Food and Biscuits: seabass

Showing posts with label seabass. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 April 2012

A weekend in Edinburgh

This weekend we were in Edinburgh, combining some important wedding planning (the food!) with baby Tom's first birthday. It was a fantastic weekend and Joe and I stuffed ourselves silly with home cooked delights and some wedding food, which will not be previewed here - that's just taking it too far! We also got to catch up with friends and family, including Werner and Zita who dragged themselves from lovely sunny Germany where it was 25 degrees, to Edinburgh where it was about 10 and rained most of the time! That's dedication to your loved ones...!

Joe and I arrived on Thursday night after a rather treacherous drive up the A1 - torrential rain all over Yorkshire, the A66 closed by flooding, and heavy cloud all over - not so fun! That said, its rare we ever have a straight forward drive to Edinburgh so it should not have been a surprise. It was all made better by a warm welcome of spicy pork stew with mash and cabbage and a nice glass of white wine - what could be better.

Mum's pork stew with mash and cabbage

Friday was quite the glutonous day, starting with two food and drink tastings and a wander around Edinburgh. Zita and Werner arrived on Friday afternoon and joined us for dinner - and with mum in the kitchen again we were quite spoiled! Dinner was roasted seabass on ratatouille with new potatoes and garlic bread, which was all fantastic and topped off with a lemon tart and a Mississippi mud cake. As I said, totally stuffed stupid.

Roast seabass with ratatouille, potatoes and garlic bread

lemon tart and Mississippi mud cake - well, how could you choose between them?

On Saturday Michael and Kerstin threw a first birthday party for Tom. It's hard to believe its been a year since he was born - and its a world away from the tricky times they had at the start. No more feeding by syringe - he is a healthy little thing who is now rapid on his feet! He would definitely outrun Michael in the marathon!

Kerstin and Michael cooked up a storm for all their guests - home made pizzas, quiches, breads, cakes and all sorts. I chipped in on a minimal level with some Thai prawns, tandoori chicken bites and cheese and pancetta straws. It was a great afternoon, the sun was shining, the drinks were flowing and Joe even now has a tan! It was lovely to catch up with lots of the family and we had a great time - thanks very much Michael, Kerstin and Tom!

The table, groaning under home made pizzas, breads, quiches, cakes and salads. All so very good.

Very proud grandparents - Zita and Mum

Home made pizza with courgettes, mushrooms and chorizo

Monday, 26 March 2012

Sunday Sea Bass

On Sunday Joe and I made a mid year resolution that we're going to get healthy. We're both fairly active (well, Joe is, and I make a pathetic attempt) and I like to think of myself as healthy, but the curse (and blessing) of the blog is that it is an accurate representation of just how many treats we indulge in! Especially as Joe is running the marathon in a couple of months, and W-day dawns in just six months, this is prime time for getting into shape and eating well.

So, bearing that in mind, please ignore the Sunday croissants that graced breakfast in bed...yum.

However, we both hit the gym during the day, and then had a rather healthy sea bass late lunch in the sun shine. While we were out on Saturday Nick commented that our most gross blog post so far has been the pheasant plucking a few months back. I'll be honest, the scenes in our kitchen on Sunday afternoon, with me descaling and gutting the bass, we're not that pretty either! Joe didn't take any pictures though, so don't be too scared of the pictures below!

Lunch was a rather yummy roasted sea bass stuffed with herbs and lemon, served with a Greek salad and new potatoes. We did feel rather virtuous and I'm sure it's set us up for a good week. Feel free to tell us off when we fall off the waggon though....

breakfast croissants. Thank god for the gym!

The prepped seabass. Pretty neat and tidy I think!

Greek salad

Roasted sea bass, new potatoes and greek salad

Thursday, 12 January 2012

Wednesday - Joe's birthday at Carluccios

So Wednesday was Joe's birthday (33, since you're asking...) and he didn't want any huge celebrations. No celebrations on a birthday is a bit alien to me - it's a bit like Christmas without turkey - bah humbug. So we decided to go for a quiet dinner (with enough time to get home and watch the Liverpool v Man City match - good skills Liverpool!) at Carluccios.

Carluccios arrived in Leeds last year, the latest restaurant to crop up on Greek Street. It's an Italian bistro/deli/coffee bar under the Antonio Carluccio brand, serving "authentic Italian food at great prices" (ref Carluccios' website). We've been in for coffee and some deli treats before (great olives and fun varieties of pasta) but not dinner.

Off to Carluccios we trotted, armed with a voucher for half price main courses (it is January, after all!). The voucher entitled us to 2 for 1 main courses from the salad, pasta and secondi menus. After some deliberation between pastas and the secondi, I opted for the seabass with tomato salsa and sauteed potatoes, while Joe made a last minute curve ball change to the fritto misto. We also had some olives to nibble on while making our choices.

The Carluccios menu isn't huge. This is usually a good thing, as a huge menu always strikes huge, clanging warning bells of outside catering and microwaves with me. However, I didn't fancy pasta, and the secondi options weren't massively inspiring. The seabass looked nice though - simple ingredients done well are always a winner. It just didn't win me over unfortunately. There was nothing overtly bad about it - perhaps the seabass was a bit overcooked and under seasoned - but in general the whole thing was just lacking. Simple dishes need amazing ingredients, and I wasn't convinced they had them. Everything was just a little bland. Poor Joe, well, he chose badly. The fritto misto was a mix of calamari, whitebait, prawns and seabass. Everything tasted exactly the same, and while the calamari was cooked well, the whitebait and prawns were over cooked. Being honest, the whole experience was just very underwhelming.

To top it off, the atmosphere was totally flat, despite the restaurant being quite busy. AND they knew it was Joe's birthday before we went, we had birthday cards, presents, and "happy birthday" confetti all over the table, and not one of the serving staff wished him a happy birthday (or really cracked a smile). It was all just rather functional.

So over all, faintly disappointing, but nothing too dramatic, which says it all really.

But on the plus side, Joe returned home to a surprise birthday cake. As always with my cakes, it tasted better than it looked (and perhaps some day someone will teach me how to ice a cake properly!)