Saturday - victory at the Hub and squid stuffed with black pudding

This weekend there was a momentous event in the calender - the Liverpool v Everton FA cup semi final at Wembley.  As you may have noticed, Joe is quite a dedicated Liverpool fan, and over the course of our relationship has suckered me in too.  I always maintain that we wouldn't be where we are today if I hadn't embraced football - it would have made for some fairly lonely weekends and a constant Saturday night battle for the TV (Match Of The Day always wins). 

So on Saturday we headed to the Hub in Chapel Allerton to have some drinks and watch the football, with a certain amount of trepidation because Liverpool haven't had their best season this year.  We were joined by Dave Bro, another Red, and Paul, a filthy Arsenal supporter who was very keen for Everton to win - fun all round. 

After a nail biting 94 minutes Liverpool were victorious, making their way to the FA cup final against either Chelsea or Tottenham with a 2-1 win over Everton.  We celebrated with some beers and a tasty bar lunch at The Hub of a Real Greek burger with curly fries for Joe and a Puppy Love Bratwurst hot dog for me, which were both awesome and a great accompaniment for the beers. 

We also stuck around for the Grand National, but the less said about that the better - out of six horses picked between us, only three finished, and only one of those was top four and I had bet on the nose!  Oh well, it was a lot of fun anyway.

The Real Greek burger, with lamb mince, coriander and tzatziki

The puppy love bratwurst - simple and effective

Andy Carroll - the new love of Joe's life

After all that, we retired home for an evening of the papers and some reality tv (don't tell anyone but Joe is a HUGE fan of The Voice) and some dinner.  I've been telling Joe for ages that I wanted to make stuffed squid, and finally got round to it this weekend.  Our dinner was baby squid stuffed with Macsween's black pudding, turkey and brown rice, accompanied by a squid, tomato and chargilled pepper stew. 

Stuffed squid

Squid, tomato and chargrilled pepper stew

Stuffed squid, stew and rice

Friday Night G-Wu takeaway

On Friday night Joe and I decided to treat ourselves to a cheeky Chinese take away.  I had originally wanted it last weekend (for my first dinner back after THE ILLNESS - which I will never mention again now, thanks) but circumstances prevented that so Friday it was.  Now, I can be a little lazy when choosing places to eat - when I find somewhere I like I have a habit of wanting to revisit that place rather than trying somewhere new - trying to avoid potential disappointments of crap food.  Anyway, Joe is rather different to me and likes an experiment, so persuaded me to find somewhere different from our usual take away haunts.

Step up G-Wu on Harrogate Road near Moortown corner.  It's only been open for a few months and I know a few people who have been and said good things.  I'll be honest, the silly name of the place has put me off so far, and when running past it always looks a little too shiny and white for my tastes.  Appearances can be deceiving though so we picked a couple of dishes and tucked in.

For starter we had the fried pork dumplings which were simply fantastic - tasty filling meaty with pork, light pastry and a lovely sharp soy dipping sauce.  They reminded me of Tibetan momo dumplings as the pastry was soft rather than crisp.  So far so good.

For mains we had prawns in a Szechuan sauce and crispy beef with chilli and garlic, which for me is a nostalgic treat from my childhood.  Both were pretty good - good chunks of beef with a chilli kick and some lovely plump prawns.  It's not something I could eat too often, but for a treat I was quite impressed.  Oh, and they do the best prawn crackers I've had in a while so that's a plus too.  There's nothing on the menu that is going to challenge the senses or push the boat out, but it was a perfectly pleasant Friday night treat.

Pork dumplings

Crispy beef

Szechuan prawns

Joe's plate - Szechuan prawns, chilli beef, crispy noodles and jasmine rice

Sunday to Thursday - a round up of treats

Apologies for the slight sabbatical from the blog this week - we've been engaged with other things so this is a round up of Sunday to Thursday this week!  We're still trying to be relatively healthy, although I was making the most of finally being able to eat a full meal so you'll have to excuse Monday's fish and chips, but here it is...

On Sunday we had Joe's stir fried udon noodles with teriyaki salmon, and very nice it was too!  I love it when Joe cooks, and bless it seems to have fallen to him a bit more this week.

Teriyaki salmon and udon noodles

Monday was the naughty fish and chips.  Joe and I didn't really celebrate the bank holiday this year - whilst I had some work to do, Joe went home for the day to spend some time with the family.  By the time he came home the last thing we were in the mood for was cooking (how very unlike us!) so it was straight to the freezer for fish and chips.  At some point I'll cave and let him go the chippy for some real fish and chips, as the freezer version is always a bit disappointing, but that'll only be after A LOT of running and a very healthy week!

Fish, chips and peas

On Tuesday I was back in the kitchen, knocking up stir fried noodles with spicy black bean prawns with yellow pepper and spring onions.  It was pretty healthy and went down very well, especially with a nice glass of chenin blanc...woops.  I think the booze ban may be delayed until May after all!

Spicy black bean prawns

On Wednesday Joe was back in the kitchen.  Bless, he had run home after a long day at work so was already pretty tired, and then received a call from me saying I was going to be working late so dinner was up to him!  He did surprise me though, making a pasta bake with broccoli and cauliflower, which was very tasty.

Pasta baked with broccoli and cauliflower

And finally on Thursday we headed to the Adelphi for @homage2fromage's latest cheese night - challenging cheese!  I've been telling Nick for a while that I thought they should do some really filthy cheese.  My favourite cheeses tend towards the face-melting, walking off the plate variety, which is often difficult to locate in the UK.

Well Nick and Vickie certainly came up with some pretty challenging cheeses - there were 8 to try and I liked all but 2 of them.  My least favourites were the Stinking Bishop and the Oxford Isis, which had something of an air of cabbage/fish about it...gross!  The best one by far was the Epoisses, which is washed in brandy and is banned on public transport in France for being so whiffy and the Reblechon was also very nice (I can see a trend with the French cheeses here).  There were some superb varieties on offer and it was a great evening all round.

Just some of the rind washed cheeses