Nawaab Khan, Oakwood

After driving back from the Wirral and a few drinks in Stew & Oyster, the last thing we wanted to do on Sunday night was cook.  Luckily for us, next door to Stew & Oyster is Nawaab Khan, self proclaimed "probably the best curry in Yorkshire".  Now, I'm not really in a position to judge whether that statement is accurate - I've eaten a lot of good (and some rubbish) curries whilst living in Leeds.  However, I will say that I did like this one. 

We opted for takeaway treats (Joe finally getting his way after what feels like months of asking), although on Sundays they do a "mega Asian buffet" for £10.95 per person.

Nawaab Khan is a family run restaurant serving Pakistani and Indian dishes.  We were relatively restrained in our ordering and could have gone for a lot more.  What I did note is that the menu doesn't give much of a spice indication - its fairly clear what is mild from the ingredients list, but what is spicy is less clear. 

We went for poppadoms and a pickle tray as a little starter and the pickles were great.  There was a lovely little coriander pickle which I haven't tried before, and was really tasty.  The others, although more standard, were also very good.

Poppadoms and pickles

For mains we went for Punjabi chicken, which is a Rajastani dish made with green chillies, cloves, cumin, black pepper and coriander, and was full of flavour and not too hot despite all the chillies. We also had lamb madras, which had sweet lamb in a lovely warming sauce full of flavour.  Both served up with pilau rice and a plain naan, it was a lovely dinner.  I was stuffed to the rafters but it was well worth it!  They are definitely giving the other Indian restaurants in the area a run for their money.

Punjabi chicken (left) and Lamb Madras (right)

Tuesday's Black Pepper Fest

On Tuesday Joe let me back in the kitchen and I felt we had some making up to do after the poor show on Monday night - I didn't know you could make beans on toast look even more basic!  Anyway, armed with some pretty simple ingredients of chicken, broccoli, peppers and some spices, we ended up with pretty tasty chicken and broccoli in a black pepper sauce with rice.  Admittedly, by the end of the meal both Joe and I were suffering from the spice but it was worth it!  Yum.

Chicken and broccoli in black pepper sauce

Joe's bowl, with some cheeky chilli chutney (perhaps thats why it seemed so spicy!)

Thursday - rushed roast chicken

The super exciting activities this weekend revolved around my beautiful friend and bridesmaid, Zanna, coming to stay.  I'm sure other people will sympathise with me when I say that I absolutely love having guests, but the night before they arrive I do slightly lose the plot in terms of cleaning, washing, and general prep.

The plan on Thursday had been to go into work super early (7.30am - definitely too early), work super hard and then leave with enough time to get a lot done in the evening, including food shopping, cleaning and cooking.  Best laid plans, hey?

Suffice to say, the leaving early did not really happen, so those plans went out the window.  We raced home late, slammed chicken, vegetables and potatoes in the oven, and manically cleaned  as much as we could get too.  What a super Thursday!  And the dinner outcome was as seen below: roasted chicken thighs with vegetables in a tomato sauce, topped with chicken wedges.  Not too shabby though.

Roasted chicken in the pan

Roasted chicken thighs with vegetables on a bed of watercress

Friday night in

So what I didn't say in Thursday's post is that as well as consuming rather a lot of cheese, I was also on the vino!  First proper time this year, so by the time Friday rolled around the last thing I wanted to do was go out.

Joe, who thinks out of the box more than me, persuaded me that the perfect Friday night dinner would be take away, and pointed me in the direction of The Red Sea Restaurant, a Lebanese restaurant/takeaway on Roundhay Road. 

I checked online and it seemed to have some pretty good reviews, so we gave it a shot.  The menu isn't huge, and if ordering online, the menu on the website does not exactly match that on the ordering site.  Not to worry though, there is plenty on there anyway.

We started with Mossaghat Bethenjan,which is fried aubergine with onions, peppers, chickpeas, parsley and mixed spices.  It was nicely flavoured with cumin and cinnamon and came with a huge naan bread.  It may also have converted Joe into an aubergine fan which is excellent from my point of view!

This was followed by Chicken Mousahab, boneless chicken marinaded in lemon, garlic and olive oil and served with fries and salad, and Sweet Lamb and Sultana Tagine with rice.  The lamb tagine (admittedly Moroccan) was an absolute treat - succulent lamb on the bone with a well spiced sauce full of cinnamon, cloves, cumin, honey and mango.  We also liked the chicken, but it wasn't nearly as interesting as everything else and was slightly overdone.  The chips weren't great either.

A word of warning to anyone thinking of ordering from there - we chose an extra naan (not really thinking we were getting one with the starter) and they were both huge (but very good).  The online ordering menu also doesn't specify the lamb came with rice, so we ordered another one of those.  There was definitely no need - the rice is enough to feed four and we had tons!

All in, I would go back there, but I'd probably stick to the slow cooked dishes as the lamb definitely outshone the chicken.

Mossaghat Bethenjan

Two HUGE naans

Some sort of chilli sauce/dressing

The fries - next time I wouldn't bother

Rice one - massive!

Sweet Lamb and Sultana Tagine

Tuesday - Slow Cooked Chicken in a Tomato Sauce

Jo now has impressive butchery skills - even if she does say so herself! The whole chicken that we had was skillfully sliced and diced into 8 pieces plus 2 wings - great work!.

We love our slow cooker - I am not sure there are many better things in life than coming home after a long day in work to the smell of homely food wafting from the kitchen.....this time it was slow cooked chicken in a tomato sauce, with sliced potatoes on the side.....perfect!

The potatoes

The main event - apologies for the poor picture!

Thursday and Joe's pasta

Joe does not handle illness quite as well as I do (ha!), and has got in a huff about having a runny nose and a sore throat, bless, so is making me do today's blog post even though it is definitely his turn!  Typical men hey?

In his infinite logic however, he did insist on cooking dinner tonight, and rustled up pasta with pesto, spinach, chicken and mushrooms.  It was a pretty good effort, which would have been well accompanied by a glass of wine, but we resisted the booze again - hurrah! 

Pasta with pesto, spinach, chicken and mushrooms

Saturday - New Years Eve (Jo Girl)

Joe and I had a brilliant Christmas period on the Wirral and in Edinburgh, so it was a sad goodbye on New Years Eve when we headed back on the train to Leeds.  After such a busy few days, a low key night was definitely in order - a few drinks and some nice food close to home!

Me and Tom - who is clearly much more photogenic than me!

A post train snack - excellent cheese and crackers, courtesy of Cousins Rosie and Tom and Uncle John - really good cheese!

So close to home we did indeed go - to Sweet Basil in Roundhay!  Rock on!  But it was a good way to spend new year - tasty Chinese treats and some wine - great stuff.

We decided the least we could do is go a bit "off-piste" and not order our usual choices!  We also steered clear of the Thai dishes, as we have Thai food so often.  So for starters we had the lettuce wraps with minced chicken and stuffed crab claws.  The lettuce wrap was quite possibly the largest starter I have ever seen - a iceberg leaf full of chicken and mushrooms - with more leaves on the side!  It was really tasty, although challenging with the chop sticks.  The crab claws were stuffed with crab and prawn meat and deep fried.  It was a little underwhelming compared to the lettuce leaf, but still a good shout.

Pre-dinner rose bubbles

The obligatory prawn crackers

Stuffed crab claws

Lettuce wraps with chicken

For main courses, we went for sizzling fillet steak with green pepper and black bean, and peanut and chilli hot bean sauce with chicken, and some fried rice (a new year treat for Joe!).  The sizzling fillet was really good - lots of beautiful soft steak with a punchy sauce, juxtaposed with crunchy green peppers, and the chili hot bean chicken was a great match - equally hefty, packed with burning dried red chillis, fiery ginger and a sweet and savoury sauce. 

We gave the desserts a miss (sorry Hunter Pig!) - despite our intentions there was simply no room for the banana fritters we had promised ourselves.  We strolled home and settled down in front of Match of the Day, celebrating a crazy day of football with a limoncello and a whisky - starting our party-animal 2012 as we mean to go on!!

Sizzling beef with green peppers and black bean sauce

Chicken and peanut chilli hot bean sauce

limoncello and whisky - cheers to a new year!

Friday - Last night in Edinburgh

Our final evening at Chez Barcroft was with the Gebbies and lots of fun they are too! Dinner was appropriate for the occasion, with an array of party food and home made treats that allowed for maximum time to catch up with everyone prior to our departure the next day......They was was too much food to have all the photos on the blog, but take my word for it that it was quite the feast!

Prawns with chilli sauce

Mini pork pies - especially for Joe!

Mini Baked Potatoes

Chicken skewers

A trio of fish

Dessert - mini millionnaire shortbread and popping candy rice crispy cakes!

Thursday Home Alone - and a Special Mention

So tonight it's Joe's turn to go out boozing with his work mates, while I'm at home.  Last update was that they're in the Elbow Rooms eating terrible food and Joe winning at pool - will see if that lasts! No dancing in the kitchen to smooth xmas for me, I've made dinner and now I'm watching last night's Don't Tell the Bride - awesome!  For anyone who doesn't watch Don't Tell the Bride, you are definitely missing out.  It is the best car crach TV, and for a bride to be, a check list of exactly how not to organise a wedding.

Before I get on to tonight's dinner, I must just do a little tribute to my food from yesterday.  I know Joe has done a Wednesday post (pasta with curry sauce and sausage...gross!), but last night I was at my trainee Christmas party and the food was great.  We went old school and had drinks and food at Michael and Kim's flat - they were awesome hosts and treated us all to roast pork sandwiches, complete with crackling, stuffing and apple or cranberry sauce.  Massive thanks - had a great night and definitely in the Christmas mood now!!

Roast pork sandwich with top notch crackling and cranberry.  Yum

And this is the trainees (minus Kai) at our winter ball last month, from left: Michael W, Kim (host 1), Jenny, me, David and Michael D (host 2)

But back to tonight.  I'm trying to be good, to prevent the pre-xmas pounds, and so no wine (promised I'd pick Joe up anyway!) and lots of vegetables.  I went for poached chicken with carrots and cabbage, with rice, which sounds so boring but it was actually pretty nice!  Definitely not an ultra exciting dinner (maybe I'll try sausage and curry next time...) but it did the trick.  Will have something more fun tomorrow!

Chicken and veg with rice...yawn

Friday Night Pizza (by Jo Girl)

It's been a long week, with lots of things going on from working away to debating competitions to cheese tastings.  Our quality time together has been fairly rushed of late, which is unlikely to change as we head into Christmas.  This means that when we get a Friday evening in together, we just want to relax and have fun, rather than get obliterated.  We certainly are getting old!

So Friday night this week was a chicken and chorizo pizza with chips and home made remoulade, followed by mince pies with blue cheese and a viewing of Up!

Starting with the food, who wouldn't want to have chicken and chorizo pizza, with peppers mushrooms and jalapenos?! We also received a celeriac in our veg box last week.  It went pretty well in soup, but whenever we go to France I have to have remoulade, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to try a homemade version.  Made with mayo, Dijon mustard, lemon and capers, it was pretty good but a little heavy on the moutarde!  However, Joe usually doesn't like remoulade and I have won him over so it was a win!

Joe was also on mince pie duty, having been disappointed in his effort last week.  This time he used the homage 2 fromage night so inspire some blue cheese mince pies, which were really good - that salty cheese brings out the flavour of the mince meat really well!

Post dinner entertainment was a viewing of Up, which I had never seen before.  It was highly recommended by Wolf and Gelt last week, and I must admit I absolutely loved it (even if it made me a little teary - don't tell anyone!).  If you have not seen this film, I can only suggest you find a copy and settle down to watch it, it's brilliant.

Remoulade

Chicken and chorizo pizza

A close up - chicken, chorizo, peppers and jalapenos.  Yum.

Joe's plate - complete with slightly burned chips.  Oops.

Blue cheese mince pies

And the finished mince pies.  Very tasty too.

Sunday Lunch at Fazenda

Back in April, our first ever blog review was of Fazenda in Granary Wharf.   We had a great time, and decided to revisit it this weekend for a bit of pre-Christmas cheer!  Admittedly Fazenda hasn't really embraced the Christmas spirit as yet, but a good lunch and some booze was fun anyway.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time writing about the food, save to say we really enjoyed it.  If you want a bit more info, check out the original review. As we were there for lunch, the choice of salads and meats was smaller than in the evening (and it costs about £7 less) but we all enjoyed some good food.  I wasn't a huge fan of the pork, which seemed to be cooked with cheese and was a little odd, and a bit over cooked, but the joy of Fazenda is that if you don't like it, you can have something else!  The staff were also very attentive and made sure we were properly looked after. 

Some form of meat in pastry thing - very nice though!

An Argentinian Malbec and a Modelo - perfect

The salad bar

A man with meat

Chips - the first of many portions - these were very good!

Chicken wrapped in bacon - a fave

Chicken thighs

Sausages

Joe's amaretto coffee

Petit fours

And our wonderful lunch companions - The Wolf and Gelt