and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…

except me. I was more than stirring. I was waving my arms about and shouting.

“What do you mean a STIR-FRY!?”

The instigators of my wrath watched me in confused silence for a moment. Then Dad said,
“Well, a vegetable stir fry.”
“It’s going to be Christmas Day! You’re having GUESTS,  and you’re going to serve them a VEGETABLE STIR-FRY?!”
“What’s wrong with that?”

For a second I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Having been brought up in Britain, the association of Christmas and good quality food was almost innate.

“You’re supposed to make an effort for Christmas Day. That’s the point, isn’t it? To overindulge in GOOD food. Not a ten minute job with reduced mange-tout!”
“Well there’s that reduced chicken we found and the salmon. We thought we’d give them to you to take home but we can use them if you think the stir fry-won’t be enough.”
“You know how to cook a chicken?”

My parents are occasional fish eaters but are mostly vegetarian. It had probably been a while since they’d attepted to cook an animal of any reaonable size.

“We can cook a curry. That works with anything. I will cut the chicken and Mum can curry it.” 

As I’ve described before, my parents’ curries are nothing like the excellent dishes you’d find on the websites of Sig or Mamta.  They involve throwing at least a tablespoon of every spice in the house (and there are a lot of ten year old, unlabelled, powdered spices there) into a pot with the chicken and a heck of a lot of salt and boiling the mixture for several hours until solid.

I took a look in the fridge. There in front of me was a small but fairly good looking, free range, corn fed bird. It certainly was not something I’d want to be a victim of my parents’ currying. I was also fairly sure that Dad’s vegetable stir fry would be seasoned with at least half a bottle of soy sauce. Things were not looking good for this meal.

“So you have invited guests to your house for Christmas Day, and you’re suggesting you  serve them a vegetable stir-fry and chicken curry?! And you want to butcher it yourself? Do you actually have a meat cleaver?”
“No, why would I need one?” he replied.  At this point I completely lost my rag.
“WELL, WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO USE TO CUT UP THE CHICKEN? A PAIR OF SCISSORS?!”
“I have a bread knife.” 

I cupped my head in my hands. Half an hour later, I’d convinced them to give me control of the chicken. I had no idea what I was going to do with it but ANYTHING would be better than what had been previously planned for it and we really needed an alternative to the inevitable soy-sauce fest that would be produced by my father.

But there was a problem. My parents don’t own many ingredients. There were no herbs, no butter and no winter vegetables. In fact there was nothing but the chicken, a lot of ancient unidentifiable spice and some mange tout. Christmas Eve at 11pm is not the best time to discover you need a trolley load of groceries. I also had the additional problem that the small chicken in the fridge was supposed to feed six people.

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Not, as you might have thought, my latest trick for tackling my homeward journey down Highgate Hill but instead a tasty little treat I found at Borough market.

When I go to Borough, I avoid taking Goon with me unless its absolutely necessary. This is particularly important now, since the rather large cheese wheel he bought back in January has apparently been totally consumed and putting him in the vicinity of more gorgonzola seems like asking for trouble.

But the problem is that Goon has been moping recently. This is in response to my rather long working days. I have even less time than I did last year to indulge him on weekday evenings. So at weekends, when I am around, Goon tends to follow me everywhere.

On my first couple of trips to Borough, I sneaked away when Goon was asleep but last weekend, hung over and tired, I didn’t leave until 2pm and Goon gleefully followed me to the market. As usual he was apathetic about most things on sale there but, on this occassion, his eye was caught by something  on the fish counter.

The creatures in question were live crayfish. As much as I am in favour of killing what I eat by myself, there was something I found vaguely arachnid about these creatures and I, for want of a better phrase, am f***ing terrified of all things spiderlike. So, in an attempt to distract Goon from his live prey, i tutted and said ‘But we’ve HAD crayfish before! Why don’t we get something we haven’t tried’. Luckily for me, right in front of the crayfish were a pile of skate wings, which neither of us had eaten before.

A little internet research led me to the following recipe for skate wings. It’s a classic for a reason and well worth trying.

Skate Wings with Brown Butter and Capers (with special thanks to Ian for his input to this recipe)

• 2 skate wings (600g), skinned
• court bouillon for poaching ( I used leeks and carrots, garlic, bay leaves and thyme simmered for about half an hour)
• handful of capers in brine, drained and soaked
• 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
• 75g butter
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1. Place the skate wings in large a large saucepan/skillet and cover with the court bouillon. Bring the bouillon to a gentle simmer.
2. When the fish flakes easily (after roughly 8 minutes) remove the fish from the pan and place on  a warmed serving plate.
3. Melt the butter in  saucepan over a medium heat. When it has turned golden brown, immediately pour it over the fish.
4. Swill out the pan with the white wine vinegar and pour this over the fish too.  
5. Scatter the capers and chopped parsley over the skate wings and serve, perhaps with sauteéd anya potatoes and buttered steamed asparagus.

***

While I was researching skate recipes, I was a little annoyed that all I could find were variants of this. Now I understand why it is so popular. The flavour balance in this dish is perfect. Skate isn’t quite like other white fish. It has a different texture. It’s not exactly fatty but it needs something to ‘cut through’ the gelationousness (is that a real word?) of the fish. The vinegar and the salty capers were perfect for this. The brown butter gave depth to the dish. It really was delicious.

An additional bonus is that skate is relatively cheap. So if you see some on sale, givethis a try.

As much as I like my job, seven weeks of 6am starts and 1am finishes has left me feeling a little drained and half term is indeed a very welcome thing. So, howcome I didn’t post until half way through half term? Well, the sad geeky truth is I got a little carried away with a mathemtical coding project related to my year 12s’ syllabus.

Yes, I know, it’s tragic. But don’t worry, I’ve still got things to post, I’ll just take a while to write them up.

My first 7 weeks at Highgate have been an interesting experience. I wasn’t expecting the ups and downs that seem to come with your average teaching day. On most days I will see my lower school set. They can be difficult and lessons with them frequently leave me totally exhausted and more than a little peeved. But then this is counterbalanced by an amazing set or year 12s who, no matter how badly the day is going, will somehow manage to make this job seem worthwhile.

The school day also makes cooking a little tough but, for these 9 days of holiday at least, I’m back on form and the first thing I made was this.

You can tell I had too much time on my hands that day, can’t you? 

I’m aware that a few cookbooks include fish lasagnas like this one with a smoked salmon filling but I think that the salmon on its own would be a bit overpowering for me. I wanted something to dissipate the strong salty flavour of the salmon and, at the same time, add an extra dimension to the dish.  I thought about adding prawns at first, but I didn’t want to alter the texture of the lasagne that much. Then I found some haddock on special offer and this dish was born.

Haddock and Smoked Salmon Lasagna

• 175g smoked salmon
• 200g haddock fillet, skinned
• half a medium onion, finely chopped
• a tablespoon of finely chopped parsley
• 3 sheets fresh lasagna 
• 2 eggs, poached and refreshed in cold water

For The Hollandaise Sauce

• one to two tablespoons chopped chives 
• 2 medium/large eggs  (yolks only)
• 100g butter
• two teaspoons of white wine vinegar

1. Start off by getting your poached eggs ready. 
2. Make the hollandaise sauce as described here. 
3. Cut the lasagne sheets in half and cook them, as normal, in salted boiling water. Brush them with olive oil so they don’t stick together, and set them aside. 
4. Sweat the onions in a little of the butter until they are soft.
5. Meanwhile, poach the haddock in the milk until it flakes. Drain the fish, flake it into small pieces and stir it into the cooked onion with the parsley.
6. Warm two serving plates. Using a quarter of the haddock minture, make a thin, rectangular base for the first lasagna on one plate. Try and make it the same size as  the lasagne sheets.
7. Cover the base one lasagna sheet. Over this, put down a layer of smoked salmon, using around a third of the salmon and cover this with another sheet of lasagna. Make the top layer of the lasagna in the same way as the first, but this time layer another third of the salmon over the haddock before adding the top lasagna sheet. Top the whole thing with the remaining salmon.
8. Assemble the other lasagna in the same way. Top each with a poached egg, pour the hollandaise sauce over them and scatter over some chopped chives.
9. Serve with steamed asparagus. 

***

This was the biggest success I’d had this term. The addition of the haddock to the smoked salmon and hollandaise did exctly what I wanted. The lasagna had that extra depth of flavour I had been aiming for but was still dominated by the classic pairing of smoked salmon and hollandaise sauce.

In fact, this would have been perfect if I’d been able to find our whisk. As it was, it had disappeared in our move two months ago and somehow I’d managed to get by without noticing it had gone. This left me with  two problems. Firstly, it is very difficult to make hollandaise sauce without one and secondly, those poached eggs were just not going to work. 

The hollandaise sauce was eventually made by beating things very fast with a fork. As for the eggs, Goon tried to replace the whisk with an electric stick blender. It didn’t really work.  

Well, it nearly held together. Next time I’m in this situation, I’ll try the oiled cling film trick that Trig described in his post on egg poaching techniques.

Last weekend I got my first paycheck! So naturally it seemed only proper that I should go shopping and spend all of it at once. The problem is that there see to be very few decent shops in my area.

To have a fighting chance at bankrupting myself, I needed to go all the way back to my old haunt of Kensington, where I managed to spend £200 on a vast array of pointless girly things (makeup I don’t really need, overly frilly underwear etc. ) and some less frivolous things like clothes for work.

Since I was in Kensington, it would seem rude to not pop in to visit the Whole Foods market, which is where I found these intriguing creatures.

I’d only seen razor clams here once before and at that time there was no way I could afford them. But on this occasion I was out to treat myself, so I picked up twelve to share with Goon.

I don’t think I’ve ever cooked anything quite so active! As the fishmonger got them ready for me, they squirmed and wriggled around in an almost disturbing way. By the time i got them home, the cold from their iced container had subdued them but, by that point Goon wanted to see the liveliness of the clams for himself, so he picked one and sat warming it in his hands.

After half an hour all the clams were at room temperature and wriggling away again. I set Goon the task of tapping them until they stayed closed while I got started on the rest of dinner. The fishmonger had suggested treating them exactly like mussels, so I decided to steam them in a both of coconut milk and fish stock flavoured with lemongrass, lime leaves, chilli and coriander.

By the time the clams were ready for steaming, Goon had grown quite attached to them and it was a struggle convincing him to let me cook them. Fortunately, Goon thinks about his stomach before everything else, so I just waited a while until he got hungry, after which he was qute happy to drop his new friends into the pan.

The clams didn’t take long to cook at all. I seved them with the thickened broth on a bed of steamed jasmine rice with some pak choi in oyster sauce.

At approximately £1 each, these clams weren’t cheap but I’d definitely get them again as a treat. They have a fantastic texture, like lightly cooked scallops but more meaty, and a very fishy flavour. I think they’d be a superb replacement for mussels in a moules mariniere. I imagine they’d also be great just grilled with some herbs and olive oil. I wouldn’t say I made a mistake by putting them in a Thai broth, but they certainly didn’t need so much attention- I could have got away with treating them simply.

So next payday, I will be running over to Kensington to see if there are any more of this exciting crustacean in stock. Hopefully they’ll still be in season then. 

Now, I like pink, but this is just ridiculous.

Mackerel with gooseberry sauce is a classic pairing. I love this fish, so this is a dish I’ve wanted to make since I first came across it on the menu of a pub almost five years ago.  The reason I took so long is, although mackerel is always easy to get, gooseberries have a very short season and I inevitably forget about them during the brief period when they are around.

This year was very nearly no exception. Luckily, I accidentally came across some of the last fruit of the season, hiding behind some raspberries in Tesco. This jolted my memory about the mackerel dish so I ran off to the fish-counter and got a couple of large whole fish for me and Goon. Remembering the ridiculous situation Goon got in the last time we had mackerel, I got the fishmonger to remove the heads from these fish this time.

Like most of the gooseberries I’d seen, these ones were green, although slightly tinged with pink. I had no idea they would have such a dramatic colour change in my saucepan. All I did was simmer the berries with some, mint, sugar and white wine. Once they were soft, I passed the dark greenish mixture through a sieve. As the skins were left behind I was left with a reasonably dark pink liquid. The sauce didn’t turn to the lurid colour in the photograph until I melted a chunk of butter into the sauce.

Of course, like most small children, Goon got very excited by the brightly coloured food. In fact he was so excited by the sauce that, for the first time ever, he didn’t moan at all about the fish having bones! I couldn’t believe it!  

I can see why mackerel and gooseberry has become such a classic pairing. Mackerel works well with acidic sauces that cut through its wonderful oily richness. The gooseberries have that acidity and a very interesting flavour too. Despite its psychadelic appearance, this meal was delicious.

I accompanied our mackerel with a potato and onion salad with sour cream, parsley and thyme and some steamed green beans. It was a very refreshing dinner for the hottest day of the year so far. It’s a shame the gooseberries won’t be around for much longer.

Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

(makes enough to accompany 2 mackerel)

• 175g washed gooseberries
• 20g caster sugar
• around 10 mint leaves
• white wine or cider to cover. A sweet-ish wine with elderflower flavours works really well.
• 15g butter (I used unsalted but then added a little salt at the end)
• A little salt if necessary

Simmer the gooseberries, mint and sugar in the wine or cider until they are soft. Gently mash them up using a wooden spatula, then pass the mixture through a sieve. Melt in the butter, taste and add more sugar and the salt if it needs it.

***

I’ve decided to send  my gooseberries to Weekend Herb Blogging, which this week is hosted by Melissa, the Cooking Diva. Check out the roundup at her blog on Monday.

Goon think’s  there’s something a little scary about Delia Smith. I think it’s something to do with this picture.

I never thought I’d end up buying a Delia book. It’s just not my style of cooking. I’m much more of a Gordon Ramsey fan.  However, a few days ago, I bit the bullet and picked up her Complete Cookery Course as many people had said it was good for teaching beginners. There certainly were a lot of recipes in it, which would make it a useful tool for Goon, and I noticed a few good ideas for me to try too.

That evening, I took the book to Goon for him to have a look. Goon cowered slightly on the sofa, as the giant face on the cover bore down on him.

“It’s got very detailed instructions,” I said soothingly. “You like detailed instructions, don’t you?” Goon nodded, then whimpered slightly at Delia’s creepy half-smile and stuck his face in a cushion.  I sighed and took the dustcover bearing Delia’s portrait off the book. Goon was much happier after that. 

My plan was for Goon to cook a recipe of his choice the following night using some cod. I’d specifically chosen fish as he’d not tried cooking it before. It didn’t take Goon long at all to find the easiest recipe in the section: baked white fish with a sauce made from sour cream, capers and watercress. 

The recipe is as simple as it sounds but it needed a fair bit of alteration. For a start it called for just one teaspoon of fresh tarragon, which really wouldn’t have been enough. Ditto the quantities for capers and watercress. We doubled the values for all of these.

The main problem though, was this recipe leaves the fish a little dry. I think it is because the suggested baking time was a bit long. Next time I’d change the 20 minutes at 190C to 15 minutes at 180C.

Baked Fish with a Sour Cream, Caper and Watercress Sauce (Adapted from Delia Smith’s Complete Illustrated Cookery Course)

Recipe to follow soon: Apologies for the delay, my home computer had a small…. umm…’accident’ with a glass of wine, which has left the keyboard a little worse for wear, which means I’ll need to copy out the recipe and bring it into the office before I can type it up.

***

Goon found this recipe very easy to follow. If he hadn’t been so late starting it, he would probably have been able to make the accompaniments to the meal too. As it was, I took over that part of the meal as I wanted to have dinner before 11pm.

I have noticed that, even though Goon claims he needs precise instructions to cook, he doesn’t actually follow them at all. He’s just as blazé with quantities as I am. Sometimes he asks me questons which makes it obvious he hasn’t even read the recipe he’s trying to follow. Still, with me in the kitchen shouting, “Read the ****ing recipe!” he seems to be getting better. 

As for our verdict on the meal, we thought it was fine but nothing to write home about. I think the sauce could have done with a bit more flavour. Perhaps a little extra wine or the addition of a little fish stock would have helped. The main downside was the slightly overcooked fish, but I’m sure knocking a few minutes off the cooking time would sort that out.

For Goon’s next cooking experiment, I’ve picked something reasonably challenging. To give you a clue, it will involve a cheese sauce topping. I wonder how he’ll cope with that.

It’s a miracle!

Yes, Goon is cooking! I think it has been at least 6 months since he last tried cooking properly and, even then, I had to take over.

The reason for this suprising occurence is a rather nasty bug that hit me on Tuesday. It really was horrible. I ended up spending most of the day on the sofa in pain. By the evening I was in pain and hungry. Goon’s first suggestion was take-away but there was no way I wanted junk food then.

Goon wasn’t too keen on the idea of cooking. He likes to have precise, failsafe instructions for preparing food and not many of my cookbooks are very good for that. They are mostly a collection of Borders £3 bargains (great for inspiration rather than reliable recipes) and  more difficult material that I like to use to challenge myself.  

The only option was for me to invent something for him to cook. In the end I adapted some instructions for a UKTV lobster dish to make an easy recipe ofr linguine with tomato based seafood sauce.

He followed it pretty well! If he hadn’t kept getting distracted by the TV, he might have managed it all himself, but I had to run in, stir and add liquid a few times to save it when the crummy cop show on telly got too exciting for Goon.

Simple Linguine with a Crab and Prawn Sauce

Ingredients (for one Goon and one ill and hungry person)

• 1 tin (approx 175g drained) crabmeat
• 200g shelled, cooked king prawns 
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 or 3 green birds eye chillies, roughly chopped
•  a thumb sized piece of ginger root, crushed
• 1 small glass white wine
• 1 Goon sized handful (it’s a BIG hand) of coriander leaf, roughly chopped
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes in their own juice
• Olive oil (quite a lot)
• Salt and Pepper
• 225g dried linguine
• more coriander to garniish

Put the pasta to boil in plenty of salted water. 

Fry the garlic gently in about 1 tbsp of  olive oil. When it is soft add the crushed ginger, the chopped green chillies, the tomatoes and the white wine. Let these simmer for a while. 

If a Goon is cooking this, make sure you turn the TV off at this point, or disaster may follow.

Once the pasta has cooked, toss it in just enough olive oil to coat it and set it aside.

When the tomato sauce is thick, stir in a large handful of chopped coriander. Taste and add salt, pepper and more coriander and tomato puree if necessary. (I had to do this bit- Goon doesn’t trust his tastebuds.) 

Stir in the white crabmeat and the king prawns. Mix it up thoroughly with the linguine, warm it through, and serve, garnished with more coriander.

 ***

And the result?

It tasted very good indeed! 

The best thing about this, is that it has encouraged Goon to cook some more. This could be really useful because I’ll probably need a few nights out of the kitchen when my job starts. My plan is to try and make Goon cook something simple once a week. I’ve already found that some of the recipes in my Nigel Slater books might be suitable for him. If those work out well, I might even go and pick up Delia’s cookery course and see what he makes of it.

Of all the commonly eaten food creatures, shellfish and cephalopods seem to be treated with the greatest trepidation. I suppose that, in today’s world of sanitised chicken breasts in plastic wrappers, the sight of eyes, tails, legs and tentacles is a harsh reminder that you’re actually eating something that was a living and breathing creature.

Then there is the fact that, when it comes down to it, these creatures do look rather bizarre. In fact they look so alien that the horror writer HP Lovecraft seems to have based his designs for ancient evil Gods on them.

Picture from www.paleos.com

Doesn’t the evil God Cthulu look like an overgrown squid on legs? I’m glad that is all fiction, or I’d be in a lot of trouble with all the tentacles i’ve eaten in my time.  

While I can partially understand a slight hesitation in wanting to try these rather odd looking creatures, cephalopods can make some really tasty meals. Here is one of them.

This is octopus, dressed with a spicy oil and coriander served with coconut and lime rice and some curried green beans. Personally I think that, in this form, the octopus looks rather appetizing. But it didn’t start off looking like this.

If you’re of a squeamish disposition, you’d better quit reading this post here. The more adventurous among you may prefer to click on the ‘more’ button to see my octopus on the way to becoming this tasty meal. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!

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Have I mentioned before that I hate Sundays?

Since I’ve had so much time on my hands in the last week, I have had lots of opportunity to think about exactly what I want for dinner. I can create and recreate dishes in my head to my hearts content and, very occasionally, I get a good idea.

On Sunday I had some of this inspiration. I knew they had some good looking monkfish tails at Whole Foods so I thought of marinating one in lemon and pernod, crusting it with lemon thyme and roasting it with fennel.

So far so good, but since it was a Sunday I had to sprint to the market before it shut. I got there just in time, selected my monkfish and gleefully carried it over to vegetable section to find, to my horror, that there was no fennel.

I couldn’t believe it! Whole Foods had let me down! But I don’t give up that easily. Even on a Sunday at 6pm, surely somewhere would have fennel. So I started walking. I checked out the little shops on Gloucester road, then I walked to the little Iranian shops on Hammersmith Road, then I walked to the Sainsbury Local in Shepherds Bush. No fennel anywhere. My last port of call was the big Islamic shops on the Uxbridge road. They have EVERYTHING and they never seem to shut.

Well, everything except fennel. By this point it was 7:30pm and I’d walked about 6 miles. I decided this whole thing was ridiculous, gave up, bought some asparagus and headed home. Then Goon said he didn’t like asparagus any more.

We both had our monkfish as planned, with saffron flavoured roast potatoes.

The monkfish was marinated in a mixture of lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic and pernod. Just before putting it in the oven, I stripped the leaves off some lemon thyme and lightly coated the tail with it, then roasted it on a bed of sliced lemon and star anise. The marinade certainly gave the fish a good flavour. The lemon dominated but there was still a subtle presence of the aniseed, which was exactly how I wanted it.

As an accompaniment, I had roast asparagus and Goon had buttered broad beans.  I made a quick white wine reduction with a splash of cream as a last minute sauce.

I think this is the second time I’ve made saffron roast potatoes. They’re really growing on me. Whilst I still prefer goose-fat flavoured roast potatoes, they don’t suit every meal and this saffron version is a nice, interesting variant. 

One day I might actually learn my lesson and shop for my Sunday dinner on Saturday when all the decent shops are open. Or, more likely, I will continue to swear and curse at the Sunday trading laws for ever, or at least until I get out of Britain.

One of the things I love most about tuna is it’s versatility.  

I wouldn’t normally have tuna twice in one week but I had to make an exception. For the whole of last week, Goon was asking for tuna steaks for dinner. I kept ignoring him because the weather was unseasonably cold and, as a result, I was craving heavier more comforting food. Then, as soon as Goon went away for the weekend, the sun came out, it got very warm and tuna steaks seemed like an excellent idea.

Browsing around Sainsbury’s, I came across a vegetable I hadn’t tried before. It was a chinese cabbage called choi sum. I’m sick to death of being stuck with pak choi whenever I’m making chinese, so I was very keen to try this new leaf. I decided to make an udon noodle soup with the choi sum, some oriental mushrooms (which I managed to get for free since the tills weren’t working properly \o/) and top it with a seared tuna steak.

This is a dish which I would have blogged before but, for some reason, it is always very difficult to photograph. This has been my best effort so far.

This dish always involves a lot of improvisation. I boil vegetable (or chicken) stock with chopped coriander, spring onion and red chilli, minced garlic and ginger, lemongrass, lime leaves and thai fish sauce in varying amounts depending on my mood. On this occasion I wanted something quite fiery, so a lot of chilli and ginger went in.

The tuna is just marinated in chilli, garlic and ginger and griddled until rare. To assemble the dish, pop the cooked vegetables and noodles in the bowl, pour over the soup and sit the tuna steak on top.  It’s best to wait until the soup is at room temperature. Otherwise it’ll cook your tuna steak more than you intended. 

When Goon found out about my dinner he wasn’t very happy. He sulked. A lot. To appease him i agreed to make tuna again when he came back at the end of the weekend, but I really didn’t fancy exactly the same thing again.

Fortunately, the versatility of tuna meant there were lots of other things I could make. This time I thought I’d do something completely different to my last tuna meal. Instead of a hot and spicy oriental dish, I went for more gentle flavours of saffron, lemon, herbs and garlic.

The marinade this time was a mixture of finely chopped basil and parsley with crushed garlic, lemon zest and lemon juice. The  black thing is a tapenade, made from black olives blitzed with soaked capers, more garlic (this is not a first date meal) and chilli infused olive oil. I like my tapenade quite chunky, so I kept the blitzing brief.

That was enough to keep Goon happy. I was suprised by the fact I preferred the second meal to the first. Usually I’m a real sucker for tuna in an oriental style, but the lemon and herb marinade beat the ginger and coriander hands down.  It had also been a long time since I’d had my own home made tapenade, so having that again made the meal even better.

Now, if only I could afford sushi grade fish, I could make some more exciting things with tuna.