Boulevard cafe, Friday and Saturday

Committee meeting and goodbye drinks for a committee member leaving on Thurday afternoon, in Boulevard Cafe, Exchequer St, meeting started with "Shall we have a bottle of Proseco?", grand so.  Food was good, as always and staff are really nice, then off to Drury Building for a couple of glasses of wine.

Friday, plan was a keema (lamb mince) and spinich curry, made curry (lamb mince, home made garam masala, peppers, onions, garlic, ginger, chilli, tomato puree, water), had some rice in freezer, made some roti (chapati flour, salt, baking powder, water, knead, rest, roll, on to a hot dry pan push down with botton of a heavy bowl to get it to puff up, turn, push again) - forgot to put the spinich in at the end, but was good.
I will do a piece on my garam masala soon, as I am nearly out of it.


Today, SQ was good to us, cheap beef mince, chicken wings and pork chops, mince and chops into freezer, wings in a dry rub of salt, pepper, chilli,cumin and corriander for an hour in fridge, into a medium oven, bit of olive oil, turn once, about 45 minutes - do for a few days lunch.

Eurovision toninght, so pizzas, made a standard chilli pizza topping for one, tuna, sliced red onion and roast red pepper on another I think, might do a third if small, not sure what, I've tinned artichokes, anchovies, jamon and a few different cheeses - so we will see, will report tomorrow

Salmon salad, going for a bit of poncy

Grilled salmon with a tomato, spring onion, cucumber, Wensleydale cheese, garlic oil, smoked salt, pepper and garlic oil salad

Front lounge and Duck

Saturday into town, San had a deal in  The Front Lounge, 6 tapas for €40, so went into town, did some shopping, into Thomas Reads for a couple of pints beforehand, San had a really lovely Rioja, I had a couple of Stella.  Into Front Lounge, I was told years ago it was a pub for the gayers, and as there is a vote on gay marriage this week, the place had a lot of YES stickers, really friendly atmosphere.

The tapas were:
Celeriac soup (maybe a little cool) with Guinness bread
Fish and chips (fantastic batter)
Mussels in creamy white wine sauce
Steak & chips (great) with chicken wings (not spicy enough for me)
Half a pulled pork mini-burger
Chocolate Fondant with ice cream

I had a couple of Cute Hoor pale ales, very nice, San had a drinkable Rioja, but not as good as previous

Sunday, allotment, rhubarb, artichokes, fennel.  Had bought a cheap duck a couple of weeks ago, so defrosted it on Saturday.  Roast on metal trivet (huge amounts of fat).  Followed standard recipe, prick, dry, salt, roast.  Had pea pure, honey glazed carrot batons and boulagere potatoes with a duck breast each.   Just 2 legs left, no meat at all on a bird...   Made loads of stock from the bones and have plent of fat for future roast potatoes, but probably won't do again

Monday visitor round, chilli from freezer with guacamole (also from freezer), bit of coleslaw, chilli pickle, nachos. 

Probably finish duck legs and potatoes  tomorrow

Salmon and coleslaw

Cheap salmon darnes in SQ in a BBQ sauce, grilled with coleslaw and another little salad

Grilled salmon, OK, salmon is one of those things like steak, like them, but don't really understand why some people looove them.

Coleslaw (as a child I thought it was cold slaw, bit thick me) grated carrots and white cabbage, shop bought mayo.  Mayo is easy to make, but as a bottle lasts me at least a year, when I make it, even from one or two eggs, it goes off before I've used much, so not worth making.

Other salad - diced spring onion, tomato, EV olive oil, salt, pepper, ripped basil, mix and add cubes of Cheshire cheese

Ragu or chilli from freezer tomorrow, pints Friday, people leaving work, meal out in town Saturday, whole duck Sunday, not sure what we will do with that, probably roast whole, but still thinking....

Quiet week

So as usual, after a lovely weekend away, it has been a quiet week in the kitchen, ratatouille, ragu and chilli from freezer.  As I had a long hard day at work Friday, we got a take-away Indian, probably my first take-away in a year.  Very good curry, It's not that I don't like take-aways, I just like to cook, don't like to spend too much and don't like waste, and they can be too big.

Allotment Saturday morning, then a lot of cooking, risotto with roast chieck breast for dinner, made about a kilo each of chilli and ragu to get parcelled up into freezer and some flapjacks as a reward for a good days work by one of the lads.

Her parents over for Sunday, so for a change from usual roast, made a lamb casserole with garlic potatoes and rhubarb crumble - all went down well.  Had the leftovers for Monday dinner, chicken fajita Tuesday, no idea for tomorrow, will go hunting once football is over

Cologne part 2

Monday was a beautiful day, warm, pretty sunny, so checked out of hotel, left the bags and went across the river and a long walk, ended up at the cable car, which scared the shite out of me, but we had to do it.  There is a huge thermal baths here and we will go when we return - we have decided that Cologne will be the Christmas market this year.

Back to pub crawl, another half a dozen brewpubs, I had a steak tartar and she had chicken cordon blue in one and finished up sharing a final schweinshaxe in a house of haxe, then got back, train direct from Cologne to Dusseldorf airport (cut it fairly fine, 7 day train strike starts at 02:00 Tuesday.  Little bit of messing at check-in as they did not know how to do standby, but we had plenty of time and got sorted in the end.

Will probably be a quiet week, need to make ratatouille tonight, but nothing much planned

Cologne

A half hour train journey from Dusseldorf to Cologne, weather not great, did have a couple of hours of rain, but that's what pub crawls are for.  I prefer Dusseldorf's Altbeer, to Cologne's Kolsch, but San prefers Kolsh, so all in all winning weekend!

Started the morning in the classic Heinemann bakery / cafe for breakfast, several different breads, meats, cheese, lovely though as usual for Germany, service is patchy.

Walked to train station, train was 6 minutes late!  At home you wouldn't notice, in Germany, they ask a question in parliament...  Taxi from Cologne hbf to hotel, standard NH city hotel, our go to chain, paid extra €10 for a bigger room, view and tea making facilities.

Off on a pub crawl, lots of different Kolsch, had GoolashSoup, Currywurst and chips (See Neil MacGregor's fantastic German History podcast, especially the episodes on beer purity laws and sausages, but not the sausage one, when you are eating one), asparagus soup (in season this month).  Ended up having a little Thai, not same league as last night, but looked and was good, shared a mixed starter and a duck curry, couple of glasses of house red.

The Ludwig museum was very hit and miss, excellent Dali and a couple of Magritte and an unbelievable Gerhard Richter that I will be using as my FB image

Dusseldorf Part 2

So, pleasant simple frühstück in a bakery this morning, then walk around, including a visit to Dusseldorf's market, may have mentioned before, but I love markets, smells fantastic, some lovely places to eat snacks and I've had my watch repaired here in the past.   Then, as is often my downfall, went into a kitchen porn shop (Germany is full of great kitchen shops, they do steel so well) and spunked €25 on a new microplane for parmesan!

Usual Dusseldorf day follows, pig sandwich in Schweine Janes, then pub crawl around the Alt Brew pubs, finished in Uerige with liberwurst on brot.  Back to hotel for nap, out to lovely Thai near train station Sila Thai, really lovely, very good staff and I really thought the level of spice was hot and perfect.

Note on shopping in Dusseldorf, go into chemists and buy deodorants, face creams, toothbrushes, floss, tampons.  Every country has things that are cheap and if you are on a budget you have to know what to buy where (maybe I will do a guide on what we have found over the years)

Depending on weather tomorrow, either Koln or back to Mordor, I was about 12 when last in Koln, so looking forward to it.

Dusseldorf

Very quiet week, making things out of freezer and leftover, roast chicken salad, some arancini frozen yonks ago, ragu and lamb curry also out of freezer.

Landed in Dusseldorf last night, went to Schmacher Alt brewery pub , had first alt beer and a schweinshaxe, lovely as always, service was patchy, but again absolutely standard for alt pub.  Went for walk afterwards, pub it was pushing 11 and  town centre was pretty messy, full of stags and hens, so we didn't linger.

Had a glass of wine in a little,gay bar, with a few elderly German men, it allowed smoking as well. as some pubs without food do.