631. Welsh Cawl

For my dad’s birthday we went to a Welsh/Italian/Spanish restaurant. They literally have three separate menus for each of the cuisines, which is weird, but actually great as you can have a total mix for your meal. For my starter I picked this cawl, which is a Welsh soup, then I had a Spanish chicken and ham dish for my main course, and an Italian tiramisu for dessert. I got told off by the waiter when I ordered this as I pronounced it like call, but you are actually supposed to say it cowl, like the type of neckline, or like Simon. It’s a lamb broth with big chunky vegetables, and it was served with a piece of caerphilly cheese on the side. I chopped my cheese up and mixed it into the soup which was awesome and I think is an idea I’m going to have to take on to all kinds of future soups I have in my life.

631 down, 1165 to go

588. Pearl Barley

Every year after Christmas, we use the turkey bones to make a stew. It’s possibly my favourite thing to eat over the whole of Christmas. The stock is full of turkey flavour, the vegetables become rich and sweet and best of all, it has dumplings. Dumplings rock. As an extra thickener and texture, we add a handful of pearl barley. Normally this gets cooked in the soup the whole time, but we didn’t have it on time this year so I microwaved it for 12 minutes, then popped it into the stew for the final 30 minutes. If anything it turned out better as it kept that lovely slightly chewy barley texture. I think I should start using barley as a carb more as it’s tasty, cheap and good for you.

588 down, 1208 to go

437. Rabbit with Garlic and Rosemary

Do you remember ages ago when I made that rabbit pie? Well ever since then I still had the second rabbit I’d bought in my freezer so I decided it was really about time I used it up. Most of the rabbit with garlic and rosemary recipes I found online had a huge amount of olive oil in them so I cut it down a little and replaced it with more wine. More wine is never a bad choice (when it comes to food that is…). On the whole though I found this a little disappointing. It was in no way bad, but it just didn’t have the powerful punch of flavours that I was expecting, and I put it more garlic and rosemary than the recipes told me to.

437 down, 1359 to go

304. Pork and Beans

Actually really quite a long time ago now I went to my friends’ house for dinner. It was the night we had the cherry pie. Anyway, the main course was this stew of pork and 305. Butter Beans which my friend Nik was responsible for. I don’t know how long he cooked it for but it was obviously a while as it had gone all tender and melty. Unfortunately there were no leftovers as it would have made for a fantastic sandwich the next day!

305 down, 1491 to go