quarter of a century

Today is my birthday.  I am turning 25 – a quarter of a century, or half way to fifty if you ask my little sister!  I have spent the weekend down in the Cotswolds with my family celebrating my birthday and today N and I took the day off work.

Apologies for not posting over the weekend, but I have some great food and garden things to tell you about over the next couple of days.  I have certainly eaten well this weekend (of course!). 

My birthday weekend menu has included: a delicious radish and pea salad, asparagus and cheese tart, some incredibly smelly French cheeses, sorrel and ricotta frittata, barbecued trout, and the star of the show – Willie’s Cloud Forest Chocolate Cake.  So if you want to share in my food adventures be sure to check back later this week.

Birthday feasting

Friday was N’s birthday, which could mean only one thing – a fantastic weekend of good food.  I sat down and imagined if I were N, what would I want to eat for my birthday weekend.

So the feasting began on Thursday night with a curry from our favourite takeaway.  The British favourite of chicken tikka masala, with poppadoms, mango chutney, onion relish, and garlic and coriander naans.  We balanced this, of course, by having brown rice…

We also made chocolate brownies, enough for N to take to work and for us.  Following Nigella’s recipe from her book How to be a Domestic Goddess, we baked a tray of chocolate brownies with enough chocolate, sugar and butter to use of one’smonthly recommended allowance.  Three and a half bars of 70% dark chocolate…one and half pats of butter…and what I can only remember as a jug of sugar.  But seriously, these chocolate brownies were heavenly.  It really matters what chocolate you use – if you used Bourneville it would taste of Bournville, so make sure you buy the best dark chocolate you can afford. 

brownie debris

When I came downstairs on Friday morning to examine the insides of the brownies after N had taken half the tray to work, I thought that I had undercooked them.  It looked (and tasted) like the liquid mixture I had scraped into the pan before cooking.  These brownies improve with age.  In fact, the centres of each square almost transforms into a truffle, it is so dark and dense and soft.  I will post the recipe another day as it is one everyone should try.

N finishes work early on a Friday, so I laid out the table with all his cards and gifts (the bunnies spent their pocket money on two jars of sweets from our local old fashioned sweet shop), hung a string of balloons across the living room, and piled chocolate brownies into a mountain, dusted them with icing sugar and stuck in some candles.

My birthday present to N – the best sirloin steak I could buy from Little Heath Farm, with melted blue cheese and chips.  I admit, the chips weren’t homemade, but there is something intrinsically scrumptious about the finest quality steak served with frozen chips – perhaps they serve to highlight how incredible the steak is.

As you might imagine, but Friday night we couldn’t eat another thing.

Saturday evening we made homemade pizzas (which had been planned for Friday tea, but were pushed on a day due to the last minute revelation of steak and chips).  We ate the pizzas standing up in the kitchen straight from the oven, served with thin slices of Parma ham, crisp wild rocket, torn basil and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.  They were so delicious that they were eaten up before I had a chance to take a photograph – such is the way with truly divine food – you just can’t wait to faff around with the camera, you just have to eat it straight away, hot from the oven.

Next weekend it’s my birthday, which means another excuse to eat more good food…yum.