A Fabulously Foodie Weekend

Amanda, who has been staying in London and Freyja, who lives in Sheffield, came to stay for the weekend. It's Amanda's second last weekend before she heads back to Australia. So we decided to have a weekend feast.

We started our feasting with a roast vegetable lasagne on Saturday evening.

Earlier in the day, I had roasted some onions, pumpkin, courgette, capsicum, garlic and some herbs and added some steamed shredded cabbage. Then I stirred it all into a bowl of light marscapone cheese and shoved it in the fridge until later. Amanda, Freyja and I made the lasagne sheets early in the evening, making the pasta very, very thin. It would never pass muster on Masterchef - the pasta was all holey. But we didn't care and it was certainly very light. And you can't see the pasta sheets once you put all the rest of the stuff on it, so holey doesn't matter!

We layered the cheesy vegetables and the pasta with pureed tomatoes and low fat mozzarella and baked it in a moderate oven until it was bubbling. Then I put some grated parmesan over the top and baked it until the cheese was golden. We had it with a mighty, mixed green salad and some white wine. It was an excellent introduction to a foodie weekend


This was the first trip out for my new pie/lasagne dish that we got in Salisbury last weekend

On Sunday we had a rib of beef with all the trimmings.

I sat the beef on a trivet of vegetables with some marjoram and a little red wine and put it into a hot oven for about 20 minutes. Then I turned it down to about 140 for a further hour or so.


A mixed vegetable trivet which will form the basis of the gravy



The meat sits on top to provide juices and tastiness to the gravy

When the beef came out to rest, I turned the oven up as hot as I could get it. Once it was hot, I put the Yorkshire pudding batter, which had been chilling in the fridge, into a pie dish which was smeared with oil and which had been heating in the oven. I took the vegetable trivet and put it in the blender together with some of the water the vegetables had been simmering in and the juices from the plate the meat had been resting on, and blended it down to a paste, which I pushed through a fine mesh strainer until I had a thickish liquid, which I then gently heated to form the gravy. And we ate it all with roasted potatoes, steamed vegetables and the Yorkshire pudding. Freyja had a veggie roast alternative and bog standard gravy. We must try to make a vegetarian friendly gravy next time.

Time to eat :


Wonderfully soft and melting beef. Alas, it wasn't all for me!



Another Yorkshire pudding successfully risen


The gravy never tastes the same two occasions in a row. It depends on how the vegetables and the meat intermingle. But it is always delicious.



Freyja's veggie alternative and the vegetables



We finished up with a steamed chocolate pudding, Jersey cream and a homemade vanilla ice cream. Magnificent autumnal food (although it's a bit mild for autumn food, really)


Pudding time


Mine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(The Builder was also around at the weekend. He was the Chief Eater and food taster, but didn't actively participate in the food preparation - apart from collecting the peas and corn from the allotment on Sunday morning)