Friday Fish and Sunday Roast

I had a small piece of monkfish tail to use up last week and had decided to do it in batter with some chips.  But then I thought that it would really be a plate of chips with a small piece of fish on the side and decided to go wild and buy some extra bits and pieces and make up a seafood platter.

As you may be aware, Tesco isn't my supermarket of first choice, but the new one in Clay Cross does have quite a nice fish counter and there wasn't time to head out to Chatsworth for the extra seafood. So we headed to Tesco and acquired a scallop each, a squid and some cooked prawns.  I also bought a lemony mayonnaise and, indeed, some lemons.  I cut the fish into goujons and dipped them in batter (made with egg, milk and self raising flour). The scallops and squid I dipped in panko crumbs.  I thrice cooked the chips, allowing them to go properly cold between cookings. And I served the lot with a little salad of beetroot and tomato - and plenty of white wine.  It was remarkably delicious!

Seafood platter with chips

Chips with seafood platter :-D

We had visitors over the weekend.  Proper visitors. The kind you clean the house for! So we took them out to Chatsworth to the farm shop and acquired a single rib of beef, which I more or less flash roasted in a very hot oven.  With it we had goose fat roasted potatoes and individual Yorkshire puddings, with baby carrots, fresh asparagus and baby purple sprouting (the PSB came from the garden - we are eating asparagus from the garden too, but we had it all on Saturday evening so had to buy more!)  I made a gravy with a trivet of vegetables under the beef, white wine, lemon slices and water. As you can see, it wasn't at all nice, not at all. We all had to force ourselves to eat every last scrap :-D.

We finished up with a rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb from the allotment. I sweetened the rhubarb with some flower honey that I got at Chatsworth and it was really rather yummy. Alas - there is no photo. We were all too greedy for the taking of photos when the crumble and cream came to the table!!

A platter of Sunday roast

Spring vegetables to accompany the roast

Sunday roast and red wine