Sam and Eva's First Valentine's Day

Since this was going to be our first Valentine's Day together, we thought we'd do something to make it a little bit special. We started by getting each other some tasty heart-shaped treats :).

First up, Sam got me a delicious over-sized cookie from Millie's Cookies, in raspberry and white chocolate flavour (my favourite!) complete with cute message in icing. It was a totally delicious cookie experience, although it was so large, I needed a little help from my friends to finish eating the whole lot (on my last bit today, sadly) Defintely 9/10

Next, I baked Sam an old-fashioned Lemon Drizzle Cake, his favourite, with some white chocolate piped decoration. Despite the addition of the pink food colouring, the cake was extra lemony, and I always like to put a bit of a punch in the drizzle by adding a couple of splashes of limoncello if you have some spare. It really adds a certain je ne sais quoi!
Sam's comments: Delicious! 9/10

Of course we could not simply have just desserts to eat, so we started the evening with a romantic dinner out at the wonderful Barceloneta, our favourite local Spanish haunt, for some delicious Madeira style beef, fried goat's cheese balls with caramelised onion relish and spanish toritlla de patatas with chorizo and spinach. This was all accompanied by a delicious vegetable paella. Muy sabroso!

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone!

<3

Sam's First Baklava

Next up was my first attempt to make a kataify or konafa style baklava. As some of you already know of my love of Greek/Middle Eastern food, and may even have tasted my previous attempts at baklava, you will not be surprised by this entry.

The thread-like pastry was a little tricky to handle, and the rolling up of the filling wasn't altogether even, but I think the result was overall pretty good though.

It passed the taste test from a couple of my Egyptian and Greek friends, and there was none left from the ones I brought in to the lab, so overall I think it was a reasonable success.
On the downside though, Sam was not too keen on it, protesting "I don't like shredded wheat. 2/10".
Oh well, more for those who like it!

Sam's First Bubble and Squeak

As some of you may already know, we had to face a set back to our ever burgeoning food blog due to a minor bout of food poisoning last week.
But we've been doing our best to catch up since last weekend, and have a few extra entries to add this week.
First up is Sam's version of Bubble and Squeak à la Jamie again. We decided to be a bit adventurous with the dish and pump it full of vegetables, from potatoes to turnips and leeks as well as peppers. After a little bit of burning, we managed to rescue the dish, and it was quite satisfying. Here is Sam's:

I added a little baked Camembert to spruce up my dish:

All in all, a very hearty and healthy dish, that makes a great weekday supper

Sam's verdict: Bubble and Squeak-tastic! Not the best thing I've cooked, but still pretty good 7/10