Sam's First Beef Stew

Sorry guys for being a bit quiet of late, we seem to have let things on the food blog front dwindle recently. But don't worry, we are back on top of things, and will be updating you with more new dishes, particularly since it is the Easter break, one of the best times of the year for cooking.
But first, let me start with one of Sam's last creations, traditional English beef stew (would you believe it, it's Jamie Oliver again). This particular dish was taking new risks and heading into unknown territory, since it involves preparation of all of the ingredients earlier in the day, and popping them all into the oven in a casserole dish for a good 3 or 4 hours. Since I was busy during the day, I was unable to be on hand and supervise all the preparation (or in Sam's terms "nag the whole time"), and so I could not be sure if all of the steps would be done correctly, and according to health and safety rules (Sam - "But that's the point of cooking, surely, to kill all the bacteria anyway?").
Nevertheless, after a few instructions via the internet mainly to inform about the location of specific ingredients or equipment, Sam was on his way, and the dish was cooking before I even got home.

After much trepidation, at 7:00pm, we tested the meat to see if it was cooked. The meat was very soft and tender, and broke apart with a fork as expected, and surprisingly it was every bit as delicious as expected, and more! All of the flavours blended in really well together and the meat was cooked to perfection. This dish was so successful, we have now cooked it twice, and the only downside we've managed to find so far is that there never seems to be enough of it! We'll have to make the full amount for 4 (or just 2 hungry) people next time.
The picture doesn't really do it much justice - this isn't a dish to look at, rather give you a warm fuzzy feeling on a cold day :) 8/10

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

Sam's First Peppadew Dish

This brings me on to last weeks wonderful creation, which was a little bit straying from the original recipe, but nonetheless incorporated unusual new flavours to excite the taste buds. This week Sam picked Olive's wonderful, yet simple, Pork with peppadew & white wine sauce, but we decided to forgo the expense and effort of the pork loin steaks, and stuck to the traditional chicken breast Sam knows and loves.

The dish worked just as well, and even though we could not lay our hands on fregola at the time, we were able to satisfactorily replace it with gnocchi. The only ingredient I simply wasn't willing to cede was the white wine in the sauce - as we didn't have a bottle in the house, I had to nip out briefly, simply in order to stop Sam from replacing it with his special bottle of Champagne received as a graduation present! ("Oh, we can't use it because it's sparkling? Why don't we just open it, leave it to go flat, and then use it in the sauce?"!!!)
After I returned with the wine, the rest of the recipe went pretty smoothly, and we were both very satisfied by the interesting combination of the warmth of the peppadews complementing the meat and the soft gnocchi. The speedyness of the dish only added to its appeal, and I can safely say that this dish will be returning to our dinner table on a regular basis in future. 8.5/10

Sam's First Carbonara

Guess what people? Things are progressing really fast at le Bistro Sam. He has cooked not one, but two dishes since I last posted online, and I am struggling to find the time to keep the posts updated with his progress! Hence it will just be a quick entry for Sam's creation two weeks ago, a simple, but beautiful courgette carbonara, once more á la Jamie. Although this dish sounds simple enough, it did involve Sam bracing the sensitive subject of eggs (he hasn't ever had a fried or scrambled egg, and winced at an eggy bread and butter pudding recently), once it was explained to him that separating the eggs didn't involve putting them into two separate rooms, he bravely created and consumed the delicious eggy sauce. Albeit, without the grated parmesan, which I added to my dish later.

Nevertheless, he competently prepared all the rest of the ingredients and even sliced and removed the fat from the pancetta slices, so credit has to be given where it's due.
All in all, a perfectly satisfactory rendition of this italian staple. 7/10

Sam's First Attempt at Cooking

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, but boy have we got news for you! Sam has now transgressed from trying real foods many people eat, to becoming an incipient foodie, and now, he has made the step to actually following recipes and cooking a meal himself. É voila! Here is his first attempt:

You are looking at Jamie Oliver's Hot and Sour Rhubarb and Crispy Pork with noodles! And yes, I can vouch as a witness that Sam did in fact collect all the ingredients on this list himself, and made the entire dish from scratch. I thought the combination was a little brave for a first dish, but it actually tasted really delicious!

Can you believe it? (Although not sure why Sam is wearing Kevlar oven gloves for this part of the cooking. Looks like he was more scared of cooking than I was of eating it!)
Sam's comments: This was a terrific dish that I made, and anyone would have loved it. I was a bit nervous about cooking with rhubarb, but it all seems to have gone well, and we're still alive now, so that's all that matters