Some culinary highs and lows

On January 29, 2014 by battenburgbelle

The weekend got off to a riotous start, with a visit to Battenburg Towers from the lovely ladies of the “Bring a Book Drinking Club”™ Mr Battenburg. I gave the ladies strict instructions not to bring the usual fine array of salty snacks, in the interests of shifting what was left over from the Speakeasy. It is a minor miracle that I hadn’t consumed the entire bucket of peanuts, with my frequent sneaky handfuls in the last week or so. 

I just can’t seen to get away from leftovers at the moment: for our main course I made a “vaguely Vincent” lasagne, loosely based on Vincent Price’s recipe in his fabulous Treasury of Great Recipes. The twist this time was that I used some of the Argentinian steak that Mr B and Andy had been unable to finish on our Christmas trip to Buen Ayre in Hackney. It was a fabulous meal. The gents chose the Parrillada Deluxe – which would have been enough for Jane and me as well and probably the people at the next couple of tables. So we brought some home, minced it and stuck it in the freezer to be considered at a later date. It made for a fantastic addition to the lasagne – I soaked the steak in some white wine, while I cooked the pork mince, onion etc, then added it and carried on as usual.

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I served that with a green salad with caramelised figs and toasted hazelnuts. And for dessert we had a trifle based on some seriously past its best before date Panettone. Sorry ladies… But it was very good soaked in lashings of Marsala.

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All was not entirely rosy chez Battenburg. My parting shot to Mr B as I left to spend a day at the Guardian’s How to Blog Like a Professional Masterclass was that there was some broccoli and stilton soup in the fridge, which may not yet have gone off, and some leftover lasagne if he and Missy B preferred. Around about lunchtime I received an indignant call informing me that the soup had indeed expired (other soups seem to have a much longer fridge life – is the broccoli or the stilton the problem??). They had eventually located the lasagne. In the freezer. Oops – the perils of drunken tidying up…

On the upside, my confession to the Masterclass won me the accolade tweet of the day at #bloglikeapro and a place at their forthcoming Effective Tweeting course. And anyway, what’s wrong with humus sandwiches all round for lunch!

Oh – and the ladies had a learned discussion of Catcher in the Rye. Great book.

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