Home cooking and a hot salad

It's Easter holidays at Oxford, but I'm very much up and down between Oxford and my parent's house in London. I have an exam in a few weeks, and even though Oxford is boring, as there's hardly anyone here, it does mean I can get on with work.

I went home for the weekend, getting back early enough to go to Yo Sushi with a friend for dinner on Thursday night. Yo isn't the world's best sushi, in my opinion, but you can eat slowly, and it's fun. The best thing we had were the hand rolls. One was soft shell crab, one was salmon skin. Yum.

Friday night is the Sabbath in the Jewish religion, and we always have an extra special meal. To make this Friday really special, it was the first time that all five of us (my parents, sisters and I) had had a meal just the five of us for a really long time. Mum and I cooked between us: we made chicken & sweet corn soup, that used leftover chicken soup from the freezer, and added creamed corn and egg. Then we did roast duck (which I started, and mum helped with when she got back) with pancakes, hoi sin and plum sauce, cucumber and spring onion, and a noodle and veg stir fry. Dessert was pineapple and mango.

Saturday night I offered to cook dinner for a few friends. We compromised well: three of my friends, who live together, bought wine & provided crisps, crudites and dips as a starter, I made main course at their house, and my friend who is a fab baker made dessert - an amazing chocolate brownie cake. I made a thai red curry, using bought curry paste (cheating slightly), chicken breast, aubergine, baby corn and green beans. It went down very well, which is always good.

Back here on Tuesday, I decided to make an aubergine and halloumi salad:
I grilled some slices of aubergine, topped them with a spicy tomato dressing: tomato puree, spices, garlic and olive oil. Simple but tasty. I add some grilled halloumi to the aubergine and and then put it all on top of some salad.

I also made some garlic butter and put it inside a seeded bread roll, to go with it:


I love garlic bread!

Dinner tonight was mainly composed of leftovers from a dinner at home that I missed last week, mum's spanish fish. It's basically white fish fillets in tomato sauce with beans, topped with sliced potato.I served it with steam corn, mange tout and green beans, with garlic spinach.