A week in France and Pink Couscous

Sorry for the lack of posting, things are very different in the holidays and taking photos of cooking is hard.

I spent the past week in the South of France with my new boyfriend and his family. We've actually only been going out for 6 weeks, so it's pretty fast moving, but we had a lovely time. There was lots of sitting in the sun, and swimming, and even some table tennis and crazy golf:



We had lots of lovely food, lots of good cheese and wine, and the boy and I cooked dinner one night: goats cheese bruschetta, lamb chops with garlicy potates and roast veg, and then grilled peaches. We went out for dinner a couple of times; the first time I had foie gras pate, and then sea bass on oriental-style veg, with sesame seeds around the edge, dessert was sorbet, fruit and macaroons. It was all really lovely! The other meal out was a late lunch, and I had steak and chips, then tarte tartin, before getting on the plane.

Last night I made dinner for dad and I, that was also lunch for mum and I today. One of my favourite things about it was that the couscous turned amazingly pink. Here's a photo of the leftovers:



Pink couscous salad:

I roasted one cauliflower cut into florets for about half an hour, and three fresh beetroot, wrapped in foil with some salt and olive oil in for about 45 minutes.
I double podded fresh broad beans - removed them from the big pods, then boiled the little ones and popped them out.
I cooked about 400g couscous (probably a bit much, actually) by adding boiling water, stock, cumin, corriander and paprika, and covering until the water was absorbed.
I combined all the veg and couscous, and then added some toasted pine nuts, and cubed feta cheese.
I made a dressing with crushed garlic, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil and white wine vinegar, and just whisked it together with a fork and dressed it all.
We served the salad with the leaves from the fresh beetroot, and some little cherry tomatoes.

It was great last night, and probably even better at lunch time today.

Where did the summer go?!

Last weekend was so beautiful. The sun was shining, it was hot, and all I wanted to do was sunbathe. Unfortunately, I had a research project to do, and had to spend too much of the weekend in the library. So I had nice plans for this weekend, including croquet today, and punting tomorrow. And what happens? Rain!




Here are a couple of pictures of me playing croquet, before the rain started!






Amazingly, there are just two weeks left of term, and so two weeks left of the academic year. Hard to believe that I've nearly finished my first year at Oxford. That's five years at university, but who's counting! I'm so glad I chose to do my MPhil here. Oxford is an amazing place.

Anyway, that means it's time to start emptying my cupboards and freezer in preparation for moving home. I decided to make some pea and broad bean soup last night, using frozen peas and beans from my freezer. I'd thought it would be a nice thing to eat cold in the warm weather. In the event, when it got to lunch time today, it was cold and miserable. So I ate it warm.



I chopped and fried an onion with a few cloves of garlic, and lots of dried mint. I love mint in pea soup.
Then I added frozen peas and broad beans, boiling water, and vegetable stock. I seasoned, and simmered for about half an hour, before blending.
I served the soup with homemade croutons, using the crusts from a loaf of bread that's been living in the freezer.
The first bowl had a dollop of creme fraiche in, the second bowl had some slivers of goats cheese. Yum.

I'm going to send this to Weekend Herb Blogging, and event that I love, which is being hosted this week by Halo of Cook (Almost) Anything.