Looking back, looking forward

I don't seem to have much time for cooking at the moment. It's because I'm busy having fun, but it's a shame, becuase I love cooking. At the weekend, Friday night was a quick bowl of pasta before the pub, and Saturday and Sunday nights both involved dinner at the pub. I did get to have another bowl of my pea and broad bean soup for lunch on Sunday, which was very good cold.

This week looks like it's going to be much of the same. Tomorrow I'm planning a girly dinner out with one of my best Oxford friends. Wednesday night is meant to be a pot luck dinner with the girls on my course, and I'll probably make my cheesecake, as I have some custard powder. Wednesday night is dinner for the whole course, out.

So a post about my fish pie from last week:


It's something that I've been experimentign with throughout the year, and this was a good one.

The base is leeks sautee'd with some garlic in a pan, then mixed with defrosted frozen spinach, and creme fraiche.

The middle section is smoked haddock, poached in mackerel.

The top is mashed sweet potato, mixed with horseradish sauce, for a good kick.

Another creamy pasta dish

I'm still experimenting with creme fraiche in pasta dishes. I think I really want to make something amazing, but everything just comes out ok. This week, I added lots of lemon, which gave it a bit of a kick.

This dish also used filled pasta. That's another thing I always want to taste better than it does. I think it's because I buy the Tesco own brand one, not something fancier. I also think that the best thing in filled pasta is squash or pumpkin, and they were out of those when I went shopping.

Anyway, this was pretty good, so I'm blogging about it anyway!


I started by chopping an onion, some garlic half a leek and some mushrooms. I'd used a white onion, not a red one, so it looked fairly white!

I added some broccoli too, so slightly better!

I cooked it all in a pan for a bit, before adding lemon juice, zest, seasoning and creme fraiche


And it was pretty good... Just not my favourite thing ever.