Jeff and I had a really great Sunday together and I am SO EXCITED that we’re going to Northumberland in a few days. In 3 days and a few hours we’ll be on our way and hopefully it will bring back a lot of lovely memories and banish a few bad ones. The last time we were up north, Jeff’s Grandmother passed away and our relationship wasn’t that great – we weren’t very intimate with each other (my fault, not Jeff’s) and I don’t think I put in as much effort as I should have done....
.. However, argh, yes! Sunday – Well, Jeff has now finished at his company... his last set of shifts is finished and he seemed very chuffed and impressed that he was given loads of presents, including loads of alcohol and a massive card which was totally full of signatures. I popped down to see Jeff at 12:30 and after Jeff had finished his shower we drove to Andover as that’s where the Hampshire Farmers market was. I have to say – not overly impressed! It was really small compared to the Winchester one, however I guess you don’t know these things unless you go to them, so I think in future Jeff and I will be staying in Winchester. We did, however, managed to purchase a very nice Sea Bass for £10 which was great as that’s what we had decided we were cooking that night – Ina Garten’s ‘Prosciutto roasted sea bass with autumn vegetables'.
To get all the rest of the ingredients we went to Waitrose in Andover as we passed it as we were going back to the car – we managed to get everything, including a couple of rather nice tartlets for lunch, which we ate when we got back to Jeff’s house.
Once back, we ate lunch and then watched some more ‘Barefoot Contessa’ as we had 11 episodes saved on Jeff’s Sky Plus – as you can tell by now, we (and by that, I mean ‘I’) are rather obsessed with Ina and her recipes and I am looking to buy all her other cookery books when I get paid next week!
After we had ‘Chillaxed’ for a bit, we decided we had better re-pot the tomato plants, which is something we had been putting off for a few days. They have been growing at an alarming rate and it wouldn’t be long before they were too big for their pot. Thankfully, Jeff had already got enough compost and some pots to do this, so we didn’t need to go to a garden center to get anything else. It didn’t take very long and with Jeff drilling holes into the pots and me pulling the plants apart, we managed to put the tomato plants into their new home and they look like they’re going to be very happy there!
Jeff seemed to be upset at the thought of throwing the other tomato plants away, so decided he would dig some mud up in the garden, and put all the surplus plants in there – only problem was, the ground was really hard, which led to Jeff’s gardening fork having an unfortunate accident – whoops! Jeff still persevered though, and whilst I haven’t seen them, I have been told by a reliable source that all the other tomato plants are now in the garden and should be OK :-)
Jeff and I then decided we would make another culinary delight – Ina Garten’s – ‘French Apple tart’. It looked easy to make, even easier than normal as we bought frozen puff pastry so we didn’t have to make it ourselves. The hardest part of the whole thing was actually peeling and cutting up so many apples, but in the grand scheme of things, even that wasn’t very hard. I have to say, before we put it in the oven we were very pleased with ourselves as it looked EXACTLY like the photograph, hurrah! It had to be in the oven for about an hour, in which time Jeff was feeling very tired (due to the fact he had got up at midday after only 4 or so hours of sleep) so he popped upstairs for a nap and I stayed downstairs to get the tart out.
The result wasn’t too bad, however we think we had the oven up too high – Ina said 205 degrees C, however as Jeff has a fan assisted oven, we hadn’t taken that into account – damn! I used rum and apricot jam to gloss it, as suggested by the recipe and waited for Jeff to wake up before trying it. It tasted absolutely gorgeous, I mean, really, really amazing! We thought they would taste ‘OK’, but they were really moist, there wasn’t too much pastry (I’d certainly recommend you buy the ready-rolled stuff) and we were really impressed – so impressed that we are going to make them again on Wednesday and take them to Northumberland for Jeff’s parents.
We watched some more Barefoot Contessa episodes and then I started getting a bit restless so Jeff suggested we go to a pub. I thought this was a fantastic idea so agreed, and suggested we get some bread to feed the ducks – thankfully Jeff knew a pub besides a river, so we combined both activities. After driving to the pub, we decided to feed the ducks first, in case it got dark quickly and it didn’t take us too long to find some – and some gorgeous ducklings! The ducklings moved incredibly fast and it was really cute to watch them ‘run’ in the water, after the bread (at this point I would like to state that we fed them with BROWN bread, as apparently white bread is bad for them?). We even had two ducks get out of the water and follow us along the path – It was as though Jeff was the ‘pied piper’ and was throwing breadcrumbs behind him so that the ducks would continue waddling after us.
It wasn’t a long walk as the path led to a main road and we couldn’t continue walking alongside the river, however it was long enough to enjoy it and we headed back to the pub where Jeff got a ‘Stronginthearmn’ and I got a pint of Scrumpy. We then sat outside, by the river and chatted, which was really nice.
I certainly felt tipsy when going back home, however I don’t think Jeff did. After getting in we decided to cook as it was already 8:00PM and so set about cutting up the vegetables and began preparing the fish. Now this was interesting as neither of us had gutted a fish before and had NO idea how to do it – What to do? Youtube it! You’d be amazed what you can actually find on Youtube and it literally took two seconds to type in ‘How to gut a Sea Bass’ to find a really comprehensive video on what to do. Cut off fins – right, slit it along the stomach – right, cut by the gills – Ok.... I decided in my half-inebriated state, that I wanted to do this, after all, if I’m eating the fish then I guess it’s a good idea to actually know how to prepare it?
It certainly wasn’t an overly pleasant thing to do, however I am very glad I did it – I certainly learned something yesterday, that’s for sure! We both agreed that in future, we would just get fillets, easier and far, far less messy! We wrapped the fish in the prosciutto after rubbing it with oil, salt and pepper and popped it in the oven. We then made the rosemary and lemon sauce which would have turned out well, had I not added lemon juice to the very hot butter – the ENTIRE thing exploded on the hob – Whoops.... This is why I find it very hard to consider myself even remotely intelligent as I had no idea that that would happen and it is apparently a very basic cooking concept – never add cold things to very hot things. Ahh well, least neither of us died or got burnt (badly).
The meal actually turned out really, really well and Jeff and I are certainly going to try it again. We seem to be doing very well on cooking and I know that when we go to Northumberland we are planning on cooking a lot of other things....
... 3 days and counting, can’t wait!
- Molly
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