This week in food, 3 (18-24 February 2019)

GUESS WHAT!? Another hectic week, so much so that I write the wrap-up post half-way the following week. BAD, but hey.

Monday

Devvers was feeling a bit sad on Monday so I went to the German deli in Borough Market and got these massive sausages to complement a classic Spanish dish of “bollit” o “hervido” (i.e. boiled potatoes and onions), topped with some home made sauerkraut to make it super gut friendly. Don’t they say the gut controls your feelings? We gave our guts lots of happiness on Monday with our Spanish-German conglomerate ?

(If you’re thinking these look a bit phallic, think also that we had boiled them and then proceeded to slice them meticulously. Still having those thoughts?)

Tuesday

I made a potato and sausage salad with additional greens (cucumber, leaves) for lunch, but I didn’t remember to take a picture, despite it causing some lunchvy at my office. Big ooohs were emitted when I mentioned the home made sauerkraut!

Wednesday

I didn’t have time to prepare anything so I just got a salad box from Savage Salads in Flat Iron Square. This one is the Halloumi salad, although you can go really savage and add chicken, or steak, OR both. But it sounds really barbaric to me.

This was also the first time they put rice on the salad and to be honest I’m not really convinced with this combination. I’ve had better boxes before ?

Wednesday

Not a thing we ate as such, but I was trying to convert 50 grams of my quite-dark rye starter into a white starter (by adding only white flour), and on Wednesday it started bubbling really nicely! It’s always a joyous experience when that happens.

Thursday

I still had extra sausages and potato from Monday, so I made another salad. I also added some butter beans I had cooked, because why not? Gotta keep that gut happy. More lunchvy developed.

In the morning of Thursday, I prepared a white dough using the white sourdough starter I had just been developing for the last week. Then I placed it in the fridge to wait until I’d be back from work. I baked it at night, but I think it could have benefited from a longer fermentation time outside of the fridge, as the crumb was just TOO COMPACT. But it’s a good start(er)! ?

Friday

Friday lunch was not worth mentioning, but we went to Kazu for dinner, and that always makes me happy. Yum! ?

Saturday

I spent most of the day doing quite a lot of DIY and I had just had a lightweight salad for lunch, so I was really hungry when I finished, and I made this carbonara pasta which was really satisfactory!

I’m glad I learned how to make carbonara the right way (unlike the usual “drown everything in thick cream” way that is more commonly seen); you don’t feel like you’re going to be sick afterwards when you eat proper carbonara 😀

Sunday

We went to the Bow Road area to see the Doreen Fletcher exhibition at the Nunnery (totally recommended! go see it!) and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to pop by Muxima cafe and have lunch there, if there was space…

And of course there was space, because it not being in central London means that you can reasonably find space and not feel harassed by silly tourists taking multiple pictures of each other while moodily pouting and holding a glass of orange juice. Yay!

The place was super chill as usual, staff were really nice and the food was yummmmmy.

I had the “Iberico” eggs (with chorizo and shaved Manchego cheese), but the picture I took was terrible. Devvers had the Haggis and Chorizo, described as “the love child of Scotland and Spain”, or something in that vein. It was good.

On the way back, I baked another iteration of malted loaf. This one was more pleasant than the previous ones, confirming my hunch that I need to prove them for longer at room / oven light temperature for the crumb to open up. I shall write in more detail about the loaves for this week.

And I tried out a Catalan recipe for thyme soup from Miriam AKA El Invitado de Invierno, using all sorts of bread leftovers and my own-land-thyme, which is always exciting!

Miriam’s poached eggs and photography technique are vastly superior to mine, but it’s the flavour that matters, and it was a good way to finish the week 😀