Pâtes à la Norvégienne

That is it, for the first time since the start of term I have eaten potatoes. Such a difference from everyday's potatoes in Halls. This meal was a bit costly, it involved Salmon pushing up the price towards £4

Peal potatoes, cut them in cubes, cook them.
Cook the pasta as well.

Cut an onion and make it fry quietly. Cut a tomato, when the onion starts getting colours, add it in the pan.

In a bowl, mix some crême fraîche, milk and a teaspoon full of cornflower. Mix well, add salt and pepper and the juice of a lemon. Cook. Stop when it has started boiling for the first time. It should be thick. Add parsley, chives and dill.

In the meanwhile, you had the salmon cut in bit and fry quickly in another pan.

Add everything in the sauce and serve over the pasta.

Agneau en boule servi avec pâtes et chou-fleur nappés d'une sauce moutarde

Again, an improvised meal. It happens so often. A wee look in the fridge gave the following results : we have crême fraîche, 2 tomatoes, and mustard and some white wine. Look elsewhere : shallots, pasta and eggs. Great, let's do some thing with that.
Go to Morrison's, see 250g of lamb for 45p, well, we will do meat balls. Buy some frozen cauliflower.
Overall cost of the meal £2.50 roughly.

Put about 30g of butter in a pan and 6 small shallots cut in fine bits in it. Small fire. Add a glass of white wine in it. It start already to smell damn good.

Put 2 pots with water in them, one for cauliflower, the other for pasta (although both could theoretically cook in the same).

While all these is getting ready. Take 4 yolks and mix them with 3 teaspoons of mustard (with grains, it is better). You just found by accident a lemon, put the lemon juice in there as well. Mix well, put in a pot and add the shallots plus butter and wine in the mixture. Put the pot on small fire. Add 100g of crême fraîche and some milk to have a liquid but not too much sauce. Add salt and pepper.

Use the shallots pan to cook your tomatoes cut in 12 bits each. Cook fast and not for long. Once they look like being cooked, put the tomatoes in the sauce.

take the lamb mince meat and do little balls that you form in the white of the eggs (that helps keeping them in one ball). Put the meat in the pan that used to have the shallots and the tomatoes. Cook small or medium fire. Get rid of the fat from time to time.

As some point you must cook the pasta and the cauli flower in boiling water.

Serve everything when it is ready.

Salade Libanaise

I had this salad in a lebanese restaurant several times. And yesterday evening I just wanted to do it. Not able to remember the lebanese name of that salad, I could not find the recipe and hence, was forced to improvised.


Cut a cucumber without the seeds in small cubes. Cut 3 tomatoes without the seeds in little cubes. Cut half a purple onion in small bits. Mix the whole. Add mint leaves according to your taste and the strength of their flavour. Add some parsley, salt and pepper.
Pour in the juice of two lemons and 2 dessert spoons of olive oil. Mix well.

Now, take some bread (best would be lebanese bread of course but some normal bread for toasting can be used). Cut it in cubes as well and apply pressure on each of them to make the bread denser. Try to make the cubs flat.
Then fry quickly in a bit of olive oil. Add the bread in the salad at the moment of serving.