Bits of everything

Tom is away on the Isle of Wight most of this week. He’s at one of those kid’s holiday camps where they learn to sail yachts…and stuff. Sophie therefore decided to pretend, for a few days at least, that she doesn’t have a child and visit all her friends. She also decided to pretend she doesn’t have a dog.

Boris settled in straight away

And so I’m puppy-sitting Boris until Thursday. I don’t mind a bit but the girls weren’t too keen. Which I’m surprised at. They never have a problem with the other dogs at Sue’s. It’s probably a territorial thing. Though, to be fair, little Freya is always a bit wary of things bigger than her (and smaller, to be honest) and tends to avoid any kind of danger.

Anyway, because Sophie was visiting us first and staying the night (and given Tom would not be there to influence the food choices) I decided to make tapas. Not that any of it was particularly Spanish (except for chorizo and aged Iberico cheese) but there was a selection of quite a few different dishes which makes it tapas in my book.

Most of the dishes I took from two lo-carb cookbooks I have but also, and probably the most popular given how much of it Sophie ate, was the linseed and poppy crisps which came from a Nordic cookbook I purchased the other day.

Linseed and poppy seed crisps – fiddly but well worth it

Because I was making ten dishes, I needed to work in the kitchen for most of the afternoon (and evening) which I thoroughly enjoyed. I deliberately chose a majority of cold dishes so they could be prepared gradually through the day, leaving me just a few hot things to make at the last moment.

While the crisps were definitely a favourite, I was rather proud of the spinach wrap. It requires the creation of a flat spinach and egg base which is spread with cream cheese, dill and smoked salmon then rolled up into a sort of savoury Swiss Roll. It was always going to be a bit of a test of my patience but, eventually, it looked just about perfect. And tasted brilliant.

The hardest dish

The only thing my diners were not so keen on was the iceberg with gravlax. Rather than buy a massive bottle of American style weak mustard, I used hot English because I had some in the fridge. It gave the dish a rather big bite when you took one. Mirinda wasn’t keen and that put Sophie off.

The whole menu was:

Tapas Night at Chez Gaz

(I’ll let you in on a little secret. I forgot to serve the Parma ham with olives and mozzarella because the table was too full. Not that it’s a waste because I’ll have it for lunch tomorrow.)

Speaking of the table, I thought it looked quite lush before we started demolishing it.

Cheers

We had a lovely night. And the carrot cake chia pudding was particularly lush.