Wonderful food, and A Visit to the National Gallery

I recently had a day in London, and took the opportunity to revisit Mere, Monica Galetti's restaurant, for lunch. 

I'd been once before, with my friend A, a little over a year ago, and had been looking for an opportunity to go back! 

Starter - Asparagus and Morels - Ragout, Broad Beans, Marmite
Mushroom Puree, Madeira Sauce

It was well worth it! They've just changed to their Spring menu, which meant lots of lovely fresh flavours.  I was only there for lunch, and didn't feel I had time for the full tasting menu, but as it turned out, since I was given 2 amuse-bouches as well as the courses I actually ordered. All of which were delicious!

Main - Herdwick Lamb - Cannon, Sweetbread & Tongue,
Black Garlic, Courgette & Basil, Lemon Thyme

   
It was all glorious, and, as you can see, beautiful to look at as well! I also got to try sweetbreads for the first time (my verdict is that I like them, or at least I like them if they have been cooked by Monica Galetti.)

Dessert - Yuzu and Rhubarb
Yuzu Posset, Rhubarb Compote, Ginger Shortbread, Rhubarb Sorbet

Well worth a visit if you are in London, (and while it isn't cheap, they do do a fixed price lunch menu during the week, as well as the tasting menu and a la carte).

After lunch, I went to the theatre (to see Betrayal again), then, as I had time to kill before my train home, I went the National Gallery,  as I am always happy to spend time there.

I usually tend to head to the Sainsbury wing, where they keep one of my favourites, the Wilton Diptych, and the Uccello George and the (rather sad) Dragon,  or alternatively to the opposite end of the gallery, where they keep another of my favourites, Henri Rousseau's Surprised!  

Details from Rubens' 'The Lion Hunt' 

This time, however, I decided to give those a miss, and to spend some time with some of the other artworks. 

I rather enjoyed Rubens' sketch, ' The Lion Hunt', particularly the worried horse batting its eyelashes at us.

And this study of Saints Christina and Ottilia. 

Particularly St. Ottilia, who is carrying a tasteful , if slightly startled, pair of eyeballs. 

It turns out that St Ottilia wasn't, as you might think, martyred by having her eyes removed but rather was miraculously cured of blindness.(The label by the painting is silent on whether this was before or after she formed the habit of wandering around with her eyeballs balanced on a book..!)

 I did also make time to go and visit The Ambassadors , and Whistlejacket.

Then I took a walk back to the station, through Hyde Park, where I spotted some of the resident parakeets ( They apparently descend from a small number of pets which escaped or were released, 3 years ago or so, and now there are literally thousands of them living wild)   

I also saw a pair of jays, which made me happy. I haven't seen one for years, so it was a lovely surprise, even if they were not very cooperative about posing for photos!

Altogether an enjoyable day.

In Which There is Food and Drink (And Jude Law)

My friend A has been singing the praises of  Hélène Darroze at the Connaught, and as we had tickets to see Jude Law and Halina Reijn in 'Obsession' at the Barbican for last Saturday night, decided to make a day of it, and have lunch at Hélène Darroze, followed by cocktails at The Alchemist  and then the play.

The food was sublime, and the service pretty awesome, too. Which, given that the restaurant has 2 Michelin stars is perhaps not surprising!

The menu comes accompanied by a solitaire board which you use to pick which dishes you want (you can chose 5, or 7, or the full experience. We went for the 7 courses, which meant a heartbreaking choice to discard 8 possible dishes...

While we struggled to decide, we were brought some amuse bouche,presumably to ensure we didn't starve while being indecisive.. There were fresh, raw peas, with pea shoots and creme fraiche on a savoury tuile, little teeny bites of gazpacho, and a little shot of mushroom consomme with a Parmesan foam.  Oh, and bread and 2 kinds of butter.

Gazpacho bites

Having made our selections, we sat back and let the food arrive. We ended up picking almost exactly the same things:

Salmon:-  this came two ways, another little straw with smoked salmon in, and a perfect disk of raw salmon, with tiny balls of apple and radish, ranging from white, to green, to pink, and a delicious apple and lime consomme.

Then there was foie gras, which came on a bed of ginger jelly, with slivers of rhubarb, after which there was possibly my favourite dish, the wild garlic and ricotta lasagna, with smoked eel, with a touch of lemon in there somewhere. And so pretty!

Wild Garlic and ricotta lasagna with smoked eel

After this we has the different dishes, mine was Scallop, which came with (mild but delicious) tandoori spices, and both purple and orange carrots. A had John Dory with white asparagus and samphire, which also looked delicious.

Then came duck - a little bit of duck breast crusted with herbs, and a chunk of duck-y sausage, with two sorts of potato. 

We then moved on to the dessert stage of the meal...

The first was rhubarb - there was some poached rhubarb underneath, with tiny pinkish meringues, and and the foam which involved rhubarb and ginger, with cashews on the top.

Second dessert was chocolate in a variety of forms, and with yuzu sorbet. It was delicious! 

That brought the meal as described on the menu to an end, but there were petit fours after that, and then, when we had paid, we were each brought a little box with a miniature savarin cake in, to take home! 

It was about 4.30 by this point  (because 3 hours is a totally reasonable  length of time for a meal), so by the time we had wandered through the park (spotting a heron en route, and also lots of TV vans prepping for the London Marathon the following day), and got the tube across to Aldgate, it was a civilized time for cocktails.

I've never been to The Alchemist before, but it was a lot of fun.  They go for 'molecular mixology', and it's all very theatrical, with bunsen burners, dry ice, and all sorts. And certainly the cocktails I had were very tasty! 

Lady Marmalade

Full food and drink album on Flickr.


We then walked down to the Barbican, to see 'Obsession'.  The play is created by Toneelgroep Amsterdam, based on the 1942 Luchino Visconti film, Ossessione (which in turn is based on the novel 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' . It features Jude Law as Gino and Halina Reijn as Hanna, the woman with whom he becomes obsessed, and is directed by Ivo van Hove.

I haven't seen the film, but I was not impressed with this stage play. It's fairly short (1 hour 45 minutes) but feels much longer, and not in a good way. The plot is fairly minimal - handsome drifter Gina meets Hanna, a bartender unhappily married to an older man. Hanna and Gino immediately start an impassioned affair, plan to run away together but split up when Hanna gets cold feet and returns to her husband. Her husband winds up dead an things end badly for everyone. 

The play seems a bit lost on the Barbican stage - it might work better in a much smaller space, and perhaps with a few more clues about the timescale, or indeed the location, of the action. (according to the programme notes, the original had lots of anti-fascist subtext, getting it banned by Mussolini, but none of that really comes through here.

The play also features Chukwudi Iwuji in a dual role as Hanna's Priest and a police Inspector, but the minimal costume changes (dog collar or not) mean it isn't always immediately obvious when he is playing which character.

There's also a lot of cliché; at one point, Law stands, in despair, against a backdrop of projected waves. At this point I thought it was supposed to be a clifftop, and that he was going to hurl himself off (which, frankly, would have come as a relief to everyone at that point). He even had to run on a treadmill to symbolise his attempts to escape his obsession... 

It's a shame, as the actors are all good, it's just that the play really isn't. I have to admit I left with the assumption that the reason there is no interval is because they were afraid no-one would come back afterwards, if there was any chance of escape, but I have to admit that a lot of the other audience members seemed rather more enthusiastic, so either they were all fans of 1940's Italian cinema or they just liked watching Jude Law take his shirt off a lot.

In the event that this hasn't put you off, the play is on at the Barbican until 20th May and is being broadcast by NTLive on 11th May.

The rest of my trip to London

The main reason for going to London (this time) were to meet up with N and A, and to see Neil give his lecture, but happily there was also time for other fun things.

When I first got to London, I met up with N and we had a delightful lunch at Nopi, Yotam Ottolenghi's restaurant. 

I did not know before that yogurt could be caramalised, but it seems that it can... ! 

 (the restaurant also has the most disconcerting bathrooms ever - they have infinitely reflecting mirrors, a  little like an unusually refined funfair...

 Very elegant to have around the basins, but I am not wholly convinced that having multiple, full-length mirrors, in a lavatory cubicle is entirely appealing...)

After lunch we went to Foyles, for some book shopping. They had a delightful display of penguins in the window  (the artist was Chloe Spicer) . The penguins were made from, and celebrating the Penguin 'Little Black Classics'. 

I was a little sad that perfectly good little books had died to make the little penguins, but they do seem to be happy, book-loving penguins, so I shall get over it!


I had not intended to buy any books, as they are heavy to carry, and I do have several lovely local bookshops, but I was unable to resist temptation. I have never found it easy to leave a bookshop without buying books, or indeed to pass a bookshop without going in.

 Only two of the books I bought were full size, though. . . I did bring some little black penguin classics home with me, although I have not the skill to turn them into actual penguins after reading them..

We had time for some tea and cake before heading to Neil's lecture, and also to admire the beautiful Burmese cat living at N's BandB, which was very nice!

On the Wednesday, I had most of the day to myself, as my train was not until late afternoon.

I started off with a visit to Leighton House Museum, the former home of Frederic, Lord Leighton, who had the house built in 1866, and then extended a few years later to house Leighton's collection of tiles and other artifacts collected in the Middle East, and it is an amazing building. 

(photo of 'The Roses of Heliogabulus from exhibition website)

It is also, currently, housing an exhibition of Victorian artwork owned by Mexican collector Juan Antonio Pérez Simón, and featuring in particular, Alma Tadema's  The Roses of Heliogabalus, which was displayed in a rose-scented room!

For me, the highlight was not the artwork, but the building itself. 

(photo of Arab Hall from museum website)

The house features the wonderful 'Arab Hall',a beautiful space, decorated with  Iznik (Turkish) and Syrian tiles, and modern tiles made by William de Morgan  to compliment the originals, and fill in the gaps. 

The hall is topped by a glorious golden dome, and contains a fountain.

I had arrived just as the museum opened and was lucky enough to have the hall to myself for a time, to enjoy the tranquility and the beautiful details. 

The entrance hall is also lovely, with the most glorious peacock-blue tiles on the walls, although frustratingly, you are not allowed to take pictures, (and the selection of postcards was very limited :( )

The exhibition is ending at the end of this month, but the house is open all year round, and is more than worth visiting!

After leaving Leighton House, I moved on to another exhibition (also close to ending!) - the Sherlock Holmes exhibition at the Museum of London.   

The museum have the outside of the museum in an appropriate manner, and inside are all sorts of interesting things - after entering through a 'secret' door, there is a lot of information about Victorian London, including maps (some showing the routes taken by Holmes and Watson in specific stories, and the method of travel ( foot, cab, rail etc) 

There was art, both contemporary art and photographs of London (Including a slightly unexpected Monet!), original illustrations from the stories, and a selection of posters and other artwork relating to various other iterations of the stories, including the Robert Downey Jnr. film, and a french pornographic film.. 

Further into the exhibition were some of Conan Doyle's original manuscripts, and information and artifacts related to criminal investigation in the Holmes era, plus examples of clothing, accessories etc. of the period. (including theatrical make up and props)

And, of course, props from some of the dramatisations, including Benedict Cumberatch's coat from the BBC's Sherlock.

I found it entertaining, but not quite the 'must see' which some of the reviews I have read suggested. 

I finished up by wandering around the rest of the museum, including the parts devoted to Roman and Medieval London, before heading back to the station (and a *very* crowded train home. 

Now to start planning what I shall do with my next visit to London, when I shall have another couple of days . . .

Hedone (because it deserves a post of its own)

Having spent an enjoyable morning admiring art old and new, we made our way to Chiswick, where Nathalie had booked lunch at Hedone, which was recently classed as the 63rd Best Restaurant in the World, and which has been awarded a Michelin Star.

The restaurant is owned and run by chef (and former lawyer and food blogger) Mikael Jonsson.

I have to say, the man can cook.

I am not a food blogger. My review would be pretty much "Oh my god. So good. More please"

So I shall mostly just post pictures, and you must use your imagination. 

We were very restrained. 

We didn't go for the full tasting menu, 'just' the 4 course lunch with wine pairing. Which was wonderful. 

First, there were the amuse bouches. I'm not sure that my bouche was amused, but it was certainly happy. As it was when we were brought bread - simple, but perfect. 

Then the official start of the meal, with slow cooked duck's egg, green peas, girolles and apricot.

Then Liquid Parmesan Ravioli, onion consomme, mild horseradish, smoked guanciale. It's hard to identify a favourite part of this meal, but if I have to, I think it might be the liquid parmesan ravioli. I don't know how you make make such a thing. Black magic, probably.

Did I mention that there was wine, too, with each of these lovely dishes? When we arrived at the main course, Slow cooked leg of Coucou de Rennes chicken, coco de Paimpol, confit tomato, we moved from white, to red wine.  Perhaps that is why we were so easily seduced into adding a cheese course to our  meal?

The cheese was gorgeous - I even enjoyed the Forme d'Ambert, and I don't usually like blue cheese. 

Dessert was Oatmeal Parfait with Cherries and was perhaps the least successful of the dishes, as the cherries were chilled, and their full flavour didn't quite come through. Although it was still delicious.

A truly wonderful meal. (and one eaten in excellent company!)

Mikael Jonsson.

I snoozed in the train all the way home, dreaming of glorious food.

In Which There is Shopping, Steam & Sunshine

After our cultural excursions we decided that a quieter day might be in order. It began with a trip to the Saturday market, where we got a little over-enthusiastic buying wonderful fresh fruit - 5kg of oranges (having found a juicer in the kitchen cupboard) and smaller (but still large, and astonishingly cheap) quantities of cherries, strawberries, some (probably) Mulberries, nectarines and some apple-sized fruit which looked a bit like tomatoes and tasted a bit like melon. I'm not sure what they were - persimmons of some kind, perhaps..

All that shopping was so exhausting that we had to go and get lunch.  Eating pide and drinking beer, while seated under a canopy of vine leaves takes a lot of beating!

Fortified by food and beer, we moved on to the 'shopping' portion of the day - K was looking for a veil for the whole getting married thing which she is doing in the summer, and she, E and I all need shoes, also for the wedding-ing. Our experience suggests that in Turkey, weddings are all about the frills. And the shiny things. And then the frills on the frills. and glitter on the frills on the frills. And sequins everywhere. Strangely, despite this, we were unable to convince K that she wanted to buy a new dress, in place of her original choice (and even more strangely, I don't seem to have taken any pictures of the dresses!)

However, trying on veils (and shoes) was so exhausting that we decided another Hamman was needed.  we went to the town hamman this time, which was less slick than the hotel (no plunge pool) but with much better massage.

And yet again, they somehow managed to scrub off another layer or two of skin, despite our all having been exfoliated to within an inch of our lives less than a week before... I really need to learn the Turkish for "I do exfoliate, honest. And I'm sure a lot of that is sun cream."

It was D's last day, so we stayed up late chatting, and sitting out on the balcony in the quiet darkness watching the bats flit past, then K drove her to airport to return to England's rain-drenched jubilee.

In which there is more recent history (and pancakes)

After our adventures with ancient history, we decided to stay closer to home, both geographically and historically, the next day.
So we went to Kaya village (Kayaköy /Karmylassos ), which is just outside Fethiye. Kaya was a village inhabited mainly by Greek-speaking Christians, but it was abandoned in 1923, after the end of the Greco-Turkish War (or the war of Turkish Independence, depending on your political views) when, as part of the peace treaty, a population exchange was agreed, allowing Ethnic Greek Christians to move to Greece, and Muslims to move to Turkey.

However, as Kaya had been Greek, Turks did not wish to live there, so it became a ghost town, and is now preserved as a museum.

The village is mostly ruins, now. The majority of the buildings are roofless shells, the alters are gone from the churches, and the place is silent other than the chirping of crickets, and birds.

When we went into one of the churches we flushed out a small group of sheep, and there were swallows nesting in the roof.

There is one house which still has its wooden internal walls, shutters and balcony, although they are rather decrepit, and seem to have been burned at some time. Outside the window was an apricot tree, with all the apricots growing, frustratingly, just out of reach...

From the chapel on the top of the hill, there are magnificent views out over the sea, and there are flowers everywhere, and fig-trees growing up inside many of the ruined houses.

Now that the village is preserved as a museum, and is something of a tourist attraction, there are several little restaurants there. And a random pair of camels and a donkey, on which one can, I assume, have rides. We, however, were far more interested in the gozleme, which are chapati-like pancakes, made in a woodburning oven and stuffed with cheese and spinach.

It's possible that the afternoon may have involved rather a lot of sitting on a sunny balcony. And possibly a G'n'T or two. And maybe some pistachio ice cream.

The baklava, however, wasn't until later.

We Are Family

I have two sisters, and they both (with no consideration for my budgeting) have birthdays in March. This year, K had a land-mark birthday, of the kind that comes with a zero on the end, so we decided to get together & celebrate.

So, Friday saw me driving down to K&C's new flat (which I haven't visited before.) I arrived in time for supper and wine andd catching up on conversation, which is a good time to arrive.

Saturday turned put to be a lovely sunny day, and after a leisurely breakfast, E arrived, and we three girls went out to run some errands, and to go for what turned out to be an extremely short walk, and a fairly long lunch.

We went up to Fort Widley, which is one of the 'Palmerston Forts' in Portsmouth. The forts were built in the 1860s in order to defend Porrsmouth  (and in particular the Naval dockyards) from the risk of French invasion.

They are huge, and bizarre looking - the one we saw was one of a group intended to defend aginst the possibility of forces landing elsewhere on the coast and then attacking by land - which apparently led to persistent rumours that they had been built facing the wrong way...! They also turned out to be obselete as soon as they were built, although they were used as betteries for anti-aircraft guns during WW2.  For us, however, they were an interesting bit of landscape around which to walk en route to the pub.  We had gone up to Portsdown Hill as it has good views out over Portsmouth and the Solent, but it was so hazywe couldn't see anything, so we just sat in the sun and ate our jacket potatoes, and (in my case) enjoyed a splendid pint of 'Spitfire'

On the way home, we popped into the local VW dealership to be patronised by some car salesmen - you'd think with the global recession an' all, that that they might be willing to face he possibility that yes, women buy cars too, (Radical, I know) Still, at least it allowed my sis to identify one garage she *won't* be getting er brannd new car from :-)

The evening was for celebration - K had booked at a local restuarant called 'Kitsch'n D'Or', a french bistro-type place. It was great! I started with smoked duck, followed by pigeon breast, and with chocolate mousse to finish with. Other members of the party had the fresh, local mussels (stemed with a touch of curry spices), roast shoulder of lamb. . . in fact, there were so many good things on the menu I think we all could have quite happily come back for a second meal the next day. I'm still regretting the fact I couldn't manage the cheese course, too.

As well as the great food, we enjoyed some lovely won, and the whole evening was very relaxed - there was lots of time to savour the food, and enjoy conversation between courses.

I hope K & E enjoyed their birthday celebration - I certainly did!

Having had a late night, and with the clocks going forward, we ended up getting up late, and having a leisurely morning, a alte breakfast, and then K&C cooked us a (very late) roast chicken dinner befre E & I had to set off for our respective homes.

All in all, it was a really nice, relaxing weekend. The only downside was that I got held up in traffic 3 miles from home, which was a little frustrating, but it was the only thing which marred the weekend so not bad going!

More of Cambridge, Books, Friends and Food

After the fun of Stephen Fry on Friday night, Saturday was devoted to socialising.

R, S & I went into Cambridge and went for a walk through the town and  along the Backs (behind some of the colleges) admiring the Mathematical Bridge,and the more decorative colleges (the picture below is, I believe, Peterhouse College) before walking along towards Grantchester, by the river.

Having arranged to meet up with my friend Em we walked back to be in the city by lunchtime, where  we had coffee. 

R & S then left, to undertake revision and chores respectively, and Em and I went off and had an excellent and adventurous lunch at the Cambridge Chop House, where our meal included a 'squirrel, hare & leek faggot', warm duck salad, and then specialist sausages & mash.

It's not a restaurant to which one would take a vegetarian, but the food was good, and the company excellent.

 Em and I were at university together, and don't see each other anything like as often as I'd like!

After our long and convivial lunch, we may have spent rather a lot of the afternoon, and of our spare money, at the Haunted Bookshop where we both filled in some gaps in our collections, and spotted many more objects of desire...

If only I had happened to have a spare £300 I could have had a beautiful  copy of 'Alice in Wonderland' with illustrations by Arthur Rackham, or some fairy stories with the Edmund Dulac illustrations.

It's a lovely shop. And I think we both enjoyed the afternoon.

I just had time for a cup of tea withh R&S before driving home, to be met by reproaches from Tybalt for havng left him so long.

A most happy-making day.

A (Mostly) Relaxing Weekend

Friday was my older sister's birthday, and Tuesday is my younger sister's, and on Thursday I got a message from E (Younger sister) inviting me to visit for the weekend, and telling me that she had invited K (Older sister) too.

The plan was to have a "Spa Day" at a hotel near her home, then go out for a meal in the evening, so I drove up to Birminham on Friday evening, and on saturday morning the three of us headed off to Henley in Arden for a day of relaxation.

The deal was that for the day-fee you got full access to the liesure facilities (pool, hot-tub, sauna, gym, squash courts), plus lunch, and then various treatments could be booked in addition.

Due to a few organisational delays, E's friend P & I I didn't have any treatments booked, although E & K each had a facial, and E a massage, too.

On the whole, we had a very good day; after a little healthy exercise in the gym we concentrated on the serious business of relaxation - moving from pool, to sauna, to seam room, to hot-tub, with lots of lying on loungers, talking, and reading the selection of magazines which P brought with her, and light novels.

The hotel spa could do with improving their customer service a little, though - the spa was quite busy, and seemed rather understaffed, and then at the end of the day, when we were all in the final stages of getting dressed to leave, one of the staff members came into the changing room to chivvy us up to check out & pay, because they wanted to close up the tills! Bearing in mind this was more than 15 minutes before the end of the day, and it was very obvious that we were leaving (we were all fully dressed and packing up our bags) it seemed rather gauche, and not terribly condusive to a nice relaxing day. The fact that we then had to wait while they finished their conversation before they could be bothered to actually process our payments did add insult to injury just a tad...

Still, poor staff aside, we enjoyed spending time together and the facilities weren't bad!

Then for the evening the three of us (Self + 2 sisters), together with K's fiance C (Who had spent the day working hard on essays, rather than coming with us and sharing in the girly bonding...) but without P, who had othr commitments, we went out to a great Indian resturant - Asha's - where we had supurb food, some lovely cocktails, an excellent waiter, and, when they heard we were there to celebrate K & E's birthdays, free chocolate cake. it was an excellent night out, alhough having eaten late and well, we were all far too full to go straight to bed, so ended up sitting around, talking, and half-wtching the Star-trek movie until past 2 a.m. ..

A lovely day, and we decided that another Spa day might make for an excellent hen-party for K's wedding, in due cours, and that perhaps we we owe it to her to do some practical field research, to ensure we find the best possible spa day/weekend...

Of course, I am now utterly exhausted, having spent the pst 2 nights (a) staying up foolishly late socialising with my family and (b) then trying, with limited success, to sleep on an airbed.. I think an early night (or 2) is now in order.

But I am glad I went.

And just after getting home I had a call from my cousin H to say she is pregnant, and so she and her husband will, all being well, having their first child this autumn. VERY good news!

In Which there is Food, and Electricity

Saturday started quietly with a snooze, then I did a little bit of tidying up, with a view to the house looking respectable once my guests arrived, and bed-making, with a view to them having somewhere to sleep.

It was another cold, but sunny day, and when I walked down into town in the afternoon I started to snow - huge, dry flakes, all properly snow-flake shaped, with 6 distinct points! I've rarely seen snowflakes like that, mostly we seem either to have much wetter, sleety snow, of the very fine grainy kind. It didn't settle at all, but we very cold - 20 minutes out doing last minute bits of shopping was more than enough, although the last of the sunlight and the sunset were both beautiful.

Julie & Jason arrived in time for a nice long supper - I had made smoky aubergine dip, so we had hummus, aubergine dip, olives, crudites and warm pita bread, with a rather nice bottle of prosecco which Julies & Jason had brought with them.

We then (despite the very small size of my kitchen) all joined in to cook the main course, which was the Nettle & Chestnut Risotto which I was harvesting and cooking nettles for, earlier in the week.

Ingredients:

2 pints nettles (measured when picked), loosely packed
8 tbsp unsalted butter
approx. 1 litre vegetable stock
2 shallots, finely diced
7¼oz arborio rice
8¾fl oz dry cider
8oz peeled chestnuts, chopped in half
lemon juice
2oz fresh parmesan, finely grated, to serve

Method
1. Wash the nettles in a large bowl, allowing any debris to drop to the bottom. Pick out any thick or tough stems. Do not be concerned that the washing water is peaty brown, this is normal.
2. To cook the nettles, heat one tablespoon of butter in a large pan over a high heat and drop in the leaves. Allow them to wilt and cook until they are tender.
3. Strain through a sieve, catching any liquid in a bowl. Squeeze the nettles and remove to a board, chopping them roughly. Set aside in a cool place while you make the risotto.
4. Heat the stock in a pan. Melt half the remaining butter in a large heavy pan, adding the shallots and stirring to soften them. Cook the shallots until they are tender and clear, then add the rice, stirring to allow all of the rice to be coated with some of the fat.
5. Add the cider and stir. While the cider is being absorbed, turn the heat to a medium simmer. Add ladlefuls of stock - two at first, and allow each addition to be absorbed. When two thirds of the stock is absorbed, add the chopped nettles and allow them to continue cooking in the rice. At this stage, add the chestnuts - they will break down slightly in the pan.
6. When most of the stock is absorbed, check the rice - it ought to be just cooked, the sauce still emulsified. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Add the remaining butter and the parmesan, and serve with a sprinkle of lemon juice and a little freshly chopped parsley

The stock I made was partly made from soaking some dried mushrooms, so our risotto had a few mushrooms in it, too. The original recipie which (which I found on the BBC Food website) had dry white wine instead of cider, and suggests using chicken stock, which of course wouldn't be any good for vegetarians.

It really was very nice :-) So much so, that we ate all of it before I thought to take a picture of it!

I cheated on desert, and bought some Gu chocolate puddings. Pure decadence.

We had a lovely relaxed evening, talked, listened to music (Including comparing and contrasting the various 'IKEA' songs, by Mitch Benn, Jonathan Coulton and The Lancashire Hotpots )

I hope that they enjoyed the evening, I certainly did!

Sunday involved a leisurely breakfast, then Jason very kindly fixed the light socket in my WC - I had pulled the cord too hard and it broke, but when he took it to pieces, the socket itself was broken, so we had a quick trip to B&Q, and pausing only to google the changing rules about the colours of wires, and for me to borrow an electric test-y thing (multimeter?) from a neighbour, he fitted the the new socket for me, which was much appreciated. I can do some basic home maintenace - I can wire plugs and change fuses, but I am very nervous about anything connected to the mains, and because of my dodgy shoulder I find anything which involves working with my hands above my head almost impossible, which of course makes wiring in a new lighting socket to the ceiling quite tricky!

Sadly J&J couldn't stay later as they had lots of family to visit, so I wasn't able to give them lunch.

After they had gone, I spent the afternoon wrapping Christmas gifts and then ventured up into the loft to retrieve the christmas decorations, into the cupboard under the stairs for the Christmas tree, and put the two together.

I'm starting to feel a little festive!

I'd originally planned to go out this evening to a Carol Service (I'm not religious, but a carol service is a lovely part of Christmas) but it was so cold, and the road icy, and in the end I decided to stay inside in the wall, and watch a BBC4 documentary about Christmas Carols, instead.

(I also enjoyed a supper of Nathalie's Pumpkin & Almond Lasagna, which turned out beautifully. (I made mine with Butternut Squash, instead of pumpkin, and I have the other half of the Squash sauce in the freezer, so I shall be able to have it all over again, soon)

All in all, a most satisfactory weekend!