Eating at home

This has been a great week for cooking.  The weather is a bit cooler and I am in the mood!  My lucky partner has taken advantage of this, as have some of his colleagues.

This week's recipe looks a bit weird in the photo, but got the thumbs up when we had it for dinner:

Smoked salmon salad.

Ingredients:

1 packet of hot smoked salmon, flaked
6 baby potatoes boiled in salt water, and sliced when cool
1 head of broccoli flowerets,  1 bunch asparagus,1 handful of French beans cut into chunks,  and blanched in boiling salted water
handful of dill, chopped
1 tablespoon capers,
( could add chopped red onions too)
2 heaped tablespoons light sour cream,
1 heaped tablespoon seed mustard,
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method:

Prepare the salmon and vegetables as per ingredients.
Cool vegetables to room temperature
Put salmon, vegetables, dill, caper and red onions if used in a salad bowl and mix.
Mix together the sour cream, mustard and pepper.  Pour on ingredients in salad bowl.
Mix gently, then serve.

We also enjoyed a brilliant dish that I have adapted from the one I used to cook for the family: lamb shanks in an orange sauce:

 

 (PS Yes, I finally found some yam, in the Toombul vegetable shop).

One night we had spinach and feta in filo pastry



and for lunch one day, we had quinoa salad with pomegranates

 

 We experimented with the last dessert from the Thai shop that I showed you last week.  It is called "Assorted Beans in Syrup", but turned out to be longan, barley, coconut, sago, jujube, lotus seed and kidney bean in a light syrup.  Quite refreshing actually, and not too sweet.

I had found this dried fruit in the shop and liked its appearance so much, I brought it home to display in a bowl.  At the same time, I discovered that the shop sold packets of dried tea made from it, so I bought a packet too.  Turns out it is a Bael fruit, and the tea is purported to be very good for you.  The tea is quite palatable for something that is good for you, sort of woody, sweet and sour at the same time, but very light.  Glad I experimented!

As well as meals for us, I made some sweet treats for the workplace: a molasses slice:

and baklava

 

Apparently they went very fast.  Luckily, I kept some aside for Bob to have at home!