This not so much a recipe as an idea. Tomorrow we head back to Turkey (can’t wait to be in my lovely big kitchen – the one here is a little on the ‘bijou’ side, and a lot of my cooking kit still resides in Turkey), so last night’s dinner was a final fridge-raid. (Tonight is fish and chips from the pub, as I’ve now cleaned the oven and the kitchen floor).
I really couldn’t face another version of fridge-raid soup and we had a couple of bags of fresh salad still to eat, plus a little container of chicken strips and a few slices of smoked bacon in the freezer. I cobbled the whole lot together and made a mustardy dressing, which I mixed in the pan in which I had fried the bacon and chicken – which made it warm and super delicious. We ate the salad with the last of a bag of new potatoes (local earlies) and some garlic bread. You can use whatever leftovers you like, and feel free to add some toasted walnuts, pine nuts or seeds (I forgot to do so). Here’s how I rolled:
- Halve some small tomatoes and put them on a baking tray that you have lined with baking paper and roast in a 180 degree oven until slightly scorched and starting to fall apart (about half an hour). If you are adding garlic bread, put this into the oven towards the end of baking (saves on electricity and means your tomatoes will be warm).
- Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and fry a few rashers of bacon until really crisp. Set the bacon aside to cool, the break into shards. Add some strips of chicken (breast or thigh is fine) to the pan – or other protein of your choice (thin strips of beef, a little chorizo or some prawns immediately spring to mind), along with a finely chopped clove of garlic and a generous sprinkling of chilli flakes and oregano. Cook until the chicken is a deep golden brown and starting to crisp. Set the chicken aside with the bacon, leaving any cooking juices in the pan.
- Meanwhile, arrange some salad leaves in a serving bowl and top with whatever you have going – I used spring onions (red onion would be fine), avocado and thinly-sliced fennel. Scatter the bacon, chicken and roasted tomatoes over the salad and top with any bits of cheese that you happen to have to hand – I used some feta, but any blue cheese, goat’s cheese or other soft cheese would be fine.
- To make the dressing, deglaze the pan with a little white wine/apple vinegar or balsamic vinegar, then whisk in a heaped teaspoon of Dijon mustard. If using white wine or apple vinegar, add a teaspoon of brown sugar or a little drizzle of honey. Season generously and whisk in a little olive oil (about two tablespoons) until you have a cohesive glossy dressing. Drizzle all over the salad and sprinkle over some chopped parsley. Serve with the garlic bread, or other crusty bread for dunking into the dressing, and some new potatoes on the side.
It has to be said that lockdown is beginning to lose any appeal that it may have had in the beginning (the fact that it has rained non-stop for the last ten days may have had some bearing on that, I admit). I can’t remember whether we are 11 or 12 weeks in, I can no longer be bothered to count, and anyway I can’t see out from under my fringe. We remind ourselves daily that we and our families are incredibly fortunate – none of us has had Covid-19, nobody has lost their job, everyone has a secure home and we are all financially keeping heads above water – for now at least. 
I have set myself a challenge of going to the supermarket an absolute maximum of once a week (though I do allow myself a quick dash into the village store to get fresh milk and fresh fruit in between). Robin is staying at home apart from our daily walk on the Bissoe Trail, owing to his advancing years and marginally dodgy ticker, so I figure that the fewer times I expose myself (and ergo him) to our new friend Corona, the better for everyone.
More cold weather, more soup. I could happily live on soup – there are so many variations that each one is like having a completely different meal. From something fast to throw together after work, like 
Happy new year to everyone. Rather late in the day, being half way through January, but the year already seems to be racing past at speed.
Despite the mostly inclement weather, we’re enjoying being back in Cornwall, and it is especially novel not sharing our house with the plumbers, carpenters and electricians. We quite miss them though – they are a happy and helpful bunch – though we don’t miss the early morning start time. They were here last week finishing off a few bits and pieces, but I think that is everything now until the summer. Robin is muttering about ‘getting up the floor of the conservatory’ to install underfloor heating, as that is our only dining space and it can be parky at this time of year. Personally, I favour a large rug. The thought of having the floor up fills me with horror. I am hoping he will have forgotten about it by the summer. 
We have just returned to Cornwall after spending a few weeks in Warwickshire with our families – hence no blog posts for a while! I am sure we couldn’t have picked a hotter spot in the British Isles if we had tried. We tortured ourselves daily by watching the BBC weather report and seeing that, back here in Cornwall, it was a whole ten degrees cooler. Obviously we’ve come back to cool weather and rain, though it does make quite a change. We will be back in Turkey in a few weeks, so there will be plenty more sunshine to come. 
When we lived in Istanbul, we used to frequent a fine establishment near our shop, called the 
Robin’s favourite favourite is fish pie. Closely followed by fish pie. It is not mine, on several counts: a) I find it a bit on the mushy, school-dinner, nursery-fare, side; b) it doesn’t look very appetising once it’s slumped onto the plate; and c) it is a right faff to make, what with having to pre-cook the fish, cook and mash the potatoes and then make a bechamel sauce with the cooking liquid. You feel as though you need to start thinking about dinner roughly five minutes after you’ve put the cornflake bowls in the dishwasher, and you’ll need more pots and pans than Jamie Oliver.
I just noticed that my last blog post was back in January for December’s Cookery Calendar Challenge, more than a month ago. Several things have got in the way of blog posting – we were away for ten days in January, looking after a family of Greek rescue cats in the Midlands while visiting various branches of the Tassell/Pearson family and now (I can hardly bring myself to say this) I AM ON A DIET. Yes, the dreaded ‘D Word’.
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