Goats cheese, asparagus and sun dried tomato tart

So I had my mum over for dinner last night and time wasn't on my side so I whipped this dish up. It's really simple but looks and tastes amazing. I used ready rolled puff which is far simpler and time consuming than making the real thing.

First of all dust a baking sheet with flour and cut a couple of tart sized rectangles of puff pastry and place them on the sheet. Score the puff using a sharp knife about 2cm in from the edge but careful not to cut all the way through.

Take four stems of asparagus cut into 2cm pieces (leaving the spear whole for the top of the tart) and 8 sun dried tomatoes, and mix in a bowl to allow the asparagus to take on some of the oil from the tomatoes. Layer the tomatoes and asparagus up on the tart with the spear on top and crumbled up soft goats cheese throughout,  cook on about 200 degrees for 12 or so minutes.

Easy.

Butternut Squash and Courgette Tagine

So maybe it might seem a bit strange that the second recipe I post on my blog also contains butternut squash but that's ok because it's a great vegetable. I more or less based this on a recipe I got from a cookbook with a few alterations. 

This is really simple to make and tastes great, I did it to serve two with enough left for my lunch the next day. 

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1/2 medium butternut squash

1 medium courgette

2 tins of chopped tomatoes

Pinch of saffron thread

2 teaspoons of crushed cumin seeds 

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons of crushed coriander seeds

1 cinnamon stick

1 large red chilli

1 tablespoon of honey

Peel the butternut squash and chop it into 2cm cubes, do the same with the courgette. Now finely chop and fry the onion in olive oil for a few minutes, then add the chopped garlic, after a minute or so add all the dried spices and stir for another minute before adding the chopped chilli. Add the tomatoes, cinnamon stick, honey and vegetables. 

Cook until tender, which is about 30 mins. You may need to top up with a bit of water to stop it drying out. Once done season and add plenty of chopped coriander. I then garnished with a little extra coriander and served with cous cous.  

The cous cous I served it with tonight was 150g with a knob of butter in the bottom, zest of a lemon, chopped green chilli and finely chopped coriander with enough boiling water on top to cook it through. 

Primal Scream at the Eden Project

Here is a review I did for Primal Scream....

Watching a band perform a classic album they released 20 years ago against a backdrop that made me feel like I was in the future was a pretty special if contradictory experience. For those of you who haven’t been to the Eden Sessions or indeed the Eden Project before, the setting for tonight’s gig was a natural amphitheatre placed in front of massive bio-domes containing all sorts of tropical vegetation - it’s like nothing else you’ve seen before. 

After hastily making my way across Devon to Cornwall for tonight’s gig, I arrived a little into The Horrors’ set to be greeted by ‘Who Can Say’. The setting seemed strange and distant for a band far more suited to dark and dingy clubs than the bright sunshine and open space they found themselves in.  Nevertheless, there was a sense of them really trying - they offered up a set that included a fair few tracks from their upcoming third album Skying alongside the best from their previous two offerings, the highlight being an excellent version of ‘Sea Within a Sea’. Despite appreciating the effort they went to – necessary to counter the far from ideal, if idyllic surroundings - one couldn’t help but feel that it was lost on a crowd who clapped appreciatively enough, but still seemed slightly unsure what to make of it all. 

Of course the atmosphere changed when Primal Scream ascended to the stage, the audience being right on side from the off, despite not being sure what to make of old Robert Gillespie’s metallic silver shirt.

Being able to start with a song like ‘Movin’ On Up’ is a privileged position for a band to be in, and just then it really hits home how special an album Screamadelica really is. The majority of the crowd, unlike me, were old enough to remember the LP the first time around, and reacted as if they had been transported back to the week of release. 

The whole shebang was worked through fantastically, with the many altered and extended versions of its classic songs being gratefully received, none more so than the lovingly doctored ‘Higher than the Sun’. Bravely, the ‘Scream even played with the tracklisting to get the most from the crowd, ending on a combination of ‘Loaded’ and ‘Come Together’ which had the audience singing long after they’d left the stage. 

Not content with treating us to just one classic record, following ‘Come Together’ the band retook to the stage for an encore of ‘Country Girl’, ‘Jailbird’ and ‘Rocks’ which really topped off a fantastic performance against an amazing backdrop.