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Dinner tonight was a Thai red curry made simply with some red curry paste fried briefly in the wok before a tin of coconut milk and a splash of stock was added.  A sliced red chilli (I didn’t bother taking the seeds out), a sliced red pepper and mange tout was then added and the curry reduced for about 10 minutes before uncooked sliced chicken breast was added.  The curry was then reduced for another 10 minutes. Just before serving with rice, I mixed some thinly sliced spring onion and coriander into the curry to give it a little lift.

The ‘apple-a-day’ resolution remains unbroken, with one eaten after dinner.

Breakfast:

No breakfast. Tut tut. To be fair, I was still full from the meal last night.

Lunch:

Visitors from the US still around, so we went for sushi at Matsuba. I wrote a review on Qype ages ago, but since I always have the same thing – the Matsuba special bento box – it still applies.

Dinner:

After eating out so much this week and last week, it was a relief to have a good old spag bol, cooked by P.

Breakfast:

Bread, meat, cheese, yoghurt, boiled egg.

I like staying in continental hotels. The breakfast is substantial enough to be satisfying, yet not artery clogging. Yes, I could try to avoid the cooked breakfasts, but I find it very difficult to do so.

Lunch:

Chicken meat balls, cardamom sauce, rice, from the work canteen. Surprisingly tasty, despite its appearance.

Dinner:

We went for a Thai meal at a place called Kori & Fay. My review on Qype gives more details but I had some of the mixed appetisers and a main of a green curry.

Breakfast:

Hot cross bun.  I think.  I really ought to pay more attention at breakfast.

Lunch:

Pizza at work again.  Lots of meat feast pizza and some pepperoni.  Very, very bad.

Dinner:

King prawn fried rice, made by my own fair hands.  The prawns were Ecuadorian organic king prawns (from Waitrose, natch, and probably costing about £20).  Rice was left over from dinner on Sunday.

Meals at home are my responsibility at the weekends, which is a fair deal, given that P cooks almost all the evening meals during the week. While I often mock and complain about P’s forward planning of meals, my ‘let’s see what we feel like eating on the day’ attitude means I spend more time shopping, sometimes having to make more than one trip. I think I’m ok this weekend, although since I hadn’t consulted any recipe books prior to the trip to Waitrose, I have to hope that what ended up in the shopping trolley combines well enough with stuff we already had, to make decent meals.

Breakfast:

A hot cross bun, two slices of toasted white bread with Marmite, washed down with a mug of green tea. Depressingly similar to weekday breakfasts, although weekend fry-ups are a thing of the past with a 15-month-old girl to look after.

Lunch:

Tuna mayonnaise (alas, Hellman’s, rather than home-made, mayonnaise) with spring onions in a baguette, with a bowl of Heinz tomato soup. Yes, I know there are superior tomato soups but Heinz tinned soup is another one of those foods that takes me back to childhood. In a good way, I hasten to add.

Tea:

We had visitors, so I scoffed a quarter of a fruit cake (again, shamefully, shop-bought, rather than home-made), washed down with (not green) tea.

Dinner:

This morning, P – somewhat surprisingly, given her general dislike of seafood – requested fish for dinner.

I managed to procure a whole, albeit small, sea bass from the fish counter at Waitrose. When the time came to prepare it, I was a little alarmed to feel rough scales on my skin when I handled the fish, and got a sinking feeling when I realised I should have asked for the fish to be scaled and gutted.

One reason I hadn’t done this at Waitrose was the fact that the girl who served me the fish looked about 12 and had just come from the fresh meats section (fear not, food hygienists, she washed her hands thoroughly) so it didn’t occur to me that she would possess the necessary skills to prepare fish. (Quite possibly an unfair judgement to make, but that’s what happened.)

Another reason is that when I was a regular fish eater, I used to go to a great fishmonger in Croydon, where it was almost assumed that you’d want your fresh fish prepared in some sort of way, so you’d always be prompted about the scaling and gutting, such that there was minimal prep time once you’d got the fish home.

Tonight, I gutted a fish myself, surprisingly for the first time. It was actually relatively simple. The harder part was the scaling, since I don’t posses a fish scaler. Having said that, running a knife at an oblique angle against the scales wasn’t that difficult; it was just a faff clearing up afterwards, as the odd scale here and there flew off a foot or two.

Anyway, after prepping the fish, I stuck to a fairly traditional ginger and spring onion combination. I peeled the ginger then cut it into thin matchsticks, and sliced the spring onions. I shoved some of this into the cavity of the fish, and sprinkled the rest over (and under) it. Chucked it into a bamboo steamer for, ooh, 14 minutes. I sprinkled on some more spring onions, and then poured over some groundnut oil that I’d heated to just before smoking point. The crackle of the spring onion and fish skin as the hot oil hit them was heavenly. Then I chucked over some light soy sauce and sesame oil, before taking the whole steamer over to the table.

Served with a bit of rice (which tasted divine, after pouring some of the soy sauce/sesame oil combination over it) and pak choi.