Mimolette Vieille Cheese

Our most recent cheese discovery.  We try to buy something different each time and very rarely repeat our purchases to continue with our knowledge.   Only for study sake of course.

This cheese is from Lille.  It is aged for a minimum of 24 months.  It is crumbly like good aged parmesan.  It is sweet, caramel, salty and nutty in flavour .  The wee cheese mites eat the rind over the ageing process.  You can see the hole in our piece which means they really do core test the cheese.  In the proper traditional way.

And honestly??? This cheese is AMAZING.  Khalas.

Cherry Apple Strudel

We do Studel. Every Friday.  We joke it's like our Austrian Grandma made.  I had the most awesome nana.  She did do incredible apple shortcake but strudel - no.  We are winging this.  We are self taught on the strudel front.

Sooo we have this cloth that we joke has been handed down by generations ... but alas no, it's just a table cloth we bought new 2 years ago.  

We use very good bread for our crumbs (of course, I make the stuff every 3 days).  We had the cherries Philippe, our neighbour,  picked from his tree.  We had apple, fresh season and I am so very VERY  picky regarding the humble pomme.  We had Andy's mix of spice and brown butter.  In essence we had a big fat happy tummy.  Andy's cooking of those crumbs with the mix of spice.  And the stretching just like our Austrian grandma (might have) taught us.   Anyway it is just yum on every single level.  

Merlu (hake) Indian style

An absolute knockout.  Fennel, potato, pea, gorgeous crispy bread, perfectly cooked merlu, chutney, raita.  YUM.  

Playing Petanque in the most glorious setting imaginable.....

And then the rain came....

 It was a gorgeous evening, we thought BBQ!!! OK my app did say it had a chance of thunderstorms but it looked OK and Andy the met man said it would be OK.  However....

We did bring it inside.  We did have the most incredible dinner (spiced burger patties, sourdough bread with grilled courgette, onion and guacamole) and we did watch that rain absolutely bucket. From inside.  It was fun.  Andy did try for a bit, but it became apparent that rain was not gonna quit!

The best tandoori chicken so far....

 Cooked in the pan in the oven, grilled at the end.  The pan was heavy, lending to a deep caramelisation of the tandoori marinade.
Andy also made a cabbage dish which was a knock out.  He made a cucumber tomato salad (kachumber salad) also a knock out.  The most incredible crispy flat bread raita and chutney.  But the difference this time was the chicken.  It took heaven to new heights.  No kidding.  F....ing deliriously indescribably divine.  YUM!!!

Flat bread

Cabbage Indian style and Andy's own recipe.  Seriously??  YUM!!!!!

Our wee garden and my first Iris!

I have always had a fondness for Iris flowers.  I never ever thought I'd actually GROW one FROM SCRACH (in this case from a bulb, but anyhoooo...) very proud am I.  A few more photos from our garden below too.  This damn blog hasn't been working but it's up and running again and I do want to do some before and afters of our wee house.  It's looking amazing in honesty.  We just love it.