Mid week feast

I left work early today to see a doc about a cough. While waiting for my prescription I picked up a kilo of chopped lamb pieces as well as some extra rosemary and parsley. Home a little early I was able to whip up a mid-week feast, which pleased my dining companion no end when she arrived home at 7.

The feast was:

- Bruschetta with basil and tomato;

- Giuliano Hazan's Lamb Stew with Olives and Parsley from his How to Cook Italian: I know I keep cooking this dish but that's because it is so good and so easy. I cook it with red wine as I never seem to have white around.

- Marcella's Potato Salad from Marcella's Italian Kitchen, with olives and parsley (WARNING: olive overload but come to think of it they aren't even in the recipe);

- Boiled Broccoli with Salt, Olive Oil and Pepper (Neil Perry);

- Baked eggplant slices (Alice Waters)

Well I can tell you I am as full as a fart now. The stew was delicious; the potato salad was a little full on (simpler would have been better); the eggplant was a touch underdone and the slices could have been bigger.

The broccoli was the star. So creamy and delicious.

One thing I noticed was that I did seem to be suffering from salt overdose by the end of it. Everything had a lot of salt and olive oil on it. Brings out flavour, says Marcella, and makes food taste of itself. No need to hide behind trickery like the Thais for example.

I get that, and can see how it all works, but here there was just a bit too much salt in all my dishes. I'm not sure what could have broken that up. Dump the potato salad perhaps, or had a real salad instead of a vege dish.

Anyway, all good. I'm stuffed as I said, mainly on veges. Can't complain about that. And lots left over for tucker during the week.

Bruschetta

Well, everyone knows about Bruschetta. But if this is the case then why is it that something so delicious is always so shit in restaurants?

The bruschetta I just ate for breakfast was proper italian style bread toasted with a little tomato cut up and mixed with little slithers of fresh basil, lots of salt, pepper, and lots of quality extra virgin olive oil.

Sounds trite but so so good. Nothing like the crap served up most places.

It was only as I was eating it that I thought I didn't put garlic on it. Often I do, but this didn't need it, and was perhaps more fresh without it. Bruschetta does not need garlic rubbed on it to be bruschetta.

Having said that, the most common bruschetta I eat is the most ancient - simply garlic, salt and oil. It is fine enough. Sometimes I sprinkle some finely chopped rosemary on top.

Be generous with the salt and oil.

The worse bucetta ever was these huge bits of toast with, I swear, a tomato chopped into the most enormous slices, put on the top of it, like the crudest tomato on toast you could imagine. It was horrific, and I just think, why. Why they do this, when the real stuff is so easy, and so tasty. And how ignorant are we to eat that crap.

Don't get me started on so-called garlic bread, Mt Cootha style. The horror.