Am I Turning into a Foodie?

So where was I? Oh yes, rashly commiting myself to making something from my recipe binder at least once a week. Well, actually I did. In fact, I did it more than once. I'm going to have to make sure I don't get carried away here.

First came pasta with creamy crab. Dead easy as you'd imagine. Pasta of your choice, couple of cans of crab meat, some cream and Bob's yer whatsit. I threw in some peas as the veg and to give the dish some colo(u)r, which more than one child diligently picked out. Why they can't just scoop a few up with the rest of the food I don't know. You can barely taste them but apparently it's the texture that's offensive. Squashy.

Anyway, the food was gobbled up appreciatively although I personally thought it a touch bland. Having grown up on the north east coast of England, I'm spoilt seafood wise. My dad used to fish at Craster every so often and come back with the most delicious crab I know I will ever taste in my life. Every summer I have to make a pilgrimage to North Shields fish quay and even my kids are sea-foodies now. Such is my crab-snobbery that I rarely eat even fresh crab in the US because it just doesn't compare. (And because I live smack in the middle of the country so "fresh" crab isn't.) The tinned crab tasted about the same otherwise I would have hunted down the real thing. I imagine the recipe would be delicious with fresh North Sea crab. Yum.

A couple of nights later I browsed through my Delia Smith and came across potato and apple rosti, which I thought would pair nicely (ooh, get me) with the pork I'd bought. That too went down well, but bloody hell are they labo(u)r intensive. Grate the apples and stick them in lemon juice to stop them going brown while you par boil the potatoes and then grate them. (Warning - grating hot potatoes can cause second degree burns.) Stick them together, coat them with flour and bake. They shrink down quite a bit but they were tasty.

Are you impressed? I am.

The piece de resistance however, was the made from scratch Barefoot Contessa raspberry cheesecake - that the man-child made on Monday. Being Martin Luther King day, the kids were under my feet, I mean off school. Determined not to let him sit in front of his X Box all day I shouted for him to come downstairs and bake a cake. Not something you'd normally yell at a 14 year old boy but he loves to bake. Anyway, we trawled through about ten recipe books until we found something that didn't send me all over Chicago for the ingredients and that he fancied making. Unfortunately, it had to chill overnight but the wait was worth it. Actually, for me it wasn't as I discovered that my ageing stomach no longer appreciates being swamped with two buckets of cream cheese, eggs and cream. It gurlged and generally threatened to explode for most of the night.

The nice thing about the cheesecake is that it is so heavy and contains so many calories that you have to limit yourself to tiny slices - so it lasts forever. Well, in theory it does but someone's obviously been sneaking a bite here and there as it vanished in less than three days.

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