Friday 19 October 2007

Dinner at rainy day

I would like to share with you a nice idea for the dinner.
But don't assume that we are eating like this every day :-).

For the starter:

Ratatouille
You will need:
1 large onion, peeled, shredded
1 red, 1 yellow and 1 green pepper cut into squares
2 medium courgettes, cut into squares
2 medium aubergine, halved lengthways and cut into squares (not too small)
2-3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
olive oil
2 ripe tomatoes (better if peeled and seeded), cut into petals
2 table spoons tomato paste
fresh basil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:
1. Preheat the oil in pan. Sweat the onions, with no color
2. Add green pepper, sweat, add yellow pepper, sweat and add the red one, sweat.
3. You can fry courgettes and the aubergine separately and then add them to the pan with pepper. Instead you can add them straight away to the pan, without precooking separately.
4. Add tomato paste.
5. Cook till the vegetable almost tender, add the garlic and tomatoes.
6. Season to taste and add the fresh basil at the end.

Ratatouille could be served warm with nice bread or also as a side dish with meat.

Main dish:

Roasted lamb with potatoes
Ingredients:
Lamb shoulder weighting about 1kg (for 3 -4 people, depends how hungry they are :-) )
3 big garlic cloves, peeled and sliced not too thin
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves removed from stalk, chopped
2 springs fresh thyme, chopped
3-4 medium potatoes cut into chunks of 3 cm
salt, pepper to taste olive oil

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Make a little slits on all over the lamb and stuff with pieces of garlic. Rub olive oil, rosemary and thyme, salt and pepper over the surface of the lamb. Let the lamb sit for half an hour to absorb the flavours.
3. Spring potatoes with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, you can also add herbs.
4. Put the lamb on baking sheet, spread the potatoes around and cook for about 50 minutes for the medium condition, it should be a little bit tender on touch. From time to time sprinkle the meat and potatoes with juices.

For the dessert we had a Le Cordon Bleu chocolate mousse cake

The recipe of this cake will come later :)


Bon Appetit!