Greg and John Live at my House...

You know, of UK Masterchef fame? Not the wishy-washy Australian Masterchef (should be called ‘So You Think You Can Cook’ or ‘Cooking Idol’) but the proper “we don’t give a damn about your personality and what kind of TV presence you have, we only care if you can cook”.

Yes, that’s who live at my house.

Imagine.  Imagine you live with someone who loves to cook.  Someone who thinks about what they’re going to cook for dinner from about lunch time.  Imagine you don’t often get the same meal twice in a month, let alone weekly.  You’re lucky enough to share a house with someone who loves cooking and pours care and passion into every meal.  Would you take it for granted? “Of course not!” I hear you say.  You’d be surprised actually.

Himself has been enjoying the cooking since 2001 and of course the Wee Girl since 1997. Instead of nightly weeping at my feet in gratitude, Greg and John move in.

The other night I decided to cook half a Dexter fillet Sous Vide (which is French for vacuum packed meat poached at a very low temp).  As I don’t actually have a vacuum packer at home* I just wrapped a lot of cling wrap around the fillet and poached for a fair while at about 70c.

 

 

To go with this glorious bit of meat I did some garden greens with nutmeg, shoestring chips and crumbed marrow (with hot English mustard on the side).

 

Once the meat was cooked I browned it in a pan to get that crispy outside thing going on.  I decided not to do a sauce and let the meat speak for itself.  Poaching meat is an interesting technique, the meat is a perfectly cooked medium but not as juicy as a pan fried/oven finished steak.

So I triumphantly served this first class meal to Greg and John.  “The meat’s a bit dry” says Greg “You probably could have done a sauce to go with it”. 

“The marrow’s slightly undercooked” says John after taking a huge mouthful “and it’s a shame, as otherwise this would have been an amazing dish.”

I think my family has been watching too much Masterchef (although Himself hasn’t got to the current series yet).  Any other normal family would probably be swooning at the delicateness of the meat, or rejoicing at the hint of nutmeg going through the greens, but not my spoilt family.

Don’t get me wrong, they give me credit where credit is due – but their idea of a fine meal and yours may be slightly different…  We had Chinese two nights in a row this week, Old Skool Chinese from the Grandviews and the next night I made my crazy take on Mapo Tofu (which contained no Mapo and no Tofu – more on that later).  As we were sitting around the table John declared, when we were deciding where to go for her 15^th Birthday Lunch on Friday, “Not Chinese Mum, we’ve had it twice this week!!”

Sigh…

*you really need to sort that out for me Himself…