Complete disaster!!!

My parents have been in the UK for the last month and came to stay last night en route to London.  They've been entertaining and eating out and driving around and eating out...and eating out...and....so I thought, instead of EATING OUT I would cook something here and we could just hang out, chat and not have to...eat out.  The main was easy...Nigella's Praised Chicken...no fail...crowd pleaser and...totally inexpensive.  So that was done, it was easy.  Dessert was a little bit harder to decide on...cake...pie...buy...make...

In last month's Olive magazine there was a little insert about Sunday dinners, and in it...is a recipe for Norfolk Treacle Tart...PERFECT! My parents have been in Norfolk this past month...it seemed like destiny...

well....it wasn't meant to be.

The tart pastry is more like a cookie dough, it is soft, it has cream in it...the butter is soft when you make it...it has to chill and then warms up very quickly after being taken out of the fridge...it didn't roll out very well...and...it tore very very very easily.  ugh ugh ugh...BUT the filling was easy to make, it smelled amazing (treacle, golden syrup, double cream...can't go wrong...oh and oatmeal) so I thought...this wacky crust MUST make sense...

Into the oven it went...intact...and out of the oven it came...

Not QUITE what the picture looked like in the magazine...not quite set...and...did the crust actually MELT off?? It did...incase you were wondering...all over the floor of my oven (thank you very much).

You should be very proud of me...I didn't cry, I didn't sulk...I just put it on the cooling rack and waited for my mum to arrive.  She will know what to do...

And she did...after both mum and dad tasted the filling (yum yum) we decided...we would just scrape it out of the crust (totally raw still on the bottom) and have it...over...ICE CREAM!

Norfolk Treacle Tart Ice Cream 

terrible pic...but wanted to share

My manager is leaving this week, so I made Nigella's No Fuss Fruit Tart from Kitchen for our last department meeting yesterday.  It was easy...no bake...just bash the cookies up for the base, mix up some cream cheese and lemon curd, top with berries...and then protectively cart it through the rush hour commute!

The picture doesn't look so bad small.  But let me tell you...it was deeeelicious! 6 of us at the meeting...and it was all gone by the end!

guess who's coming to dinner....

Well, David and I have been back from Canada for three weeks now....and.....guess who came to stay last week??? My mum and dad and Auntie Sandi!! Between recovering from our trip and preparing for their arrival (plus work...work...and work) I haven't been spending much time in the kitchen.  Well, that's not entirely true...we are cooking (from scratch) every night...but it just hasn't been too inspirational, or inventive or....well....extraordinary.  That's not to say that we haven't been making new dishes...David made a fantastic fish pie the other week, and I've made some new pasta dishes...but nothing WOW OH WOW!!!!

The fam arrived last Thursday and stayed with us for three nights....Lots of eating out, lots of travelling lots of fun.  The one night we stayed in (after a gorgeous day in North Essex) we had...the classic...hors d'oeuvres nibbly meal....perfect (with or without a glass or five of bubbly...or wine...or both) after a full day's adventure!

smoked salmon, shrimp, smoked trout, pate, olives, marinated artichoke hearts, beetroot relish, cheddar, port salut, stinky cheese and....drinks!!!