I say we, but it was Anthony that cooked up a delicious starter. Steamed asparagus spears with quick hollandaise sauce. This sauce is not a traditional way of making hollandaise but is lower fat and much easier and to be honest, tasted just as good

Quick Hollandaise Sauce

• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 tablespoon cornflour
• 1 1/2 rounded tablespoon creme fraiche
• 5ml white wine vinegar
• 1/4 tablespoon lemon juice
• 25g butter

Basically you put everything except the butter in a small pan. Whisk together and heat over a medium heat until simmering – whisking all the time. Take off heat & whisk in the butter.

Serve with steamed asparagus tips.

After enjoyed the asparagus I got on with the pie. And as it was Saturday evening I thought I’d use the potatoes I picked up for mash to make dauphinoise potatoes. This is something I’ve had in the back of my mind to try for a very long time and I searched on the internet for a recipe that suited what we had in. The link takes you through to the recipe I used from the bbc website.

We served the pie, dauphinoise with some steamed kale.

It is certainly a dinner to enjoy once every few months as it oozed lots of creaminess. But it went down very well with a nice cold white wine.

Followed by some Sweet Baby James – whilst I think the title is quite poor, I do have a small thing for James so I have to watch…

Followed up by The Apprentice, not as good as past years in my humble opinion but I do watch (normally whilst on the ‘bag).

And at 10pm we have the finale, Desperate Housewives, I just love this programme & there’s not many on telly that gets me cheering & laughing quite so much (Susan & Mike have to get back together!).

A bottle of wine always goes down on a Wednesday too – ahem.

Anyway, back to the food. I went a bit mad last night & made:

• Bruschetta (toasted ciabatta for ease, & mixed up some tomatoes, garlic & red onion with a small amount of olive oil, serve with a dash of balsamic vinegar)
• Asparagus & Lemon Risotto (yum) care of Nigel Slater
• Chocolate Chip Muffins thanks to Nigella’s recipe here
  
• I also heated through some ciabatta & onion bhajis for lunch today (based on a Philpotts favourite of ours – ciabatta, hoummous, onion bhaji & spicy mango chutney)

Here are a few pics of the risotto & muffins
The muffins are quite nice but not as sweet as we expected so may try another recipe next time.

And here are some tulips Hubby bought on Tuesday after a small reminder that it was our two-monthiversay.