I recently bought "Eat the little book of fast food" by Nigel Slater. I picked it up from the library first and was quite taken with it. Further to this project, and in general, I want to get more interesting in my cooking especially during the week and this book has already helped me cook outside the box. While flipping through yesterday for ideas, I saw a recipe for chicken with bread sauce. I've never heard of bread sauce. My husband, who lived in England for 5 years, has never heard of bread sauce (but being the type that has never been huge on food, I'm not going to take him as an expert). But it sounded tasty, Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver both describe bread sauce as an English concoction, I really like Nigel Slater so I was inspired. My next International night would be England. No dinner party, just my husband and I, but away we go! Now, the State Department website lists Great Britain and not the countries within so I've just expanded my list of countries, meaning that instead of the 20 years to complete the countries in my original estimate, I'm now up to 20.5 years!!
With the bread in the sauce, I was on track with my goal of including bread in these international meals. Along with the chicken, I wanted some vegetables other than the potatoes in the recipe. Since I was already reading Jamie Oliver regarding bread sauce, I decided to look for a salad in his British recipes section and came up with Root Vegetable Salad - a mix of vegetables I either don't usually eat (radishes and celery) or don't usually eat raw (beets and fennel). Then there was mint, which is one of my favourite tea and chocolate flavours but not, for some reason a favourite in the cooking department. And, in my mind, a very English herb. I think this relates to the lamb and mint sauce stereotype but whatever works.
While bouncing around on Jamie Oliver's site, I noted a crumble/crisp in the British recipes section. Hah - I thought that was a North American thing but apparently it is British in origin - this according to Jamie Oliver and Wikipedia. And it is my favourite dessert in the entire world (no exaggeration and not likely to change no matter how many desserts I try during this project). The menu was done. Forget the cookies (Jaffa cakes would have been fun to make) but crisp it is. This is a bit of a cheat because I make it all the time but who cares. It's my project so I can make the rules!All was good. I love the salad (which is good because it makes enough for a large dinner party and we'll be eating it for a few days yet) and the bread sauce was also really tasty. All in all, a really good dinner and not what I would have expected for the English portion of the project, which made it even more fun.
