Things are comparatively quiet in life at the moment. We’re saving for our upcoming trip to NYC and the weekends staying in are seeing me rather motivated with Sunday night night dinners. This is a variation on things I have made before and, as I often do I opt for utilising as much produce that we have around the house as possible. I did go out to buy the lamb cutlets but we had blue cheese, plenty of herbs and some sourdough baguette to use up and this is where I ended up.

Marinated lamb cutlets

I marinated the lamb in mint, parsley, lime juice, olive oil and about 3 cloves of garlic for over an hour then baked in the oven on 180ºC for 15 minutes. The lamb was great quality so they were tender and juicy. I love lemon or lime juice with lamb. It really gives it an amazing zing.

Tomato salsa

I really like the idea of putting stale bread in my salads. It’s a great way to use up leftovers that sponge up all the amazing fresh flavours and dressings. I usually make a great Italian salad but this time I went more for a salsa style salad. I finely chopped two tomatoes, 1/2 a spanish onion, a handful of parsley and a quarter of an sold sourdough baguette and mixed well in a bowl with salt, pepper and olive oil.

Potato, onion and blue cheese gratin

Ok, admittedly this dish is a bit evil but if you can’t be a bit decadent every now and again what’s the point. I sliced 2 medium potatoes thinly along with half a yellow onion (also thinly). Layer the potato and onion in a ramekin with crumbled blue cheese in between each layer. Pour in thickened cream until the ramekin is about half full and bake in the oven on 180ºC for about 45 mins to 1 hour (the top should start to go golden brown).

Garnish of parsley oil

Finely dice parsley, place in mortar and pestle and grind thoroughly adding as much olive oil as desired. Leave to infuse for decent amount of time.

I made an amazing fig dessert as well but I’ll dedicate a separate blog post to that because, quite honestly, it deserves it. Delicious.