January’s James Cuisine

One of the things on my 2013 list of goals to achieve that I still haven’t written because I actually have work to do at work, is to greatly increase the amount of new dishes I learn to cook.

Last year I did maybe one new dish a month at a push, the aim now is one a week.

Here are the results:

This is fried fruit (fruit in a frying pan – who knew you could do that?!) with some kind of spice on top of crumpets.  I liked the fruit but the crumpets were pretty crap.  Very strange to have this kind of dish for breakfast on a Saturday.  4/10 – should have just had fruit.

This is a bit more realistic for breakfast, bacon with poached egg (only previously done fried eggs, I think I overdid the poaching a touch but do like them poached a lot), and cherry tomatoes with balsamic vinegar.  I liked this dish a lot though was a touch on the small side 6.5/10.

Chicken with parma ham (a new thing) and something else that I cannot remember.  Perhaps parmesan cheese?  Parmasan cheese is a total rip-off, I liked this though 6.5/10.

Salmon with green beans and pesto.  Never tried pesto before, always thought it looked odd but it is tasty and I will do it with salmon again.  Yes I know I have resorted to chips and egg with it but my brain can only cope with so much new cooking stuff at once and I had nothing else suitable to hand.  8/10 for the salmon and green bean combination.

Not very easy to see but lamb chops with a tomato and pepper salsa which was ok, bit too much tomato I think.  Never had a salsa before.  I did put some naan bread with it as the dish originally looked way too small for a man my size.  7/10.  Could have been better.

Just in case you thought I had gone weird.  Gravy.  Better than sex.  Better than drugs.  111/10.  Couldn’t be better.