Calling All Cooks! Update.  Add/Read Comments

It is NOT a quiche

Thanks to all who emailed and left comments regarding my little whimper for help. Spinach.. dandelion leaves... fresh beans.. pea shoots... potatoes... lettuce... what do to with the contents of my first freshly picked veg-box?

Thanks to Christina (Thorngrove Table) for the salad idea - lemon juice and olive oil over the pea shoots/lettuce/dandelion leaves. Nice, quick , simple, tasty. Jenni (Pertelote) suggested adding bacon. As luck would have it we had some lardons lurking in the fridge. These were crisped up in olive oil and tossed with the potatoes (boiled and thickly sliced). All were tossed with a big handful of Parmesan and and olive oil-balsamic vinegar-Dijon Mustard dressing, served on a bed of wilted pea-shoots and leaves. Lovely as a lunch.

Steven's recipe for a watercress and cress tart looked great but the watercress was substituted with wilted spinach. Chopped dandelion leaves were mixed with cress for the topping. Pity I didn't manage to fully cook the pastry - very undercooked in the middle, but fine on the outside.

Fish Cakes

Rob found a recipe for fish cakes online (Helen Porter's Fantastic Fishcake Recipe) and constructed said cakes with great aplomb and verve. They didn't taste too bad either! These were served with wilted spinach (do we really need two HUGE bags guys?) was also hugely successful. They were served with two wines

Saint-Pourçain Réserve Spéciale, 2003, Loire France.
Waitrose £4.75.
Tart, lean, very crisp and lemony. Harsh drinking on its own - gets those cheeks puckered and the mouth watering. The Waitrose website describes it as 'easy-drinking'; I couldn't disagree more. It is a cool-climate wine made from 60% Tressallier grapes which seems to relish in producing high acidic wines; even as here when mixed with Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. Nice enough with the fish-cakes although I think cockles/welks/mussels etc would be better.
Scribblings Rating - 82/100

More successful was another Waitrose wine which had a little more weight and a softer approach. At a fiver good value.

Excelsior Estate Sauvignon Blanc, 2004, Robertson, South Africa.
Waitrose £4.99
Full of grassy, fresh flavours. Lemon with a mineral edge and characterful too with grapefruit and nettles adding interest. Very good value.
Scribblings Rating - 90/100

Still to come on the culinary front are Eggs Cocotte with Ham and Spinach (thanks Julie) and some sort of bean/oil/lemon/mozzarella pasta sauce that I am about to invent. Still have loads of pea shoots lurking at the bottom of the box; they are looking a little past their best...

More photographs, taken with my trusty camera phone, uploaded to Flickr

Technorati Tags: wine  food & drink wine tasting