Sushi lunch for garden birthday - Friday
My daughter, now 13 and I made this sushi with very few ingredients since her favourite sushi restaurant is closed. All this food (including the little rice salad bowls) was made with 300g of sushi rice. I put the rice in a pan, cover it with water, put lid on and boil as instructed on the pack. The rice is soft and a bit sticky, we added sushi flavouring, which is basically rice vinegar with sugar and salt (you can use wine or apple vinegar and add a bit of sugar and salt). We used seaweed rolls to make those in the box. Fillings for all sushi was achieved with a small packet of smoked salmon, a red pepper and an avocado. I served a few slices of cucumber as we did not have any pickled ginger. Garnishes are parsley and chives, both from my garden. We made good use of an old trampoline... We used some plastic moulds to make the sushi rectangles (two soy sauce compartments from two takeaway sushi boxes I had kept alongside these pretty trays), which were pressed down and refrigerated so they stayed together.
Easter Sunday - a celebratory meal
The inspiration for the puff pastry spiral came from an Italian recipe which I have anglicised. In Italy torta salata (savoury cake) is traditional for Easter. You can find it here: https://ricette.giallozafferano.it/Girella-di-sfoglia-ripiena.html. I used bought puff pastry and made it smaller (there is only three of us) so there was enough to do the base of an apple pie (apples and dots of berry/quince compote with cane sugar on top). Back to spiral, I had four rectangle, two filled with ham and turkey ham and blue cheese, two filled with scrambled eggs and peas - this would down better than spinach and ricotta, which is the traditional filling. An alternative could be sausage meat (get the casing off some cooked sausages and perhaps boiled carrots)....
