25/05/2015: Spaghetti with squid ink sauce and prawns – own recipe

Tonight we decided to use this sauce packet that we picked up from MUJI in Japan (who, by the way, should totally sell their food here?! Am I right?!?!?) I LOVE squid ink sauce so this was a no-brainer. I coupled the squid ink spaghetti with some asparagus left over from our salad on Friday, some yummy roasted cherry tomatoes, and some juicy king prawns. As well as being scrumptious, the dish also provided us with plenty of entertainment as it turned our mouths black! Not for long though.

26/05/2015: Spaghetti with blue cheese and artichoke sauce – Framed Cooks

http://www.framedcooks.com/2013/02/fettuccine-with-blue-cheese-and-artichoke-sauce.html

We had the rest of the fresh spaghetti to use from last night and some blue cheese too so I searched online for any good recipes and landed on this one. Finding artichokes wasn’t the easiest so we had to buy antipasti artichokes and just rinse them so they added a bit of extra flavour to the sauce…for better or worse. Perhaps it was the workaround that we had to do with the artichokes but I felt that just a blue cheese sauce would have been ok.

27/05/2015: Chicken satay burger – GBK, Spitalfields

http://www.gbk.co.uk/

I was out tonight at Spitalfields with a friend I used to work with and we just fancied burgers and GBK didn’t look too busy. I opted for the chicken satay burger because the combination of chicken satay, crispy onions and pickled onions really intrigued me! It was absolutely delicious and I ordered a side of onion rings too because I just love the spicy seasoning they serve with it! I let Mark know what I was having just out of habit and he decided to have the same and ordered through Deliveroo.

28/05/2015: Chilango legendary box – Chilango, London

http://chilango.co.uk/

Tonight we were out with a friend Mark used to work with for his leaving drinks and after a couple of drinks in Balls Brothers, Bury Court, we were in need of some food. We wandered about and found this mexican fast food restaurant. We went for the “Legendary Box” which had chicken, salsa, guac, rice, beans, all the staples of a great mexican dish…chucked in a box. It did taste good though!

29/05/2015: Poached egg on Marmite toast – own recipe

We were up for a fairly simple dish tonight so we went for poached eggs on Marmite toast. Simple and delicious. Unless you don’t like Marmite – then it would suck.

30/05/2015: Weekend at Saville Court Hotel and Spa

http://www.savillcourt.com/

This weekend Mark organised for us to go to Saville Court Hotel and Spa in Windsor to celebrate 5 years of being together.

We arrived mid-afternoon and quickly changed in our rooms before going down to the Spa for a massage. We had lovely couple’s massage and then relaxed in the “Relaxation Room” with some herbal tea. When we got back to our room we were pretty peckish but weren’t going for dinner until later. Included in our booking we had some champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries which we were more than ready for at this point. We had to laugh when the chap delivered them and we realised that “chocolate-covered strawberries” actually meant one chocolate-strawberry each! It was lovely though!

Finally we were ready for dinner and had a 3 course meal as part of our booking. I had pâté to start, followed by roast lamb rump with white bean cassoulet and potato rosti, and finished off with a rhubarb dessert which was plated so beautifully I almost didn’t want to eat it! Mark went for the char-grilled lamb gigot steak with grilled field mushroom, plum tomato, watercress oil and chips for his main.

Lizi: Roast lamb rump with white bean cassoulet and potato rosti

The combination of flavours here was great with the strong distinctive flavour of the lamb and the lamb was so tender. The only let down for me was that everything had been stacked on top of the rosti and so there was no crunch on the outside giving that contrast of texture, it was just a bit soggy, but the flavours worked with the cassoulet.

Mark: Char-grilled lamb gigot steak with grilled field mushroom, plum tomato, watercress oil and chips

I ordered the steak to be medium rare and it came out pretty much on the money. The edges were probably a little further along but not too much. The lamb was juicy and delicious though I was hoping there could have been a bigger portion of mushroom and tomato to accompany.

Mark suggested we go for a walk around the grounds to walk our dinner down and enjoy the scenery so I was a little bit conscious during dinner that it might get dark but it was fine in the end. We wandered out into the grounds and were surrounded by huge bushes of stunning purple rhododendrons so it really was romantic. Mark stopped and turned to me, got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!

31/05/2015: Fish bowl salad

http://www.sticksnsushi.com/

Mark’s mum was in town this evening so we decided to go out and celebrate our engagement together. This Fish Bowl salad just looked fresh and yummy and just what I fancied and it was absolutely delicious. Seared salmon and tuna, shrimps, a sprinkling of quinoa, daikon, pumpkin seeds and lots more crunchy veg. The amount of fish was really generous and I kept thinking I’d eaten all the sashimi and then find another bit! Their sushi is also really good and I luurved the crunchy ebi bites we ordered as a starter – I can highly recommend this place.

For dessert we decided that we couldn’t decide on one thing so we all shared this collection of 9 mini desserts. They were out of the bergamot orange crème brûlée so we chose a coffee one instead, and they were also out of the dark fondant so we doubled up on the chocolate cake. Everything was delicious and it was great to be able to try a lot of different things. It was so difficult to pick a favourite but I loved the distinctive flavour of the yuzu sorbet and the coffee crème brûlée because it was like eating a latte. The white chocolate and liquorice mousse with the raspberry foam (just visible right at the end in the picture) was really interesting too!