I can’t believe what is happening with the weather at the moment. The temperatures are rising to summer levels and beyond. It’s been 26C almost the entire week, which is weird if you think that it is only April! Now I am not complaining but I am totally in summer mood and I know this will most likely not last long enough to give us a summer that is this good. Nature is slightly confused too with dandelions blooming two weeks before their time (which was great for my photoshoot as you can see… )and I am sure this will eventually have an effect on crops and prices of veggies and fruit at some point.

I think we had a similar warm spring last year or the year before and the end result was that we had rain for the biggest part of the summer. I even heard on the news that apparently we are currently the warmest country in Europe! Now how weird is that??

But let me not forget to wish you all a wonderful Easter!! I don’t think there have been many Easters in the last centuries where we could actually have a barbecue or lounge on the beach! Haha… I am sure that will be source for talk in the years to come too. In the meantime this is perfect as we are entertaining some friends tonight and we’re making a wonderful roast lamb with a new potatoesalad with capers and mashed peas with mint. The starters we have done before; first off it will be this lovely little salad with smoked salmon and then followed by scallops wrapped in prosciutto. And for dessert we have Jamie’s fabulous mascarpone berry cream.

Now that sounds like a great meal right? I am a little anxious about the lamb as we are not that familiar with cooking large pieces of meat, but I think we’ll be ok…. I will share the results with you if they are any good (and also if they’re not..lol)

But now on to the dish I am sharing with you today; a beautiful little salad with asparagus and grilled haloumi. It’s brilliant in flavor and the mustard dressing fits perfectly. It’s asparagus season and if you love asparagus this is the dish for you. It’s quick and the saltiness of the halloumi works well with the asparagus. It would be great as a small starter or it works well as a lunch on a hot summer (or spring) day as I did this week. Enjoy!

 

What I try to do each week is to plan our meals a bit so that we at least have some decent food. The reality is that our lives are quite hectic so it is sometimes just not feasible to prepare a good meal and still do all the things we want. In my line of work it is sometimes necessary to work evenings, weekends or other hours, while Tom loves to go fishing with friends. Fishing is apparently essential to do as early as possible in the evening (after he comes home from work, which has fairly normal working hours)
So if you look at a typical evening such as we had yesterday, that means that he comes home around 6 pm and this particular case I had to leave at 6.30 since I had a family photoshoot in the studio at 7.30. Leaves precious little time for a normal meal!

I had set my mind to make a recipe of Jamie Oliver’s book “Cook” wit involved pancetta, asparagus and monk fish. Tom had promised to be home early, so I figured I could still make the dish… Taking a photo of it would be nice, but if I could find the time… was doubtful.
I bought the fish in the afternoon which was incredibly expensive by the way (18 euro’s for about 500 gr. of monk fish-fillet. It still had to be made into a fillet which meant I had to pay for the entire fish and not just the fillet)

The recipe calls for pancetta, which of course I could not find anywhere around here, so had to do with regular smoked bacon.
All in all Tom was still quite late or at least later then he said the day before so it was a bit hurried but at least we still had a lovely meal. I did take three photos in a hurry so the styling is not exactly how I had wanted it but still half decent…:) The recipe is definitely worth a try and you can choose cheaper fish such as haddock, whiting or hake, which funnily enough my fish market didn’t have yesterday.

Recipe (for four persons, from Jamie Oliver’s Cook):