Two New Recipes (and Waffles)

Those of you who read this blog regularly have probably been wondering what I was up to this weekend.  Well, my best friend Jules came to stay, and we had the most wonderful weekend of "vegging" - pottering about, eating many, many cakes and other treats, spa-ing, shopping and setting the world to rights. 

As well as being one of my favourite people in the whole world, Jules is a terrific cook, so I wanted to really push the boat out for her.  Her train arrived in Durham at 12.25, so I organised Alastair to go and pick her up and embarked on a morning's cooking.  I tried two new recipes, and - fortunately - both were both easy and an absolute pleasure to cook.  At least one looked much more difficult than it was, too, which is always a bonus!

I made the Hairy Bikers' Basque Chicken Pie from their Bakeation series - I love the Hairy Bikers! - and for dessert I used up some of the left-over egg whites from Alastair's ice-cream making - they freeze, who'd have thought it! - to make a Lemon Meringue Roulade from my favourite cookery website. 

I prepared my pie filling and baked my meringue...

...and then rushed around making my pastry and filling my roulade so that I could lay the table before Jules arrived.

The Basque Chicken Pie was an explosion of sunshiny Spanish flavours and was devoured with much enjoyment.

The Lemon Meringue Roulade - though I say it myself as shouldn't - was an absolute triumph.

The following morning, I made waffles using Alastair's waffle maker and a recipe from an old cookery book that Alastair's mam gave him.  They were light, fluffy, tasty and delicious with maple syrpup - I'll add the recipe to this page when I get a moment (I have to go and cringe at watch The Apprentice now).