Shredded beef ragu, Moroccan roast chicken

Andrea fixed one of her favorite recipes from The New Basics Silver Palate cookbook -- a pot roast and pasta recipe that involved braising bottom round with onions and tomatoes, then shredding it and braising it some more. The beef totally absorbs the tomatoey sauce. We served on anelloni -- short, large diameter tubes -- she bought online.

I audaciously tried an Ottolenghi recipe during the week. A whole chicken quartered is marinaded in olive oil, garlic, stock, allspice, sumac and lots of red onions, then roasted with Zataar sprinkled over it. Served with a yogurt-garlic sauce and brown rice.

Roast chicken with butter, sage, garlic, lemon

My intention is to re-purpose this sadly moribund site as a real weblog -- i.e. for the most part simply a log on what we eat, and particularly what I cook. We renovated our kitchen earlier this year and it has made cooking more fun than ever. We have cooked many great meals, some with friends but mostly just us. Unfortunately, I can hardly remember them the next day, let alone keep track of what we had, what we like, where it came from.

Our "nouvelle cuisine"

Yesterday I roasted a chicken with a rub under the skin of chopped sage, garlic, lemon and butter from Sara Jenkins' Oranges (how thankful we are we sat next to Loren Jenkins at Paula Butturini's dinner at Buck's several years ago, because he told us about his daughter's book). Accompanied with roasted fennel and thyme from Molly Steven's Roasting. Turns out Molly worked with Anne Willans at La Varenne and on her My Chateau cookbook.