On a day when life literally gave me lemons, it has also given me a metaphoric dose of citrus sourness. Things started out really well when I discovered five ripe lemons on our lemon tree. This is fairly momentous given it is January in England and by all accounts lemons shouldn’t really grow here and also that the tree has been fleeced to save it from the frost we have had every morning for the last few weeks. So, a good ‘life gives you lemons’ start to the week. It would be fitting to now make actual lemonade.

But the lemony treats didn’t end there. A double line on a LFT for LOD has left a sourness in the house. Poor kid has it for the second time in seven weeks and so we wait with bated breath for the whole O’D household to fold like a Covid pack of cards – again!

That’s how we roll these days, the never ending roller coaster of positive / negative lateral flow tests and navigating a sensible route through it all. On the plus side, we can still cook! So, that’s the plan. Over Christmas, my defacto sister-in-law and I cooked (pun intended) up a plan to cook around the world and along the alphabet. Basic idea – we picked a country for every letter and agreed a list and so we have 52 weeks in which to cook a dish from the 26 countries on the list. X caused some issues so we picked one of the two countries with an x in the spelling. Also, did you know there is only one country that starts with W? Finally, I will have some food stuff to write about again and hopefully discover some great cuisines along the way. Obviously I wont be wasting these delish dishes on my ungrateful, palette-less offspring so COD and dinner guests will be the guinea pigs!

A is for Argentina – Matambre

Let’s be honest, the only thing I knew about Argentinian food before I started to research it was chimichurri sauce (amazing) and steak. A bit of research and I settled upon a variation on steak and sauce. The matambre. This is a rolled, stuffed flank steak which sounded delicious. The recipe I broadly followed is one from Jo Cooks but a few things I did differently:

• Flank steak is relatively unknown outside of Argentina but the wonder that is Google assured me that beef skirt would work just as well so I toddled off to the butcher and got some lovely IOW-reared beef skirt
• I didn’t follow the recipe for the sort-of chimmichurri sauce but used the one below instead – just blitz all the ingredients in a food processor. I also made loads to serve on the side which the recipe doesn’t say to do.
• I filled mine with hard-boiled eggs, carrot strips and red pepper strips
• I also didn’t grill or braai it. It’s January in the UK. One only goes outside if the house is on fire and then well, we could grill inside! I sealed the matambre roll in a pan and then put it in a roasting tray in the oven for a good hour
• Matambre is a snack food and means ‘to kill hunger’ and so (according to my in-depth research) this dish is usually served as an appetiser. I served it as a main meal with some roasty potatoes and veg.

The conclusion from both COD and myself was that it was nice but didn’t pack the flavour we were expecting. In fact without the fresh chimmichurri sauce served with it, it just wasn’t exciting. Since I have nothing to compare it to, I have no idea if it was in fact meant to blow our hair back or just simply be a hunger killer.

Next up is Bangladesh….

In other news:

• Since last writing, LOD has started secondary school, plays the flute reasonably well and is 5’4″ tall – we have the same size feet
• EEROD and ACOD make a tight team. Full of nonsense and can often be found doing each other’s make-up. This of course means that my two younger children resemble ‘ladies of the night’ for most of every weekend
• The house is finally finished – well, the inside is and the guest wing is now fully operational. As is the sewing room which I am enjoying using more often again
• All three girls are appearing in the forthcoming ballet production of Peter Pan at Shanklin Theatre. Unless of course the Covid house of cards thwarts this which will be bitterly disappointing
• I am still running but not feeling as strong as I’d like to. It’s just so hard to motivate oneself to bounce out of bed in the morning and do all the stretching and strength training one should.