Last weekend I had two late nights in a row and as I am not twenty anymore (sob) I coudn’t do the same this weekend. Instead I hibernated at home on the Saturday and invited my party happy friends from the weekend before over for a relaxed dinner. It’s obviously a different experience to doing shots at 2am but very emjoyable.

We started with a few nibbles; padrón peppers, sweet green olives (that I managed to find in Sainsbury’s actually) and serrano rolls with lemon crème. Some nice bread would have worked well with this, and a grassy olive oil to dip it in, but we avoided gluten this evening and even though there are great products out there, glutenfree bread just isn’t as nice as a proper sourdough.

We then had a real classic in my kitchen; lavender chicken with lemon, thyme and garlic served with roasted new potatoes and steamed green beans and broccoli tossed in a Dijon vinaigrette with some honey in. The jus is simply the juices from the chicken reduced and thickened with a knob of butter. Delicious!

To finish we had a take on Gino with bananas, strawberries and perfectly ripe mango. I usually don’t buy fruit and veg so very out of season but couldn’t resist the strawberries and they were actually not that bad, but I prefer local produce in season. Hurry up summer!