Lady Lunchalot

Sometimes, when I really don’t feel like going out, I’ll bribe everyone with a meal.

When everyone else wants to go out for drinks, I might just make subtle mention of the lasagne sauce that’s been bubbling away on the stove all day, or the chocolate cake cooling on the kitchen bench that I still need to ice.

Sometimes it works, and other times people just want to go out drinking. But to be honest, now that we’re thirty-something rather than twenty-something, it only takes a mention of a roast chicken and the video store before we’re all sitting around the living room in our tracky dacks with full bellies on a Saturday night.

That’s kind of what happened tonight. La Clarkabrese is off swanning around Malaysia so Signor Valvasori was all on his own. O mentioned that we might all go and see a movie or something. I really didn’t feel like leaving the house, so I dropped a mention of a roast chicken with lemons and hey presto, the three of us had a night in.

I’ve written about my favourite style of roast chicken many times on this blog. Slice up a lemon and stick it under the skin, pop a whole lemon in the cavity, throw in a few herbs and baste with olive oil and lemon juice. Mmmmm…

Tonight I teamed it with rosemary potatoes, sweet potato, pumpkin, parsnip and baked onion and garlic. O looooves roast parsnip, so that part was for him.

I also have an infatuation with a box of medjool dates at my supermarket. The affair has been lasting for weeks now. Every time I am in the fruit and veg section I throw a few dates in a bag and scoff half of them in the car. I can’t help myself. The gooey chocolatey goodness is straight from heaven.

So, perhaps a little out of guilt from all the great dates I’ve been having without my husband (pardon the pun) I thought I’d cook his all time favourite dessert tonight. Sticky date pudding.

I drew some inspiration from Stephanie Alexander’s recipe for Sticky Toffee Pudding and put my own twist on it.

Preheat the oven and grease a medium-sized cake tin. Chop up 200g of medjool dates (remove the stones of course). Place in a bowl with a teaspoon of bicarb and 300ml boiling water. Let it sit for a bit while you do the other stuff.

Cream 60g butter with 170g castor sugar. Mix in 2 eggs and a few drops of vanilla essence. Gently fold in 170g SR flour and mix in the date/bicarb/water mixture. Bake for about 30-40 minutes.

For the sauce, place about 300g of brown sugar in a saucepan with 100g butter and 250ml cream. Stir and bring to the boil. Let it cool for a few minutes and pour it on top of the pudding. Let the sauce seep through a bit, (you can put it in the still-warm oven) and then serve.

I gotta tell you, this is one of the best dates you’ll ever have! And it’s a sure fire method of guaranteeing a Saturday night at home.