A week of warmth

 I am not built for heat. Neither is my flat. I'm now sitting on the sofa, mildly watching the Brave New Dawn of British Cricket (TM) but mostly worrying about how much my knees are sweating, considering it's 9pm. Elegant. It has been a tad wearing this week. Among the kitchen mishaps I could point to are my gas hob failing and my freezer bursting open during last night, because I tried to freeze an ice pack. So that's nice, and not at all expensive in frozen food I'd had delivered last weekend. Botheration. 

But does it really matter? I'm mainly in the mood for this: 

Blurry almond Magnum joy

That said, I have been cooking. I'd had to plan this week's menu before I went on holiday, because food delivery on return, and the whole heatwave thing was a bit unforeseen by me. 

I've made buttermilk sweetcorn fritters (I did burn them slightly, but this is such a dark photo because the rest of the kitchen was bathed in sunlight at the time; they weren't that sinister). Tasty, but exactly as you'd expect them to taste, which wasn't quite exciting enough for me to be worth frying on Monday night. Oof.

Then I had a rather better-planned watermelon salad. It was meant to be the fancy one from Simply where you freeze feta and grate it over, but that sounds like effort I do not currently have to spare. So just thin watermelon slices, small feta, olives, basil, dressed with honey, lime and chilli. The basil is a surprise, I'd usually do this with coriander; it works well when the weather is boiling.

And tonight, with a hob that's actually working, I cooked a random mix of bulgar and freekeh (cupboard situation: too many ends of packets) and made the apricot "fregola" from Crave. Dressed with ground fennel seeds, vinegar, olive oil, seasoning, chopped tomatoes, chopped apricots, olives (I am now out of olives), and ideally mint and parsley. How am I out of parsley? Maybe that's what the delivery was meant to send instead of a prawn cocktail and some lambs lettuce. 

With it comes halloumi - 2 minutes on one side, 30 seconds on the other, than blob some honey into the pan and let it caramelise for 30 seconds. Pan off heat, squeeze in half a lemon and enjoy the pan drippings turning into a glossy glaze. Sprinkle a bit more crushed fennel seed on. This worked really well: 

Yes, there is lambs lettuce on the plate. It has been a feature this week too. 

So, as long as my freezer doesn't burst open again, I am broadly making it through. But next week there's actual cooking planned, so my hob had better behave and the weather too. *shakes tiny fist*