Ok diner, A1 Northbound at Tickencote

A day trip out finished off with dinner at the diner!

As usual mlh (my lovely husband) had a banana milkshake, apparently there is no other kind. I went off-milkshake with a coke float in an effort to be able to eat the dinner. The diners milkshakes are so good as they use 4 scoops of ice cream to make and you get two big glasses full. Yummy.

We have visited the diner before (See this post) and were inspired to visit by a series on the food network called Diners, Drive ins and dives 

It remained fantastically neon.....

For dinner I had a barbecue pulled pork bap and mlh had a chilli cheeseburger, his with curly fries and mine without. We have never got to try the puddings, although they sound great on the menu, we are always way too full.

Mlh is keen to try and visit all of the ok diner chain and is planning a motorbike tour round it. We have so far been to three, A1 northbound and A1 southbound (at colsterworth) and the A38 southbound.

And are they any good?

Well, we've joined the loyalty card scheme ;)

Find the ok diner near you here. Ok diner website.

It's not food you would want to ( or rather your arteries would want you to) eat very week, but for a milkshake-tastic neon occasional treat it's worth finding one near you!

The Glades Restaurant, Melton Mowbray

A sunny Saturday calls for a trip out! We hopped into my car and went for a drive to Melton Mowbray's Saturday market. The sky was beautifully blue and, although cold with the roof down on my Eos we both needed the sunglasses on. I think in the uk you need to take every opportunity to have the roof down to make the most of the car, and that's what we did. 

The market wasn't that busy so we were able to get all of our bread, meat and veg quite quickly. Then off to dinner. Our favourite spot is the Glades, think fixed plastic chairs and tables, really friendly waiting staff and massive all day breakfasts. 

For this week, the food will do the talking. look at these lovely all-day breakfasts. At £5 each (including the mug of tea) you can't go wrong. 

That's me on the left, poised to dive in, and making a start in the second. Just look at the lovely fried bread.

Contact details and location on here, someone else is obviously also a fan!

Link to phone and map

Special spiced chicken, at home

So what do you give your tired husband for dinner when he's tired, hungry and racing around for a weekend of 'playing on (motor) bikes' with his friends?

Mr Huda's curry chicken of course!

We were bought a selection of Mr Huda's pastes for Christmas by my always-seeking-something-different sister in law (mentioned in the previous Handmade Boutique post) and we are gradually working through them.

So-back to the chicken.

It was really easy (a boon for me, I am not a fan of ordinary everyday cooking, I prefer the 'play' cooking - jam, cakes, buns, chutney etc) all I had to do was rub a teaspoonful of Mr Huda's paste onto each chicken breast and then covered it with clingfilm and left it in the fridge all day.

This wasn't the suggested recipe on the pack, and it's the 'kebab' paste that I used (this one)

When it came to drawing together the dinner, I popped it into the oven and simply baked it for  25 minutes. I served it with broccoli, cauliflower and rice, with a little mayo on the side.

It was declared a great success. The chicken was moist and spicy without being too chilli hot, in fact it has been requested again next week :)

I have realised that if I am going to do more of the home-cooked recipes and ingredients you'll probably want to see what it turned out like, unfortunately in this house dinners are eaten as soon as they hit the table so I'll have to make a special effort to show you my outputs as well as my inputs.

I've also used the onion bajee paste (this time following exactly the recipes on the box) to great success for bajees and pakora that taste like they do in the restaurants, but they really are messy!

This is the bajee paste:

Have fun with them curry-lovers.