Crackin' Crab Briks, Couscous Salad and Salsa

Meal 61 - July 27th - Crackin' Crab Briks, Couscous Salad and Salsa

I'm not going to beat around the bush here - this was a f*cking disaster. Allow me to set the scene...

We started the weekend with a Friday evening trip to Ikea, as Lolz and I were looking for some new storage solutions for our tiny flat. We found a suitable shelving unit/chest of drawers type contraption and, resisting the temptation to buy any kitchen gadgets, switched our focus to important matter of dinner. Naturally we went for the meatballs, eating an impressive three dozen between us. Little did we know at the time that that would represent the pinnacle of our weekend, in a culinary sense.

Saturday began with putting together the new shelving unit, and although we have successfully put together more complex pieces of furniture in the past, we were somewhat drained, physically and emotionally, by the experience. We set out for the shops feeling a little irritable but were confident that a bit of fresh air and few bargains up the North End Road market would sort us out. We bought most of the ingredients from the Lebanese supermarket - they employed their usual tactic of rounding all the prices down - but unfortunately they didn't stock crab meat though, so, put off by Waitrose's lofty prices, we bought what looked to be bargainous pack of the fishmonger's finest.

I was really looking forward to this meal as I'm a big fan of street food type cooking, and fellow Jamie enthusiasts have raved about it. I even downloaded the video on the iPhone app to make sure I had the pastry folding technique nailed. So what went wrong? Well Lolz had already commented on what I can only describe as some interesting aromas emanating from our fridge and although the crab didn't seem to be off, it did resemble a bowl of slurry. It was too late to do anything so I cracked on and made the mixture for the briks. With the addition of the coriander and spring onion it was looking slightly more appetizing but looked far too wet to be able to mould and enclose it in the pastry. I did the best I could and made a start on the salad. Here I ran into my next problem - these days my food processor doesn't do grating. it just grinds everything into a very unattractive mush. Thankfully I had a spare half of fennel, so I grated it the old fashioned way, but it didn't look like there would be enough to go round. You may be thinking that I've overreacted to what is really only two problems but in my defence the briks were looking like flabby pancakes and the salad was barely worthy of the name. The only thing that had gone right was a fairly nondescript bowl of couscous. I couldn't even get the pomegranate right - juice went everywhere.

I was pretty distraught by the end of it and I think Lolz had to talk me out of ordering takeaway. She made a good show of enjoying the meal though and even went back for seconds, though I think that was only to make me feel better. This was not my finest day. But I will return...

Lolz gave the dish a very generous 7/10. Difficulty rating 4/10 - it's not even that difficult - I was let down by poor ingredients and poor equipment.