Dinner with you, a Dinner for Two

I've been a little distracted lately from my university work.

My classes at Malaga are coming to an end but the work just seems to be piling up.

Some days I just want to scream and hide under a rock and hope my deadlines won't find me there; go sit outside and sunbathe with a cocktail in my hand and forget all about it.

But no, I can't. I'm a postgraduate now, I have to be more responsible!

I did maybe kinda give myself a week off though...

It was for a good reason! I had a new visitor come stay at Casa Burt and obviously I couldn't be so rude as to abandon him with my parents! I'm not that cruel.

On his first night, he cooked for me

Hold your horses!

I know what you are thinking... What kind of hostess lets their guest cook for them? 

But look what he made...

And this...

He was very insistent, but I was also very quick to let him. 

He's a very good cook and I was secretly hoping to steal a couple of tricks off him too...

So we took a trip to Mercadona to buy all the ingredients. 

Then he got to work in the kitchen

For the starter, 'Spaghetti Carbonara with Salmon':

Chop up your fillet of salmon in to dices

Melt a big ole chunk of butter in a pan (can you tell he's English? None of this Olive Oil stuff!) and cook the salmon with salt and pepper for a couple of minutes. 

Then leave it off the heat for 5 minutes. You don't want to cook it all the way through. 

Whilst that is cooking, boil your spaghetti in a saucepan

I must confess we used shop bought carbonara sauce (*GASP*). So heat that in a pan too

Then comes the important combining of the ingredients.

Drain your spaghetti and put it back into the pan on a low heat

Now add your pasta sauce and finally the salmon. The salmon will finish cooking with the heat of the pasta and the sauce.

Give it a couple of stirs and serve!

Remember: 'Presentation is everything'

Candles are a necessity too

It was absolutely scrumptious!

We were both pretty full after our starter, but we couldn't really turn down the fillet steak and prawns!

Especially as I'd peeled them all and I really really wanted some

The steak was done on the grill with (lots of) butter, seasoned with sea salt and pepper and a sprinkle of sugar to make the top layers go crispy.

He cooked the prawns in the remainder of the steak juices for a minute or so and arranged it all beautifully on our Royal Worcester plates

Fillet steak. Nom nom nom

Topped with prawns. Nom nom nom

And a side of Pepper Sauce (from a packet *GASP*). Still very nom nom nom

There was definitely no room for dessert!

I will say this though, the fish and seafood from Mercadona was very fresh and tasty but the fillet steak was a bit tough. Mamma B recommends fish from Mercadona and steak from SuperSol, so now we all know for next time (you're cooking in Spain). 

Next day we completely forgot about the chips we had left cooking in the oven.Whoops! I've not done that one before...