Snow and Pomegranates

The garden once again under an inch or two of snow this morning. I'm still not bored of it by any means, but then I don't have a 3 hour commute into work and I haven't been stranded overnight on the Devon moors, so I'll just keep quiet.

I haven't really felt like blogging much about food in the last week. An ongoing battle with tonsilitis and some kind of virus that is making me feel utterly rubbish means that, although I've been cooking, I haven't really been enthused. Last night was not much better, but I still fancied flavours that were bright and tangy rather than casserole-savoury.

I smeared a couple of lamb leg steaks with some olive oil and then sprinkled on ras-el-hanout and left for an hour. I roasted some butternut squash sprinkled with dried chilli flakes in the oven until tender and caramelised. Then I cooked the lamb steaks until pink and left to rest wrapped in foil while I sauteed some kale with pine nuts and soaked sultanas in the same pan. So far, so disparate, but I brought all the elements together with an eye-popping 'sauce' of Greek-style yoghurt stirred with a crushed clove of garlic, the juice of a lime and a healthy bashing of pomegranate seeds which looked so translucently beautiful against the white of the yoghurt, they gave me - pace Anne of Green Gables - a 'queer ache' (although that could just have been the effort of bashing the pomegranate...).

A gentle lift of spice from warmer shores combined with the tangy cooling pomegranate yoghurt briefly lifted us out of the mid-January slump.