Croque of gold

We like a croque-madame at Fine Dining. There's something very mouth-pleasing about its eggy hammy breadness, although we were once bitterly disappointed by its naughty husband, the croque-monsieur in a beer garden in the Lake District.

Here's a croque-madame we had at chain restaurant Café Rouge in Cardiff Bay. It got us through a hangover and was nice and comforting and all friendly-like. We put a load of ketchup on it and it didn't seem to mind. That's your croque-madame: easy-going. So we were somewhat alarmed to learn about the croque-madame's bigger, brasher, beefier Portuguese cousin – the francesinha. Terrifying. We're not sure we could manage one of them. It would be like getting beaten up in your stomach. Although the chips look like they'd be amazing dipped in that sauce. It's got two kinds of boozes in it!

Here's a recipe...
And here's the blog, I Just Like To Eat, that we borrowed the francesinha picture from.

Pig pie & shark sandwich

A really, really delicious ham hock and pea pie at the Three Kings, Clerkenwell. Amazing. Then our team, Shark Sandwich, came third in the pub quiz. Not bad, really.

The twelve eats of Christmas: 4

A Boxing Day lunch treat: cold ham and turkey, loads of pickles and bubble and squeak, made from the veg leftover from Christmas Day.

The twelve eats of Christmas: 3

The main event: Christmas dinner at Marc & Sam's. A lovely prawn cocktail and a really great main course. Turkey AND ham. No room for pudding.

Windermere 2: Piccalilli circus

A ham sandwich, with piccalilli, eaten at the Masons Arms half way through a long walk.

Trying that bit harder

After a farewell bacon sandwich courtesy of Disappointment's gran, we left Nottingham and set off for Llanelli. It's a 220 mile trip and so we took a break at Magor Services, on the M4 near Newport. There we ate the ham rolls that we'd made for the journey and bought some chips and a pot of tea each. There's something very satisfying about chips and a roll. The services at Magor are run by First, an independent operator. It's a great service station, with a lovely cold carvery of meats and salads and a separate counter for hot food. Currently, they seem to be doing up their petrol station.

And the dinner is...

Three-course dinner at Tuesday night's BSME awards, at London's Park Lane Hilton.
The courses were something like:
Starter: Chargrilled peach with some cream cheese wrapped in ham on the top
Main: Monkfish with asparagus tips and sweet potato mash
Dessert: Champagne jelly with some fruit in and a sort of pink marshmallowy thing that was a bit chewy.
And wine, wine, wine.