1st April 2026

The new cookbook of the month, Better at Home by Colu Henry, has some sandwiches dotted through it.  Now, whilst I know, a sandwich can hardly be called a recipe, Matt and I were having lunch so I thought why not try the perfect beach sandwich.

I often eat cheese and cucumber or cheese and onion but I have never thought of having both together (oddly) but will from now on, it worked really well and was very nice.

In a slight change, I swapped out the Hellmans mayonnaise for another brand as I do not like it.  I also noticed that the mayo is extremely yellow, ours in the UK is nowhere near as dark as the picture, it is clearly very different in the US. I needed to change the Havarti cheese as I have been unable to locate it. I did a quick google search and Monterey Jack was recommended so I used that.  I did (of course) butter the bread.

A really nice combo and one I would do again.

On to supper and pappardelle with mushrooms and harissa. 

This is a difficult one to review because it was ‘nice’ but theres a couple of fairly similar recipes that I have that are better (including a very nice one in Ottolenghi’s Simple).  The other recipes use tomatoes as well as the harissa that give a much better sauce.  This felt very one dimensional as much as I love harissa.

The amount of harissa wasn’t enough to coat the mushrooms let alone the pasta so I added some pasta water (probably about 250mls in the end), I also ended up using much more than ‘a little parmesan’ as it really just needed help. I put the hot pasta water through as I added the parmesan and it emulsified nicely. It did also need a lot of seasoning.

This didn’t set the world on fire. That said, we all finished our portions and were happy.