The night before Christmas

In the nick of time the tree was dressed. Nothing as elegant as the spiders webs. Decorations brought down from the loft adorn her. We hung every single one. No matter that she was smaller than me... Dressed to the nines...a little overdressed if truth be told...But  bright and sparkly and jolly and kitsch. 

In contrast, the  Amaryllis has put on an elegant show just in time for Christmas eve... within half a day creamy white petals unfurled...and she bloomed...

Quick snacks with a few cheats,  kept up energy on a busy day:

Baked mushrooms with goats cheese and caramelised onion chutney:

Ingredients:

• One large flat mushroom per person, Portobello are perfect.
• Soft goats cheese
• Fresh garlic
• Olive oil
• Crushed black pepper
• Caramelised red onion jam/marmalade if like me you cheated or one small red onion.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to about 220c
2. Remove the mushroom stalks and place the mushrooms in an oven proof dish oiled with a little olive oil. 
3. Chop up the stalks finely and place in the hollows in top of the mushroom. 
4. Peel and crush some garlic. I use one clove per person. Add that to the top of the mushroom and then give a good drizzle of olive oil.
5. Top with a generous slice of cheese, about an inch/2cm thick and a little more olive oil and a good twist of pepper.
6. Place into the oven and bake until the mushrooms are tender and the cheese is beginning to oozy...mmm...
7. Meanwhile if not using store bought chutney, peel and slice the onions finely and fry in a saucepan with a little olive oil until soft and naturally, sweetly caramelised.
8. Remove the mushroom and serve with a big spoonful of the caramelised onion. Lovely with some salad leaves.

and Simple supper of...

Teriyaki salmon, rice noodles and steamed vegetables.

Ingredients:

• One salmon steak per person (sustainably sourced)
• Fresh rice noodles
• Teriyaki sauce
• Soy or Tamari sauce
• Fish sauce
• Fresh vegetables...pack choy, baby sweetcorn, green beans, mange tout
• Fresh garlic
• Fresh or dried chillies
• A couple of chopped spring onions/scallions
• Oil for cooking 
• A little sesame oil for seasoning

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to a moderated temperature.
2. Wash the salmon and place in an oven proof dish. Pour over some of the Teriyaki sauce and ensure the fish is well coated, turning a few times making sure that it is skin side up on the last turn.
3. Put into the oven to bake. 
4.  Prepare the vegetables whilst the salmon is baking. This will take about fifteen to twenty minutes depending on the size of the steak. Check half way through cooking time and turn them over, basting in the sauce, that will be reducing.
5. Boil a kettle of water and have saucepan ready  with a steaming basket or colander to hand.
6. Pour the boiling water until about a third full into the the pan on the hob. Place the vegetables in the steamer and steam for about five minutes. Be careful not to overcook them. They should have some crunch to them.
7. Place a wok onto the hob and warm up a little oil. Add a couple of crushed garlic cloves, some chillie and the spring onions.  Quickly cook them being careful not to burn the garlic. Add the fresh noodles and heat them through, adding a little fish sauce to season and hot water if necessary just enough to moisten them mix in all the flavourful ingredients and a dash of soy sauce to season further if you like.
8. Put a nest of noodles on each plate and top with a salmon steak, serving with the vegetables. 

I think we're just about ready...just a couple more parcels to wrap...

Hope you have a happy Christmas eve....a perfect one...

merry merry...

debx

Barbecued Salmon Steak with Speedy Vegetable Stir-fry in home away from home.

Don't you think that food seems to taste so much better when eaten outdoors? Especially when the sun is shining and you are sitting in a pretty garden in West Sussex. Where the bees are buzzing, you can hear a  cock crowing from the farm across the road and for the moment work is just a happy memory. All thanks to my sister B whose home we holidayed in whilst she was away with her family on theirs.  She left maps and guide books of places to visit and a note to say there was a bottle of fizz chilling in the fridge...perfect.


I soon found the big stash of Selvedge and Interior magazines she left by the bed for me to read and I was as happy as a bee in pollen...


'A' lit up the barbecue and cooked a fillet steak for himself and a salmon one for me and I managed to pry myself away from the magazines just long enough to make a speedy vegetable stir-fry. 


To make our BBQ'd Salmon steak with  Speedy Vegetable Stir-fry you will need:

• A barbecue heated up and ready to go
• One salmon steak per person or fillet steak 
• Sea salt and crushed black peppercorns
• Olive oil
• Some spring greens or a small summer cabbage
• A sweet red pepper...I love the long thin ones
• A handful of mushrooms
• One crushed glove of garlic
• A couple of spring onions (scallions)
• A small piece of ginger, grated finely
• A small hot chilli (optional)
• Tamari sauce
• A lime

Method:

1. Season the salmon with salt and pepper
2. Place on the barbecue with the skin side down and cook until the skin is crunchy and brown about six to eight minutes.
3. Turn over and continue cooking for about four minutes. 
4. Meanwhile wash, peel, deseed and cut all the other vegetables into similar sized pieces. 
5. Put some ground nut oil or rapeseed oil into a pan and heat up.
6. Add the onions, ginger and garlic. Stir-fry for a couple of minutes before adding the other vegetables and continuing to cook for about five minutes further. 
7. Season with Tamari/Soy sauce and fresh lemon juice.
8. Serve with the barbecued salmon.

Enjoyed as the sun was going down...

Fridge Forage Friday - Egg Fried RIce

Tasty friday night supper, made when a quick fridge and freezer forage revealed left over boiled rice, lovely eggs from friends' chickens, odds and ends of vegetables including shiitake mushrooms and frozen prawns.

It's this easy: 

1. Just defrost the prawns and then simply stir-fry the vegetables.

2. Add the rice,making sure that it's thoroughly heated through. 

3. Season with Tamari or soy sauce. 

4. Add the prawns in the last few minutes, ensuring that they are cooked properly. 

5. If using frozen peas, cook in boiling for a few minutes and then drain.

6. Finally add the peas and beaten egg. Cook and stir through the rice. 

7. Check seasoning and then dish up.  Simple and tasty.

A chance to use my cute new Japanese cups and Hinoke wood candle that smells amazing, thanks to nephew and girlfriends' lovely Christmas gift. Thanks D and M.

...A great start to the weekend...

Dom's Random Recipe Challenge Number 12 - Salmon and Rocket Pasta

By now you'll realise that I don't generally go out of my way to buy things specially for specific recipes.  Usually it's the other way round.  I see what's growing in the garden, or in season on local markets and food stores, or in my organic veg-box when it arrives. Then I either make-up, or search for an appropriate recipe.


I do make an exception though for Dom's Random Recipe Challenge. I actually make a special trip to buy the ingredients. So it may surprise you that when I went to buy the precise ingredients for Salmon and Rocket Pasta, that I came back with something else! I bought some lovely tuna fillet and watercress! Oh and instead of the prescribed tagliatelle, papardelle.


We've had quite a bit of salmon over the holidays, kindly and deliciously prepared by others. So when I saw tempting fresh dolphin friendly, line-caught tuna in the fishmonger section of the store, I couldn't resist adapting the recipe a little. I was sure the recipe required 'either' rocket 'or' watercress (it didn't, just rocket) I chose the latter as it's even more peppery than rocket, so that was another adaptation. 


Finally the pasta substitute...I really love fresh pasta, 'A' doesn't...and I was making one of those indulgent solitary suppers when he was out visiting friends, so decided to have fresh pasta and wouldn't you know...there wasn't any fresh tagliatelle left in the store, hence the papardelle! 


...I must try and make my own pasta...it's a vague New Years Resolution!


The book? Not a Christmas present...I didn't actually get any Cookery Books this year but lots of lovely related gifts that will creep into photo's soon. But this is my latest acquisition. BBC Good Food: 101 Fish and Seafood Dishes. A dinky little book filled with simple supper dishes...the kind of recipes you could easily make-up yourself, but really good to give you ideas, with good clear illustrations on every other page. Lots of great recipes like Spicy Salmon and Lentils sound lovely (p84) and Leeky Salmon in a Parcel (p66). Oh and I've been wanting a recipe for Cullen Skink(p74) for ages.

But I randomly opened it up at page 92 where you can find the recipe for Salmon and Rocket Pasta. It's copyright so I can't write the recipe here but you can link to it over at the BBC food website, here.


Basically you pan fry the fish in a little oil then remove from the pan. Cook the pasta, reserving some cooking water. Make a sauce with the cooking juices, creme fraiche and the zest of half a lemon...I also added the juice. Then combine all the ingredients...It takes twenty minutes maximum. It actually took me less because I used diced tuna which took about five instead of twelve minutes to cook and fresh pasta that again only took minutes to prepare, even less than dried would have. I also added a little sea salt and lots of crushed black pepper.


A definite winner...10 out of 10...I might even make it for supper tonight...or Tuna and Red Onion Salad looks good page 32...mmm...


It's a delicious and very adaptable recipe as I've shown by changing almost every ingredient including the creme fraiche for low fat yoghurt...(healthier eating being another tentative New Year's Resolution.) Instead of fish, Chicken or prawns would work really well, or wild mushrooms/butternut squash for vegetarians.

Why not join in Dom's challenge this month too...

...You sometimes stumble across the best recipes randomly...


....I may even have to do this again...I've made so many changes to the recipe it might not qualify...

Simple supper - Smoked Haddock and Autumn Vegetable Soup

I know there may seem to be a bit of a fish and broth/soup theme going on recently. But on the evenings when you come home exhausted or you are about to dash off Christmas tree shopping  and want something that's fast, you can't beat a clear soup like this.

It's tasty, nutritious and quick. The hardest thing to do is to wash and chop up a few ingredients and because the fish is cooked in the broth, there's only one pot and a couple of dishes to wash up...perfect...

For my Smoked Haddock and Autumn Vegetable Soup for two people you will need:

• A large fillet of sustainably sourced undyed traditional smoked haddock
• Greens eg Swiss chard, spinach or beetroot greens. 
• A small piece of ginger, finely sliced
• One clove of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
• One small sliced chili pepper, mild rather than hot
• One small parsnip, peeled and sliced
• One small carrot, peeled and sliced
• Frozen peas
• 400ml of vegetable or fish stock

Method:

1. Heat up the stock in a saucepan and bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer.
2. Wash and prepare all the vegetables, removing any hard stalks from the greens.
3. Skin the fish if necessary and cut into mouth sized pieces.
4. Pop all the root vegetables including the ginger and garlic along with the chilli into the stock and cook until just tender.
5. Add the fish, greens and if using frozen peas add at this point. If fresh ones at stage 4. Cook until the fish is ready...this will only take minutes, so avoid over cooking. 
6. Serve up while hot.

I didn't add any seasoning at all to this soup as the smoked fish is salty and the stock was seasoned, but you may want to check and adjust just before dishing up.

This is a lovely warming soup.  The ginger and garlic bring mild heat, whilst the slightly aniseed flavour of the parsnips along with the gentle  sweetness of the carrots and peas work together so well. Add the depth of flavour introduced by the leaves and the smokiness from the fish and you have a real winner.

I wasn't sure if the parsnips would work here because they have strong unusual flavour, but they did and I will definitely make this again...

...and we were even in time to get the  tree...

...did I say 'one pot'!...

Simple Supper - Soba Noodles with Rainbow Trout Broth

I saw a recipe for Japanese soba noodles over here a couple of days ago and then spotted this lovely pack in my local food store.  I couldn't resist getting them, especially because the noodles are separated into little portion sized bundles wrapped up in paper ribbons.

I love Japanese food and couldn't wait to try them out in a soup using some of the ingredients that were in my fridge and store cupboard.


To make my Soba Noodles with fish broth for two people you will need:

• 400ml of stock (I used vegetable but chicken or fish would work just as well)
• One clove of garlic, peeled and then finely sliced.
• A small piece of ginger, peeled and sliced.
• About a quarter of a green pepper deseeded and cut into small pieces.
• One chilli, chopped.
• Two cabbage leaves shredded.
• A small handful of broccoli florets. 
• 3-4 sliced mushrooms, preferably Shitake.
• A small piece of lemon grass, peeled and then chopped.
• Tamari sauce.
• Fish or chicken.  I used a whole sustainably sourced rainbow trout. With the head, tail and bones removed and then cut into chunks.  A fillet or steak of salmon would have been perfect or any shell fish

Method:

1. Prepare all the ingredients.
2. Heat the stock in a saucepan.  Bring to the boil and then add all the vegetables and cook for about five minutes.
3. Add the noodles. I used one bundle because I wanted this dish to remain soup-like.
4. Cook the noodles in the broth for about five minutes before adding the fish, cook for a further couple of minutes until the fish is cooked.
5. Add Tamari sauce to season. 
6. Serve in a big bowl...

This is such a quick and simple supper to make.  It takes less than half an hour to prepare and cook.  I was fortunate to buy a sustainably sourced trout for just over £2 and reckon that the dish cost less than £4 for two servings!

Oriental Style Salmon Broth

Cold autumn evenings call for bowls of warm comforting  soup. Ever since enjoying an enormous steaming bowl of miso soup at Hi Sushi, I've made a number of versions of hot, spicy broths. I think they would be what Nigella Lawson refers to as Temple food.

Food that's light and healthy, that makes you feel really good after you've eaten. The kind that's great if you've been a little bit too indulgent. Or if you just fancy something very hot and tasty.

To make my Oriental Style Salmon Broth you will need:

• A small piece of ginger
• One clove of garlic
• Chilli (as much as you like depending how much heat you want)
• One spring onion
• One sustainably sourced fillet of salmon or trout.
• A few green peppercorns in brine
• One piece of lemon grass
• A few fresh shitake mushrooms
• Tamari sauce
• 300ml/half a pint of vegetable stock (you could also use chicken or fish if you prefer)
• Baby spinach leaves (or coriander or flat leaf parsley)
• 1/4 of a small bell pepper

Method:

1. Wash and prepare all the vegetables. Finely slice the chilli, lemon grass, spring onion, ginger, bell pepper, shitake mushrooms and garlic, peeling or removing any skin and seeds as necessary.
2. Place in a saucepan and cover with the warmed stock. Bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer.
3. Drain and crush a few green pepper corns and add to the stock along with a few dashes of Tamari sauce.
4. Meanwhile remove the skin from the salmon fillet and cut the fish into mouth sized pieces.
5. Wash the baby spinach leaves or herbs and add to the pot.
6. Once everything is heated through add the fish and cook for a further 2 or 3 minutes.

This is enough for a large hearty bowl for one or a starter for two. 

It really is fast food and very healthy. A great quick supper or lunch dish. It could be made into a much more substantial meal by adding rice or wheat noodles. It would be nice with prawns or crab meat, you could ring the changes with different herbs and even add coconut milk....but I doubt it would constitute Temple Food if you did...!

Delicious with a pot of Shensha Green or Jasmine tea...mmm...

Butternut Squash and Prawn, Thai style curry

I had a dream….

…. Sorry, nothing deep and meaningful like Martin Luther King’s.  Mine was a bit silly but it inspired this supper dish.

It was one of those nights when you wake up in the middle of it and just can’t get back to sleep.  You go downstairs and make a hot drink, then curl up on the sofa to watch TV.  On this occasion it was an episode of Nigel Slater’s Simple suppers that I’d recorded earlier in the day.

I’m not quite sure when I fell into a deep sleep that involved my dream:  I was Nigel Slater’s new assistant.  He’d just cooked the most amazing spicy creamy Thai concoction with prawns and squash and coconut milk, and I was busy washing up the dishes in his quirky cartoon-like kitchen (very different from the simple elegant one he uses on tv.)  He was getting ready to go to the pub for a drink with his friends, to which I’d also been invited. He popped his head around the kitchen door wearing a bright yellow sou'wester and a colourful knitted Peruvian hat with earflaps, that had a lot of pink and yellow and pale blue in it…not his usual black…

…It was at that point that I was woken by the sound of A coming downstairs to see where I was….

…I was so disappointed to wake up and realise that Nigel Slater wasn’t my new best friend and I wasn’t working for him!  I clearly remember thinking in my dream that I must take everyone I know to meet him…but just say I was introducing them to my new friend and not tell them who it was, because I didn’t want them to get star struck!!

No new job, but at least I could try to make the spicy Thai prawn and squash concoction. 

To make
Butter Nut Squash and Prawn, Thai style Curry 
for two people you will need:

• Half a medium sized, or one small butternut squash. Peeled de-seeded and cut into mouth sized chunks.
• Enough fresh or de-frosted frozen prawns for two people.
• A can of low fat coconut milk.
• A piece of lemon grass.
• A small piece of fresh ginger.
• Two spring onions.
• A couple of cloves of garlic.
• A little bit of ground cinnamon.
• A little bit of ground cumin.
• Two to three chillies.
• Fresh flat leaved parsley.
• Nam Pla Thai fish sauce.
• The juice and zest of one lime.
• Plain boiled white rice to serve.
• Oil for cooking

Method:

1. Give the lemon grass a good bashing with a rolling pin and then slice finely. 
2. Chop the Parsley, spring onions and chillies, grate the ginger and crush the garlic.
3. Place all these ingredients in a blender.  If you don't have a blender chop everything as finely as possible and pound in a mortar with a pestle.
4. Pour some plain oil ( I used olive because that's all I had but any plain oil will do) into a frying pan and begin to cook out these ingredients.  
5. After a few minutes add the dried spices and cook these out for a minute of so, stirring so they don't stick.
6. Add the zest and then the juice of one lime and cook a little longer.
7. Pour in the coconut milk.  Add the Nam Pla sauce and give a good stir and let the liquid heat up before popping in the uncooked squash.
8. Reduce the heat and leave to cook until the squash is tender but not mushy.  I like it when it still has a little bite to it.
9. Meanwhile prepare plain boiled white basmati rice. 
10. When the squash is just about ready add the prawns.  If using fresh ones ensure that they turn from grey to pink.
11. Check the seasoning you may want to add some crushed black pepper.  I didn't any salt at all because the Thai Nam Pla fish sauce is very salty.
12. Add a little more fresh chopped parsley and serve with the boiled rice.

For me this is ultimate comfort food.   I was a little worried that this dish might be too sweet as both the squash and the prawn meat are, but the creamy salty sauce with a good kick of chilli and then the lovely fresh lemon grass, really balanced it very well.   Mmm...delicious...the stuff that dreams are made of... 

Pan-fried Cod with Spinach and Purple Carrots

These gorgeous purple carrots came in my veg box last week…aren't they lovely?…The weird thing is that when you cut them open they are still orange inside. 

They were so nice I didn’t want to just steam them. I remembered a picture of some that Dom of the Belleau Kitchen blog had grown himself and a quick recipe search revealed that he drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt and a few sprigs of rosemary and then baked them in the oven for an hour for a lovely sweet intense carrot flavour.   Served with boiled new potatoes, sauteed spinach and cod (sustainably sourced), that I pan-fried in butter with sea salt and crushed black pepper; it made a lovely light Sunday supper.  

Best of all it was so quick to make that we didn't miss a second of the New Series of Downton Abbey...

Random recipe challenge 3...Retro Prawn Stuffing...

I think that we may have to thank Dom of the Belleau Kitchen for a minor (possibly major) resurgence of vintage/retro recipes.

It all started with his challenge. This is his challenge:

“In a continuing celebration of my 1st Year Blog Birthday this month's Random Recipe is a simple one... go back to your first ever cook book. Whether it be the first one you were given as a gift or bought for yourself or had handed down from a relative... it has to be that very first book.... and it's from this book that you should randomly select a recipe.”

In theory it sounded quite simple. That was until I picked up the cookbook. It was 'The St Michael All colour FREEZER COOKERY BOOK' a reprint of a 1976’s book one of my sisters sent me in 1986. I’d recently got married and our big old vintage fridge with a tiny ice-making compartment (which I loved) had broken down for the millionth time and so we splashed out on a fridge freezer with equal space for both, top half fridge, bottom freezer.

But how was I going to fill it? I was used to buying fresh produce from the market in Manchester every lunchtime, or the deli on my way home from work. The M & S cookbook taught me how to freeze everything from fish and poultry to peas and blackberries...Hurrah...I regained my lunch hour. I was now free to window shop, knit sweaters, chat, have coffee or best of all go for lunch with work mates in the Danish Food Centre. We would eat prawn open sandwiches, a slice of Princess Cake a light-as-a-feather sponge layered with cream and covered in pale green marzipan...mmm...and a glass of white wine.Those were the days... I’m not quite sure how we managed to do any work on those afternoons!

Anyway it’s a long time since I’ve used the book and I have to say that to begin with I was pretty confident that it would open up at the Minestrone soup recipe on page 62 that I used to make all the time back then, but it didn’t! It opened up at page 78 ‘Prawn Stuffing’!! I was very tempted to try again, reasoning that stuffing wasn’t really a recipe.

But then Dom’s word’s began ringing out in my metaphorical ears:

“Go on... go and do it NOW!... and no bloody cheating!”

...so I just got on with it. At least I had all the ingredients to hand...well I thought I had.

Prawn stuffing

For fish and tomatoes

Here are the required ingredients: ( I've used the metric and not imperial quantities)

100g Fresh white breadcrumbs

15ml parsley, finely chopped

5ml finely grated lemon rind

75g peeled prawns

25gm butter

1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

A little milk

1. Place the breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon rind and prawns in a bowl and stir well. (Easy you may think....it would have been except that the little bag of what I thought were fresh prawns that I had taken out of the freezer the night before, were actually langoustine. They were half-price fresh ones to be used on the day of purchase but I'd popped them in the freezer until I had time to research how to cook them! Thank goodness for youtube tutorials.)

Simple when you know how!

2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, add the onion and fry for about five minutes or until soft and transparent. Stir the butter and onion into the breadcrumb mixture, season to taste and mix well, adding enough milk to stir the stuffing together. ( As usual I had to change at least one thing and omitted using the milk...I didn't think that it was necessary)


To freeze: Pack the stuffing into polythene bags or foil containers, in usable quantities. Seal and freeze.


To serve: Thaw at room temperature for three hours. Use immediately.

I never would have gone to all this bother if it hadn't been for Dan's challenge but I'm so glad I did. This is totally delicious and I could have just wolfed down bowlfuls of the stuffing...just as it was...but I used it to stuff trout and then made it again this time with prawns with white fish that I rolled up and baked in the oven in a spicy tomato sauce it was totally delicious. It would also make a special crumb topping for baked salmon.


This isn't an every day recipe but a lovely treat.

I'm so glad that Dom reintroduced me to this book. It really is full of lots of useful information and lots of good basic recipes with a good cake and bread making section too. Oh, and I'm really thankful for the sister that bought this for me...who has also been the generous giver of some of my all time favourite cookbooks including Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros and my lovely Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights.


So thanks Dom, and thanks Bec...