Fruity Salads

Hot weather seems to call for citrus flavours and salad dinners, so I have mostly been eating fish and salad of late. I love the fruity-nutty flavours of thai salads, but decided to experiment with flavour combinations from Europe and the Caribbean this week.

Figs and Parma ham and mint

Trout with tomato and cucumber salsa

Grilled tuna with fennel, grapefruit and red onion salad



I know its a classic Italian dish, but I'd never tried the combination of figs and parma ham before, but I spotted some very ripe loooking figs in the shop and thought they'd make a nice lunch. And indeed they did. Jamie O's Italian recipe book suggested mint, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar as accompaniments, and it made a tasty meal. The mint was a nice touch - I would have expected basil to be best but preferred the mint.

Nothing fancy about the trout and salsa really, just a chopped tomato and cucumber salad in lemon juice, and mint again. Lots of mint you notice - its my new favourite herb because I actually managed to keep some alive in the garden!

The tuna salad was the most interesting. The idea came from my Cuban recipe book. I chopped 1/2 red onion finely and divided 1/2 ruby grapefruit into segments. These were mixed with the juice of a lime, salt and pepper, and a good handful of coriander. Then I shaved some fennel finely and mixed that in along with a drizzle of olive oil. I just grilled the tuna. Easy. The recipe called for swordfish but I couldn't get any, I would recommend you at least look for some if you want to recreate this as I think it might be a better combo than the tuna.

Torta di Spinachi

This was my second Angela Hartnett recipe, and it turned out just as tasty as the first ( Aubergine Parmigiana).



As always, I adapted it slightly to suit the ingredients in the shops and in my fridge - I used half spinach, half asparagus, and changed the parmesan to a creamy goats cheese I bought from Crudge's Cheese at the weekend farmer's market.

The recipe directs you to make the pastry using olive oil instead of butter. I've tried this a couple of times before; once was a disater and once was passable. This version was actually good! The difference was the flour I think - Angela Hartnett's recipe suggests using '0' type flour, which is the same kind you would use for pasta. Its a much finer flour and worked well for the pastry with olive oil.

The torta was easy to make on a busy day - I made the pastry and mixed the filling together in the morning then they just sat in the fridge all day until I was ready to roll out the pastry and put the dish together in the eveing. We had it warm with salad and new potatoes one day, but it was equally lovely cold for lunch the next day.

Here's the recipe I ended up with after my amendments:

Pastry:
200g pasta-type flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of salt
Ice cold water as required

Mix the flour and salt together. Add the olive oil, then gradually add cold water, mixing well between additions until the pastry comes together into a dough. Wrap in cling film and allow to rest in the fridge for at least an hour.

Filling:
250g Spinach (stalks removed & roughly chopped)
200g cooked asparagus, chopped into 1-2cm lengths
60g hard cheese eg parmesan, manchego, or goats cheese - grated or finely chopped
1 egg - beaten
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Salt & pepper

When you are ready to assemble your torta grease a pie tin with a thin coating of olive oil. Roll out the pastry until its larger than the pie dish and lay it in the dish, allowing it to hang over the edges.
Mix together all the filling ingredients, place them on top of the pastry in the pie dish and spread into an even layer.
Fold the excess pastry over the top of the filling to cover it.
Bake in the oven at 200C for about 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Serve hot or cold. Its a great picnic dish.

Brazil!

A while a go I went through a short phase of trying out a few Latin American recipes which jogged my memory and made me recall the delicious Pao de Queijo which I had eaten with my friend Yu Chen at a Brazilian place at the grotty end of Oxford Street in London.
They are light and puffy cheesy breads, even delicious to me - a non-cheese eater. Even better there was a recipe for them in my Cuban recipe book. However, they call for tapioca flour. And where on earth can you buy that?!

Well, it turns out you can buy it in the health food shop of our little market town. Who'd have thought it? So, watch this space, because as soon as I have a couple of hours spare I will be getting my Brazilian groove on and having a try at Pao de Queijo.



Now all I need is some Havaianas, a beach, and a massive party!

A fishy norwegian weekend

Why don't we eat more fish in this country? Its so tasty!

Considering we're really quite a small island I find it quite surprising how unavailable good fish is. I know I live about as far from the sea as its possible to get in the UK, but nonetheless you would expect some good outlets for fishy things. Even the supermarkets have aisles of meat and maybe a tiny section at the end of one for all of their fish. Its really quite odd.

The Norwegians don't have this problem. We just spent a fabulous weekend in Bergen. Its a cliche to say it, but it was amazingly expensive (Dan was horrified - a beer cost about £8!), but really when the food is of good quality you don't resent it too badly. I don't think we could have afforded to stay for more than a weekend though!

So here's a brief tour of our gluttony...

We started at the fish market on the harbourside:




Where we bought a massive smoked salmon, crab, prawn, and crayfish salad for lunch. It may have been pouring it down with rain but we were quite happy:


The next day we decided to head up into the mountains for a good long walk. Of course, we couldn't possibly go for our expedition without a picnic. The bakery across the street from our hotel provided wonderful seed and dried fruit rye bread, and the fish market also came up trumps. We were deeply indulgent, and lunch consisted of a langoustine each and a massive bag of prawns. Yum Yum Yum.....


That night we went out for dinner to a fish restaurant near the harbour. And yes, we spent more than I ever have before on a meal.
But what a meal...
Fish soup
Crayfish, salmon and angler fish with layered potato and sweet pepper
Blackberries marinated in schnapps with vanilla icecream
I know it doesn't sound all that exciting, but it was delicious because it was beautiful ingredients, perfectly cooked.

The next day was our last day. We went in search of fish and chips, but in the end this looked more interesting:


Spicey kebabs of scampi. Massive meaty prawns. Delicious.


We couldn't resist buying some smoked wild salmon to take home. Its buttery textured, smokey flavoured, and melt-in-your-mouth perfect.


So there you have it: We went to Norway, we ate more fish and seafood than you would ever believe, we walked, and saw the sights and the countryside, we had a lovely time.

And came home feeling distinctly poor!

Aubergine Parmigiana

I have noticed that recently this blog has been rather sparse on pictures. I'll be attempting to put that right next week, as this weekend we're heading to Bergen (Norway) for the weekend. I'm planning to gorge myself on fish and seafood and take lots of pictures at the fish market on the harbour.

I'm really looking forward to introducing Dan to the best fish and chips in the world, courtesy of the Bergen fish market, as well as the beautiful Norwegian scenery. I'm really excited to be staying more than a day, which gives us the opportunity to take a bit more time over walks, wanders, lunches, day trips. Always before I've had to hotfoot it back to the cruise ship at the end of the day which curtails how much you can explore.

So, hurrah for mini breaks!

In the mean time, this week's recipe was Aubergine Parmigiana, from Angela Hartnett's recipe book which I borrowed from the library last week. Its quite time consuming to put together, just as any layered dish is, but you can prepare it all a day or so ahead and it can happily sit in the fridge overnight - then all that needs doing in the evening after work is to just bung it in the oven.

We had it with spicey baked pork meatballs and a green salad. It was delicious - A really good balance of tomato, basil, mozzarella, parmesan and aubergine. Not as heart-attack inducing as you might expect either as I cut down the oil and cheese quantities a bit. There was still enough of both to make it a good flavour but not so much that the cheese overwhelmed it or the oil made it horribly greasy.



It can be found in Angela Harnett's Cucina, but I suspect there will be versions in a million-and-one other Italian recipe books too.

The delights of the library

woohoo!

I temporarily forgot that I could borrow recipe books from the library. I'm like a kid in a sweet shop....what to try first?!

I have gone with one by Angela Hartnett and one by Rick Stein.

Both look like they have some reasonably challenging recipes in them, and I'm definitely up for trying making some more complicated dinners - something to make me feel like I've made an effort!

Also, both have lots of fish ideas. Why do so few recipe books have a decent fish section? It makes me sad. I love fish and seafood.

Couscous Jamie O style

I feel a bit guilty about the lack of use of my Jamie Oliver Italy recipe book. I keep taking it off the shelf and looking at the recipes and the beautiful photography, but then rarely get round to cooking from it. The recipes on the whole look like they would take more time to make than I generally have on a weekday evening. Although they also sound like they'd be worth the effort.

Nonna Giusy's Fish with Couscous was on the menu for us on bank holiday monday. I felt that with a little more time available it was the ideal time to delve into the book.

The method was an interesting one - you mix the couscous with finely chopped onion, garlic and parsley and then steam it for half an hour before mixing in some tomato sauce (made while the couscous steams) and putting it in the oven on a very low heat (80C max) to keep the couscous warm while it absorbs the tomato sauce. It was delicious cooked that way.
We used gilt-head bream as our fish (I had to gut it! Don't think I've ever had to gut my fish before. Chop the heads off, yes, but not scoop out its insides. Fortunately I'm not overly squeemish). This was poached in the tomato sauce, then I skinned and de-boned it, flaked the flesh into big chunks and mixed it back into the remaining tomato sauce.

Dan and I thought that a handful of raisins would go well in this recipe. Also, we thought chorizo and prawns could be substituted for the fish to good effect. The dish does take over an hour to prepare, but it is simple to do and, as always with tomato based recipes, the long slow cooking makes it rich and adds a wonderful depth to the flavour.