Fishy Otti

By chance rather than by design I ended up cooking a lot of fishy meals this week. The star meal of the week was definitely Tuna with a Pistachio Crust and papaya salsa, taken from the Ottolenghi cookbook. I used tuna chunks instead of a loin piece simply because it was cheaper! Instead of coating the piece of tuna with a crust of pistachio and mustard I scattered the crust over the top of the chunks. It seemed to work just fine that way.

The salsa was really very pretty, and tasted just as lovely as it looked.



I served this dish on steamed new potatoes with peashoots. It was a good dinner, but the salsa does take quite a while to prepare because of all the peeling, chopping and mixing. On the otherhand, you could make it a day or two ahead. Next time I may swap the mustard in the crust for wasabi which I have a hunch may work a little better with the salsa.

A close runner up in the week's favourites was fillets of fish served with green tahini sauce and pomegranate seeds. I dished this one up with roasted aubergines and couscous. Another Ottolenghi special. It seems I'm cooking my way through the book! Again I used a cheaper piece of fish than was recommended; haddock worked perfectly OK so who need sea bream?!



Papaya Salsa
1/3 Papaya, diced
1/3 Mango, diced
1/3 cucumber, peeled, deseeded and diced
1/2 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
3g fresh ginger, grated
1/3 red onion, finely chopped
grated zest and juice of 1/2 lime
2 tspn thai fish sauce
2 tspn olive oil
1 tspn caster sugar

Mix everything together, season with salt and pepper, then chill for at least an hour before serving.

Super quick post this week. My sister's getting married on saturday and we're catering it ourselves so there's not a whole lot of time to spare for blogging!

Foraging

One of the great joys of country living is stumbling across delicious foods for free. Everyone knows about the joys of blackberry-ing in the autumn, but I have recently been discovering other treats in our hedgerows and woodlands.

Last year my Dad pointed out some wild garlic growing on the riverbank at the end of our garden, and I discovered that the leaves could be used to make a lightly garlicy pesto. This year I found that the old railway line a few minutes walk from our house is absolutely covered in the herb. I ventured up there a few weeks ago with a large carrier bag and picked lots and lots of wild garlic leaves. The majority of them went into a lemon, almond and wild garlic pesto (last year I used walnuts instead of almonds), which I have been stirring into pasta sauces, spreading on pizza bases, and toasting on bruschetta. It does need a bit of cooking or it can be a little bitter, but once warmed through it makes a lovely pesto.

This week I have started to notice elderflowers in bloom around my area. When I was a child we had an elder tree in the garden and I remember my parents making elderflower and elderberry wine. I was too young to try any at the time, but I am reliably informed that when it was good it was GOOD. (But when it was bad it was awful?)

So, trusty carrier bag in hand, I hit the hedgerows to pick elderflower heads one morning. It said online that they should be picked in the morning if you want a slight banana-y flavour. That sounded better than the slight cat-wee flavour they said you get if you pick them in the evening! Also, you have to pick and use quickly or they loose their lovely floral scent.

I had in mind to make elderflower cordial, so I got online to find a recipe. An article by Tom Parker Bowles yielded a method, I bought citric acid from the chemist (and was cross-questioned about how I planned to use it - apparently heroin-users need it), and was good to get going.

300g sugar, 15 heads of elderflowers, 3 quartered lemons, plus 1oz citric acid:



Then add 1 1/2 pints boiling water. Stir until the sugar is all dissolved. Leave for 24 hours, stirring regularly.



Strain through muslin. Serve ice cold diluted with sparkling water, garnished with a couple of mint leaves. You could use it with cava too for an alcoholic treat.



The drink has a dry taste on the palate; like the dryness of unsweetened lemonade. Very refreshing, and floral, but if you have a sweet tooth then you'll probably want more sugar and less lemon.



Using elderflowers got me thinking about other culinary uses for flowers. Why not make use of violets, lavender, roses, and other beauties? Watch this space....

Bread and Jam

Strawberry honey butter.

Doesn't it sound lovely?

The idea for this came from a blog I read last week, although I did tweak the recipe a little to make it a bit less sweet. This is the blog which inspired me.



The butter is nice alternative to jam, and was easier and quicker to make too. You need really good in-season strawberries for the best results; don't bother with inferior under-ripe examples. I enjoyed my strawberry honey butter on a slice of olive bread (basically the same as ciabatta); homemade and fresh from the oven just a few hours before. Tasty.



The bread was a good method: marvellous with in-season asparagus and poached eggs for breakfast, and a life saver when the in-laws came round for sunday lunch with only 4 hours notice. Father-in-law (sort-of, Dan and I aren't actually married we've just been together for ages) declared it the best bread he's ever eaten. The bread recipe was from the Bourke Street Bakery book. Its turning out to have been a very good purchase.

My top tip from today's sunday lunch: steamed new potatoes are way nicer than boiled ones and don't take any longer.

Enjoy what's left of the weekend.

Off topic - a music blog post

In the real world I work in music publishing. Its a quirky little mixture of art and commerce.

Last night one of the composers I represent was featured on BBC Radio 3's Late Junction. The composer is Howard Skempton, and of all the composers whose music we publish his is the work I have the most inate affinity with. I'm not sure if I'm meant to admit that (is it like having a favourite child?!), but its definitely true. He's a lovely, chatty, intriguing man.



The Radio 3 Late Junction sessions pair up 2 musicians who have never worked together, throw them into a studio together, and record the results. Howard Skempton was paired with Robin Williamson, who is described as a 'celtic bard'. Their resulting creations were suprisinging, magical, haunting. Completely brightened up my friday to 'Listen Again'.

If you're in the UK (I'm not sure if it works elsewhere) take a listen to the programme here. The session starts 1 hour into the programme, and there's an amusing little treat at 1 hour 16!

Kasmiri prawn curry

On sunday night I was in the mood for a curry. I'd run a 10k race, not as fast as I wanted to, also cycled 5 miles, and had a good walk round the grounds of Blenheim Palace. I was hungry for comfort food. Even if I was inclined to eat one, take aways are few and far between in our area - far easier, quicker, and nicer to make my own curry.
So, out came the Curry Bible and after some debate a Kashmiri prawn curry was chosen.

The curry was basically a korma-style curry, but the kormas I make are much spicier, less sweet and creamy than the variety you would get in a jar or from a takeaway. The dish has a good blend of spices, a small amount of coconut milk, onion, garlic, and red and green peppers, as well as the king prawns. The recipe called for the addition of four canned lychees, and suggested garnishing the dish with sliced bananas.


Trust me, this was WAY nicer than it looks!

This definitely was a very beautiful curry to eat. It feels like a meal for a maharajah - indulgent, creamy, rich, fruity. For my palate it was a little sweet for a regular dinner. Nice as a one off though. I would make this again for an unusual dinner for anyone with a slightly sweet tooth, but I think I'll generally stick to tomato-y, spicier dishes (except when comfort food is needed; then this is ideal).

California dreaming

A few months back Dan applied for a job in sunny San Francisco. Even though it was a long shot I got a little dreamy about the idea of moving to SF.



Sunshine, sushi and outdoor pursuits all figured in my day dreams. Sadly, the job didn't happen, but in my general musing on the lifestyle possibilities I did come across Fish Tacos; a speciality of Baja in California. A flour tortilla is liberally filled with grilled or fried white fish, guacamole and tomato salsa, and topped with a dollop of sour cream. Friday night called for a light supper, so I made an attempt.

First the tomato salsa: Skin 3 tomatoes, deseed, chop finely, mix with half a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, a finely diced (small) red onion and seasoning. Put to one side for the flavours to mingle.

Make the tortillas (or you could use bought ones, which would be a bit thicker and floppier): Mix 150g flour with a pinch of salt. Add just enough water to bring it together to a soft, but not sticky, dough (probably about 100ml). Kneed for a few minutes until soft, then divide into 4 golf-ball sized portions. Roll each of these into as smooth a ball as you can manage then roll them out to thin circles about the size of a dinner plate. Heat a heavy-based frying pan until hot, but not smoking. Dry fry the tortillas one at a time, for a couple of minutes on each side until bubbled and lightly coloured.
Mine weren't exactly round, but never mind!



Cover the cooked tortillas with foil and keep them warm in a low oven (120C).

Season the fish: Using about 350g white fish, cut it into bite sized chunks. If you plan to fry the fish lightly dust it with well-seasoned flour, then shallow-fry in vegetable oil. If you are grilling the fish just season the fish, but don't use flour.

While the fish cooks make guacamole by mashing an avocado, add lime juice to taste and half a finely chopped green or red chilli.

Place everything on the table, including some sour cream (or thick yoghurt), and help yourselves.



Expect to get your hands mucky!



These quantities were good for 2 people for dinner, or would make a light lunch for 4. We slightly ruined the healthiness of it all by having chocolate icecream for pudding.

Broadening my horizons

Yesterday I found myself in central London with a little time to kill, so I wandered into Selfridges and then down Bond Street.

I'd read about Vogue magazine's Street Lights project at the weekend, so I made a beeline for Old Bond Street to see the window displays. It was fun and inspiring, with quite a buzz about it. Lots of people were checking out the displays, there was live music, and there were lots of interesting concepts on show. My favourite was the Tiffany's window, with perspex shapes which turned and magnified the jewellery.

Here's a small selection of snaps, just taken on my phone as I meandered around.



If you want to check out the window displays they're only up this week, so go go go!

Read a bit more about it here.

I also saw this in the Selfridges window which I thought was mad, cool and very funky:



Must practice my origami!

PS You may see more off-topic posts on this blog in the coming months. I'd like to broaden the subject matter a little here and there, to include a bit on crafts, art, fashion, jewellery, photography, and other things that interest me.

Three ways with chicken

This month we are feeling poor (buying all the bits for a new bathroom will do that to you), so we're eating thriftily. Chicken fillets were on special offer at the butcher's this week, so that's what we've had for three dinners in the last five days. I'm not keen on eating the same thing over-again on successive days, so here are three ways with chicken pieces.



1. Chicken with sumac, za'aatar and lemon
This recipe came from the Ottolenghi recipe book. I marinated the chicken pieces in a mix of middle eastern spices (cinnamon, allspice, sumac) and lemon, then baked it in the oven with an approximation of za'aatar (I used a mix of sesame seeds, dried thyme and sea salt) and lemon slices on top. The lemon went soft and gave a delicious tang to the dish. I served this with couscous and some toasted pinenuts. It was a lot like a tagine: Perhaps not one of the most unusual-tasting recipes in the Ottolanghi recipe book, but easy, filling and certainly a very pleasant dinner.

2. Chicken and bacon burgers
I used the recipe for chicken and bacon sausage rolls from the Bourke Street Bakery book for these burgers. Instead of encasing them in puff pastry I grilled them up and served them in pitta breads with salad, potatoes and fried apple wedges. 'Junk' food but certainly no junk in them. Two chicken fillets and 3 rashers of smokey bacon made 4 burgers, so it was quite a thrifty dinner. The only other ingredients were a few breadcrumbs, a quarter of an onion, and a few spring onions. These burgers weren't quite as fantastic as the pork and fennel sausage roll mix that I adapted into burgers a couple of weeks ago, but they were meaty whilst feeling light on the calorie load.

3. Chicken rolls stuffed with orange, anchovies and chicory
I have a cook book which I've had for years - since my teens I think. It is one that my Mum bought us all as a job-lot for stocking fillers around the time she was trying to encourage us all to cook and fend for ourselves. The book's by Josceline Dimbleby and is called The Nearly Vegetarian Cookbook. It truely is a treasure trove of achieveable, delicious dinners.


We had left-over oranges still sitting in the fruit bowl from making Dan's birthday cake last week, and flicking through the book I spotted this recipe, which had the advantage that it would use the last of my special-offer chicken, some of the oranges, and the recipe described it as a 'delightful' dish. I decided to put my scepticism to one side (orange and anchovies didn't seem like natural partners) and give it a try.
I should have had more faith - it was lovely!
None of the individual flavours dominated the dish, which was subtle but well flavoured, and delicious served with wild rice and baby corn-on-the-cob. Dan liked it so much he licked the plate. Bad manners, but a ringing endorsement!
A first for me on this dish - I'd never used chicory in cooking before.

Here's the recipe:
Chicken rolls stuffed with orange, anchovies and chicory
Serves 2

2 Chicken breast fillets, skin removed
3 anchovy fillets (in oil or salt - drained and/or rinsed), finely chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1cm ginger root, finely chopped
1 medium chicory
Juice and zest of half an orange
150ml milk
5g cornflour, mixed to a paste with a little water
Parsley
Salt (go easy - the anchovies are salty) and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Place the chicken pieces (one at a time) in a plastic sandwich bag and bash them flat with a rolling pin. You need to get them to a thickness of about 1/2cm-1cm. Very theraputic!
Mix together the chicory, garlic, orange, ginger, anchovies and orange zest. Spoon this over the flattened chicken fillets and roll them up to encase the chicory mixture. Secure with a cocktail stick if necessary. Place the chicken rolls in an ovenproof dish and pour the orange juice around them. Cover the dish with foil and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes.
Once the chicken is cooked drain the liquid from the oven dish into a heavy based saucepan and keep the chicken warm while you make the sauce. Add the milk and cornflour paste to the cooking liquid from the chicken and bring it slowly to the boil, stirring all the time so that it doesn't catch. Once the sauce has thickened slightly add the parsley, pepper, and a small amount of salt.
Serve the chicken rolls with fried mushrooms (I loathe them so I left them off my plate), wild rice, lightly steamed baby corn, and spoon the sauce over the top.

Festival excitement

I'm excited.

Super-excited actually.

I've just read that there's a festival literally a few miles from me this summer which two of my food heros will be at. Yotam Ottolenghi AND Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Throw in a few bands, a couple of gardeners, an opera of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mister Fox, and a generally lovely location, and its a festival I can actually get enthusiastic about.

Hurrah for Alex James's Harvest Festival. Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase - no pots of jam and corn doilies at this one!

Here's the link:

Harvest

Birthday cake

3rd May is Dan's birthday. We decided not to go out this year, but I still wanted to make it special so I gave him the option to choose any dinner he wanted. He chose beef wellington and dauphinoise potatoes - high effort, but his absolute favourite. I made myself a monkfish wellington, which was delicious. (I found the recipe on the BBC website here.)

But a birthday isn't a proper celebration without cake, so I had to make a birthday cake. Dan's not a particular fan of chocolate cakes and sponge cakes, and with just the two of us in our household we wouldn't get through that kind of cake before it went stale anyway. Instead I chose to make an Orange Polenta Cake - the recipe comes from the Ottolenghi cook book. I'm a total amateur with sugar cookery, so I had to make 3 attempts before I managed a proper caramel for the top of the cake, but I got there in the end. The citrusy-fresh orange scent of the cake was AMAZING as it cooked. Here it is straight out of the oven:


(although the colour cast seems a bit odd on this photo.)

And this is it once it had cooled and I'd glazed it with some of my Mum's homemade marmalade:



We had a slice of the cake each on Dan's birthday. Dan had his with a scoop of creme fraiche. The cake had a slightly grittier texture than a normal sponge (possibly because I coudn't find instant polenta). That wasn't unpleasant though - in fact it was rather nice. The cake was moist, slightly bitter on the top, very orangey and utterly gorgeous. I'd buy the recipe book just for this cake!

Traditionally you have to take cakes to work on a birthday, and orange cake didn't seem the most portable variety, so I also made some rasberry cupcakes. (Dan was fitting our new bathroom all weekend, so it seemed only fair that I assume responsibility for work cake snacks for him!) The recipe was from the Primrose Bakery cupcake book - a vanilla sponge swirled with homemade rasberry jam, then filled with a little spot of rasberry jam and iced with vanilla buttercream icing. I decorated them with a little grated white chocolate and silver sugar balls.



I know they look a bit girly and pink and white for a boy's birthday, but if you're going to get your girlfirend to make cakes for your office what do you expect?!



Of course he told everyone he made them himself. Some of them even believed it.

A right royal weekend

Whilst I had very little inclination to spend a whole day watching the Royal wedding on TV, I was very grateful to William and Kate for getting married and thereby granting us all another lovely 4 day weekend. I could seriously get used to not working, not least because it gives me plenty of time to try out a few of the more complex recipes from some of my recipe books!

Some of the recipes from the Ottolenghi cook book have been on my list to try out for a while, and I managed two of those dishes over the weekend.

First I tried out the fried Seabass with labneh, pitta and pomegranate.



My budget didn't stretch to seabass this week, so I used coley instead. Its a chunkier fish, but if you can't afford the fancy stuff you just have to put up with that! Here in deepest, darkest Oxfordshire it is not possible to find labneh in the shops, and I hadn't realised ahead of time that I should allow 2 days to make it, so I was forced to improvise for that element. I started off with quite thick sheeps milk yoghurt and drained it through a piece of muslin cloth for an afternoon, and then used that as a spread. It wasn't quite the thickness of cheese, but nearly there, and at least the flavour was right. I spread this on toasted pitta breads, sprinkled a handful of pomegranate seeds over the top, fried the fish, and then topped the whole thing with a spoonful of homemade tomato salsa. I added some steamed spinach and a sprinkle of finely chopped fresh mint to the dish, which weren't in the recipe but were good additions. It was a fragrant and fruity dinner, perfect for a warm evening.

A couple of days later we had the turkey and sweetcorn meatballs with roast pepper sauce.

The sauce came out an amazing colour - almost fluorescent!



I'm a girl who doesn't much care for sweetcorn, but so many people had raved about this recipe all over the internet I felt I should try it out. And they were so right.

My corner of Oxfordshire failed me in sourcing turkey mince, so I used finely chopped chicken instead. Other than that I did this one 'by the book'. The chicken and sweetcorn meatballs are seasoned with a dash of ground cumin and served with a dipping sauce of roast peppers, chilli, and sweet chilli sauce.



I can see why there are so many blog posts out there raving about this recipe. Its easy to make and very yummy indeed. I appreciate that this snap does not make it look that way, so you'll have to trust me!

Its no surprise to me that I have so far loved pretty all the recipes by Ottolenghi which I have tried. What I'm really pleased about is that Dan is also becoming a massive fan. So convenient when our tastebuds agree!

An update 2 June: This week I made the meatballs again, but using turkey this time. Lovely. I served them up with cauliflower and pitta breads for dipping in the sauce. A very good combo.