I don’t seem to have made any notes about this and just took a photo of the flavouring ingredients and the finished dish. I think the inspiration must have come from Ken Hom’s pad thai recipe. I do remember that I left the fish very slightly undercooked on the non-skin side so that placing it on the soup would finish it off.
This is a recipe from Nigel Slater’s Real Cooking book. I had been looking forward to cooking it for some time and so I bought red mullet (not snapper) fillets and (baby) spinach. But, partly due to the recipe and partly due to my rather thin home made langoustine stock, it was rather bland. This was in spite of my adding deseeded green chilli and a lot more garlic than was called for. To be fair though, I didn’t taste it right before serving – I’m always forgetting to do this – which would have given me a chance to rectify the situation somewhat.
I found some mistakes in the recipe: 1) the title says grilled fish but in fact it fried then poached while sitting in top of the soup, 2) the recipe calls for skinned fillets but the photograph shows the skin plainly left on the red mullet. And while we’re on the subject, the marinade was far too strong for mullet.
If I make this again I will use more robust fish such as salmon and big up the salt, hot and sour flavours. I’ll also use a more concentrated and so more tasty stock.
Oven with fan on, 160 degrees, 15-20 mins. No need to brush sausages with anything, just line trays with baking paper. This method gives the sausages a good outer colour without drying out the filling.
Sausage fusilli recipe by Jamie Oliver
Made this for Abbie and Stuart when they came over for a simple lunch. OK, so it wasn’t amazing but it was fine. The sausage was nicely pepped up with Italian flavours. I think it would have been better if when went on the pasta had more of a sauce-like consistency. Maybe next time I will reduce the wine and lemon juice and replace with some tinned tomato. Having said that, I probably won’t make it again as Mr W was not impressed with it. He called it ‘student food’.
This is from Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escapes. I found the recipe on a food blog:
Ingredients
half a butternut squash
half a sweet potato
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp onion seeds
2 garlic cloves
3-4 dried chillis
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Peel the squash and spud and chop into little 1 cm cubes.
Boil for a few minutes in salted water until slightly soft, drain well.
Heat the oil in a pan and toasted the two types of seeds gently for 30 seconds.
Add the garlic and fry gently.
Tip in the chillis
Add the squash and spud and fry until they are very tender and slightly crispy
My adjustments
Used 1 whole butternut squash and no sweet potato
Added 1 tsp salt to the water for blanching
Roughly doubled the amount of garlic
Reduced the amount of chilli
I must admit that this wasn’t next on my ‘To Read’ list but I’d been investigating holidays on the Dorset coast and that brought the title to mind.
The front promises that it is ‘devastating’ which seemed a little dramatic for a book only 160 pages long. I wouldn’t say it is devastating but it did affect me. Ian McEwan is excellent at describing exactly what goes on inside his characters’ heads; I felt that I completely understood them. I love his precise prose. I didn’t enjoy every part of the book though, in fact I thought it sagged a little in the middle, but it perked up again towards the end. The finish itself was wonderfully poignant. It reminded me of one of the reasons why I love my husband: he would never have made the mistake that Edward made with Florence on Chesil Beach.
(21st in 2012)
Mr W has declared that he is always happy to eat curry so this weekend I made monkfish moilee with vegetable pilau using recipes in Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escape. Both turned out well, except I marinaded the fish in lime juice for too long which made it a little bit too dry around the outside. Next time I won’t marinade in lime juice; I’ll add it to the sauce instead. Also the fish curry had too much chilli in it!
Serves 4
Ingredients:
500g skinless and boneless Monkfish tails
¼ tsp Ground Turmeric
½ tsp Sea Salt
Juice of 1 Lime
2 tbsp Vegetable Oil
1 Large Onion, peeled and finely chopped
3cm Ginger, peeled and finely grated
3 Garlic Cloves, peeled and finely crushed
3 Green Chillies, deseeded and sliced in half lengthways
4 Curry Leaves
400ml tin Coconut Milk
6 Cherry Tomatoes, quartered
Coriander leaves to garnish
1. Cut the monkfish tails into bite sized chunks and place in a bowl.
2. Mix together the turmeric, salt and lime juice to create a wet paste, then mix this with the monkfish chunks and leave to marinate for about 20 minutes.
3. Heat the oil in a large pan over a medium to high heat.
4. Add the onion, ginger, garlic, chillies, curry leaves and salt. Stir frequently for 5-6 minutes until the onion is translucent and soft.
5. Pour in the coconut milk and bring to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally.
6. Add the marinated fish and cherry tomatoes and gently simmer for another 4-5 minutes until the fish is cooked through.
To serve, ladle the curry into a warm bowl and garnish with coriander leaves. Serve with plain rice.
I need to try this at some point:
CHILLI FETA
Serves 1-2 as a light snack
Ingredients
3 medium hot, red or orange chillies
2 spring onions – finely chopped
A little olive oil
200g feta cheese
a few sprigs of thyme
coriander – a large handful, roughly chopped
Turkish bread to serve
Directions
1. Halve the chillies lengthways, remove their seeds with the point of a knife and discard. If you like it hot, leave the seeds in.
2. Finely slice the chillies and the spring onions. Warm a thin layer of olive oil in a shallow pan, add the chillies and spring onions and leave to soften over a gentle heat, stirring from time to time.
3. Remove the leaves from the thyme, chop roughly then stir in the chillies. Put the lump of feta in the pan, spoon a little of the chillies, spring onions and thyme over the cheese and leave for a few minutes until the cheese is warm and starting to soften around the edges.
4. Add the chopped coriander leaves then sandwich pieces of the cheese and its seasonings in between pieces of bread.
I read almost all of this book in a single day. It is wonderfully easy to read. Written by a woman only three years older than I am, the book took me back to parts of my own childhood (Indians aren’t so different to Iranians in terms of cultural attitudes). I’m very impressed at how good Shappi’s memory is. She describes childhood episodes so honestly and in such detail that they really were a delight to read. I loved the stories of the older members of her extended family too. A welcome bonus was learning a little about Iran and its people. The book is very enjoyable indeed.
(20th in 2012)
I read this book because it was recommended by Sue Perkins when she was a guest on My Life in Books. It’s the story of Sophie Fevvers, a trapeze artist who is part woman, part swan and Jack Walser, a journalist on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. It is set at the turn of the century and the book’s three parts take place in London, St Petersburg and Siberia respectively.
Before I started it I wasn’t aware that ‘Nights’ is a work of magic realism so I found the first part of the book confusing and off-kilter, so much so that I had to start again from the beginning. The other aspect of this book that made it hard work is the enormous number of words whose meanings I had to look up. I think it was more than one word per page on average and at 350 pages long, this made the experience feel very disjointed.
However there was plenty that I enjoyed in this book. Actually, the word plenty is apt as the book is simply bursting at the seams with things for me to ponder. It’s filled with colourful charcacters. There are numerous metaphors, most of which I haven’t yet untangled. An abundance of mini fairy stories sewn into the main plot which delight and disgust in equal measures. The joke at the end was hilarious. But as well as humour the book has important things to say. These are my favourite quotes:
“What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?”
“Wherein does a woman’s honour reside, old chap? In her vagina or in her spirit?”
Overall, Nights at the Circus is fascinating and wondrous but I did find it a bit of a slog. It’s a book that needs to be studied. The fantasy element does provide some escapism but it doesn’t do the book justice to ignore all its other aspects.
(19th in 2012)