Category Archives: food

Noodle soup with grilled fish by Nigel Slater

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.

How to cook sausages

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.

proper blokes’ sausage fusilli by Jamie Oliver

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’.

Stir fried butternut squash with dried chilli

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

Curry night

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.

Nigel Slater’s chilli feta recipe

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.

Citrus grape cake

I’d made this citrus grape cake once before. That time I found it a little greasy. This time I replaced 25ml of the extra virgin olive oil with orange juice, to replace the flavour of the orange peel (I didn’t have any fresh oranges). I thought it worked well although Mr W tells me it was a risk to alter the amount of fat in baking and that he preferred the original recipe.

Risotto

I used this Courgette and lemon risotto but used petit pois (cut weight by a third) instead of courgette. It turned out pretty well, but the courgettes and petit pois need throwing in close to the end, the amount of parmesan needed cutting by about a third as it was quite salty and it was better for an extra dollop of creme fraiche.

25 April 2012
Made again using 2 courgettes and petit pois to make the weight up to 400g again (not 600) and grana padano instead of parmesan. You do need the full amount of cheese but serve a third of it separately (Mark added more after I only used 2/3 of the cheese in the risotto). I really like this recipe but Mark is not keen on the creme fraiche, so I may substitute double cream for that next time.

In future I think I will try Jamie Oliver’s risotto recipe as I was inspired by the ones he made on Jamie Does Venice. I’ve only been able to find this Jamie Oliver risotto recipe online though.