Smoked Salmon Pate
After our recent success with mackerel pate, we decided to try smoked salmon pate for lunch today. We used half poached salmon and half smoked salmon, which we mixed with a spoon of crème fraîche and some lemon juice and seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper. I wasn’t convinced at first, but with the addition of a bit more salt it was rather good and I ate loads of it.
Rocket Pesto
Last night, we used some of the rocket pesto from the freezer but mixed it with some roasted tomatoes and some Emmett’s bacon that we bought when we were in Suffolk. The roasted tomatoes acted much like a tomato sauce and I think we’ll use this method when we next need some instead of fiddling about with tinned tomatoes. The bacon was beautifully sweet and worked well with the peppery rocket.
Stuffed Lamb
I was out after work this evening so Stephen was in charge of dinner. I got home to the smell of something sweet and roasty which turned out to be roasted sweet potato. This was the accompaniment to some brilliant stuffed lamb fillets which he served with roasted red pepper and, of course, the sweet potato. The lamb was stuffed with cous-cous which had been flavoured with garlic, spring onions, nutmeg, chicken stock, pine nuts, mint and parsley. It was sealed on the hob after being filled with the cous-cous and then roasted in the oven for about twenty minutes.
It was a brilliantly thought out dish which combined the sweetness of the lamb with the sweet potato and the aromatic and nutty cous-cous. If this is the result when I leave Stephen to his own devices in the kitchen then I think I should go out more often and leave him to cook 🙂
Squid, Scallop, Salmon and Prawn Stir-Fry…with Oysters
We’d vaguely planned a fish stir-fry for dinner this evening and Stephen volunteered to go shopping for the ingredients. I’d imagined some kind of white fish or possibly some salmon but he came home with a big bag from the fishmonger which included all of the above.
He sauteed off the fish first before removing it to a plate and cooking the vegetables, the fish was then returned to the pan and a mixture of fish stock, oyster sauce and soy was added before the whole thing was steamed for a few minutes. The resulting dish was tasty but lacked any sort of strong flavour. We’d used a chilli from a plant we have growing in the kitchen which was barely recognisable in the end product; clearly meant just for decoration.
The big bag of fish also included two oysters which Stephen had bought as a starter (how decadent for a Tuesday!). We tried to open them but failed miserably so decided to steam them to see if that made the opening process easier; it did and they were really tasty and completely different to the usual “raw” oyster – none of the sliminess that is often associated with oysters but instead a delicately flavoured and moist piece of fish.
Beef Casserole – take two
I can be pretty fickle when it comes to food – quite often I find something I love and I want to eat it all the time, other times I might think something is brilliant but eat it once and then not want to eat it again. Tonight was one of those nights. There was plenty of leftover casserole for dinner this evening which should have been great because it’s Monday and I always find it difficult to get excited about cooking by the time I’ve got over the shock of going back to work following the weekend. Stephen is out so it solves the cooking-for-one issue and the casserole was good. Did I want to eat it though? Nope.
I didn’t give myself a choice though, I just got on with heating it up and congratulating myself on how mature I was being when something struck me; if I spooned the casserole into a dish and smothered it with the leftover potato and parsnip mash then it would be transformed into a completely new dish and I would be fooled.
And fooled I was! It tastes exactly the same as it did yesterday really (the flavours have intensified as you’d imagine) because, really, it is the same as yesterday but in my little head I’d created a whole new and very imaginative Shepherd’s/Cottage pie type-thing – aren’t I clever 🙂
As an aside, leftover mash = good, leftover parsnip and potato mash = not good, in fact more than a little sweet and strange tasting 🙁
Beef Casserole
Strangely, on Saturday Kitchen yesterday morning, they cooked some Thai food (a Phad Thai with approximately a thousand scallops… mmmmm!) and also beef casserole. This fitted in rather well with our plans for the weekend, as we had been planning Thai food last night and beef casserole today. Spooky really. Anyway, we took it as a sign that we were on the right path and continued with our plans.
Kerri has been planning to perfect versions of chicken, beef and sausage casseroles this year. We’ve already had a really good chicken casserole, so beef was the next in line. I was either studying or having my hair cut for most of the day, so Kerri did most of the preparation for this and it turned out really well. Cooked in the oven for over four hours and served with mashed potato, it was excellent. Great depth of flavour and slightly gooey in texture.
Beef Casserole – Serves Four
1lb stewing beef
Flour
1 packet lardons
3 medium shallots, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 stick celery, finely chopped
250ml red wine
500ml beef stock
Small tin of chopped tomatoes
Bay
Thyme
Carrots
Mushrooms
S&P
Coat beef in seasoned flour and brown in flameproof casserole.
Remove beef from heat.
Saute shallots, lardons, garlic and celery until brown.
Return beef to casserole dish.
Add a tablespoon of flour and cook out.
Add wine and cook until alcohol has burnt off.
Add stock, tomatoes, s&p, bay, thyme, carrots and mushrooms.
Bring to the boil then transfer to the oven and cook for four hours.
Serve.
Thai Banquet
We’d been planning to go to Oriental City last night and buy ingredients for a Thai banquet; we didn’t end up going but managed to scavenge enough ingredients from the shops of Fulham to put it together anyway.
First up were prawn crackers. Friends of ours had actually bought these for us from Oriental City a couple of weeks ago. They arrive raw in a bag and need to be deep fried. They puff up surprisingly quickly when they are cooked and it’s a challenge to remove them from the oil quickly enough before they start burning. I wasn’t that quick to begin with, but the last few batches turned out better.
After that, we cooked deep fried squid with garlic. If you’re committed to wasting a load of oil deep frying one thing, you might as well do two. We had a rather large squid from our fishmonger and chopped it up into rings and legs, marinated it in Thai fish sauce then mixed it up with a paste made from garlic and deep fried it. The squid was really good; some was cooked better than others though but it all tasted good.
For main course, we cooked a dish that is actually Cambodian – a Khmer dish with chicken and loads of lemongrass and garlic and cooked in coconut milk. It was intensely flavoured but there was something in it that was a bit astringent; possibly the inexpertly minced lime peel which we’ll need to sort out next time. Served with some jasmine rice.
In the background of the chicken picture are a half bottle of Alsace riesling which went really brilliantly with the food and also a bottle of South African chenin blanc which went well too but was not as good a match as the riesling.
Chelsea Market
I went to Chelsea Market today for the first time despite living just down the road. Stephen and I are really spoilt by having a great deli, butcher and fishmonger just around the corner from us so we don’t tend to venture out to specialist shops and markets much anymore as we seem to be able to get everything locally. I’m really glad I made the journey today though because the market was really interesting and Partridges was just brilliant.
I didn’t buy much but enjoyed wandering around and had a great salmon bagel at Pattiserie Valerie.
Sake-Steamed Sea Bass with Ginger
After recent attempts at Japanese cooking, we tried again. This time, we tried sake-steamed sea bass with ginger. I’ve been getting used to going to our fishmonger, buying a whole fish and proudly heading home with it as if I’d caught it myself, then barbecuing or roasting it whole. I bought a whole sea bass again, and when I got home realised it needed to be filleted. So I attempted filleting it and did a passable job, but it took ages; clearly a reasonable excuse to buy a proper filleting knife.
Anyway, once it was filleted it needed to be steamed. We steamed it over a mixture of sake, fish stock (the recipe called for clam juice but we didn’t have any), ginger and garlic. Before steaming the fish, we seasoned it with salt and pepper and sprinkled it with chopped spring onions and soy sauce.
It was done in five minutes and we served it with rice and greens. It turned out rather well; just cooked to the point of being done and lightly flavoured with all the aromatics in the steamer yet still robust enough to stand up to being drizzled with more soy sauce. Definitely something to try again.
PS With this we drank an Australian verdelho which went well with the fishy, savoury flavours.
Macaroni Cheese
I’ve never had macaroni cheese before so thought it would be interesting to give it a go given that I love pasta and I love cheese. We used a Nigel Slater recipe from Kitchen Diaries (I love this book but haven’t cooked from it before) that included Dijon and wholegrain mustard and had a breadcrumb topping. I enjoyed it but not as much as I thought it would. Stephen said the breadcrumbs were unnecessary so if we do it again we’ll leave those out. I’m not sure about the Dijon either as it gave the dish a slightly vinegary taste.
