Fishcakes
We made these fishcakes on Sunday and froze them; 20 minutes in the oven when we got home tonight and they were done.
We roasted the salmon in the oven with some garlic and baked a large potato. Once cooked, flake the salmon and mash the potatoes with butter and seasoning, combine with some briefly steamed spinach, parsley and season again if needed. Form into cake shapes and freeze…or cook, obviously.
We served these with steamed vegetables and some horseradish. The horseradish would have worked well stirred into the mashed potatoes before the cakes were formed too.
These are definitely the best fishcakes we’ve ever made and we think it’s probably because we roasted the salmon instead of poaching it in milk. It could also be because we baked the potato instead of steaming it – I’ve read a lot about how this makes the best mashed potato but I haven’t tasted it on it’s own (well, I did “test” the potato while I was making the cakes) so am not sure about that yet. I guess we’ll have to have mashed potatoes again soon 🙂
Barbecued Steak
Kerri suggested that as the weather was good today, we should barbecue this evening. A good idea it was too, but I think the weather disagreed with us and it started clouding over. It was still good enough to barbecue when the time came though.
We’re on a health kick at the moment and I know barbecue doesn’t sound like the healthiest option, but we kept it simple: steak and salad and half a corn cob each. We were famished and ended up steaming the corn while the barbecue heated up and ate it as a starter. It didn’t have that delicious barbecue-corn flavour, but it was tasty anyway and we were too hungry to care.
Then came the steak. A couple of sirloin steaks on the barbecue for a few minutes on each side. The edge of one was looking rather underdone after this so I put them back on for a few more minutes and ended up overcooking them a bit, but it didn’t matter much as they were still really tender and tasty. The steaks were from Marks and Spencer; usually I don’t buy much in the way of food there because so much of it is packaged in ways that irritate me, but as it turns out their steaks were particularly good.
We’re both dying for a glass of wine now after all of that, but that’s not compliant with the health regime sadly.
Stir Fried Vegetables with Roasted Salmon
Does this look familiar at all? If it does it’ll be because this is basically the same as last night’s dinner, except with salmon instead of chicken. I roasted the salmon in the oven with some garlic, chilli and ginger and stir fried the vegetables seperately in the same sauce of oyster sauce, soy sauce and rice wine vinegar. I used more oyster and soy too.
The other difference is I cooked this myself whereas Stephen normally does the stir frying. This is actually the first time I’ve stir fried anything and I think I did ok. My onions were probably overcooked and things may have gone a bit too brown but the vegetables stayed crunchy and it tasted good.
G
Stir Fried Chicken
It’s another healthy eating week for us, we’re going on holiday on Friday and expect to be eating and drinking too much so this is a sort of pre-emptive strike.
We decided on a carb-light dinner of stir fried chicken which was really tasty, and quick too which is key…if we don’t eat soon after we get home then we find ourselves picking at things before we sit down to eat.
Chicken, onions, garlic, ginger, mange-tout, baby corn, red pepper, mushrooms, purple brocolli and beansprouts were the basis; with a sauce of soy sauce, rice wine and oyster sauce thrown over at the end before cooking for a few more minutes.
Carb light, but probably improved with just a small portion of rice to soak up the tasty juices.
Barbecue
I think summer has arrived. I could be wrong but in the interests of making the most of it while it lasts, Stephen and I barbecued yesterday. We’d been talking to a friend on Friday night about how good barbecued mackerel is so decided to have that, along with some bream.
We also had corn, samphire, baked potatoes (with garlic butter), salad, harissa roasted tomatoes and some interesting wine. It was all really good, the samphire obviously went well with the fish but the harissa roasted tomatoes went briliiantly too. I’m not a big fan of the tomato but could happily eat loads of these.
Here are some of the more interesting pictures we took:
Scallops and Samphire
Yesterday we visited our local farmer’s market and were lucky enough to find samphire. We’ve heard a lot about it recently but haven’t seen it anywhere so we were both really excited to find it at the market.
Online recipes were pretty scarce, I found a few risottos but not much else apart from a couple of fish dishes. I knew that we would be going out for lunch today and wouldn’t want a big dinner so decided to pair it with some scallops, broad beans and salad; working on the basis that scallops go well with chorizo and the samphire tasted quite salty.
We sauteed the samphire with some shallots and steamed the broad beans. The scallops were fried quickly with some salt and pepper. Once assembled, a squeeze of lemon juice and some good Spanish olive oil finished the dish. It was good but some bacon or pancetta would have added something extra.
Marmite on Toast
Stephen is out tonight so I have spent most of the day wondering whether to cook something for myself or just have Marmite toast. I decided that I would attempt to make an interesting pasta sauce with the chorizo that’s been lurking in the fridge and some mushrooms I bought on the way home. Interesting is one word for it, another might be inedible.
So, in the end the Marmite toast won out. I should have just done that in the first place and saved myself the effort of cleaning up.
Brownish-Green Thai Curry
While cooking Thai green curry this evening, I was wondering how to make it slightly differently because we have had it quite a few times over the past few months. While pondering this, I was not really paying attention and burnt the chicken slightly. Which I’m claiming makes it brownish-green curry rather than green curry; hence slightly different 🙂
We had some curry paste in the fridge from last time we’d made it, but we remembered that as not being quite hot enough, so we added another couple of chillis to it. We added our usual vegetables – baby corn, mange tout and pea aubergines. It was really good and we ate it all, despite initial decisions not to do so.
Spaghetti with Roasted Peppers and Chorizo
I think this has the potential to be quite good, but it needs some refinement. I oven roasted the peppers and then added them to some softened onions, garlic and chorizo. Next I added some basil, s&p and passata and reduced the sauce before adding a dash of worcester sauce and mixing it through some spaghetti.
It was quite sweet, partly from the roasted peppers but partly because my tomato sauce is always quite sweet. I think maybe next time I could add some chilli in the beginning or some vegetable stock with the tomatoes. Creme fraiche at the end may work to lighten it slightly too.
Marinated Tuna and Alaskan Spider Crab
Tonight we had marinated tuna; it’s ages since I remember cooking tuna. We marinated two tuna steaks in some oil, soy sauce and lime juice with some chopped garlic, chilli and lemongrass. We’d planned to marinate it for one hour but due to some changes of plan it ended up being in it for three hours. I was worried that it might have been too long, but the result was really good: deep flavours and a slight caramelised sweetness on the outside of the tuna. Served with some jasmine rice and steamed leaves (I failed to find pak choi, so just used some lettuce which was okay but not brilliant).
As a quick starter we’d had two legs of Alaskan spider crab. The legs were huge and contained enough meat to cover two whole slices of toast. We dressed it lightly in olive oil, salt and pepper and a light squeeze of lemon, then ate it with triangles of the aforementioned toast. Yummy.
