Pasta with Prawns and Pea Pesto
We have been enjoying fresh peas lately and out of some enthusiasm, I picked up two bags instead of one because… well just because. Kerri had had some plans for peas in combination with broad beans, but we couldn’t find any broad beans so the plans changed and we ended up making a mighty mound of pea pesto with all the peas. The quantities are very approximate, but it went something like this:
Pod two bags of fresh peas and boil / steam the peas until just cooked. Roast a small bag of pine nuts until golden brown. Bash the nuts with a mortar and pestle, along with half a clove of sliced garlic. Pick about half the leaves off a largish basil plant. Grate three quarters of a small block of parmesan.
Put the peas and basil into a food processor and process until fairly smooth, drizzling in olive oil as you go. We didn’t add that much oil as we wanted it to be fairly healthy (negated somewhat by all the cheese and nuts, but at least we tried) and it was a lot firmer than real pesto would be. Put the pea and basil paste into a saucepan and add the nuts and grated cheese. Stir well and heat very slightly just enough to melt the cheese. Add plenty of pepper and salt if required.
Because of all the pea-pesto-making, we forgot to cook the prawns until the last minute. Which was fine, because they turned out well – just fried them quickly with a little garlic. The combination was very good, with the roasted nut flavours coming through well and combining with the fresh pea and basil. The sweet garlickiness of the prawns balanced it beautifully.
Mushroom Stroganoff
A typical conversation in our house at the moment goes something like this:
Stephen: “We haven’t decided on dinner for tomorrow night have we?”
Me: “No, I was just wondering about that”
Stephen: “What do you feel like having?”
Me: “Dunno”
Stephen: “What about some fish or something Mexican?”
Me: “I guess. What about (insert random ingredient) instead?”
Stephen: “OK, what shall we have with it?”
Me: “Dunno”
And then poor Stephen is left wandering around the supermarket after work trying to think of something we might both like that includes the very specific vegetable or piece of meat I’ve requested. Which is a very long winded way of saying that I’m not feeling very creative when it comes to food lately and I’m also being very indecisive and Stephen is being very patient. That’s how we came to eat mushroom stroganoff earlier this week, after I’d decided that I fancied mushrooms.
As well as putting up with my random requests, Stephen has also been doing most of the cooking lately since he has been getting home earlier than me. Consequently, I’m not really sure how he made this but I do know it was based on this recipe. I could ask him I suppose but I’m about to hit him with my request for something with radishes for tomorrow night’s dinner and I think I might be pushing my luck.
Barbecued Trout with Broad Beans, Peas and New Potatoes
We’ve been so busy lately that although we have been doing some cooking, we haven’t found the time to blog about it. What we have been cooking has mostly been quick and easy and not all that interesting which makes things difficult to write about. I’d completely forgotten about this until I found the picture while clearing out the camera and remembered that we ate it almost two weeks ago.
Stephen picked up some trout on his way home from work and since the weather was so good, we stuffed it full of herbs and cooked it on the barbecue. I remember it being good but since it was so long ago, I can’t remember much more than that. The picture does remind me that I enjoyed the impromptu barbecue and the al-fresco eating though and it’s these reminders that I enjoy when I look back through old posts so that’s why I’ve written this up. Hopefully soon things will quieten down and we’ll have more time for both cooking and blogging.
Mushroom Burgers
These started life as mushroom pizzas but when it came to it, we realised they just weren’t going to be filling enough so we added some toasted ciabatta and they became mushroom burgers. It seemed like a reasonably good idea when we came up with it but I wasn’t all that excited about it when it came to cooking time. As it turned out though, these were brilliant.
The mushrooms had a really good, earthy flavour about them and they actually tasted like mushrooms rather than just being watery and a bit dull. The filling of salami, artichokes and cheese complimented that earthiness and, for something so quick and easy, they made a really tasty dinner. Obviously not as good as real burgers but a pretty good alternative.
Sill and Crackerbread
After visiting Sweden and eating loads of sill (marinated herring), we popped into a Swedish cafe and shop in London last weekend (Scandinavian Kitchen) and bought some more of it.
We bought one picked in a dill marinade and our plan was also to buy a plain one and do our own marinade for it. However, we got this slightly wrong and instead of getting a plain one, we got another flavoured one. I went ahead and attempted to marinate it anyway – in a bit of mayonnaise with some garlic and chives.
When it came to eating it this evening, the dill one was of course as expected, but the “home made” one was a strange mixture of its original flavour and the garlic and chive, so not that successful. Served with some sliced tomato, cucumber and pickle, on some cracker bread. Later I added a dash of cream cheese and mustard too. Not quite as planned, but still delicious.
Green Bean Spaghetti with Crab
Initially, this was going to be just green beans, taking the place of the spaghetti, for a healthy, mid-week meal. I was far too hungry for just a little bit of fish and some vegetables today though so added some spaghetti in at the last minute. As a light lunch or starter it would have been fine without the pasta but it definitely needed the extra carbs to turn it into a proper meal.
Essentially, it’s just crab spaghetti with some beans and peas added to it but the long strands of runner beans were fun to twirl onto the fork with the spaghetti and it was a good way to eat some tasty, summer vegetables without the pasta being the main event.
Sadly, rather than tame my pasta craving, I seem to have stoked it even more so you can expect a reverse of this in the next few days: bowls stuffed full of pasta, plenty of rich sauce and just a few token vegetables for a nod to summer.
Barbecued Steak Wraps
After not barbecuing very much so far this year, we seem to have gone a long way to rectifying things this weekend. The first weekend that arrives after a holiday is always a busy one and we didn’t have much time to think about what we were going to eat, steak on the barbecue takes very little effort and always provides good results so that’s we decided on for this evening.
We had some gardening to do this afternoon and a healthy prune of our herb bushes was much needed. It provided us with a bumper crop of herby green stuff which we put to good use when cooking our dinner. Some of the herbs went on to the fire to sizzle and flavour the steak as it cooked and the rest went into the blender with some oil, lemon juice and seasoning to make a tasty dressing for the cooked meat.
I sliced my steak up, spread some of the herby sauce on to a wrap and then loaded it up with steak and lettuce. A little salad and some more dressing on the side and we had ourselves a quick and very tasty dinner.
World Cup Cuisine – The Highlights
So, apart from cheating today and buying beer and cheese to represent Holland, we did a pretty good job of exploring some new cuisnes and finding some new favourite dishes.
We started with South Africa and cooked every Saffer’s favourite, the milk tart. I ate a lot of this while I was there but have never thought to cook it myself. It’s really just a baked custard and is very easy to make yet still impessive enough to serve to guests. We took it to a barbecue and it was well received. Definitely one for the make-again-soon list.
There was a lot of steak, all of which was good, as steak generally is. Stephen’s improvisation with the steel strip from the hardware shop in place of a long skewer was genius though. I’m not sure if we’ll employ that technique again but it made a good talking point and it might be useful in the future if we ever get a bigger barbecue.
Other highlights were the Japanese clams, just like moules marinere but with Japanese flavourings and the minestrone soup for Italy. I’ve been meaning to make that for years but never got round to it, this gave me the push I needed and has become a real favourite – we’re having it for lunches this week. The Greek stiffado was another revelation, for it’s sheer simplicity and big flavour delivery. Probably more suited to the colder weather but it’s something to look forward to in the winter.
The Spanish entry gave us a good excuse to visit a local restaurant instead of just ordering from foodora again and meant we found a new favourite place to eat tapas. Although we didn’t actually cook anything ourselves, this was still a good discovery which was part of the point of the exercise.
Now it’s over, I feel a bit lost. While it was a little difficult eating tastless Ghanian stew while my favourite peas and broad beans where appearing, it gave us a good focus to our meal planning and forced us to try dishes we weren’t familiar with. A success I would say, something many people would have liked to say about Fabio’s contribution to this year’s world cup.
World Cup Final
And our final post. After England’s dismal performance and our holiday to Sweden, we weren’t sure whether we would get round to posting a final country. We had however set out to cook the food of roughly half the countries and, this final post makes for 16 which is exactly half.
While I was keen on the evenness of cooking a Dutch dish today, time just didn’t allow for it. Instead, Stephen improvised (or cheated) with some beer and cheese. Which was useful actually since we were out of both beer and cheese.
I also bought some Spanish cava to drink while watching the game. While I’m a big fan of Grolsch (less so Heineken and edam cheese), I’m looking forward to the wine more than the beer.
So, no real expoloration of the country’s cuisine today but a reasonable way to round off the series.
Barbecued Sausages
We had lots of errands to run today and, when we were finally finished, we realised we hadn’t thought much about dinner. We’d discussed going out to eat but when it came to it, we were too hot and tired so decided to head home and barbecue something instead.
Earlier this morning, I popped into the new Union Market food shop that has opened near to us. It’s a beautiful shop, on the site of the old Walhmam Green tube station near Fulham Broadway. It used to be a TGI Friday’s and thankfully, someone had the good sense to tear it down and replace it with this brilliant new place.
While I was there, I tasted some really good sausages so, after the barbecue plan was formed, we stopped off to pick some up. They didn’t have any soft rolls or baguettes left so we grabbed the last packet of wraps to, well, wrap our sausages in. Some fried onions, barbecued peppers and aubergines later and we had ourselves a somewhat fusion but very fine dinner.
