Prawns in Romesco Sauce with Cabbage

At the recent opening of Union Market, I spent some time talking to Simon of Olives Et Al who provide the olives, artichokes, anchovies, etc. There were plenty of samples to taste and liking them so much, I’ve been buying them most weeks since. I love olives but am often disappointed with the supermarket and deli offerings which are often soft and tasting only of the herbs they’re seasoned with. Simon’s olives actually tasted like olives and were firm and meaty in texture.

Simon kindly offered to send me some samples of some of their other products and a couple of weeks later, a box full of stuff arrived on my doorstep.

One of the jars that caught my attention straight away was the romesco sauce. We’ve made this before and enjoyed it with fish, I even tried it with pasta which wasn’t a huge success since my version was rather dry but I still think it has potential. The Olives Et Al version was much wetter than the sauce Stephen and I made and it looked like it would work well with some rice to soak up all the flavours. Remembering the fish from last time, we also added some prawns and some cabbage, peppers, onions and tomatoes that were hanging around in the fridge. Another dollop of the romesco sauce and we had a quick and easy, Spanish style dish.

I’m not usually a big fan of ready-made sauces but this was very convenient and worked well with the rice. The sauce itself had a good flavour without overpowering the delicate prawns and had plenty of tasty, crunchy nuts. While our own version didn’t work particularly well with pasta, I think this one would do because it had an oilier texture. There’s half a jar left so that may well make an appearance soon.

Prawns with Romesco Sauce
Serves Two

1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 green pepper, sliced
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Splash white wine
2 tablespoons romesco sauce
1/2 tin tomatoes
1/2 savoy cabbage, finely shredded
Prawns

Start by softening the onion and garlic in some oil. Add the green pepper and allow this to soften too.

Deglaze the pan with a large splash of white wine and allow this to cook for a couple of minutes so that the alcohol burns off.

Next, add the paprika and the romesco sauce, along with the tomatoes and stir. Add the cabbage and allow this to almost cook through, about five minutes. Finally, add the prawns and cook for 3-4 minutes. Serve with rice and more romesco sauce.

Mexican Fish and Black Bean Wraps

I always knew it was going to be challenging to get this to look attractive, I didn’t think the picture would come out quite as badly as this though. It’s a truth universally acknowledged by all food bloggers (well, Stephen and I at least) that the quality of the picture often bears little relation to the quality of the dish itself and this definitely proves the point since these were really very good.

We used our usual refried bean recipe and added some baked fish, much like we did here. The beans caught slightly while they were cooking but rather than ruin the flavour, the smokiness seemed to improve things. I wouldn’t recommend intentional burning but you could attempt to replicate that flavour with something smoky like paprika.

Chicken in Fried Onion Sauce with Mustard and Fennel Cauliflower

It’s been so long that I’m not sure anyone is still reading, if you are then thanks for being so patient while we’ve been off enjoying ourselves. The Summer has been brilliant fun but not much of it has been spent in the kitchen. We have of course been eating and, as is now second nature, photographing our food but we’ve been sticking to old favourites and not quite getting round to writing about them. There’s quite a backlog to get through and I wondered about giving up altogether but I can’t imagine a life without Dinner Diary so we’re back. I suspect things will change slightly since although we don’t have quite so much planned for Autumn, we’re still much busier than we have been in the past but, for now, we’re going to try and catch up and then see what happens after that.

I was going to start yesterday but we had roast chicken for lunch which is probably the dish we eat most often and neither of us could get excited about photographing or writing about that. Although we’ve cooked this before, we used the leftover chicken from yesterday instead of the raw chicken in the recipe and it worked well. Curry is one of my favourite ways to use up leftovers and this is a quick recipe that does just that, the dark browned onions add a depth of flavour that suggest a longer cooking time and the tomatoes and coriander lend fragrant notes which are just right for the last of the warmer weather.

To go alongside the leftovers, Stephen suggested the cauliflower dish which meant things took a little longer but it was a good way to turn something we’ve eaten before into a new and more interesting dish.

Cauliflower with Fennel and Mustard Seeds from Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery
Serves Two

1 cauliflower
Oil
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 tablespoon black mustard seeds
1/2 tablespoon garlic, chopped
1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons water

Cut the cauliflower into florets and soak for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil and then add the fennel and mustard seeds. As they start to pop, add the garlic and cook until light brown.

Add the turmeric and cayenne pepper, stir and then add the cauliflower, salt and water. Stir and cook on a medium heat for 6-7 minutes.

Steak and Pickled Mushrooms

Kerri was out tonight so it was up to me to cook my own dinner and I found that I was craving STEAK. But in an attempt to be reasonable and not over-indulge after last week’s continual over-indulgence, I bought a smallish steak. Which meant that I over-cooked it while being distracted by the smoke alarm.

Served with a baked potato which was good and some pickled mushrooms that we saw being cooked on Saturday Kitchen this morning. They were good too. Just the steak was a bit overdone.

I can’t remember the exact recipe for the mushrooms (it will be online somewhere) but I just made it up as I went along and it was something like this:
Slice some button or small chestnut mushrooms. Fry these in a little olive oil with some thyme sprigs. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in a splash or three of sherry vinegar and keep cooking until the vinegar has almost evaporated. Then turn off the heat and they are finished. On TV they added some more oil at this point and used them as a dressing, but I didn’t.

Tom Yum Goong

While searching to see if I had already posted this recipe, I came across this post, the opening line of which reads “The plan was for something light and spicy to counteract the amount of heavy food we’ve eaten over the last few days”. Not that we’re creatures of habit or anything but that was the exact reason we came to be eating this on Friday, the night we got home from a week of heavy food in Devon.

Habit or not, this dish is perfect for when you feel in need of something fresh and restorative and is also great if you’re feeling like you might be coming down with a cold, as I did on Friday. I felt fine on Saturday and while I don’t think this is magic soup or anything, there’s definitely something to be said for eating plenty of chilli if you’re feeling less than brilliant.

We had a stir-fried noodle dish with this too, recipe to follow.

A Week in Devon

We spent last week in Devon, staying near Totnes which Wikipedia describes in the following way “It has a sizeable alternative and “New Age” community, and is known as a place where one can live a bohemian lifestyle.” While I’m not sure bohemian is exactly the right way to describe us, we certainly enjoyed a week that was very different to the weeks we usually experience in London.

Along with 13 of our friends, we stayed in a large house to take part in the annual Superstars tournament, based on the popular eighties television show. We spent the week playing tennis, darts, pool, table tennis, croquet, kubb, giant Jenga, swimming and of course, eating.

Totnes has a huge amount of good, local produce to choose from and we were spoilt for choice when it came to meat, cheese and fish: some hundred mackerel were caught by the group who went off fishing for the day, some of those were dispatched elsewhere but plenty were barbecued or turned into sushi.

Luckily, most of us are interested in food and the cooking of it and we took it in turns to cook for the group each night. Stephen and I cooked our favourite slow roast shoulder of lamb which is perfect for a large group and can easily be left in a low oven while the serious business of competing in the petanque competition took place.

We ate some brilliant local pork, steak and sausages too, as well as a wonderful rabbit casserole cooked with plenty of local cider. Last year, I think I managed to photograph every meal but this year I’ve missed a few. Apologies to our friends who were hoping to see their culinary creations live on the internets but we were clearly too busy enjoying ouselves.

Little Chef, Popham

We spent last week in Devon and, on the way there, made a small detour to the Little Chef in Popham. I can’t remember if I’ve ever eaten at a Little Chef before, when I was small we always used to go to the Happy Eater (which I loved for it’s badges and lollipops) if we were on the way to somewhere but, having watched the Heston Blummenthal programme last year in which he attempted to re-brand the ailing chain, we thought we’d give it a go.

It wasn’t too bad actually. My scampi was a huge portion but well cooked without too much batter and fresh, crunchy fries. Stephen’s beef suet pudding had lots of meat in it which he said had a decent flavour but he wasn’t a fan of the mushy pea gravy which looked pretty unpleasant to me. The salad that accompanied my scampi (the only sign of anything remotely healthy on the entire menu) was limp and old and the mashed potatoes were tasteless and over-processed. We definitely ordered better than the table next to us though who had opted for the hamburgers which were of the rubbery, hockey-puck variety.

Just like on the TV show, the service was comically bad with lots of sour faces and people shuffling around miserably just like on the TV show. The restaurant itself was really showing the signs of wear and tear and was in desperate need of cleaning but it didn’t look like anyone was particularly inclined to do so. I don’t think I’d bother to go back but it was better than the McDonald’s or Burger King you usually find at a service station.

Slow Simmered Bean Soup with Mint and Pasilla Chile

This was good, really good but that’s all I can remember about it. One of the problems with food blogging (for me at least) is that often, once I’ve committed my thoughts and feelings about a dish to the page and hit submit is that I tend to forget the finer details, safe in the knowledge that I can refer back to the post. That only works if I write the post soon after I’ve eaten the dish and of course I didn’t with this and my brain is a little tired from all the summer holiday fun I’ve been having.

I can remember is that the combination of coriander and mint was unusual and a little challenging to begin with but really good after the first couple of mouthfuls. It tasted pretty good without the mint too so if that’s not your thing then you can skip it and still end up with a tasty bowl of soup. The chilli oil was brilliant and lifted the already-good soup into something brilliant. I think this would work with lots of different dishes, particularly soups but also just added to fish or chicken.

Slow Simmered Bean Soup with Mint and Pasilla Chile
Serves Two

1 cup beans
2 cups chicken stock
2 garlic cloves
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 tin tomatoes
2 dried chillies (I used ancho, the book specified pasilla), stemmed and seeded
Olive oil
1/2 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon oregano
Salt
Handful coriander, chopped
Handful mint, chopped
Cheese, to garnish

Simmer the beans in the chicken stock for an hour or until cooked.

While the beans are simmering, roast the garlic in a dry pan, turning occasionally until blackened and soft – about 15 minutes. Once cool, remove the skins and finely chop.

Fry the onions until medium brown and soft – about 7 minutes.

Add the garlic, onion and tomatoes to the beans and simmer for about 30 minutes until the beans have softened right down.

While the soup is simmering, cut the chillies into 1/8 inch slices. Heat the oil over a medium heat, add chillies and the oregano and stir for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add the vinegar, 1.5 tablespoons of water and a little salt. Leave to stand for half an hour, stirring occasionally.

Just before serving, add some water to the beans to bring the soup to the consistency of a medium-thick bean soup. Stir in the coriander and mint, tast and season with salt. Ladle into bowls, top with the chilli oil and cheese and then serve.

This is based on the recipe in Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen but I didn’t follow all his measurements exactly and I used tinned tomatoes instead of fresh.

Stir-Fried Chicken

We went to Brussels for the Bank Holiday weekend (post to follow) and, on our return, resolved to eat healthily to rid our bodies of all the Belgian beer, mussels and chocolate we ate while we were away. Some kind of stir fried chicken is what we usually opt for when we want something that is light, full of vegetables but still filling. Not the most original choice but it works for us. We vary the sauce ingredients depending on whether we’re in the mood for something Chinese or Thai, this one had a Thai tilt to it, close to this recipe.

A Weekend In Brussels

This post is hideously overdue and one of the reasons we got so far behind. Since we were away from home, it’s mostly a post about restaurants and I hate writing about restaurants. I like eating in them but I find it hard to know what to say about food if I haven’t cooked it myself.

It was a spur-of-the-moment trip, booked just a few days before we left for the bank holiday weekend trip so we hadn’t had much time to read up on the city’s culinary opportunities. We spent most of the Eurostar journey from St Pancras reading the guide book and panicking that we’d be forced to survive on beer and chocolate all weekend since we’d been so lax in booking restaurants.

We slept late on the first morning and missed breakfast so when we finally left our hotel, it was that weird time of day where we were too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. We got round this by eating croissants and drinking coffee in a small bar until lunch service opened. I opted for the club sandwich which isn’t typically Belgian at all but was what I fancied and Stephen went for the more traditional carbonnade of beef. Except my club sandwich came with egg which I don’t like so we had to swap. This definitely worked in my favour since the beef was was beautifully tender and fell apart at the slightest nudge of the fork. The flavour of the beer was obvious but not over-powering and while I probably wouldn’t have served this with chips, they were very good chips and worked well at sucking up any leftover sauce. Luckily for Stephen, the portion was huge so he got to eat the dish he had ordered as well as my unwanted sandwich.

We had booked to go on a beer tasting tour in the afternoon and, despite my huge lunch, by the time we arrived at the third bar, I was very glad to see that food was included. The food in question was pottekeis, a traditional Belgian cheese served with a heavy sourdough bread. Pottekeis is a soft cheese made from fromage de Bruxelles (a cow’s milk cheese) and fromage blanc which is a little like cream cheese. It’s said to smell very strongly although I didn’t notice it and is mixed with spring onions. I liked it, it’s not something I could eat a lot of since it has a mouth-drying texture to it and is very tangy but it was interesting to try and worked well with the sweeter Belgian beers.

That night, we ate at Belga Queen which was just down the road from our hotel and on the site of an old bank; the room itself retains many of the original features and is vast with high ceilings and ornate flooring. The food is modern-Belgian in style and uses beer in many of the dishes. I can’t remember what I ordered originally but it wasn’t available so I opted for lobster ravioli instead which was very good. The pasta was well made and there was plenty of lobster meat in a delicate, creamy sauce. Stephen wasn’t so enamoured by his rabbit rilletes, they were largely tasteless and there wasn’t enough bread.

I didn’t particularly enjoy my main course of rack of lamb. The portion was so big and the plate so over-crowded that it was difficult to eat, not helped by the fact that it hadn’t been trimmed very well. The sauce that was well-made and tasty to begin with quickly turned into a congealed mess and, while it worked well with the lamb, it didn’t work with oily beans at all. There were some roasted vegetables on the plate too in another, different sauce which just added to the confusion. The lamb itself was good and I enjoyed the mustard crust but again, another flavour too many.

Stephen’s sole meuniere was much better with a decent sauce and just the right amount of fish. The fries seemed a little out of place to me but they were well cooked nonetheless.

The service was mostly okay but we did feel hurried towards the end so left without ordering dessert, not that I would have had room for any given the huge portion of lamb.

So the next day we weren’t all that hungry and just grabbed some more croissants which we ate while making our way to the markets. We were hoping to find interesting things to take home from the food market but they were largely populated with fruit and vegetable stalls. Lunch was salad from an organic cafe in the centre of town.

Dinner on the Sunday night was much better since we were lucky enough to get a table at Le Pre Sale. This was the place that stood out the most to me in the guide book but there was a note to say we would need to book three weeks in advance. The concierge at the hotel said he didn’t think bookings were necessary at all, particularly not on a Sunday and that we should just turn up for a table. We arrived a few minutes after they opened at 7 and they were almost full. They managed to squeeze us in but told us we had to be out in an hour. Not a long, leisurely dinner then but we were happy to have been seated and knew what we wanted to order anyway: mussels.

There were other things on the menu, mostly fish but also some meat dishes. Most people were there for the same reason as us though and pot after pot of mussels cooked with various different orders streamed out of the kitchen. We got a bit worried when people who had arrive after us were served first but finally ours arrived: a kilo of mussels cooked in white wine for Stephen and the same for me with the addition of cream and garlic.

To say these were the best mussels we’ve ever eaten wouldn’t be an understatement but then it’s not something either of us are experts in. What we did notice, from our table right by the kitchen, was that the mussels were cooked for a lot longer than any recipe we’ve ever seen. Probably about 20 minutes instead of just until the shells are opened. This had the benefit of allowing plenty of flavour to penetrate the shell and didn’t affect the texture of the fish at all. A kilo of mussels is a generous serving but we managed it, along with the ubiquitous but very good fries. We didn’t need the allotted hour in the end but were glad to have it since the restaurant itself was a lovely place to be and full of locals that made for interesting people-watching conversation. It was all quite functional and the service was swift but, in contrast to the previous evening, was much more pleasant and enjoyable.

We had a full day on Monday but, as per the previous day, we weren’t very hungry and lunch was a quick sandwich eaten in a random cafe while we escaped the rain in St Giles and Ixelles. When we arrived at the station to catch our train back to London, I realised that despite being surrounded by waffles all weekend, I hadn’t eaten one. We had some time to spare so found a cafe and I ordered one with chocolate sauce. I liked the waffle itself but the chocolate was far too sweet. Perhaps I should have had cream too, to dilute it a bit.

And that was it, apart from some reasonable Eurostar food and plenty of complementary Champagne on the journey back to London (due to the lateness of our booking meaning that we could only get a “Leisure Select” seat on the way back).

Belga Queen
Rue Fossé aux Loups 32
1000 BRUSSELS

Le Pre Sale
Vlaamsesteenweg 20
1000 Brussel, Belgium

More pictures can be seen here.

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