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.
Barbecued Rose Veal with Salmoriglio
We haven’t done nearly enough barbecuing this year so, as we had a little more time than normal tonight, Stephen rolled out the Weber and got busy with some veal chops.
While we were away our herbs flourished and we’re now more than a little over-run with tasty, green stuff. This Valentine Warner recipe was ideal for our predicament and also used rose veal which we both like but don’t eat nearly enough of. Stephen was able to find some locally and get it marinading for a decent amount of time which, combined with the herby-dressing, led to some really tasty meat. It was cheap too, around £7 for two large chops which, had they been beef would have probably been twice that.
Smoked Salmon with Dill Potatoes and Summer Vegetables
When I thought this up this morning, I was quite pleased with myself. It used up some fridge-bottom ingredients, was fairly quick, used seasonal vegetables with an interesting dressing to bring it all together. Stephen has just pointed out that actually, it’s just a variation on Tuesday’s dinner and, like everything else we’ve eaten this week, features something plonked on top of something else.
None of that really matters if it tastes good though and, luckily for us, this did. The potatoes were boiled with some dill and added to the briefly-cooked peas and asparagus before being tossed with a honey and mustard dressing. The salmon was then plonked on top.
The dressing did work as I thought it would and brought the whole lot together but the asparagus (not part of the original plan) was the real star. Of course, it’s a traditional pairing for smoked salmon but the sweetness of the honey really brought out the grassiness of the asparagus.
We don’t currently have any plans for tomorrow night’s dinner but perhaps I’ll try to think of a different way to present it, even if it does turn out to be just another something on top of something else.
Halloumi with Barley Cous Cous
Back to work today and with nothing planned for dinner, we improvised with some halloumi and some barley cous-cous that’s been hanging around in the cupboard for a while. We were both too tired to really think this through properly, a last minute dash for harissa proved fruitless so we added some of last night’s leftover salsa-verde to loosen the tabbouleh style cous-cous.
It worked well but could have done with something creamier like hummus to bring everything together as the end result was a little too dry. The barley cous-cous had an interesting texture, chewier and with more bite than ordinary cous-cous but not as toothy as regular barley. I can see it working well with something like chicken tagine or just with some preserved lemons added – of course, we have a jar of those in the fridge but it was far too late by the time I remembered them.
Summer Roast Chicken
As is now traditional, whenever we arrive home from a holiday, we cook roast chicken. It’s a comforting dish and one we always look forward to, particularly when we’ve been away and eating unusual foods.
Neither of us particularly wanted roast potatoes – it was hot and we had eaten a lot of bad foods while we were in Sweden so I opted for a salady dish of broad beans and peas with spring onions. I made a loose salsa-verde to dress the whole lot too.
This was just exactly what we needed, a good balance between comforting and interesting. The chicken looked after itself while I got on with the suitcases full of washing and I got a well-earned rest in the garden while I shelled the beans and peas.
The chicken would have been better shredded and added to the salad instead of sliced on top but it didn’t matter too much, we were both so grateful for something other than herring (well, I was) and Daim ice-creams (Stephen).
Pelikan Restaurant – Stockholm, Sweden
While we were staying with friends in Stockholm, we asked then to recommend a typically Swedish restaurant for dinner and they chose Pelikan. After a short ride on the Tunnelbana, we arrived outside an old builidng (one of the oldest in this part of town).
The dining room seemed rather dark inside, and it has brightened up a bit in the pictures thankfully so that you can see things. We were seated at a table near the window, which was good because it allowed us to read the menus and study the interior to some degree. The room had very high ceilings and the walls were adorned with old paintings. The restaurant was half full in a rather curious way – one side was completely full and the other side was completely empty. This is obviously the empty half:
The waiter presented us with a selection of breads and a short menu from which to select from. We were lucky enough to be seated next to a table of people who were just finishing their starters and shortly afterwards, just starting their main courses, so we got to see a selection of dishes before ordering.
Seeing “SOS” on the menu as a starter, I immediately had to choose that as a starter since I had read about it being very Swedish. SOS stands for Smör, Öst och Sill, which means Butter, Cheese and Herring. A lot of traditional Swedish food is all about marinated herring, and as Kerri pointed out in a previous post, I love it. In the end three of us chose SOS as a starter and it was only Kerri who decided to branch out, opting for crayfish.
Being on a roll with fish, I ordered pike perch for the main course, as did Jan. The girls didn’t go for a second round of fishy goodness – Kerri chose veal and Lucy chose cheese pie which looked a bit like a very deep quiche.
Starters arrived first of course:
The SOS was really good, particularly the herring marinated in the garlic and chive sauce. There were two other types of herring, marinated in a butter sauce with some dill on top, and a traditional marinade with red onion. One of the cheeses contained carraway seeds, which was really good too. It did seem odd to most of us eat a slice of cheese with marinated herring, but it did go together well. I figured it was just a bit like eating cream cheese with salmon. More on fish and cheese to come though. Kerri’s crayfish starter was good too, with cumin in the sauce.
After we had finished these, our main courses arrived:
As I promised, there would be some more cheese-on-fish action. This time it was camembert on grilled pike perch. The pike perch was delicious, as was the baked camembert if eaten in small amounts. But not really together and not really a whole camembert at once. The roasted until almost dried beetroot bits were good too. Strangely enough, both Jan and I left half of our cheese behind.
Kerri’s veal was delicious, meaty and pink inside. Again though, the aquavit butter came in rather too large a portion, but it did complement the veal rather well. Lucy’s cheese pie was good too. We were rather too full after that to order dessert, so after paying we wandered outside and after ten minutes or so, found ourselves in a bar on a boat. Which was expensive (a common problem in Swedish bars) but a brilliant place to while away the evening.
Pelikan
Blekingegatan 40
116 62 Stockholm
Sweden
http://www.pelikan.se/
