Swordfish with Salsa Romesco
Kerri recently bought a book by Diana Henry called Crazy Water Pickled Lemons and it has many, many interesting Mediterranean, North Africa and Middle Eastern recipes in it. Kerri went through the book and tagged the pages that had recipes that she thought were worth looking at, and there are now hundreds of little coloured tags sticking out of the book. Okay I exaggerate a bit – there aren’t quite hundreds, but there are certainly a lot of them.
Today we tried swordfish with salsa romesco. We have tried a few stews with romesco before, but then it was cooked into the dish rather than being served as a sauce. It is a Catalan speciality which is very adaptable to serving with different sorts of fish, meat or vegetables.
I was out having my hair cut for a while, and while that was going on, Kerri prepared dinner. When I got home, the salsa romesco was made, new potatoes were steaming, beans were ready to be steamed and the swordfish was oiled and seasoned and ready to be griddled.
We griddled the swordfish for just a couple of minutes on each side and they turned out very well – cooked through but moist and succulent. The romesco sauce was spicer than we remembered the previous versions being, so it was good that we had the fairly robust swordfish to stand up to it. It all turned out rather well and we have a fair amount of the salsa romesco left over, so we’ll be looking for interesting uses for it over the next few days!
This is the recipe… it serves four. We only did swordfish for two but made the four-person serving of salsa, which is why we have so much left over.
Ingredients:
4 swordfish steaks
olive oil
salt and pepper
For the salsa:
1 1/2 dried ancho chillies (or nora chillies – we actually just used dried finger chillies and we couldn’t find either at short notice)
3 garlic cloves
olive oil
1 slice bread
30g shelled hazelnuts
30g blanched almonds
2 plums tomatoes
1 tsp soft, dark brown sugar
1/2 red pepper, de-seeded
1/2 medium red chilli, de-seeded and chopped
1/2 tsp sweet, smoked paprika
12ml sherry vinegar
80ml extra virgin olive oil
Method:
Cover the dried chillies in very hot water and leave them to soak and plump up. Saute two of the garlic cloves in a couple of tablespoons of pol until pale fold and reserve them. Discard the crusts, tear the bread into pieces and saute it in the garlicky olive oil until well coloured. Toast the nuts in a dry pan until just browning. Set these aside.
Halve the tomatoes and sprinkle with the brown sugar. Brush the pepper with a little olive oil, then grill it with the tomatoes until the latter have caramelised on top and the pepper is blistered and black in patches. When the pepper is cool enough to handle, peel the skin off and put the flesh into a food processor with the tomatoes, bread and both the raw and the sauteed garlic.
Drain the dried chillies, reserving a little of the soaking liquid. Cut them open and remove and discard the seeds. Put them and 30ml of the soaking liquid into the food processor, then add all the other salsa ingredients, except the extra virgin olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Turn the machine on and gradually add the oil in s steady stream. Taste for seasoning – you may want a little more sherry vinegar or salt.
Brush the swordfish with olive oil and season. Cook on a very hot griddle pan, colouring both sides and then turn the heat down so that the fish can cook in the centre. Serve with the salsa.
As it turned out, our swordfish steaks were quite thin, so we didn’t need to turn it down and leave it; they were done after just a couple of minutes at relatively high heat on either side.
Stir Fried Chicken with Cashew Nuts
A quick almost-all-store-cupboard dinner for Tuesday evening. We defrosted some chicken breasts overnight, then sliced them thinly. We heated up some oil in a wok, then added finely chopped garlic for about 30 seconds before adding the chicken. At this point I added a little freshly ground black pepper and enjoyed the aroma of it cooking so much that I added a whole load more even though this sort of recipe doesn’t generally call for it (it turned out well though).
When the chicken was almost done, it went onto a plate and into the wok went a little more oil and then thinly sliced onions. After a minute, thinly sliced red pepper and baby corn joined the onions (the baby corn was the not-store-cupboard ingredient, which I bought on the way home – it’s not essential but works well in these sorts of dishes as the rough texture absorbs the sauce well).
Then in went a tablespoon or so each of soy sauce, oyster sauce and Chinese cooking wine, followed by a little chicken stock and some cornflour mixed in water. After cooking for a couple of minutes, we added chopped spring onions and cashew nuts and returned the cooked chicken to the pan to heat back up, then served with rice and topped with some more chopped spring onions.
Quick and very tasty and it gave us a chance to use the lovely chopsticks that a friend had brought for us from her recent trip to Malaysia.
Quinoa and Red Rice Salad
One of the things I really like about Whole Foods is that you can buy a small amount of rice, grains, pulses etc. from their self-service section. We don’t have a lot of cupboard space so are limited in what we can store, a selection of rice, pasta, lentils and beans are of course essential but with more unusual items, it’s good to be able to buy a small amount at a time.
Not knowing whether quinoa was going to make it on to the “must have” list, I just bought enough for one meal and cooked it this evening as part of an Ottolenghi recipe. Despite the widespread love for Ottolenghi, I’ve never cooked any of his recipes before. I find it difficult to get excited by meat-free dishes and his long lists of ingredients are somewhat off-putting for someone who doesn’t like following recipes. This seemed like a very manageable dish though and I had everything I needed. Or so I thought. I wasn’t intending to use apricots or oranges but I forgot that I needed rocket so what we ended up with was a considerably watered-down version of the original.
We both enjoyed the flavours; the contrast between the cooked onion and the raw, spring onion was particularly good and perhaps the missing ingredients would have improved the flavour but I couldn’t help thinking it would have been infinitely better if served up with some barbecued lamb. I’d make a rubbish vegetarian wouldn’t I?
As for the question of whether quinoa is going to be making a regular appearance, I’m not sure. The nutty flavour was interesting and I would like to try it again but, for now, I’m glad I didn’t commit to a whole bag.
Barbecued Beef Rib
We discussed a variety of options when deciding on something particularly English to cook as a St George’s day celebration. Roast beef is always pretty high on the list in these sorts of situations, and as the weather was forecast to be good, we decided to cook it on the barbecue instead of doing a traditional Sunday roast. We bought ourselves an impressive-looking air dried rib from our local butcher that had been aged for 21 days – we’ve used this partcular cut a couple of times before and always been pleased with the results but don’t remember having one that looked quite so dark from the ageing process. The clouds came and went and the wind was a little chilly when the sun was obscured, but overall it was good barbecuing weather especially for this time of year.
Having put a couple of foil-wrapped potatoes in amongst the coals for about an hour or so, we finally seasoned the beef with salt and pepper, rubbed it with a little oil and laid it onto the barbecue. Dripping fat caused numerous flare-ups, so we moved the coals to the sides and put the lid onto the barbecue so that the meat wasn’t over a direct heat. This worked well and meant the meat was well seared on the outside and cooked evenly. The initial high heat meant that a brilliant crust formed on the outside of the rib and the smoky flavour from the barbecuing ran all the way through the meat which was tender and sliced like butter. The air drying and aging provided a really deep, beefy flavour which meant it didn’t take us long to devour what was on our plates and go back for seconds.
Served with the aforementioned potatoes, mixed salad, some left-over salsa verde and of course mustard, both English and Dijon:
Foolishly, we forgot to buy any English wine so made do with some interesting England’s Gold ale from Badger instead. Like every summer, we resolved to have as many barbecues as possible, even if the weather isn’t great… we’ll see how that works out 🙂
Bobotie and a Couple of Cape Wines
I’ve lived in London for a number of years now, but I was born in Cape Town in South Africa and lived there until I was 25. Last Wednesday, someone asked me how long it was since I’d moved away from South Africa, and I worked it out – it was ten years and one day. So having reached the ten year mark, it seemed like I should do something to mark the occasion. Also, having St George’s day last week to meant that we planned an English-South African crossover weekend – more on that tomorrow.
So today we cooked bobotie, which is a traditional dish from the Cape, which originated from the Cape Malay community. It’s hard to explain what it is, but to break it down objectively it is a dish of curried minced lamb topped with an eggy sauce (aka savoury custard). I remember my mum cooking a fish version and a lentil version, but I don’t remember when I last had a traditional lamb version and I don’t remember ever having cooked it myself. This recipe is one that my sister sent to Kerri recently, and it worked out rather well:
450g lamb mince
1tbsp oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp curry powder / paste
1tbsp garam masala
2 slices white bread, crusts removed and soaked in milk
1 apple, peeled, cored, finely chopped
1tbsp mango or peach chutney
Salt and pepper
1 chilli, finely chopped
2tbsp cider vinegar
1tsp lemon juice
1tspbrown sugar
1 bay leaf
2 eggs
200ml milk
Heat oil in large pan and cook onion, garlic and spices for 3 mins. Add mince and cook for further 3 minutes.
Add bread, which will fall to pieces as you stir it in and all the other ingredients except for the egg and milk. Cook for a few more minutes, then put into a large casserole dish.
Beat the eggs slightly, then add to the milk and pour over the mince.
Place the dish uncovered in a preheated oven at 170degrees for 30 – 40 minutes.
Served with some rice and some chutney. In South Africa, dishes like this are often served with accompaniments called “sambals” which would include chutney but also simple things such as grated coconut or sliced banana, or relishes made from tomatoes, onions, etc.
We drank a couple of South African wines before, during and after eating it. The first was Chamonix Blanc, which is a white blend which curiously was stoppered with a glass stopper:
And then a Boekenhoutskloof Semillon, which was rather good and had a really brilliant label depicting some old fashioned Cape chairs. The label was a bit rough around the edges as if it was a picture that had been clipped from an old book or magazine:
Burgers on the Barbecue
Today marks the first day in our quest for the perfect burger. This version included anchovies and capers along with some grated onion, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper and some chopped parsley. They were seasoned just right and the meat (miced chuck steak) was tasty and had a great texture but the anchovies over-powered slightly. The capers worked well though.
Next time, same combination but minus the anchovies. At some point, I’d also like to consider the addition of chilli or tabasco. I’ve used red wine in the past and that’s worked well, as has worcester sauce. We also need to work on a lamb version. I guess we’ll just have to keep on firing up the barbecue.
Tuna, New Potato and Asparagus Salad with Salsa Verde Dressing
We have vaguely talked about tuna last night, but I’d completely forgotten about it by this morning. And Kerri said that she spent most of the day thinking about lamb chops. Somehow, she eventually remembered about the tuna and bought some, along with some potatoes and asparagus.
When I arrived home, she was blending the ingredients for the salsa verde and offered me a taste. I approved. When the potatoes and asparagus were cooked, they went into a bowl and we stirred them up with some of the salsa verde. Then we seared the tuna quickly in a frying pan, just a couple of minutes a side, although the piece wasn’t consistently thick so some of it was a bit less pink than we’d wanted. The well-seared edge bits were very good though.
We sliced the tuna and put it on top of the potato and asparagus “salad” and topped it with a little more salsa verde. Delicious. We drank a crisp, herbaceous sauvignon blanc with it which went well with the salsa verde.
Salsa Verde
15 parsley stalks
15 mint stalks
6 cornichons
20 capers
5 anchovies
1 garlic clove
Heaped tablespoon Dijon mustard
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
Add all ingredients to a food processor and blend.
Chalky’s Bark Beer
Kerri went to Whole Foods today at lunch time, and bought me this as a surprise – a beer named after Rick Stein’s beloved dog Chalky who has now sadly passed away but is still very much alive in many re-runs of his television shows.
I rather enjoyed it, along with its interesting addition: ginger, which comes through more in the finish than it does initially.
This is the second Chalky beer – the first one was called Chalky’s Bite. I don’t know if Chalky’s Bark is stronger than his Bite or not.
Smoked Mackerel Salad
Can you tell I was hungry when I took that picture? Stephen is out this evening so rather than reaching for the toast and Marmite as I usually would, I thought I’d use up the salad that was in the fridge and have it with some smoked mackerel. I added a little dressing after the picture was taken of oil, lemon juice and mustard. It doesn’t really need a lot of oil because the mackerel has so much natural oil but the lemon juice and mustard really lifted the flavours.
Spring Soup
“Spring Soup” makes this sound very grand when, in fact, it’s actually just a combination of leftovers from the bottom of the fridge: the watercress from last week’s salad and the ends of the asparagus that we barbecued on Sunday.
1 white onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
3 large new potatoes, sliced
1 litre vegetable stock
Handful of asparagus stalks
Half bunch of watercress
Salt and pepper
Start by sweating the onion and garlic in a little oil and some salt for about 10 minutes. When softened, add the potatoes, stock, asparagus and salt and pepper and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the watercress and cook for two minutes. Blend. Check for seasoning and rectify if necessary.
This was obviously very quick and cheap to make and was great for lunch with a toasted bagel. I think some paprika would have worked well too, stirred in with the onions.
