Soup
We make a fair amount of soup but rarely blog about it, I think it’s because generally it goes straight into a Tupperware ready to go to work for lunches and we don’t photograph it. Today’s offering, as is so often the case, was born out of lots of leftover vegetables lurking in the bottom of the fridge.
I roasted off some red and yellow peppers with various types of tomato, some celery leaves, a red onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, half a red chilli and some salt and pepper. When they were just charred I transferred them to a saucepan and added some vegetable stock before blitzing the whole lot together. There’s probably only about two portions there but they’ll be fine for lunches this week.
Mozarella and Roasted Peppers
We haven’t done very much in the way of cooking this week and unfortunately this weekend wasn’t much of an exception. We cooked spaghetti bolognaise on Friday night which was lovely but not very original or photogenic. We went out for both lunch and dinner on Saturday; lunch at Hummus Bros on Wardour Street (an interesting concept but I didn’t much like the hummus) and dinner at our local tapas bar in the evening where we ate Jamon, Machego, whitebait and calamari.
After gathering together the necessary ingredients for today’s dinner we had a quick lunch of brown bread, Mozarella and roasted peppers. It was really good but I think we could have made better peppers – we bought these from Waitrose.
Steamed Barramundi and Stir Fried Vegetables
Kerri was out tonight and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to eat, so I just picked things up as I wandered around the supermarket. As I was doing so, I realised I quite fancied vegetables and fish, so I ended up making stir fried vegetables and steaming some fish to go with it. I wandered up and down the fish counter and eventually chose barramundi (which came from here), because I don’t remember ever having it before.
I stir fried purple sprouting broccoli, thinly sliced red pepper, onion, garlic, ginger, spring onion and shitake mushrooms, adding some soy sauce, oyster sauce and Chinese cooking wine. The result was good but a little sweet; possibly too much oyster sauce. I marinated the fish in soy sauce, lime juice and garlic and then steamed it. The fish was good and remained moist, with the flavours of the marinade penetrating it almost well enough; could have done with some more time.
Pasta
Last night we had a quick dinner of pasta with roasted tomatoes, rocket, smoked bacon and parmesan. It was an idea that developed on my journey home and was loosely inspired by this recipe. It didn’t work quite as well unfortunately, probably due to the lack of pesto but with a little work I think it could become a good mid-week meal.
Guinea Fowl
We’ve cooked guinea fowl a few times before but only as part of another dish; casserole or pie usually. While I was at the butcher last week I noticed they had some lovely looking guinea fowl so we decided to have one for dinner this evening.
We started by browning the guinea fowl and removing it a plate. Next we fried off some streaky bacon before adding some onion, celery and garlic and sweating it for about ten minutes. We added the guinea fowl back to the casserole dish and threw in some carrots and leek, a bay leaf and some sage, a splash of white wine and also some chicken stock. We brought it to the boil and then transferred it to the oven where it cooked for about an hour and fifteen minutes.
We served it with some green cabbage, mashed potatoes and mashed swede. It was a great dish, easy to prepare and full of flavour. While cooking it had a gamey smell to it but this disappeared by the time the dish was finished.
It struck me while we were eating that this is a great alternative to chicken; it’s slightly smaller and has a stronger flavour but I think it would work well in place of chicken.
Tablet
Tonight we’re going to a Burn’s Night party at a friend’s house, it’s become an annual tradition (much like Burn’s Night itself funnily enough!) and is always a lot of fun. There is of course haggis, neeps and tatties but there is also a performance element to the evening which everyone is encouraged to get involved in. Neither Stephen nor I are particularly talented in the traditional areas of singing, dancing or instrument playing and in previous years we’ve tried to remain as invisible as possible during this part of the evening. This year however we decided to be brave and rather than subjecting our fellow guests to a karaoke version of Scottish pop music, we thought we could take a dish along and talk about it; we chose tablet.
We researched a number of recipes but become increasingly apprehensive about our choice of dish, it seems tablet can be rather troublesome and unpredictable. Neither of us have eaten it before so we had the added disadvantage of not really knowing what we were trying to create. We’d made a decision though so we stuck to it and last night we set about boiling vast amounts of sugar with butter and condensed milk.
Once the sugary mixture had thickened we followed the instructions to whisk vigorously until we felt the mixture become grainy. We continued to mix for some time but weren’t entirely convinced we’d got to the grainy stage. We carried on as long as our mixing arms would allow before tipping the mixture into a greased baking tray and leaving it to cool.
This morning we cut the tablet into generous sized pieces and have packaged it up ready to take along with us this evening. We have of course tasted the crumbs and while we think it’s good, neither of us are sure whether we’ve come up with tablet or fudge. I guess we’ll find out this evening.
A Sort of Puttanesca
I had a pasta craving today. I get these often but usually manage to be persuaded by Stephen that there is life outside an entirely carb-based diet. Today however he lost the battle and when he said the magic p word we were all set. But what to do with our spaghetti? In a moment of genius he came up with tonight’s offering (he might have called it a “deconstructed puttanesca” but we’ll gloss over that) and I was on the next bus home ready to start roasting tomatoes.
Stephen picked up some fresh anchovies on the way which we fried off in some olive oil until they had broken down and the vinegary smell had dissipated. Next went in some green and black olives, a handful of capers and some basil. We quickly realised that the slow roasting tomatoes were indeed roasting slowly so abandoned that plan and threw them into the pot too. Some seasoning, a little more basil and we were ready to eat.
It did taste a lot like puttanesca but was lighter and fresher which we put down to the lack of chilli and the way it was cooked. We both enjoyed it and I’m sure we’ll make it again, perhaps next time the craving hits.
Steak Fajitas
We’ve had some good successes with chicken fajitas before, but our previous attempt at steak fajitas didn’t turn out that well. So we decided to try again and attempt to get it right. And, after all the meat-free dinners we’ve had recently (we decided that fish doesn’t count as meat), we needed some steak.
Kerri bought some really good rump steak from our local butcher, cut it into strips and marinated it in lime juice, garlic, chilli and coriander for about an hour. We fried these strips until they were medium and set them aside. Then we heated some oil and added some more garlic, some chilli, some cumin, some coriander and a dash of cinnamon (not traditional Mexican, but it was a suggestion by a friend who makes really good fajitas). Then we added the sliced peppers and red onion and stir fried until they were just softening, adding a splash of water along the way. Added the steak slices back into the vegetables, stirred them together and then served on a plate to be wrapped up in tortillas.
This was much more successful than our previous attempt at steak fajitas, with the steak strips remaining tender and having a decent depth of flavour both from being good quality steak and from having marinated for an hour. The spicing was just right too. Certainly a good comeback to carniverousnous.
Smoked Mackerel Fishcakes
We had some mackerel in the fridge that needed using up today and while wondering what to do with it I noticed a lone potato lurking in the vegetable bowl. I decided to make mackerel fishcakes and spent a little time looking at recipes online. There was a wide variety of choice but I settled for mackerel, potato, capers and lemon juice to start with so I could work out how the flavours worked together. And work together they did, very well in fact.
Next time, I’ll add some butter and more seasoning to the potato as it tends to stay quite separate from the fish and I’ll increase the capers and lemon juice, maybe adding some zest too. A lot of the recipes I looked at suggested mustard or horseradish, we had a mustardy dressing with our salad and the flavour complimented the fishcakes well so perhaps I’ll add some mustard in next time too.
These are another great mid-week meal as they’re very east to put together and cook quickly under the grill, the added bonus being that mackerel tends to be something we often have in the fridge so they’re also a great store-cupboard meal. I imagine they’ll freeze well too as our other fishcakes too and can be cooked from frozen too, making it even quicker!
1 packet smoked mackerel
1 large potato
10 capers (approximately!)
S&P
Lemon juice
Bake potato in the oven, scoop out flesh and mash (eating of skins with butter and salt optional!)
Flake mackerel fillets into potato
Add chopped capers, s&p and lemon juice
Mix and form into cakes
Grill
Roasted Vegetable Lasagne
We’ve only cooked this dish once before, partly I think because it’s quite time consuming. However, we planned for this by roasting the vegetables over the weekend so that all we needed to do today was assemble the lasagne and cook in the oven. The dish doesn’t suffer from the pre-roasting and it obviously makes it much quicker and easier to cook during the week.
After the vegetables have been roasted all that needs to happen is for them to be layered up with the lasagne sheets, bechamel sauce and mozarella before cooking in the oven for half an hour. It’s a rich, tasty dish and could be made healthier by reducing the amount of mozarella.
1 courgette
1/2 red pepper
1/2 orange pepper
1/2 red onion
1/2 aubergine
1/2 punnet of mushrooms
2 garlic cloves
Handful basil
S&P
Olive oil
Olives
Capers
Bechamel sauce
Mozarella ball, sliced
Dice the vegetables and roast in the oven with oil, s&p, basil and garlic for about 40 minutes (or until the edges have started to char). Once cooked, remove the basil and add the olives and capers.
Make the bechamel sauce (we follow a basic recipe)
Place lasagne sheet into the bottom of the dish, cover with bechamel sauce, vegetables and mozarella. Continue until you’ve run out of everything and end up with a layer of bechamel sauce.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.
That’s our second meat-free meal in as many nights, unusual for us but definitely something we would like to continue.
