Thai Banquet
We’d been planning to go to Oriental City last night and buy ingredients for a Thai banquet; we didn’t end up going but managed to scavenge enough ingredients from the shops of Fulham to put it together anyway.
First up were prawn crackers. Friends of ours had actually bought these for us from Oriental City a couple of weeks ago. They arrive raw in a bag and need to be deep fried. They puff up surprisingly quickly when they are cooked and it’s a challenge to remove them from the oil quickly enough before they start burning. I wasn’t that quick to begin with, but the last few batches turned out better.
After that, we cooked deep fried squid with garlic. If you’re committed to wasting a load of oil deep frying one thing, you might as well do two. We had a rather large squid from our fishmonger and chopped it up into rings and legs, marinated it in Thai fish sauce then mixed it up with a paste made from garlic and deep fried it. The squid was really good; some was cooked better than others though but it all tasted good.
For main course, we cooked a dish that is actually Cambodian – a Khmer dish with chicken and loads of lemongrass and garlic and cooked in coconut milk. It was intensely flavoured but there was something in it that was a bit astringent; possibly the inexpertly minced lime peel which we’ll need to sort out next time. Served with some jasmine rice.
In the background of the chicken picture are a half bottle of Alsace riesling which went really brilliantly with the food and also a bottle of South African chenin blanc which went well too but was not as good a match as the riesling.
Chelsea Market
I went to Chelsea Market today for the first time despite living just down the road. Stephen and I are really spoilt by having a great deli, butcher and fishmonger just around the corner from us so we don’t tend to venture out to specialist shops and markets much anymore as we seem to be able to get everything locally. I’m really glad I made the journey today though because the market was really interesting and Partridges was just brilliant.
I didn’t buy much but enjoyed wandering around and had a great salmon bagel at Pattiserie Valerie.
Sake-Steamed Sea Bass with Ginger
After recent attempts at Japanese cooking, we tried again. This time, we tried sake-steamed sea bass with ginger. I’ve been getting used to going to our fishmonger, buying a whole fish and proudly heading home with it as if I’d caught it myself, then barbecuing or roasting it whole. I bought a whole sea bass again, and when I got home realised it needed to be filleted. So I attempted filleting it and did a passable job, but it took ages; clearly a reasonable excuse to buy a proper filleting knife.
Anyway, once it was filleted it needed to be steamed. We steamed it over a mixture of sake, fish stock (the recipe called for clam juice but we didn’t have any), ginger and garlic. Before steaming the fish, we seasoned it with salt and pepper and sprinkled it with chopped spring onions and soy sauce.
It was done in five minutes and we served it with rice and greens. It turned out rather well; just cooked to the point of being done and lightly flavoured with all the aromatics in the steamer yet still robust enough to stand up to being drizzled with more soy sauce. Definitely something to try again.
PS With this we drank an Australian verdelho which went well with the fishy, savoury flavours.
Macaroni Cheese
I’ve never had macaroni cheese before so thought it would be interesting to give it a go given that I love pasta and I love cheese. We used a Nigel Slater recipe from Kitchen Diaries (I love this book but haven’t cooked from it before) that included Dijon and wholegrain mustard and had a breadcrumb topping. I enjoyed it but not as much as I thought it would. Stephen said the breadcrumbs were unnecessary so if we do it again we’ll leave those out. I’m not sure about the Dijon either as it gave the dish a slightly vinegary taste.
Fish and Potatoes
While looking through my “things to cook soon” file yesterday I came across this “speedy fish and potato dish” that I’d clipped from Prima magazine. I don’t recall ever buying a copy of Prima magazine so I have no real idea where or when I clipped this but it sounded like it was worth trying.
Fry some potatoes, add some parsley and garlic, add tomatoes, deglaze with wine, add fish then put the lid on and cook for 10 minutes. When I came to actually cooking it tonight it looked too simple and I was worried there would be no depth of flavour. I cooked the potatoes for 10 minutes and they were brown (as the recipe said) but rock hard which worried me again. I persisted though (with some encouragement from Stephen) and continued to follow the recipe. I’m glad I did because it worked like a dream.
The end result was a rich, tasty dish that was cooked perfectly and full of flavour. The best thing about it was that the whole thing took about 20 minutes which is perfect for a mid-week dinner. Did you hear that Mum, it can be done!
We served this with our usual brocolli but any green vegetable would work. I think next time I’d use more fish and possibly more tomatoes. The variations could be endless though, peppers would be brilliant, olives, almonds, capers would all work. I think you could adapt it to use chicken too if you wanted.
Thank you Prima magazine!
Spaghetti with Meatballs
I was out tonight and when I got home, Kerri had cooked meatballs and spaghetti. We’ve had these once or twice before. Kerri didn’t like them this time, but I didn’t think they were too bad; needed a bit more seasoning and depth of flavour perhaps. Funny how you can try the same recipe more than once and get different results.
Sausage Pasta
I did a mini freezer audit today and found some sausages lurking at the back that looked like they needed using up. Stephen was out watching the rugby so I thought I’d use them in a pasta sauce. I don’t think I’ve used sausages this way before, I removed the casings, fried them with some garlic and chilli before adding some wine, tomatoes and basil. It was horrible. It tasted like sausages and pasta and tomatoes which just seemed like all sorts of wrongness. Still, there’s a small space in the freezer now which is always good.
Panini
Mozarella, Proscuittio di Speck, sundried tomatoes, basil and rocket.
Butternut and Chorizo Risotto
While looking through our folder of recipes to try we came across a Waitrose recipe for butternut and goats cheese risotto which we thought we could adapt to include chorizo. When we came to cook it though it seemed to be a bit of a cheat’s recipe as it required the stock to be added all at once and the rice to sort of boil in it. We decided to just use our normal recipe as it’s always worked well in the past. And work well it did. The butternut worked really well with the chorizo and the rocket at the end balanced everything perfectly. Sage would be a good addition too I think.
2 small chorizo sausages, chunked
3 sticks celery, finely chopped
1 red onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
200g risotto rice
600 ml chicken stock, hot
125ml white wine
Handful rocket
Pizza!
We’d been planning pizza for tonight for a week or so. So we got home this afternoon and made the pizza dough, kneaded it and left it to rise for an hour while we wandered off to the local wine shop where they had some Australian winemakers visiting to show their wines. They were from Jane Brook and we particularly liked their verdelho and shiraz.
Verdelho always reminds me of Italian or Spanish wines and this one was particularly good, with a slightly savoury nose with notes of asparagus. The Shiraz had an intense nose and full palate without being overwhelming; the 14.5% alcohol was well hidden by all the other flavours.
When the pizza was ready, we had it with some of the verdelho mentioned above. The pizza topping included bruschetta topping, mozarella, olives, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes and fresh rocket leaves. The verdelho went particularly well with the pizza; probably because of the artichokes and olives.
