Barbecued Fish
Our second barbecue in as many days! It seemed like a waste not to barbecue on any rain-free weekend days, so we bought some fish to burn. It was a pink / red sea bream this time – the first time I remember having one. We bought it from a local fishmonger and when he heard that we were planning to barbecue it, kindly gave us some of his oil, garlic and herb marinade. We spooned some inside, as well as onto the outside of the fish while it was cooking (having the skin stick to the barbecue helped here, as you can see ;-)).
We also had some squid as a starter, which we had cut open to make squid “steaks” along with the tentacles:
Unfortunately the squid doesn’t look very appetising; we’d marinated it in the oil, garlic and herb mixture which caught alight the moment it went onto the barbecue, giving it a greyish tinge. When we were planning it, I imagined it golden and swimming in delicious garlic butter. Something to try for next time. As it was, it was still tasty though, with a squeeze of lemon and some more of the marinade spooned onto it.
Roasted Tomato Soup
We used this Waitrose recipe today to make a batch of soup for lunches. Despite the fact it’s August and supposed to be warm, I’ve found myself craving tomato soup for the last couple of weeks. Hopefully this’ll cure me and I can move onto the next thing to obsess about!
The tomatoes were roasted in the oven first with some red onions and garlic, before being blitzed together with some chicken stock. It tasted good; sweet and roasty and had a light, summery texture.
Barbecue!!!!
So finally it’s a) the weekend, b) we don’t have any prior social engagements and c) it’s hot….leaving only one thing to do….BARBECUE!!!
We started with corn. Stephen bought these last week with the sleeping bags husks still intact, despite the fact that he maintains he prefers them to be cooked without. I gently prised back the husks and coated them in harissa. I then gave them to Stephen and he burnt them on the barbecue. No matter, they still tasted good.
Next up we had steak of the Scottish ribeye variety, cooked simply with salt and pepper and served with baked potatoes (cooked in the fire) and butternut with spinach and Feta, also cooked in the fire.
We had wine too. Lots of wine. Of different varieties. Consequently it’s taken me at least half an hour to type this. Happy weekend!
Guacamole
Did I mention I have become slightly obsessed with avocados lately? I can’t get enough of them. We picked up some avocados on Wednesday to use this weekend…how’s that for organisation? Today I turned it into guacamole which we ate with Poco Loco corn chips while we waited for the fire to get hot.
Sardines on Toast
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A quick lunch today of sardines on toast. Reminds me of being small as we often used to eat this for lunch on a Saturday. Yum.
Breakfast Bread
This morning Stephen made breakfast bread, to his mum’s recipe. He used to eat this at home in South Africa when he was small. It was delicous, fruity and cinammony and perfect eaten with butter.
1 cup wholewheat flour
1 cup digestive bran
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
Pinch salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 medium apples
1/2 cup raisins
1 egg
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup water
Mix dry ingredients and raisins. Grate apples into flour mixture. Beat together egg, oil and water. Add to other ingredients and stir only until combined. Spread in greased pie plate. Sprinkle top with a little extra sugar and cinnamon. Bake at 200 degrees C for about 30 minutes. Serve warm.
Fish Egg!
Well, an egg that’s shaped like a fish really.
I bought this for Stephen from eBay, it’s a plastic mould that you squish a boiled egg into and leave to cool until it’s shaped like a fish. It’s from a Japanese seller who specialises in Bento box accessories, this is for a child’s lunchbox. Or a Stephen’s breakfast.
It came in a pack of two so watch out for Car Egg.
Thai Skewers
A few days ago, we planned to have Thai lemongrass beef skewers tonight and hadn’t planned much else. Today we decided to have chicken satay as well, to follow the skewer theme. We managed to plan all of this without so much as a thought to anything non-meat related and this lack of thought continued until it was cooked and served.
So we had lemongrass beef skewers and chicken satay with peanut sauce (made in our new Magimix). Both the chicken and the beef were really good; they were under the grill and I reluctantly took them out before they were nicely browned for a photograph but I knew they would be more tender that way. The peanut sauce was good too and we have some left over – we’ll probably be putting it on random things for the rest of the weekend.
Harissa Roasted Salmon
We’ve had a lot of fish this week; clearly we need to be more imaginative when trying to think of healthy things to cook. We roasted some harissa-covered salmon and served it with roasted cherry tomatoes and a salad of spinach, feta, pine nuts and new potatoes. Generally, things worked well together but the salmon didn’t have a lot of flavour (maybe that’s why it was half price) and the potatoes were a bit out of place (would have been better with couscous instead of potatoes but we had some potatoes and didn’t want them to go to waste).
Avocado with Pine Nuts and Fish with Tomatoes
We’ve been eating lots of avocado lately. I’ve always liked it but at the moment I really like it. Not that I get obsessed about food stuffs and eat them until I can’t face eating them anymore or anything… 😉
Tonight, Stephen made a pre-dinner dip of mashed avocado with salt and pepper sprinkled with toasted pine nuts. We served it with brown toast. It was good, but not as good as the unwanted toast crusts I dipped into the Marmite jar when he wasn’t looking 🙂
When we were finished with our starter (starters, on a Tuesday? Oh the extravagance!) we moved on to dealing with our fish.
We used up the leftover tapenade we made last week to stuff and smear the fish which was roasted on some cherry tomatoes, lemon and bay. The fish (sea bream) was wrapped up in foil to poach in the oven with some white wine. We served it with the usual vegetable selection of crushed new potatoes, green beans and brocolli. The tomatoes were a little sour so I quickly finished them in the oven in some harissa.
All good, but sadly not quite enough of it. I have a feeling I might be running back to the Marmite jar before the night is out.
