Kedgeree and Riesling

Kedgeree

It just sounds like something you want to eat doesn't it, Kedgeree? If I didn't know what it was I'd want to find out.

We'd had the house to ourselves for the weekend and the opportunity to cook a curry really could not be missed. We decided on fish curry but couldn't decide on exactly what kind of fish curry. But then we remembered that we'd bought some smoked haddock for a risotto in the week and decided to use a bit in this Kedgeree, which if you don't know, is a dry curry, like a biryani or a pilaf.

It's a dish that came back to England with the colonialists and historically used to be a breakfast or brunch dish. And it does make a good breakfast/brunch, particularly if you like curry, and even more so if you've just been for a swim at Portishead Lido.

It is simple to make, it could be a one pot dish if you didn't have the boiled eggs. But you should have the boiled eggs, cos the boiled eggs are good. Here's what you'll need for a dish that will feed two handsomely, with leftovers:

2 fillets of smoked haddock
2 boiled eggs, quartered (or more if you like)
A finely chopped onion
A finely chopped chilli (or more depending on your appetite for heat)
A thumb sized piece of ginger, grated or finely chopped
A generous teaspoon of black mustard seeds
Garam masala (you know, curry powder, heat to your liking)
2 bay leaves
Some chopped, fresh coriander
A good squeeze of lemon or lime juice
15 fl oz of basmati rice

There's a couple of stages to the cooking, but a sensible place to start is boiling your eggs. For good boiled eggs, put them into a pan of cold water. Bring the water to a boil and then boil the eggs for 6 minutes. Once done, stick them into some iced water and set aside.

Next, cook the haddock. Simply add the whole fillets to a large, high-sided frying pan and cover with about 650ml of boiling water. Throw in the bay leaves, cover, and simmer for 10-15 mins.

When the haddock is cooked, remove it from the water, wrap in foil and put in a low oven to keep warm. Don't pour away the water! You need it for the rice.

Rinse and dry the frying pan then get it back on a medium heat. Add a good knob of butter and then and your curry powder and black mustard seeds. Allow them a couple of minutes, stirring all the time, then add the  chopped onion, chilli and ginger. Let them soften for a while.

After a few minutes add the rice and give that a stir to coat it in the spice/onion mix. After a minute or so add the water that the haddock was cooked in. Stir again, get it back up to a boil and let it boil for a minute. Then turn the heat down as low as possible, cover and leave to simmer 15 minutes. Do not remove the lid. After 15 minutes take off the lid, take the pan from the heat and cover with a damp tea towel. Leave for 5 minutes. After that time flake the rice with a fork for perfect, fluffy grains that don't stick.

Before the rice is done, shell your boiled eggs and either halve or quarter them. Also, remove the fish from the oven.

Kedgeree

When the rice is cooked, flake in the haddock, stir through the chopped coriander, squeeze over a bit of lemon or lime juice and add the eggs.

We served ours with a bit of mango chutney as it's is virtually impossible for us to have a curry without mango chutney. Our wine choice was a very nice Riesling, recommended to us by Corks of Cotham. It was a superb match. The wine heightened the spice and seemed to take the taste all around my mouth. The aftertaste left an almost sherbertty tingle right in the middle of my tongue along with a satisfying bite of chilli heat.

As I wrote at the top, the quantities given are enough for two with leftovers. Which polished off for brunch today after another swim at the Lido. Any weekend with two curries in it is a good weekend.

Mussels with Chorizo

Mussels must be one of the cheapest, easiest and most satisfying ways of eating fish. I love them. They're so versatile you can put almost anything with them, and for a fiver you can usually buy at least a kilo and half that makes a good portion for 1 person.

This dish of Mussels with Chorizo is a simple variation on the classic Moules Marinieres. I served this as a starter for 4 but it would make a fine main course for 2. You'll need:

A kilo of mussels - cleaned
2 good chorizos - I use chorizo rosario from T & P.A. Murrays on Gloucester Road in Bristol. They're the best I've been able to find in Bristol. If you know any better, please tell me.
1 shallot - finely chopped
1/2 a carrot - finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic - finely chopped
1 glass of white wine at room temperature - given the slightly Spanish nature of this dish I'm sure you could use a fino or light sherry
Splash of olive oil
1 handful of chopped parsley

This is easy, so you're going to have it ready in minutes. Perfect for after work cooking.

Heat a high-sided saucepan over a medium heat and add a splash of olive oil. When that's hot add chopped chorizo and give it a 4-5 minutes so that it releases some of it's oil. The add the shallot, carrot and garlic. The carrot isn't strictly necessary so don't worry if you don't have one. Let the chopped vegetables soften for a few minutes.

Put the lid on the pan for about a minute or so to allow some steam to build up. Throw in your white wine or sherry and the mussels, give everything a good stir then put the lid back on. The mussels will take about 5 minutes to cook. Give everything another stir after a couple of minutes to make sure everything gets coated in the cooking liquor.

When the mussels are open, you're done. Stir in the chopped parsley and then serve the mussels in bowls along with the cooking liquor. Some bread for soaking up juices, a glass of cold white wine and you've got a very satisfying tea.

Stuffed Squid Sicilian style with Couscous




Stuffed squid - Sicilian style - with couscous

  And so our Saturday of very satisfying eating continued.

A while back I wrote up a recipe for Mackerel with Minted Potato Salad. Cheap, quick and easy. Well, this recipe for Stuffed Squid Sicilian Style has just replaced it in the number 1 spot for easy fish dishes. Apart from the squid the ingredients are things that you're likely to have already, and what you don't have isn't expensive to buy.

The ingredients below are given for stuffing 4 squid, but I was only cooking for 2 so I put the rest of the stuffing through the couscous that I served with the squid.

100g breadcrumbs
1 heaped tbsp raisins (we used some sultanas we had, and soaked them beforehand)
1 heaped tbsp pine kernels (we used sunflower seeds)
1 tbsp grated Parmesan (we get ours from Aldi, very nice and half the price of anywhere else)
6 anchovy fillets
pinch of chilli flakes
Olive oil
splash of white wine (we used the Macon Village from Aldi, it went very, very nicely)
small handful chopped parsley
Salt and pepper

We started with 2 fresh squid from http://glosroadfish.co.uk/, cleaned an prepared by them. I chopped up the tentacles and fried them quickly in some olive oil and added them to a bowl contained the rest of the stuffing ingredients. Then you simply stuff the squid bodies. It can be messy, but it isn't difficult. Then seal up the ends with a cocktail stick.

Put the stuffed squid onto a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and a splash of white wine, then put them into a pre-heated oven (180c) for 10-12 minutes.

Whilst the squid is cooking prepared your couscous. I generally soak couscous in chicken stock (made from a cube) to give it extra flavour. When it has soaked up the water, drag a fork over it until it has separated into large grains. Dress with olive oil and lemon juice and season. I also added some of the stuffing I had left over.

When the squid is done, take it out the oven, place on top of the couscous, dress with a little more olive oil and a light dusting of paprika and serve.

Squid - stuffed

We were transported. It might have -4c and snowing outside, but round the dining table it was in the high 20s and we were overlooking a calm, blue sea with the smell of ozone in the air. It's a fantastic little dish this, and really, really worth a go. The reward and satisfaction you get is in stark contrast to the effort and the amount of cooking involved. It could be scaled up easily for a dinner party, and can just as easily serve 2 people in need of a bit of Mediterranean sunshine.

Use a sprat - and leave it at that

It's sprat season. Not that it receives much attention. These little oily fish can't really compete with the glamour of the game season. But what they lack in glamour they make up for in taste, and versatility.

It was the missus who spotted them for sale in Asda, at 45p a pack. There was about 20 of them in the 225g pack, which is a reasonable portion when split between two.

Traditional recipes keep things simple and don't involve much more than frying them and serving them with brown bread and butter - wedge of lemon optional. But we fancied something with a bit more kick, specifically a kick of chilli.

We could have gone Indian, oily fish seems to work really well with curry flavours. Or Moroccan, with a rub of ras el-hanout. But we went instead for Chinese.

The chilli kick was delivered by the best chilli sauce I have ever tasted, made by the missus with bird's eye chillies, rice wine vinegar, sugar, lime juice and dried chillies. Shop bought stuff pales in comparison. It was sharper than it was sweet, and perfectly hot.

This worked really well with the little sprats, which were simply dusted in flour and fried.

We had some noodles hanging around at the back of the cupboard so just chopped up some onion, garlic, ginger and peppers and put that together with a bit of soy and some more lime.

I honestly don't think we could have had a better meal for about 40p a portion. It was such a good way of getting some oily fish into our diet, which we're not very good at, and one that didn't break the bank. It was also a very satisfying dish for the determined carnivore, as sprats must be the biggest fish you can eat whole. Like whitebait for grown-ups. Don't waste them on catching a mackerel.

Risotto with crab and roast butternut squash

Last week the missus made a cracking soup of roast butternut squash. It was simple to make, just roast a squash, some shallots, garlic and chilli then blend it all together. I haven't tasted many better soups to be honest. So it was a surprise that we had some left over. But we did, and I had my mind set on using it in a risotto with some crab.

Risotto is a favourite dish of mine, and there's already recipes on this blog for others - risotto with braised celery and prawn and broad bean risotto.

The basics are nearly always the same. Soften some finely chopped onion or shallot in some butter or oil, butter gives a creamier taste to the final dish. Then add your risotto rice and stir it around to get it coated in the melted butter. Stir until you see the edges of the rice turn slightly see-through.

At this point you can add a glass of dry white wine or vermouth, but if you don't have any just start with adding the stock. Ideally use a stock which matches the main flavour of what your cooking - fish, meat or veg.

Stir the risotto a lot when you add the first few ladles of stock, as this will make sure the starch releases which makes the risotto creamy.

Towards the end of cooking this particular risotto I added the leftover butternut squash soup, adding a little at a time so that the risotto didn't cool down too much. That done, I then added the back end of a block of grana padano, some creme fraiche and two small tins of dressed crab. I used the dressed crab as it's made with the tastier brown crab meat. I find white crab meat can be a bit 'fine' for a dish like this and the taste just gets lost.

Using the dressed crab is this instance meant that the crab taste was prominent in the final risotto. And it worked really well with the squash. Definitely one of the tastiest combinations for risotto in my opinion.

Spaghetti Vongole

Us Brits are a nation of animal lovers, apparently. A fact reflected in what we eat. Although there are an odd few who keep chickens, sheep and even pigs as pets the vast majority of us don't. Because we want to eat them.

Admittedly some of those who keep farm animals as pets do end up eating them, but I can't imagine a chicken called Sally tastes a great deal better than one called £5.99 from the butcher. Familiarity may breed contempt but it doesn't guarantee flavour.

There is a more practical view of animals in other parts of the world. Dog may not feature on many menus seen by tourists in South-East Asia but it does appear in the diet of ordinary people at home in Vietnam and Cambodia. France hasn't produced any famous jockeys and I can't help but think that the reason is because they'd rather eat horses than watch them run round a field.

Put simply, some animals are meant to be eaten and some aren't. There was no heartache, then, when we recently said goodbye to our clams.

We had only had them for 24 hours before we decided that they would make a much better spaghetti vongole than a house pet - having said that, we live in a flat so they weren't such a bad idea. We bought them from the excellent fish market in Kirkgate Market (terrible website alert!) in Leeds.

The stalls at this market sell a range of fish that I haven't come across in this country. Fresh conger eel, clams, parrot fish are some of the more exotic varieties on offer. The stalls also provide the restaurants of Leeds with their fish so it would be safe to assume that there is a high turnover of produce, which means the fish is fresh.

Once you've got some clams making spaghetti vongole is straightforward. We used about 100g of clams per person, and cooked them in a pan along with 4 cloves of garlic (we like garlic), half an onion, a small glass of wine, a chilli and olive oil. The clams cook till they open and then get mixed with cooked spaghetti.

This is the kind of meal that would cost the best part of a tenner in a restaurant, yet at home it can be made for a couple of quid. It's well worth it.

Grilled mackerel with minted potato salad

This lovely dish couldn't be easier or cheaper.

We had some egg yolks left over after making some coconut macaroons (2 egg whites, 160g dessicated coconut, 100g sugar - whisk then put some blobs onto some baking paper and bake in the oven at 180 for 12ish minutes) which were, well still are in fact, delicious. With the egg yolks we made some mayo. Homemade mayo really will put you off shop bought for good.

If you want arms like Popeye then whisking mayonnaise is the way forward. But if you want to make your life a lot easier then a blender comes in very handy. All it takes is 2 egg yolks, a teaspoon of dijon mustard (and some english mustard if you fancy), a dash of white wine vinegar and some oil. We tend to use normal vegetable oil (which more often than not is rapeseed oil) so that the mayo doesn't take on a taste of oil, but some recipes I've seen suggest olive oil. So use whatever takes your fancy.

Put everything except the oil into a blender and give it a couple of short bursts, then switch to constant and start trickling in the oil. It'll take quite a bit, something like 150-200ml. It's done when you have a thickish pale yellow sauce. It will need a little bit of seasoning, which is best done at the end. If you're using pepper, use white rather than black to prevent very visible black bits in the mayo.

We had a mackerel in the freezer and felt like having a light Sunday lunch, so we thought we'd have it with a potato salad made with our homemade mayo.

It doesn't take a lot of explaining really. We boiled some new potatoes, cut them in half and then mixed them with some mayo, some chopped gherkin and some fresh mint for a very tasty potato salad. We simply topped that with a grilled mackerel fillet, and there you have it. A very rewarding tea for very little effort.

Prawn and Broad Bean Risotto

Risotto is not a hard dish to do. All you need is the right rice, Arborio or Carnaroli, some decent stock (make your own, buy fresh or use a cube) and something to go in it, like some prawns and broad beans. Or chicken and herbs, fresh vegetables perhaps, crabmeat and roasted squash, whatever you fancy really. Here's a link to a post about one I did recently - risotto with braised celery. And if you're in the mood for something a bit different, try this - Italian bubble and squeak.

Most recipes start with finely chopped onion or shallot softened in butter or olive oil. However, on Saturday Kitchen at the weekend Antonio Carluccio was in Italy with the 'King of Risotto' and the King didn't use onion or shallot. So if you haven't got either, don't worry.

Another common feature of risotto recipes is a glass of dry white wine or vermouth. Again, good for flavour but not vital and not having any wine to hand shouldn't stop you from cooking risotto.

The most important thing is technique. You need two pans, one for the rice and one for the stock. Get the stock simmering on the hob so that you always add warm liquid to the cooking rice. To start, cook your rice for a minute or so in hot butter or olive oil - with or without onion/shallot/wine. When the rice starts to turn see-through at the edge start adding hot stock, one ladle at a time.

Stir the rice a few times every time you add stock and add another ladle of stock before the rice cooks dry. A good rule of thumb is to add it when you leave trails in the rice when you stir it. There's no need to stir constantly, if you do it'll take ages for the rice to cook.

Add the rest of your ingredients according to how long they take to cook but not before the rice has had about 10 minutes and is well on the way to looking like a risotto. If you're adding chicken cook it beforehand or just add it at the end fully cooked. Peas and other small veg can be warmed up in the hot stock. Herbs should go in right at the end to ensure they retain their flavour.

After about 20 minutes you should be ready. The risotto should be thick and saucy. Try a little - the rice should have a little bit of firmness in the middle, but only a little. If its at all chalky or dry add more stock (or warm water if you've run out) then stir and wait a couple more minutes, then try it again. The liquid should look glossy and creamy.

Before serving let the risotto stand for a couple of minutes off the heat and for a really good flavour add a good knob of butter, a generous scoop of mascarpone or a handful of grated parmesan. Check the seasoning.

With the basics taken care of (rice, stock, stir, rest) risotto really is easy. It's a great for veggies and meat eaters and works with pretty much all meat and fish. It can even be a sweet dish, like an Italian rice pudding, using fruit like blueberries or strawberries, fresh brambles or mulberries would be pretty good as well I reckon.