Sunday 25 October - Crab Gratin

After Saturday nights fishy disaster, I was slightly anxious about doing anything with the crabs we had also picked up at the same time as the monkfish, but as it's a favourite I thought it should be ok.

This was a Valentine Warner recipe for a starter, but we padded it out by serving some boiled potatoes and salad with it, and also making some bread rolls to dunk into the crab mixture.

The recipe called for a greater proportion of white meat than brown, but having bought dressed crabs we had this the opposite way round - I would probably add more white meat, for texture if I made this again

This was made a bit like a basic roux sauce, with the addition of some flavourings, and unusually alcohol as well as milk.

Once the roux sauce was made, the crab meat was folded into it.

Poured into gratin dishes, and topped with a breadcrumb, gruyere and parsley mix before baking.

We made some crusty brown rolls topped with oats to serve with these.

Pleased to say, that this was absolutely delicious.

Saturday 24 October - Monkfish

I've decided to blog this, as it was something new, however, I really disliked it, and ended up eating the potatoes and artichokes, and moving the very expensive fish to one side.

We had gone over to the fish sheds hoping to find scallops, but they didn't have any. I spotted a monkfish, and realised I've hardly ever cooked this before, so we went for that.

First problem was that it came as it was, skin and all, so we had to watch a video on how to fillet and skin a monkfish tail.

For a first attempt, I think we actually did rather well

A stuffing was made from herbs, garlic and toasted pine nuts, all whizzed up together

This was then sandwiched between the fillets of fish,.

The fish, was then wrapped in parma ham, and tied with cooks string, before browning in oil, and it was then finished off in the oven.

This was served on a bed of cubed roasted potatoes, cooked with some rosemary, and some artichoke hearts that I had picked up frozen in the Turkish Supermarket, and some homemade tartare sauce.

I was really pleased with presentation, and how the fish was cooked, but sadly, it just wasn't to my taste.
The spare bits of fish are in the freezer, and will be used in a fish pie later this week.

Friday 2 October - Ham, Leek and Cider Pan Pie

Although we were not going to buy any more recipe books, a copy of Pie by Angela Boggiano for £4 was too good not to bring home.

The first recipe to catch my eye was a very simple one for Ham, Leek and Cider Pan pie - all cooked in the one pan, so very little washing up. As there were only two of us, I didn't splash out on a gammon joint, but bought a couple of steaks instead - unsmoked here, which is unusual for us as we always have smoked gammon or bacon by preference.

Simple ingredient - carrot, leek, the gammon, a potato and some fresh thyme from the garden.

The leeks were chopped and fried in butter, then in went all the rest of the ingredients, and fried gently for a few minutes.

Then, in with a spoonful of flour, and a can of cheap old Lidl cider. This was then all simmered for around half an hour - the recipe said to add creme fraiche at this stage, but I added that right at the end of this stage.

The pie filling, still in the cooking dish was topped with a suet crust pastry  - the easiest pastry in the world to make

Unusually, the cooking of pastry carried on on the stove top, with a tight fitting lid on top - I popped it all into a hot oven for 5 minutes right at the end to brown it off.

The pastry came out quite light and flaky, and was delicious - we just served this with broccoli as there was already plenty of veg in the pie filling. For something so simple, this was absolutely delicious, and will become a bit of a favourite in this house