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

Sunday 27 September - Finnish Pea and Ham Soup

Spotted this on The Hairy Bikers programme last week, and George said he liked the look of it. I can't often get him to eat either peas, or soup, so thought this was worth a try.

I started by soaking the gammon hock, as I find they can be rather salty.

 

The peas were also soaked, and then boiled for 10 minutes.

The Gammon was then simmered for an hour with some mace, an onion studded with cloves, and a couple of bay leaves.

Then in with the soaked peas, and some chopped onion and carrot and it was cooked for another hour or so until the peas were soft.

The meat was shredded, and the peas and broth blended together ( it took a while to locate the cloves to remove them as the whole onion had broken up during the cooking). As it was blended a big spoonful of English Mustard and a dash of cream were added. I'm not keen on mustard, but this really lifted the flavour of the soup.

This made a delicious thick soup - nothing else really needed for a meal, although we served it with some home made rolls.

Friday 29 August - Crab Cakes with Chilli Jam

I've always wanted to make crab cakes, but most recipes I've looked at include just silly amounts of white crabmeat. However, I found a lovely looking recipe in a Sarah Raven book that just called for crabmeat, so I bought a couple dressed crabs, plus a few extra claws.

We started by making the chilli jam to serve with them, this also had the advantage of using up lots of our homegrown tomatoes.

Our own chillies also went into this-they are lovely and hot this year.

Chillies, garlic and ginger were processed along with half of the tomatoes.

Red wine wine gar and fish sauce were added, and then the rest of the tomatoes roughly chopped, along with some sugar. Then it was all cooked until lovely and thick and sticky 

Plenty of this left over for another day too.

For the cakes, the crabmeat was mixes with mayonnaise, breadcrumbs, hopped herbs and chillies, and some Worcester sauce and lemon juice.

It was all bound together with an egg yolk, before forming into cakes and into the fridge to firm up before we coated them in egg and breadcrumbs.

They were then shallow fried, before being served with chips and the chilli jam.

Tuesday 25 August - Swedish Meatballs

We were inspired to make these by a visit to IKEA . Although we've never had meatballs there, they seemed to be popular there so we thought we'd have a go. Although there were frozen ones on offer, we decided to have a go ourselves, although this vital accompaniment was purchased on the way out

I googled lots of recipes, and the main differences were whether to add dill or not. I decided to add it ( a decision that George wasn't happy with.

Lots of dill and parsley were finely chopped.

These were added to a fairly basic meatball mix- pork, eggs, dried breadcrumbs, some milk and salt and pepper.

I rolled this mixture into fairly small balls, and they were fried in olive oil.

The sauce was made, by adding flour to the fat left in the pan, along with a spoonful of the jam, some beef stock, cream and lemon juice.

then the meatballs went back in, and were simmered for a while to heat through.

Served with mash, and more of the jam, and I thought they were delicious - teenagers may prefer them with no dill though.

Tuesday 18 August - Ma Po Tofu

II had never heard of this, but it was requested by George who is a bit of a Tofu fan - it's basically a spicy pork mince stirfry, with cubes of tofu added at the end.

The recipe started in the same way as many stirfries do - ginger, garlic and spring onion were added to the wok.

Then in with some  lean pork mince and some roughly chopped fermented black beans

Once these were all fried together, some spicy chilli bean paste was added and cooked for a few minutes.

Then the cubed tofu - I had pressed this for a while to get rid of excess moisture to stop it falling apart.

Finally in went some cornflour and stock, flavoured with soy, sesame and some sugar

Garnished with spring onion, and served with lots and lots of steamed rice