Home made fish and chips

Today's post is a very rare treat, as we hardly ever make anything deep fried. But the other day the Culinary Consultant had a craving for fish and chips so I thought why not try and make our own, and it turned out much better than expected!

I can still remember the first time I had fish and chips. My sister spent a while in North London as an exchange student years ago and I went to visit her. I think it musth have been my first time in the UK, and we did all the touristy things you do when you go to London for the first time. I remember one evening after a long day of sight seeing, we came back and stopped by the local chippy. My sister told me the Brits have this thing called fish and chips, and they put vinegar on the chips and that's really odd. I remember us going back to her student accommodation where we ate the fish and chips. After dinner we sat in her tiny little room eating Ben and Jerry's Phish Food straight from the tub while watching The X-factor. It was a great visit, but little did we know at that time that we would both end up living in this country permanently.

I have had my fair share of fish and chips while living here in the UK, but I have to admit it's usually not my first choice. The Culinary Consultant however is rather partial to a bit of fish and chips every now and then, and the bigger the fish, the better. As we live pretty much in the middle of nowhere, it's a bit of a drive to the nearest chippy, not to mention the nearest good chippy. So home-made was the only option when a fish and chip craving set in recently. I have to apologise for the photos, as we are now in the time of year when it simply isn't light at any time when I cook, and it's not like you want to keep your fish and chips hanging around until the next day to wait for daylight...

Fish and chips (serves 2):
Salt and pepper
2-3 fillets of white fish of choice (we used cod fillets)
115 g flour plus extra for dusting
150 ml beer (we used an ale called Theakston's Old Peculiar)
1 tsp baking powder
oil for deep frying

3 large jacket potatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
salt

frozen peas
to serve: vinegar and tomato sauce

The Howto:
Peel the potatoes and cut into chunky chips. Preheat oven to 225 degrees C. Parboil potatoes for about 5-6 minutes and drain. Mix with the olive oil and spread onto a baking sheet. Sprinkle lightly with salt. Place in the pre-heated oven and set the oven timer for 25 minutes.

When the oven timer goes off, your chips will need another 15 or so minutes. During this time, cook the frozen peas and prepare the fish. To prepare the batter, mix the flour, beer and baking powder. Adjust the amount of flour and beer to get a thick batter, about the consistency of thick double cream.  Salt and pepper the fish fillets. We got better results by cutting the fillets up in a few pieces instead of cooking them whole, if you have a proper big deep fryer you might get away with cooking the fish fillets whole. 

Heat oil in a deep fryer or a large saucepan to 190 degrees C. If you don't have a thermometer, you know the oil is hot enough if you put in a small piece of bread and it bubbles away very briskly and the bread turns a golden. If the bubbling is slow, the oil is not hot enough to cook in. Also remember to always keep a lid close when you are deep fry any food, so that you can cover your saucepan in case of an emergency as oil can over heat and catch fire. Cover fish fillets in batter and carefully place them in the oil. Cook for about 4 minutes, making sure to turn them when one side has gone golden brown. This will leave the fish perfectly cooked and the batter lovely golden and crunchy. 

Serve the fish immediately after cooking with chips, peas, vinegar and tomato sauce.

The Verdict:
I've never been a huge fan of fish and chips, but the Culinary Consultant loves getting those huge fish fillets from the local chippy. I have to say I honestly thought our efforts were much better than the chippy we usually go to. Also, I definitely prefer the oven baked chips to the chips from the chippy. With a splash of vinegar and tomato sauce, they are so delicious. The fish also turned out surprisingly good. The batter was actually pretty perfect, it cooked to be golden and very crisp and crunchy. The fish was perfectly cooked, moist and succulent. I wasn't sure how well we would do, cooking fish and chips without a proper deep frier, but it did turn out really delicious, and even the Culinary Consultant said we should definitely do this again.  

White bean and tortelloni soup

I hosted a dinner party for a bunch of very good friends last week. For once, I decided not to make a mountain out of a molehill and to keep the food very simple. I guess my "clean and simple" mindset from my card crafting is making it's way into the kitchen as well. Instead of planning an intricate three course meal I decided I would stick to something easy and delicious and spend all my time with my guests instead of in the kitchen. 

One of my guests is vegetarian, and I knew my other guests wouldn't mind eating veggie so I decided to just make the whole meal vegetarian instead of having separate options. I was browsing the food blogs I follow in case I would stumble upon inspiration, and there it was right in front of me. How Sweet It Is was featuring a white bean and tortellini soup and I thought that would be perfect. Easy ingredients, and I could partly prep it in advance and then it would only take me a short while to cook it when my guests had arrived. I also served sundried tomato and goats cheese muffins and garlic breads. I didn't have any starters, I just had some olives and grapes out on the table that we nibbled on while enjoying some bubbly before the meal. I had planned to make a crumble for dessert, but it turned out the Culinary Consultant wanted to bake so he made an apple cake and some banana bread for dessert. Although I have to admit we never made it to the banana bread, as we could hardly move after finishing the soup, bread, muffins and apple cake with custard.

I made a double serving of the soup in a huge saucepan as there was five of us for dinner, and I also hoped there would be some left over for me to take to work for lunch the following week, which there was. The original recipe uses tortellini, but as I wanted a vegetarian soup, I went for tortelloni instead. You can easily choose whatever pasta you prefer. 

White bean and tortelloni soup (from How Sweet It Is, serves 4-5):
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp smoked paprika
salt and black pepper to taste
2 tbsp tomato puree
300 g spinach
2 tins (400 g each) crushed tomatoes
2 cans cannellini beans (I used cannellini and butter beans)
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
400 g fresh tortelloni (I used a mix of spinach and ricotta as well as basil pesto)
(1/3 cup grated parmigiano reggiano cheese)

The howto: 
Chop the onion and garlic. Drain and rinse the beans. Heat oil and butter in a large saucepan. Add onions and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the spices and tomato puree and give it all a good stir. Add spinach and let cook until wilted. Add the crushed tomatoes, beans and vegetable stock and let cook for about 5 minutes. Add the pasta, and cook according to instructions (my fresh tortelloni required 5 minutes of cooking). Make sure not to over-cook the pasta. If you want to, stir in some grated cheese right before serving. I didn't as I was serving this with cheesy garlic bread and cheesy muffins. 

The verdict:
The food was certainly a success, all the guests enjoyed it, and even the Culinary Consultant went back for seconds. I will certainly be making it again, although I think switching to a meat filled pasta would make him like it even more. 

The soup is really tasty, I don't often cook pasta but this was a great way of having some. I used a mix of store bought crushed tomatoes and some of our home-made tomato and garlic sauce from our fantastic sun ripened fresh tomatoes. I usually use very little salt in my food, but to bring out all the flavour from the tomatoes and beans, you want to make sure you season the soup properly. I had some leftovers for a few more days, and it was as tasty when re-heated as it was when first served. I certainly consider this a great success. 

The wonderful thing about the soup is that it hardly required any effort to put together. I chopped the onions and garlic before my guests arrived. When it was time to prepare dinner, I just chucked in the chopped onions and garlic and joined my guests while they were cooking, went back after five minutes and added the spinach, joined my guests, went back to the kitchen to add the tomatoes and beans, joined my guests, and then finally added the pasta. I felt like I hardly missed any of the conversation, and the soup just cooked all by itself. I had also pre-prepared sundried tomato and goat's cheese muffins which I put in the oven when I started the soup, and I also pre-prepared some roasted garlic and mozzarella bread which I popped in the oven 10 minutes before the soup was done. It all worked perfectly together.

Unfortunately I only managed to take very bad photos of the soup on the day I served it. The photo at the top of this post was taken the next day, but at that point most of the liquid had been absorbed into the pasta, so it didn't look much like a soup. It was still tasty, but I included the very bad photo below from when it was still an actual soup.

Pork chops and apple

Have you ever been really upset by something you have been watching on TV? We have been watching Breaking Bad (I know, I'm very late with it, but as it was such a phenomenon, now that I finally broke down and got us Netflix I thought I would check it out). And it has upset me to no end. I used to have quite a high tolerance of TV violence and cruelty. I don't know if it's just me getting older, or if it's because I didn't have a TV for many years and I wasn't exposed to any of it, but I find I get very upset by the violence these days. I keep bursting out in tears mid-show, and having terrible nightmares. I'm happy we only have one episode of the show to go, as it upsets me so badly. From now on I have decided to avoid TV as much as possible, apart from a few very gentle shows like Downton Abbey, Great British Bakeoff and such. I just think there is plenty of cruelty and violence in the world without having to expose myself to made up violence also. I'm just rather surprised at how strongly I have been reacting to it all. But it just seems so incredibly over-indulgent. 

Anyhow, amongst all of my emotional turmoil over made-up stories, it's nice that I have been treated to delicious food. Today's recipe is another Culinary Consultant original. Seems like it's mostly his cooking keeping this blog alive these days. I do cook a little bit, but he has been in charge of most of the everyday cooking. I mostly prepare salads for work lunch. They consist of pretty much the same thing every day - lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and sweet peppers along with either chicken or eggs, and maybe some avocado if I'm really treating myself. That doesn't much of a blog post make. So luckily the Culinary Consultant has a newfound interest in creating new and exciting dishes so I can mostly focus on baking to keep feeding my carboholicism.

Pork chops with apple (serves 6):
6 pork chops
100 g (1/2 jar) sundried tomato paste
2 large cloves of garlic
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup Henderson's Relish (or replace with Worcestershire sauce)
1/2 large cooking apple

The Howto:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Finely chop garlic and mix with tomato paste. Place pork chops in an oven proof dish. Spread the tomato and garlic paste onto the pork chops. Season with salt and pepper. Drizzle balsamic vinegar, relish and oil over the chops. Decoratively place sliced apple onto the chops (this is a direct quote from the Culinary Consultant). Cook in 180 degrees C for about 45-50 minutes until the pork chops are cooked through. 

The Verdict:
This was another Culinary Consultant success story. The combination of sundried tomatoes and the sweetness from the cooked, mushy apple go perfectly with the pork. If you caught the Culinary Consultant's Pork and Chorizo stew earlier, you know I'm not a huge fan of pork. However, as we have been trying to be sensible about our grocery shopping and grab onto a good deal when we find one, we have bought a pack of pork here and there. And just like the stew, I found this so delicious I didn't mind the fact that it was pork at all. It's so great when someone else is cooking, they come up with different flavour combinations than what you would use yourself, and food cooked by someone else always tastes better than if you cooked it yourself. Ok, that is not always true, but it is in this case.

Courgette lasagne

I've been having some very strange dreams lately. I have been dreaming about people who have not been part of my life for a long time. A former colleague, who wanted me to give a talk about physics which I didn't understand anything about. Another night I dreamed about some old friends who were visiting me in my home. But my home wasn't my home, it was some other place. And then some other people showed up who were supposed to be my friends but I didn't know their names, so I couldn't introduce them to the friends who were already there. 

I think my vivid and restless dreams are because we have been watching Breaking Bad right before going to bed. I can't wait to finish the last few episodes, to get it over and done with. I don't want to watch anything so depressing and scary anymore. From now on, I will only watch period dramas and baking shows. Seriously, the older I get, the less violence and psychological drama I can take. I don't watch much TV anyways as I think it's mostly a waste of time. So if I decide to waste my time doing nothing at all but staring at yet another screen, I want it to make me all warm, fuzzy and happy. I keep re-watching my old Gilmore Girls, because they just don't make TV like that anymore.

The other day I was going to make a regular veggie lasagne as I have blogged about here. I popped out to the greenhouse to pick some tomatoes for the tomato sauce I spotted a few giant courgettes. So I thought, why on earth would I use pasta when I have these lovely courgettes instead. 

For me lasagne is all about the sauces. If you are going through the trouble to make lasagne, you want to do it right. And although making the sauces from scratch yourself takes some time, it's not that much work really. It's mostly about the sauces just bubbling away on their own while you can prepare the rest of the veg so you don't even waste any time. This makes a big batch, but the lasagne freezes well. I like to freeze it in serving sized portions and take with me to work for lunch.

Veggie lasagna (serves 8-10):

For the tomato sauce:

Tomatoes

6  cloves of garlic

1 onion

ground black pepper

2 bay leaves

For the bechamel sauce:

1 litre whole milk

1/2 onion

10 peppercorns

2 bay leaves

80 g butter

80 g flour

black pepper (and salt) to taste

olive oil spray

4 sweet peppers

1 onion

250 g kale

1 courgette

200 g feta cheese

6 lasagne sheets

(grated cheese or torn mozzarella for topping)

The howto:

Start by preparing the tomato and bechamel sauce. For the tomato sauce, chop tomatoes into quarters and remove the hard stems. Put the tomatoes in a large saucepan along with the bay leaves, black pepper and finely chopped garlic and onion. Bring slowly to a boil, and you will see the tomatoes start to give off liquid when heating up. Let cook for about an hour and remove from the heat. You can prepare the tomato sauce on the day before, or even freeze it for use later. For the bechamel, place the milk, roughly chopped onion, pepper and bay leaves in a large saucepan and slowly bring to a boil. When the milk has boiled, sieve it and put to the side. In a large saucepan melt the butter, and add the flour to form a thick paste. Let the paste cook for a minute or two and start adding the milk. Add milk 1/2 cup at a time, making sure you stir constantly with a balloon whisk to avoid any lumps from forming. Just be patient and keep adding milk a little at a time, stirring vigorously between additions and you will be rewarded with a beautiful, smooth, silky sauce. Season with salt and black pepper.

While preparing the sauces, roast the peppers. Preheat oven to 225 degrees and roughly chop peppers (I usually chop peppers into 6 big chunks). Place on an oven tray and lightly spray with olive oil. Roast for about 30 minutes, or until small dark patches start to appear on the pepper skins. Remove from oven and let cool. Finely slice the onion and roughly chop kale. Slice the courgette thinly. Lower the oven temperature to 200 degrees C. To assemble, start by placing sliced courgettes in a large oven proof dish. Top with half of the peppers, kale and feta cheese as well as tomato sauce and about a third of the bechamel. Add another layer of courgettes, peppers, kale, feta and sauces, and add a sprinkle of ground black pepper (and salt if you want to although the feta has a lot of salt, so I didn't find it necessary to add any salt). For the last layer, add the lasagne sheets and top with the remaining bechamel sauce (and grated cheese if using). Cook for about an hour, or until golden brown and bubbling. 

The verdict:

This was simply delicious. It does make such a difference to make everything from scratch yourself, and I do appreciate how lucky I am to be able to walk out to the greenhouse to pick the most amazingly sweet tomatoes (although that happiness doesn't last much longer as tomato season is drawing to a close soon). If you want to make it even healthier, you could leave out the cheese and lasagne noodles and replace with more courgette slices. I have to admit the carboholic in me likes to have at least that one layer of pasta on top, with a thick layer of bechamel sauce and some cheese. It just makes the whole thing so much more delicious. Also, the roasted peppers are absolutely brilliant. I cooked this along with a meat lasagne for the Culinary Consultant, and when tasting them both side by side I can honestly say I preferred the veggie one. 

Pork and chorizo stew

Culinary Consultant week continues here on the blog this week. This recipe was created and cooked by him with very little contribution from me, apart from taking the photos and typing up this post (although I do take credit for the suggestion of adding chorizo to it). This stew was waiting for me when I got home from work the other Friday. He is much better at cooking healthy food than I am, he seems to naturally gravitate towards rather wholesome home cooked basic food. I'm more about carbs and cheese and chocolate. To be honest, I do wish I didn't have all these crazy cravings all the time and would be happy to just eat basic healthy food. But don't worry, I will be back with some of my very unhealthy carb and sugar loaded recipes soon! To be honest, I may just extend Culinary Consultant week for one more post to show you he does cook puddings as well. 

Back to the star of the day. The combination of sweet and spicy paprika gives the stew just a little bit of a kick, without being too overpowering and the chorizo and red peppers bring lovely flavour. As it's about time to admit it's no longer summer, evenings are getting colder and darker a hearty stew is very appropriate. We enjoyed it with a glass of cider. This makes quite a big serving, but it can easily be frozen for later, and it only gets better when re-heated so a few days in the fridge will only improve it further.

Pork and chorizo stew (serves 8):
2 parsnips
4 carrots
10 medium potatoes (we used Red Duke of York grown in our own potato patch)
1 kg (2.2 lb) pork steaks
1 tbsp olive oil
black pepper to taste
1/2 + 2 tsp sweet smoked paprika powder
1 + 2 tsp hot smoked paprika powder
about 100 g chorizo 
2 medium onions
3-4 cloves garlic
1 sweet pepper (eg. 1/2 green and 1/2 red)
1 sachet of Schwarz Summerset Pork Casserole spice mix (or some other spice mix you like)
1/2 cup dry apple cider 
2 apples

The howto:
Peel and slice the parsnips, carrots and potatoes. Cut the pork into slices. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and cook the pork on medium heat until cooked through. Add a grind of black pepper, about 1/2 tsp of sweet paprika and 1 tsp of hot paprika powder to the pork while it's cooking. When pork is cooked, transfer to a bowl and pour any juices in the pan into a jug. Slice the chorizo and sweet pepper, finely chop onions and garlic. Slowly heat chorizo in a pan until it starts to release fat into the pan, add the peppers, onion and garlic. Cook for a few minutes until the onion starts to soften a little. Preheat oven to 190 degrees C (375 F)

Layer the root veg, pork and chorizo/onion/pepper mix in a large oven proof dish (we used a 4.5 litre Pyrex casserole dish) with a lid. 

Boil a kettle with about 1 litre of water. Add the sachet of spice mix to the jug with the pork juices, and add 2 tsp sweet and 2 tsp spicy paprika powder. Add 500 ml of hot water and mix well. Pour the apple cider and spice mix over the casserole. Add hot water from the kettle until all ingredients in the casserole dish are covered. 

Cook in the middle of the oven at 190 degrees for about 2 hours with the lid on. Peel and slice the apples, layer on top of the casserole and return to oven for another 1/2 hour, again with the lid on.

The verdict:
The Culinary Consultant is a big fan of casseroles (not least because they make a large serving with no need for cooking for days) and he cooks them from time to time. Usually they are made with beef, but I think this is the first one with pork. I thought it was a really tasty and hearty casserole with very well balanced flavours. And I'm not a very big fan of pork, so that should tell you something. I think the sweetness from the apples and the sweet peppers compliment the lovely full flavours of the pork and chorizo very well. This is also turned out to be a rather frugal recipe, we got the pork on a great offer of £5 for a kilogram, the apples, onions and potatoes were from our own garden. The apple cider we used was a ridiculously expensive one (in my defence, I didn't buy it, my Mum did). If you used regular cider, that would take the cost down even more, but I worked it out that the total cost of ingredients (excluding what we got for free from the garden and the spices and olive oil), it came to a total of £9.66 or £1.20 per serving.

Stuffed marrow

After last week's carb feast I thought it might be time for somewhat more wholesome recipes this week. And turns out I didn't even have to lift a finger to make this happen!

This week the contents (well, the food an pictures, if not the actual text) of InvisiblePinkFood are courtesy of the Culinary Consultant. The other day, I came home from work to these stuffed marrows waiting for me. I was a bit skeptical as I have never managed to cook anything very delicious from marrows. But looks like the Culinary Consultant had a bit more talent in the marrow department than I did, as they turned out fantastic. He even grew the marrow himself! This recipe is modified from BBC Good Food recipe for Spanish Stuffed Marrow.

Stuffed marrow (serves 4-6):
1 big marrow
100 g chorizo
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
330 g sausage meat
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp mixed herbs
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 sweet pepper
100 g grated cheese (we used a mix of cheddar and Red Leicester)

The howto: 
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F). Cut the marrow in half lengthways and scoop out the middle (see below), and cut into serving sizes. Our giant marrow made six servings. Put the halves in a large oven proof dish. 

Chop onion, chorizo and sweet pepper, finely chop garlic. In a frying pan, cook the chorizo until it starts to release fat. Add onion, garlic, sausage meat, spices and herbs and use a spatula to break up the sausage meat while it cooks. After about five minutes, add tomatoes and peppers and cook for 15-20 minutes. 

Spoon the filling onto the marrow halves, cover with foil and bake for 30-40 minutes depending on the size of your marrow. The marrow should start to soften. Our marrow was really big and dense and needed even more time to cook. Sprinkle with cheese and return to the oven for 10 minutes until the cheese is golden. 

The verdict:
When I heard the dinner was going to be stuffed marrow I thought "meeeh". I honestly thought this would be a really boring and somewhat soggy dish. I could not have been more wrong. I know they say food always tastes better if it's cooked by someone else, but in this case that was more than true. The marrow was still a great texture, not mushy at all. I was also surprised that it actually tasted really good, it had a mild but somewhat nutty flavour. Must be all the love that has gone into growing it... And the filling was so full of flavour, just a perfect pinch of heat, tasty chorizo and sausage and a nice final touch from the cheese. If you have marrows but not an idea what to do with them, this is the perfect solution. I think it's worth a try to see if you could scoop out the marrow, cut it into serving size pieces and freeze it for use later. I can't see why it wouldn't work, although the marrow might go a bit soggy after defrosting it, at least courgette does but the marrow does seem to be a bit more compact to start with so it might just work.

Tarragon chicken

I have quite a bit of tarragon growing in the garden. Not planted by me, just leftovers from the previous owners. Last year I didn't use the tarragon at all and this year I decided I have to try and use it for something. To be quite honest, I wasn't quite sure what the heck tarragon was. I had to look what it translates to in Finnish (it's rakuuna by the way) as I thought that might help me figure it out. It didn't as I realised I've never used it for anything. So I had to google what I could do with it, and one of the recipes that came up was tarragon chicken. We are very fond of chicken in this house, which you probably are in no doubt of if you have been following my blog. So feeling adventurous I decided to give tarragon chicken a try.

According to Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge and wisdom, tarragon is an important part of French cuisine and it's particularly suitable for chicken, fish and egg dishes. It's part of Béarnaise sauce. Apparently it's also a part of a popular green soft drink in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

I used this recipe by Nigella Lawson. It sounded straight forward and easy and didn't include any weird ingredients (although I have to admit I didn't have any vermouth in the house so I thought this is a good excuse to acquire some). I made some small changes to the recipe as I didn't have any freeze dried tarragon and I doubled the recipe as I had four chicken breasts to cook.

Tarragon chicken (serves 4):
2 tbsp olive oil
1 clove of garlic finely chopped
4 scallions
1 tsp finely chopped fresh tarragon
4 chicken breasts
2/3 cups of vermouth (and maybe then some...)
1 cup (250 ml) double cream
salt and black pepper to taste
3 tsp chopped fresh tarragon

The howto:
Heat the olive oil to medium heat in a large frying pan that has a lid. Add the garlic, scallions and tarragon. Cook for a minute while stirring. Add the chicken breasts curved side down and cook for 5 minutes. Scrape the scallions and remove from the pan if they start to burn. Turn the chicken breasts over and add the vermouth. Reduce heat and let simmer gently for 10 minutes with the lid on. Check that the chicken is cooked by cutting through in the thickest part of the fillet. If not, let simmer for a few more minutes. Remove chicken breasts from the pan, and add the cream. Bring to a boil, making sure to scrape any bits and pieces which may have gotten stuck to the pan. Add the tarragon and add salt and pepper to taste. Pour the sauce over the chicken and serve with potatoes and veg.

The verdict:
I have to admit, I can't say I'm a huge fan of tarragon after trying this recipe. I'm not saying it's bad, it just had nothing on, for example, this amazing sun dried tomato chicken recipe I tried a while ago. But the Culinary Consultant liked it and said he wouldn't mind having it again. So maybe there is use for our tarragon after all.

Steak and warm kale salad

I am less than a week away from my summer holiday in the sun. A multitude of maxi dresses have been eBayed and I'm hoping my huge sun hat will arrive in time. I need to nip by Boots for some sunscreen and some other summer necessities tomorrow, other than that I should be more or less good to go. Although I'm hoping all I will be needing is a toothbrush, a bathing suit and a few dresses.

I should start packing soon, as we leave on Monday. Incidentally we are having some of the Culinary Consultant's family over on Sunday for a BBQ (this was agreed on before the summer holiday had been booked, have to admit the timing is not optimal). And I need to make the whole BBQ menu dairy free... oh deary (or dairy, hehe) me, I have no idea how to make a dairy free pudding. Anything I can think of has milk or butter. Maybe Eton mess with coconut cream instead of whipped cream? Or a nice dark chocolate sponge cake with oil instead of butter? I shall have to turn to my dear friend Pinterest to figure this out. At least doing dairy free BBQ should be quite easy. No cheeseburgers though... And I am thinking of having a salad station where everyone can make their own salad, bowls of ingredients like lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, feta, onions, sweetcorn, chorizo and whatnot. I just want to make it as easy as possible. And I'm happy the Culinary Consultant will be left to clean up the mess while I jet away to sunny Cape Verde. So expect an update on Cape Verdian food coming up!

Today's recipe is perfect for a quick and easy weeknight dinner. It takes less than 15 minutes to prepare if you multitask preparing the warm salad and cooking the steaks, and it will help you get rid of those last few leftover handfuls of spinach and kale. I always have a bit of kale left and never a good idea what to do with it.

Steak and warm kale salad (serves 2):
2 steaks of desired size
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
150 g mushrooms
2 big handfuls of kale
2 big handfuls of spinach
1 clove of garlic
salt, pepper

The howto:
Slice the onion and mushrooms. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, and cook the onions over medium heat until starting to soften. Increase the heat a bit and add the mushrooms. Let cook for a few minutes. Add the kale, and cook until starting to wilt. Add the spinach and finely choppped garlic. Toss well, season to taste and cook for another minute or so. 

Cook steaks to desired doneness. Let rest in foil wrap for a few minutes before serving with the warm salad.

The verdict:
This was something I just tossed together from the left overs in my fridge. I had a few traditional, "cold" salads over the weekend, and with the weather all overcast and chilly today I thought I rather have a warm salad instead. And it turned out rather nice even if I do say so myself. The kale was still a bit crunchy and the flavour of garlic came through really well. The Culinary Consultant, who is back from his weekend of debauchery also enjoyed it, although I served him some boiled potatoes with butter and mint to make it a bit more substantial. And I might just have had one or two of those potatoes when I tidied up after dinner. Leftover calories don't count! 

Caramelised onion and goat cheese pizza

I can't believe we are already a week into June! Where has this spring gone? At least the weather is very summery today, the sun is shining and it's nice and warm outside despite the forecasted rain. What an anomaly! I am planning to finally wash all the linen and towels that have accumulated as I can finally get them dried properly outside. Laundry always smells so good when it dries outside. And I finally got around to wash a big bunch of towels I bought a while ago but haven't been able to use as I have been to lazy to wash them. Oh the troubles we have in our lives...

I was doing my normal Saturday morning thing, trying to figure out what to cook for the weekend. I haven't looked at my Pinterest boards for a while, I keep on pinning but never actually go back to look for inspiration on my boards. This time I decided to go through my Cheat Meals board to get inspired. I have pinned this caramelised onion and goat cheese pizza from Minimalist Baker ages ago and decided it was time to recreate it. It's simple and I love caramelised onions and goat's cheese. And I always make the same pizzas, so I thought it would be nice to try something different. The culinary consultant chose to go with his usual salami and cheese instead. His loss! And you have to try the balsamic reduction, it takes the pizza to another level!

Caramelised onion pizza (serves 1-2):
Pizza dough or flatbread (for my favourite pizza dough see here)
2 onions, caramelised and seasoned with salt and pepper (for instructions see here)
85 g soft goat cheese
a splash of milk
3/4 cup (185 ml) balsamic vinegar
basil or rocket for topping

The howto:
Prepare the pizza dough and caramelise the onions. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Roll the pizza dough a pizza of your choice, brush with olive oil and pre-cook for about 5 minutes. Add a splash of milk to the goat cheese to make it spreadable. Spread the goat cheese on the pizza and top with onions. Cook for another 5-10 minutes until the crust is golden and crunchy. While the pizza is cooking, prepare the balsamic reduction. Put the balsamic into a small saucepan and cook for about 10 minutes on medium heat without letting it boil. The balsamic will become syrup-y and reduce in volume by about half. After removing the pizza from the oven, top with balsamic and basil or rocket.

The verdict:
This was a delicious pizza and a great change from my regular tomato based pizzas. The combination of goat cheese and caramelised onions is heavenly. And the balsamic reduction. Why haven't I know about it before this day?? It's sticky and strangely sweet and tangy and perfect to complement the goat cheese and onions. And it would be perfect for salads too!  

Chicken in sun dried tomato sauce

You know how Pinterest is full of chicken recipes? When you browse your feed, all you get is chicken recipes. Or is it just me? But why is it that when you go looking for chicken recipes you can't find a single one of them? It's like shopping. If you go for a browse, you find the most amazing things. But just try to go out there looking for a pair of black trousers and you are guaranteed to find nothing. I actually had to look up "chicken recipes" on the find function in Pinterest to find something worth making. And boy am I glad I did. I stumbled upon this recipe from Spicy Southern Kitchen, and it is amazing. Without trying to brag, I'm usually a decent cook and most of what I cook goes down without a problem. But this was just out of this world good!! I was actually going to post another recipe today, but that one got re-scheduled because I just had to share this. That is how good it is!

This recipe is dedicated to by Bestie. I think she would love this. She is a pastaholic. And she really doesn't like onions. I usually never cook anything without onions, so I really notice if they aren't there. It's like a cooking ritual, starting by chopping up that onion and sauteeing it. But this time it was garlic and the wonderful flavour of sun-dried tomatoes that were the stars of this show. As usual, the picture doesn't do the food justice.

Chicken in sun-dried tomato sauce (serves 4):
1 tbsp butter
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp flour
3/4 cups chicken stock
4-5 chopped sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup double cream
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 to 1/2 tsp crushed red peppers
black pepper
2-3 tbsp of oil from the sun-dried tomatoes
4 chicken breasts
cooked pasta
1 cup peas or sweetcorn

The howto:
Finely chop the garlic clove. Melt the butter in a frying pan, cook the garlic until it starts to soften. Add the flour and mix, cook for a minute or so. Add 1/2 cup of the broth, a little bit at a time and mixing thoroughly to avoid any lumps. Add the finely chopped tomatoes, double cream, thyme and peppers and cook for a few minutes. Set aside in a bowl or small saucepan. Clean the pan, add the sun-dried tomato oil and cook the chicken breasts until cooked through (but make sure not to over-cook to avoid them becoming rubbery). Remove the chicken from the pan, add the remaining 1/4 cup of chicken stock, and scrape all the browned goodies from the pan to dissolve in the stock. Add the sauce and mix. Return the chicken to the pan, mix everything and cook until everything is heated thoroughly. Serve with pasta and peas or sweetcorn.

The verdict:
This is without a doubt one of the best chicken recipes ever! I just wanted to eat the sauce with a spoon straight from the pan. Double cream tends to do that... But it's worth every single calorie, I promise you. By a fluke I managed to cook the chicken to perfection, it was cooked through but very moist and juicy. And did I mention the sauce? Garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and just a pinch of heat from the red peppers. Trust me, you have to try this! The sooner the better. I may just make another batch this weekend again. Unless Pinterest pops up with another chicken recipe I want to try. But I find it hard to believe anything can be better than this!

Paella

Yesterday was just one of those days... It all started out well and good with light traffic so I made good time on the commute to work, got some unfinished business finished, our study donors both showed up and everything went well. I headed home early to avoid the bank holiday weekend rush hour traffic... Or so I thought. And then I was stuck on the A14 standing still in a massive congestion due to a three car accident a few exits up the road. People, be carful out there! I don't understand why everyone gets so aggressive when driving a car, it's all about speeding and making risky manoeuvres to overtake and then boom! And no-one can get anywhere. And there I sat for an hour on the road, wishing to get home. 

But when I finally got home (after passing another accident in one of the accident-prone big roundabouts), I get home to the water softener leaking water all over the place due to a worn down pipe that was leaking. The cupboard under the kitchen sink was full of water and it had leaked onto the floor under the kitchen cupboards... So we had to pull out the skirting board under the cupboards and blast the heating to get it to start to dry. I guess our kitchen will look like a construction zone for the next week or so until it has all dried out. Thankfully we detected the problem quite soon, so I am hoping there is no major damage and we can get it all to dry out, but this miserable cold and wet weather is doing nothing to help. 

So currently we only have water in the kitchen tap, and I'm waiting for the Culinary Consultant to make it out of bed, head off to get a new pipe and install it so I can get a shower, flush the toilets (ewwwww!!) and clean the house before our weekend guests arrive. Oh the joys of owning your own house. Although I have to admit, having a very handy boyfriend is... well... very handy, as I would have had no idea what to do about this whole business of a geysir under my sink. And I'm so worried it won't dry out properly and then we get all sorts of problems with mould and whatnot. Here is to hoping that was the last domestic crisis for a while. And could someone please do something about this miserable weather! I know it's tropical summer in Finland while it's monsoon season here. How unfair is that? It is just literally pouring down right now, here is to the bank holiday weekend...

A day like this calls for some good food. Maybe food from a more sunny place. As I have been posting nothing but brunch recipes for quite a while (and expect a few more to come), I thought I would interrupt the theme for one post by posting this paella we made a while ago. And as I'm on the theme of complaining, let me do one more. Why, oh why, is the paella rice not with all the other rice in our grocery store, but in a completely different isle? I would think if you want rice, you would go look for it in the rice section. But hey, that would be too easy wouldn't it? Ok, I'm all done now, I hope you all are having a better weekend out there!!

Paella (serves 4):
1 tbsp olive oil
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
1 green pepper
2 tbsp paella spice
2 tbsp smoked paprika (I used a mix of spicy and mild)
black pepper
300 g paella rice
1.2 l vegetable broth
3 tbsp marsala wine (should have been sherry, but we didn't have any)
150 g sliced chorizo (the one I used was smoked paprika and garlic)
350 g cooked seafood mix (the one I used had mussels, squid and prawns)
1/2 cup sweetcorn (or peas, but we didn't have any peas)
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley

To serve: lemon wedges and parsley

The howto:
Slice the onions, chop the garlic and green pepper. In a large frying pan, cook the onion in the oil until starting to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and green pepper and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the paella spice, smoked paprika and black pepper. Add the rice and cook for a few minutes. Add the vegetable stock and let cook until the rice is cooked, about 30-40 minutes. Add the marsala, chorizo, seafood mix, sweetcorn and parsley and let cook for a few more minutes to make sure everything is heated through. Serve with a sprinkling of parsley and a lemon wedge on top.

The verdict:
I thought making paella would be time consuming but it turned out to be rather easy. Unlike risotto, you can add all the liquid into the rice at once and just leave it to slowly cook, just stirring every once in a while to make sure it doesn't stick to the pan. The paella spice we bought on our trip to Tenerife last year was nice, it had a lot of flavour, as did the marsala wine. Don't skip the marsala wine! I really enjoyed the paella, with a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice on top it was a great dinner with very different flavours to what we usually eat. It was also still good to re-heat for lunch the next day, although the mussels do tend to get a bit chewy when re-heated.

Veggie lasagna

This week I decided to be a vegetarian. Not for any other reason that just because. I came across this post about being vegetarian for a month on A Cup of Jo, one of the blogs I'm following. I think the Culinary Consultant would rebel if I tried to introduce a month of vegetarianism in this house, but I decided he can put up with it for a week. 

I don't have an ethical problem with eating meat. I believe we need quite a bit of protein in our diet to cut out carbs, and meat is great for that. That should of course include a variety of white meat, fish and some read meat as well. Of course buying meat from animals who have lived a happy life and whose lives have been ended in the most humane way possible is always preferable over meat from intensely farmed animals. But it's also a balancing act with the financial constraints. Not a question I want to go into too much detail as I know I don't always practice what I preach or at least what I would prefer.

So this week, just to challenge myself to make new recipes, I went veggie. I tend to make the same old things over and over, and it was time to get new flavours into my food. And eating more veggies can never be bad for you. So I started with this delicious vegetarian lasagne which was an amalgamation of some recipes I've seen online and my own imagination. It does involve a bit of work with preparing sauced and veggies, but it's definitely worth the effort! Also, I would love to know how all the "real" food bloggers always manage to cut up their lasagne into these perfectly symmetrical square pieces which looks so great on the plate. Mine just ends up in a big sloppy pile no matter what I try to do. Oh well, it tastes great nonetheless.

Veggie lasagna (serves 6-8):
Tomato sauce:
about 20 tomatoes (or 2 jars of tinned tomatoes)
2 cloves of garlic
one sprig of rosemary
1 tbsp dried oregano
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 dried chilli (or more, depending on preference)
1 bay leaf
a pinch of sugar
salt and black pepper

Bechamel sauce from 1 litre of milk, see here for instructions

For the filling:
4 sweet peppers
4 onions (1 used 1 red and 3 yellow onions)
2 cups curly kale
garlic shoots (you know the greens that grow when you plant garlic cloves in the ground. If you don't have garlics growing in your garden, substitute with chives)
lasagna sheets
150 g mature cheddar

The howto:
Start by preparing the tomato sauce and Bechamel. The instructions can be found here. For the tomato sauce, if using fresh tomatoes, blanch and peel. If using frozen tomatoes (like I did), let them semi-thaw, at which stage it's easy to take out the hard green bit and peel off the skin. Put all the ingredients in a large saucepan and cook until desired consistency (i.e. not too runny), with my frozen tomatoes this took about 40 minutes of cooking without a lid.

While the sauces are cooking, chop the sweet peppers into large chunks, lightly coat in olive oil and roast in a 225 degree oven for about 35-40 minutes. Slice the onions and cook in a bit of olive oil in a frying pan until starting to soften. Grate the cheese.

Start by spreading a bit of Bechamel in the bottom of a oven proof dish, and top with lasagne sheets. Add a layer of Bechamel, half of the tomato sauce, half of the onions, peppers and kale. Add some chopped garlic shoots and some cheese. Add another layer of lasagne sheets and build an identical layer to the first one. Top with a final layer of pasta and pour the rest of the Bechamel on top and sprinkle grated cheese on top. Cook in a 200 degree oven for an hour until golden and bubbly.

The verdict:
I am so happy this lasagne turned out to be full of flavours and really delicious. The Culinary Consultant thought it wasn't too bad given the circumstance (i.e. the lack of dead animal). I have no qualms about making this again, to me it was at least as good as a regular lasagne, possibly even better. If you are going to make home made lasagne, it's without a doubt worth making your own Bechamel and tomato sauce, it just brings that extra flavour to it and is worth every extra minute you spend on cooking. Seriously, you have to try this. I suspected it would be a decent meal, but it was just amazing, the favours were so good. I rarely get completely overwhelmed by my own creations, but this was seriously good. 

Beef and Guinness stew

Saturday morning, 5:20 am. I have survived my first week in the new job, in fact I more than survived it, I had a great time. I was eased in very gently and it almost felt like a holiday with a minimum number of emails and loads of time to read up on background material, a luxury I know I won't have later. But one thing that has been a bit of a struggle has been the early mornings. So I was looking forward to sleeping in today. But as fate will have it, I have come down with a bit of a cold, so I have been waking up for most of the night with a cough, aching sinuses and having to blow my nose a lot. So I thought I might as well get up instead of tossing and turning and constantly waking the poor Culinary Consultant. So I am sitting here in my crafting lair listening to a choir of birds sing outside welcoming the dawn, and sipping a cup of mint tea with honey, made from dried mint from my very own garden. I was really hoping I had managed to avoid the cold, I felt a bit crappy on Wednesday and Thursday with a sore throat, but I went to sleep really early on Thursday night and felt much better on Friday morning so I though I got away easily. Clearly not. But like the model employee I am, of course I got sick on the night between Friday and Saturday so that I can spend all weekend poorly and then be ready to go back to work on Monday morning. But at least I have an excuse to huddle up in bed under the covers for most of the day, and spend the rest of it crafting and blogging. 

Based on the contents of my RSS feed and all the green food that has cropped up over the last few weeks, you can't miss that St Patrick's day is just around the corner (for those of you like me who had no idea when it is, it is in fact on Monday the 17th). So I thought why not, I'll contribute a little something as well. I just pretty much made a regular meat stew as we usually make them, but threw in some Guinness for good measure.

Beef and Guinness stew (feeds 6-8, or 2 people for the better part of a week):
1 onion
1 stalk of celery
2 tbsp oil
800 g beef, diced
salt and pepper
3 giant carrots (probably corresponding to 4-5 regular carrots)
3 large potatoes
3 small parsnips
4-5 large mushrooms (this was what I happened to have in the fridge, you can omit or add more if you want to)
1 can of Guinness
dried thyme
salt and pepper
enough beef stock to cover the veg and meat
4 bay leaves

The howto:
Finely chop the onion and celery. Heat up a large frying pan and add 2 tbsp of oil. Add the celery and onion and let cook for a few minutes. Add half of the beef. Cook until beef is nicely browned on the surface, season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl. Add the other tbsp of oil to the pan and fry the second half of the beef, and transfer to the side as well. If there is a lot of brown goodness stuck to the pan, add a bit of water and let bubble away until the stuff from the bottom of the pan has dissolved into the water. 

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Peel and thinly slice the carrots, spuds and parsnips. Slice the mushrooms. In a large lidded ovenproof casserole, add layers of potatoes, parsnips, carrots and meat adding in the mushrooms at some point as well. About halfway through, add two of the bay leaves, and sprinkle with black pepper and some dried thyme. Once everything is layered in the casserole, finish by sprinkling with thyme and black pepper and add two bay leaves. Pour enough Guinness and beef stock to cover everything in the casserole, and cook with the lid on for about 2 hours and 20 minutes. Then take off the lid to allow some of the liquid to evaporate and cook for another 40 minutes. Serve with mash or sweet potato fries.

The verdict:
We often make a big chicken or beef stew for Sunday dinner and then have leftovers for dinner the next week. It is a perfect way to get rid of whatever meat we happen to have in the freezer, or what happened to be on sale, and also to use up any root veg we happen to have around so there is a lot of variation. You can pour some wine in with the stew, and we are often using different varieties of store bought seasoning mixes for stews to change things up as well. Sometimes we have been able to go all the way to Thursday on one giant batch of stew. If you don't like to eat the same food many days in a row, just freeze the stew in appropriate sized servings and pull out later. After defrosting, you can either heat it up in the microwave, or in a smaller casserole in the oven. Usually the stew only gets better after standing a few days in the fridge so it's perfect food for re-heating. The stew itself was tasty and got even tastier over the next few days. If you are worried that it will taste too much of beer, it won't. If you really want to taste the Guinness, I would add more that one can to the stew, but if you add one can it just gives a bit of warmth and flavour to the stew but is in no way overpowering. I served the stew with oven baked sweet potato fries. Just chop up your sweet potatoes into sticks, coat lightly in oil and sprinkle with your choice of seasoning (I used just a bit of salt and pepper) and bake in 200 degrees C for 45-55 minutes depending on your preference of crispiness.