Stuff yer bake

I was busy as usual trying to find cheap and quick meals for my food order for the week and this one jumped off the page. It looked tasty, easy, healthy and had only a few ingredients so ticked all the appropriate boxes. I fiddled with the recipe a bit as I usually do because I’m incapable of leaving things alone (as my other half always tell me). I added a little finely grated lemon zest and a bit of grated parmesan in the sauce as well as on top which did give it a bit more depth ( I felt I had to replace some of calories lost with cheese as I used low fat creme fraiche!) It turned out really well, so well done to Good Food magazine this month for making my week of food so tasty. 

Serves 2

200g linguini

1 tbsp olive oil

1 red chilli, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic

2 courgettes, grated

2 tbsp creme fraiche

2 tsp lemon zest

grated parmesan to serve

Put a large saucepan of salted water on to boil and cook the pasta according to instructions. While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a frying pan over a low heat and add the chilli and garlic and stir but don’t allow it to brown. Turn up the heat and add the courgette and stir for a few minutes to cook and allow any water to evaporate. Stir in the creme fraiche, lemon zest and season well. Drain the pasta and coat in the sauce adding some grated parmesan and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil to finish. 

I spotted this recipe in July’s Good Food magazine and knew that I had to try it. I love salmon and I could happily sit and eat a tin of anchovies on their own so it was definitely a recipe for me. The nice people at Good Food magazine have made my life very simple and put the recipe on their website for you to have a look at if you fancy. Give it a go, especially if it’s a nice day and you can get the BBQ on and pour yourself a glass or three or chilled white wine or beer.

One bag of frozen squid is a little much for one person, so as I was on my own this weekend (the other half was living the high life in London for the weekend) I decided to do two different squid dishes, one for Saturday night and one for Sunday night. I had seen a Nigel Slater recipe for squid on TV a few days ago which got me salivating and I thought I’d give it a try. I did my usual trick of just going from memory and not bothering to look up the recipe so I ended up doing it quite differently.

I made up a similar marinade by pounding up zest of one lemon, 2 tsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp thyme leaves, half a small garlic clove, 2 tbsp olive oil, tsp salt and lots of freshly ground pepper in a pestle and mortar. I then cut open about 6 baby squid and scored it as the recipe suggested, dried it thoroughly and fried in olive oil in a very hot pan. It cooked for only a few minutes until slightly golden and then the hot squid was tossed in the marinade. I then put the squid into a bowl with some salad leaves and tomato and tossed them together to coat the leaves and heaped in onto a plate. The other recipe looks good too… maybe I should try it sometime. 

I bought some more frozen squid this week and had two dishes in mind to make with it. The first one is a recipe taken from one of Rick Stein’s book. I can’t remember which one it is as it has been a few years since I made it, but I imagine it was one of his early ones.  I first saw it when he came to a book signing in the BBC shop in Belfast about ten years ago and cooked it for us. That was the first time I had tried squid and have really enjoyed it ever since. 

I found the recipe on line, so here it is. It really is a beautiful and simple dish. I served it with a couple of slices of sourdough bread but a glass of chilled white wine wouldn’t go amiss either. 

I cooked a little squid for Poppy but she sniffed it, poked at it and then walked off. Obviously nothing but prime tuna can satisfy her. 

I have had rather a productive day for a bank holiday, when generally everyone lazes around relishing the fact that it’s another day off the full working week (although I was at work on Sunday so it doesn’t really count for me). I did sleep in just a little but I struggle to get up when it is really humid. It’s been about 20 degrees centigrade here today, which is a big change from just a few weeks ago when we had snow and I don’t think my body has had time to adjust.

First off was a quick trip to the garden centre to try and get my garden sorted for summer. I bought some strawberry plants and some seeds to sow peppers, tomatoes and lettuce and some shrubs for the front garden. I have been a bit lax with the garden this year and it was slowly beginning to look like a poster advertisement for Day of the Triphids. I also had time to squeeze in making a pavlova, which I will post about later. I’m now rewarding my efforts with a glass of wine but sadly it will be my last before my 10k run next Sunday.

I have seen frozen squid in the supermarket on several occasions and since I can’t get any fresh I thought I’d buy some. They were prepared baby squid and I decided they would be very nice pan fried for dinner and served on salad. 

Ingredients 

Around seven prepared baby squid

I bag of salad leaves, eg rocket, spinach, watercress

A handful of black olives, pitted

A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

olive oil

1 tsp of dried chilli flakes

Half a small clove of garlic, crushed

2 tsp toasted sesame oil

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 tsp rock salt

3 tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 tsp soy sauce

2 tsp vinegar 

4 tbsp plain flour

Prepare the salad first by assembling the salad leaves, tomatoes, and olives in a bowl. Make the dressing by putting the garlic, vinegar, soy sauce and freshly ground black pepper into a glass. Add the oils and whisk to combine, set aside. Cut the squid into rings, leaving the tentacles whole and pat them dry. Heat a couple of tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan over a high heat. Mix the flour together with the chilli flakes, salt and pepper and coat the squid with it. Drop the squid into the very hot pan and move it around to get the squid evenly coloured, this should take about four or five minutes and no longer as the squid will become tough. Whisk the salad dressing again to combine, drizzle over the leaves and mix to cover the leaves lightly. Divide between two plates. When the squid is cooked and golden brown take out of the pan, heap on top the leaves and serve immediately. 

Serves two.

I was wondering what to do with the rest of the fabulous crab I got in Devon so I browsed through the selection of cookery books I brought with me and found a crab ravioli recipe from Rick Stein’s Seafood book. I have never been terribly successful at at making ravioli as they are so fiddly and always seem to fall apart on me and I haven’t made fresh pasta in a while so it took me time to get to grips with the pasta machine again. I really need to invest in one of those ravioli tray things as they are supposed to be quite useful.

Apart from the fact that it took me the best part of two hours to make and some of them burst they turned out very nicely. The sauce in particular was simple yet very flavoursome and well worth the wait.

Fresh Pasta

225g Plain flour (type 00)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 teaspoon olive oil

2 medium eggs

2 medium egg yolks

Put all the ingredients into a food processor and blend. Once it has come together, tip out onto a work surface and knead for about 10 minutes until the dough is soft and elastic. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Ravioli

175g fresh white crab meat

1 tblsp melted butter

a small sprinkle of cayenne pepper

Parsley and lemon butter

100g butter

2 tblsp chopped flat leaf parsley

1/2 tsp grated lemon zest

2 tsps lemon juice

2 garlic cloves very finely chopped

Mix all the ingredients for the ravioli together. Divide the pasta into three or four pieces and roll out in your machine or with a rolling in until quite thin. Keep dusting the pasta with flour to stop it sticking to the rollers. On one half of a sheet of pasta dot a teaspoon of mixture at 3inch intervals. Wet around each mound of crab with a little water, then fold over the other half of the pasta and starting from the inside out press down around the little mounds pushing out all the air so you have no bubbles in the ravioli. This is the complicated bit and would be so much more simple with a ravioli tray if you have one. Make sure that you flour each one well so that they don’t stick together as they will tear easily. Once your have used up all the mixture get some salted boiling water ready and add the ravioli. Cook for about three minutes, then drain.

While they are cooking make the butter dressing. Simply melt the butter with all the other ingredients, seasoning to taste and once the ravioli is drained and plated up, spoon over the top and serve. Then sit down for a well deserved rest.

Unlike the vast majority, or so it seems to me, I love Brussel Spouts. It’s like declaring that you enjoy wading knee deep in manure, when you get that sour-faced, nose turned up look of disgust when they are mentioned. Infact I don’t know why I don’t have them more often. I think I just tend to forget about them, or maybe I don’t want to own up to my distasteful 20 a day sprout habit and simply pretend that you only have them on Christmas day when your mother tries to force them down your throat and the only thing you can do to stop the ever rising tide of bile is to hold you nose.

Instead of having just sprouts for Christmas day, which don’t get me wrong would make me just as happy, we tend to boil them and then fry them in butter with white breadcrumbs and chopped brazil nuts or we slice them raw and fry them with pine nuts and pancetta.

Just before Christmas I thought it would be nice to try sprout soup. I thought it turned out very nicely. If you don’t like sprouts, I’m not gonna lie to you, you may heave at the very sight of it.

I simply boiled the sprouts in a saucepan filled with weakish vegatable stock, a clove of garlic and a bay leaf. When the sprouts were tender I reserved the cooking liquor, refreshed them in cold water and blended them to a smooth soup with the cooking liquor, a little grated nutmeg, salt and pepper and a little butter. The soup ended up a little thick so I just thinned it out with a little water, but the consistency is, of course, entirely up to you. I then swirled a little creme fraiche into the soup and topped with ciabatta croutons that I cooked in the oven with olive oil, salt, a clove of garlic (which I removed before serving) and a handful of pine nuts.

I can never quite decide whether I like soup. If I’m ever in a restaurant and there is soup for starters on the menu, I never order it as I tend to think soup is rather boring. Don’t get me wrong, I have had some really nice soups and I have actually decided to do soup next week for an evening meal so I don’t know why I feel that way about it. It is generally a cheap quick and healthy meal, although I do tend to have a slab of bread with it, so it is ideal for a mid-week meal. Despite my indifference to soup I quite like this one.

I apologise for not giving quantities here as I never bothered to measure the ingredients and employed a slap-dash approach as usual.

Simply soak some butter beans overnight, then rinse and drain them and put into a saucepan with a couple of bay leaves, a sprig of thyme, an onion peeled and halved, pepper, a couple of garlic cloves and a potato and cover with water. Boil the beans until tender. Whilst the beans are cooking, cut pancetta into slices and fry until golden. Once the beans are cooked, remove the bay leaves and thyme and blend the rest of the ingredients (with the cooking water), seasoning with salt and a little more pepper if required. If the soup is too thick add a little water and if you want to be more indulgent add a drizzle of cream. Serve the soup in warm bowls topped with the bacon and drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and eat with crusty bread.

I really like risotto but you have to keep trying different recipes to make it more interesting. This is one I made up myself although it is by no means ground breaking. I love Gruyere cheese and I thought it would go well with the nutty squash and pine nuts. The basic risotto recipe is from Jamie’s Italy.

Serves 6

Ingredients

1.1 ltrs chicken stock

3 tblsp olive oil

knob of butter

1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

2 sticks celery, trimmed and finely chopped

400g risotto rice

2 wineglasses dry white vermouth or white wine

salt and freshly ground black pepper

70g butter

1 small butternut squash

1 tsp ground cumin

100g pine nuts

115g Gruyere finely grated

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees centigrade. Peel and chop the butternut squash into 1 inch size pieces. Toss them in a tbslp of olive oil, the cumin and salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roast in the oven until soft.

Heat the stock. Add the onion, garlic and celery into a frying pan with the olive oil and butter and gently cook for 15 minutes. Add the rice and turn up the heat and fry for a minute or so. Add the vermouth and stir until absorbed, then start adding the stock a ladle at a time, letting the rice absorb it after each addition. The heat should be turned down to medium so the rice doesn’t cook too quickly on the outside. Keep adding the stock until the rice is cooked, which should take about 15 minutes.

Just before the rice is cooked dry fry the pine nuts until golden. Keep an eye on them as they colour very quickly once up to temperature. Remove the rice from the heat and add the squash, Gruyere, pine nuts and a knob of butter. Stir together, put a lid on and let it sit for a few minutes before serving.

This simple concoction was originally intended to be a plain sweetcorn soup, but the only bread I had in the house was naan bread and I thought adding a hint of spice might compliment the bread very well. The soup is cheap, easy to make and reasonably healthy so it probably ticks most peoples boxes.

Ingredients:

• Two 400g tins of sweetcorn, try and get good quality stuff that hasn’t had salt and sugar added. Leave a tblsp aside to decorate
• Two large potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1 inch dice
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 1 red chilli pepper, deseeded if you like, and chopped
• 1 litre of chicken stock
• 4 heaped tsps of cumin seeds
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tblsp yoghurt to serve
• a small sprig of parsley or coriander to garnish
• naan bread

Method

Heat a small pan on a medium to high heat and dry fry the cumin seeds until they release their aroma and slightly colour, (keep an eye on them so they don’t burn) then grind them with a pestle and mortar. Heat a small amount of oil in a large saucepan on a medium heat then add the onion and garlic. Fry for a few minutes until slightly softened then add the potatoes, chilli and ground cumin. Stir for a few minutes then add the chicken stock and simmer for about 15 minutes before adding the sweetcorn and cooking for a further 5 minutes. Check the potato and onion are soft ,then take off the heat and blend until smooth. It is quite a thick soup but if you find it too thick add a little water. Season the soup and then ladle into warm bowls, with a spoon of yoghurt, a small heap of sweetcorn and a sprig of parsley on top. Serve with warm naan bread.

Serves 4