Sunday's fish pie

Matt, my husband, had declined my offer of roast dinner. Wisely because roast dinner would probably have consisted of bean burgers, roast potatoes, peas and gravy. So I would have to be a bit more imaginative. Whilst ferreting in the freezer earlier in the week I had noticed a disproportionate amount of smoked fish. I tend to buy this (and other fish) when it's reduced and then freeze it for use when we fancy it. One of the things I like to make is fish pie, but in the absence of any plain white fish and only a massive side of salmon (which I should have chopped up before freezing but is now going to have to be deployed when we have lots of people round sometime) this wasn't an option in the traditional sense. What I envisaged instead was something with the smoked fish (2 of the 4 fillets) and tomato. There was also half a tin of sweetcorn, half a punnet of mushrooms and some spring onions that needed using up. I wouldn't normally buy spring onions but they were on offer so were effectively free with the celery (not deployed in this creation) that I had brought. So I decided to add the mushrooms and sweetcorn to the tomato / fish mix and to make some sort of fancy mashed potato to go on top of it all.

This had the potential to use a lot of pans, something that I generally strive to avoid. So I spent a few minutes working out how to reduce my pan usage. I got it down to a wok, a saucepan and an oven-proof dish. Unfortunately I had used my multifunction hob / oven dish for the previous day's curry and hadn't yet washed it up, otherwise this would have reduced my pan usage by a third.

Strategically, I started off cooking the chopped spring onions in the wok while the fish defrosted in the microwave. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of smoked fish aroma emanating from the microwave every time we used it for a number of days subsequently. I am yet to discover the way around this – apart from of course to be more organised and get the fish out the freezer earlier so that it can defrost naturally. I was reminded of one of the reasons why I don't buy spring onions very often – they were so full of mud and required a disproportionate amount of washing for their small volume.

Spring onions to one side – they would go in the mash. I replaced them in the wok with the mushrooms and once these were cooked down (and I never cease to be amazed just how much they do cook down) I added a tin of plum tomatoes which I chopped a little bit with my wooden spoon. While that heated up a bit I prepared the fish. This mainly involved deskinning it, which is relatively easy as long as you have some good soap for afterwards so that you're not afraid to tackle to quite assertively.

The fish went into the mushroom / tomato mix and I put the potatoes on to boil. I am of the opinion that lots of the goodness in a potato is in its skin. Therefore unless you are an exceptionally honoured guest or the potatoes have particularly grotty skins you will find that my mash has the added texture and flavour of the skins which I leave in. In posh restaurants I think they call this crushed potatoes, really it is just slack mash. I stirred the sweetcorn into the mushroom / tomato / fish mix and then had to wait for a while until the fish was cooked and the potatoes were ready for mashing. Rather than twiddling my thumbs I grated some strong cheddar that I decided would augment the mash rather nicely.

I finished off the mushroom / tomato / fish / sweetcorn mix with a tablespoon of crème fraiche (it seemed like a good idea) and lots of black pepper and transferred this to my oven-proof dish. I mashed up the potatoes with the spring onions and cheese (this smelt amazing in itself and I would have been quite happy just to eat this for my meal) and then carefully applied this on top of the mushroom / tomato / fish / sweetcorn mix. There was a little bit of mash left over but I didn't mind – I would look forward to eating it as reheat.

The whole thing went into a hottish oven (the standard 180°C for when you don't really know what temperature you should really be using) for about 20 minutes and I cooked a little bit of broccoli (one of my favourite vegetables but not one of my favourite spellings) to go with it. The smell coming from the oven was (even if I say so myself) amazing – that wonderful combination of smoked fish and cheese I think. And when it came to eating the smell lived up to the expectations that it had created - a delicious alternative to a slack roast dinner. This is definitely one that's going to be recreated, hopefully with fewer pans next time.

Monday's potato dumplings

My mum and I had shared the vegetarian sharing plate at a local restaurant for lunch but another dish on the menu inspired me for the evening meal: gnocchi. I had planned to make a lasagne for us all (me, mum and dad, Matt – my husband – and my mother-in-law) but I thought that gnocchi would be no more complicated and a bit unusual. The pressure was on because Matt needed to eat before 7pm. Normally this wouldn't happen on a school night, but I had the day off work so with a bit of planning and the assistance of my mum as sous chef it should be possible.

I've made gnocchi once before (or maybe twice), and they were slightly gloopy so I decided to try a different recipe. My thoughts were that the sauce(s) would be easy (and slack) so I concentrated my initial efforts on the gnocchi. We debated for sometime whether the potatoes should be peeled before or after cooking, the recipe said afterwards but this would increase the time because:

1. They'd take longer to cook if whole rather than chopped

2. They'd have to cool down before peeling

So I put mum to work peeling the potatoes. And then boiling them.

Then I thought I may as well start the sauce. This would be the ideal opportunity to use up the leftover butternut squash. I started off by chopping a red onion and some sticks of celery and putting them in a big pan to sweat. Then I peeled off the skin and chopped up the squash. This was looking more and more like a reprise of the risotto flavours from last week. And it was such a good flavour I added mushrooms to complete. I mixed thing up a little bit by changing the seasoning, obviously some veg stock and black pepper but I also added some thyme from the garden. According to my mum I need to give my thyme plant a hair cut. I also set off a very easy pepper and tomato sauce by chopping a load of peppers and putting them in the oven to roast with a couple of sprigs of rosemary from the garden. I don't think that needs a hair cut.

Once that was all under way, I returned to the gnocchi. The potatoes were cooked and now needed mashing. I don't really like mashing potato (which is a shame because I love eating mashed potato), but this wasn't so bad as you're actually supposed to leave it a little bit lumpy. Once that's done you add an egg, flour, cheese, salt and pepper. On this occasion I used a hard goat's cheese – mum had already displayed her sous chef skills in grating this. It looks really dodgy when you first start to mix it up but comes together fine and then you tip it out and kneed it a little bit. This is very messy – wear an apron and remove hand jewellery. When it looks a bit less messy you have to roll it out into long thin sausages (about 1.5-2cm diameter) and then chop into pieces 2-3cm long. Maybe you could roll it all into little balls, but maybe this risks “over-handling” (if this is possible with gnocchi).

When it comes to cooking the gnocchi use the biggest pan of boiling water that you have but they need to be able to move around freely – I did mine in 4 batches. They're done when they float to the top and you need to remove with as little water as possible – I used a slotted spoon. In retrospect a chip pan would have been ideal but I don't have a chip pan. You can keep them warm in a buttered dish in a warmish oven (not the same oven that you're roasting peppers and by now tomatoes too in).

I finished off the butternut squash and mushroom sauce with a load of crème fraiche, and removed the sprigs of thyme. This was a good tea from the point of view that I could put everything in dishes on the table for people to help themselves. As well as the gnocchi and sauces there were some green beans that my sous chef had brought from her garden and prepared for me. It all seemed to go down very well. An improvement on my previous gnocchi, although they would probably have benefited from even more cheese (but what doesn't). No-one had any space for pudding which was a good job because there wasn't any. And we were nearly done by 7pm.

Monday's risky pasta

As I had a band rehearsal to get to, a late finish at work meant that my preference for tea was reheat soup. Matt, my husband had other ideas and made it quite clear that he wanted pasta. I was up to the challenge. 

Since it had been such a glorious weekend, we were particularly devoid of fresh ingredients - grocery shopping is not, in my opinion, an appropriate activity in such fine climes. But I was optimistic that I could concoct something from the available ingredients: 

• some cherry tomatoes (brought for a picnic but then forgotten in favour of naughtier things) 
• a bag of baby spinach (not quite a fortnight past its use by date) 
• a bit of blue cheese (when I came to it a bit less than I had anticipated - I think that someone might have had some for lunch). 

I would make a variation on one of my favourite student pasta sauces of broccoli, Stilton and lemon. 

I began by frying an onion. Even this was the last useable onion in the house - I have to return one to the shop as it was gone off in that way that onions do but that you can't tell until you start chopping. Onion doesn't feature in the original student recipe but it seemed like a sensible thing to do tonight. When this was nice and soft I added the spinach. Based on its use by date this was in remarkably good condition, you have to be a bit suspicious about what they do to it to make it last so long. Hopefully I'll be able to start using spinach from our hanging basket soon, or maybe even chard if I'm feeling fancy. At the same time I added a dozen or so cherry tomatoes. 

Whilst the veggies were cooking I set about the pasta. We have a large choice of different pastas and today I opted for the "fun" pasta from my favourite garden centre. This is because I was not certain of the success of the sauce and, should it be less than delicious, fun pasta might at least distract. When the veggies looked like they were done (spinach a tiny proportion of its original volume and cherry tomatoes exploded) I stirred in the blue cheese. This didn't look like quite enough dairy so I augmented it with a dollop of cream cheese. Finished off with a good grind of black pepper. Unfortunately I forgot that you shouldn't pick up the pepper mill from the top and as well as the good grind I ended up with peppercorns scattered around the hob. 

It culminated in one of those happy coincidences where the pasta and the sauce are ready at just the same time. Furthermore, it was one of those happy coincidences where the things that you throw together from the fridge actually end up tasting pretty good.

And I don't think that it was just because we were distracted by the fun pasta. (I did identify a star, an apple and a bow shape, but these are nothing in comparison to the sphinx that Matt found). 

I'd been a bit excessive with the fun pasta, so one of us will be having even more fun tomorrow lunchtime.

Monday's medley of soup

After a leisurely start to the day it was all systems go to equip the garden. The leisurely start included reading an old book – I’m sure I’m enjoying it more because it smells old.

The equipping of the garden first involved removal of junk from the boot of my car at the dump. This included:

1. An enormous and cute, but slightly mouldy teddy bear, that had been freed from our loft by my cousin, Alastair, in January. It had been sat around in a black sack in various locations since as I had been intending to fettle it up with a trip to the launderette but finally thought better of it.
2. A whole load of VHS tapes which I had discovered whilst spring re-arranging (more enjoyable than spring cleaning) yesterday. Both mine and Matt’s and none of them viewed in at least the last 7 years.
3. My condemned sandwich toaster.

Items 1 and 2 disposed of according to plan. Item 3 disposed of causing Matt great hilarity. Today I was fulfilling the role of dumping whilst Matt watched from the car. This is often beneficial as the men at the dump are generally quite keen to help ladies with their dumping. I was duly assisted with items 1 and 2 but today the electrical waste was unmanned.

Taking health and safety seriously I called out before throwing the sandwich toaster into the skip to check that there was no-one inside it. There was no response so I went ahead with the launch of the sandwich toaster. Unfortunately I didn’t launch with quite enough force and the sandwich toaster rebounded from the side of skip, plug flailing and narrowly avoiding my head. It was whilst I was picking up the bits that Matt wound down the car window and told me, between fits of laughter, to walk round the other side of the skip. Where the side was down and I could just place in the sandwich toaster with no risk of head injury.

A successful trip to the garden centre ensued and 8 terracotta, mosaic encrusted pots later we began the return journey. Matt had seat belted the larger pots into the back seats with the rest in the boot so there was limited capacity for shopping from a “luxury” supermarket. One of the best things about said luxury supermarket is that when they reduce things they do really good reductions. Today’s best bargain was watercress and I picked up 4 packets. I also picked up a packet of reduced salad which when put together with some reduced beetroot, the remaining salmon & prawn leftovers and a homemade dressing made a very nice lunch.

After lunch it was back out to another garden centre where we successfully equipped ourselves with garden tables (that sort of match the pots) and a hose. And what appears to me to be an extravagant hose attachment but Matt assures me that we will not regret it.

Once home I needed to turn the watercress into soup while it was still nice. I think that potato is the traditional thickening to go with this but I prefer lentils to add some protein.

Realising that we’d had watercress in the lunchtime salad I thought that I should mix up the day’s flavours, I decided to make another sort of soup too. I got a leek and potato one on the go. 

Then I thought: why stop at two? We had eaten the last portion of frozen soup yesterday (the parsnip and apple one) so there was scope for restocking.

One of my other luxury supermarket bargains was a pot of sun ripened tomatoes and I thought I’d try these with some slightly wrinkling peppers. Having started to heat some olive oil to sauté an onion I noticed that there was quite a bit of oil in the tomato pot and not wanting to waste this I got out another pan and heated that instead.

So now I had a spare pan with olive oil and the only logical thing was to use this to make another soup. I had used up nearly all of the fresh vegetables in the house but there were still some carrots. And I had a little knobble of ginger so decided to try carrot and ginger. To improve the flavour I oven roasted the carrots before adding to the onion and ginger. Whilst the carrots were roasting and I was pondering this creation I felt inspired to add orange juice. This would be the perfect opportunity to use up the oranges and satsumas etc that had been sat, unloved, for a good long while (some I fear since 2012) in the fruit bowl. This is because I love nice citrus and am often tempted to buy. But if I buy a pack, eat one and it’s disappointing then it puts me off the rest. But I hate wasting food so the citrus stay there. (If it’s nice the whole lot may well get devoured in one sitting.) Matt can usually be counted on to help consume food but he isn’t keen on oranges due to the peeling issue (not that I’ve ever perceived that as a particular issue). So I was pleased to be able to squeeze some semi-decent juice out of my languishing fruits, which I added with some stock and red lentils to the other ingredients.

The tomatoey-peppery soup was looking rather insubstantial so I added a tin of tomatoes to that. And some red lentils.

Once all the soups were blended up (separately) we faced the dilemma of which to eat tonight. Matt went for the watercress (with a dollop of crème fraiche) – I am told it was scrumptious. I went for the carrot / ginger / orange. It too was scrumptious. I think that I’ll call it velvet carrot soup as the lentils gave it a gorgeous texture (although I did miss a few bits of carrot in the blending process).

Now I’ve just got to find enough containers to freeze it all. And replenish the lentils. 

Thursday's lovely lentils

Bank holidays are all very well but that does mean that lots of us have to get 5 days’ work done in 4. Plus with sickness and holiday in our team it’s been a really hectic week. When I’m feeling busy one of the things that drops off is proper shopping. With hindsight it would have been a good idea to organise Mr Big Supermarket to deliver us a top up but as it was the kitchen was fairly poorly stocked. Tonight’s tea was therefore going to have to feature mainly store cupboard ingredients.

A while ago I’d made a rather tasty rice and lentil dish and tonight seemed a good time to revive this. It’s a very simple recipe. The main drawback is that it requires 3 pans: 2 more than I would like but since we got a dishwasher this bothers me less. It also requires some multi-tasking.

I usually like to make excess portions of dinners; either for the next day or to freeze for emergency reheat meals. But I’m always worried about rice since everybody seems to think that it’ll give you food poisoning if reheated. And I am nervous about rice as it is. So for a change I was planning to stick fairly closely to a recipe, but since my recipe was for 4 people I would need to take care that I remembered to divide everything by 2.

Pan 1:

The rice is cooked up with onion and spices. And really after I’d thinly sliced my onion that was the most taxing part of the preparation out of the way. Once the onion is cooked off nicely you’re supposed to add 1 ½ tsp of ground cinnamon and 1 ½ tsp of ground nutmeg (halved on this occasion). But I have some aging cinnamon sticks (a random purchase from the 2011 Devon County Show) so used a couple of those instead. And rather than getting all my ingredients ready before I started I went to add the nutmeg only to find it wasn’t with the rest of the spices. I am yet to find my perfect spice rack so in the meantime all the spices etc are stored in a shoebox. After enlisting the help of my husband, Matt, who always knows where everything is, the nutmeg was located next to the popcorn (at the opposite end of the kitchen to the spices). Unwilling to measure this I just grated until it looked and smelt about right. Then you add the rice. I used a mixture of basmati, wild and some sort of red rice (all our dried ingredients like this are in plastic canisters so the packet that would tell me exactly what it was was long gone). And then the stock / water. Cue narrow avoidance of adding too much fluid by the omission of dividing the original recipe’s volume by 2 – luckily I realised before it had gone in. And then you just cook it until all the water is absorbed.

Pan 2:

Boil some green (puy) lentils until cooked. (I think that a combination of red and green lentils would probably work ok.) Drain the lentils.

Pan 3:

Make a tomato sauce. I suppose that you’re supposed to use fresh tomatoes but I’m sure that tinned are nearly as good. Today’s sauce also contained a small pepper (going a bit wrinkly), some chilli flakes, a teaspoon of yeast extract (it makes loads of things taste brilliant), some tomato puree and some pomegranate molasses. The pomegranate molasses is even older than the cinnamon sticks, 250ml having been purchased for a specific recipe in December 2008 that required 1 ½ tbsp (for the scientific amongst you I’m sorry about my mixing of units). We are still looking out for opportunities to use it and this was just one of those occasions. Oh, and some black pepper. Today I proved that our new “artistic” pepper mill (long story) is resilient as well artistic; the kitchen floor may have been covered in peppercorns but the peppermill was unscathed after I managed to drop it from a height of about 3 feet (just to mix up the units even more). Boil it all up and keep warm.

To serve you mix the lentils into the rice pan. I needed to reheat a bit (the lentils not the rice obviously bearing in mind my food poisoning concerns) due to partial multi-tasking failure. The tomato sauce goes on the side. The recipe also says to serve with a cucumber and yoghurt salad. I had neither of these but did have an out-of-date pot of tzatziki which I had acquired during a fleeting trip to the shop one lunchtime. It didn’t taste out-of-date and filled the role very nicely.

I think that Matt found the tomato sauce a bit spicy (he does have quite a delicate palate!) but overall a success, plenty of carbohydrate and protein fuel for the long swim I have planned tomorrow. And at least I’ll know where the nutmeg is next time I want it in a hurry.

Saturday's cabbage

The savoy cabbage is one of those vegetables that I have convinced myself is very healthy and good value. But when it comes to actually eating it seems to be remarkably un-inspiring. So I resigned myself to the fact that we would be eating some sort of soupy / brothy thing or a stir-fry this evening with a cabbage that was looking increasingly sorry for itself.

The day flew by but when looking back it’s not entirely clear that very much actually happened. I almost signed up to a store card but backed out when they said I couldn’t set up a direct debit to pay the full amount each month. They offered me the option of an old fashioned statement which I would have to organise to pay or a direct debit for a set amount and then arrange to pay the rest or accumulate interest. Either seemed liable to be a disaster.

Returned from said store and I made use of some lovely March sunshine creating the “Mediterranean” bit of the garden. By which I mean planting some herbs around the olive tree (actually spotted an olive!) and repotting the bay tree. Hopefully this will all survive next week’s predicted snow and soon I should be cooking with home grown flavourings.

After a quick lunch consisting of a bowl of my favourite crinkle cut salt and vinegar crisps I managed to get a good swim in today. The main hazard facing me was hoards of teenagers windmilling their arms on the poolside. It was some sort of regatta (if that’s the word for a swimming competition) and this apparently amounts to warming up.

I was certainly ready for dinner. But rather than choosing the straightforward option (the stir-fry had been on my mind most of the afternoon) I thought I would see if there was something more exciting to create. Two of my books had recipes for stuffed cabbage leaves so I figured that I could give that a go. Neither of them sounded brilliant but didn’t seem too complicated so I decided to go freestyle….

The obvious thing to stuff the cabbage leaves with would be rice. But I am useless at cooking rice and my husband, Matt, who usually does this task was out on a DIY-based mission. So I opted for pearl barley. This tends to work out best if rinsed before cooking and since I had just used the colander to rinse the cabbage leaves prior to blanching (it defeats me why this is called blanching, but there we are, and blanche I did) I chucked a cup or so into said colander (in an effort to reduce washing up). My misjudgement of the relative size of pearl barley and the holes in the colander resulted in pearl barley spattering all around the sink area so I had to revert to a sieve anyway. I decided that the whole thing could do with a bit of protein so chucked in a cup or so of puy lentils with the pearl barley and set them to simmer.

It struck me that the whole thing would need some sort of sauce. So I cooked up an onion, a couple of sticks of celery and a couple of carrots and then at a loss of what else to do threw in a can of chopped tomatoes. And on a whim I added some red wine vinegar and a teaspoon of brown sugar. And then decided that it would be better blended. By now Matt had come home and as well as cooking rice he tends to do most kitchen tasks that involve the use of a power tool and thus we had a nice tomato sauce and a spattered worktop.

I had evidently made a huge overestimation of how much stuffing each cabbage leaf would take but, determined not to waste my pearl barley and lentils, piled on the filling. And then tried to roll. Resulting in a lot of pearl barley and lentils joining the tomato sauce on the worktop, and a bit on the floor too. The leaves just wouldn’t be rolled. I had images of tying them up with string. But had no suitable string. So the only solution I could come up with was to “pin” them shut with cocktail sticks.

After arranging in an ovenproof dish I poured the tomato sauce (which miraculously was just the right quantity) over the stuffed cabbage leaves. Still not convinced on the outcome of this dish I grated over little bit of cheese (my culinary cure-all) before putting the whole lot to bake in the oven at 180°C for about half an hour.

And after careful removal of the cocktail sticks we tucked in. Matt declared it   a  “triumph”. It was yummy but if I was doing it again I wouldn’t bother with the cabbage leaves. I’d just make the pearl barley / lentil mix and serve with tomato sauce.

Which I guess means we’re back to soup or stir-fry for the savoy cabbage.