Random Recipes - 'Dare to Bare'

Well there went chrimble - I've been so disorganised (and also quite busy) that I totally failed to get a post
up before the day.  Hey ho, hope we all had fun anyway.  :-)
I've also been super slack at getting any blog challenge posts done but thankfully lovely Dom at Belleau Kitchen, instead of the normal Random Recipe gave us the task of 'Daring to Bare' and photographing our larder / pantry / food cupboards.  I'm still a day late with this but I'm sure he's used to it by now!
My 'pantry-in-potentia' has yet to be built into the space under the stairs so at the moment I have two very disorganised and messy cupboards.  Don't say I didn't warn you...

This is the kitchen cupboard, note most of a whole shelf devoted to herbs / spices / vinegars etc!

Two things I always have - soy sauce and mushroom ketchup.  The latter gives the depth you miss when not using meat.  I generally have quite a few oriental options in stock.  Different noodles, pickled turnip (nicer than it sounds), random tins of braised eel - because I loved the packaging.  ;-)

This is the other cupboard.  For overflow / multibuys.

Multiple packs of pasta, stuffing, jars of curry pastes.  The left side is full of cds which is why I haven't pictured it.  Not a lot of free space though as you can see and the best bit of this is - I have an Approved Food order arriving on Tuesday.  Now where am I going to put that lot...

Mash? Smashed it!

Apologies for the cheesy title but I'm kind of excited by my discovery this evening.  Mash can be nice!!  Good - even tasty!!!  I have always disliked mash; there's no texture, there's no taste, all too often it's too watery and just insipid and all round uninspiring.  To me it has always been the lowest form of cooked potato to eat.
However - as I mentioned I have had something of a epiphany.  I was making mash to top the Chaps cottage pie with (heroic meat cooking by the faint hearted I reckon) and I played around with it a bit and found - The Perfect Mash.
(Imagine a little musical 'ahh ah aaahhh' at this point if you will.)

Do you want to know the first secret?  Do you??

Don't boil the potatoes.

Ahaa - boiling them just introduces water into a; by necessity, floury potato.  It's floury nature means it will soak it up = rubbish mash.
A note here - you need a decent spud too, if that's not too much of an obvious thing to say.  Mine were local Desiree's bought complete with the dirt on from the local grocers.  A good spud should taste nice already, even before we add the magic.
So - if we're not boiling the spuds what are we doing with them?  Some people advocate baking them which is fine if you already have the oven on for something else, but if all you want is a bowl of mash it seems a bit long winded to me.  So - I microwaved them.  Scrub clean then prick the skins well with a fork - they'll explode if you don't!  I had two monsters - over 600g between them.  Microwave for 5 mins, turn over, cook for another 5 and prong with the fork to test if they're done.  If not give them another couple of mins.
Once they're cooked slice open in half to help the steam out.
With a fork to steady the spud (they are hot!) scoop the innards out with a spoon into a bowl.  Roughly mash with the fork.
Add 2 big spoons (about tablespoons) of Greek yoghurt and 2 of horseradish sauce.  Some salt and pepper and a small knob of butter.  Mix in well but endeavour to keep some texture to the mash.
Taste.
Marvel.

I have a lot of catching up to do on a lifetime of spurned mash...

Easy chunky fish chowder

Having taken some fish snaffled up from the bargainous CFC out of the freezer yesterday  with the intention

A mere £3.75 for all 4 fish fillets.  :-)

of making my crunchy topped fish pie, I realised tonight as I got home late from work that I really just could not be bothered.  So - what to do with the fish?  A nice chowder would suit the freezing outdoor temperatures nicely I figured, and should be easy to knock up.
Atypically for me I didn't then embark on a 2 hour research project comparing the relative merits of each and every recipe on the interwebs but I adapted this one from the BBC good food website and made it even easier and chunkier.

Chunky Fish Chowder
EVOO
2 sticks celery - diced
1 leek - sliced then the rounds sliced in half
500g spuds - diced small as I didn't bother peeling them.  I used waxy spuds as that's what I had and what I prefer
1 litre fish (or use veg) stock

Skinning salmon is easy, cod - not so much!

Zest of 1 lemon (if you haven't got a lemon in the house feel free to leave this out - I wasn't convinced you could taste it in the final product tbh)
1 tsp cornflour
2 salmon fillets (my pack was 260g) - skinned and cut into chunks
2 cod fillets (my pack was 220g) - skinned and cut into chunks
300ml full fat milk
150g sweetcorn - defrost if frozen
2 heaped tbsp Greek yoghurt

Soften the celery and leeks in the EVOO for 5ish mins while chopping the spuds.
Add the spuds, stock and lemon zest.  Bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer.

Stir the cornflour into a small amount of cold water and add to the pot.
Once the potatoes are soft (up to 15 mins) use a masher and crush them into the soup a bit.  How much is up to you.  It saves getting the FP out though!
Add the milk and sweetcorn and warm up.
Add the fish and cook gently for a few minutes until done.  Don't boil or the fish will fall apart.
Serve - I put a little more lemon zest on mine.  The original recipe suggests chives but I didn't have any.

Tasty, easy and filling, I enjoyed this greatly.  Helped warm me through too.  :-)
As I'd used reduced fish it was a cheap dish for me to make and I just used veg that was to hand, so no need to shop especially for this dish.

Quick, tasty & frugal - Tortilla Española (Spanish Omelette)

I wanted to whip up a quick lunch yesterday and was going to make an omelette when I remembered there was half a *tins worth of potatoes in the fridge to be used up.  I love Spanish Tortilla so it was a bit of a no-brainer decision what to do with them.
This is quick, easy and cheap yet satisfying and a bit more of a meal than just an omelette would be.  In fact really this makes enough for a snack later too.  As the Spanish generally advocate serving it at room temperature this is most definitely not a problem for me!
So - what do we need?

1 small onion, halved and sliced finely
Half a tin potatoes- use the value ones
2 eggs
EVOO
Fresh parsley
S+P

Heat a slug of EVOO and sweat down the onions whilst you slice the potatoes.  You can make them thick or thin - it' a matter of personal choice. I've seen recipes for both ways on line and they all claim that theirs is the 'authentic' way of doing it.
Add the potatoes and a pinch of salt and cook gently, half covered, until nicely softened, getting a little colour and taking on all the lovely oniony flavours.
Beat the eggs, add plenty of salt and pepper and pour swiftly into the pan.  Throw in the chopped parsley and give the whole lot a very quick stir so everything is coated in the egg, then cover and leave to cook.
Once you judge the bottom is cooked through, cover the pan with a plate and quickly invert the lot, then slide the tortilla back in to finish cooking.
Serve.  That's all there is to it.  J

You could add other bits to this depending on what you have lying around to use up.  You could also add another egg for an even more substantial final product if wanted.  It's one of those very un-strict recipes.  Have a play with it!

*I don't normally use tinned potatoes but had wanted to experiment with them for my lunch at work.  Our work kitchen is woefully under equipped - there's a coffee maker and a boiling water tap and that's it.  No microwave, toaster, kettle, anything of that sort.  This can make it a bit of a challenge (and one I embrace) to come up with hot food for lunch in the winter.  One day I might get round to a mini-series of posts on 'cooking without a cooker' or something along those lines.

I'm adding this to Chris's Bloggers Around the World - Food World Cup challenge.  Do check it out - there's going to be a lot of posts for this one!

First frost

First frost of this winter here today.  We're lucky down in the South West that we get a lot warmer climes most of the time than a lot of the rest of our wee island.  Today the river steamed gently in the morning sun on a truly beautiful morning as I wended my way to work.

The cold I can cope with but I do love it to be bright and sunny.  It's those grey dreary November days that get me down.  As I read recently 'November is like the Thursday of the year.'  And as the great Douglas Adams wrote in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays...'

Bloggers around the World - Greece - Tomato Pancakes / Keftedes and the case of the spookily disappearing feta

This month’s country for ‘Bloggers Around the World’ by Chris over at Cooking Around the World is Greece.  Now this is one of my fave  blog challenges but sadly I have not managed to enter for a few months but, as it was I that suggested Greece, I really really am deffo going to get at least one post in for it.  Kinda feel I should!

That said, as my failure to take part in the other months has been due to time constrictions (either in making the dish or in posting it having made it – now that’s really irritating) I decided to start with a quick snack style option and see if I can get more of a main course in later in the month.  --As I’m now posting this at the very end of the month the obvious answer to that was no.  L  Doh!

Now I had intended to serve these tomato pancakes/fritters/keftedes* with a nice authentic Greek hummus to dip into.  Until that is, I started doing my research and found that hummus isn’t really Greek.  It’s most likely Middle Eastern in origin; although it does seem to be one of those things that’s gets argued about, but the earliest reference found for it is in Egypt (13thC) and the word Hummus is Arabic for Chickpea which seems fairly conclusive to my mind. 

 So - a little crumbled feta and some tasty olives would have to do the trick instead.  Hmm – where did that feta go?  One day it was in the fridge and the next – poof – it had vanished in a puff of (Halloween) magic!  Must have been the really big fridge dwelling mice the Chap tells me we have.  The ones that leave human sized bite marks in blocks of cheddar… !!  I settled for some shavings of goats cheese with the olives instead.

*I came across this recipe first on the BBC Good Food website then found it on the original blog.  [I've asked the blog owner for permission to post the recipe but had no response but the blog has been dormant for the last 3 years so I’m going to post it anyway, especially as she said a Greek lady gave her the recipe in the first place.  Plus I made a couple of small tweaks.  Still with me so far?!]  It’s called tomato pancakes there so I tried to find the translation for ‘pancakes’ into Greek.  Hmm – I don’t read the Greek/Phoenician alphabet though which came up with τηγανίτες or κρέπα, so after a little more pottering on google it seemed that keftedes was a close approximation to fritters/pancakes.  Having seen several very similar recipes to this that termed them fritters instead of pancakes I think it’s ok to adopt this term for them.  [Quite possibly any Greek person reading this is wincing at my torturous mishandling of their fair language though as it really isn't ok to use ‘keftedes’ in this way, if so my apologies to you!]  Also my apologies to anyone who just waded through this paragraph and wondered what the point was.  Believe me – I often wonder the same myself when I've been wittering on at length without appearing to get anywhere!

However; we have got to some beautiful warm islands in the blue blue sea and come upon Greece.  I haven’t yet been lucky enough to visit Greece but it’s on my definitely-want-to list.  I imagine the tomatoes there to be bursting with fresh flavour and that these simple little pancakes are a joy to eat.  Here’s how to make them:

Greek Tomato Pancake / Keftedes

5 Tomatoes

2 Spring Onions

1 Egg

Up to 120g Plain Flour

1 tsp Baking Powder

1-2 tsp dried oregano or fresh if you have it

1 tsp Sea Salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Olive oil for frying

As some of my toms were on the small size I used 6 for the recipe so needed all the flour.  Add up to 100g first is my advice then add the rest if needed.

Slice toms in half round the ‘waist’ – this makes them easier to grate than slicing them top to bottom I found out after the first attempt!

Grate into a colander over a bowl to catch the juice.  (Use this up in soup etc.)

Finely chop the spring onions and mix into the toms.

Beat the egg and whisk into the mix.

Sift in the flour and beat in bit by bit.  Add the seasonings and beat in well too.  Add enough flour to make a thick batter – preferably sans lumps; unless they're the tomatoes!

Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan and cook in spoonfuls – 3 to 4 at a time depending on the size of your pan.  Cook until golden – they must be cooked through or can be a bit nastily mushy as the tomatoes are naturally full of moisture. 

I tried these on the bloke and he said they were ‘ok’.  Damned by faint praise!  I did tend to agree with him though.  I think the issue is that as aforementioned the toms in Greece are probably rather more flavourful than those here, especially at this time of year.  So – use lovely vine-ripened ones of the best quality would be my advice.  Oh – and don’t skimp on the salt; tomatoes are one of those things that really need it to bring the flavour out.

Eating these with the olives worked really well though so I think they are one of those things that contrast well; provide a good foil for something with a bit more depth of flavour.

So – a tasty relatively quick thing to knock up but make it in the summer when the toms are at their best.  Enjoy.  J

Perk up your pies

I'm woefully behind with my posts and have a veritable arms length of them to get up but I thought I'd share this little tip with you quickly.
When you're baking pies, or you could try the same with savoury scones; pop some herbs and ground black pepper in the egg wash over the top.  Whatever takes your fancy really.  This cheese and onion pie benefited from a little oregano, pepper and a squeeze of tomato puree mixed in and liberally sloshed on before baking.  Yum!