Absolutely Nothing To Cook : Smoked cod baked with fennel and potatoes

A while ago I posted a made up recipe of sorts – cod baked with tomatoes – which proved quite popular and has become a bit of a dinner staple. So, last night when the craving kicked in, I decided to try something a little different and I think this version might be even more delicious!

The basic formula remains the same but I used smoked cod, in stead of plain and added fennel and basil to the baby plum tomatoes plus some par-boiled Charlotte potatoes.

Here’s what I did with a few pictures to wet your appetite: Serves 2 hungry people

A couple of handfuls of baby plum tomatoes – halved

A bunch of basil leaves – torn

1 Fennel bulb – finely sliced. I removed the stalks but I’m not sure if you have to…up to you and the condition of your fennel

2 large cloves of garlic – unpeeled and crushed slightly with the flat side of a large knife

About 10 Charlotte potatoes – halved or quartered, depending on their size

1 large fillet smoked cod

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Put the tomatoes, fennel, garlic and basil in to a roasting tin and drizzle with some olive oil, a splash of balsamic, pinch of salt and pepper and mix it all together with your hands to ensure that everything’s covered in the oil/vinegar mixture.

Put in a hottish oven (180C)

Meanwhile cut the potatoes in to good size big chunks and put in boiling water. Don’t cook until completely soft – they should still be slightly hard.

When the tomatoes and fennel have been in there for about 15 minutes, add the potatoes to the roasting tin. Mix it all up and put back in the oven for about 25 minutes. Give the tin a shake every 10 minutes or so to make sure nothing sticks.

Make sure your fish is free of bones and cut it in to 4 big chunks. Take your tin out of the oven and lay the fish on top of the potatoes. Drizzle with a bit more olive oil and season if you like. Put back in the oven for around 15 minutes – depending on the thickness of your fish. It’s ready as soon as it starts turning opaque and begins to flake.

Smoked cod, potatoes, fennel and tomatoes

Serve immediately with a sprinkling of fresh basil. Lovely.

Absolutely Nothing To Cook – Tomato and Strawberry Gazpacho by Mimi Roberts

During my extended summer stay at our house in France, my Spanish friend Jose who, deprived of good food due to his sticking to the frightful Dukan diet, can only talk about all things gastronomic rather than either cook or eat them!

We talked about the recent closure of Ferran Adria’s restaurant in Spain which neither of us had ever been to and of his wonderful combinations of flavours. He spoke of a strawberry and tomato gazpacho, which during this hot weather, I thought would be just the thing. We have a brilliant roadside shop near us which I call the “Tomato Shop”. It has the most amazing array of different old fashioned types of tomatoes, all home grown. It also had wonderful looking strawberries…..so……..I spend a happy half hour fiddling with ingredients, overseen by Jose and came up with the following gazpacho.

Strawberry and Tomato Gazpacho

500 grams of strawberries, hulled
3-4 large ripe tomatoes , unskinned.
Half a red pepper
1 red chilli
large clove of garlic, crushed
4 spring onions, white bits only
1 soup spoon of sherry vinegar
sugar to taste
light chicken stock (as much as you think it needs)
salt and pepper
Olive oil

Ideas for garnish are :
Cubed pieces of melon or crunchy pancetta or cubed cucumber and chopped mint, or basil or, for something special, some lobster.  I did pancetta which I cooked in a hot oven on baking parchment until it was crispy, then crumbled it over the soup with some basil leaves just before serving

To make the gazpacho, put all the ingredients in the liquidiser and give it a good whizz, taste and add more of whatever you think it might need so that the balance is perfect. It should be sweet, spicy and sour at the same time. If it is too thick, then add more stock. Then put through a fine sieve and chill for at least 4 hours. Serve in either glasses or bowls and garnish with the above suggestions.

Absolutely Nothing To Cook – cod baked with tomatoes and tarragon

I completely made this up last night, in the hope of recreating a similar dish I had in France a couple of weeks ago. It was delicious but in the words of my husband – my fiercest critic – it could be “refined slightly”. So here it is, warts and all with the refinements in brackets…..not that I don’t agree with them obviously.

2 x fillets cod

a pack of baby plum tomatoes, halved (or big red tomatoes skinned and cut in to chunks)

a handful of fresh tarragon – leaves torn

a handful of fresh oregano – or not quite a handful, just as much as you fancy

1 large clove garlic, peeled and thinly sliced (or 5 cloves of garlic slightly crushed with skins on)

half red onion – chopped finely (1 red onion peeled and left in chunks)

a good glug of olive oil

a splash of good balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

Here’s what I did and might do differently next time….

Chop your onion, garlic and tomatoes and throw in to a roasting pan. Mix together with the tarragon, oregano, olive oil and balsamic and season with salt and pepper. Bake in a medium oven (about 150) for half an hour or so or until all the juices are starting to run from the tomatoes and the onions are soft and caramelly.

I might use large tomatoes next time and skin them before adding them to the tray. The skins on the little tomatoes didn’t bother me at all to eat, but the pile left on my husband’s plate at the end, did. I might also add more garlic – I was using some we brought home from France and was a little over cautious as it’s pretty strong stuff. I might also add a tiny teaspoon of sugar as it could have done with being a little bit sweeter. Or maybe more balsamic….you choose.

Once the tomatoes are all delicious and soft, push them to one side and lay the cod fillets in the middle of the tray. Spoon over the tomatoes so they cover the fish and  put back in the oven for 10 minutes until the fish is just flaking apart and no longer clear in the middle.

I served it with some steamed samphire and a little bit of crusty bread for the juices. And there you have it.

The photo is of the more delicious French version  – he used some seeds I think too but I reckon pine nuts could work quite well for a bit of crunch.

Absolutely Nothing To Cook – some Summery soups

After gorging ourselves on bread and cheese and rose for the past 2 weeks, we’re being tastefully frugal and enjoying evening meals of soups and salads. Soups are the easiest things in the world to make and really quite satisfying in both the concocting and consuming. So being rather proud of my last 2 evenings effort, I thought I’d share them…..in the absence of a longer and more interesting post about all the things I should be writing about. They will come soon, promise.

So, soup number 1 was cold beetroot soup which is up there as one of my very favourites. Here’s what I did – you can add all kinds of other things like spices and herbs (cumin is lovely when added at the onion stage and chopped parsley or chives are delicious thrown in at the end) but this is a basic easy start :

I used cooked beetroot which is much quicker and just as healthy as the raw version which needs cooking and boiling for hours. This recipe serves 2 as a main and 3 or 4 as a starter.

1 pack cooked beetroot (usually contains about 4 or 5)

1 red onion

1 large clove garlic

750 ml chicken stock

Balsamic vinegar – 2 tbsps I think

Olive oil and butter for cooking

Coconut milk or cream (about 150ml depending on taste)

Plain yoghurt and shelled crushed pistachios to serve

Chop the onion finely and crush the garlic. Heat a knob of butter and a glug of olive oil in a large pan and add the onion and garlic until soft but not coloured – do I sound like a cookery book yet – only take about 5 minutes most.

Add the balsamic vinegar and cook for further couple of minutes until it most is absorbed. Don’t have the heat too high for all this.

Quarter the beetroot and add, cook for a couple of minutes and then cover with the chicken stock (or you can use vegetable). Cook just for 5 minutes or so, the beetroot is already cooked so it’s really just to get all the flavours mixed up together.

Blend until nice and smooth and then put back in to the pan. Add the coconut milk or cream – to taste – and more stock if it’s too thick. You don’t want it too runny though. Season to taste.

Allow to chill for a couple of hours. You can always put it in the freezer to speed things up a bit towards the end.

Serve with a dollop of yoghurt and sprinkle some chopped greek basil (the little leaves are really good with this) and some crushed shelled pistachios and a drizzle of olive oil.

Looks pretty as a picture.

Soup number 2 was butternut squash – which actually followed pretty much exactly the same recipe as the beetroot but here it is anyway.

1 butternut squash – I peeled it but apparently you don’t need to. I’ve never really been sure.

1 onion

750 ml chicken stock

Balsamic vinegar – 2 tbsps

Coconut milk / cream – 150ml or more to taste

Olive oil and butter for cooking

So, sweat the chopped onion as before and when they’re soft add the balsamic…..just as before. De-seed and peel the butternut squash and cut it in to small chunks – cooks faster that way. Cook with the onions and balsamic for a few minutes and then add the stock to cover. Simmer until the squash is soft. Blend until smooth and then return to pan and add the coconut milk and season to taste.

Serve hot with a drizzle of olive oil, some chopped basil or corriander and a dollop or yoghurt if you like.

And there you go. 2 soups with pretty much exactly the same ingredients but totally and utterly differently delicious.

This photo was taken at the brilliant restaurant Le Tracteur where we enjoyed a fabulous beetroot soup complete with croutons and chopped chives.

Absolutely Nothing To Lick: Gelato

A very kind neighbor recently gave me a big bowl of apricots that had flirted with ripeness and were now ready to be consumed or settle into apricot ennui, patiently awaiting the inevitable coarsening of flesh and wrinkles. Just a little bit too much like me, I thought, wondering how on earth to eat all eighteen immediately.

As they sat there smiling up at me with their golden glow in the evening sunshine, the answer hit upon me: they have to stop being apricots, and start being apricot gelato. Now they reside happily in my freezer in a couple of quart tubs waiting to be scooped out onto sugar cones and sprinkled with toasted almonds or served in a glass with a wafer and some raspberries.

Homemade gelato is absolutely worth making and it’s easy. It starts with a plain custard base to which you can add almost anything; in this case, a big dollop of pureed apricots. Here’s my recipe:

In a heavy-bottomed pan, pour 1 pint of whole milk, and half a pint of double cream.

Place over a slow heat and cook until tiny bubbles start to form and the temperature reaches 175 degrees F. Do not let it boil.

Meanwhile, whisk together the yolks of 4 eggs with 5oz of caster sugar until the mixture is thick and pale.

Now you have to temper the eggs by slowly introducing the hot milk to them. Do this with a balloon whisk: go back and forth between the milk and the eggs with it a few times so that the eggs understand that heat is coming. Then very very slowly pour the milk into the eggs, whisking furiously as you go. The aim is to not scramble them!

You should now have a lovely pale creamy liquid that needs to be returned to a low heat to become custard. Stir gently until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon and the temperature reaches 185 degrees F.

Remove from heat and pour into a cold metal bowl. Let it settle to room temperature then refrigerate, overnight if possible, because the colder it is, the faster it will freeze.

When you are ready to turn this into gelato, simply mix in your chosen flavor; all stoned fruit and berries are good, but so are nut pastes, such as pistachio, hazelnut and chestnut. The sticky seeds scraped out of a long pod would be all it needs to make an exquisite vanilla. Pour into an ice-cream maker and watch for it to become aerated and fluffy. Scoop into a freezer-safe container and freeze for a few hours to achieve the proper texture.

This should provide up to two quarts of finished gelato. Most ice-cream makers have drums that can only take half of this, and the custard keeps very well for a few days in the fridge while you make one batch after another, re-freezing the drum in between.

Here’s the finished product. This apricot gelato is so vibrant with the fresh fruit that it literally zings on your tongue, a bit like the sparkles of a glug of fizzy-pop. It keeps you young, I swear.

Absolutely Nothing To Cook — Meringues

So thankful I am that summer is here and it is again possible to buy eggs from the farmer’s market — a pastel jewel box of eggs of different colors and sizes, all laid the day before by happy hens — that I have rather overdone it. Each week I cannot pass up the opportunity to buy one, or even two dozen (especially when she has huge luminous duck eggs). This has left me with an inevitable surplus of a perishable commodity and not much room in my fridge.

Last night I hit upon the perfect answer to my dilemma: meringues. SO simple to make, yet so delicious! Just four whites, when whipped with a cup of sugar and a pinch of tartar produces a giant plateful of airy delights. Whip the whites until just past frothy, then add the sugar and cream of tartar slowly until the mixture is pale and glossy with peaks. Dollop tennis-ball size blobs about 3 inches apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment.

They can also be endlessly tweaked with different flavor combinations; switching some of the white sugar for brown sugar and a bit of espresso powder gave me these lovelies:

Try mixing in a bit of lemon oil or rosewater (and a teensy-tiny dot of pink food coloring, and sprinkle the tops with flaked almonds or chopped hazelnuts before baking. Bake for an hour at 275 degrees, until the meringues are a dry hollow shell with a chewy base. To serve, knock a hole in the top and fill with a flavored whipped cream, like a traditional Pavlova. I mixed a bit of chestnut puree into mine, but I imagine lemon curd or Nutella would also be absolutely delicious.

This only leaves the question of what to do with the four egg yolks you have left over. I made a herb omelet, but they can also be used to make the base for an egg custard which, when mixed with cream (and pureed strawberries or peaches, say) and frozen in an ice-cream maker….eggceptional. Serve with a meringue.