Lemon baked cod

... is what we will be mainly eating tonight.  It is unfeasible that something this SIMPLE tastes sooooooo good!  Even fish-haters will find this a simple delight.  Photos to follow.

1 lb cod fillet (or another favoured white fish)
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
paprika

If fish fillets are large, cut into serving sized pieces.
Mix butter and lemon juice.
In another bowl, mix flour, salt and white pepper.
Dip fish into butter mixture; coat fish with flour mixture.
Place fish in ungreased square baking dish, 8x8x2 inches.
Pour remaining butter mixture over fish; sprinkle with paprika.
Cook uncovered in 350 degree oven until fish flakes easily with fork, 25-30 minutes. Garnish with parsley sprigs and lemon slices if desired.

Karla's courgette soup

My parents had a friend called Karla.
A dear old German lady with impeccable manners and full of loving kindness who flirted uproariously with my father and swore in a bad English accent.  She had been a midwife in the East End (of London) working with the Jewish community right after the second World War - it can't have been easy but it made for a great sense of humour!

I spent many an evening eating wonderful food at her home and many a Christmas lunch time persuading her to eat "just a little more!"

This is her recipe - perfect if you have a glut of courgettes!

Ingredients

500g courgettes, thickly sliced 

1 onion, chopped

150g potatoes, peeled and cubed 

600ml chicken or stock 

25g butter 

1 clove garlic, crushed

150ml milk 

1 (scant) teaspoon curry powder

Freshly ground pepper

Method

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the onions and garlic.

Sauté the onion and garlic for 5 minutes until they are soft.

Add the curry powder and stir together.

Stir in the potatoes and most of the courgettes and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the stock, milk and pepper and bring the mixture to the boil.

Reduce the heat, cover with the lid and simmer for 15 minutes until the vegetables are soft.
Puree the soup and serve hot garnished with thin slices of courgettes.

Our dinner tonight - Chilli Con Carne from scratch!

Ingredients

2 onions,

2 large Portobello mushrooms,

2 fat cloves of garlic crushed,
splodge of vegetable oil

1 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes and 1 can water,

1 tablespoon tomato puree,

500g good minced beef,

2-4 heaped teaspoons dried chilli flakes,

1 tsp cumin seeds,

1 tsp ground cumin,

1 tsp dried thyme,

1 tsp smoked paprika (pimentón),

1/2 bottle full-bodied red wine,

1 cans of red kidney beans,

1 bunch of fresh coriander (stalks & all) chopped,

a generous splash of Worcestershire sauce,

Suzy salt and Percy pepper (having an Ainsley moment)

What to do ...
- Finely chop the onion, slice the Portobello mushrooms and crush the garlic. 
- Gently fry in oil (with sprinkle of salt) for about 15 mins, until soft. Add the mince, turn the heat up to medium, and cook until the meat is browned.
- Then simply stir in the rest of the ingredients, incl. the chopped coriander stalks, reserving the leaves until later.
- Bring to the boil and then  simmer for 1 and a half hours, stirring regularly and adjusting the heat if necessary.
- Check and adjust seasoning with both Suzy salt and Percy pepper!! *
- Add the chopped coriander leaves, stir and serve with white rice and/or bread.

* To be fair ... I also bring out the chilli and red pepper jam at this point - that's another recipe for another day!

Keema gajar with roti

Keema gajar with roti, originally uploaded by Laquet.

Looks like Saturday is really becoming curry night! The recipe is in my flickr account with the photos - kind of. Tweak it I say, tweak away!

Lunch!

I made Spicy Butternut Squash and Lentil Soup for lunch this week ... thank goodness I did because it was so bloody cold and it really hit the spot! There was a lot of chopping and blitzing on Sunday BUT it was worthwhile. There's not a recipe so to speak - I just use random amounts of vegetables ... but for what it's worth, here you go.

Jo's "it changes every time but that's one of the best bits of the surprise"
Spicy Butternut Squash and Lentil Soup

1 butternut squash
Fry light Olive-Oil spray
large pinch of dried chilli flakes
1 tsp of la Chinata paprika
onions, carrots, courgettes, celery, leeks or whatever veg you love/have handy
100 grms of red lentils*
3 tsps Marigold Swiss vegetable Bouillon powder
salt and pepper to taste

1. Cut the butternut squash** in half, scrape out the seeds, spray with olive oil spray and sprinkle with chilli flakes, paprika, salt and pepper. Roast in a hot-ish oven for 40 mins until soft.
2. Put the lentils to soak/wash in cold water.
3. Clean, peel and chop the remaining vegetables and sweat*** them off in a large pan with some more of the olive oil spray.
4. Add the lentils and mix them to coat them with the lovely slippery vegetable juiciness.
5. Cover the vegetables with water and add the bouillon powder, turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Then turn down, cover and simmer until the vegetables are tender.
6. When the butternut squash is cool enough to handle, scrape the flesh out of the shell and add it to the soup along with any juices that are in the pan.
7. Then it's in with the hand blender to take the soup to your desired consistency, check the seasoning and dig right in.

Enjoy!

* I measured the lentils because I had to count the points - the rest of the veg were free.
** I don't peel it first - I scrape the flesh out of the skin afterwards ... I don't know why - I'm rather strangely unique/special ... and not always in a good way!
*** My mother says there's no need for this but Saint Delia does it in her carrot and artichoke soup which is the basis for a lot of my soups and if Saint Delia says you have to do it ... then you do it!

Making the points stretch

I love pasta bolognaise/in meat ragu and one of the awful things about WW-ing is that it just doesn't really fit in with the diet ... I can hear you all saying "of course it does!" But I like juicy, oozy meat and lashings of olive oil and glugs of red wine and parmesan shavings and sides of garlic bread and Ben & Jerry's for dessert and a couple more glasses of merlot to wash it down ... but I digress and I've made myself dribble and spit all over the monitor.

So anyway, when I decided in June that I needed to loose the weight I realised that I needed to change the way a) I made my sauce and b) the way I ate and enjoyed it.

Firstly this would not all be possible without the wonder that is spray light. I've stopped using tomato puree - because of the amount of oil in it and I've discovered that good balsamic vinegar works wonders ~ giving the taste of a good glug of wine. Sooooo, here I present my new recipe ... works for 4 but the guts that I live with usually polishes off the leftovers ;o)

Spicy Ragu
4 "squits" of spray light
1 large onion, sliced
1 large carrot, grated
2 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed - it's up to you.
500 grms of lean minced beef
2 cans of chopped tomatoes
1 tsp of chilli flakes
1 bay leaf
1 tsp of Marigold vegetable stock powder
1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar*
Salt and pepper to taste
a large handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. Ok, cook off the onion and carrot with 2 sprays of fry light ... they're not browning, just cooking slowly. When they've began to soften add the garlic and continue to let the vegetables sweat.
2. In another frying pan, brown off the mince with the other 2 sprays of fry light and when this has browned ... and this is a trick for me - pour the beef into a fine sieve and drain well ... getting rid of even more fat.
3. Add the tomatoes, chilli, stock, bay leaf and balsamic vinegar to the onions and garlic. Bring to the simmer and then add the minced beef and enough water to cover the meat.
4. Turn down the heat and then let the mixture cook gently for as long as you can wait before falling face down into the pan. The longer it cooks, the softer the meat gets - because of course you've drained all the fat out of it!
5. Season to taste with salt and pepper**, chuck in the handful of freshly chopped parsley, mix and serve with the pasta of your choice - gigli in this house, because I like the frill and the name makes me chortle.

*I actually use the vinegar out of a jar of Tesco's Borettane onions ... the ones Saint Delia recommends in her cheats Boeuf Bourguinon. The vinegar is always around because I've wolfed the onions while Simon wasn't looking.
** I normally add another splash of vinegar and crunch/slurp on a few onions at this point - a girl has got to have a treat you know!

Help me Internet help me!

**UPDATE** The Mail on Sunday can't help me out with the recipe ... poof! Sheesh! Where next?

Last Christmas Tana Ramsay came up with a Cranberry Relish recipe in one of the Sunday magazines using a mixture of dried and fresh cranberries - bloody, bloody Simon threw the magazine out!!

Can you help Internet?

What's cooking?

I cooked lamb shanks last Saturday night and my god they were delicious - browned off in the pan and then slowly braised for 5, yeah 5 hours; with carrots, onions, celery, fresh herbs and a mixture of red wine and stock. They were so tender, they fell apart and the only mistake (not mine I might add) was that we ate them with new Charlotte potatoes and not a big, oozy pile of buttery artery-clogging mash. Wouldn't you like a smell-a-vision version of t'Internet right now? It would do you no good as ... and I should be shot for this ... I didn't take any photos. Yep, no photos twice in one month, no photos in Wales, no photos of the best braised lamb shanks in the world ever.

So, on Friday afternoon when I decided to cook a curry from scratch I thought what a better way to make up for the lamb shanks than to share the tips imparted to me by Shisho on how to do curry without lining the pockets of Messrs Sharwood and Patak.

So, I started with 2 thinly sliced red onions which I fried in a little vegetable oil with 2 spoons (they are very tiny spoons in my masala dabba) of cumin seeds. Then I added some turmeric and some ground ginger & cumin - a spoon of each. And then a little more turmeric because it didn't look like there was enough. I let this all continue to fry for a couple more minutes over a low heat before adding some minced garlic and fresh ginger and then gave that a few more minutes.

This curry was always going to be just vegetables, so I chopped up a mixture of potatoes and green beans, opened a can each of chick peas and tomatoes and got mixing.

In went the potatoes, green beans and 2 spoons each of smoked paprika and garam masala.

And then it was the turn of the chick peas - drained and rinsed - plus the tinned tomatoes (and a tinful of water), 2 tsps of dried chilli (as the one in the fridge was more than a little past it's best), salt and pepper, the heat was turned up, the whole lot came to the "boil" and then it was turned down and left to simmer for 30 mins.

Meanwhile, the brandy and lemonade that you can see in the first picture way up there got drunk and another was poured. Rice was made - basmati rice, a little more cumin seed, some salt, the odd vegetable or two and some vegetable oil; fried for a minute or two before boiling water water was added and a tightly fitting lid that "is NOT removed to check/peak/stir for a full 10 minutes" * ... perfect vegetable rice.

So finally, after adjusting the seasoning with a little sprinkling of S&P, Simon and I settled down to a gorgeous plate of potato, chick pea and green bean curry with rice and a spoonful of tamarind, chilli yoghurt ... the picture of the finished dish, oh ... umm ... oops!

* Shisho is always very forceful about this!

Old friends

In June 1988 I started a recipe book ... not a recipe book like Nigella or Nigel* but a jotter (originally bought at Shabbytat) in which to scribble recipes that I'd seen and wanted to try / tried and loved and wanted to cook again / felt I should keep in case I needed them. Some are family recipes, some nicked**, notes about meals I've eaten and loved and want to recreate; some are very, very simple, others more challenging. Some are just lists - like the list of salads a French friend could just chuck together at a moments notice.

Way back in June 1988 my 18 year old self would very carefully in her best hand writing painstakingly copy out the recipes word for word. If I made a mistake I would tippex or even use my other friend Stanley to remove the page! These days I scribble, with whatever is to hand - been known to use a crayon and once even picked up a lip liner ... but thought better of it***!

The book is dirty, well not dirty, more like slightly grubby - it's been in the kitchen, it's got oil spots on it, there's a smear of pasta sauce**** on the back cover. But I love it and I'd be lost without it; in fact if there was a fire I'd grab it, my family history certificates and my back-up CD. Oh and Simon *flutters eyelashes* of course.

* Or any other cook, not one that has to begin with N.
** There's me and my thieving ways, at it again.
*** It's a gorgeous colour and Rimmel don't make it anymore.
**** It's a fab recipe!

Oooh!

samosa, originally uploaded by Laquet.

I am off to spend the day with my nursery nurse - Shisho - and one of my teaching assistants - Harpreet - and they are going to teach me how to cook samosas and mattar. I am going to try and persuade them that as we have the whole day, there's enough time to learn roti too. And then I just have to refill my masala dabba and I'm good to go - no more takeaway curries in this house. In return I will be showing Shisho how to make homemade pasta sauce. I'll be back later with lots of photos and some recipes to share.

Lamb and fig tagine

I kg lamb neck fillet, cubed
2 onions, sliced
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp cayenne
½ tsp turmeric
1 cinnamon stick, crumbled
¼ tsp chilli flakes

1 large can of chick peas
1 large tin of Italian tomatoes, drained and chopped
2 potatoes, diced
2 carrots, sliced
4 oz dried figs
2 courgettes, sliced
2 tbsps fresh coriander, chopped
Juice of ½ lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Place the lamb neck fillet, onions, garlic cloves, paprika, ground ginger, cayenne, turmeric, cinnamon, chilli flakes, salt and pepper in a pot and cover with water.

2. Cover with water, bring to the boil and then turn down to a simmer. Cool for ½ hours.

3. Add the chick peas, potatoes, carrots, dried figs and the courgettes and cook for a further 30 mins.

4. Adjust seasoning, sprinkle with fresh coriander and lemon juice just before serving.

Serve with harissa over steamed couscous.

As mentioned ... even better the next day!

Friends for dinner

... and unfortunately Jamie's not coming to cook for us and neither is that flirty-girty Raymond either. Nevermind, something simple and not too different for the oh-so fussy but lovely Steve and Ella ~ Toad-in-the-hole** with roasted onion gravy served with mashed potatoes, broccoli and carrots. Straight to Aunty Delia for that recipe* ~ yummy for a Sunday!

But, why is it that when you want a recipe for something simple like Golden Syrup sponge pudding ... the one you bake in the oven (like my mum used to make) not the one that Delia tells you that you have to steam for 2 hours ... you can't find one anywhere? So it's Eve's Pudding without the apples but with Golden Syrup instead. But if Stephen wasn't so fussy it could have been Bill's banana butterscotch pudding instead!! That really is a recipe made in Heaven!

* frequently passed off as my own!
** guess what today's photo is going to be?!?

Houmous for Doris and the Fizz-ter!

Ahmed and Kev came to dinner last night, well they came over yesterday afternoon and we sat and gossiped* and ate (tonnes of olives**) and drunk all afternoon until Simon came home and then we started eating and drinking again ...

When Kev rang and said that they were coming down I made the decision not to cook a "meal" so to speak ... a main course to meet the needs of a vegetarian, a muslim and Simon "I only like peas and carrots" Langthorne was beyond my culinary talents and it made my head hurt to think about it. So a selection of tapas-esque dishes was called for, we had green bean, shallot and bacon (vege version) salad, mozerella with a chilli lemon dressing, roasted peppers, fried courgettes in tomato and garlic, couscous, olive bread *** and some of Ahmed's homemade houmous. So for your delectation I present traditional Palestinian houmous (I'll never buy it from Tesco's again!

You will need

1 can chick peas
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 1/2 lemons
2 heaped tsps tahini (mix the jar really well to get the good gloopy stuff from the bottom)
1 green chilli (one of the fat ones that's only medium hot), roughly chopped, seeds and all
coarse sea salt
olive oil

1. Drain the chick peas, retaining the liquid and place them in the bowl of a food processor **** blend until a fine pulp.
2. Add about half of the liquid and blend again until it resembles thick double cream (... I suppose you could pass it through a sieve at this point if you really wanted to but I'd been making the acquaintance of Mr Merlot all afternoon and I was hungry!)
3. Add the freshly squozen/squeezed juice of half a lemon, a clove of chopped garlic and the tahini (including a little of the tahini oil) and whizz for 30 seconds.
4. Meanwhile, back at the ranch in a pestle and mortar, pound ***** the remaining garlic, the chilli, some sea salt and the juice and pulp of the lemon. This sour, hot, salty mixture becomes a dressing for the finished houmous!
5. Add half of the hot lemony mixture to the houmous and whizz again. Serve on a large plate flattened out, leaving a sort of a moat to drizzle extra virgin olive oil into. AT the last minute top the houmous with the "dressing" and serve with hot flat bread such as pitta!

I went to bed full, smelling of garlic and slightly squiffy BUT very happy. As my toast at the start of the evening said "here's to good friends, good times and good food!"

* And they say women can talk ... jeez! The differences is that women can talk and do other things at the same time!
** Ahmed tells me that his dad buys 30 sacks of olives at the start of each season and his mum cures them ... they then last throughout the year! After yesterday, I can't believe the 30 sacks last that long at all!
*** With the addition of a piece of medium rare rump steak for the carnivore!
**** Ahmed's mum apparently makes this buy hand from scratch! Yeh, well, I have a Phillip's Master Chef!
***** Schwarzenegger ~ pah!