Category: recipes

Midweek salmon supper


Oh, if only fish ‘n’ chips were fat-free, gluten-free, zero-calorie, organic, paleo, suitable for a 2-day on the 5:2 diet, full of healthy endorphins… Only 4 more school nights ’til Friday, though.

In the meantime, if you’re also having a non-stuff-your-face day then try out this quick little salmon dish for dinz.

It’s served with garlic spinach, spiralized veg, sprinkled with soy sauce and lemon and baked in paper – en papillote, as Greg Wallace would say. Yes, the spiralizer’s been partying again.

Oily fish + mountains of spiralized veg + select condiments = a surprisingly yum and filling dinner that might make you forget about your need for stodge for a while.

Here’s what you need to make this for two:

2 courgettes, spiralized (or grated or peeled)
2 carrots, spiralized (or as above)
1 medium/large onion, spiralized (same again)
Bag of pre-washed spinach leaves
Fat clove of minced or grated garlic
2 salmon fillets
1 lemon, sliced in half
Soy sauce
Sea salt and cracked black pepper
Baking paper

ASALM21ASALM4
ASALM5ASALM2

Here’s what you do:

Preheat your oven to about 160C

Rip 2 sizeable sheets of baking paper to create your parcels

Place half of the mound of your spiralized veg in the centre of the paper

Place your salmon fillet on top

Sprinkle soy sauce on your salmon and over your veg, as much or as little as you like, according to prefz

Grab your lemon half and give it a massive squeeze so it rains over your ingredients

Sprinkle on some pepper

Now create a loose parcel by scrunching up the corners of the paper

Place parcels on a baking tray in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes

About 15 minutes in, splash some olive oil into a frying pan and heat over a moderate setting for 30 seconds

Throw in your garlic and heat for a minute or two until it’s translucent

Chuck in your bag of spinach and, with a spatula or wooden spoon, press it down and turn it until it’s wilted to your favourite wilt setting

Pull salmon from the oven, and still in its parcel, plonk on a white plate and open carefully – this is not the time for a steam facial

Add spinach, salt and pepper, and serve with a very cold glass of wine

Or water. It’s Tuesday. God. Tuesday. But perhaps just one very cold glass of wine because it goes really well. Not two glasses. No. Never.

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Shakshook for the weekend?

ASHAK

Author: Sarah-Louise 

Meet, shakshuka. Or, as it’ll be known here, shakshook. It’s a spicy, oniony, tomatoey, baked-eggy dish of dreams that originally hails from Turkey and is a breakie fave in Israel.

I first had it in New Yoik and now it’s starting to pop up on breakfast menus over here (though not on as many as I’d like). I recently had it at Nati’s on Priory in Crouch End, third pic on right, below. It’s a real international affair.

Anyway, the weekend is the best time to get acquainted or re-acquainted with it. As this baby, while easy to knock up, is best prepped sloooooooooow and with lots of TLC. And with crusty sourdough. And endless coffee. Or Mimosas.

Take a look below the pics for the how-to.

 

Ingredients for 4: 2 or 3 tins (depending on appetite) of organic chopped toms; 6 organic eggs; 3 cloves of garlic, minced; 3tbsp olive oil; whole red pepper; whole red onion; 1 tsp paprika; 1tsp cumin; a pinch of cayenne; 1 1/4 cup of feta; sourdough; rock salt and pep

How to:

1. Whack on your oven to 190C

2. De-seed your peppers and slice into tiny cubes. Slice your onion super thinly

3. Heat your olive oil over a moderate heat in a saucepan then add the peppers and onion.

4. Cook gently for 20-30 mins until they start to get all nice and mushy

5. Add your garlic and cook gently for another couple of mins

6. Add your cumin, paprika and a sprinkle of cayenne and cook for another min

7. Chuck in your toms, seasoning with your salt and pep as you go, and cook for another 10 to 15 mins

8. As soon as your toms start to look all thick and slushy, crumble in your salty feta

9. Now the tricky bit, for me anyway: make sort-of hollows in your toms, then crack in your eggs

10. Season again

11. Now pop your pan into your nice hot oven. Depending on how runny you like your eggs, you can leave your wondrous concoction in there from 7 to 15 minutes. Just keep an eye on it and judgez for yourself

12. Relieve your pan from the oven. Sprinkle with something green like coriander, if you like it. Eurgh. Devil’s food. I didn’t.

13. Serve with warmed-through slices of sourdough and if you fancy giving your shakshook an extra kick, sprinkle it with tabasco

14. Consume with mugs of coffee, glasses of cool water and/or Mimosas – a simple-yet-super mix of Prosecco and OJ (Mimosa! Mimosa!)

Et, voila. What’s your favourite indulgent breakfast? We’d love to hear.

 

 

Funky Cheese Plate Friday!

FUNKY CHEESE 6

Here’s the thing. Drinks soirees, cocktail parties, “bevvies round ours” are all greatly improved with the presence of a cheese board.

We’re not talking crusty old slabs of cheddar, triangles of something blue and a bunch of wilted grapes-cheese boards. Though still we wouldn’t turn up our noses.

These days, the hot new trend in cheese boards (yes, according to the blogosphere, that is a thing) is informal and piled-up, look-at-me-and-dive-right-in. Styled to look bright, colourful and cool as well as delicious.

Check out our tips for a funky cheese board, below the pics.

FUNKY 7FUNKY CHEESEFUNKY 8FUNKY CHEESE 3

1. Get yourself a nice big board – wood, glass, colourful, up to you

2. Position your easy-to-slice cheeses on your board to start off with. Camembert and Stilton in our case

3. Chop up your tricky-to-slice cheese into easy-to-pop-in-your-gob cubes and position on board. Good old Red Leicester and cranberry cheddar in our case

4. Fill ramekins with dips. Hummous in our case. Place on board

5. Halve cherry tomatoes, slice up fingers of pepper, cucumber and apple and place on board

6. Add piles of cheesy biscuits, crackers, oat cakes, whatever takes your fancy

7. Fill the spaces on your board with tasty little buggers like mini gherkins and stuffed olives

8. Serve with sliced French bread and booze of your choice

9. Tuck in

We did all of the above for our Aperol-infused blog launch party – and the nibbles went down almost as quickly as the cocktails.

A cheeseboard is not just for Christmas, you see. A cheese board is just as much for weekends, week nights and wet Wednesday afternoons in winter.

What would you add to yours? Let us know!

Salmon and tomato zoodles

Zoodles

Zoodles? See also: coodles. AKA, courgette-noodles. Going with the American/Oz mash-up, zoodles (zucchini-noodles), however. Because it sounds 70s and mad. A bit like ‘Zowie!’

Anyway, if you’re after a midweek munch that looks pretty and is pretty quick and easy to make, you’ll want to get your mouth around this. It’s got six ingredients: salmon, courgettes, tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive oil. And, despite being simple, it still feels a bit complex and sophis’.

The dish really benefits from the use of a Sprializer. A contraption I got for my birthday in February and which I was too scared to get out of the box until recently.

When I plucked up the courage, however, I discovered it was actually really bloody easy to use and now I can’t get enough of it. Yay. And it made lovely-looking veggies. Unless we’re talking about the bit that’s left over at the end of the er, spriralization process, let’s call it. Which you can see below.

If you haven’t got a Spiralizer, don’t you worry at all. Just use a simple little julienne peeler to cut your courgettes into long, thin (un-curly) ribbons.

Get the recipe after the pics! SL x

Zoodles toms

Zoodles salmon

Zoodles two

To make four:

Ingredients: 4 courgettes, 6-8 fat juicy tomatoes, an utterly pluckable basil plant (or just a packet), 2 cloves of garlic (or more if you put taste over fretting about stinking people out on the bus the next morning), 4 tsbp of good olive oil, rock salt and pepper

How to:

1. Get spiralizing or julienning those courgettes. When done, put your curly courg in a big bowl, sprinkle with rock salt and leave for now…

2. Smash up/grate/slice up your garlic

3. Roughly chop up 6-8 leaves of basil then pop in a bowl with your olive oil and garlic

4. Get your salmon in the oven. You could parcel up your fillets in tinfoil, with a bit of olive oil and pepper, and leave them to cook for 13 minutes on gas mark 180. Or you could cook the salmon to your own prefs

5. Time for de-skinning the toms. Get a pan of water on the boil. Then get yourself a bowl of cold or iced water. Make criss-crosses on the bottom of your tomatoes with a sharp knife

6. Using a slatted spoon, dunk your toms, one by one, in the pan of boiling water for 30 seconds each. After each dunking, plop your toms in the cold water

4. Remove your toms from the cold water and now you’ll find it’s a doddle – doodle! – to peel off those skins. Scoop out the seeds then roughly chop your tomatoes into small cubes

5. Pour your olive oil, garlic and basil mix in a big saucepan or wok on a moderate heat. After a minute, add your toms

6. After two or three minutes, tip in your zoodles and cook for two minutes or more, depending on how al dente you’d like them. I like them al dente so I cook them for two minutes

7. Now serve your tomato and zoodle mix in 4 deeps bowls, pop your cooked salmon on top, season – et voila!

Zoodles spiralizer