Well, I’m back at school now and it seems that the first day of the summer term has been a lot easier than the previous two terms. The kids are mostly revising now, meaning that there’s a lot less lesson prep to do and, to my astonishment, I left work today at 5pm! Previously I would have rarely left by 7:30.

I’m taking full advantage of these easy days before revision clinics take off and I’m thrown back into the crazy-busy schedue I had before. There has only been one problem with work these last two days. Apparently someone in the finance department decided it was a good idea to turn the heating off in the maths block and boy, is it cold!

I feel the cold badly anyway. You know the type of girl who insists the flat is kept permanatly at 25 degrees, doesn’t care about the heating bill and then still sits right next to the radiator all the time? That’s me. Any degree of cold makes me lose concentration remarkably quickly, and on these sunny but chilly spring days it is marginally warmer outside in the quad than it is at my desk.

After about half an hour of pacing up and down the office during my first free period and grumbling to anyone who’d listen, I decided I couldn’t take it any more and went and took refuge in the photocopying room. I didn’t need to photocopy at that point, but those printers don’t half keep the place warm!

Even my colleague Luke admits its freezing and he’s Northern! In fact, he  was the man who said last term that I was a weed for adding extra layers to go outside in February and that I should be made to live in a freezer for a week to make me understand the true nature of cold.

So for these last two days, I’ve been craving really warming food and, for a change I have had the time to make exactly what I wanted for dinner. After our initial training  day, when I spend all day sitting in the office with my coat and scarf on, I felt what I needed was this.

Marinated, Griddled Squid on Pepper, Tomato and Chickpea Stew with Smoked Paparika, Bacon and Chorizo

• About 200g baby squid, cleaned with hoods and tentacles seperated and heads discarded
• The juice of half an orange 
• 1 cubic inch ginger, crushed 
• a small onion, minced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 yellow pepper cored, deseeded and chopped, roughly into 1 inch squares
• 300g drained tinned chickpeas
• 3 tsp smoked paprika
• 2 tsp cayenne
• 300g chopped tomatoes
• 200ml fresh vegetable stock 
• 3 links spicy raw chorizo, chopped into small chunks
• 4 rashers smoky bacon, chopped 
• large handful of coriander, roughly chopped

1. Make a slit down the side of each squid hood and open it out, score in a cris-cros pattern over the outer side.
2. Mix the orange and crushed ginger. Toss the squid hoods in the mixture and leave to marinate while you prepare the stew
3. Sweat the onions and garlic gently until the onion is beginning to soften. Add the cayenne and paprika, stir well, cover and leave to cook for another few minutes.
4. Add the bacon. pepper and chorizo, stir and allow to cook for a further 3-4 minutes turning the heat up to just below medium.
5. Add the tomatoes, stock and chickpeas, stir well and bring to a gentle bubble. Leave uncovered to bubble down to a thick stew consistency.
6. Taste, adjust seasoning and when ready to serve, stir in the coriander.
7. Griddle the baby squid over a high heat for about 90s per side or until just cooked through. Serve the squid on the chickpea stew. I accompanied this with roast cherry tomatoes, wilted green spinach and a glass of rioja.

This holiday it struck me how many bargain cookery books I have. There are more than two shelves full of those £3 Borders reduced paperbacks which specialise in cuisine from a certain country or continent. They look cheap, they feel cheap, heck, they ARE cheap, but I find these little books very useful.

I’d love to be able to go out and spend £25 each time I fancied trying out something new but sadly, if I did that, I probaby couldn’t afford the ingredients I needed to make good use of the books I bought.  Still, a book entitled “The Best Ever Curry Cookbook” isn’t likely to fill you with confidence about its contents but, rather suprisingly, it turned out to be quite informative and inspiring. Most of the book focuses on cuisine from the Indian subcontinent but around a third of it is devoted to curries from Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, the Phillipines and Indonesia. There are several very unusual recipes in this section of the book which I’m determined to try. The first on my list was the prawn and quail egg curry.

This was a really delicious meal. The flavour of the curry is delicate but earthy, dominated by garlic, ginger and turmeric with subtle heat (which could be increased if desired) and the lemongrass coming through right at the end. The sauce is thin, almost like a broth, which made it a nuisance to carry to the table but was wonderful mixed up with the rice. It pays to go easy on the fish sauce as its pungent flavour could easily overpower the other ingredients.

A note on the use of stock here: As far as I’m aware most ‘wet’ curries don’t traditionally call for stock and instead get their flavour from the meat being braised slowly. For this reason I assume the use of chicken stock in this meal is not authentic. However, I find the right stock can be really useful in making ‘quick cook’ curries like this one. I’d use a light fresh stock that isn’t flavoured with herbs. I always make stocks like these from the carcasses from my roast dinners because they are so wonderfully versatile. 

I have come around to the idea of egg in curry. As a child, there was nothing more I hated than finding half an egg in an overpoweringly hot and salty Sri Lankan dish but the quail eggs suit the delicacy of flavours here. This is definitely a meal I will make again, especially since it is quick enough for a schoolnight dinner!

Indonesian Style Prawn and Quail Egg Curry

(Adapted from “The Best Ever Curry Cookbook” by Mridula Baljekar, published by Hermes House)

Ingredients (for two people with big appetites) 

• 400-450g shelled  and cleaned king prawns
• 9 quail eggs, hard boiled, peeled and halved
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 3 fat cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 cubic inches of ginger, chopped finely and crushed
• 2 red chillies, finely chopped
• half a level tablespoon ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon sugar (I assume palm sugar is authentic- I had to use demerera)
• one half inch cube of shrimp paste or up to 1 tablespoon fish sauce  
• 1 small stalk lemongrass, tough outer layer removed, trimmed and shredded.
• 300ml thin coconut milk (pass 350ml normal coconut milk through a sieve)
• 200ml unherbed chicken stock
• 110g pak choi, or similar leaf, roughly shredded
• shredded spring onion green part only) to garnish
• plain boiled basmati rice to serve

Method

1. Sweat the onions, garlic and ginger together gently until the onions are soft but not coloured.
2. Add the chilies, shrimp paste/fish sauce and lemongrass. Fry for a minute so they release their favours.
3. Add the strained coconut milk, stock and sugar and stir well. Bring the mixture to a gentle bubble. Let the mixture reduce by about 40%.
4. Stir in the prawns and leaves and turn the heat down so the curry is at a simmer. 
5. Stir gently until the prawns have just turned pink all the way through. This should ony take a few minutes and the leaves should also wilt in this time.
6. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning
7. Stir in the quail eggs. Turn the curry out into a serving bowl and sprinkle over the shredded spring onion.
8. Serve immediately with plain boiled basmati rice. 

I think this might be called ‘having too much time on your hands’.

After 12 weeks of school canteen meals, scrounging processed cheese sandwiches from the kids’ lunch time maths clubs and, at worst but most frequently, skipping lunch altogether, I’m ready for some good home-cooked food at lunchtime. I may have gone a little over the top this time, but can you blame me? This is the first time since the Christmas break that I’ve had time to spend in the kitchen.

The dish pictured above is a tuna nicoise. Like most contemporary restaurants, I have foregone the traditional use of flaked tuna and replaced this with a seared tuna steak. I’ve also replaced the boiled hen’s egg with three soft (in theory) boiled quails’ eggs. Everthing else remains the same apart from a little (in theory) drizzle of balsamic reduction to dip the cherry tomatoes in. Yes, I know there is too much reduction and two of the quails’ eggs are overcooked. I’d like to see you make this perfectly first time around. :p

I first encountered a tuna nicoise made like this in a lovely little tapas bar in Leamington Spa. The dish didn’t stay on the menu for long but the memory lingered with me and I’ve never found a nicoise as good since then. So, what better to do on the first of my 21 days off work than recreate it as closely as possible in my own kitchen while Goon and our new pet looked at me as if I was crazy. 

Goon accused me of over-cooking the tuna.

Yeah, right, like that’s ever going to happen. I might forget to cook it at all one day, but overcook it? Never!

Have a nice day at work, everybody!

Mini Tuna Nicoise  (enough for a starter or a midday meal for someone who’s not particularly used to eating lunch)

• 1 small tuna steak (100g or so), griddled to rare (or practially raw if, like myself, you’re that way inclined)
• a small handful frisee lettuce
• 5 or 6 green beans, steamed until just cooked and cut in half)
• Around 10 black pitted olives, halved
• 2 or 3 baby new potatoes, cooked and halved
• 3 cherry tomatoes, halved
• 3 soft boiled quails’ eggs, peeled and halved
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinaigrette
• 2 extra tablespoons balsamic vinegar, reduced to a thick syrup.

Toss the lettuce, beans, olives and potatoes in the vinigrette dressing. Pile into the center of a large, flat serving plate. Balance the tuna teak on top. Arrange the tomatoes and quail egg pieces around the main salad and drizzle the balsamic reduction around it.

At least, they have around here. I apologise to all of you that have attempted to e-mail me and contact me via comments during the last six months. I must have appeared very rude. 

It’s mostly my fault really. What kind of plonker starts a job before they’ve taken their PhD exam? Generally the kind of plonker who doesn’t understand that their job will take up 70 hours per week during term time. I possibly would have thought twice about it if I had known. I certainly would have delayed the start of my career if I knew I was going to write a grand total of 9 sets of reports during my first term and that my commute would total 2.5 hours a day. 

I have reason to believe that things will be very different next academic year. I really hope I’m right. As for now, I’ve just started a four week holiday and, now that all my thesis corrections are done, I’m properly free for the first time in nearly five years. So now I’ll try and catch up with everyone who I managed to ignore over the last two terms. 

And now that I won’t be spending at least 3 hours a day writing worksheets* and/or reports, hopefully my brain won’t have turned to mush by 8pm and I’ll be capable of creating some posts for this blog.

My cooking didn’t cease completely this term but time pressure meant that I couldn’t spend hours experimenting in the kitchen. I resorted to reasonably quick meals and, to my suprise some of them turned out to be quite good despite the lack of preparation. The reipe below was one of my favourite school-night suppers. It’s comforting, yet very healthy and doesn’t take much time to make. Plus there’s the added bonus that all the ingredients can be found in our depleted local Sainsbury’s or, more often, in the small Turkish stores across the road.

Salmon with Spiced Lentils and Minted Yoghurt

Ingredients

• two large piees of salmon fillet, skin on
• Enough seasoned cornflour to dust the salmon skin (I think any flour will work here)
• 3 handfuls puy lentils, rinsed
• fresh, unherbed vegetable stock (two to three times the volume of your lentils)
• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 2 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons fresh, finely chopped coriander, plus some extra oursley chopped leves to garnish
• 8 heaped tablespoons of plain natural yoghurt you might want to scale this down- Goon REALLY liked the yoghurt)
• around 30g mint leaves, very finely chopped

Method

1. Fry the onion gently in olive oil with the cumin and ground coriander until the onion is soft. 
2. Add the garlic and continue to fry for another few minutes until the garlic is cooked.
3. Add the vegetable stock and lentils, stir well and bring to a gentle bubble
4. While the lentils are cooking, mix the mint and yoghurt and set aside 
5. Grill the salmon skin side down over a medium grill for three minutes.
6. Dust the seasoned flour over a plate and then turn up the grill to medium/high  
7. Lift the salmon of the grill, press the skin into the seasoned flour then return the salmon to the grill, skin side up, and grill until the skin turns a crisp golden brown.
8. Remove the salmon from the grill.
9. One they are cooked, drain the lentils. Stir in the fresh coriander.
10. Spoon the lentils onto a serving plate and top with dollops of minted yoghurt. Place the salmon fillet, skin side up, on top and sprinkle over chopped coriander.
11. While this meal was sufficient for me, if you are serving a carb fiend, you may want to have some basmati rice on hand to keep them satisfied. 

*I imagine that any teacher reading this is thinking ‘Why are you spending so much time writing worksheets?!’. In response, my school’s maths department has an unusual policy of not teaching through textbooks so all our resources are created by hand specifically for each lesson. This has a lot of advantages and I’m in favour of it 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time, I just want to sleep.

and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…

except me. I was more than stirring. I was waving my arms about and shouting.

“What do you mean a STIR-FRY!?”

The instigators of my wrath watched me in confused silence for a moment. Then Dad said,
“Well, a vegetable stir fry.”
“It’s going to be Christmas Day! You’re having GUESTS,  and you’re going to serve them a VEGETABLE STIR-FRY?!”
“What’s wrong with that?”

For a second I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Having been brought up in Britain, the association of Christmas and good quality food was almost innate.

“You’re supposed to make an effort for Christmas Day. That’s the point, isn’t it? To overindulge in GOOD food. Not a ten minute job with reduced mange-tout!”
“Well there’s that reduced chicken we found and the salmon. We thought we’d give them to you to take home but we can use them if you think the stir fry-won’t be enough.”
“You know how to cook a chicken?”

My parents are occasional fish eaters but are mostly vegetarian. It had probably been a while since they’d attepted to cook an animal of any reaonable size.

“We can cook a curry. That works with anything. I will cut the chicken and Mum can curry it.” 

As I’ve described before, my parents’ curries are nothing like the excellent dishes you’d find on the websites of Sig or Mamta.  They involve throwing at least a tablespoon of every spice in the house (and there are a lot of ten year old, unlabelled, powdered spices there) into a pot with the chicken and a heck of a lot of salt and boiling the mixture for several hours until solid.

I took a look in the fridge. There in front of me was a small but fairly good looking, free range, corn fed bird. It certainly was not something I’d want to be a victim of my parents’ currying. I was also fairly sure that Dad’s vegetable stir fry would be seasoned with at least half a bottle of soy sauce. Things were not looking good for this meal.

“So you have invited guests to your house for Christmas Day, and you’re suggesting you  serve them a vegetable stir-fry and chicken curry?! And you want to butcher it yourself? Do you actually have a meat cleaver?”
“No, why would I need one?” he replied.  At this point I completely lost my rag.
“WELL, WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO USE TO CUT UP THE CHICKEN? A PAIR OF SCISSORS?!”
“I have a bread knife.” 

I cupped my head in my hands. Half an hour later, I’d convinced them to give me control of the chicken. I had no idea what I was going to do with it but ANYTHING would be better than what had been previously planned for it and we really needed an alternative to the inevitable soy-sauce fest that would be produced by my father.

But there was a problem. My parents don’t own many ingredients. There were no herbs, no butter and no winter vegetables. In fact there was nothing but the chicken, a lot of ancient unidentifiable spice and some mange tout. Christmas Eve at 11pm is not the best time to discover you need a trolley load of groceries. I also had the additional problem that the small chicken in the fridge was supposed to feed six people.

(more…)

Not, as you might have thought, my latest trick for tackling my homeward journey down Highgate Hill but instead a tasty little treat I found at Borough market.

When I go to Borough, I avoid taking Goon with me unless its absolutely necessary. This is particularly important now, since the rather large cheese wheel he bought back in January has apparently been totally consumed and putting him in the vicinity of more gorgonzola seems like asking for trouble.

But the problem is that Goon has been moping recently. This is in response to my rather long working days. I have even less time than I did last year to indulge him on weekday evenings. So at weekends, when I am around, Goon tends to follow me everywhere.

On my first couple of trips to Borough, I sneaked away when Goon was asleep but last weekend, hung over and tired, I didn’t leave until 2pm and Goon gleefully followed me to the market. As usual he was apathetic about most things on sale there but, on this occassion, his eye was caught by something  on the fish counter.

The creatures in question were live crayfish. As much as I am in favour of killing what I eat by myself, there was something I found vaguely arachnid about these creatures and I, for want of a better phrase, am f***ing terrified of all things spiderlike. So, in an attempt to distract Goon from his live prey, i tutted and said ‘But we’ve HAD crayfish before! Why don’t we get something we haven’t tried’. Luckily for me, right in front of the crayfish were a pile of skate wings, which neither of us had eaten before.

A little internet research led me to the following recipe for skate wings. It’s a classic for a reason and well worth trying.

Skate Wings with Brown Butter and Capers (with special thanks to Ian for his input to this recipe)

• 2 skate wings (600g), skinned
• court bouillon for poaching ( I used leeks and carrots, garlic, bay leaves and thyme simmered for about half an hour)
• handful of capers in brine, drained and soaked
• 1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
• 75g butter
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1. Place the skate wings in large a large saucepan/skillet and cover with the court bouillon. Bring the bouillon to a gentle simmer.
2. When the fish flakes easily (after roughly 8 minutes) remove the fish from the pan and place on  a warmed serving plate.
3. Melt the butter in  saucepan over a medium heat. When it has turned golden brown, immediately pour it over the fish.
4. Swill out the pan with the white wine vinegar and pour this over the fish too.  
5. Scatter the capers and chopped parsley over the skate wings and serve, perhaps with sauteéd anya potatoes and buttered steamed asparagus.

***

While I was researching skate recipes, I was a little annoyed that all I could find were variants of this. Now I understand why it is so popular. The flavour balance in this dish is perfect. Skate isn’t quite like other white fish. It has a different texture. It’s not exactly fatty but it needs something to ‘cut through’ the gelationousness (is that a real word?) of the fish. The vinegar and the salty capers were perfect for this. The brown butter gave depth to the dish. It really was delicious.

An additional bonus is that skate is relatively cheap. So if you see some on sale, givethis a try.

As much as I like my job, seven weeks of 6am starts and 1am finishes has left me feeling a little drained and half term is indeed a very welcome thing. So, howcome I didn’t post until half way through half term? Well, the sad geeky truth is I got a little carried away with a mathemtical coding project related to my year 12s’ syllabus.

Yes, I know, it’s tragic. But don’t worry, I’ve still got things to post, I’ll just take a while to write them up.

My first 7 weeks at Highgate have been an interesting experience. I wasn’t expecting the ups and downs that seem to come with your average teaching day. On most days I will see my lower school set. They can be difficult and lessons with them frequently leave me totally exhausted and more than a little peeved. But then this is counterbalanced by an amazing set or year 12s who, no matter how badly the day is going, will somehow manage to make this job seem worthwhile.

The school day also makes cooking a little tough but, for these 9 days of holiday at least, I’m back on form and the first thing I made was this.

You can tell I had too much time on my hands that day, can’t you? 

I’m aware that a few cookbooks include fish lasagnas like this one with a smoked salmon filling but I think that the salmon on its own would be a bit overpowering for me. I wanted something to dissipate the strong salty flavour of the salmon and, at the same time, add an extra dimension to the dish.  I thought about adding prawns at first, but I didn’t want to alter the texture of the lasagne that much. Then I found some haddock on special offer and this dish was born.

Haddock and Smoked Salmon Lasagna

• 175g smoked salmon
• 200g haddock fillet, skinned
• half a medium onion, finely chopped
• a tablespoon of finely chopped parsley
• 3 sheets fresh lasagna 
• 2 eggs, poached and refreshed in cold water

For The Hollandaise Sauce

• one to two tablespoons chopped chives 
• 2 medium/large eggs  (yolks only)
• 100g butter
• two teaspoons of white wine vinegar

1. Start off by getting your poached eggs ready. 
2. Make the hollandaise sauce as described here. 
3. Cut the lasagne sheets in half and cook them, as normal, in salted boiling water. Brush them with olive oil so they don’t stick together, and set them aside. 
4. Sweat the onions in a little of the butter until they are soft.
5. Meanwhile, poach the haddock in the milk until it flakes. Drain the fish, flake it into small pieces and stir it into the cooked onion with the parsley.
6. Warm two serving plates. Using a quarter of the haddock minture, make a thin, rectangular base for the first lasagna on one plate. Try and make it the same size as  the lasagne sheets.
7. Cover the base one lasagna sheet. Over this, put down a layer of smoked salmon, using around a third of the salmon and cover this with another sheet of lasagna. Make the top layer of the lasagna in the same way as the first, but this time layer another third of the salmon over the haddock before adding the top lasagna sheet. Top the whole thing with the remaining salmon.
8. Assemble the other lasagna in the same way. Top each with a poached egg, pour the hollandaise sauce over them and scatter over some chopped chives.
9. Serve with steamed asparagus. 

***

This was the biggest success I’d had this term. The addition of the haddock to the smoked salmon and hollandaise did exctly what I wanted. The lasagna had that extra depth of flavour I had been aiming for but was still dominated by the classic pairing of smoked salmon and hollandaise sauce.

In fact, this would have been perfect if I’d been able to find our whisk. As it was, it had disappeared in our move two months ago and somehow I’d managed to get by without noticing it had gone. This left me with  two problems. Firstly, it is very difficult to make hollandaise sauce without one and secondly, those poached eggs were just not going to work. 

The hollandaise sauce was eventually made by beating things very fast with a fork. As for the eggs, Goon tried to replace the whisk with an electric stick blender. It didn’t really work.  

Well, it nearly held together. Next time I’m in this situation, I’ll try the oiled cling film trick that Trig described in his post on egg poaching techniques.

Last weekend I got my first paycheck! So naturally it seemed only proper that I should go shopping and spend all of it at once. The problem is that there see to be very few decent shops in my area.

To have a fighting chance at bankrupting myself, I needed to go all the way back to my old haunt of Kensington, where I managed to spend £200 on a vast array of pointless girly things (makeup I don’t really need, overly frilly underwear etc. ) and some less frivolous things like clothes for work.

Since I was in Kensington, it would seem rude to not pop in to visit the Whole Foods market, which is where I found these intriguing creatures.

I’d only seen razor clams here once before and at that time there was no way I could afford them. But on this occasion I was out to treat myself, so I picked up twelve to share with Goon.

I don’t think I’ve ever cooked anything quite so active! As the fishmonger got them ready for me, they squirmed and wriggled around in an almost disturbing way. By the time i got them home, the cold from their iced container had subdued them but, by that point Goon wanted to see the liveliness of the clams for himself, so he picked one and sat warming it in his hands.

After half an hour all the clams were at room temperature and wriggling away again. I set Goon the task of tapping them until they stayed closed while I got started on the rest of dinner. The fishmonger had suggested treating them exactly like mussels, so I decided to steam them in a both of coconut milk and fish stock flavoured with lemongrass, lime leaves, chilli and coriander.

By the time the clams were ready for steaming, Goon had grown quite attached to them and it was a struggle convincing him to let me cook them. Fortunately, Goon thinks about his stomach before everything else, so I just waited a while until he got hungry, after which he was qute happy to drop his new friends into the pan.

The clams didn’t take long to cook at all. I seved them with the thickened broth on a bed of steamed jasmine rice with some pak choi in oyster sauce.

At approximately £1 each, these clams weren’t cheap but I’d definitely get them again as a treat. They have a fantastic texture, like lightly cooked scallops but more meaty, and a very fishy flavour. I think they’d be a superb replacement for mussels in a moules mariniere. I imagine they’d also be great just grilled with some herbs and olive oil. I wouldn’t say I made a mistake by putting them in a Thai broth, but they certainly didn’t need so much attention- I could have got away with treating them simply.

So next payday, I will be running over to Kensington to see if there are any more of this exciting crustacean in stock. Hopefully they’ll still be in season then. 

Now, I like pink, but this is just ridiculous.

Mackerel with gooseberry sauce is a classic pairing. I love this fish, so this is a dish I’ve wanted to make since I first came across it on the menu of a pub almost five years ago.  The reason I took so long is, although mackerel is always easy to get, gooseberries have a very short season and I inevitably forget about them during the brief period when they are around.

This year was very nearly no exception. Luckily, I accidentally came across some of the last fruit of the season, hiding behind some raspberries in Tesco. This jolted my memory about the mackerel dish so I ran off to the fish-counter and got a couple of large whole fish for me and Goon. Remembering the ridiculous situation Goon got in the last time we had mackerel, I got the fishmonger to remove the heads from these fish this time.

Like most of the gooseberries I’d seen, these ones were green, although slightly tinged with pink. I had no idea they would have such a dramatic colour change in my saucepan. All I did was simmer the berries with some, mint, sugar and white wine. Once they were soft, I passed the dark greenish mixture through a sieve. As the skins were left behind I was left with a reasonably dark pink liquid. The sauce didn’t turn to the lurid colour in the photograph until I melted a chunk of butter into the sauce.

Of course, like most small children, Goon got very excited by the brightly coloured food. In fact he was so excited by the sauce that, for the first time ever, he didn’t moan at all about the fish having bones! I couldn’t believe it!  

I can see why mackerel and gooseberry has become such a classic pairing. Mackerel works well with acidic sauces that cut through its wonderful oily richness. The gooseberries have that acidity and a very interesting flavour too. Despite its psychadelic appearance, this meal was delicious.

I accompanied our mackerel with a potato and onion salad with sour cream, parsley and thyme and some steamed green beans. It was a very refreshing dinner for the hottest day of the year so far. It’s a shame the gooseberries won’t be around for much longer.

Gooseberry Sauce for Mackerel

(makes enough to accompany 2 mackerel)

• 175g washed gooseberries
• 20g caster sugar
• around 10 mint leaves
• white wine or cider to cover. A sweet-ish wine with elderflower flavours works really well.
• 15g butter (I used unsalted but then added a little salt at the end)
• A little salt if necessary

Simmer the gooseberries, mint and sugar in the wine or cider until they are soft. Gently mash them up using a wooden spatula, then pass the mixture through a sieve. Melt in the butter, taste and add more sugar and the salt if it needs it.

***

I’ve decided to send  my gooseberries to Weekend Herb Blogging, which this week is hosted by Melissa, the Cooking Diva. Check out the roundup at her blog on Monday.

Goon think’s  there’s something a little scary about Delia Smith. I think it’s something to do with this picture.

I never thought I’d end up buying a Delia book. It’s just not my style of cooking. I’m much more of a Gordon Ramsey fan.  However, a few days ago, I bit the bullet and picked up her Complete Cookery Course as many people had said it was good for teaching beginners. There certainly were a lot of recipes in it, which would make it a useful tool for Goon, and I noticed a few good ideas for me to try too.

That evening, I took the book to Goon for him to have a look. Goon cowered slightly on the sofa, as the giant face on the cover bore down on him.

“It’s got very detailed instructions,” I said soothingly. “You like detailed instructions, don’t you?” Goon nodded, then whimpered slightly at Delia’s creepy half-smile and stuck his face in a cushion.  I sighed and took the dustcover bearing Delia’s portrait off the book. Goon was much happier after that. 

My plan was for Goon to cook a recipe of his choice the following night using some cod. I’d specifically chosen fish as he’d not tried cooking it before. It didn’t take Goon long at all to find the easiest recipe in the section: baked white fish with a sauce made from sour cream, capers and watercress. 

The recipe is as simple as it sounds but it needed a fair bit of alteration. For a start it called for just one teaspoon of fresh tarragon, which really wouldn’t have been enough. Ditto the quantities for capers and watercress. We doubled the values for all of these.

The main problem though, was this recipe leaves the fish a little dry. I think it is because the suggested baking time was a bit long. Next time I’d change the 20 minutes at 190C to 15 minutes at 180C.

Baked Fish with a Sour Cream, Caper and Watercress Sauce (Adapted from Delia Smith’s Complete Illustrated Cookery Course)

Recipe to follow soon: Apologies for the delay, my home computer had a small…. umm…’accident’ with a glass of wine, which has left the keyboard a little worse for wear, which means I’ll need to copy out the recipe and bring it into the office before I can type it up.

***

Goon found this recipe very easy to follow. If he hadn’t been so late starting it, he would probably have been able to make the accompaniments to the meal too. As it was, I took over that part of the meal as I wanted to have dinner before 11pm.

I have noticed that, even though Goon claims he needs precise instructions to cook, he doesn’t actually follow them at all. He’s just as blazé with quantities as I am. Sometimes he asks me questons which makes it obvious he hasn’t even read the recipe he’s trying to follow. Still, with me in the kitchen shouting, “Read the ****ing recipe!” he seems to be getting better. 

As for our verdict on the meal, we thought it was fine but nothing to write home about. I think the sauce could have done with a bit more flavour. Perhaps a little extra wine or the addition of a little fish stock would have helped. The main downside was the slightly overcooked fish, but I’m sure knocking a few minutes off the cooking time would sort that out.

For Goon’s next cooking experiment, I’ve picked something reasonably challenging. To give you a clue, it will involve a cheese sauce topping. I wonder how he’ll cope with that.