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.

A few months ago, my Dad brought me a few bargains from Borders. Among them was a £3 book on Mexican Cookery. Whilst I’m always up for trying new cuisines, I thought that this particular one was a bit out of my reach. The book described a lot of ingredients I’d never heard of before. For a start, it mentioned more types of chilli than I knew existed, strange vegetables like sliced cactus leaf paddles and a few cheeses I didn’t think I could find.

The book lay unused on my shelf for months. Then, two weeks ago, I was reading the BBC food boards when I saw that Charlotte (from Great Big Vegetable Challenge) had been looking for some cactus and had been pointed in the direction of an interesting company called Cool Chile, which imports a lot of Mexican ingredients and storecupboard items.

The next Friday I visited their stall at Borough Market, hoping to get my hands on the most common items mentioned in my book: tomatillos, corn tortillas and nopales (cactus paddles). The very helpful gentleman running the stall sold me the last two, but he didn’t stock the tomatillos at Borough. Apparently no one bought them. I couldn’t help wondering why.

However, he did point me in the direction of Cool Chile’s Taqueria, which happens to be reasonably close to where I live. So the next morning, I set off, eager to get my hands on the elusive ingredient. I was in for a bit of a shock. This was the can of tomatillos I found.

I don’t think that picture does it justice. I think this one puts things in perspective.

Apparently tomatillos are only imported into Britain in cans about twice the size of my head! No wonder they weren’t sellingfast at Borough. These things weigh around 3 kg. Still, I was determined to have my tomatillos, so I bought them anyway. Then the shop assistant told me they didn’t have any carrier bags.

So I walked the three miles back to my flat with my tomatillos cradled in my arms like an oversized baby, getting some very strange reactions from passers by. A few people pointed and laughed. Someone even tried hitting on me. Apparently the thing to do if you’re single and really desperate in London, is walk around with a large can of tomatillos. You’ll attract Goldhawk Road weirdos by the dozen.  By the time I got back home, my arms really ached and my throat was a bit sore from yelling at the weirdos to get lost.

The irony is that I still haven’t used the tomatillos. For my first attempt at Mexican cookery, I fancied beef enchiladas and, from what I saw in books and online, tomatillo wasn’t the best accompaniment. I’m saving them now for chicken and tomatillo burritos.

So, what did I make for my first Mexican style meal? Well, beef enchiladas like I said,

a salsa made from mango, finely diced white onion, lime juice, lime zest, green chilles and coriander leaf,

nopales and red pepper salad,

and sweet corn with fried onions and cream.

It was an interesting meal to make. Each particular dish was easy in itself but co-ordinating the lot was a bit challenging. I started early by making the beef.  I sweated off one finely diced onion with 2 cloves of garlic and 3 chopped green birds eye chillies. Then I added 500g of chopped braising steak and browned it. I put the lot in a casserole dish with a about a level tablespoon of  ground cumin, ground coriander, dried oregano and paprika,  then covered the meat with beef stock, added salt and pepper and let it braise slowly at 130C for about 5 hours. While it was in the oven, I made the the creamed corn and let my tinned nopales soak in fresh water to remove the salt from them.

After that I took the beef out of the oven, poured off most of the liquid and shredded the beef. It had picked up the flavours from the spices very well so I didn’t add any more. I just put a dollop in the middle of each of my 8 corn tortillas and rolled them up into enchiladas. These went into a baking dish and were topped with sour cream and grated mild cheddar (as a substitute for Monterey Jack) and baked until the cheese bubbled.

While the enchiladas cooked I quickly assembled the salad and salsa. The salsa was literally just the ingredients mentioned above, mixed together in a bowl. The salad was made from grilled, skinned and sliced red pepper, thinly sliced red onion and the nopales slices in a dressing made from a chile and garlic oil and white wine vinegar. The nopales had an interesting flavour that’s hard to describe. They were very slightly bitter and quite leafy but had a bit of a salty tang from being pickled. Their texture was like cooked runner beans. We liked them a lot.

I’d have liked to submit the tomatillos to Weekend Herb Blogging this week, but since I haven’t yet cooked with them, I’ll have to talk about the nopales instead. Nopales are the paddles of the prickly pear cactus. Over here they are sold pickled in brine. Apparently these things are full of vitamins and fibre, which is very useful as they are very tasty too!

For more information on nopales, see the Wikipedia entry.

This week, Weekend Herb Blogging is hosted by Anna from Anna’s Cool Finds. Head over there to see the round up on Monday. 

That Whole Foods supermarket is going to bankrupt me. I keep finding cool things like these that I want to try.

Picture borrowed from nandalaya.com, until I remember to photograph my own eggplants.

The market actually has a good selection of eggplants, from the normal aubergines we see all the time here to little yellow, white and blue ones. These tiny green ones caught my eye because I remember eating them in a green curry I had in Thailand. I was ill that evening with a horrible heat migraine and had stayed behind in my hotel room. Dinner was from room service and, after I’d finished, I tried asking the porter what the little, sour vegetables in the curry were. I’d assumed they were peas but the flavour was different and they had a harder texture.

Unsuprisingly, the porter was clueless and it wasn’t until I was visiting Saran Rom several years later that I encountered the little vegetables again. The staff here were much more well informed about the ingredients in the green curry and the maitre’ d even brought out a raw one for me to see. Apparently these eggplants are considered to be good in a green curry because of their slightly crunchy texture.

When I came across the plants in Whole Foods I made a mental note to make my own green curry with them. Then, on Thursday, I was planning to make a red curry with a twist but the key ingredient was unavailable. I thought it was a good time to make a green chicken curry instead with the exciting eggplants.

The curry was more difficult to make than it should have been. While i was getting my spices together, flatmate Ken came to ask me how to make a green curry from scratch. I started to tell him, and then realised that I wasn’t making a green curry at all. For some reason I’d gone on autopilot and was making a red one. I clearly need more sleep.*

So, I told Ken roughly how to make both a red and green curry paste and proceeded to make my red curry. Then I ran into problem 2. Somehow, during our move, we lost both our pestle and mortar pairs (i.e. Goon forgot to pack them). Fortunately Ken came to my assistance and did a pretty good job of pounding the spices in a bowl with a rolling pin.

Once the spices were roughly ground, I made my red curry paste and then the red curry in the way I normally do, except this time I threw in my eggplants roughly ten minutes before I was ready to serve.  

Those eggplants really look like large peas, don’t they.Fortunately they were just as good in a red curry as they are in a green one. We had our curry with jasmine rice and, on Schmoof’s recommendation, I tried stir frying some choi sum with garlic, ginger, chilli and oyster sauce. I threw some mushrooms in for good measure too. 

I’ve decided to enter Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging this week with this post, so I’ve done a little bit of research on these eggplants**.  Apparently eggplants are native to India Sri Lanka but are cultivated all over the place now. The wild plants produce small vegetables, like the ones I had in my curry. They were only half a centimetre in diameter. Cultivated plants tend to produce much bigger vegetables, like the purple ones we are used to seeing in our supermarkets.

The name ‘eggplant’ comes from the first growers of these plants in Europe and North America. The aubergines there looked a lot like Goose or Duck eggs since they were white and round.  

This week, Weekend Herb Blogging is being hosted by Chris from Mele Cotte. Head over there on Monday to see the other exciting submissions for this week’s WHB.

*Or less alcohol. I’ve had a fair few bottles of champagne since I found out about my new job.

**Ok, you got me, I just looked them up on wikipedia.

This has got to be the best thing to come home to after a night out. 

Well, it would have been if things had gone to plan.

I don’t get to go out very often any more. In fact, apart from occasional trips to the pub after seminars with my fellow mathmos, I don’t go out at all. This is why I was so excited about going to my friend’s houewarming party last night. I’d been really good friends with this girl at university but partially lost touch after she finished her degree, so I was looking forward to a big catch up.

My original plan was to stay out until 11:30 and get takeaway on the way home, but the idea of stodge actually made me feel a bit sick. So I went for what was, in my opinion, the next quickest option.

In the afternoon I headed to my local fishmongers (Cape Clear) to buy myself some nice sea bream. The people there are very helpful and they’ll pop a lemon and some parsley in the bag for you with your fish for free. It’s practically a ready meal in a bag but with nice, fresh ingredients and no artificial anything. All I needed to was grill the fish for a few minutes, then add the lemon and chopped parsley and perhaps boil some new potatoes. Could it be any easier?

While I was there I also got to sample some samphire for the first time. I really liked it so I bought a load to go with my fish dinner. After all, it would only take seconds to cook.

So I was all set up for a night out with some friends followed by coming back to a gorgeous, tasty dinner. My mistake was trying to take Goon with me. After I’d planned to leave at 7pm, Goon turned up at  7:15 and somehow then spent 40 minutes in the shower. So, by the time he was ready to go, we were over an hour late and, with the tube engineering works, we’d end up spending twice as much time travelling than we would at the party.

So no night out for me.

Dinner was still tasty though, and I got to try out the interesting new vegetable whilst sober, which certainly wouldn’t have happened if I went out. Another plus side is that I can submit my samphire to Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging which is hosted by Rinku from Cooking in Westchester this week.

Even though samphire has been eaten in Britain for ages (hundreds of years), a remarkable number of people (well, at least amongst the students I hang out with) haven’t heard of it. For some reason it doesn’t make it’s way into the supermarkets but is sold in proper fishmongers. The plant comes in several different varieties. The one I got hold of was marsh samphire. Apparently rock samphire is sometimes also eaten pickled and is a delicacy in Lancashire and Northumbria.

I think marsh samphire is a wonderful vegetable, with a pleasant flavour, that is a bit like salty asparagus, and a crisp crunchy texture. It’s a great thing to eat alongside fish. When I tried it for the first time at the fishmongers, I had it raw, but usually it is blanched in hot water for a few seconds or steamed for a very short time to lessen its saltiness. Last night, I went for the first option, then tossed it in lemon and butter.

This whole meal literally took 15 minutes to cook, and most of that was taken up by waiting for the potatoes to boil. The fish, after its skin was rubbed with salt, had about 8 minutes under the grill. I spent two minutes incinerating some parsley to add to some melted butter for a makeshift sauce and the samphire was done in seconds.

So who needs ready meals when you’ve got fish? \o/ Well, people who don’t like fish obviously, but I’ve never really understood them anyway  

A few posts ago, I mentioned a pub meal I had that was really not as good as it should have been.

This ‘duck breast salad with pomegranate and blueberry dressing’ was a great idea, but somehow had come out all wrong. The biggest problem was the duck breast itself. It was overcooked, but hadn’t had enough time on the skin side to make it crispy. Also, whoever had prepared it apparently hadn’t heard of the benefits of removing the tendon from a duck breast.

Ignoring the duck breast, the salad itself was ok. But, after a while, the dressing, which I think was pure honey, became overpowering. The sweetness almost worked against the tartness of the blueberries but it was a little too much. I felt it needed tempering.

Even though the execution of this dish wasn’t great, I totally loved the idea behind it and that’s why I wanted to try out a variation on it myself.

The duck breast was the easy bit. I’ve cooked those dozens of times before and I think I’ve got the hang of them now. I could also easily mimic the spinach-watercress-spring onion combo of the pub for the salad but the dressing was a bit more tricky. I wanted to keep some of the honey but find a way to lessen the intensity of flavour. On a whim, I took half my pomegranate seeds, juiced them in a blender, then strained the juice into the honey. After tasting the mixture, one thing was obviously missing. So i added a capful of rosewater to the dressing and also decided to dust the meat side of the duck breasts with powdered rose petals to give the dish a very noticable rose flavour.

I prepared my duck in the same way I always do. For a start I alsways get my duck from Manor Farm’s stall at Notting Hill farmers’ market or from Furness at Borough. The quality of meat at these two places is a lot better than most supermarket duck.

As for method of preparation, this one seems to be fairly reliable.

1. Score the skin of the duck is a cross hatch pattern, with lines about 1.5cm apart. Try to cut as far as you can into the skin without exposing the meat.
2. Rub a pinch of salt into the skin to help it crisp up nicely.
3. Turn the duck meat side up and look for the white tendon. It’s a good idea to remove this as this is what makes the duck breast shrink when you cook it. I use a very small, sharp knife to do this, slipping the knife under the tendon and cutting it away. The difference you get from moving the tendon is very noticeable. The meat seems softer and jucier. 
4. When you are ready to cook the duck, get a frying pan hot (I use the highest heat setting on my electric hob) and cook the duck skin side down 8 minutes, then turn it and cook it for 1 minute 30s skin side up.
5. Rest the duck wrapped in foil for about 5 minutes before serving.
6. When you’re ready to serve, cut it into thin diagonal slices for pretty presentation. Or don’t bother, and just eat it.

If I haven’t just missed the deadline, I’m submitting thi post to Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging, this week hosted by Pat at Up a Creek Without a PatL. Several ingredients make it eligible to qualify. The salad leaves, the pomegranate and the rose petals would all be good reasons to enter. But, I’ve decided to use this post to draw attention to the humble blueberry, which I think is a much underused ingredient in savoury cooking. While it’s all over the place in the form of yoghurts and muffins, you don’t often see a blueberry sauce for venison or the berries used in salads like this.. This is a shame as blueberries have a superb flavour which goes really well with game.

So, next time you’ve got some duck or venison (or kangaroo for that matter) in the fridge, why not try out partnering it with blueberries? It’s a very tasty combination!

It’s been a funny old week. I thought that since half my students were going on holiday I’d have loads of free time. But it seems the few remaining ones had other ideas. Ideas involving three hours of tutorials a day. Each. I have been starting teaching at 9am and finishing at around 9pm, with a few hours in between to hurriedly type thesis. 

In the midst of all this I got a call from these guys at Market Kitchen. Apparently I will be on the telly soon. More on that when I know what exactly is going on.

To add to the already huge stress levels, Goon has been away this week, working in Newcastle for his web-hosting company, Byethost. I thought this would mean that cooking for me this week would be reduced to quick and fairly boring meals as there was no way I could cope with arriving home at 10pm, getting up at 8am, cooking properly and cleaning up the kitchen.

It seems however that I was wrong. The basic meals took on a life of their own. For the first night, I had a fresh tuna steak. I thought this was perfect for my situation. It would be quick to cook and still really tasty. My plan was to just sear it and have it with new potatoes and a salad to give myself time to sleep that night, but then an idea struck me.

My dad had brought me some gotu-kola leaves the previous weekend. I guess this is a bit of an obscure plant. It goes by a variety of names, including, Antanan, Brahmi and, over here, we have a close relative of it called pennywort. The leaf is important in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine and, in Sri Lanka, the leaf is used in salads and also blended with coconut to make a breakfast drink.

I hadn’t eaten these leaves since my childhood and, when I tried them from the box in the fridge, I remembered why. They are a bit of an acquired taste, at least on their own. Adding a little bit of dessicated coconut and lime, however, gives the leaves a new lease of life. The sweetness of coconut balances the leaves’ bitterness and the lime gives it a pleasant freshness. This flavour combination was the basis of the spontaneous idea I had to jazz up my dinner.

I scored  my tuna steak and left it to marinate briefly in a blend of chilli oil, grated ginger, garlic and grated lime zest. 

The gotu-kola leaves went in the blender. I blitzed them, adding coconut milk slowly until I had a pesto like consisitency. I also blended in a couple of teaspoons of grated coconut, some lime zest and a little fresh red chilli. The result was very interesting, in a good way. The bitterness of the leaves had gone but the distinctive ‘medicinal’ taste was still there. I tried to find some rice noodles in my cupboard, failed and settled for spaghetti instead and tossed the cooked stands in my makeshift pesto.

Centalla Asiatica (gotu-kola). Picture from Wikipedia

The balance of flavour here was really good. There was the classic gotu-kola, coconut, lime combination balanced by the ginger and chilli in the tuna. I think more ginger was needed somwhere but, other than that, I couldn’t complain about this dish. I also made a quick tomato and aubergine side dish with coriander, which, again, because if its sweetness, completmented the gotu-kola flavour really well.

This was a suprising success for such a random idea. I think I’ll work on it because there’s  potential for an interesting and tasty Sri-Lankan- British fusion dish. 

Also, since it contains a weird and relatively unheard of plant, it is perfect for Kalyn’s  Weekend Herb Blogging which, this week is hosted by  Anh from Food Lover’s Journey. I found an interesting fact about the leaf as I researched it for this post. Apparently in ancient times it was regarded as a natural version of viagra. A story tells of a Sri Lankan king, Aruna, mustering the energy to satisfy his harem of fifty on the powers of the gotu-kola leaf.     

More believably, the leaf also promotes the healing of wounds by speeding up the scarring process and is an anti-oxidant.

I wasn’t expecting to do another flower entry for WHB quite so soon after my Rosey Lamb, but inspiration struck me on Saturday.

That night I was due to be out late watching a production of Arcadia and I needed a reasonably quick dinner on arrival back home, preferably with the duck breasts in my fridge which needed using a.s.a.p . However, I was quite determined to not return to my fruit sauce rut. Also we had to grab a chinese on the way home the previous night so that cooking style wasn’t allowed.  I turned to the internet for inspiration.

It seems that Trig has a rather useful search engine that allows you to search food blogs. It’s there at the end of his side-bar.  Apparently it originally belonged to Elise at ‘Simply Recipes’ and as soon as I have time I’ll be trying to grab a copy for this site. It was this search engine that led me to this post at Chocolate and Zucchini.

Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of putting lavender with duck before? It seems obvious now. I didn’t want mine to have quite as much spice as Clothilde’s on this occasion. I wanted it to stay very light and floral, just because that was the mood I was in.

So, as I frequently do on occasions like this, I ran over to my spice cupboard, got out all the spices that Clothilde suggested plus any others I thought might work and started tasting. The interesting thing I noticed was that a small amount of ground coriander on its own tastes quite floral and not very curry-ish (if you know what I mean). I thought a pinch of it with the lavender rubbed into the duck would be good but I decided to omit the suggested cumin because that really did taste ’spicy.’

Before leaving for the play, I got Goon to grind some lavender for me. We coated the scored meat side of the duck with this and just a pinch of ground coriander seed. Then we wrapped the duck up in cling film and went out.

When we got back I got Goon to grind another tablespoon of lavender while I very gently infused some melted butter with a sprig of rosemary. I removed the rosemary,  then drizzled in about four tablespoons of  honey. I thinned the mixture gradually with just a tiny bit of chicken stock while stirring and tasting until I thought it was at the right level of sweetness. Finally I added the lavender bit by bit until the flavour balance was right and we had a sweet floral sauce.  At this point I decided it needed some depth so another pinch of ground coriander went in and then I was happy. I had to use a bit of cornstarch to get it to the right consistency, but never mind.

As usual I pan fried my duck. I find the best way to do this is to first remove the white tendon on the breast. This will stop the meat shrinking and seems to stop it becoming tough too. Then score the skin almost through to the meat and cook it skin side down on a reasonably high heat for 10-12 minutes (or a very high heat for then turn up the heat on the hob to maximum and fry it for an additional 1 minute 45 seconds skin side up. This makes the duck a nice rare/medium. 

One thing to note is that too much lavender will make the sauce bitter. I had to rebalance my sauce by adding more honey and stock when I found this out and as a result ended up with too much sauce. As long as you aren’t a moron like me and add the lavender slowly, and taste regularly, it shouldn’t be a problem. 

It was a great success! The coriander, used sparingly, added depth and accentuated the floral flavours in the sauce but gave no detectable ’spicy’ flavour. The honey and lavender sauce was unusual but gorgeous. Goon gobbled it up very quickly. I decided to slow down and savour. The flavours in this sauce are too interesting to rush.

The only thing that disappointed me about this dish was that I wanted the sauce to be actually be lavender, rather than the caramel colour that it was. Even the few pieces of lavender I threw around as a garnish didn’t really stand out as being purple.  I somehow think I can’t overcome this problem without the addition of food colouring, which would just be silly. 

Anyway, Goon seemed to enjoy the sauce even more than me. We had our lavender-honey duck with new potatoes tossed in herby butter and simple steamed purple sprouting broccoli, so at least there was some purple on our plates! 

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging this week hosted by Kate at Thyme For Cooking.

Remember, if you’re going to get lavender for cooking make sure that is safe to eat first. Just ask the vendor if it unsprayed. For those of you in London, you can get dried culinary lavender from ‘Herbs from Heaven’ at Borough Market.

This will be my entry for this week’s weekend herb blogging, so I imagine a lot of you coming through from our lovely host’s site may want to see the photo …..

and skip to the end for the recipe.

Some others among you may notice something a bit odd about that picture. I’m sure you know that food bloggers generally take great care with their photography.  Hell, Amanda and Tyler even have their own photo tent with special lighting! Whilst I haven’t got that much equipment (yet), I still do my best for the blog. So why then do I have a fairly scruffy photo with my mobile phone, Goon’s course notes and several other pieces of rubbish in the background for this dish?

It’s all down to one of Goon’s flatmate.  Once upon a time, when I was a sprightly second year student, I thought there was no way I’d ever want to live on my own. My flatmates were great, I adored spending time with them and arguments were rare. How things have changed! Spending time at Goon’s in the presence of his cohabitants is starting to turn me into a bit of a misanthropic cow.

Let’s face it,when you’re a foodie, it is damn hard sharing a kitchen with people who think a good meal (as in one they would cook for a formal dinner party) is Tesco value tuna, tomato sauce and pasta.

Then we have the case of disappearing food. It appears the irritating squeamish one has another bad habit: throwing out food that looks even remotely unfamilar or has any kind of aroma. We have lost a dragonfruit “because it looked funny” and the best part of a pheasant “because it smelt funny” and a fresh pack of smoked salmon “because it smelt of fish.”

What the hell did she think salmon should smell like!? Rose petals?

A more pressing irritation is that, recently, one flatmate has taken to having Bible parties in the front room. Yes, you read it correctly. BIBLE parties. This means that the room has to be immaculate and we certainly can’t eat in there, which is a right pain because that is where the dining table is. Goon and I are forced to eat in his rather cramped bedroom on the very full computer table. 

It is annoying to be kicked out of the dining room when setting the table, but the conversations going on between this lot are plain disturbing. This lot have a book that lists all the words in the Bible alphabetically and gives page references for each. They LOVE that thing.

“Oooh, look it says the word ‘and’ appears 5,907 times in the Bible.”
“Really? I wonder whether these numbers have any significance.”
“How many times does the work ’the’ appear?”

Crazy!

I hate eating diiner in the bedroom. Rice gets on the floor and the lack of space means it is so much harder to photograph in there and we end up with clutter in the background. Also, Goon has a habit of hiding the plates under the bed so he can avoid the washing up. For days you wonder what the funny smell is, and then a couple of weeks later you find the plates, by then fully concious and with their own legs, making a daring escape out of the bedroom window.

Ok, maybe I made the last bit up, but they do end up covered in an interesting range of several species of mould. Goon’s bedroom is a mycologist’s dream.

Now that I’ve had my rant and explained the reason for the dodgy photo, here’s the interesting bit: a rough recipe for the Goan fish curry. This will work for most fish, although I prefer to use something white and flakey, like cod or haddock. This dish is easy to make and really tasty.

Take a large onion, peel it and slice it into  thin half-rings. Fry it gently in groundnut oil with a lot (about 1 tablespoon each) of coriander and cumin, a large clove of crushed garlic and about the same amount of ginger, two chopped red birds eye chillies, a teaspoon of cayenne, two teaspoons of paprika and a teaspoon of turmeric. When the onions are soft, add about 100ml of fish stock and about 150ml of coconut milk, and allow the lot to bubble until you have a slightly thin curry sauce.

At this point I add the ingredient that really makes a goan curry: tamarind. I generally use tamarind paste which I get from Asian speciality stores. I find the trick to using tamarind paste is to dilute it with a little bit of water and then add it slowly to the dish , tasting every so often to make sure you aren’t overdoing it. Tamarind is one of those things that can make a dish delicious but, a little too much makes it sour and, to some people, unpalatable, so it pays to be careful.   

After adding your desired amount of tamarind, add the fish fillets to the sauce and simmer for amout ten minutes until they are cooked. Then taste, adjust spice and seasoning and serve over basmati rice (perhaps flavoured with ginger and spring oniions) with a vegetable curry. Last night we had beans with coriander and garlic, cooked in coconut milk.

This is a really delicious dish. The tamarind provides a pleasant sour pungency that is followed by a slight sweetness from the coconut milk and a warmth from the spice. Personally I might add another chilli, but Goon gets funny about these things. 

It is the tamarind in this dish that makes it suitable to be an entry to Kalyn’s Weekend Herb Blogging which this week is hosted by Becky from Key Lime and Coconut.

For those of you unfamiliar with tamarind, the spice is the fruit pulp of a tree native to East Africa. It now is found all over Asia and South America as well. The young fruits of this tree have the sour flavour that makes a Goan curry so special. As the fruits get older they become sweeter and then are more suitable for use in desserts.

Ifyou may think you’ve never had tamarind, you may be suprised. It is one of the main ingredients in Worcestershire sauce! 

So there we go- a rant, a recipe and a brief collection of facts on a very tasty spice. Never let it be said that this blog lacks variety.