Category: Quick and easy

Woodpigeon Breasts on toast with lemon and thyme fresh cheese

I had got some woodpigeon breasts and thought they would make a lovely lunch.

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Beautiful wild game with no additives

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Except, perhaps the lead shot that killed it!

I also had the lovely fresh cheese that I made specifically for this on the Great Greek Yoghurt Challenge….

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And I have a fresh loaf of No Knead Bread

(I think I have seen a recipe for something very like this but I really can’t find it… I can’t have imagined it, surely? I have spent ages flicking through my magazines looking for the recipe but I just can’t spot it. It was probably in Olive or delicious. a year or more ago and it involved some kind of game, on toast with a lemony, thyme-y ricotta…. probably.  I have searched online and I still can’t find it – if any of you know who did it then let me know so I can give due credit. I would hate for someone to think I was stealing their ideas and I always try to link back to originals. I would hope that people would do that for me too)

Anyway, this is as simple as simple can be and oh-so-fast.

First, slice and toast your bread

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Heat some oil in a pan (I use my oil that I have steeped chillies in – it just gives things a little lift) 

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 and after seasoning the woodpigeon breasts with salt and some thyme

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start to fry it quickly -it will only take a few minutes to get the outside browned beautifully while the inside stays pink

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Once it is done, take it out and let it rest while you deglaze the pan with something.. wine, perhaps? Sherry? Port? Or, as I did, a Balsamic truffle glaze.

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Slice the pigeon breast and lay it on the toast,

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Drizzle with the pan juices

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Put a spoonful of the fresh cheese over the meat

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And that, I should tell you, was a lovely weekend lunch.

And I know that, hard though it is to believe, that one portion of this will come in at under 400 calories. Just a squeak under, but under, nevertheless.

It would be a brilliant week night supper as well, as it can be made in less than 15 minutes, if you have everything to hand.

Salt and pepper prawns

I can always be tempted by salt and pepper dishes from our local Chinese restaurant and when the Bear returned home clutching  raw king prawns and a bottle of rose it seemed that this would be the night to make salt and pepper prawns. I didn’t want to do a deep fried dish (lovely though that is) so I decided on a more or less dry fried way of cooking so I could at least say I was giving a nod towards healthy eating.

The rose went into the fridge to chill – that lovely pink fruitiness goes so well with spicy seafood – and I started on the spice coating.

All you need is salt, black peppercorns and Chinese five spice powder. Well, actually you should use Sichuan pepper as well, but I didn’t have any.

Actually, I didn’t have ordinary salt, either, which meant I had to crush some….

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So, about 2 tablespoons of salt are put into a dry frying pan and toasted…. you will see the salt change colour slightly

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In the meantime, crush a  teaspoon or so of black pepper corns

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And then pour in a teaspoon of Chinese 5 Spice powder and stir it well. If you had the pink Sichuan peppercorns then add a teaspoon of them and grind them

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Once everything is smooth and fine, add the spice mix to the salt and toast. Again you will see a colour change

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You can see it smoking in the pan… a word of warning – aromatic though that is, it doesn’t half make you cough if you breathe it in

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Leave it to cool and then remove it from the pan and get your prawns out. A spring onion, finely chopped and a squeeze of lemon juice will set them off beautifully.

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You can see they are grey and raw…

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put the minimum of oil in and get it hot and then throw them in

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Thirty or so seconds later they are pink and opaque.

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Scatter over some of the salt and spice mix

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………………….then serve with a scattering of spring onions and a squirt of lemon juice

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And the chilled rose is just perfect along side it.

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The Bear, who has always been hesitant about prawns and only bought them to please me… ate his portion with gusto and decided he liked prawns after all. I’m not sure that is such a great result.. on the one hand, it is lovely that we both like prawns but on the other… well, I have had to share!

Ohhhhh… aubergine

Sometimes it is really rather lovely to have a lighter, vegetarian meal…. something quick and tasty. I always used to think aubergines were awful until I made this roasted and stuffed-with-delicious-little-bits aubergine. This is excellent when you want a midweek supper when you are late in from work, or maybe  a hot lunch at weekends. 40 minutes or so… does that sound good? And 30 minutes of that is in the oven.. you can be pouring yourself a drink and trying to put the tortures of a working day out of your mind while the smell of supper filters out and makes your mouth water…

Imagine a roasted aubergine, stuffed with delicious bits of anti pasti – olives, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, olives and goats cheese? And before you think that might not be for you, the Bear ate it and said it was delicious.

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You’ll need aubergine (half for each person)

I called in at Sainsbury’s and filled a little pot with their mixed antipasti – it has olives, marinated mushrooms, roasted peppers, tomatoes.

I bought a jar of chargrilled artichokes because I love them and I knew there were some sun dried tomatoes in the cupboard.  You don’t have to, you can just use the mixed antipasti if you want to. All I needed to finish it off was a small log of goats cheese.

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Halve your aubergines and slash them across (try not to slash their skin – you want to keep all the juices in) and then slash again length ways. This will give you the gaps you need to stuff in everything.

Put the oven on at 160 degrees C, or thereabouts

If you have bought artichokes you will need to slice them – they are too big to be shoved in the slashes

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and half the olives and any of the big bits

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Start to jam things in the gaps… this is quick and easy. You are not looking for awards for neatness here

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There will be some oil left from the pot, don’t waste it, dribble it over the vegetables and aubergine

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Then open the goats cheese and slice it. This is a sticky job, more sticky than shoving in the oily vegetables, but don’t worry you can wash your hands in a minute and settle down while it cooks.

Share out the goats cheese on top of the aubergine and vegetables

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See? Looking rather attractive, don’t you think?

Lay them on a silicone sheet or some tin foil, lay some more foil lightly over the top to keep the moisture in for the moment and pop them in the oven.

At this point I would start to boil some baby salad potatoes to go with it and then take a break…. pour that drink and tell everyone within earshot about how dreadful your day was.

After quarter of an hour, check the aubergines… and take off the foil top to brown everything in the last ten minutes. The aubergine will be soft and bathed in the delicious vegetably, oily juices.

Drain the potatoes… and serve….

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There you have it. Forty minutes or so and you have a delicious supper with ingredients you can pick up in the supermarket on your way home, very quickly

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Best sandwich in the world

.. or so says the Bear. He likes this whenever he is at home and would probably eat it every day if he could. Of course, it is not a sandwich in the real sense of the word – there’s no top – and I am perhaps more partial, say, to egg mayonnaise. Or maybe crayfish and rocket… Still, each to his own and that is his choice.

It’s very simple – just three ingredients and a sprinkle of Maldon Salt

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It’s best made with the delicious No Knead Bread, which makes spectacular toast, a Hass avaocado (they are the knobbly, dark green ones) and some small baby plum tomatoes, crisp, sweet and juicy.

Slice your bread

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and lightly toast it

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Slice those little tomatoes

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and then scoop out the avocado and mash it with a fork

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Then start to put it all together….

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Spread the mushed up avvy thickly over the toast

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Then put the tomatoes on top of that

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And sprinkle lightly with Maldon Salt…..

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And there you have it. How to keep a Bear happy in one easy lunch.

Monkfish

I was cooking for some friends recently and bought monkfish tails. I didn’t use all the monkfish so I froze a tail fillet knowing that it would come in handy one night as a quick supper for the two of us.

That night was Friday night.

I had a few tomatoes and the last bit of a pot of cream.  It was cold and grey outside so I wanted  something bright to look at and there’s nothing more cheery than saffron added to food, with its lovely golden colour and that gorgeous deep tang of its flavour.

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This wouldn’t take long so I thought rice would be good. Basmati cooks really quickly and all you need to do is measure the rice then add the same amount of water and maybe a tablespoon extra.

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Just put that on the heat with a pinch of salt and get cracking on the rest of the supper…

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Start by chopping up a small onion and gently sauteing it in some butter till it softens and sweetens . Add a good pinch of saffron

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And some finely chopped tomatoes

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Stir it round and then pour in a good old slug of vermouth… maybe a cup full, add some salt and pepper..

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Stir that round and let it bubble down a bit.  The alcohol will cook off so don’t expect to get lashed on the sauce 😉  and don’t worry, you can give it to youngsters!

Get the monkfish and cut it into rounds.  Check the rice… has the water all been absorbed in? Is it tender? If it needs a drop more then add that but keep your eye on it. If it is ready, take it off the heat and put a tea towel over the top and then put the lid on to absorb the extra steam. By now the tomatoey sauce will be coming together. Add a knob of butter and stir round then carefully put the monkfish slices in

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Let it gently, very gently, bubble away for about 5 or so minutes until the fish is cooked.

Take the fish out and put on one side because you are now going to make the most delicious sauce…

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Pour in some cream and stir it in then turn up the heat so the sauce can reduce and thicken

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See how it is still a sauce but it has thickened?

Now pile up the rice in a bowl and add the monkfish

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Doesn’t it look gorgeous?

Then pour the sauce over

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And settle down to eat….

Mayo… mmmmmmmayo

It’s always handy to have the makings of mayonnaise in the house. In just a few minutes you can have a lovely thick, tasty dressing that you can modify in all sorts of ways to match whatever you want to use it with.

 I made fish and couscous and wanted something to tie it all together. I know that Bear would have been happy with tomato sauce but I wanted something nice. Lemon mayo, I thought, would be just the thing. So….

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Two eggs were separated (the whites can go into something else tomorrow) and the yolks put into a jug.

Stir a sparse teaspoon of mustard (very, very sparse if you are using English mustard as that is hot, maybe just a touch… but I was using Dijon which is mild) into the yolk and blend it. Add a pinch of salt and then, if you are feeling energetic, whisk it fiercely. I stuck the balloon whisk on the end of my blender and whizzed away.

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You can see it start to thicken slightly and change colour a bit

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And then you trickle in some oil. Use a flavourless oil, like sunflower, rather than olive oil as that can make it taste just a bit too strong. I have saved the oil from jars of roasted peppers or sunblush tomatoes (you know how there’s always loads left and it seems such a waste to bin it) and used that before as an addition to the sunflower oil. That just gives it an extra taste dimension – useful if you are making it for a specific dish.

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Suddenly it thickens even more and the colour lightens…

I wanted a lemony mayonnaise to go with the fish so I added the juice of a lemon

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Whisk, whisk, whisk! Add more oil and maybe a couple of teaspoons of white wine vinegar. Taste it to see if you have the flaovouring right.

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You’d be surprised how much mayonnaise you can make if you keep adding the oil. In one of my favourite books, ‘ The Curious Cook’ Harold McGee experiments with just how much oil can be emulsified with just one yolk. Make as much as you need.. just keep whisking and adding the oil slowly.

You end up with a wonderfully thick, unctuous, deliciously flavoured mayonnaise. Less than ten minutes (I made it while the fish cooked) and you have something to be proud of. This was lemony and savoury and oh-so-right for that fish.

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In fact, it was so nice that the Bear went and got an extra spoonful and he’s not a mayonnaise lover. Mmmmmmmm…

Fish and crisps

Fish is brain food, or so people say.

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What could be better than a nice piece of fish, in a crispy crumb, baked to perfection?  We got some line caught cod as a treat and I set about making a crunchy covering for it.

I started to think about what to  do for the crispy crumb… breadcrumbs? Passe, my dear, so passe. Also, I have to admit, I didn’t have any bread to make crumbs from. So that ruled that out.

I did have cornmeal (polenta) and I did have a bag of crisps… well, Sunbites. They are wholemeal snacks that are crunchy and tasty. They would do. They would have to.

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I crushed them, inside the bag, so they were roughly crumbed and mixed the bits with a couple of tablespoons of cornmeal and a teaspoon of salt.

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On a plate, I roughly whisked, with a fork, a small egg and some milk.

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I put an oven tray, with a silicon sheet on, into the oven and set the temperature to 180 degrees. The tray needs to be hot when you put the fish on it so the bottom gets cooked as well, without being too soggy.

Drying the cod – or at least, patting it dry with kitchen roll – means that when you dip it in the eggy milk mixture, it gets a good coating…

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Which makes the crumb mixture stick to it. Put the fish onto the crumbs and pat them into the fish. It’s a bit sticky on the fingers but worth it, so don’t complain. I sprayed it with some oil spray so that the heat of the oven would crisp things up

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Doesn’t that look good? And it isn’t even cooked yet. Get it onto that hot oven tray and into the oven.

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15 to 20 minutes and it has crisped up to perfection. The fish flesh is brilliantly white and flakes perfectly.

I made some couscous flavoured with lemon zest and juice and some lemon and garlic mayonnaise to go with it

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What a lovely mouthful……

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There you go…. easy crispy coating made in seconds and twenty minutes in the oven and you have delicious fish… and crisps!

Like it? Then try it… and look, I have a like button!

Butter bean mash

Sometimes I just get fed up with the ordinary things I make to go with a meal. Sometimes I just don’t have time to make the ordinary things… mashed potaoes? All that peeling, boiling, draining and mashing? What if you are late in from work and need something quickly? Or, quite frankly, if you are fed up to the back teeth of mash?

At times like this I make butter bean mash. I always have tins of beans of various sorts in the larder because they are a brilliant standby and you don’t always have the time to soak the beans overnight.

First of all, get a couple of tins of butter beans, open them and rinse the beans till all the gloopy stuff goes

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Then, while they are draining, get some herbs if you have them

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I found some thyme, chives and oregano in the herb boxes on the balcony and, after stripping the leaves from the stems, chopped them roughly

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Then, as I heated some butter in a pan, I squeezed in some lemon juice to sharpen things up a bit

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And if you look closely you will even see a drop of lemon juice perfectly captured as it falls into the pan.

I’d like to say that shot was planned that way, but really it was just sheer luck.

By now the beans were well drained so they were added to the buttery lemon mix and stirred round, with the chopped herbs thrown in to soften in the heat. Once they were good and hot, I gave them a bit of a bashing with a potato masher

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Not too much though because you don’t want a smooth puree, you need something of the butter bean left

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And there you have it… a good, roughly smashed dish of butter beans

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Just right to serve up with whatever you fancied.

On this particular night, what I fancied was some delicious stewed beef and mushroom that I had made a few weeks ago and frozen ready for a night like this….. and served it in a good old Yorkshire Pudding

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It was gorgeous. The butter beans made a lovely change from ordinary mashed potato and were quick and easy. The buttery, lemony, herby tang livened them up brilliantly… and for a side dish that took less than 10 minutes? Perfect.

Well, what else could you ask for on a cold and dark night?

Eggs for breakfast?

When it comes to weekend breakfasts, there’s something very nice about having eggs of one sort or another. I was a bit bored with scrambled eggs and boiled eggs didn’t quite seem to hit the spot and what about fried eggs? Well, you needed bacon to go with fried eggs. What if you didn’t have bacon? What could you do then?

I liked the idea of baked or coddled eggs, where eggs are cooked in a little pot, usually in a bain marie in the oven. Thing about that was, first of all, I didn’t possess an egg coddler and secondly, even if I did, I didn’t want to be standing around in the kitchen waiting for the water to gently simmer round my little pots. I like breakfasts to be good and tasty I know… but I don’t want to spend hours trying to do it.

Normally I use the microwave only rarely – to reheat vegetables say or defrost something  – but I wanted to work something out. Eggs and microwaves can be tricky with the yolk going rubbery and the white staying runny. Not an appetising start to anyone’s day.

You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I tried this. You wouldn’t believe the variable results I have had from this… but now I can finally share with you one of our favourite Sunday breakfasts. A breakfast that can be made in just about ten minutes and then taken back to bed to eat while you read the papers and enjoy the fact that it is Sunday.

And what do you need?

220See that bread? That’s No Knead Bread, that is. Brilliant for using with Eggies because the bread has a great strong texture that holds the eggs well. And that butter? Well, I made that too!

In my many experiments I realised that while eggs can go in the microwave, they need some kind of insulation in the pot to stop the dreaded rock hard yolk scenario which clashes so badly with the gloopily wet white.

So, first of all, slice some bread

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Then scrape some butter over the slices… this sort of waterproofs the bread

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(The butter was straight from the fridge so it was hard, but really these are thin scrapes of butter)

Then, using a small pot with a lid, roughly line the inside with the bread

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The aim is to get a layer of bread round the outside of the pot so the eggs can drop into the middle. If you have any cream, just put a spoonful in the bottom with a pinch of salt

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Then, crack in a couple of lovely eggs….

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See how the eggs are kept in the middle of the pot? Protected by the bread?

You can put another teaspoon of cream on the top and then… well then you scrape the tiniest anount of butter over the rest of the slices of bread, sprinkle with salt  and lightly put the bits of bread on top – no pressing down! You are making a little lid for your bread liner

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Then, lid on and then put one at a time in the microwave.

First of all – ONE minute on medium and then 30- 40 seconds on high. Take out the pot and do the other one…..

They will still cook a little bit in the residual heat.  Lift the little bread lid and look…

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You can see the white is cooked… but what about the yolk?

Well, The Bear, being devoted to tomato sauce insists on his egg being squirted with it and then he shoves his spoon in….

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PERFECT!  Breakfast in less than ten minutes… 

Benefits? You have sort of baked/coddled Eggies; with no messy frying, or boiling, or poaching;  using the timer so you can lean against the bench while your cup of tea brews…. and the Eggies are cooked in the pot you eat them from, saving you washing up later!

It’s not the most elegant of breakfasts but it is fast and tasty and oh so comforting. The kind of breakfast a person might need if they had had a lively night and needed something restorative…….. some of you may know the feeling……

Garlic and Rosemary Focaccia

Well, if you are going to make soup then you need bread to go with it. You could buy stuff, I suppose, but as we are becoming Domestic Goddesses and nothing fazes us… obviously, the way forward is to make the world’s easiest bread.

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All you need is less than an hour,

250 g of strong bread flour

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7g of instant yeast (that’s a sachet or a teaspoon of instant packet yeast – yes, you eagle eyed baking detectives, I am using a different packet from the  last time. Just thought I’d give it a go, that’s all)

Olive oil

Garlic

Rosemary

Salt – you know I love that lovely, crunchy, large crystalled Maldon.

In a large bowl, put the flour, yeast and a teaspoon of salt and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil.  I did it in my food mixer because (am I boring you with this? I only have one working arm you know) I needed to give it a good mixing and there’s only so much I can do…. add in 150 ml of warm water and mix it till it becomes a smooth dough.

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Get it out onto a floured wooden board and knead it till it looks smooth and bouncy. Then, on a clean surface, put down some olive oil, flop the dough onto it and using a rolling pin, roll it out…

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It just needs a rough roll to get it smoothed out.

I use silicon sheets – you can get them anywhere nowadays – I even got some in a Pound Store.  Absolutely brilliant for baking and cooking with. Anyway, put a silicon sheet on a baking tray and put your oiled dough on there.

Chop some garlic and rosemary leaves finely

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… then scatter it over your dough, then sprinkle it with lovely crunchy salt

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You need to let the dough rise in a warmish place for half an hour or so. Cover it in greased cling flim and let it rise.

I have been known to help it by standing the baking tray on top of the soup pan. Apart from anything else it frees up bench space so you can have a quick wipe down…

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Then, when it has risen up and become puffed up and bouncy. turn the oven on to 200 degrees and while that is heating, peel back the cling film, poke the foccacia all over with your fingers and drizzle it with olive oil

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Into the oven with it for fifteen or so minutes until it is golden brown

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Let it cool just a bit and then…. serve it up. Beautiful garlic and rosemary focaccia, perfect for your soup…. in fact, just perfect.