Fish Pie With Swede And Potato Topping
I regularly do Jamie Oliver’s fish pie and thought it was about time I found another. Especially, as I wanted one that was more in tune with my 0.6L Le Creuset dishes.
I found this one on the BBC’s Good Food website, which was ideal to make two pies.
For the two pies, I used the following.
- 500 g potatoes, cut into chunks
- 400 g swede, cut into chunks
- 200 g tub low-fat soft cheese with garlic and herbs
- 150ml vegetable stock
- 4 tsp cornflour, blended with 2 tbsp cold water
- 500g skinless, boneless cod, cut into large chunks
- 100g cooked peeled prawns
- 1 tsp chopped fresh parsley
This is the method.
- Cook the potatoes and swede in boiling water until tender (about 20 minutes).
- Preheat the oven to 190°C. While the potatoes and swede cook, put the soft cheese and stock into a large saucepan and heat gently, stirring with a wooden spoon, until blended and smooth. Now add the blended cornflour and cook until thick.
- Stir the fish into the sauce with the prawns and parsley. Season with some pepper.
- Tip the mixture into the dish or dishes. Drain the potatoes and swede, mash them well and season with black pepper. Spoon the mash over the fish to cover it completely. Bake for 25-30 minutes until piping hot, then transfer to a hot grill for a few minutes to brown the top.
- Serve with frozen peas or sweetcorn.
I served it with frozen peas and a Celia.
Fish Pie With Peas And A Celia
The second pie went in the freezer.
Haddock On A Bed Of Asparagus
It seems that the shops have a surfeit of asparagus. As I had some haddock, I looked for a suitable recipe and found this one here on SparkPeople. It took me about half-an-hour to cook it.
For two people you need the following.
2 fillets of haddock
1 pack of asparagus
2 cups of frozen peas.
1 large onion (finely chopped)
2 tomatoes (chopped into quarters)
Salt, freshly-ground black pepper.
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp vegetable stock powder.
As it was 2 small fillets, just for me, I used a pack of English asparagus tips. None of your air-freighted stuff for me!
I started by heating the oil in a saucepan and then adding the onion.
Cooking The Onion
I cooked it, until the onion was reasonably cooked. I then added the tomatoes, seasoned it all with black pepper and let it cook on a gentle heat for a minute or so.
Adding The Tomatoes
I then added a cup of water, the vegetable stock powder and the frozen peas (from frozen).
I left the peas to cook for five minutes before adding the haddock fillets to the sauce.
Cooking The Haddock In The Sauce
After another five minutes the haddock was cooked.
As the haddock c0oked, a cooked the asparagus in the way that Heston Blumenthal used in this recipe.
Cooking The Asparagus
I just fried them in a little olive oil with some seasoning.
It was then just a matter of arranging the asparagus on a plate, putting the haddock on top and then adding the sauce and some of the peas.
Haddock On A Bed Of Asparagus
I also added some potatoes.
I think others might modify this to their taste, perhaps by adding lemon juice. But I liked it the way it came.
Grilled Pork With Asparagus And Shiitake Mushrooms
This recipe was taken from Saturday’s Times and I cooked it for lunch for myself today.
The paper says that for four people you need the following.
4 French trimmed pork cutlets
Knob of unsalted butter
2 crushed cloves of garlic
20 shiitake mushrooms, stalks removed
20 spears of asparagus, cleaned and trimmed
Seasoning
1 hard cheese, I used a French sheep’s one.
Lemon juice and olive oil
I did half quantity and just used pork steaks, as my Waitrose isn’t a posh one, that does French-trimmed pork cutlets. Here’s the pork, mushrooms and asparagus, ready to cook.
Pork, Mushrooms and Asparagus
The asparagus was of course English. I just snapped the ends off.
I cooked the pork in my chargrill pan for a few minutes each side.
Cooking The Pork
After they were cooked I put them in the top oven to keep warm.
I then melted a good knob of butter in my frying pan and when it was very hot, put the garlic and the mushrooms in and cooked them for nearly a minute. I then added the asparagus and gave it another minute.
Cooking The Mushrooms And Asparagus
I then arranged it over the meat, with a few potatoes and scrapings of the cheese and some lemon juice.
Ready to Eat
I did find the two steaks I cooked rather a lot for me, so one will be tomorrow’s lunch. but it was a pleasant change to have the mushrooms and asparagus with pork.
Baked Eggs And Sardines
This recipe came out of Saturday’s Times and explains the tins of sardines and bread earlier. When I saw the recipe, I thought I hadn’t had sardines for years, so this recipe seemed a good one to rectify that omission.
Baked Eggs And Sardines
All I did was put a crushed clove of garlic, a complete tin of sardines in tomato sauce and two eggs into a buttered ovenproof dish, which then went in the oven at 180°C, until the eggs looked cooked.
I did buy some parsley to chop on the top, but I forgot to do it.
I shall be cooking it again! Especially as sardines are suposedly nutritious and considered by some to be an aphrodisiac. The dish is also so easy to cook. The most difficult thing was opening the tin of sardines!
Even the washing up was fairly minimal!
Four Gluten-Free Casseroles
The Times today, in the comic has four casserole recipes. All are gluten-free.
One doesn’t even need an oven.
I shall be trying one or more.
C and I always referred to the Colour Magazine in a newspaper as the comic. We once looked over a house in Primrose Hill, where the walls were decorated with pages from the Sunday Times Magazine. It was just after the strike and the owner of the house had acquired these magazines, which were not needed because the paper wasn’t published.
Poached Smoked Haddock With Poached Eggs
After my experience at the Hope Street Hotel in Liverpool, I thought I’d try to do this myself. I asked an honourable friend how to poach the fish and she suggested using the microwave. I then found this method on Yahoo.
If you don’t want to spend ages with the other recipes just put it in a shallow dish with a little milk and water (equal amounts) and a knob of butter on top then whack it into the microwave for three/mins full power.
Here’s what it looked like before it went in the microwave.
Smoked Haddock Before Cooking
And here it is after the cooking.
Smoked Haddock After Cooking
To poach the eggs, I used these mini-poachers from John Lewis.
Mini-Poachers From John Lewis
Here they are sitting in the pan.
Two Eggs Poaching
They can either sit or hang on the side. The eggs didn’t turn out of the poachers too well.
Poached Smoked Haddock and Poached Eggs
But they tasted alright and I suspect I’ll get them better next time.
By the way it looks like John Lewis is out of the mini egg poachers. Perhaps a lot of mothers are going to get them for Christmas. After all they only cost four pounds each.
Baked Eggs With Tomatoes
I’ve done this recipe for years, but in the move the book with it in has got lost.
- Well butter four ramekin dishes.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C
- Take a large tin of chopped tomatoes and put in a saucepan with a a finely chopped medium-sized onion. Mix well and heat.
- When it is hot, simmer and add two tablespoons of flour mixed with enough butter to make a nice paste.
- Simmer for five minutes or so, adding a teaspoon of sugar and salt and pepper until you get the taste right.
- Spoon the mixture into the ramekin dishes, making a nest in the top of the mixture.
- Add an egg to the nest and cover with grated cheese.
- Bake in the oven until the cheese is cooked.
With practice they can be got to rise like mini-soufflés.
In some ways the great thing about this recipe, is that apart from the eggs nothing has a sell-by date. Usually I have everything required in my fridge and/or store cupboard.
A New Take On An Old Favourite
I cook fish with beans and peas quite regularly, using Lindsey Bareham’s recipe. Tonight I gave it a new twist to make it easier. I first assembled and prepared all the ingredients.
Ingredients
Note that instead of using a lemon, which I often forget, I’m using Carluccio’s olive oil with lemon. A small pack of beans are trimmed and halved, the fish is laid flat in a dish and enough peas to fill a mug are taken from the freezer.
The fish is then sprayed with a couple of tablespoons of the olive oil and then put in an oven at 200 °C for 10-12 minutes. The beans are put in boiling water for a couple of minutes and then the peas are added. It’s probably better to taste them to get them right, but I’ve done this so many times, I just use my eyes. In fact, when I need green vegetables I cook a few this way.
You then serve the fish on a bed of the vegetables.
Fish With Beans and Peas
It tasted very good with Carluccio’s oil.
The great thing about this recipe, is that all you need to buy is the fish and the beans, if like me you keep the peas in the freezer.
I should say that I’ve served it for a lady a couple of times and they’ve been impressed. One even did the washing up!
But even the washing up is minimal with this dish.
Lamb Leg Steaks With Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce
This is another recipe off the side of a packet of meat from Waitrose.
You will need.
- A packet of four lamb leg streaks. The ones I used were new season Welsh ones.
- 200 ml. of lamb or chicken stock
- 2 tsp sun dried tomato paste
- 2 tbsp of creme fraiche
- 25g of fat soft cheese
- lemon juice.
- fresh basil.
And this is how you do it.
- Grill the steaks, which should take about 15 minutes. Keep them warm.
- Put the stock in a pan and bring to the boil with the tomato paste.
- Add the creme fraiche and the cheese, a squeeze of lemon juice and season well.
- Simmer for one minute, add a few shredded basic leaves and pour over the lamb
It says serve with rosti potatoes and sugar snap peas.
The Anonymous Widower 