South Indian prawn curry

I do like cooking with prawns because they take so little time to cook. Today I made a South Indian curry sauce for the prawns, a ridiculously simple recipe but incredibly fragrant and absolutely delicious. It might look ingredient-heavy, but believe me when I say that there are no complicated steps. So on to the recipe.

Ingredients:

250gms fresh water prawns, cleaned and shells removed
1 small onion, minced
1/4 cup tomato passata or tomato sauce
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp lime juice
1 tsp mustard seeds
Salt to taste
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp chopped coriander leaves for garnish

Fry in 1/2 tsp oil for 30-45 seconds until fragrant and slightly darker in colour :
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1-2 mild dried red chillies, or use 1 tsp paprika

Grind together to a smooth paste, using a little water:
1/4 cup fresh or frozen grated coconut
1 small tomato, quartered
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic
1cm piece fresh ginger
the toasted spices

Method:

1. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a saucepan and add the mustard seeds and let them pop (about a minute on high heat). Then stir in the minced onion and fry for a minute or two until it softens.

2. Turn down the heat to medium, add the ground spice-coconut paste and fry it for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Stir in the milk and passata and let it cook for 5 minutes, without letting it burn. You can add a couple of tablespoons water along with salt to taste at this point, if the paste looks very thick.

4. Add the prawns and stir to coat with the sauce. They should take 5-7 minutes to cook through (they will turn pink). Stir in the lime juice and taste the sauce to make sure the flavours are balanced. Sprinkle with the fresh coriander and serve hot with steamed rice or Indian flatbreads.

Verdict: Pete thought the sauce was incredibly delicious with the prawns.

Oven-baked “KFC” mini chicken fillets

I happened on a food blog called RecipeTinEats while looking for a recipe for southern-fried chicken that was not actually fried, as Pete had bought a pack of chicken breast mini fillets. This blog had great photos – and does anyone else feel that practically every food blog one sees nowadays has fantastic photographs? The food itself doesn’t look doable by lazy/incompetent me, but my oh my, the photos! But that’s by the by – as I was saying, the photos were sensational and when I read the write-up and the recipe, I was thrilled that it really did seem easy.

The recipe below is pretty much what Nagi of RecipeTinEats posted on her blog. I used a 50:50 mixture of Greek yogurt and milk in place of the buttermilk (because I didn’t have any buttermilk handy), and added some cumin powder and coriander powder to the spice mix… because why not. While the spices probably don’t add up to the number that KFC boast of in their “secret” mix of spices and herbs, they are more than adequate for the chicken.

I guess I should say that the chicken didn’t get as crisp in the oven as Nagi mentioned, but perhaps that was my fault. I was just concerned that the chicken strips might become dry and tasteless if I left them too long in the oven in the hope that they would crisp up. So I removed them when they were a golden brown and a knife inserted in the thickest part showed that the chicken was cooked.

I didn’t tell Pete that the chicken was meant to be KFC-style. I just served it up with home-made coleslaw. And guess what? When I asked him if the chicken was good, he said – and this is gospel truth – that it was the best chicken he’d tasted short of being an actual KFC takeaway! Sweet! And he made the KFC connection all on his own. So thank you, Nagi of RecipeTinEats, for the inspiration.

Recipe for: Oven-baked KFC chicken

Smoked haddock fishcakes

I made this because there were some leftover vegetables from Sunday lunch and I was loath to throw them away – four pieces of roast potatoes, 1 small roast carrot and 1 piece of parsnip. And since there was some smoked haddock in the freezer, fishcakes seemed the easiest thing to make. It looks like there’s a lot in the ingredient list, but really the spicing is minimal (given what I’m used to, anyway). Pete and his mum both said the flavours were clean, the spicing didn’t mask the flavour of the fish or the potatoes. Which I guess is the point.

I used semolina for a crunchy exterior, but if you want to use Japanese panko breadcrumbs or maybe even cornmeal, feel free.

I served the fishcakes with sweet chilli sauce as a dip and a green salad on the side.

Tuna pate

I love recipes like this, where there are no steps as such to follow, no fiddly procedures. Just collect the ingredients and throw them together and that’s it.

I used to find tuna really smelly, but I seem to have got used to it over time. The tuna I used for this recipe was line-caught tuna packed in olive oil, and it was actually quite mild, considering. I tried a little bit of this pate myself, and I have to say it was not smelly at all. That said, there’s the possibility that I couldn’t smell anything because my sense of smell has been affected by a rather horrible cold that I’ve had the last three days. I do think, however, that this pate is pretty mild-tasting and creamy. Rather nice.

Tuna pate

Recipe for: Tuna pate

Moussaka (Greek aubergine and potato bake)

Moussaka is one of Pete’s most favourite dishes. When we went to Crete last year, practically every time we went out for dinner, whether at an upscale restaurant or a village cafe, he would order moussaka. (And I would just as obsessively order dolmades, not just because I love them but also because they were vegetarian and there were not enough vegetarian options barring salads or pizza. But vegetarian problems are not relevant to this blog, really.)

The moussakas (and dolmades too, come to think of it) weren’t always what he had hoped for, but when he came across one that hit the spot, his delight was boundless. And, of course, that particular cafe was the one we went back to thereafter, because as he kept saying “I know it’s good here, so why go anywhere else where it might not be as good?” He never did answer my question which was “What if it’s BETTER?”. Or rather, he said “What if it’s NOT?” Well, fair enough, because the dolmades at that cafe were pretty good, so I didn’t mind not going anywhere else. 

Anyway, moussaka’s been on my “must try one day” list – just to make, not to eat, because I am a rabid anti-auberginarian and I don’t care who knows it! It’s a good thing that discrimination against aubergines is not a crime because I’d be jailed before you could say “aubergine”. or “eggplant”. Or “brinjal”. Or “kathirikkai”. Or “baingan”. Or in any of the other languages in which aubergines exist.

So, as I was saying, this weekend I decided would be my time to make moussaka. I thought it would be a painfully protracted process (ha, try saying that three times when you’re drunk!), but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected – mainly, I suppose, because I scaled down the original recipe to make two generous (or three medium) portions. That meant that the aubergines and potatoes didn’t take too long to fry. However, I guess if you have a book in hand for this part of the cooking process, you won’t really notice the time it takes. 

Recipe for: Moussaka (Greek aubergine and potato bake)

Fish pie

Four steps. That’s all it takes. (Apart from the sub-steps for each of the four steps..;. but that’s all, honest. And at the end of those few steps and sub-steps, you get this gently spiced pie with a crisp cheesy mashed potato topping. You can use whatever fish you like in this, I guess. I bought a fish pie mix from the supermarket, so there were two-inch pieces of salmon, cod and smoked haddock.

If you’ve read the recipe and you’re wondering why I didn’t add salt to the mashed potato or to the white sauce, it’s because I found out the hard way that salt water fish are salty in themselves, unlike fresh water fish. I’ve come close to making a fish dish inedible because I added salt… so I’m now a little less ignorant and passing on my wisdom (!) to you.

I don’t have anything else to say on this topic, so shall we move on to the recipe? Yep… I thought you’d want that.

Recipe for: Fish Pie

Smoked haddock and fennel pie

I’m always on the lookout for fish dishes for Pete that seem easy to make, and The Guardian and The Telegraph are my favourite places to scout for them. I adore Wednesdays and Thursdays in The Guardian (because of Angela Hartnett on Wednesdays and Felicity Cloake on Thursdays), and Stevie Parle in The Telegraph (although I’m not as certain about when the recipes appear in the newspaper). I read all the recipes, doable and otherwise, and print off a good few of them. However, my record with making them isn’t as good as my record with printing them, and definitely nowhere near as good as my record at reading them. I suppose I consider myself up on the deal if I manage to make one recipe for every dozen printed off. This was one of those that made it from newspaper to printout to plate.

Prawn stir fry in chow mein sauce

I think prawns may have just moved to the top of my list of non-veg things that I like to cook – they cook, quite literally, in minutes. It makes for the quickest stir fry ever, and they’re pretty easy to cook. I used uncooked frozen prawns, but I guess you could use fresh prawns (buy ready prepped from the supermarket or, if you’re lucky enough to have a fish market, from a fish market) just as well. The difference between raw prawns and cooked prawns is their colour – in their raw state they’re a rather horrible grey, but when they’re cooked, they turn a lovely light pinkish orange. Really, they look much better cooked, and I understand they taste good too.

You could, of course, buy pre-cooked prawns and just warm them in whatever sauce you’re using, but that is taking the lazy way out. Yes, the lazy way out, not the easy way out – because cooking the prawns is really almost as easy as opening a packet of cooked prawns.

I wish I could stop saying prawns.Prawns. Praaaaaaaaaaawns. Uh oh.  If only prawns were potatoes, I could refer to them as spuds, or tatties, or taters, or even murphies. But prawns aren’t potatoes. There isn’t a better word, or an alternative name (in English), for prawns, so I’ll just have to continue calling them prawns. 

Anyway, the first thing to do with the frozen prawns is to defrost them. The instructions on the packet will probably say to defrost the prawns in the fridge overnight or over 8 hours. But there is a much simpler, much quicker way. Just put the prawns in a bowl and pour warm water over – NOT hot water. After 10 minutes, there will be a lot more water in the bowl. Drain it off and if the prawns aren’t soft and defrosted, add some more warm water and leave for another 5-10 minutes. Once it’s defrosted, drain away the soaking water and reserve the prawns. After which, follow the recipe below.

Sausage and bell pepper rice

This recipe came about because there were four Morrisons best sausages that had been sitting in the fridge for a few days. Every evening I would ask Pete if he wanted the sausages for his supper, and every evening, without fail, he would end up eating something else. I was getting daymares (as opposed to nightmares) about Pete getting food poisoning because I cooked and served him sausages that had expired. He kept assuring me that they were okay, but I’m extremely suspicious of any non-vegetarian items. They just seem too prone to making people ill – undercooked chicken, stale fish, meat past its eat-by date… all of these can give one severe food poisoning. And I’m extra wary of them because they look innocent enough even if they’re teeming with deadly bacteria – they smell and look the same to me. On the other hand, undercooked vegetables won’t make you severely ill – they just won’t taste good…

But no, I’m here to get over my fear of non-vegetarian cooking, so I’ll continue with the saga of the sausages. I looked up some jambalaya recipes on the internet, but they mostly required shrimp and chicken and something called Andouille sausages (which I know nothing about), so I didn’t bother with them. Then I came across a recipe by Gordon Ramsay, and that turned out to be JUST the ticket – I had almost everything on the ingredient list, bar a 1/2 cup of white wine. What you don’t have, you gotta do without – so I did.

Squeezing the sausagemeat out of the skin was possibly one of the most unpleasant feelings ever – at least it was to me. It just didn’t feel right… however, I persevered and crumbled it into small pieces. I say “crumbled”, but what I really mean is “pinched off bits”. If you can get over that, this is a very simple one-pot dish. Smells pretty good, and apparently the smell didn’t lie.

Whole steamed sea bass, Chinese style

I have a cookbook that deals entirely and only with fish, which I bought on Ebay after a fraught bidding war. I really, really, REALLY wanted that book! The book is simply titled “Fish”, and the author is Sophie Grigson. What I really like about this cookbook is that there is a very informative foreword on the various types of fish that are (or could be) available, and the recipes all have suggestions for substitutions in case you don’t have the particular type of fish required. That to me is invaluable, because I’m not at all knowledgeable about which fish are alike in texture/taste, etc.

This recipe is from her book, and is absurdly simple if you have a steamer. That was handy because I wanted to try the electric steamer (which my husband had bought for using in the campervan, not at home – too bad), because I’d never used one before. It’s got two compartments, and I steamed the whole sea bass in the top compartment, following the suggestion given on the steamer for cooking time, which was about 25 minutes. Easy enough to set the timer for 25 minutes and forget about it thereafter, to be reminded again when it pinged “done”.

The fish tasted fine, but again, it was really quite bony. Ok, it’s not as if I was going to eat the fish… but still, I still prefer my food to be easily accessible and eaten without discomfort – which means not having to pick out the bones carefully from every mouthful before eating. I know I’ve said this before, but seriously, eating such fiddly things seems like such a pain in the wrong place! Much simpler to get fillets which have been de-boned.

Anyway, this is a very healthy way to cook fish, and I was quite pleased with how well it worked out. I served it with Chinese-style fried rice. Simple flavours, maximum taste. I don’t suppose it can get better than that.