Cape Hake with Jersey Royals and a Parsley and Bacon Sauce

I haven't done any cooking with Regal's great fish products since December, so it clearly was overdue. Last nights dinner was Cape Hake with a Parsley and Bacon Sauce. According the the kids the fish was perfect and the sauce was "mega".

I simply steamed the fish in a parcel of aluminium foil in the oven with a little olive oil, lemon juice, four bay leaves and a couple of parsley storks at 180C for 20 minutes. Whenever I steam fish like this I salt it to firm up the flesh. It only takes a few minutes and really makes a difference. You sprinkle salt evenly on both sides of the fish and let it stand for about 10 minutes and then rinse the salt off.

for the sauce I chopped two slices of bacon and fried them off in a sauce pan with a little olive oil. I then took the bacon out, making sure the olive oil and bacon fat mix stayed in the pan. That is then the perfect base for a white sauce. So I added flour to make a rue and the I added half a pint of milk and half a liter of vegetable stock. At this point I added the finely chopped storks of the parsley and half a finely chopped onion and returned the bacon. Once this had come through the boil I let it simmer for 10 minutes. I did this quite early in the, so I just took it off the flame and covered it with cling film. If the film is directly on the sauce it prevents it from forming a skin. Letting it stand for a few hours allows the flavors to mature. Just before the fish was ready I re-heated the sauce and at the last minute I added the roughly chopped parsley leaves.

Seeing as the Jersey Royal season has just started they just had to be used. So I served with Jersey Royals and steamed asparagus.

Ketchup Leather the Experiment

Following on form my last post:

http://marcsfoodadventures.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/ketchup-leather.html

I have now done the experiment and I think it really works! Have a look at:

https://youtu.be/IMQIMXUPPdo

Lovely stuff - let me know what you think

Ketchup Leather

I just found this on the web page of the German broadcaster ARD:

http://www1.wdr.de/verbraucher/ernaehrung/ketchupleder-100.html

Sounds absolutely brilliant - basically you spread ketchup (normal commercial version or self made) about 2mm thin on a silicon sheet and dry it out in the oven for 3-4 hours.

The result can be used in in burgers and slightly melts with the heat of the burger releasing its intensified flavor.

The idea is from Ernesto Uchimura of the Plan Check Restaurant in LA. He developed the Ketchup Leather to stop burger buns from getting soggy.

I've got to try this! I am sure the kids won't mind testing ;-)

EDIT: Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMQIMXUPPdo

Wow - this is different

Well, as you might remember, in February I had a go at doing my own Sauerkraut. The other day we did some red slaw and had some red cabbage left over, so I thought it might be worth a try to treat that in the same way.
Obviously for Easter it's a great idea to have lamb and so we did. Here in the UK is is customary to have pickled red cabbage with Sheppard's Pie. So I thought that 'Red Sauerkraut' would work as well and it certainly did! We loved it!!!

Home made Macaroons

The company I work for is headquartered in Paris, France. As such I go there quite frequently and the family love it when I bring back Fauchion Macaroons.
You might have worked out from this blog, that we do love our food. The eating and the making. My wife kept on saying "I wonder how you make these". We live near Windsor and when we had a trip to the Windsor Daniel's department store, I found a cheap copy of Stephane Glacier's DVD "macaroons".

Ever since it has been a family joke to ask Rhona (my wife) - "when will you do macaroons???".

So when our 9 year old son was pushed for finding a Mother's day gift, he searched on Amazon and found Mad about Macarons! by Jill Colonna (obviously macroons and macarons are supposed the same thing -  let me know which spelling you prefer).

Now Rhona really got the bug and after reading the book a few times, she gave it a go. Apparently the quick reference section at the back of the book giving you the measurements for different quantities numbers of macro(o)ns was incredibly helpful.

In her own word, Rhona's piping skills need improving. So the sizes of the macaro(o)ns in her first attempts were varied. Practice no doubt will help on that, but we all agreed that (particularly for a first attempt) the result was a triumph from a flavor and a texture point of view.

I just can't wait for the next few tries...

Confused Sushi Dinner

The family have been complaining that I hadn't made sushi for ages, so I was press ganged into changing that. While writing this my wife is asserting that no press ganging was required - anyway... we had sushi for dinner last night.

We had Inari Sushi (seasoned pouches of fried tofu pouches filled with sushi rice), Igiri Sushi with prawn, konbu cured hake and tuna, and Maki Sushi with spiced tuna tartar and salmon roe.
With the sushi we had  Ebi no Suimono (dash based soup with prawn and spinach), Tosa Sauce and and a scallop.

The scallop was Peruvian and looked stunning. I found them yesterday at Waitrose and could resist adding them. Rick Stein got a lovely recipe for scallop with a hazelnut and coriander butter (you can find that on Foodie Couple Blog). I adjusted it to be a soy sauce and chili paste butter.

So why did I call this "Confused Sushi"? Well, the spiced tuna tartar and the spiced butter for the scallop, both used Gochujang, the Korean Chili paste, which is hardly authentic Japanese. However we loved it.

Mother's Day Dinner Inspired by Heston

We had a lovely Mother's Day - at least in my opinion. However, Mrs M seems to agree.

Dinner was actually based on two separate ideas. A few years ago my wife got a book on light eating and one of the ideas was Venison Steak with a black pepper and Juniper Berries crust.

The other inspiration was based on Heston Blumenthal's roasted artichokes dish.We had a a lovely dinner. However, when we explained that venison an deer are the same thing, it would have helped if we wouldn't have seen Bambi's relative  on our walk through Swinley's Forrest

It wasn't really a problem though and dinner was a real success.

                                                                                                                                                                    We had venison steak in a crushed black pepper and juniper berry crust with steamed broccoli, sauteed mushrooms and artichokes, based on a recipe from Heston Blumenthal's "Fat Duck Cook Book".