And I’m not even on a diet…

Being a bit of a hippy, this weekend I made steamed fish and brown rice.

Right, this is more appetising than you might think.  I had a heavy weekend last weekend at my lovely nephew’s Christening in Ireland, and came back begging never to drink again and craving steamed fish and vegetables.

Of course these things never really come to fruition, but it did make me think I don’t eat enough fish, which is odd, as I’ve always really liked it. My Mum loves fish, and I was brought up eating it.

As I try and buy all my meat from the butcher, I really ought to buy my fish from a fishmonger too, but unfortunately there isn't one nearby. So instead, I’m aiming to try and at least buy more sustainable fish. (see Hugh’s fish fight: http://www.fishfight.net/ ) I bought pollock, to try and replace the usual haddock/cod.

Right, off my soapbox and back on with the cooking…

The first thing I did was boil the kettle and get the brown rice on, as it takes ages compared to white rice.* I also put the oven on to preheat. (180 degrees)

I put the fillets on a bit of tin foil with sliced ginger and sliced red chilli.  I then added the juice of half a lime, a tablespoon of soy sauce, and a tablespoon of Thai fish sauce. (I love Asian flavours, but don't always use them in the most authentic way and tend just to make it up)

I wrapped it up into a big pasty-type effort, leaving enough room for steam to be created, but sealing it at the edges.

I then thinly sliced some carrot and peppers, chopped up some broccoli and garlic, and took some green beans out of the freezer. When the rice had been on for about fifteen minutes, I put the fish parcel in the oven, and stir fried the veggies in some hot oil.

The vegetables only took about five – ten minutes, and I then dressed them in some soy sauce and sesame oil.

 Then we were more or less done! The fish takes about ten minutes. When I served it I left some of the slices of chilli on, as I like a bit of heat, but didn’t bother serving up the ginger.  I figure its done its job, and otherwise is like chewing on a bit of wood. 

Pour the lovely juices from the foil parcel over the top of the fish and rice.

* Note on brown rice: I don’t eat this entirely to be a hippie. I like the taste. I find white rice very heavy and stodgy. To me it’s like the difference between white and brown bread, and I generally prefer brown bread, as it’s got some real flavour. But if you don’t like it you can always use white rice.

This weekend I am also making: Roast chicken, with the works. I may be having a lean healthy meal tonight but tomorrow is pure gluttony. It’s going to be the basis of many more meals, as the chickens from my butcher are massive.  There’s another blog entry to be had with “Five meals out of a chicken” But not this week.

Whilst making this I was mostly listening to: 6music

This weeks soup: Leek and Potato.  I have to admit that after many years, I still don’t make this as well as my mum.

Right. I’m off to the pub.

It's not really cassoulet is it?

A few weeks ago we had my parents over for dinner, and I made sausage cassoulet from a Jamie Oliver recipe.  Because we were having guests, I even followed the recipe! So rather than describing that, here’s the link:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork-recipes/quick-time-sausage-cassoulet

My favourite bit of the dish, was the bean-y stew-y goodness underneath; utterly brilliant and the leftovers were great as a pasta sauce. 

So I’ve decided to recreate the dish, except that I don’t have any sausages. So I’m not making sausage cassoulet at all, but chicken legs, with tasty bean stew.

As it’s so completely inauthentic, I will deviate completely from the recipe above. I also don’t have any dried porcini mushrooms left (which is an error, they’re pretty amazing).

So, I fried some smoked bacon lardons whilst I finely chopped two carrots, celery, garlic, ordinary mushrooms and two onions, and added them to the mix with a pinch of salt. After they’d cooked I added whatever was left in the bottle of red wine from the weekend, a bay leaf, and the leaves from a couple of sprigs of thyme and rosemary.

I let that simmer down for a bit, before adding a tin of borlotti beans and a tin of tomatoes. Whilst that’s cooking for about ten minutes, I chopped a couple of slices of bread and tossed them in olive oil with salt and pepper and some more roughly chopped thyme and rosemary. I didn’t have any nice bread – I used the end bits off our normal loaf.

-  Beany mixture bubbling away... (Ignore the marks on the pan. They're from a previous haggis mishap.)

I put the bean mixture in the roasting dish, set a couple of chicken legs on top, season with salt and pepper and add the croutons around and about them. I put this in a preheated oven at 200 degrees celsius (I don’t know how to do the little degrees sign on this…) for about forty five minutes, and, ta da:

 (I really ought to use my camera rather than my phone for these pictures, but that's a little more labour intensive)

We had it with greens, as we’ve eaten extremely well over the course of this weekend courtesy of other people making tagines and roasts for us, so I didn’t think it warranted extra potatoes. It's an insane amount of food for two people, so the rest is going in the freezer so wecan have bean stew another day.

Whilst making this I was mostly listening to: The Beta Band.

This weeks soup: Carrot and Coriander. It was about 40p for a kilo of carrots from Lidl, so it’d be foolish not to.

My excitement about Masterchef escalated this weekend after reading this article by the very talented and extremely funny Grace Dent: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/feb/12/grace-dent-tvod-masterchef

Why I love food and cook the way I do...

I love to eat. I love to cook. I spend a lot of my time thinking about, and talking about, food. I'm not sure if this is a bit tragic, but it seems to be one of my few hobbies.

It was suggested by more than one colleague that I should perhaps do something with this and start a food blog. I think it's possible that they were just trying to shut me up. But here's a bit of an explanation for why I'm so food obsessed:

- I was brought up in a 'like it or lump it' household, meaning you basically ate what was put in front of you. (I understand this sentiment completely) As such, the only food I dislike is brussel sprouts. And if you like them, you're wrong.

- I spent too many years as a student, and even more just being generally skint, and so my hopes for eating healthy, tasty food were based largely around home made soup. It's damn cheap. I'm working now, but still have a love for a really tasty comforting bowl of home made soup.

- I don't always eat meat, for similar reasons to the point above.  It's expensive, and I don't like the idea of cheap meat. Where possible I try and make sure I buy meat at my local butcher, but often, particularly during the week or after a heavy weekend, I eat like a vegetarian.

- I hate to waste food, because it's a spectacular waste of money. Call me a tight fisted Scot all you like, but I see absolutely no reason to throw stuff away when it can probably be used in something.  Like soup.

- I have a time consuming job that I love, but that has resulted in me splitting my life between two Yorkshire cities, Leeds and Hull. I have a boyfriend who I live with who dislikes cooking, and is incredibly long suffering in my meal-based demands. I have been known to email him instructions for how to make our dinner. I'm not proud of this.  On my part, I try and 'batch cook' a lot. My days off are often largely spent in the kitchen.

This blog will probably contain my own recipes/re-hashed versions of other people's recipes as well as reviews of any meals out I have. It will probably have nonsense about cookery programmes. After all, a new series of Masterchef is about to start, and I can't possibly miss that.