Category: Fish & seafood

Perfect supper for a cleaning day

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Even though I love cooking, I don’t particular like other domestic chores. Laundry is ok, but ironing is a bit boring. And I hate doing the washing up, and am forever grateful that we have a dishwasher. Worst of all is the cleaning though. It is so tedious, and although I like the satisfaction when it is done, it doesn’t way up the fact that it is such a boring task. Apparently my grandmother disliked cleaning as well, but my mother seems to enjoy it more than I do. Maybe the cleaning gene skipped one generation, I don’t know.

But when I do have to clean (far too often for my liking) I want a reward at the end. A quick supper that takes care of itself but still is fulfilling. And the jacket potato is my perfect friend here. But I want a classier topping than cheese and baked beans (which I don’t even like) but still something quick. And this is it. After you have taken the spuds out of the oven to let them cool for a few minutes, you quickly make this topping.

 

Crayfish mess for jacket potatoes, serves 2

180 g crayfish tails in brine

200 ml creme fraiche

4 tbsp mayonnaise

a plash of lemon juice

1/2 finely chopped red onion

1 tbsp lumpfish caviar (Waitrose stock it)

chopped fresh dill

Mix all the ingredients. Press both sides of the potato so it ‘opens’, pour filling onto the spud. Tuck in.

Rainbow trout with parsley potatoes, baked beetroots and hollandaise

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I like buying fresh fish, and a reasonably priced fish here in the UK is the rainbow trout. I buy most my groceries from Ocado, and trough them you can buy fresh fish prepared on the day by their fishmonger. Perfect! I love the trout fillets with the skin on, I think they taste great but they are also easier to cook. I just panfried the fillets and served them with ovenbaked beetroots, summery potatoes with parsley and a deep yellow hollandaise. I have started to buy freerange eggs from a friend of a friend’s farm, and they have a deep yellow yolk. Best eggs ever!

Rainbow trout with parsley potatoes, baked beetroots and hollandaise sauce, serves 2

2 rainbow trout fillets with the skin on

persillade

5-6 potatoes (Maris piper)

a knob of butter

2 tbsp chopped parsley

2 fresh beetroots

olive oil

Sauce:

2 egg yolks

100 g salted butter

1 lime

1 tsp vinegar

salt, white pepper

Peel the beetroots and cut into wedges. Place in an ovenproof dish, add olive oil, salt and pepper. Bake for 1hr in 200C or until soft. Peel the potatoes and cut into 2-3 mm thick slices. Rince, put in a pan and cover with water. Add salt. Bring to the boil. Drain. Place in an oven tray, add dollops of butter (approx 2 tbsp) and chopped parsley. Bake until soft and golden, 200C, about 30 mins.  

Melt the butter and leave to cool a little. Mix vinegar, lime juice and egg yolks in a sauce pan.

Fry the trout fillets skinside down in oil/butter until the meat around the sides seems cooked. Turn over and fry on the other side for a few minutes. Place skinside down again. Sprinkle persillade on top and squirt some lime juice. Turn off the heat.

Skala rödbetorna och skär i klyftor. Lägg i en form, häll på olivolja, salt och peppar. Baka 1h 200 grader. Skala potatisen och skär i 2-3 mm tjocka skivor. Skölj, lägg i en kastrull, täck precis med vatten, salta. Koka upp. Häll av vattnet. Fördela i en form. Klicka över smör (ca 2 msk) och strö över persilja. Baka tills mjuka och gyllene, 200 grader ca 30 minuter.

Smält smöret och låt svalna lite. Blanda vinäger, limesaft och äggulor i en kastrull.

Stek forellfiléerna med skinnsidan neråt i olja/smör tills kanterna ser genomstekta ut, vänd och stek andra sidan. Vänd igen, pressa över lite limejuice och strö å lite persillade och vitpeppar. Turn off the heat.

Put the sauce pan in a double boiler or on a very small flame. Whisk while adding the butter little by little until it is all incorporated. Be careful not to get the sauce too hot, and don’t stop beating as the sauce might split. Season with salt and pepper. 

Prawn cocktail on salad leaves

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Among the little bits we ate on Friday was these cuties; prawn cocktail on salad leaves with crushed rosé peppercorns on top. The recipe is courtesy of Nigella, but I can’t remember which cookbook/series it is from. It is a very easy recipe to remember, and only takes minutes to make, but I like the little individual portions and that all you need is a napkin to eat it.

Please note that this dish requires rosé peppercorns, which is not the same as pink peppercorns. They can be hard to find, but it gives the dish that extra oomph, so it is worth searching for.

Prawn cocktail on salad leaves 

1 1/2 little gem lettuce

100 g large Icelandic peeled prawns

150 ml mayonnaise

2 tbsp ketchup

a splash or two of tabasco

lemon juice

salt

white pepper

crushed rosé peppercorns (not the same as pink peppercorns)

Mix mayo, lemon juice, tabasco and ketchup. Season with salt and white pepper. Add the prawns. Rinse the lettuce and place the leaves on a platter. Place 2-3 prawns and some sauce on each leaf. Crush the rosé peppercorns with a pestle and mortar and sprinkle on top. Serve immediately.

Fish burgers, sort of

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I try sometimes, not to spend a fortune on food every week, but it is so diffucult not to when I find lots of interesting recipes everywhere. I bought fresh Alaskan Pollock the other day, because it is quite a cheap fish but still tasty, but I didn’t really know what to do with it. At first I thought of fish soup, but I wasn’t in the mood, so in the end I settled for burgers, sort of.

I didn’t mince the fish and made burgers that way. Instead I just cut each fillet in three, turned them in flour and fried them in butter. I served it with burger buns, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, lemon, storebought hollandaise, a homemade cold dill sauce and potato wedges. It was actually very tasty, surprisingly good, especially with the dill sauce, so we will make this more often.

Cold dill sauce, serves 2

100 ml creme fraiche

100 ml mayonnaise

1 tsp dijon

2 tbsp chopped fresh dill

salt & white pepper

Salmon tartar with cream cheese top

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I hope you all had a nice Valentine’s day! We did. My cupcakes and chocolate biscuits disappreared quickly at work, which is a good sign and when I got home Christopher and I exchanged cards. The same card! Out of all the thousands of different Valentine’s day cards we had managed to pick out the exact same one. In different shops. So we had a good laugh about it. It is rather funny, and hopefully a sign that we are supposed to be together. We clearly know each other well… 🙂

A bit later Jess and Chris arrived, and brought lots of goodies; champagne, red wine and Jess had got us all a heartshaped chocolate box each. So sweet!

I served a salmon tartar as the starter. I found the recipe in one of my mother’s many cookbooks but do not remember which one. Great recipe though! And I was quite pleased I managed to plate it nicely as well. 🙂

For the main course we had pork fillet en croûte with parsnip purée and asparagus, and for dessert creme brûlée and blueberries with lime sugar. I will post those two recipes later, but you will get the salmon tartar recipe now. Do try this, it was delicious and so fresh and perfect for spring. You start off by curing the salmon, so this is proper gravad lax – very Swedish. But then you mix in some tarragon, lemon juice and dijon. Lovely!

Before curing
Homemade gravad lax

Laxtartar med cream cheese-täcke, 4 portioner

Step 1:

300 g salmon fillet

1 tbsp sea salt

1/2 tbsp caster sugar

1 tbsp chopped fresh dill

Step 2:

1/2 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon

1/2 tsp dijon

juicefrom 1/2 lemon

salt, white pepper

Step 3:

200 g Philadelphia

1 tbsp cut/chopped chives

1 tsp paprika

Start with step 1 48 hours before servning. Cut the skin off the salmon. Mix salt, sugar and dill and pat into the fish. Put in a shallow dish and cover with clingfilm. Refrigerate for 48 hours.

Step 2: Dice the salmon. Mix tarragon, dijon and lemon juice in a bowl and add the salmon. Season with salt and pepper.

Step 3: Mix all the ingredients in a bowl.

Place a round metal ring (6 cm in diameter and 4 cm high) on a plate and put 1/4 of the salmon in it. Press down to flatten with a spoon. Put a layer of creme cheese on top and smoothe it out. Carefully remove the ring. Repeat with the remaining three plates. I placed rocket around the tartar and decorated each with a lemon slice and some dill. Serve with nice bread.

Our Friday evening…

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… looked like this:

Paradise prawns with a twist. I used a tbsp of dry sherry instead of the wine, and added som pressed garlic and a tbsp chilli sauce. This version was really nice too! It feels right to cook this dish in a copper pan, because that’s what mummy used to do. 🙂

The simplest salad with spinach, little gem, thinly sliced red onions, balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt. Some nice seeds would have worked well, but I can’t eat them. We finished off dinner with some cheese. My current favourite is Ossau-Iraty (to the left), a ewe’s milk cheese from the Basque region in France. In the middle you see truffle honey, which is divine together with cheese. Love it! On the right is a creamy Brie that I like to eat with pears. And Carr’s water biscuits is a must with cheese.

I received some cookbooks today that I’d ordered from Amazon. The Moomin cookbook is really cute with drawings and anecdotes but the recipes were a bit boring. The Hummingbird Bakery book is lovely and I really want to get into cupcakes a bit more. But the best was Plenty. OMG, I want to cook all the fabulous recipes in that book. Amazing!

On our way to the country now… Take care!

Scallops in saffron sauce

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Scallops are one of my favourite things from the sea. I love both the taste and the soft texture. And every time I eat them I feel like I’m treating myself to something a bit luxurious…

The inspiration for the sauce I found in one of my mum’s old cookbooks when I visiting home last. As usual I didn’t follow the recipe much, but went my own way, but I would never have come up with pairing scallops with a saffron sauce if I hasn’t seen the recipe, so all credit to this book, but I have no idea which book it was… The dish turned out really well, and I think serving the scallops with a yummy sauce is so much nicer than serving it with a little herb salad or something. This just feels fresh, a bit extra and it really works!

The most important thing is the produce though. Rather buy a few nice scallops instead of buying the small tasteless ones, and make sure you avoid the frozen ones, they taste nothing but water. Two large scallops per person is enough as a starter and is not very expensive. I’d rather go for quality than quantity any day… 🙂

We got these placemats in the Harrod's sale. Love them!

Scallops in saffron sauce, serves 2

4 large scallops

100 ml dry white wine

100 ml fish stock

100 ml cream

1 large pinch of saffron threads

1/2 pressed garlic clove

1 chopped shallot

Cut the hard muscle off each scallop. Pour wine, stock, cream and saffron into a sauce pan. Bring to the boil and let it simmer and thicken for a few minutes. Season to taste with saffron, garlic, salt and white pepper. Fry the scallops on medium heat in butter (and maub a little bit of olive oil). Season with salt and pepper. Put two scallops each in two bowls. Pour the sauce around the scallops. Sprinkle with chopped shallots.

Spaghetti with lemony garlicky tiger prawns

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Several years ago the TV-programme Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was quite popular. It was not one of my favourite programmes, but sometimes I ended up watching it anyway. Already then I enjoyed the food clips the best, and this recipe is actually partly from there. The prawns were called lemony garlicky shrimps and were made in a similar way to these, but I think grated parmesan was included as well, and they were cooked in the oven and used as a snack. I have made these several times as a canapé or starter, but thought that pairing them with pasta would be nice. And it was! 

The prawns are marinated in lemon juice, olive oil and garlic and taste a lot and absolutely delicious. The breadcrumbs give the dish a bit of crunch, and makes it a bit more interesting, where as the sauce is there mainly to complement the dish and enhance the prawns instead of stealing their glory.

Spaghetti with lemony garlicky prawns, serves 2

200g raw peeled tiger prawns

1 lemon, the juice

3 garlic cloves, pressed

2 tbsp olive oil

100 ml breadcrumbs

250 g spaghetti

100 ml single cream

100 ml passata

1 tbsp Heinz chilli sauce

1 tsp persillade

white pepper, salt

olive oil

Mix lemon juice, oil and garlic in a bowl. Add the prawns and leave to mariante for about 10 mins. (If longer, cover and store in fridge.) Cook the pasta according to the instructions. Turn the prawns in the breadcrumbs and fry on medium heat until crispy and golden. Mix cream, passata, chilli sauce in a sauce pan and bring to the boil. Season with persillade, salt and pepper after taste. Save some of the pasta water, drain the pasta and mix with the sauce, oilve oil and if needed some of the pasta water. Plate the spaghetti and sprinkle over some persillade and place the prawns on top. Enjoy with a salad and a crisp white wine. 

Steamed mussles in white wine, cream and saffron

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We had some dear friends over for supper on Saturday. The first course was a pre-starter with Jerusalem artichoke soup. I only added a pinch of dried thyme to the recipe and served it in small glass cups with a teaspoon and sprinkled some finely chopped shallots on top. Simple and lovely, in my opinion. 🙂

On Saturday morning Christopher went to the fishmongers and came home with some really big and juicy mussels. We de-bearded them, which was the only hard task in cooking this dish, you need some finger strength here. 🙂 The rest was simple reall; chop carrots, leek and onions, sauté in olive oil, add cream, wine, saffron and the mussels. Put the lid on and after a few minutes they are ready to serve.

I read this article recently about why you shouldn’t discard mussles that are closed after cooking, and I was looking forward to try a closed one and see if it was true. Of course they all opened! 🙂

Steamed mussles with white wine, cream and saffron, serves 6 as a starter

1,5 kg mussels, rinsed and de-bearded

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

2 baby leeks, chopped

1 red onion, finely chopped

olive oil

400-500 ml single cream

300-400 ml dry white wine

2 pinches saffron

salt

white pepper

chopped parsley

Use a large pan. Heat up some olive oil on medium heat and sauté the vegetables for a few minutes. Add wine, cream, saffron, salt, white peppar and the mussels. Add the mussels. Put on the lid and wait for the liquids to boil.  The mussels don’t need to be covered with liquid, the steam will open them up, that is why it is so important to keep the lid on. When they’re done, taste the liquid and add saffron, salt or pepper if needed. Serve in bowls with plenty of the liquid and with some bread and butter. Sprinkle over some chopped parsley before serving.   

Oven baked trout

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I really do like everything from the ocean (apart from poached cod – bad hildhood experience) but I still tend to eat quite a lot of meat. Don’t get me wrong, I love meat, but fish is so much better for you.

 

Fish is healthy, tasty and makes you full in a nicer lighter way then when you eat meat, so I will really try to incorporate more fish into my diet.

If you want to keep it simple but still eat something really nice, I suggest fish in tin foil cooked in the oven. It is a piece of cake to make and has the benefit that your whole house doesn’t smell of fish. 🙂

Ovenbaked trout with lemon and persillade, serves 2

2 trouts, heads and tails removed

butter

4 lemon slice

persillade

salt

white pepper

oliv oil

Rinse the fish. Put two pieces of tin foil on a large baking tray. Pour some olive oil onto each piece and put the fish on top. Place a few dollops of butter and 2 lemon slices in the opening of each trout. Also add salt, pepper and persillade. Shape the tin foil into two parcels and put the tray in the oven, 180-200C for about 20 minutes. Serve with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables.