Nigella’s new series, Kitchen, is on at BBC at the moment, and this recipe is from the first episode. First you roast some potatoes in the oven, then you scatter seafood on top, add some wine and put the dish back in the oven for another 15 minutes. This was utterly delicious with homemade aioli and nice crusty bread.
Nigella’s seafood bake with potatoes, serves 2
4-5 large potatoes
1 lemon
1/2 red onion
olive oil
4 squid tubes
some large raw prawns, unpeeled
clams
50 ml white or rosé wine
persley, chopped
Don’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into 1,5 cm thick slices and cut each into four pieces. Put the potatoes in an ovenproof dish. Cut the lemon into pieces the same way as the potatoes and scatter over them. Cut the onions into pieces and scatter around the same dish. Pour over some olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put in a 200 C oven for an hour. Meanwhile, soak the clams to remove grit. Throw away the opened ones. Take out the dish from the oven, cut the squid into rings and put them into the dish, next add the clams and prawns. Pour in the wine and add some more olive oil. Bake in the oven for another 15 minutes. Crank up the temperature to 220C if you like. When it is all done, scatter some parsley on top, maybe squirt some lemon juice and serve with aioli and nice bread.
At least in Sweden this dish was a popular starter in the 70s, and it is something I have picked up from my mother’s repertoire. I love this as a simple dinner for one, but can’t say I serve it as a starter very often. It is a very simple dish, but I love the combination of crispy potato, salty caviar, creamy cream fraiche and a bit of crunch and a punch from the red onions.
Rosti with creme fraiche, caviar and red onions,serves 1 as supper or 2 as a starter
2 large potatoes
knob of butter
olive oil
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
creme fraiche or soured cream
lumpfish caviar (you find this at Waitrose)
Peel the potatoes and grate them. Heat butter and oil in a pan and divide the grated potato into 4-6 rounds in the pan. You need nothing more than the starch from the potatoes to hold it together. Fry them golden and crisp on both sides on medium-high heat and season well with salt and black pepper. Mean while chop the onions and place a dollop of creme fraiche and caviar on each plate and divide the chopped onions between the plates as well. Serve immediately for the potatoes to stay crisp.
I have always made potatoes au gratin like my mother makes it, and that is a very good way. But sometimes it is good to try new things, right? So I tried Pioneer Woman’s version, and that was really good too!
It is less fiddly because than my mothers which require thin slices of potatoes, where as here Pioneer woman suggests chunks and not peeling the potatoes. To be honest, you don’t notice the potato peel at all, so why not skip it all the time?!
Potatoes au gratin, serves 3-4
10 medium-sized potatoes
knob of butter
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
350 ml single cream
150 ml milk
2 tbsp plain flour
salt
black pepper
grated cheddar
Wash the potatoes and leave the skin on. Slice the potatoes into quite thick slices (5 mm), tack them and cut them into four. Take an oven dish and smear the butter all over it, sides as well as the bottom. Place a third of the potatoes in the dish. Mix together cream, garlic, flour, salt and pepper and pour a third of it over the potatoes. Season it a bit extra. Place another layer of potatoes on top (half of what is left) and pour half the cream mixture on top, a bit extra of salt and pepper and the top layer. Bake in 200 C oven for 40 mins or so, with the dish covered in tin foil. When the cream is hot and bubbly and the potatoes are cooked, cover the top with grated cheese and place the dish under the grill for 10 minutes until the cheese is crisp and golden. Serve with any type of meat.
Beef mince is great weekday food. It is cheap, healthy and very versatile. I often make these burgers served with feta creme and potato wedges instead of in a bun.
Burgers with potato wedges, parsnips and feta creme, serves 2 + a lunch box
Burgers:
500 g beef mince
1 egg
3 tbsp milk
ca 100 ml breadcrumbs
1,5 tsp sambal oelek
a splash of lemon juice
1 tsp onion granules or 1/2 onion, finely chopped
salt and white pepper
Potatoes and root vegetables:
5 potatoes
3 parsnips
a few carrots
olive oil
rosmary
salt, white pepper
Feta creme:
1/2 packet proper feta
200 ml creme fraiche
a splash of lemon juice
salt, white pepper
Peel the parnsips and perhaps the carrots (I used chantenays so it wasn’t necessary), cut into wedges. Wash the potatoes and cut into wedges as well, put it all in a roasting dish, drizzle over some olive oil and season. Toss and roast in 200C for about 45 minutes.
Mix all the ingredients for the burgers apart from the mince. Leave it for a few minutes so the breadcrumbs can swell, then mix in the meat. Incorporate thoroughly and shape into burgers. Put them on a plate until needed. When the potatoes have 20 minutes left to cook, fry the burgers in a frying pan in a knob of butter and some oilve oil.
Crumble the feta in a bowl and mush it up with a fork, mix in the creme fraiche, squeeze in some lemon and season with salt and pepper.
I also served some broadbeans with this, sautéed for a few minutes in olive oil with some finely chopped onions, lemon juice and a few chilli flakes.
I have spent two nights in Southampton with my dear friend Gaby, relaxing, gossiping, shopping, eating and talking about food. It has been a few really nice days and she has spoiled me tremendously. On Thursday evening she cooked herb crusted rack of lamb with Potatoes Boulangère. The recipes are Gordon Ramsay’s from the F word, and it was delicious!
Yesterday we had a lovely day in Winchester, looking in shops, having a lovely Croque Monsiuer for lunch, and cakes in the afternoon and in the evening we had cheese, charkuteries and bread followed by Gaby’s apple crumble.
Christopher was out playing cricket yesterday, which meant that he wasn’t hungry when he came home. I’m still amazed that they have tea and sandwiches during the game (that’s just so British!) and because it was the last game for the season they had dinner afterwards as well, so absolutely no hope that he was hungry after the game, so I had to come up with something to eat for myself.
I don’t particular like to cook for one, I just don’t see the point in it. For me, having a meal is a sociable thing – you eat together. Although my family isn’t a big and loud one, the three of us still had all meals together, apart from breakfasts, as I’m tired in the mornings and my parents are not. So when I cook for one I don’t enjoy it as much as when cooking for two or more, so I try to keep it simple and quick. Like these jacket potatoes, with a really simple yet very tasty topping. Try it when you’re home alone, and you won’t be disappointed.
I was hungry and made two potatoes but it was a bit too much. Sometimes the eye is hungrier than the tummy...
Jacket potatoes with easy peasy topping
Grab one or two large potatoes/baking potatoes and cut a cross on the top pf each potato. Bake in 200C for a little more than an hour. Take out the potatoes and press the sides towards the middle so the cut comes open. Put a knob of butter, either persillade or berbecue seasoning, some grated cheddar, creme fraiche, crispy bacon and some more seasoning on top. Enjoy!
How many of you have seen the film Julie and Julia? As soon as I finished watching the film I just had to buy the cookbook at Amazon. I have read it and love it, but most recipes are time consuming and not everyday dinners perhaps. At least not for me when I come home grumpy and need something quick. But yesterday, I had a whole day to cook, and I thought it was a perfect opportunity to start autumn in my kitchen, with a nice stew. Even though I worship the sun, I am actually longing for the autumn. I want it to be a few degrees cooler so I can start wearing autumn clothes, and enjoy the season as the trees drop their leaves. Instead it is 18 degrees and the flat is roasting when I have the oven on for more or less a whole day. Supper, however, was delightful! It was exactly so delicious I had pictured it in my head, and that is usually quite difficult to live up too.
I converted the recipe to metric and centigrade and divided it by three to serve two.
The cookbook!The finished casseroleBoeuf bourguignon with roast potatoes
Julia Child’s Boeuf bourguignon, serves 2
60 g streaky bacon
olive oil
450 g stewing steak, cut into cubes
1 small carrot, sliced
1/2 onion, sliced
salt & black pepper
10 g plain flour
230 ml red wine (Beaujolais, Cotes du Rhone, Burgundy, Chianti)
130 ml beef stock
2 tsp tomato paste
1 clove garlic, pressed
1/4-1/2 tsp thyme
1 bay leaf
6 small onions (such as shallots)
150 g button mushrooms
Cut the bacon into lardons. Simmer rind and bacon for 10 minutes in water. Drain and dry. Preheat oven to 230C.
In the casserole dish, sauté the bacon in oil over moderate heat for 2 to 3 minutes to brown lightly. Remove to a side dish with a slotted spoon. Leave casserole aside. Reheat until fat is almost smoking before you sauté the beef.
Dry the beef; it will not brown if it is damp. Sauté it, a few pieces at the time, in the hot oil and bacon fat until nicely brown on all sides. Add it to the bacon.
In the same fat, brown the sliced carrot and onion. Pour out the sautéing fat. Return the beef and the bacon to the casserole and toss with salt and pepper. Then sprinkle on the flour and toss again to coat the beef lightly with the flour. Place casserole uncovered in the middle position of preheated oven for 4 minutes. Toss the meat and return to oven for 4 minutes more. (This browns the flour and covers the meat with a light crust.) Remove casserole, and turn oven down to 165C.
Stir in the wine, and enough stock so that the meat is barely covered. Add the tomato paste, garlic and herbs. Bring to a simmering point on top of the stove. Then cover the casserole and place in lower part of the preheated oven. Regulate heat so that liquid simmers very slowly for 3 to 4 hours. The meat is done when a fork pierces it easily.
While the beef is cooking, prepare the onions and mushrooms. Leave them aside until needed.
Put butter and oil in a frying pan and wsit for it to get bubbling, then add the onions and sauté over a moderate heat for about 10 minutes, rolling the onions about so that they brown as evenly as possible. Be careful not to break their skins. You cannot to expect to brown them uniformly.
Then pour in 100 ml or so of beef stock and a small bay leaft, some parsley sprigs and a little thyme. Cover and simmer slowly for 40 to 50 minutes until the onions are perfectly tender but retain their shape, and the liquid has evaporated.
Place a frying pan over a high heat with some butter and oil. As soon as you see that the butter foam hasbegun to subside, indicating that it is hot enough, add the mushrooms (washed, well dried, left whole if small, sliced or quartered if large). Toss and shake the pan for 4 to 5 minutes. During this the mushrooms will first absorb the fat. In 2 to 3 minutes the fat will reappear on their surface, and the mushrooms will begin to brown. As soon as they have browned lightly, remove from the heat.
When the meat is tender, pour the contents of the casserole into a sieve placed over a saucepan. Wash out the casserole and return the beef and bacon to it. Distribute the cooked onions and mushrooms over the meat.
Skim fat off the sauce. Simmer sauce for a minute or two, skimming off additional fat as it rises (I didn’t need to do this). The sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon lightly. If too thin, boil it down rapidly. if too thick, mix in a few tablesppons of stock. Taste carefully for seasoning. Pour the sauce over the meat and vegetables.
Cover the casserole and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes, basting the meat and vegetables with the sauce several times. Serve in its casserole, or arrange on a dish surrounded with potatoes, noodles or rice, decorated with parsley.
Tradionally, boiled potatoes are served with boeuf borguignon but we chose to serve it with roast potatoes, and it was perfect. The middle of the potatoes are a bit liked boiled potatoes, but the outsides are nice and crisp.
I have never roasted potatoes this way, but it seems to be the common way of roasting potatoes for a Sunday roast.
Roast potatoes
Peel potatoes and either leave them whole or cut in half, or if exceptionally big potatoes, cut in quarters. You want quite big pieces. Boil the potatoes nearly done, for 15 minutes or so. Place on a hot roasting dish and coat them lightly with either vegetable oil or (even better) goose fat. Roast in 200C for about 40 minutes.
We roasted them for 30 minutes or so on the same temperature as the casserole, 165C and then turned it up to 200C when I was thinning/thickening the sauce and roasted them for another 20 minutes. It works fine to heat up the vegetables in the casserole on this temperature for a few minutes.
Sometimes I’m in the mood for really greasy food. It usually occurs when I’ve had lots of wine to drink the night before… strange isn’t it?! This happened to me on Friday, all I could think about was comfort food with melted cheese. So instead of getting a way too greasy take away I made my own junk food, and it hit the spot. 🙂
Schnitzel burger with potato wedges, 2 portions
2 pork escalopes
100 ml natural breadcrumbs
2 eggs
2 seeded large burger buns
2 slices plastic cheese
Swedish pickled red pepper
6 large Maris Piper potatoes
olive oil
Cajun spice
Start by cutting the potatoes into wedges. I kept the skin on. Then pour some olive oil onto a roasting dish, place the potatoes in it and pour over a little bit more oil, then season with the Cajun spice and flip them around a bit so that all wedges are coated in oil and seasoning. Place in an 175-200 degree oven (depending on the oven) for about 40 minutes, Check on them a few times and flip them around a bit. When they have been in the oven for 30 minutes or so and have started to soften, it is time to start cooking the meat. Beat the eggs in a bowl and dip the pork in the beaten eggs, then coat it in breadcrumbs. Fry in butter in a frying pan until the meat is cooked through and the outside is crisp. Place a slice of plastic cheese on each schnitzel and let it melt. Toast the burger buns and serve with the pickled sliced peppers (I use a Swedish pepper salad, but you can buy pickled peppers here and just slice them). Some ketchup and mayo is perfect to dip the spicy wedges in. Yum!
I still haven’t learned to like jacket potatoes with baked beans or cheese or tuna, which seems to be how potatoes are eaten here in England. Instead I hold on to my Swedish way of eating baked potatoes. With prawns of course. Try it!
As you can see I eat my potato with a tea spoon, that is another Swedish thing I think... 🙂
Baked potatoes with prawns and caviar, 2 portions
1-2 baking potatoes per person
100 grams peeled prawns (Waitrose’s Maine prawns are ideal, make sure it’s icelandic type prawns and not tiger prawns)
100 ml creme fraiche
3 tbsp mayonnaise
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1/2 lemon, juice from
2 tsp caviar
salt
ground white pepper
Start off with baking the potatoes for 1-1,5 hours on 200 degrees. Before putting them in the oven slice a cross on the top of each potato, it makes it easier to ‘open’ later. While the potatoes are baking, make the prawn filling. Roughly chop the prawns and mix with the other ingredients, pour in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper, store in fridge until the potatoes are ready. When they are, take them out and push them open with oven gloves. Basically press both sides of the potato towards the middle and the cross you made earlier will come open, and you can spoon in the filling there. Garnish with lemon slices or some more caviar if you like. Enjoy!
This is a Swedish classic, ‘invented’ in the 40s when there were plenty of potatoes but little of everything else.
Hasselback potatoes (Hasselbackspotatis)
White potatoes, as many as you need (2-3 per person)
olive oil
salt
white pepper
Peel the potatoes, then cut in half lengthwise. On every potato, make cuts 2 mm apart, nearly all the way through. It is a bit fiddly and you need to be gentle on the knife, but it is all worth it. Pour some olive oil on a baking tray, place the potatoes on it, drizzle over a bit more olive oil, season with salt and white pepper. Bake in 175-200 centigrade over for about 45 minutes, until crisp and golden. Best served with meat. We had steak, bearnaise sauce and asparagus. Yum!
Nigella’s new series, Kitchen, is on at BBC at the moment, and this recipe is from the first episode. First you roast some potatoes in the oven, then you scatter seafood on top, add some wine and put the dish back in the oven for another 15 minutes. This was utterly delicious with homemade aioli and nice crusty bread.
Scandelights 
