Inspired by Masterchef: Thai Fish Cakes

For my honeymoon 3 and a half years ago we went to Thailand, to Bangkok and Koh Samui.  I loved it – the atmosphere, the scenery, the weather, and the food of course.  So, last week on Masterchef I was delighted when the contestants were flown to Thailand to cook in a market and then for a royal banquet.   Some of the best food we ate was also in a market, so I was especially interested in the street food.   Like with lot of Thai food, the paste is the base of the dish and so the contestants spent a long time pounding away with pestle and mortars.   I was a little lazier.   I used my pestle and mortar to crush the galangal, as it’s quite tough but then put it in the blender with all the other ingredients to make the paste.    I then just added the fish to the blender once the paste was made.   So, really easy fish cakes, much easier than making them in a Thai market.   Nevertheless, I’m fairly confident that I’ve managed to make quite good ones.    I didn’t use any flour, which leads to a denser, heavier fishcake so they stayed really light and juicy, but held together well and were bursting with flavour.  Definitely one to make again.

I just served these with a little squeeze of lime juice but they would normally be served with sweet chilli sauce.  However, I’m not keen on sweet and savoury together so didn’t bother to make any.   But, after this week’s show focusing on pastry, I will now be making something sweet and next week is the last week so there’ll only be two more Inspired by Masterchef posts to go.   For now anyway.

Ingredients – Makes 6 fish cakes

4 largish red chillies, most of the seeds removed

2 tsp lemongrass paste or a fresh lemongrass stalk

4 shallots

2 cloves of garlic

Small knob of galangal

Handful of coriander leaves

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cumin

3 kaffir lime leaves

1 tsp fish sauce

200g white fish

1 lime (to serve)

How to make Thai Fish Cakes

1. In a pestle and mortar, crush the galangal then put in a food processor.   If using fresh lemongrass, also pound first in the pestle and mortar.  Add all the other ingredients to the food processor except the fish.   Blend to a paste.  Taste and made any adjustments if necessary.

2. Roughly chop the fish and add it to the food processor.

3. Take the mixture out of the food processor, using a tablespoon.   Place spoonfuls on a plate and flatten slightly.    Put in the fridge for half an hour.

4. Heat some oil in a frying pan and then fry the fish cakes for about 3-4 minutes on each side.    Serve with lime wedges or sweet chilli sauce.

 

Inspired by Masterchef: Fennel Salad with Sea Bass

I really couldn’t decide what to make at first for my Inspired by Masterchef post after last week’s show.   I considered making a pearl barley risotto with fish, but I’ve already made a potato risotto with fish this series.   Also, the contestant who made it rather spoiled it by adding whiskey, so it’s probably not the ideal recipe they’d prefer to be remembered for.   Another option was beef with braised red cabbage, carrot puree, walnuts and rosemary.   I have to admit that this option came very close to winning out, but in the end, I opted for the fish with fennel salad, which has probably turned out quite differently to the recipe on the show.   It certainly looks very different.  On Masterchef dainty pieces of red mullet were arranged among fennel and tomatoes.   There certainly wasn’t a big pile of salad as on my plate.  There were also scallops with the dish on Masterchef, but as I’m allergic to them, they stayed well away from my plate.   So, as you can see, not really a winner for presentation, but it tasted delicious and made a relatively easy but very healthy midweek meal.

Ingredients – serves 2

1/2 bulb of fennel

2 tomatoes

4cm piece of cucumber

Juice of 1 lemon

1/2 tsp mind

1/2 tsp parsley

Salt

Black pepper

Extra virgin olive oil

2 sea bass fillets or other white fish

How to Make Fennel Salad with Sea Bass

1. Sliced the fennel very thinly.    Cut the cucumber in half and also slice thinly lengthways. Slice the tomatoes too and put all the vegetables in a bowl.   Add the dried herbs, salt and pepper.   Finally add lemon juice and olive oil.   Mix well and leave for an hour before serving.

2. Panfry the fish and serve alongside the salad with extra lemon wedges.

 

Inspired by Masterchef: Salmon en Croute

This week my Inspired by Masterchef  challenge involved not only making salmon en croute for the first time, but making my own puff pastry for the first time too.   And I have to say, I am seriously impressed with myself.  The pastry actually had little layers in it – just like in real puff pastry!   I’d always heard that puff pastry was too much effort and that there was almost no point making it, it would be nowhere near as good as shop-bought, and you’d have wasted lots of time over it.  Well, it turns out I was wrong, conned, deceived because it is possible to do it yourself.   It might take a couple of hours but the smug self-satisfied, I did it feeling is definitely worth the effort.   Not that I’m saying you should never buy a block of ready-made puff pastry again, just that for special occasions and to feel that sense of achievement, it is something you should try at least once.    Now, I hope that has convinced you.

I did of course consider just using ready-made puff pastry, but the rest of this recipe is so simple that it would have felt like a cheat to do that.   To be honest, I don’t know if my salmon en croute is similar to the Masterchef one at all.   They were cooking canteen style for lots of people and served it with a fennel and orange salad (I think), but if I hadn’t watched Masterchef, I certainly wouldn’t have made this.  I adapted the recipe for the puff pastry from a Gordon Ramsey recipe.   I was shocked at the equal quantities of butter and flour so I did cut the butter down a little and it still made a very rich buttery pastry so the amount could be reduced even further still if you wanted to.  In fact, that is possibly the only problem with making certain things yourself.   When they are unhealthy, you know just how unhealthy!

Ingredients – Serves 2

For the Puff Pastry

120g strong white flour

100g butter

1/2 tsp salt

Approx 50ml cold water

For Filling

2 salmon fillets

2 tbsp cream cheese

Handful watercress

Black pepper

How to make Salmon en Croute

1. Make the puff pastry.  Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl.  Cut the butter into small pieces and add to the bowl.   Rub the butter into the flour but not as much as with normal pastry.   Leave relatively large lumps of butter.

2. Add the water a little at a time and mix with a knife so it binds together and forms a dough.    You probably won’t need all the water. cover the dough in cling film and put in the fridge for 20 minutes.

3. Flour the work surface, your hands and the rolling pin.  Give the dough a quick knead and then roll it out.   Roll in one direction only so you get a long thin piece of pastry in which you can see streaks of butter.  Fold the top half down by one third and then fold the bottom half up.

4. Turn the dough around by 90 degrees then roll out again and repeat the process twice more.

5. Put the folded up dough back in the fridge for about half an hour.

6. Roll out the dough.  This time I did roll it in both directions as it would have been the wrong shape if I hadn’t.

7. If necessary remove the skin and any bones from the salmon. Season.   Place the salmon on the pastry.

8. Using a fork, mash the chives into the cream cheese.   Season with black pepper.   Then, spread the top of the salmon with the cheese mixture.    Fold the pastry around the salmon and seal the edges of the parcel well.   Use a fork to fold slightly and press the edges together.  Cut away any excess pastry.  Make slits on top of the pastry so excess steam can escape.

9.  Bake the parcels in the oven at about 200c for 35 minutes.

10. Serve the salmon with salad or vegetables.

 

Inspired by Masterchef: Chorizo Potato Risotto with Sea Bass

My favourite food programme is back on: Masterchef!   Last year when watching it I started a series of posts called Inspired by Masterchef and so this year I’m hoping to do the same.   Each week, after watching Masterchef, I will try to make something inspired by the show, to post by the end of the following week.   As each year gets harder and the processes and ingredients used get more complex for just an ordinary cook at home, I know that this is going to be a real challenge for me, especially as I have only just over a week to get the right ingredients and make each recipe.  Some of the recipes used on the show do get posted on the BBC food website, but that would be just too easy, I want to be a bit more creative.   Therefore, some of the recipes I post will attempt to recreate the recipe exactly, but based on my memory, whereas others will be a looser interpretation.

Well now, on to my first recipe.  I’d heard of potato risottos before and loved the idea of making a risotto with finely diced potato rather than rice.  So of course, when one of the contestants decided to make a potato, chive, chorizo and orange risotto with sea bream, I liked the sound of it.   Well, except for the orange juice, and neither did John and Greg.  Of course, for my recipe, out went the orange juice, and in came some lemon juice as a replacement, which I’m sure would have been much more popular among the Masterchef judges, if only the contestant hadn’t tried to be so ‘interesting’.

It’s important to use waxy rather than floury potatoes for this, as floury ones will disintegrate in the stock as they are in such small pieces.  I know when you look at my picture, the pieces of potato don’t look that small, but they did look small to me when I was chopping them up!    Maybe next time I will attempt a bit more refinement and dice the potato more finely.   That’s the only change I’ll make.   The chorizo and pimenton give the dish a lovely slightly smoky flavour and the taste really soaks into the pieces of potato.   The lemon juice is very subtle and keeps the whole dish light.    So overall, I’m very pleased with my first dish of the series and looking forward to my next one.  In fact, I’m so pleased I’m planning to cook this for quests, not just me and my husband!

If anyone else is as big a Masterchef fan as me and would like to join me in this challenge, let me know and I’ll provide a link to your recipe as well.

Ingredients – serves 2

2 sea bass fillets

5 small waxy potatoes (depending on size, enough for 2 people)

15g chives

1 clove garlic, crushed

100g fresh chorizo sausage, diced

A little chicken stock (approx 200ml)

1/2 tsp pimenton (sweet smoked paprika)

Black pepper

Juice of 1 lemon

How to make Chorizo Potato Risotto with Sea Bass

1. Dice the potatoes into small rectangles.   Heat a little oil in a saucepan.   Add the chorizo.   Cook for about three minutes, stirring occasionally.  Then add the garlic and cook for another minute.

2. Add the potatoes to the saucepan.   Stir to cover in all the oil from the chorizo.   Sprinkle with the pimenton.

3. Add the stock, so the potatoes are just covered, but not swimming in the liquid.   Bring to the boil then lower to a simmer.    Cover the pan.

4. Check the pan every so often and stir.    If it does start to get too dry, before it is fully cooked, add a tiny dash of water from the kettle.   It will take about 20 minutes for the potato to be fully cooked, soak up the flavours and become a little soft.  During this stage, cook the sea bass.    I like to fry in a little oil so the skin goes crispy, but you could grill or steam it.

5. Just before serving, stir through the chives, season with black pepper and add the lemon juice.

6. Serve the sea bass on top of the risotto.

 

Baked Sea Bass with Lemon and Olives

I know this is not very Christmassy.   What a thing to post on Christmas Eve!    Well, the truth is,  I don’t really do Christmas cooking(except truffles).    I spend all my Christmas visiting family and enjoying what everyone else has cooked.   I love looking at Christmas food, but to be honest, I know I’m not actually going to go out, get the ingredients and make it.    I eat everyone’s mince pies, biscuits, chocolates and puddings, and when I am at home to cook, I feel like I need to eat something a little healthier, something I’m not going to be given at the next meal out.   In fact, this year, I haven’t even bothered watching any  of the usual Christmas celebrity cook/chef cooking shows and I’m looking forward to January when everyone starts blogging about something a little different.   Sorry, please don’t misunderstand that, I’ve loved reading about everyone’s Christmas baking, but, as I know I’m not going to be making those things myself, I’m just getting ready to read about something else.

Anyway, this will be my last post until New Year’s Eve so Happy Christmas everyone.   Hope you all have a fantastic time and enjoy all the lovely Christmas food.  And if you do fancy something a little lighter instead, well…

Ingredients – serves 2

2 sea bass fillets or other fish of your choice

Handful of olives

1 tbsp capers

1 lemon

Salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

How to make Baked Sea Bass with Lemon and Olives

1. Take a large piece of tin foil.  Season the fish and lay skin side down in the middle of the foil.

2. Slice half of the lemon into thin slices.   Lay the slices on top of the fish.

3. If the capers and  olives are in vinegar then rinse them and sprinkle onto the fish.  Drizzle with a little olive oil and lemon juice.

4. Bring the foil up at the sides to make a parcel and scrunch the sides together to seal.

5. Bake the parcel in the oven at about 180C for 15 minutes.

Serve with homemade (don’t feel you have to) chips and salad.

 

Salmon Pasta Bake

Sometimes you want to try and recreate a favourite childhood dish – but with a few twists – and this is exactly what I did here.   The dish in question is my mum’s macaroni fish pie, a dish made with a mixture of fish, pasta and mushrooms, baked in the oven in a cheesy sauce.   Even today I like it when she makes it for me, which unfortunately is not very often as I usually have my husband with me, who doesn’t share my love of cheesy fish pies.   He would say he has more sophisticated tastes.   I would say I have an appreciation of a wider range of foods.   In my mum’s dish, the mushrooms are a more recent addition.   An addition I’m happy with.  When I’m not there, she likes to use smoked haddock too,  but I find it a little strong and so prefer white fish, salmon or a mixture.  This time, I chose to add layer of spinach to the bottom of the dish as the vegetable component, but in retrospect,  I think I prefer mushrooms and would miss out the spinach layer next time, or maybe just have a spinach salad on the side.

So, given the choice, would I choose mine or my mum’s pie?   For now, my mum’s.   But with a few mushrooms instead of spinach, I’d be spoilt for choice.

I used Dreamfields’ rotini pasta which was once again successful.  I am also submitting this to Presto Pasta Nights, this week hosted by HoneyB of The Life & Loves of Grumpy’s Honeybunch.

Ingredients – Serves 1-2 (depending how hungry you are)

1 small piece of salmon

50g pasta

1 tbsp plain flour

250ml milk

2 tbsp Oil

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 tbsp wilted spinach

2 handfuls grated cheese approx (I forgot to measure it, but taste the sauce and add more to get the right level of cheesiness)

Salt

Black Pepper

How to Make Salmon Pasta Bake

1. Cook the pasta for about 5 minutes then drain.

2. Heat the oil in a small saucepan.   Add the flour and keep stirring for at least 2 minutes, being careful that it doesn’t burn.

3. Start adding the milk. Add a little at a time and keep stirring so it makes a smooth sauce.   If you add too much at once it will go lumpy.

4. Add the nutmeg, season and stir in the grated cheese.  Then stir in the pasta.

5. Spread the wilted spinach on the bottom of the dish.   Cut the fish into cubes.   Put on top of the spinach.   Top with the pasta and sauce.

6. Bake in the oven at about 190C for about 25 minutes.   The dish should be piping hot and bubbling when it is ready.

7. Serve with lots of salad.

 

Garlic Sea Bass

This dish was inspired by our Croatian holiday but as I had run out of olive oil and used butter instead, it is slightly more French.  Well, that’s what I say, a French person may not agree.  But, going back to this dish, Dubrovnik is by the sea so fish is really popular everywhere especially, it seemed, sea bass.   It was usually served very simply with boiled potatoes and greens and a garlic and olive oil dressing.   As far as I know, it isn’t usually served with broccoli, it was generally chard.  The fish was grilled/barbecued, usually whole and had a lovely crispy skin.   As you can see from the picture, my fish is not whole, I didn’t grill it, I fried it, but it does have a crispy skin.    Next time I’ll make sure I have some olive oil in the kitchen before I start and will use that instead of butter.    After all, although the butter was nice, and the garlic delicious, I am more of an olive oil girl at heart.

Ingredients – serves 2

2 sea bass fillets

5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

Olive oil

Small knob butter

Garlic salt

1 Lemon

New Potatoes

Broccoli or other green vegetables

How to make Garlic Sea Bass

1. Put the potatoes on to boil.   Five minutes before they are ready, add the broccoli.

2. Wash the sea bass.  Scrape off any scales if necessary.   Dry and season with garlic salt.

3. Heat a little oil in a frying pan.   Add the sea bass.   Turn after 2-3 minutes.

4.When ready take the sea bass out of the pan.   To the pan, add the butter, a little extra oil if necessary and the chopped garlic.

5. When the garlic begins to brown, spoon some of the butter and garlic over the fish.

6. Drain the potatoes and brocoli and add to the frying pan with the rest of the garlic and butter.    Shake to coat the potatoes and broccoli in the sauce and serve with the fish.

7. Serve with lemon wedges and black pepper.

 

Fish with Spinach, Olives and Tomatoes

Why is it with fish that whenever I have a particular dish in mind when shopping, the shops never have the fish I want?  I really wanted a flat fish for this – lemon sole would have been my first choice, but I’d have settled for Plaice, which is what Jamie Oliver used in  Happy Days with the Naked Chef, which is where this recipe is adapted from.  As there was no flat fish, I chose some small fillets of pouting as they were the flattest fish I could see and they didn’t have many bones in them.  I just hate removing bones, trying to grasp them between your nails and pulling only to be left with raw fish beneath your nails and the bone still in the fish.  Yes, I know I could use tweezers – but that would mean going on a hunt around the flat to find them.

The filling in the middle is a variation of tapenade so you could use a jar of tapenade instead of making it, but it can easily be made while the sauce is simmering.   I loved the ways the olives flavoured the sauce but my lovely husband found it a bit fishy.  Unfortunately, that is a problem he seems to have with fish.  Why can’t you get sea bass? He asked.   Ok, next time.  Or, as soon as I can find it…

I am submitting this to IHCC. The theme this week is Something Fishy.

Ingredients – Serves 2

4 small fish or 2 larger ones – flat fish is best but small thin white fish also work, ideally skinless and boneless

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 small onion, chopped

1 large clove of garlic, chopped

1 cup stock (or wine)

75g stoned black olives

2 anchovies

1 tsp dried basil – but use fresh if you have it

2 handfuls of spinach

Salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

How to make Fish with Spinach, Olives and Tomatoes

1. Heat a little olive oil in a saucepan.   When hot add the onion and garlic.  When it softens add the stock, basil and chopped tomatoes. Turn the heat down so it simmers gently.

2. Prepare the olive paste.   Put the olives and anchovies in a food processor with a little olive oil.   Blend till smooth.

3. Remove the skin from the fish if it has it and any bones. Spread the fillets with  the olive paste. Roll up and secure with cocktail sticks.

4. Gently place the fish into the sauce.  Put the lid on the pan and leave to simmer for about 15 minutes.

5. Carefully remove the fish from the pan.   Add the spinach and stir till it wilts then spoon the rest of the sauce over the fish.

6. Serve with fresh bread.

 

Roasted Sea Bream with Roasted Onions

A couple of weeks ago I heard about the 365 challenge in which the Murdoch Books team are cooking their way through all the recipes in Stephane Reynaud’s 365 Good Reasons to Sit Down to Eat which includes a recipe for every day of the year.   If you want to see what they have created so far and follow the challenge then go to their 365 Challenge blog at Murdoch Books.  This post can also be found there.

For my first recipe I chose red mullet with roasted onions.  I didn’t think this would be a problem.  I’d just seen red mullet on the supermarket fish counter and I assumed it was in season and I’d find it again easily.   How wrong I was.    When I was sent the recipe and went back to the supermarket there was no red mullet.    I asked the fishmonger if there was any fish that would be similar but he told me nothing was similar and he didn’t know when he would next have red mullet.   Not very encouraged, I went away and decided to try elsewhere another day.  I found a fresh fish shop on the internet and decided to do a detour there on my way home from work.   Unfortunately I’d picked the day it was closed.    Hoping for third time lucky, I went to another supermarket that I knew had a fish counter.    Deciding I would have to give up on red mullet I opted for sea bream instead.   I’m not sure if it has any similarities to mullet, but it was a very nice fish all the same with nice bright eyes and no fishy smell.

So, finally I could begin to cook.   As I hadn’t seen the recipe before deciding to make it, I hadn’t known that it required barbecuing.    Not having a barbecue, I deciding roasting the fish would have to do as a substitute.   After all, the onions needed roasting so I would be using the oven anyway.

I also decided to make small roast potatoes, roasted tomatoes and roasted fennel to go with the fish and onions to make a full meal.

Overall I was happy with this, it was a good meal, but it was essentially just roasted fish and roasted vegetables.   It definitely needed the potatoes and extra vegetables to make a full meal.

Ingredients – vary quantities according to number of people

Whole fish

Onions

Bay leaves

Thyme

Butter

Salt

Pepper

Assorted vegetables for roasting

How to make Roasted Sea Bream with Roasted Onions

1. Wash the onions well as you keep the skins on them.  Slice down in a cross shape but not cutting all the way through.  Push a little butter inside and sprinkle with dried thyme then wrap them in aluminium foil.

2. Season the fish with salt and pepper, and rub with olive oil.   Oil the roasting tin.   Put a couple of bay leaves under the fish, a couple inside and a couple on the top.

3. Put the onions and fish in an oven pre-heated to about 200c for about 20 minutes.

I also roasted potatoes, fennel and tomatoes with the fish.   The potatoes should be parboiled, salted and need to go in the oven about 15 minutes earlier than the fish.

 

Inspired by Masterchef: Monkfish Tail Wrapped in Pancetta

This week on Masterchef it was the food critic week.  I always love this round as the critics don’t know the contestants so I feel their opinions are based wholly on the food whereas I sometimes feel John and Greg may have another agenda and can be influenced by what they already know about the contestants.

Anyway, at the end of the show I was left with at least three things that I would like to make.   Rice paper rolls, paneer and spinach stack, and of course, monkfish wrapped in pancetta.    According to the critics the paneer stack was the star meal of the day and maybe I should have tried to make it but I felt I didn’t have quite enough information in order to make my dish into a star dish.  So, that dish was out.  What about the rice paper rolls?   Well, I am definitely planning to make them.  But not this week, soon.

So, back to the monkfish.  On Masterchef it was filled with garlic, thyme and rosemary.   As I had basil and chives left over from the previous day, I decided to use this as my filling along with the garlic.   It was really quite a simple dish.   It was my first time to cook with monkfish though and so it was also my first time to remove the long bone that goes through the length of the tail.  I seemed to manage it without wasting much of the flesh, but I did end up cutting the tail in half lengthways in the process.   Anyway, at least having two strips of tail, each with a fat end and a thin end meant that I could place them end to end which would mean that once wrapped in pancetta the whole fish was a similar thickness.   I hoped this would mean it would cook evenly and not leave me with one end overcooked.   It seemed to work.  The fish seemed to be well-cooked to me.   You notice I say ‘seem’.  This is because I haven’t really eaten monkfish before and so I haven’t eaten a perfectly cooked piece of fish in order to compare my efforts against.  The flavour from the garlic and herbs was delicious and the fish itself was definitely meaty, not as flakey  and light as a lot of fish.  I hope this is how monkfish is supposed to be.    Anyway, next time I am at a really good restaurant and I see it on the menu, I suppose I’ll just have to order it to find out.

Next week’s Inspired by Masterchef post will be on 23 April.

Ingredients – serves 1

1 Monkfish tail

8 slices of pancetta

1 garlic clove

1 tbsp chopped fresh basil

1 tbsp chopped fresh chives

How to make Monkfish Wrapped in Pancetta

1. Remove the bone from the middle of the monkfish. (I then had two strips of monkfish, each fat at one end and tapering to the other end.   It may be possible to keep the two strips joined together but this was my first time cooking with monkfish).

2. Make the herb filling.   Roughly chop the basil and chives, crush the garlic and put everything in a pestle and mortar with a little salt and pepper.   Crush to make a paste.

3. Lay the sliced of pancetta out, overlapping slightly.   Lay one piece of monkfish in the middle.   Spread the herb and garlic paste down one side of the fish.  Put the other piece of monkfish on top. Lay them top to tail so the monkfish is approximately the same width at each end.

4. Wrap the pancetta around the fish and roll it over so the fish is wrapped in the pancetta.    Heat  a little oil in a frying pan.   Fry briefly on all sides then put on a baking tray in the oven at about 200c.  Bake for 15 minutes.