Pasta Nigellissima

70s style dining experience

Unlike Nigella I do not have packets of pasta that I just look at because they are pretty.  I don't have space in my kitchen or my life for this kind of frivolity. I don't really think I have space in my life for Nigella, but she is a little bit lovely.

This is nothing like Nigella's pasta recipe - the only ingredients I think it has in common are smoked mackerel, capers and pasta. 

However, when I saw her make her version it did make me think about making a pasta and mackerel dish. Although I intended to make something using orzo, I didn't have enough for 2 people and so made a slightly different dish using fusili and whatever was in my fridge that I thought would go.

Pasta Nigellissima ingredients

• As much pasta as you want for 2 people
• 2 small smoked mackerel fillets (100-150g), flaked
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon capers, finely chopped
• 2 handfuls rocket
• A handful cherry tomatoes, halved
•  1/2 bunch parsley, finely chopped
•  3 tablespoons breadcrumbs

How to make pasta with smoked mackerel

1. Cook the pasta in salted boiling water until al dente.
2. Meanwhile, heat about a dessert spoon olive oil in a large frying pan, and when hot, fry the breadcrumbs until lightly browned.  
3. Turn the oven onto a low heat and warm two pasta bowls.
4. Just before the the pasta is cooked, reserve a small cup of the cooking water, then drain the pasta and blanch with boiling water.
5. Tip the pasta back into the pan you used for cooking it in, and put it on a low heat.
6. Add the mackerel, spring onions, chopped capers, rocket and cherry tomatoes, and stir thoroughly.
7. Season well with salt and pepper.
8. Add a little of the reserved cooking water to help the ingredients soften a little and coat the pasta. Start with about a tablespoon; add more if you think it needs it.  
9. Remove from the heat then stir in the parsley and crisped breadcrumbs.
10. Tip into the warmed bowls and serve immediately. 

Sweet chilli chicken salad

Some people and a bit of salad

This is a delightfully fresh-tasting salad. Grateful thanks to chef extraordinaire, Miss Kate "K-Dog" Turner for the recipe.

Serves 10.

Chilli chicken salad ingredients

• I large bag rice noodles
• 2 whole cooked chickens*
• 3 red peppers
• 1 bunch spring onions
• 2 carrots
• 1 cucumber
• 2 mangoes
• 3 avocados
• I bag mange tout (snow peas)
• I bunch coriander (cilantro)
• Peanuts - about 4 handfuls (I have small hands. Maybe 3 handfuls if you have man-hands)
• A large quantity sweet chilli dressing

*Preferably, buy and cook your own chickens. As in, buy dead chickens then cook them. Though if you want to buy live chickens, spend time raising them, then slaughter and cook them, I take my hat off to you.
Instinct tells me the £4.49 ready-cooked chickens from Tesco probably didn't have a happy a life. If you didn't like the Henry Pig salad photo, consider becoming vegetarian. Personally, I prefer to know that my lunch lived a happy life before it was slaughtered so mI could eat it.

Sweet chilli dressing ingredients 

• Juice of 1 lemon
• White wine vinegar, or preferably, rice wine vinegar - about the same quantty as the lemon juice
• Sugar, or, preferably, palm sugar (1/4 cup), dissolved in the same quantity boiling water
• I dried chili, de-seeded (keep the seeds)
• Coriander powder
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 4 crushed garlic cloves

How to make sweet chilli dressing

1. In a small pan, mix together the lemon juice, vinegar, sugar in water, powdered coriander, fish sauce and garlic cloves.
2. Simmer gently for about 5 minutes, till it starts to thicken.
3. Add the crumbled dried chill along with the seeds.
4. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves. 

How to make chilli chicken salad

1. Cook the rice noodles in some light chicken stock for about 5 minutes.
2. Drain and refresh under cold water.
3. Immediately toss in 1 teaspoon sesame oil, or, if you have some to hand, some sesame-based dressing.
4. Toast raw peanuts lightly in a pan then crush. 
5. Slice the peppers into long, very thin strips
6. Slice the spring onions diagonally into short strips.
7. Cut the carrots and cucumbers into julienne strips.
8. Cut the mango and avocado into thin strips.
9. Chop the coriander.

Lay everything out on separate plates and let people help themselves.**

**For salad club only. At home, mix everything together with the noodles and top with the toasted crushed nuts. 

Crunchy salad

Crunchy salad

Tonight I made teriyaki salmon with rice and a crunchy salad from the very few fresh vegetables I had lying around in my fridge. I wanted a tangy dressing to go with it, but since I didn't even have a lime I made this dressing out of store cupboard ingredients. While it didn't have the same zinginess that fresh herbs and lime would give, I think it worked really well.

Ginger and sesame salad dressing ingredients

• 1cm piece root ginger, grated to a pulp, which will give you about 1 teaspoon ginger pulp
• 3 tablespoons rapeseed oil
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1/2 teaspoon hot chilli blend (from a tube)
• 1 teaspoon coriander blend (from a tube)
• 1 tablespoon plum seasoning
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice 
• A few drops light soy sauce

How to make ginger and sesame dressing

• Grate the ginger finely. You wll end up with about 1 teaspoon grated ginger pulp.
• Add all the ingredients to a screw-cap jar and shake vigorously to combine.

I hate chopping chillies so always have one of those tubes of chilli blend and jars of chilli sauce in the fridge. While some recipes really do need fresh chillies, if you just want a little kick of heat, these work surprisingly well. 

Coriander blend in a tube, however, really is a last resort, and nothing like the fresh stuff. But its a handy thing to have in the fridge for coriander-related emergencies. 

I used plum seasoning (not sauce) to give a sharpness to the dressing. If you don't have any (and I suspect you won't, as I'm not entirely sure why I do) then use extra lemon juice, or, even better, lime juice. 

You don't have to use rapeseed oil either, but if you use olive oil use a light one that doesn't have a strong flavour. The sesame oil, however, is essential. 

Ingredients for crunchy salad

• 3 water chestnuts
• 2 spring onions
• a 5cm piece carrot
• a 5cm piece cucumber
• 1/4 iceberg lettuce
• 1/2 teaspoon each of white and black sesame seeds (or just use 1/2 teaspoon 1 type if that's what you have) 

How to make crunchy salad 

1. Slice each water chestnut into about 5 or 6 slices.
2. Slice the spring onions into 5cm lengths. Split each piece horizontally into thin slithers.
3. Slice the cucumber and carrot into thin strips (julienne).
4. Shred the lettuce into thin slices, about the same length as the rest of the vegetables.
5. Mix all the vegetables together in a bowl. 
6. Add a couple of tablespoons of the dressing and toss to coat the vegetables.
7. Lightly toast the sesame seeds in a frying pan over a low heat.
   If you are using white sesame seeds, they will turn golden brown so you know when they are done. If you are only using black seeds, just keep moving them around in the pan for about 2 minutes; they will start to smell toasted when they are done. In either case, do not attempt to multitask - you need to watch them all the time or they will burn. 
8. Scatter the seeds over the salad.

 

 

 

 

 

A vegetarian pie with winter salads

OK, so a cheese-filled pie is probably not the healthiest start to the New Year, but this was for a special occasion when my brother- and sister-in-law and nephew came round for an after Christmas dinner.

However, I'm a great one for winter salads, and the 2 below are a nice way of using raw winter veg. I felt a little smug about the amount of vegetables I'd bought so thought I'd take a picture. 

 Before

Thanks to Nigella we all know that a messaluna means 'half moon' in Italian and is a semi-circular double blade for chopping herbs.

 Messaluna pie ingredients

• 1 pack filo pastry (approx 300g)
• 5 eggs
• A 200g pack spinach
• 2 leeks
• 1 stick celery
• 2 small handfuls rocket
• 1 large red onion
• 1 bunch dill
• 1/2 bunch parsley
• 3 spring onions
• 150g ricotta
• 100g feta
• 75g cheddar
• Oil, for frying and brushing

2 things I forgot to put in this pie but should be added:

• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 small bunch chives or 1 tablespoon freeze-dried chives

  How to make vegetable pie

1. Chop the red onion and celery finely and fry gently in some oil for about 5 minutes till beginning to soften without browning.
2. Meanwhile rinse the spinach in water.
3. Heat a large pan and add the spinach. Keep moving the spinach round till it is wilted down to almost nothing. 
4. Tip out of the pan into a colander and allow to cool.
5. Put the spinach into a clean cloth and squeeze out as much liquid as possible, then chop finely.
6. Break the eggs into a large bowl and beat.
7. Crumble in the feta and ricotta into the eggs and grate in the cheddar.
8. Grate the lemon zest into the mixture. 
9. Add the chopped spinach and the rocket.
10. Finely chop the spring onions and add to to the egg and cheese mixture. 
11. If using, add the finely chopped chives and the dried oregano.
12. Chop the herbs and add these to the egg mixture.
13. Season well with salt and pepper.
14. Brush a baking tin which is slightly smaller than the sheets of filo pastry lighly with oil. I used a 30x20cm tin.
15. Lay a sheet of pastry in the dish so that the ends hang over the outside of the dish then brush lightly with oil. It doesn't matter if the pastry breaks; just patch it up so that the dish is covered.
16. Repeat till half the sheets of pastry have been used.
17. Pour the filling mixture into the pastry.
18. Fold the overhanging pastry from the pie bottom on top of the filling.
19. Top with the remaining filo sheets, brushing each with oil before laying the next on top. Brush the final layer of pastry with oil too.
20. Bake at 190 degrees C for 30-40 minutes or till golden. 

Serve with chilli jam.

After

Red cabbage salad

Do not be tempted to make a larger quantity of this salad as it takes a lot of chewing, so you will probably get bored halfway through your leftovers.

• 1/8 red cabbage
• 1 pear
• 1 small handful walnuts
• A few pieces blue cheese
• Walnut oil
• Lemon juice
• Chopped parsley
• 1 dessertspoon mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon yoghurt

To assemble the red cabbage salad:

1. Mix the mayonaise, yoghurt, lemon juice, walnut oil and chopped parsley in a bowl.
2. Shred the red cabbage finely and add to the mayo mixture.
3. Lightly toast the walnuts in a small frying pan over a low heat for about a minute.
4. Add the toasted walnuts to the cabbage.
5. Peel the pear and cut into thin slithers.
6. Add to the slaw and mix gently so the pears do not break but so everything is coated in the yoghurt mixture.

Leaf and root salad ingredients

• The rest of the rocket left over from the pie
• A handful watercress
• 1/4 grated raw parsnip
• 1/4 raw grated courgette
• A tablespoon sesame seeds, lightly toasted
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice

How to make leaf and root salad

1. In a bowl, dress the rocket and watercress with a drizzle of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice.
2. Arrange on a plate, and top with the grated courgette and parsnip.
3. Sprinkle the toaste sesame seeds over the top. 

Stuffed peppers

It’s blazing hot weather, the Olympics start tomorrow, and I want an accompaniment for hot smoked trout and salad.

The idea of stuffed peppers probably draws a sigh from most vegetarians, but as a non-vegetarian I actually quite like this dish once in a while.

 

The recipe below assumes the dish is part of selection of salads.

Stuffed peppers ingredients

• 1 yellow or orange pepper. Go on then, use red if you insist.
• A handful of cooked Puy lentils
• Slightly larger quantity of cooked giant couscous
• An even larger quantity of cooked bulgur wheat
• 2 spring onions
• 1 small garlic clove, crushed
• A few chopped nuts – I used cashews today but pine nuts or mixed nuts would also work
• About 3 sundried tomatoes (optional), chopped into really very small pieces
• A few chopped herbs – I used a few thyme leaves tonight but oregano or Greek basil would also be good

How to make stuffed peppers

1. Finely shop the spring onions and lightly fry for a few minutes in a little olive oil till soft.
2. Add the crushed garlic clove and fry for another minute or so.
3. Mix together with all the other ingredients
4. Slice the peppers in half and remove the stalk and seeds
5. Fill the pepper halves with the stuffing
6. Bake for about half an hour to 40 minutes at the Magic Cooking Number (fan 190)