Peanut Noodle Salad

My weekends are for cooking and while I tend to rely heavily on leftovers for lunch, I like to make some kind of salad to stash in the fridge during the week for snacking or for lunch when we've been over zealous and eaten every last scrap of dinner.

Something robust that will survive a few days in the fridge is in order - couscous, or rice usually. I've also recently re-discovered the joys of this simple brown rice salad dressed in thick and syrupy ginger soy dressing with lots of cashews, if you're not a fan of brown rice, this will turn you. So, this weekend I tried another gem from Nigella, Sesame Noodle Salad - noodles dressed in salty and sweet satay sauce with plenty of crunchy veg. This is very much open to interpretation, use whatever you have - red cabbage, carrot, cucumber, radish, spinach, mushrooms. I like to add a handful of chopped peanuts to the mix for extra crunch and some extra garlic and chilli. Just make sure you keep the ratio of sauce to noodles, you need enough sauce to coat everything well. Read more...

Smocked Mackerel and Sweetcorn Chowder

I've been thinking about making chowder for a while. Something about it just appeals, kind of like a liquid fish pie - in a good way. Unfortunately, a certain someone is allergic to white fish so this has been off the menu until I realised that smoked mackerel would work just as well as haddock, imparting the same smoky flavour and healthier too. I tend to add smoked mackerel to everything these days, but the haddock would be just as good, as would peas or fresh sweetcorn I imagine.

This is certainly filling, but not as rich as it looks, the milk base is surprisingly light. Eat with plenty of bread and butter of course.


Ingredients

serves 4

50g butter
2 large leeks, white part finely chopped
small bunch parsley, leaves and stalks separated
750ml whole milk
250ml vegetable stock
400g (about 2 medium) potatoes , peeled and cut into small cubes
400g smoked mackerel fillets, skin removed
1 small can sweetcorn, drained (approx 160g can)

• Heat a large saucepan and drop in the butter. Once melted, add the leeks and fry on a medium heat until softened.
• Meanwhile chop the stalks of the parsley as finely as possible and add to the pan. Reserve the leaves for sprinkling over the finished soup.
• Pour in the milk and stock and stir in the potatoes. Bring to the boil and simmer for a 10 minutes. Flake in the smoked mackerel and stir in the sweetcorn. Simmer for another few minutes. Add plenty of black pepper and serve sprinkled with chopped parsley.

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Dan Dan Noodles

During my visit home, while rooting through my mum's cookbook collection; I found Chinese Food Made Easy by Ching-He Huang. I knew my mum wouldn't use this book, she rarely uses a recipe for anything and so, I managed to commandeer it for myself.

I'm not a fan of the cookery shows myself, a bit too smug and she annoyingly overuses the words fragrant and delicious. But the book has some lovely photos (if not enough) and the recipes are certainly a gentle, healthy introduction to authentic Chinese cooking.

This recipe caught my eye, mostly due to the picture but also as it's unlike anything I've cooked before. Luckily, there's a chinese supermarket in Brixton, so off we went (after a delicious trip to Franco Manca) and purchased vast bottles of chinese ingredients and sauces for next to nothing.


She suggested using beef mince, I think pork is more authentic, but I actually used veggie mince which worked fine; there are so many other flavours going on that you don't notice.

The results went down well, apparently 'one of the best things I've cooked'. I have to say that this was down to me tweaking the recipe somewhat. Apparently the broth for the noodles was supposed to be a mix of tahini, sesame oil and balsamic vinegar (or Chinkiang black rice vinegar), but when I combined these in a saucepan as instructed, it looked a little like gone off milk... Out went that idea and I simply cooked the noodles in vegetable stock with a drop of sesame oil, the starch in the noodles helps to thicken the broth. I used plenty of chilli to make this a cleansing, warming soup and added some radish for crunch. You can add whatver vegetables are to hand really, add mushrooms to the mince, some beansprouts, shredded spinach or cabbage could go into the broth or matchsticked carrots.

Ingredients

Serves 4

750ml vegetable stock
2tsp sesame oil
400g noodles
1 small bunch radishes, sliced
2tbsp sunflower oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1tbsp grated ginger
1 chilli, finely chopped
250g mince
1tbsp Shaoshing rice wine or dry sherry
100g gherkins, finely chopped
To serve:
1 small bunch spring onions, finely sliced
1 small bunch coriander, chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
soy sauce to taste.

• Heat the vegetable stock until boiling, add the sesame oil and noodles. stir to untangle and cook gently until soft. Stir in the radishes.
• Meanwhile heat a wok or large frying with the oil until smoking. Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and fry for a few minutes. Add the mince and stir until well browned. Pour over the rice wine and allow it to buble away. Stir in the gherkins and take off the heat.
• To serve, spoon some noodles into a bowl with a ladleful of broth, top with the mince, spring onions, coriander and as much chilli as you dare.

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Vegetable Curry

I spent the weekend visiting the family in Manchester. While I was obviously required to make brownies, we did most of our eating in some delicious restaurants. I came home yesterday to a rather sad looking romanseco cauliflower and was itching to get back into the kitchen. My knee-jerk reaction is generally to douse it in cheese sauce, instead I thought I'd try to re-create a very successful curry from last week.

Loosely inspired by the legendary Leon Gobi - this is rich in coconut milk and sweet from ground almonds, feel free to enhance this further with raisins; but I can't stand them in savoury food - especially curry. Of course, you can also use any vegetables you have lying around - I find this a really good way to use up root vegetables, the sweetness works perfectly; or throw in chickpeas, they're delicious in everything. The richness also means it goes particularly well with brown rice - making this an altogether virtuous meal.

Ingredients

Serves 4

1 onion, sliced
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 chilli
1 2inch piece ginger
5 cloves garlic
2 tsp Madras curry powder
1 tsp turmeric
about 250g sweet root vegetables cut into chunks e.g. carrots, swede, sweet potato, pumpkin, squash
1 cauliflower, broken into florets
1 x 400ml tin of coconut milk
4 tbsp ground almonds
Juice of ½ a lemon
coriander, roughly chopped

Blend the garlic, ginger and chilli to a paste.
Meanwhile, heat a large frying pan with the oil, add the onions and fry until soft.
Tumble in the vegetables (apart from the peas) and sprinkle over the spices. Stir well.
Pour in the coconut milk, half fill the can again with water and add to the pan.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 15mins.
Add the ground almonds and peas, simmer for a few mins more.
Add the lemon juice and season to taste.
Serve with lots of chopped coriander. Read more...

Smoked Mackerel, Radish and New Potato Salad

I was a bit stumped when the we got these radishes in the veg box, lovely and pink as they are. They taste a bit like turnip and add crunch and colour to a simple salad. But I wanted something new and exciting. I found an interesting one in my Abel and Cole Cookbook, a salad of new potatoes and radish with olives and feta, all good but several ingredients I din't have and had no intention of buying.

So, as usual, in between dozing off on my tube journey, I planned my dinner for the evening and thought of this. Crispy little slices of roast new potatoes, fresh, crunchy pink radish and parsley, flakes of smoked mackerel and zingy little capers. All doused in a lemony, mustardy, yoghurt dressing. If I do day so myself, the flavour combinations worked perfectly, capers and lemon are smoked mackerel's best friend. We happily gobbled it up for dinner.

Ingredients

Serves 4

750g new potatoes
3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
4 tbsp capers
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 lemon, juiced
300g radishes, quartered
400g smoked mackerel
200g greek yoghurt
2tsp english mustard

• Heat the oven to 200°C and heat a large roasting tray with the olive oil.
• Meanwhile clean the potatoes and slice into 1cm thick coins. Add to the baking tray, stir until well coated in the hot oil and season well.
• Roast for 30mins, stirring occasionally until golden and soft inside. Don't worry if the slices become a little stuck, use a spatula to scrape them off the bottom, this just creates more crispy bits. After 20mins place the mackerel fillets onto the potatoes in the oven to warm up.
• Meanwhile, add the english mustard and half the lemon juice to the yoghurt along with a pinch of salt and pepper and stir well.
• Once cooked, transfer the potato slices to a large bowl along with as much of the roasting oil as possible. Flake in the smoked mackerel and add the red onion, capers, parsley, radishes and the rest of the lemon juice.
• Dollop on the dressing and mix very gently, you don't want the salad to be completey covered.

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