Hake ‘n salad

It was time for fish – without the loaves, obviously, them being carbs n’all.

I bought some el cheapo hake medallions and a tin of NoMU seafood rub. The rub has parsley, coriander, mustard, garlic, dill, fennel, ginger and lemon in it – or so the ingredients say.

It’s dry so I mixed it with some lemon juice and olive oil and left the fish to wallow in it for a while.

I fried the fish in a little olive oil (like maybe 2 teaspoons) and then, when I had removed the fish, I threw a few florets of broccoli into the remaining tastiness in the pan. That was a good plan indeed. They came out just cooked (perfect) with the remains of the rub and fish flavoured oil all over them.

I threw together with a salad of rocket, sorrel and baby spinach and some bits – and I was good to go.

I really think hake is under valued because it is so cheap. The fish is delicious, firm and moist.

Enjoyed that meal, I did

feta and pepperdew chicken

I have decided to see what cutting carbs out of my diet will do for my IBS and general sense of well-being. Seeing as I am in Cape Town and away from my normal routine for almost 3 weeks I thought it was a good time to do this now.

I may well be eating carbs I don’t know about, hidden in baby carrots or bananas, but don’t tell me okay.  The point is that I am not eating any obvious carbs which is enough I think.

 

It does make eating a little challenging – who know how basic a role carbs plays in so many meals.

Today I bought the Pick n Pay magazine Fresh Living and used one of the recipes I found.

 

I bought skinless, boneless chicken breasts, a small packet of feta and some pepperdews.  I crumbled the feta cheese and chopped some pepperdews into it. I added one of those freebie packets on Robinson Italian Herbs paste and a bit of dried Italian herbs too. A drop of olive oil made it all stick together nicely.  I sliced pockets into the chicken breasts and stuffed each with some of the mixture. They went onto a lightly greased baking tray and into a pre-heated oven at 180 degree C oven

 

20 minutes later I made a salad (no potatoes) and sliced 2 breasts up. And this is it

Very nice and uber filling.

Day 2 of carb free eating done and dusted. Feeling good but windy like a cowboy on beanfest night!

three weeks

I am off to Cape Town this morning for three weeks

and no – not for fun. for work. serious 15 hour a day work to meet a deadline

i fear i may be eating lots of Woolies throw-it-in-the-micro meals – but if i do cook i will share

otherwise, the foodie posts will resume after the 10th February

Sardine Bouillabaisse

When the recipe said bouillabaisse it really meant fish soup – if you are going to be proper about it and all. Cos I believe bouilla-what’s it requires three days, a French accent and a vineyard to make properly.

So I made fish soup

This also comes from Plum magazine – they are very South African. They have no adverts as such because the adverts are incorporated into the recipes. This came from the Lucky Star section.

I started by heating some olive oil from my garlic chilli oil pot (GCOP)(does anyone actually measure 15ml of olive oil when frying stuff?) and then sautéing a chopped onion, 4 of my GCOP garlic cloves and a large carrot. 5 minutes later or so I added the optional 180ml of white wine. (Like wine is ever optional!) I let this simmer away for a while (5 minutes or so) and then added 750ml of veggie stock. Recipe called for fish stock but I was fresh out of that. I also added a tin of whole tomatoes which I chopped up with the edge of the wooden spoon. The recipe also asked for a pinch of saffron but I can’t bring myself to pay more for spices than I would for medicine. I put some turmeric in instead.

25 minutes later I put about 1kg of frozen seafood mix and two tins of filleted chopped up sardine. I used the sardines in water, not oil and chopped them quite big.

That simmered for 15 minutes while I sliced some fancy bread and grated mozzarella. I grilled the cheese and bread just to make it look a bit upmarket.

And this was the rather delicious result

Between the bf and I we gave it a 7/10

the recipe would feed 4 comfortably as a main course

So easy too

what colour is an egg yolk?

I learnt a very interesting lesson while teaching in Zambia that I have never forgotten

Chickens in Zambia (where I was living) truly are free range. They wander around farms and plots scratching in the ground for food. The eggs I bought at the markets were often caked in mud and chicken shit and more often than you might like had blood in the yolk. Real proper free range eggs.

Delicious even if a bit off putting when half-chick half-yolk.

However, the yolks were not yellow. I don’t know if we here in the land with battery chickens and money feed the chickens something to make the yolks yellow, or if the chickens there in the land of truly organic farming and roosters getting at the hens there is something missing from the food they find in the dirt – but the result is beige egg yolks in Zambia.

Delicious eggs but beige yolks

Which brings me to the lesson

Never ever assume that your experience of anything is the absolute experience.

What you call egg yolk yellow is not necessarily what someone else has experienced as egg yolk coloured

I wonder how many immigrant kids (or house painters) got called stupid (or fired) for selecting beige when told to select egg yolk yellow!

How often have you judged someone by their understanding of ‘egg yolk yellow’?

today’s funny

Beer battered fish and mint pea puree

Last night was fish and chips and mushy peas. And was delicious!

I started by making the batter about an hour before I cooked. It took all of five minutes to sift the flour (230g) with salt, pepper. I then stirred in a beaten egg and slowly poured a cold Hansa into the mix, whisking all the time. The whole beer went in and made a fine looking batter. The recipe asks for more beer than we get in a bottle and the batter seemed fine with one bottle. I guess you could use less flour and have a runnier batter if that made you happier.

Anyway – the batter went into the fridge until I started to cook. Half an hour before we wanted to eat I heated the over and put the oven chips in.

I put water on to boil and a pan with about an inch of oil on to heat. I don’t like to deep fry – so I used less oil and turned the fish over. I used Hake fillets, defrosted, and cut them into tops and tails.

The peas went into the simmering water at the same time as the first half of the fish went into the batter and then into the hot oil. 4 minutes or so and the tail halves of the fish were done. I took them out when they were golden brown on both sides.

I then turned the heat off under the peas and put the fatter pieces of fish, battered, skin side down into the oil. While that side was browning I strained the peas and put them back into the hot pot. A tablespoon of chilli/garlic olive oil, 2 tablespoons of plain yoghurt (my low cal replacement for the cream the recipe asked for) and some finely chopped mint went into the peas too.

By then it was time to turn the fish and use a hand whizzer on the peas to make mushy peas. I didn’t mush them completely so there was a mix of textures.

Fish out of the pan and onto a plate with kitchen towel, previous thrown into the over oven chips out and the meal was ready.

The batter was light and crispy, the fish moist and tender. The peas were amazing. The mint just lifted them from boring peaness and the chilli in the oil added a little spark.

A really easy, yummy meal that took all of about ten minutes to actually cook with almost no prep.

 

Pesactarian friend gave it 8/10

BF was at pub quiz so missed out

I gave it 7/10

 

So a 7,5 average

Tomato, pea and tofu curry

Last night a vegetarian friend came for dinner so Meatless Monday happened on Tuesday

I made tomato, pea and tofu curry – the recipe called for paneer but i didn’t have time to make it. I shall do though so that next time I have a stock in the freezer.

I have never cooked with tofu before and have only eaten it once. I thought it tasted like something that would happen if a condom and an egg were genetically spliced – rubbery and somewhat tasteless. But I decided to brave it in the name of environmental friendliness and all that hippy stuff.

I bought two packets of tofu from my local EverFresh. It seemed a nice texture but I wouldn’t know. It was certainly not dry and felt like what I would call silky. (I do watching cookery programmes so I know how to talk about tofu.:-) )

Anyway, I chopped the tofu into pieces and fried in batches until golden brown. I do know that tofu absorbs flavour so I used some of my home-made garlic and chilli oil for the frying. Not a lot, just enough to keep the tofu from sticking to the pan.

Once golden brown I put the tofu to one side.

I then threw half a dried red chilli (next time I will use a whole one), a whole jalapeño from my oil bottle, 50g of plain yoghurt (recipe asked for greek-style but i had low fat plan yoghurt and it worked fine – with fewer calories), a tin of tomatoes, a good squirt of tomato paste (15ml), a teaspoon of sugar, 2 tsp of garam masala, some salt and a crushed garlic clove (also from the oil bottle) into the food processor.

I whizzed these into a thick liquid and then put it into the pan I fried the tofu in.

I brought it to the boil and simmered it for a while – 3 minutes ish. Then I added 125ml of water and again simmered for 2 or 3 minutes. Then in went the tofu and frozen peas. I used about 150g of peas. That cooked for 5 minutes and voila – all was ready. The recipe calls for cream to then be stirred in and I guess it may have made the sauce creamier (duh) but I am not sure it is necessary considering the calories it adds.

I served it all with wild brown rice.

BF scored it 8/10

Vegetarian friend scored it 7/10

I thought about 6/10

so thats an average score of 7/10

All agreed it is a meal we’d eat again happily. But we all want to try it with paneer.

And the tofu was great – not rubbery, slightly spicy and so full of self-righteousness it wins as a protein

Recipe I modified came from Plum Magazine – Summer 2011. A great South African recipe magazine.

100 words – death

Silver needle, mercuric solution, glinting in the shaft of light penetrating the dust mote filled room.

I pushed it against his arm, the skin resisting, a small unnatural dimple forming in his elbow. The sound sense of a tear ripped through the silence, the inhaled air, as the skin broke and the needle penetrated his being.

A swirl of blood in the syringe as the plunger pulled back with expectation, and forward, pushed rushing, liquid flooding into his body.

A slow sleepy smile on his face as the hole in his soul shrinks. And implodes with a ragged final breath.

weekly recipes

I have decided that i will select 4 new recipes from a single recipe publication to try every week

this week the publication is Plum Magazine

and the recipes are:

chicken breasts (i added these) and a polenta and mediterranean veggie stack

tomato, pea and paneer (or tofu) curry

Beer battered fish and chips

Sardine Bouillabaise

Will post as i cook them with recipes, photos and comments