Highlights - October 2013

Herring Salad

... as featured on MDA.

Swordfish & Spelt Risotto

Spelt? Yes, a grain ... experimental!

Compost Heap!

Happy Hallowe'en!

Hallowe'en Compost Heap!

Muhahahhahaaaaa! It's Hallowe'en and what better than a fun themed meal?

We're having a Compost Heap! No, really ...

We need to build out compost heap: old food, soil, dead organic matter, fungi and worms.

Constituents

Soil - Minced beef, cubed potato, onion garlic and black pepper

Fungi - Oyster mushrooms

Dead, organic matter - calendula petals, an edible flower

Worms - Hot Dog sausages!

Hot Dogs? I know ... THE HORROR!!! It is Hallowe'en ...

Soil

In a skillet, brown off the minced meat, add in puréed onion and garlic. Black pepper, top up with water and let it energetically simmer for maybe an hour.

Fungi, Organic Matter & Worms

Meanwhile, cut a few oyster mushrooms in half, remove the petals from a calendula flower and warm the Hot Dogs through.

Calendula is an edible flower with a slightly bitter and very floral taste.

Once the Hot Dogs are just warm, remove from the heat and quarter lengthways.

When you are ready to eat, fold the mushrooms through the mince beef and serve ...

Serve

Serve the minced meat out into large bowls, threading the worms through and scatter the petals over.

Presenting my Hallowe'en themed Compost Heap!

Scallops in the Shell

For your viewing pleasure ... with a creamy, peppery sauce over a duvet of spinach and Japanese omelette.

You'll need scallops (two per person), cream, white pepper, egg, spinach and butter.

Optionally, Nasturtium as garnish, which lends a light, floral pepperiness quite different to the base note pepper in the spinach.

One skillet ...

Whisk a single egg (for two) with a tiny splash of water. Whisk it really well. Pour into a pre-heated and buttered skillet and swirl around gently until all the liquid egg has caught. Cook on until the egg has just cooked. Remove onto a board and roll up. Slice through into thin noodles.

More butter, wilt your spinach; a good handful per person. Spinach wilts down to nothing. Add a little white pepper. Place on the board once wilted.

Heat up, more butter, scallops in and colour up. Place on the board once colour.

De-glaze the pan with a splash of water and pour in some double cream. Reduce.

Serve out into a scallop shell, spinach down first, interleaved with the egg noodles. Scallops on top, cream sauce over and garnish with Nasturtium.

Foie de Boeuf

Simple beef liver given the French language makeover ... now it sounds posh!

Yeah, it's just beef liver ...

I say "just" but lets not forget that organs are the prize! I don't eat much land animal, but when I do ... it's the tough, sinewy cuts that need long and slow cooking, or offals.

Offals pack in the nutrients in a way that the flesh does not. Largely a pesce-paleo, I see organs as something too prized to overlook.

You need ...

Beef liver, gravy (leftover from a slow-cooked piece of meat), onion, mushroom and something green - samphire, in my case, and herbs. Chervil, here. Black pepper, sea salt.

Gravy

Using leftover meat juices from a slow-cooked piece of shin, get it up to temperature and add in some sliced mushrooms. Black pepper.

Meanwhile, caramelise some onions. Touch of sea salt.

Add to the jus, add some arrowroot and a good knob of butter, raise the temperature and watch it thicken.

Voilà! Gravy ...

Samphire

... needs nothing more than boiling water poured over, count to ten and drain.

Beef Liver

... wants little more than gently frying off in some butter.

Plate

... onions and mushrooms down first, beef liver over, spoon the jus on top, samphire next and crown with chervil.

Phenomenal!

Herring Salad

... as a starter.

You can figure it out - it's herring, egg, paprika, black pepper, Icelandic ash salt, Salad Cream, pickled gherkin and edible flowers.

EAT MOAR HERRING!

Gobi Musallam

North Indian, a favourite for dinner parties and it's vegetarian ... although I cooked mine with some fish.

Russ over at The Domestic Man showed us this very dish just a few days ago and he pins it as a dish from Uttar Pradesh, simply a northern province of India nestled up in the north east against the Himalayas, although you'll find this over in the north west, Punjab and further north into Jammu Kashmir.

It's a whole, baked cauliflower ...

... for which you'll need the following Ingredients:

Cauliflower (optionally, broccoli) and turmeric.

Red onion, ghee (or butter), ground coriander, ground cumin, chilli powder, paprika, fenugreek, asafoetida, garlic, ginger, black pepper, Indian black salt and optionally, yoghurt if you want to do a more Kashmiri version.

I do. We have a sizeable Kashmiri population here in Bradford, quite unusual in fact.

Tomatoes.

Fish - firm white fish, smoked is good. Haddock, cod, pollock, coley, that kind of fish.

Cauliflower

First, simply boil your cauliflower in water and turmeric - this will colour up the 'flower. I also boiled a head of broccoli, just because ...

... also draw an X into the bottom of a couple of tomatoes per person and drop them into the water for 60 seconds, retrieving and plunging into iced water. They'll stop cooking and the skins will be really easy to peel.

Gravy

North Indians call their sauce, gravy. As an aside, it's also nice to hear North Indians call a raita (as you might hear them called in the south) simply, chutney. Those Anglicisms are fun.

So, the gravy ...

Caramelise some chopped red onion in ghee. No ghee? Use butter - caramelisation happens at a low temperature, certainly way below the smoke point of butter.

Add in ground coriander, ground cumin, asafoetida, fenugreek, chilli powder, paprika, some sliced garlic and sliced ginger. I made mine more Kashmiri with my spice mix.

Add in a little black pepper and Indian black salt. Again, no Indian black salt? Regular sea salt is fine.

Once softened, caramelised and sweet gorgeous, peel your tomatoes, de-seed and dice up the flesh. Add to the onion mix and cook on until the tomato flesh is soft.

Blend ...

... and add in a couple of tablespoons of probiotic yoghurt. Goat is best. Again, I want a more Kashmiri version, so I did this. It's optional.

Pour over the cauliflower ... and broccoli.

Fish

Now, let's make it a meal ...

... with some smoked haddock, sliced and pushed into the gravy.

Embellish

Optionally, faff it up!

I went with some black mustard seeds and some chopped parsley. I really like parsley with this kind of curry. Consider it my Anglicisation. Coriander, otherwise.

My cooking tin? Prison issue enamel. Wink. I've had it years.

Cook

Cook in the oven set to 200C (400F?) for maybe twenty minutes, half an hour ...

... meanwhile, if you're so inclined, cook some rice. I did.

Serve

Serve onto a plate, spooned on, rice alongside.

How good? Immense! Cheers, Russ!

Sprats with Grilled Aubergine, Parsnip Cream & Mustard Sauce

Let's just take a minute to give it up for the humble sprat.

Thank you ... I love sprats!

 I've been eating them a lot recently, so check back through a few posts for the skinny on these guys. Sprats are small, oily fish just over an inch tall, three or four inches long and cost quite literally pence each.

Better still when they're on offer!

I got a pre-packed shoal of the little fellows in the discounted section; 71p (just over a dollar) full price, for 12 ... 49p (80c?) discounted! That's less than 10p per fish!

I shared my catch with our kitten, who wolfed the first three down, managed a fourth and got some way through a fifth! Seven left - they're mine.

So, what to put them with ...

I had half an aubergine and for some reason, a real hankering for whole grain mustard (which is a seed, not a grain); half a block of Greek Feta that wants eating and some lovely tomatoes on the vine. Gah! There's a parsnip that really wants eating!

... that sounds like a dish is forming.

Grilled aubergine with sprats over a parsnip cream with wholegrain mustard sauce:

• Sprats - Sprats!
• Parsnip Cream - parsnip and cream
• Grilled Aubergine - aubergine and olive oil
• Mustard Sauce - Wholegrain mustard, lemon juice, sea salt, black pepper, chilli, parsley and olive oil
• Accompaniments - Greek Feta, tomatoes and black olives

Let's get to it ...

First, get the grill on set to 225C or more. Take your aubergine (that's an eggplant if your English went funny crossing the Atlantic), score through the skin all the way around at the stalk end. Cut in half through the length, half each - this meal is just for me, so my half will do perfect. Score another line or couple of lines from top to bottom - this will assist you peeling the skin off later.

Settle it under the grill with a light slosh of olive oil and leave it be for about half an hour. Plenty of time to prepare the rest of the dish.

For the parsnip cream, peel, cube and boil a parsnip - this will make plenty and leftovers are very nice with a few carrot and celery sticks. Once boiled, purée with some cream. Voilà! Parsnip cream.

The mustard sauce is just a case of taking a generous tablespoon of the mustard, a good squeeze of lemon juice, touch of sea salt, grind of black pepper and a good glug of extra virgin olive oil. Finely chop some parsley, mince a chilli and add. Mix well.

Prepare your feta, tomatoes and olives. Set aside for later.

Sprats take a mere couple of minutes each side, so we can do those right at the end. Leave the heads on and guts in; just give them a rinse under clean, cold water, pat dry and set aside.

Once the aubergine is ready, retrieve it from under the grill and place the sprats under.

Swipe some of the parsnip cream across your plate and remove the flesh from the aubergine, placing it across the parsnip swipe.

Turn your sprats ...

... and when cooked on the other side, lay them against the aubergine.

Dot the tomatoes, feta and black olives all around and spoon the mustard sauce over the fish.

Done! That's a Gordon Ramsay Done!

B&M ... Quick & Dirty

... at the weekend, we had an unctuous piece of slow-cooked beef shin.

The best bit about a hunk of beef skin is the leftovers: shredded meat salad for lunch and gravy into the freezer in a bag.

Needing a fast dinner prior to fencing, I flicked the oven onto 200C and pushed a bunch of high meat volume turkey sausages in.

30 minutes, we'll be done ...

... meanwhile, melt the gravy in a pan along with some sliced mushroom.

... also, peel and cube up a squash, boil and mash with butter.

Here comes the nom!

Mash down, sausages over, spoon the mushrooms over and pour the gravy around.

That's dinner - get eating! Quick, dirty and absolutely filthy gorgeous!

Sprats in Spicy Tomato Sauce [Ode to Worker Bee]

Over on Mark's Daily Apple, Worker Bee posted up an absolutely superb recipe for Sardines in a Spicy Tomato Sauce.

Horror! She decapitated them! How can you cut the heads of such beautiful fish?

I don't have sardines, but I do have sprats ... which I have to concede, I gutted mine.

Sprats, Latin Sprattus, a distinct genus within the same family as sardine and herring. These sprats are from the Baltic. Needless to say they are similarly oily and loaded with good omega-3. Highly anti-inflammatory, they make perfect partners with a light leafy salad and great bedfellows to a good, starchy hash ... or a spicy tomato sauce.

Sprats

Eat them whole. Heads, tails, guts, the lot.

If you're at all queasy about heads, cut them off. Actually, from there you can gut the fish by squeezing the belly up to where the head was. The guts will come out. Wash and you're done.

Otherwise, just make a small incision behind the gills and squeeze the belly up to the head to draw the guts.

You can pan-fry sprats or you can grill them. Grilling is gentler, frying is faster. You say tomato, I say tomato. I'm British, and a grill for me is an overhead heat source: broiler, salamander.

Talking of tomatoes ...

Spicy Tomato Sauce

You'll need tomatoes, garlic, chillies paprika, sea salt, black pepper and your favourite paleo fat, optionally, shallots or spring onions.

First, the tomatoes. Two per person will do just fine. Draw an X into the bottom, immerse in boiling water for 60 second and then plunge into iced water. Peel, quarter, de-seed and dice finely.

In a skillet, melt some of your favourite paleo fat - no, not goose fat ... coconut oil, for me this time.

Toss in the diced tomato and gently fry on to soften the flesh.

Add paprika for vibrant colour, sea salt and black pepper to taste then thinly sliced garlic and chilli. Cook on.

When you're ready, in another skillet, melt some more fat - this time I did use goose fat; fry off your sprats.

Serve

Plate up ... sprats down, tomato sauce over. Simple as.

Chilli Squid

Just a simple plate of fried squid in chilli sauce with rice alongside. Nothing complex, just a delicious plate of food.

Grab your chopsticks!

Ingredients

Squid - Squid and coconut oil

Chilli Sauce - Maggi Chilli Sauce, Worcestershire Sauce, lemon juice, cider vinegar, sea salt and black pepper

Accompaniment - white rice, bouillon and peas

Squid

Squids need a bit of cleaning up ...

Pull the tentacles and head out of the body sock. Set aside.

Fish about inside to pull out all the sloppy bits and recover the pen. If you've no idea what the pen is, just pull out the plastic feather. That's the pen.

Pick away at the purple membrane that covers the squid sock. One of those blue kitchen towels is good as this job.

Rinse well under running water to clean up.

That's the sock ...

... the tentacles can be chucked, or cut off just below the eyes, the tentacles reserved and the rest discarded. There is an ink sac in that bit you've just thrown away, which is quite fun for colouring up rice and pasta ... just sayin'.

Open the sock up with a knife and score the flesh with a sharp knife - this will stop it curling up when cooked. Cut into pieces just over an inch square.

In a skillet, melt some coconut oil and fry off the squid pieces along with the tentacles for three or four minutes ...

Chilli Sauce

Combine Maggi Chilli Sauce, Worcestershire Sauce, lemon juice, cider vinegar, sea salt and black pepper. The consistency should be quite running.

... once the squid is cooked, pour over the chilli sauce and thoroughly combine.

Rice

Cook as appropriate, adding peas in during the cooking. I used some bouillon to give more flavour.

Serve

Plate up ... squid down, rice alongside.

Fish Provençale [Again]

Provençale? Yup! Inspired by the French Mediterranean province, I cooked up a hash over which we had swordfish and a sort of Sauce Vierge, a light, Mediterranean sauce of olive oil and tomato.

Inspired ... this is not Classic French cuisine - this is real world ancestral eating inspired by Provençale ingredients, method and approach.

Constituents

Fish - Tonight, swordfish. Grilled. No fat needed.

Salad - Mixed leaves and grapefruit segments.

Hash - Potatoes, red pepper, green pepper, onion, celery, garlic, black pepper, sea salt, parsley and goose fat.

Sauce - Tomato, olive oil, lemon juice, capers, black olives and chilli.

Hash

Take a large heavy based skillet and melt some of your favourite paleo fat ... altogether, now: goose fat, for me.

Cube up some potato, chop up onion, celery, garlic, red pepper and green pepper.

Toss in the onion and celery to soften, then lower the heat.

Scatter in the potato, garlic, red pepper and green pepper.

Cook on ... this will take 20-30 minutes. At the end, scatter over chopped parsley.

Sauce

Meanwhile, make up the sauce ...

Sauce Vierge is a simple sauce of chopped tomato, olive oil, lemon juice and basil.

Additional ingredients are permissible, so in went some capers and black olives.

Fish

Once the hash is pretty much there, heat up your griddle. I have a cast iron ridged griddle pan.

Drop the fish on and watch the edge - once the fish has gone opaque to about half way up, flip 'em.

Plate

While the fish is finishing, dress a plate ...

Mixed leaves, touch of black pepper, perhaps some sea salt - I used Icelandic Ash Salt, perhaps some sumac - I did.

Serve

Ready to eat?

Mound the hash in the middle and lay the fish on top. Sauce over.

Pan Fried Coley with Diced Vegetables

Tuesday night ... fencing, tonight, so I need a light, yet satisfying dish of protein, carbohydrate and fat.

Coley is a white fish, not dissimilar to cod but less flake to the structure. Curiously, it is referred to as Pollock in North America but it is a distinct species of fish.

At something like 90% protein to 10% fat, Coley gives us that good pack of protein and can stand a little more fat of our choice in the dish.

Ingredients

Fish - Coley and lard ... then, butter and sumac

Veg - diced potato, carrot, onion, celery, spring onion, green pepper, red pepper and peas, goose fat, parsley, sea salt and black pepper

Sauce - Maggi Chilli Sauce, Worcestershire Sauce, lemon juice and sea salt

Fried Egg - egg and butter

Diced Veg

First, soften some of your favourite paleo fat in a skillet (goose fat, for me) and toss in diced potato, carrot, onion, celery, spring onion, green pepper, red pepper and peas. Sea salt to taste and black pepper. Fold in chopped parsley.

Cook on for maybe ten minutes ...

Chilli Sauce

Combine Maggi Chilli Sauce, Worcestershire Sauce, lemon juice and sea salt.

Fish

Scale, gut, skin and fillet your fish.

... melt a little lard in a skillet and lay the fish fillets into the pan on the presentation side. Cook on the presentation side for maybe three or four minutes, sufficient time for the fish to go opaque up to about half way through the thickness of the fillet.

Flip over and cook on for another three or four minutes. Set aside in the hot pan while you fry off an egg.

Once served, the fish will have an extra slab of butter on top and some sumac for flavour.

Sumac. Sub-tropical and temperate shrubs which grow predominantly across Africa and North America producing a reddish spice with a curious zesty flavour used in Middle Eastern cuisine, primarily.

Egg

Fry off an egg in a little butter.

Everything is better with a fried egg on top.

Serve

Diced veggies down, fish on top garnished with more butter and sumac, egg alongside, sauce also.

Gorgeous! Primed and ready, I'm off fencing ...

Munchkin Chowder

Partly a use-up meal and part combination for two dishes I had in mind ...

I picked up a couple of munchkins from the supermarket. They're mini-pumpkins, although upon reflection, they're probably just immature pumpkins.

The basics of the dish is a seafood and bacon chowder poured into a hollowed munchkin.

Ingredients

Munchkin

Chowder - white fish, lardons, leek, celery, garlic, fennel, springless beans, carrot, fish stock, cream and dill

Flavours - white pepper

Munchkin

Cut the munchkin in half, horizontally. Scoop out the seeds to form a bowl in each half and settle into the oven set to 180C (350F?) for somewhere around 30 minutes to soften the flesh.

Chowder

I call it a chowder, but in reality, it's probably just a cream soup.

In a heavy based skillet, fry off some lardons of bacon.

Using the fat that has rendered, soften leek, celery and fennel. Continue by adding shredded stringless beans, garlic and then a pint of fish stock. Add in chopped carrots.

Slice up a few fillets of white fish - I used pollock. Add to the soup.

We're probably about 10 minutes into the cooking time for the muchkins, so cook the chowder on a medium heat for about 10 minutes. to reduce the stock and compound the flavours.

Sprinkle in some white pepper and pour in cream. Something like 100ml of double cream will do perfect. For folks States-side, your heavy cream will do perfectly well here.

Toss in a generous amount of chopped dill and cook on for another 10 minutes.

The muchkins should now be cooked. If they need a little longer, just turn down the heat on the chowder to its lowest while the munchkins get a few more minutes.

Serve

Ready? Plating is straightforward: munchkin bottom in a bowl, chowder ladled over. Lid on. Serve.

Impression

I've not had munchkins before. Truth be told, I've only eaten pumpkin a couple of times - we don't really "do" these over here.

They were okay. Just okay. As I said at the top, I think they were probably just immature pumpkins. Depsite that, I don't think it will be something I'll try again.

You? You may love 'em ... I hope this gives a fresh idea for you.

Stuffed Squid

Breakfast ...

Last night, I swung by the supermarket to scoop up anything they had on offer. The Fishmonger had a stunning array for a Friday night, which took some time to look through.

Along with my other purchases, I bought a couple of squids. He had just the two left, one about five inches long and one about nine inches! I bought both since they were now half price and being a regular, he knocked it down by half. Both squids for £1.34!

So, one tucked away in the freezer for Monday night - I've got something planned for that one, and one happy overnight for this morning's breakfast ... and a trial run.

Constituents

Squid

Stuffing - well, pretty much anything you have to hand; for me, some leftover hot tomato sauce, some peas and sausage meat

Bed - omelette and spinach, and some mushroom slices

Squid

Squids need a bit of cleaning up ...

Pull the tentacles and head out of the body sock. Set aside.

Fish about inside to pull out all the sloppy bits and recover the pen. If you've no idea what the pen is, just pull out the plastic feather. That's the pen.

Pick away at the purple membrane that covers the squid sock. One of those blue kitchen towels is good as this job.

Rinse well under running water to clean up.

That's the sock ...

... the tentacles can be chucked, or cut off just below the eyes, the tentacles reserved and the rest discarded. There is an ink sac in that bit you've just thrown away, which is quite fun for colouring up rice and pasta ... which we don't eat anyway. Just sayin'.

Stuffing

Stuff with whatever you like or have to hand.

I went with some leftover hot tomato sauce from last night's Albondingas padded out with some sausage meat and a few peas.

Stuff the squid sock to about two thirds full. Any more and it's start foaming out as you cook - no big deal, but easy just not to over stuff.

Secure the end with a cocktail stick.

Heat up a skillet and then turn the heat down a little. Melt some of your favourite paleo fat - here, I used coconut oil.

Notice the fins? That gives you three natural sides to cook the fish on. My squid was about five inches long which needs a turn about every two to three minutes. It'll take about 10 minutes to cook through, smaller ones less time.

Stuffed squid ...

Bed

Once cooked, the squid will want to sit on something ...

I went with a thin omelette and spinach, some mushroom slices to soak up the remaining coconut oil.

While the squid is cooking, wilt some spinach in a little butter and a light shower of white pepper.

Japanese omelettes are thin and quick to make. One egg, well beaten with a teaspoon of water. Heat up a skillet with a little butter and pour in the mixture. Swirl around until its all set and cook it off just enough for the top side to cook through ... just. Roll up and slice.

Soak up the last of the cooking fats into a few mushroom slices.

Lay these on a place side by side with the mushrooms over.

Tentacles

Once the squid is cooked, remove and settle onto the omelette and spinach.

... and tentacles.

Drop the tentacles into the hot pan and let them dance for about a minute before plating alongside the squid.

C'est tout ...

Yoghurt Marinated Salmon with Hot & Cold Cabbage

Marinating is a great technique for softening meat and fish, be it lemon juice, lime juice, vinegar or yoghurt.

Today, I'm using yoghurt ... or rather yesterday, I used yoghurt ... Greek yoghurt and lemon juice.

So, back up a day ...

Ingredients

Salmon.

Marinade - Greek yoghurt, celery salt, black pepper, turmeric, ground coriander, fenugreek, asafoetida and lemon juice.

Marinated Salmon

For two, put five or six generous tablespoons of Greek yoghurt into a bowl and add in the spices. As a rough guide, half a teaspoon of each will do admirably.

Cube up your fish - salmon, here and drop into the bowl. Stir well.

Settle into the fridge overnight.

Today ...

Ingredients

White and red cabbage, butter.

Cucumber, mooli, tomato and beetroot.

Red wine vinegar.

Butternut squash, goose fat and mustard seeds.

Dill.

Butternut Squash

Bulk. Take some cubes of butternut squash and par-boil them. You just want to take the rawness off since we'll be frying this off later on.

Hot & Cold Cabbage

Conceptually, this is fried white cabbage into which cold white ingredients are added - cucumber, daikon and dill; marinated cold red cabbage into which warmed red ingredients are added - beetroot and tomato.

Shred some red cabbage and marinate in a bowl with some red wine vinegar.

Grate some beetroot and slice through a tomato. Set aside - we'll warm this through later and add to the cold red cabbage.

Shred some white cabbage and cook it through on a low heat in a skillet with goose fat.

Slice some cucumber and mooli (you might know this as daikon) into matchsticks. Set aside with some chopped dill - we'll add this to the warm white cabbage later.

Got it?

Salmon

Fire up your Tandoor!

No, I don't have one either so my grill will have to do - get it heated up to about 225C.

Lay the salmon pieces on a piece of kitchen foil and place them under the grill. Grill? Broiler/Salamander ... overhead heat source. If you're using a grill over coals, sit the pieces of salmon onto the bars.

Give the fish about 10 minutes and then turn the pieces over. They will cook through, catch some of the heat and darken up some of the yoghurt - this is all good.

Meanwhile ...

Take a second skillet, melt some of your favourite paleo fat (goose fat, for me), add in some black mustard seeds and fry off the squash cubes - keep them moving so they don't catch, but do colour them up.

Your white cabbage will be cooked through by this point, so put that into a bowl and combine with your cucumber, mooli and dill.

Return that skillet to the heat to cook the beetroot and tomato through. Use a little fat if need be.

Drain off the red cabbage and add the hot beetroot and tomato to it. Combine.

Serve

Plate up the cabbage as a base, white on one side, red on the other over which the salmon pieces can be scattered, squash cubes intermingled.

Garnish with dill.

Hot, cold, several types of sour, subtle sweetness from the beetroot and sharpness from the daikon.

Full flavours!

Fish Provençale

Provençale? Yup! Inspired by the French Mediterranean province, I cooked up a dish of vegetables over which we had a piece of white fish and a Sauce Vierge, a light, Mediterranean sauce of olive oil and tomato.

Constituents

Fish - any white fish will do. We had coley, but cod, haddock, pollock or halibut would do equally well. Good thick fillets of sea bass would be very nice. Butter for pan frying.

Veggies - a mix of courgette, peppers, onion, garlic, olives, olive oil, black pepper and sea salt should do fine. Add in some squash or root veggies if you like; I did. No need for tomato - it's in the sauce. Herbs? Dried oregano or marjoram is perfect.

Sauce - tomato, garlic, shallot, olive oil, black pepper and sea salt.

Veggies

Oven on. Set to 180C.

For two, chop up a medium onion, courgette, pepper (bell pepper or capsicum, depending upon your proclivities), stick of celery and some squash pieces.

Toss into an roasting tray and slosh a load of olive oil over, freshly milled black pepper, sea salt and a little oregano or marjoram, or both. Mix well.

Later, we'll toss in a handful of black olives, but for now settle into the oven for about 30 minutes.

Sauce

Meanwhile, make up the sauce ...

Sauce Vierge is a simple sauce of chopped tomato, olive oil, lemon juice and basil.

Sauce Vierge

Naturally, I did it a little differently using dill in place of basil, a flavour I love with coley, and the addition of pickled garlic and minced spring onion. Typically, shallot would be used, fresh garlic and sometimes capers are added - I left out the capers.

Tomatoes should be skinned and seeded, so slash an X into each tomato and plunge into boiling water for about a minute. Retrieve and drop into iced water.

Skin, quarter and de-seed. Chop fine.

Mince the white part of a spring onion, finely slice some garlic; pickled if you have it for less bite, and chop up some dill.

Mix together in a bowl with a generous amount of olive oil and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Pinch of sea salt.

Sauce Vierge can be served cold or hot. Either way, let the sauce sit for a short while to permit the lemon juice to macerate the sharp ingredients. Warm through in a frying pan if you like.

I wanted a chilled sauce over, so put the bowl of sauce in the fridge.

Fish

Prepare your fish by scaling, gutting and cleaning.

Fillet up and select a couple of good, thick fillets for this dish, pinch gently and slash the skin a few times.

When the veggies look just about done, toss in a handful of black olives.

Take a heavy based frying pan or skillet, melt some butter and place the fillets in skin side down.

Let the fish sit there for three to five minutes. Do not be tempted to move them about. When the flesh starts to turn opaque and a gentle shove of the pan proved the fillets not to be stuck, flip them over and lower the heat allowing the residual heat in the pan to do the majority of the cooking on the softer flesh side.

Serve

Spoon the veggies out onto a plate. Optionally, dress the plate with a few leaves: spinach and rocket is good.

Lay the fish over, skin side up for presentation and spoon the Sauce Vierge over.

Sprats & Scrambled Eggs

Breakfast. Sprats.

Sprats, Latin Sprattus, a distinct genus within the same family as sardine and herring. These sprats are from the Baltic. Needless to say they are similarly oily and loaded with good omega-3. Highly anti-inflammatory, they make perfect partners with a light leafy salad and great bedfellows to a good, starchy hash.

Sprats

Eat them whole. Heads, tails, guts, the lot. Eat them whole.

If you're at all queasy about heads, cut them off. Actually, from there you can gut the fish by squeezing the belly up to where the head was. The guts will come out. Wash and you're done.

Otherwise, just make a small incision behind the gills and squeeze the belly up to the head to draw the guts.

Or, leave them in ... it's all good flavour!

You can pan-fry sprats or you can grill them. I prefer the grill. You say tomato, I say tomato. I'm British, and a grill for me is an overhead heat source: broiler, salamander.

Pan frying can be quite violent, leaving your sprats broken up and the fats over-cooked. Grill 'em. Lay your sprats out on a piece of kitchen foil and place under the grill on high. Two or three minutes each side is perfect.

Plate 'em up.

Scrambled Eggs

Scrambled eggs takes almost no time.

For one, two to three eggs is good. I get huge eggs from the chickens just up there on the corner, so used two. I'd use three otherwise.

Crack them into a bowl and muddle with a fork. Muddle, not whisk - trust me, it gives a really nice texture at the end.

Warm up a skillet with some butter and pour in the eggs.

Fold gently a few times, removing from the heat to use the residual to gently cook through as you fold the uncooked egg towards the base of the pan.

Done? Great!

Plate up ...

Splash of your favourite spicy condiment over the sprats and get stuck in. I went with Tabasco.

Swordfish & Spelt Risotto

Spelt? SPELT? Isn't that a grain?

Yes, it is ... it's an experiment.

At the very fringe of ancestral eating is the mesolithic, where grains were just starting to come into the human diet. We know full well just how actively dangerous to human health the consumption of wheat is, but some folks amongst our community do experiment with ancient grains.

Amaranth, Buckwheat, Millet, Quinoa, Kamut, Teff and Spelt seem the popular ones.

What is interesting here is that spelt is biologically related to wheat, yet people with quite visible intolerances to wheat do seem able to eat spelt. My own wheat intolerance manifests itself as nuclear heartburn within about an hour of eating.

Why? I'm curious ... that's all. I don't have any burning desire to eat this stuff regularly to work it into my regular routines. I saw a packet and thought, "why not?".

Pairing with swordfish was not deliberate either ... I simply had some swordfish that wanted eating that evening and I wanted to try out the spelt. I put some purple sprouting broccoli alongside.

To be fair, it worked ...

Ingredients

Swordfish.

Spelt, Bouillon and parsley.

Purple sprouting broccoli.

Spelt

Spelt takes about halt an hour to cook through properly. Treat it like a risotto that you don't need to stir and you shouldn't go wrong.

Maybe a cup per person and half a pint of water each, lid on, bring to the boil and lower to a simmer. Bouillon to taste - that's the mirepoix flavour.

Fish & Veg

After 15 minutes, pop the tenderstem broccoli over the spelt in a steamer pan.

Fire up your griddle and lay the fish on.

Serve

With everything cooked through, place the broccoli on the side, a good helping of spelt in the middle garnished with freshly chopped parsley and fish over to the other side.

n=1

Flavour was not at all bad - think somewhere between risotto and Bulgur Wheat or Pearl Barley and you're there. I can see myself using this again for something like a good, rustic central European stew in place of barley.

I did not get even a hint of heartburn, something which wheat would bring on within the hour ... but ... erm ... I did get wind. It passed, or rather, I passed it. No ill effects the following day.

In all, fun.