Mushroom Baked Basa Fillets over Spring Colcannon

If you like butter, this one is for you!

First, a spin around the ingredients: White fish (Basa fillets, here), spring greens (or curly cale, green cabbage, that sort of veggie), potatoes (Jersey Royals, here), butter, some more butter, yet more butter, cream, mushrooms, sea salt and black pepper.

Colcannon is a recipe you already know how to cook because it comes with a thousand names: Bubble & Squeak, Hash, Stoemp, Stampot, Bikesmad, Pyttipanna, even Rumbledethumps.

It's a green veg with potato. I celebrated the end of seasonal veggies with some spring greens and Jersey Royal potatoes. Regular white potatoes will do, as will curly kale, green cabbage, even spinach at a push.

Naturally, if you don't "do" potatoes, mashed cauli might work, but I'm more inclined to think a mix of celeriac and perhaps some daikon, mashed, would do the trick.

Let's get on with it ...

Oven on at 180C (350F?) and get it warming through while you prepare the fish parcels.

I went with Basa, although most white fish will do perfectly well here. Haddock works better than cod when it comes to mushrooms, and smoked haddock particularly. Halibut would be lovely. I had basa.

Take a couple of fillets and place one on a sheet of kitchen foil or baking paper. Place a good wedge of butter on and the other fillet on top. This will meld with the juices to make an instant sauce, which we'll make extra special with some cream at the end. Just a touch of sea salt, then some slices mushroom over and some black pepper.

Seal up and pop the parcels into the over. They'll want 30 minutes.

Prepare your veggies and get the potatoes, or roots, on and boiling. Place the greens over the top in a steamer pan. It doesn't matter if these are ready after even 15 minutes; it'll keep warm and there's a little after-prep to do.

Once soft, drain and mash the potato (or roots), adding in a good helping of butter - the wetter the better, but not overly so. In with some shredded spring onions or leek. In with the greens. Stir together. More butter if necessary ...

Set aside and wait for the fish.

Once cooked, retrieve the fish from the oven and pour of the juices into a frying pan along with the mushrooms.

Serve out the colcannon with the fish fillets over the top.

Meanwhile, you'll want to bring the juices to the boil and pour in some cream, continuing the boil to reduce. This will only take a couple of minutes and warm the main dish through handsomely once poured over.

Pour over the fish and garnish with some superfluous greenage: pea shoots, here.

My Mrs has put this up there in the Top 10 of "dishes to definitely do again". I will.

John Dory with Spinach Colcannon [St Patrick's Day]

Happy St Patrick's Day!

What better way to start the day than with a bottle of Guinness. No, really ... Foreign Extra, no less!

Better have some food with that, eh?

Okay, remember yesterday? I made some potato croutons for my Loch Trout dish and had some trimmings leftover.

I diced those potato pieces into small, perhaps half centimetre cubes and started to cook them through and colour up in goose fat.

Meanwhile, I turned my attention to the John Dory ...

John Dory, also known as St Peter's Fish, has a cool method of capturing its prey - it shoots its mouth out and withdraws the catch. You can play about with the mouth and weird out your Mrs if you like, or just get on with it.

John Dory is a squat fish, half of it head. It also has a row of spines/spikes all around it and several more on top.

My filleting method is to cut around the fish, removing all the spikes and spines, and the head. I'm left then with just a bit of gut which can easily be pulled out and cleaned up. The fillets removed by simply sliding the tip of the knife into the fish along the bone until the middle is reached. That's one side. Next, do the same from the other side. Flip and repeat. Two fillets.

With the potatoes now cooked through and colouring up well, I added some spinach, spring onions and garlic. Colcannon is usually made from mashed potato and cabbage, but it is a dish which comes in many forms and with many names the world over: Bubble & Squeak, Stampot, Pyttipanna, Hash, the list goes on.

Serve out, fry an egg and in the still hot pan, warm the John Dory through. Not too much; this is a fish that is great just warmed.

Complete the plate with some superfluous greens, wasabi greens in my case, and a little bowl of pickled beetroot alongside.

Sláinte!

Irish Soda Farls

Farls? Yes, bread!

BREAD?

I know I have said before that there are some foods which are just more authentic when eaten with bread but my reason for making this up is actually for reasons of fusion.

Good excuse, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

Why? Really why? Well, I cooked a fantastic brisket of beef on Sunday and predictably cooked way too much which is always welcome for cos lettuce and pulled beef wraps for lunch, but the left over gravy and uneaten beef on the plate was too much for me to throw away. I cannot abide waste.

Setting aside into a pan and adding in a half teaspoon each of cumin, coriander and chilli powder and a sprinkling of risotto rice, that'll do for a Beef Mulligatawny Soup for dinner on Monday night.

Many soups are accompanied by a starches - taking inspiration from those hot African soups, where a fufu ball is dropped into the middle, I did consider just that. Likewise, thinking of thick paratha or roti breads eaten alongside curry, I combined the two and came up Irish!

Yes, my mind works in mysterious ways ...

Soda Farls are potato breads. Combining potato with flour is about all there is to it. Potato is the starch and flour the filler. We can't use wheat flour, but we can use something like sorghum.

Sorghum is actually a pseudo-grain, so not a grain at all, and the flour is not at all glutenous, so you're not going to get the same texture as wheat flour dough. It will form a firm texture. Sorghum flour is used extensively on the Indian sub-continent where it is known as Juwar Flour.

Take one large potato, peel and boil. Mash and set aside to cool. This will weigh in at something like 8oz and perfect.

In a mixing bowl, rub 1oz or butter into 3oz of sorghum flour. Add a heaped teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt, a handful of chopped spring onions or leek and then the mashed potato and a couple of tablespoons of double cream. Most recipes will say milk, but cream is so much better.

Combine into a dough and roll out gently to make a half inch thick bread. Transfer to an ovenproof plate or dish and score lines across the diameter of the bread, not all the way through, but sufficient to divide up easily after cooking.

Bake in a pre-heated oven set to 200C for 30 minutes.

Serve out with butter lathered all over! The bread, not you, although that might be fun ... Valentine's Day tomorrow :)

Irish Stew

Traditional Irish - a simple stew of lamb or mutton, onion, potato, carrot and parsley.

It was the Celtic invasion of Ireland that brought the cooking pot which, along with the already established spit, became the dominant cooking vessel.

For purity - both historically and conventional paleo, discount the potato; potatoes were introduced to Ireland in the Sixteenth Century.

Brown off several pieces of lamb or mutton and place into a casserole dish.

Soften some roughly chopped onion in the same frying pan and toss into the casserole dish.

Peel and quarter some potatoes. Peel and cut some carrot into similar sized chunks. Add to the casserole dish.

Chop a good bunch of parsley. Add to the casserole dish.

For purity, top up with water.

For flavour, top up with some bouillon and a couple of teaspoons of arrowroot to thicken the stew.

Bouillon is a broth made from a simmering of mirepoix, bouquet garni and some bones. You can look up mirepoix and bouquet garni but here's a cheat - you can buy powered bouillion which only needs a generous tablespoon in a litre of water. If you wanted to make up your own, it's onion, celery and carrots (the mirepoix), thyme, bay and sage tied together (the bouquet garni), some bones and water - simmer for a few hours to extract all the flavour, freeze excess as appropriate.

Bouillon can also be purchased in powdered form.

Cook for 2-3 hours in an oven set to 180C by which time the lamb should be tender.

Optionally accompany with cabbage.

Perfect for St Patrick's Day! Consume with several glasses of Guinness ... Sláinte!