Turkey & Prawn Pilaf Stuffed Peppers

Stuffed peppers should not be overly wet on the inside, so try to keep "wet" ingredients to a minimum.

Pilaf is a Middle Eastern, Turkish, Persian, Uzbek, even North African dish of rice cooked in a seasoned broth, a term which I'm using in the broadest of sense since the rice will be cooked in broth, but inside a stuffed pepper.

You can stuff your peppers with anything you like, but here, I went with: minced turkey, prawns and cauliflower rice.

In a skillet, brown off the mince.

Meanwhile, steam some cauliflower and add to the skillet, crushing gently as you go and expelling as much liquid as you can.

Add some spice: ground coriander, perhaps some chilli powder, a little sea salt and some black pepper.

When the mixture is good and dry, simply lop the tops off a few peppers and stuff them up.

Place the peppers into an ovenproof dish (no lid), slip the tops back on the peppers and now pour in some bone broth. Stock will do if you don't have broth.

Into the oven at, say, 170C (350F?) for maybe 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, by which time the broth is reduced and the peppers good and soft.

Serve out into a wide brimmed bowl, slicing the peppers open and pouring more broth over.

Crab Senza Linguine

Prior to ancestral eating, my Crab Linguine was one of my wife's favourite dishes; a simple preparation of crab, chillies and lime over linguine.

Ancestral eating has knocked traditional linguine out and while I could use a rice-based replacement, a perfectly good and actually nutritious replacement can be found in juliennes of courgette or carrot ... but ... I think I've found a perfect linguine now.

Nosing around a Polski Sklep (Polish food store) near work I was reminded of something I actually found many months ago: a curious jar of what looked like noodles.

The best I could get out of the shopkeeper at the time was that it was celeriac. Upon translating the ingredients, it was, indeed celeriac, in salt, vinegar and sugar.  No drama - simply soak in water for an hour and we're good to go ...

Ingredients

Vegetable Noodles - Juliennes, spiralized or bottled
Crab Meat - Fresh or canned
Flavours - Fish sauce, spring onions, garlic powder, coriander & chillies
Fat - Coconut oil

How much? Well, one crab each or, say, 170g of meat per person. Noodles to suit your appetite, chilli and fish sauce to suit your taste, garnish as appropriate.

Method

Heat the coconut oil in a decent sized skillet, one which you can toss happily.

Add in the crab meat, your vegetable noodles (drained, if bottle preserved), chopped spring onions, chopped chillies, a touch of garlic powder and toss through.

Flavour with a dash of fish sauce. If using canned crab meat preserved in brine, skip the fish sauce.

Heat through and add a generous amount of chopped coriander, folded through.

Serve

Serve, lifting out with a couple of forks into bowls, gaining air and height. Garnished with more fresh coriander and perhaps a grind of freshly milled black pepper.

We had an Insalata di Caprese and a boiled egg alongside.

Zuppa di Pesce [Fish Hunter's Stew]

Fish Hunter, rather than Fisherman, since I didn't partake of any of the actual fishing, just hunting down the bargains at my local supermarket ...

I came away with some monkfish, cod, scallops and mussels.

At the time I had no idea what I was going to do with this lot, thinking most likely a succession of meals, but when I got home, I thought, "why not just bung it all into a pan with some tomato?".

... and so, that's what I did.

Ingredients

I decided to call this Zuppa di Pesce since it is in that tradition of simple Italian stews made the whole country over from whatever was left from selling off the day's catch married with simple local ingredients.

I did not shop for the ingredients ...

Again, in the same tradition, I used what I had.

You'll need ...

Fish - whatever you have, can find, can catch or can swipe from the cat
Sauce - Onion and tomato, that's a must ... any bulk you like, marrow, for me
Flavours - Garlic, fennel, tarragon, parsley, basil, black pepper and sea salt
Fat - Olive oil

Method

First, make up the sauce.

Chop onion and in a large skillet get it softening in a good glug of olive oil. Don't concern yourself about the oil oxidising, just keep it on a lower than boiling heat.

To the onion, add some shredded fennel and a sprig of tarragon.

Add in some chopped garlic, a little sea salt and some black pepper.

More herbs, so parsley for depth and some basil, shredded for aromatics.

Now, in with the fish ...

Cube up your larger, white fish and push into the sauce. It will now cook through.

You could push in your shellfish, put the lid on and serve just like that, but I cooked my scallops and mussels alongside, adding in at the last minute.

Scallops just want colouring up in butter, mussels de-bearded, washed and simply steamed open in a little white wine.

Serve

Combine the lot in your skillet, take to the table and serve.

How awesome is that? ... and who needs pasta?