Catch of the day

Not today. Or yesterday. Or even the day before. But a catch none the less. A carrier bag full of little fishies, caught on the calm Balearic waters off the island of Ibiza, and cooked up for (an admittedly fairly modest) dinner. That's what I call a stag do.

Sympathy for the stuffed goose

For another seasonal guest recipe, I turn to the inspirational Philippa Davies, who despite currently living an oh-so-glamorous post-Mudchute existence, found time to put together this wonderfully characterful selection for your cooking, eating, and drinking pleasure. Take it away, Philippa...

"For those who consider food one of the major loves in their life, the festive period is a very exciting time. I, being such a person, hate to admit that my body has reached the age where it can no longer remained unscathed after days on end of banqueting, boozing and revelling, so I have had to start planning a more balanced Christmas. This is not say that I won’t have my fair share of goose fat roast potatoes or mums sherry trifle but I will be having the occasional lighter and digestible meal.

Ignoring the above, however (I did say it was about balance), firstly, I have a fun, festive cocktail to get you going!"

Clementine Margarita Cocktail

enough to make many merry
Tequila chilled in the freezer
200g White Sugar
1 bag clementines
Crushed Ice

Melt the sugar with 200ml water and leave to cool. Juice the Clementines. In a jug, add 2 parts tequila, 2 parts clementine juice, 1 part sugar syrup and stir. Taste to see if the balance is right and adjust accordingly - if you prefer sour add a squeeze of lemon juice or less sugar syrup. Serve in chilled glasses rimmed with salt or sugar and filled with crushed ice.

Baked trout with tahini sauce and greens

Serves two.

for the trout
2 small trout stuffed with parsley stalks, a pinch of ground cumin, lemon wedges, seasoned and drizzled with olive oil.
blanched winter greens like chard, cavolo nero or savoy cabbage.

for the tahini Sauce
1 large tbsp spoon Tahini
100ml Water approx
Juice of ½ Lemon
½ crushed garlic clove
1 tbsp Olive oil
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley
¼ tsp sweet paprika

In a bowl whisk 2 tablespoons tahini with the lemon juice slowly whisk in the water until you have the consistency of single cream then add the olive oil, parsley and paprika. Season.

To serve, bake the trout and serve warm with the blanched greens and tahini sauce poured all over.

An amazing fish stew

It just so happened that our dawn ride to Billingsgate Market coincided with the date that I'd arranged for Basil Snr to come over for dinner at For Those That Love to Eat HQ.

So fate decided that the meal would be pescatarian, however as we set off for Billingsgate at 5.30am, the menu was still very much up for grabs. I had thought of doing a rustic variation of fish and chips, with fresh mackerel wrapped in streaky bacon, roast in the oven in amongst wedges of potato, rosemary, and whole heads of garlic, cut in half through the centre of the cloves. To serve there would have been crushed minted peas and a home-made tartare, bursting with capers and finely chopped gerkin.

When I got to the market, however, variety got the better of me, and it seemed a shame to limit our supper to just one type of fish. And so fish stew it was to be, packed full of my sea bass, haddock and mussels.

I'd previously tried a few Basque-style fish stews, however since the fish was so fresh, there was no need to over-complicate things with unnecessary chorizo or even pernod. I opted for a recipe penned by my culinary hero, Nigel Slater.

Just as I would expect from him, his recipe - with the inclusion of a couple of un-conventional ingredients - is something of a culinary masterstroke. He starts with a base of anchovies, orange peel bay leaves and thyme, which are muddled together with garlic in lightly sizzling oil. I also added leek and fennel for texture and to complement the fresh fish flavours, but these aren't essential. Next, white wine, tomato, fish stock, and the fish only when the sauce has reduced to a splutter. Finally, the mussels are dropped in, which according to Nigel, add as much flavour in their three minutes of cooking as all the other fish put together.

The result is a bold and comforting stew that is both rich yet never heavy, with beautifully evocative scents and flavours. Alongside our starter of smoked salmon, and plenty of Dad's freshly-baked Irish soda bread, it was quite a midweek supper.

Nigel Slater's Fish Stew
Serves 4

3 cloves garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
6 anchovie fillets, drained from their oil
1 or 2 curls of orange peel
1 or two bay leaves
3 or 4 sprigs of thyme
1 large leek
1 large fennel
1 glass white wine
2 400g tins of tomato
500ml fish stock (I simply boiled the fish heads and bones in vegetable stock for 30 minutes, which worked very well)
400g assorted fish per person (I used sea bass and haddock)
24 mussels
Chopped parsley to serve
Plenty of bread to mop

Peel and finely slice the garlic and cook in a deep pan with the oil, anchovies, orange peel, bay and thyme till the garlic is golden and the anchovy has dissolved. Add the chopped leeks and sliced fennel, and cook for another 6 minutes, until the leeks are translucent.

Pour in the wine, boil rapidly for a minute or two, then add the tomatoes and the stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 20 minutes. When the sauce is thick and slushy, lower in the fish, firmest first. Then, once the fish is opaque and tender, add the mussels. Cover with a lid and cook for another 3 minutes until the mussels open. Serve in soup bowls, sprinkled with parsley, and plenty of fresh bread.

You could also include chorizo, before adding the leeks, and use fino instead of white wine for a more Iberian-inspired version.

P.s. If you're wondering why the picture has no mussels, it's because that's the left overs... We were too busy eating to take photos the first time around.

Home made smoke house

Just got back from a very nice trip to France. We stayed in the South West, somewhere between Bergerac and Bordeaux - wine country, as you can see by the vinyards...

This is the beautiful little town of Saint Emillion - home of one of the South West of France's best known varieties. I know very little about wine, which is why the info here is patchy.

Anyway, apart from the odd winery visit, and a lot of time sat about by the pool, there wasn't a huge amount to do at our French escape. There was, however, a big kitchen and a built in BBQ, so one cloudy afternoon, I decided to build a smoke house.

The basic principle is that you funnel the smoke away from the fire into a separate chamber where whatever you are smoking sits. Since the thing you are smoking isn't actually near the heat, it isn't cooked - this is called cold smoking. Perfect for me, because I wanted to smoke butter, in order to recreate the radishes we had at the first Farmyard Feast.

As you can see, I used the BBQ, with some foil wrapped around to gather more of the smoke, and a piece of hose pipe in the chimney leading to the chamber, which was made from a sealed mixing bowl (sat on top of a wine cooler). What you can't see is the funnel that I created out of more tine foil, that's wrapped around the end of the pipe that's sitting in the chimney.

Ideally the pipe would have been wider, but it still worked pretty efficiently.

Getting the fire going. The other good thing about the place we were staying was that there was a lot of fire wood, and a lot of tree bark, which is the perfect fuel for creating a lot of smoke. The fire wood also meant there was no need for charcoal, so all the food we cooked had a lovely subtle smokey flavour.
To make matters even better, there was also loads of fruit growing on the trees in the garden. Dad made a sorbet out of damsons, and I picked a load of figs, which were then cooked in the smoked butter and a bit of black current jam. These were used in a duck breast and fig salad we had as a starter.

Here's the radishes cooking away in their smoked butter. And below, being served up with bread, toasted on a roasting dish over the fire. Rustic. Next to it are the duck breasts, moments before being seared over our white hot fire wood.
After the appetisers and duck salad starter were served, it was on to mains: A mixed fish platter, and some lamb chops.
Dorado, marinading in parsley, lemon, and garlic.
On the grill.
Pretty much ready to serve. You can see the little foil parcels underneath which are directly on the coals. They contained salmon steaks, challots and fennel, with a little local rosé wine and olive oil.

And of course, some more meat. Lamb chops, marinaded in rosemary (from the garden) and garlic. Classic stuff.