A Fish called Wonder

Are you one of those people constantly wondering which would be the best way to manage your recipes? I definitely am. And it gets worse than that – as much as I enjoy the advanced search and tagging functions of most electronic applications, there is nothing as nostalgic as a handwritten cookbook, enriched with all kinds of personal comments, including what was eaten when and in which context.

I abandoned this blog some months ago, partly due to this reason; but hand-written recipes don’t really satisfy me either, so I’m back. And I handed in my dissertation last week and have returned to live with Buzz, which means a (slightly) larger and clearly better equipped kitchen.

I’ll start with a dish we made over the course of summer, when the days were long and hot and light, fresh food was all I could take.

 

Trout with Ginger, Lime and Coriander

2 trouts
3 limes
1 bit of ginger (appr. 5 cm)
60 g sugar
bunch of fresh coriander

Pre-heat oven to 180°C.

Finely slice the ginger (juliennes) and two of the limes. Squeeze the third lime and cut juliennes from its zest. Clean the trout and pat dry (inside and outside). Fill with lime slices and most of the ginger juliennes. Place on a slightly oiled aluminium foil, close and bake 20-30 minutes until the fish can be easily picked to pieces with a fork.

Meanwhile, make the syrup. Mix the sugar and the lime juice (should be 60 ml) with 250 ml water and bring to a boil. Cook for 10 minutes on reduced heat until the sauce turns syrupy. Add the lime zest and the rest of the ginger juliennes.

Place the trout on plates and garnish with the coriander. Serve with the syrup, and preferably some vegetables and either rice or potatoes.

 
Notes:

We absolutely loved this dish. Its easy to make, extremely low-fat, and super-delicious. You’ll need a really fresh fish from the market or the fish monger, though. Not sure whether we’ll be able to get that once both of us are working full-time (shops around here close at 6 – just imagine!).

One thing was completely unnecessary, though: the syrup. The trout had already produced a lot of juice which was sufficient for the whole meal, and why add sugar and so much sweetness to a dish that doesn’t need it?

Serves 2; adapted from The Essential Seafood Cookbook.

Catfish with a Lime-Crust, Flambéed Grapes

Last week Thursday it was my turn again with cooking, and I was far too late again; at 6 o’clock Buzz would come home, having had an extra difficult day because of application talks, and at 5 o’clock I still hadn’t had the faintest clue of what to do, nor the ingredients I would probably need.

I quickly reached out for Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food – if there was anything I needed now it was exactly that. I opted for fish, because we hadn’t had any fish all week, and I was delighted to find a recipe that wouldn’t require me to go to the fish monger and wouldn’t need any special ingredients either. For dessert, we were about to repeat Valentine day’s Flambéed apples when we decided to try it with any other fruit we had in house – grapes in our case. And to my great surprise, it worked!

 

Catfish with a Lime-Crust

4 large trout fillets (or other white fish)
2 tbsp. fresh breadcrumbs
(2-)3 limes
4 tbsp. fresh mixed herbs (parsley, dill, tarragon)
25 g butter
salt (and pepper)

Preheat the oven to 200°C (I always forget that if I don’t mention it in the very beginning).

Grind or grate an old bread roll for the bread crumbs, if possible. Grate two of the limes and add the zest to the bread. Finely chop the herbs and add them as well, then place on a flat plate.

Melt the butter in a pan and add the juice of 1-2 of the limes. Press one side of the fish fillets firmly onto the herbs so that they will stick, then place them on a baking sheet, herb-side up, I suppose, and spoon over the butter and lime.

Bake until the fish is done (should be 6 min for trout but can be longer!), and serve. Nigel Slater chose crispy green beans for accompaniment, I opted for broccoli. Go for some Caribbean vegetable accompaniment to make it a bit more special and get that summer feeling.

 
Notes:

Because I couldn’t find trout, I bought two filets of Catfish (Pangasius) instead, a fish that, as I found out, needed more cooking time than a trout (which might be down to the fact that catfish fillets are larger, apparently…). Also, I didn’t really manage to get a crust, I probably used too much butter and/or lime juice (I never measure those things precisely; I must have used less lime juice anyway because I only had two in place of the required three), as the crust was too soggy to be crispy. So, next time I’ll definitely reduce the amounts of liquids.

Be careful not to use too much parsley, as the taste of parsley is far stronger than that of dill, and beware of the intensity of the lime juice as well.

Serves 2; adapted from Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food.

 

Flambéed Grapes

Basically, this recipe is identical to that of the Flambéed Apples, with the apples replaced by, well, grapes, and no Calvados.

a bunch of grapes
Caster sugar
some Rum
Ice Cream/ Crème Bavaroise

Pick and slice the grapes. Melt some butter in a pan, add the grapes and cook for a short while. When you think they are ready, sprinkle caster sugar on them, add the rum and ignite. Small grapes will take the shape of contact lenses, might be a nice idea for a Halloween joke later this year.

Some tips for flambeing: Some alcohols, such as certain brands rum, contain just about enough alcohol to make flambeing possible. To help the process, make sure the food you want to flambé is hot, and preheat the alcohol in a ladle above a flame before igniting.

Serve with ice cream or Crème Bavaroise (we had Speculaas-Ice cream, ice cream with bits of spicy cookies mainly eaten around Christmas and Sinterklaas, making it a typical winter dish – excellent!).

Serves 2; adapted from Hedwig M. Stuber’s Ich helf dir kochen.

Dinner with my in-laws

Dinner at my in-laws’ last Wednesday. I always enjoy going there, not only because it’s always very entertaining and pleasant, but also because my mother-in-law is a fantastic cook. And she has outdone herself once again.

As a starter we had Beetroot Soup with Pumpkin and Horseradish Cream. It was supposed to have been beetroot soup, but in the last minute she discovered that it wasn’t going to be enough for the four of us and added some pumpkin – a daring step, I think, but it gave a very interesting taste. The main dish was Steak with Aubergine and Coriander, followed by Apple Bread Pudding. I only have recipes of the latter two, so I will only post those.

 

Steak with Aubergine and Coriander

3 aubergines
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 lime
1 cm fresh ginger
2 shallots
2 red peppers, deseeded and sliced
coriander

1 steak pp.

Cut the aubergine into long thin slices. Sprinkle them with salt, place them in a sieve and place a heavy object on them so that as much water as possible will be squeezed out.

Place the coriander seeds in a dry pan and roast them until they begin to smell. Wash the lime, grate its zest and squeeze the lime. Grind the coriander seeds, lime zest and juice, ginger, shallots and red peppers until they form a smooth paste.

Pat the aubergines dry. Fry them for 6-8 minutes in some oil, then add the paste and 100 ml water, cover and cook for another 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Brush the steaks with oil. Heat a grill pan and grill the steaks for 1-2 minutes on each side until they are done but remain pink on the inside. Serve with the vegetables and sprinkle with coriander leaves.

Serves 4; a recipe from the local supermarket.

 

Apple Bread Pudding

bread
cinnamon
butter
apples

Butter some stale bread (e.g. baguette), sprinkle with cinnamon and roast in the oven until it is dry and crispy (but not too crispy, you will want to be able to bake it a second time), then cut into small cubes. Cut some apples into slices and cook until they fall apart. Keeping some of the bread cubes apart, mix the apple mixture with the bread cubes in a oven-save dish. Place the rest of the cubes on top, and roast for another 10-15 minutes.

Serves how many you wish; a family recipe.