Roasted plaice fillets with a parmesan crust

 

Tonight you are witness to a first, a record in culinary feats, an event never recorded in history, for tonight, I cooked fish for the 2nd time in 6 days!!

Yes, tonight I cooked Roasted plaice fillets with a parmesan crust, courtesy of Delia and Book 2.

Delicious it was too! And a different taste/texture sensation in the fish department…todays fish was tender, succulent and, forgive me if I’m a bit naive, it reminded me of blancmange! Sort of jelly-like! (Does that mean it was under cooked?)

It was certainly not ‘meaty’ like the salmon. I really surprised myself and ate most of the skin too….unheard of! Quite frankly, I didn’t know I was at the time! The crunchy, cheesy topping was a good contrast to the soft texture of the fish and the sharp lemon. Enjoyed it with brocolli and pine nuts again…my favourite!

Super!

Now, please help me if you will….would you like me to include a full run down of ingredients, top tips and instructions (ie.the recipe) on these culinary explorations or are you quite happy with my enthusings, without the detail? I will happily oblige if you want the full monty!

Answers on a post card….or in the comments section, if you prefer!

 

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New Theme and Feedburner problems

 

I seem to be having a merry old time changing the themes of all my blogs.

Blog de la Bouffe is no exception!

A reader wrote that the black background and small font was not easy to read at times. I definately don’t want to make things difficult for my visitors and so thought I would have a change here too! I already had suspicions myself.

I hope you are comfortable with the changes, any feed back is gratefully received.

Oh, while we’re at it, I have also had a few problems with the Feedburner email subscription service. It has not been possible to enter the ’secret’ letters in the anti-scam thing (why can I never remember what it’s called?). Having been in contact with Feedburner, they tell me that AOL users and Norton Antivirus enabled users are being blocked. It would appear that there is no remedy for this at the moment…many apologies.

The only way around it, that I can see, is to go for the RSS feed instead!  That, at least, seems to be fine. It’s odd, because this is not the case with my other blog feeds…..not being a techy person, it’s all a bit mind boggling!

 

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Tortilla (Spanish Omelette)

 

Delia Smith was my inspiration today. I must admit, I have never been a real fan of hers….I have always found her sort of prudish and well, boring!

Sorry!

But my sister has been a follower for years and after a trip to her place this weekend, I managed to pinch the complete set of the Delia’s How To Cook trilogy. It has made very good reading; now that I am a fully fledged convert, an evangelical maestro of the kitchen!

Tonight, I randomly opened a page of book one, (which has a lot to do with eggs, and apparantly caused a bit of a stir back in the 90’s when it was first published) and found Tortilla (Spanish Omelette). Looked easy enough and quite tasty to boot!

I couldn’t find Desiree potatoes, so made do with some little new potatoes instead. I did what she said, turned up the heat, then turned it down, measured the base of the omelette pan, ‘combined’ the eggs, without over doing it, left it gently cooking. I did come a cropper when I had to invert it on a plate and put it back in the pan…..it just sort of disintegrated really! But I got there in the end!

It was really tasty, cheap and cheerful and perfect with a crunchy Cos salad and a glass of Rioja!

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True Colours

In my post Distortion, I was talking about the difficult dilemma faced by parents in the quest to raise healthy, well-adjusted children and in particular, daughters.

In the comment section Matt C mentioned the Dove commercial that explores our daughters’ and their self-esteem. I personally find it really moving.

Take a look here…

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Pan roasted salmon with purple sprouting broccoli and anchovy-rosemary sauce

Ok, I know, we should all eat more fish….2 to 3 times per week apparantly.

Who are they trying to kid?! I don’t remember eating much fish whilst growing up…fish and chips being the exception.

Even now Mum will turn her nose up at fish, with the usual…’Too many bones’ remark. And as the food provider in our house, for the most-part,  I would conclude that fish was never a staple of my diet.

And so it remains! I know it sounds stupid but fish is too damned fishy! It just tastes too fishy and why eat cod, for example, because it doesn’t taste fishy? May as well eat meat or cardboard or white chocolate! And it’s true, there are too many bones…. 

So tonights journey into the above recipe…(I can’t be bothered to type it again!) was different, yeah, unusual, yeah, novel, roight …to quote Kath and Kim. In fact 3 times a week…I’m closer to 3 times per year! 

It was very nearly a disaster too, which would have been a travesty, to say the least. For one, I don’t want to break my record, 3 recipes, 3 successes and two, if this hadn’t worked I may never have attempted a fishy dish again!

Problem number one….make a rosemary and anchovy sauce in the pestle and mortar…whoops! Pestle and morter is now in France, 400 miles away. I never used it, which is why it is where it is! I did manage to cobble it together using the Moulinex and the back of a wooden spoon though.

Then I took the salmon out of the oven too early and it was a bit under cooked! I know you can eat raw fish, the Japanese seem to thrive on it, but a combination of raw and cooked? I wasn’t sure, so whacked it back in the oven for a while. I put the purple sprouting broccoli back in too, which meant that the lemon in the sauce intensified.

And there we go, it was actually really rather lovely in the end. I still have no idea if Yvonne pinboned it, there were certainly no bones in it. It tasted of lovely salmon, not too fishy! It was a really ‘meaty’ fish that I wasn’t too nervous to sink my teeth into. The rosemary and anchovies and lemon were super….d’you know, if Keith Flyod were to read this he would be very worried by now! 

Final comment 4 successes out of 4! I will be entertaining soon, soirees and dinner parties, I can see it now!!

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Jamie Oliver doesn’t know what he’s talking about!

 I went to Sainsburys yesterday to get my little piece of fish for my next recipe.

I found what I wanted at the fishmonger department…a piece of organic, un-dyed salmon from the wilds of an intensively farmed loch, somewhere off the Isles of Harris.

Yvonne, the fishmonger on duty was very helpful, and proved great at offering and cutting the right sized piece of fish.

I then asked her if she could ‘pinbone’ it for me. I explained that this is what Jamie Oliver had recommended. Yvonne, suitably unimpressed turned to me and said, ‘Jamie Oliver, he don’t know what he’s talking about!’ 

Of course…… that’s why Yvonne is fishmonger at Sainsburys on the basic wage and Jamie Oliver is a multi-millionaire….. it’s all perfectly clear!

What’s not clear is whether Yvonne did in fact pinbone my piece of fish, I forgot to check. I will no doubt find out later tonight….

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More pancakes…

I liked this when I saw it way back when…..

Great music too…

(Check-out the dodgy wall socket!)

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Shrove Tuesday

That means Pancake Day in our house. And pancakes we had…..for breakfast and tea. We like pancakes….can you tell?! 

I am getting better now with Shrove Tuesday, I have been known to be a week early or a week late. This year I was spot on!

Years ago my Mother-in-Law got me a pancake pan, it’s on it’s last legs now, all the non-stick is coming off. But the reason why I like it so much is that the recipe for the pancake mix is on the bottom. Great! I am hopeless at remembering basics, like pancake mix!

Here are the basics:

• 2 eggs
• 4oz flour
• 8oz milk

So easy to remember too! The 2,4,8 ratio. Mind you, I often double up, as we really, really like pancakes in our house, and the 2,4,8 mix is just not enough!

I do cheat though…instead of using white flour, I mix in half wholemeal flour and half oatmeal, so my pancakes resemble Staffordshire oatcakes, a bit ‘meatier’, but more nutritious and healthy. The kids love ‘em!

The first time I tried to make pancakes was an unmitigated disaster. It took me a week of pancakery to get it right. ‘Pancakes are so easy to make,’ I thought to myself, ‘ I am not going to be beaten’…. I now know that I need to have the pan sizzling hot, if I don’t want a lumpy, soggy, mushy mess. I also make the mixture the night before and leave it on top to fester. I have the oven on really low and throw them in there as they are made.

We then make our way to the table, (which has usually been expertly made by Diddy….no need to ask twice when it’s pancakes!) and then the fun begins. The Fillings!

• Lemon and sugar…the traditional method…Diddy’s favourite one!
• Mapel Syrup
• Mapel Syrup and squirty cream…The Boys top choice!
• Blueberries and mango…my fave!
• Mashed banana and mascarpone cheese…(left over from the risotto the other day!)
• Plain squirty cream
• Sugar and nutmeg
• Chocolate sauce
• Golden syrup
• Grated cheese…not the most popular

We like to roll ours up into cigar shapes, cut them into Thomas Tank, Annie and Clarabelle shapes and pop ‘em in our mouths…..

…Toot, Toot!…

 

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6 Golden Rules for kids healthy eating

 Not that I am obsessed with my kids and their eating habits, but here is another article for your reading pleasure…

This time it deals with healthy eating for children….6 Golden Rules.

A quick synopsis:

Rule 1: Make every bite count…

Rule 2: Ban the word ‘dessert’

Rule 3: Be persistent, not insistent

Rule 4: Break rules our parents taught us

Rule 5: Everyone needs breakfast

Rule 6: Learn from your child

 Have a read, see what you think.

I seem to know the thoery quite well now, but am struggling to put it all into practise! We have done sticker charts, little treats/toys, bribery and cajoling, I have tried very hard to not make a fuss, to shout and rave and ignore the behaviour. But nothing seems to work! The Boy is still really picky and quite honestly, sometimes I just do not have the energy to ‘persist’!

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Schnitzel with watercress and spiced apple sauce

 Apparantly, according to Jamie, it is possible to do a schnitzel with chicken, pork or veal. Probably due to the apple sauce, it is recommended to use pork, which I did.

I made my breadcrumbs in the blender using half a baguette left over from lunch. They came out a bit big but in the end were perfect….crispy and crunchy…lovely!

The apple sauce was easy to prepare and complimented the pork really well. The flavours of the orange and spices were really subtle and helped to give a sweet/sour flavour along with sugar.

I served it with brocolli, which I sprinkle pine nuts on…it gives a great nutty texture to the vegetables. On top of the schnitzel was the water cress and slithers of cornichon…not something I would normally buy or eat, but they were lovely…

So another Jamie Oliver success…ok, I know I’m doing the easy recipes but they have all been edible, straight forward and encouraging.

For my next attempt, I may go for a fishy dish! Now there’s ambition!

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