Thai prawns and mushrooms

I was going to make this for dinner: Spicy Prawn Soup. I never make soup for dinner, but after my success with the last kinda-soup, I figured I may as well try another.

Of course, I chickened out at the last minute. To be fair, I'd had soup for lunch, and there's only so many semi-liquid meals a girl can consume in a day. But I'd already bought the mushrooms (all the other ingredients are storecupboard/freezer regulars for me), and, as the boy is allergic to them, they had to be consumed tonight. So I changed the soup into a stir-fry.

A warning about curry pastes before you attempt this. Heat varies between brands. I used M&S's Red Thai Curry Paste in this, because I know it's coconutty and mild (and I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on it, inauthentic as it probably is). I've tried Bart's before and it is about three times as hot. Others might be even stronger. I know I can get away with stir-frying a couple of tablespoons of this paste, with nothing added to temper the heat, and not blow my head off. I'd suggest either: a. using a brand you know well and are happy with the heat of, or b. standing ready with vast quantities of coconut milk to temper it down (and turn it into the soup I didn't want in the process).


Thai Prawn and Mushroom stir-fry

125g pack Shiitake mushrooms (this is the size Tesco's sell them in; 40g or so either way doesn't make a big difference. If you can't get hold of shiitakes, just use normal button mushrooms.)
7 or 8 raw tiger prawns (defrosted if frozen)
2 tbs Red Thai curry paste
75g dried rice noodles (or other noodles, but thin rice noodles are my favourite.)
tbs lime leaves, or zest of one lime
tbs fish sauce (nam pla)

This is basically a construction jobby, so get everything ready before you turn on the cooker. Thickly slice the mushrooms, soak or cook your noodles according to the pack instructions (and drain them), and get everything around the hob in easy reach. You could even put things in little bowls if you want to look like you're on the tv.

Once that's done, stick some oil in a wok, and, once hot, tip in the mushrooms. Despite the name of this dish, don't stir them immediately. Leave them to sizzle and turn brown, then stir them and repeat until they are pleasantly brown all over. Move them to one side of the pan.

Place in the prawns, turning them over when they start turning pink (the business of a minute or so). Once pink through, again, push to the side of the pan.

Turn the heat lower, and spoon in your curry paste. It will probably sizzle and might spit a bit, so stand back. Give it 30 seconds, then stir everything in the pan in together. Add the lime leaves/zest and fish sauce, and a drop or two of water if it's looking dry. Stir again, add the noodles, and give everything a final toss together.

Eat.

(With chopsticks if you're pretentious. I am.)

Dover sole with cauliflower and mushrooms

Dover sole is one of those things, like partridge, that is perfect for one person - a small sole, on the bone, cooks quickly and is the perfect size. My views on sole are very much those of Nigel Slater ("crisp white tablecloths, doddery waiters, and careful, old-fashioned cooking"), and the crisp white tablecloth was very much in evidence at the restaurant where I got the inspiration for this dish. Of course, they caramelised the cauliflower and turned it into a puree, and the mushrooms were chanterelles, but the drizzle of truffle oil in this more than makes up for the lack of an entire brigade of sous-chefs in my version.

I had this as is, but it would work with some crusty bread, new potatoes, a green veg or a few leaves.

Dover sole with cauliflower and mushrooms

4 regular-sized white mushrooms
1/4 cauliflower

1 whole dover sole, around 250g weight, skinned
Plain flour
butter

4 tbs sour cream or creme fraiche
1 tbs capers
1 tbs chopped parsley
drizzle truffle oil

First deal with the veg: break the cauliflower into smallish florets, and toss these and the mushrooms with a little oil and salt. Pop into an oven at around 200 celsius for ten minutes before starting the rest of the cooking. Drink some wine and read a few pages of the paper whilst you're waiting.

After the ten minutes are up, dust your dover sole lightly in flour and heat a tbs of butter in a frying pan. Once the butter is sizzling decently, slide in the sole and leave it for at least 3 minutes until you can see it browning round the edges. Turn over and repeat on the other side, adding a little more butter if necessary. In total it will need 8-10 minutes, depending on weight.

Once the sole is cooked, turn the oven out and pop the sole in with the veg to keep warm for a moment. Unless you've managed to burn the butter, you should just have a few brown crispy bits in the pan, so don't wipe this out. Just tip in the sour cream, leave to bubble for a minute, then add the capers, parsley, and the truffle oil if you have some hanging round (as a rule, I do). Warm for another 30 seconds or so whilst you put the sole and veg onto a plate, and then tip the sauce over.

A more wintery quick pasta

Looking back to this post, I can't help but notice how light and summery they all are. The weather today has been miserable - grey, rainy, and windy - and frankly the last thing I want for dinner is a fresh tomato.

I had some cauliflower in the fridge left over from another recipe (more on that at a later date), and had a vague idea of a robust pasta dish like this, but with a different type of brassica flower. Then I opened the tin of anchovies, nibbled a bit of one (as is my wont when faced with an open tin of the beauties), and decided to go the whole hog and make anchovies as much the star of the show as the cauliflower.

Originally, I made this recipe with a whole tin of anchovies. I think that's too much, and I would classify myself as a serious anchovy fan, but one friend (@peteellender) suggested he'd be up for trying it. If you do give it a go, let me know what you think, and don't say I didn't warn you. Otherwise, the leftover anchovies will last for weeks in the fridge, covered in a thin layer of oil.


Cauliflower and anchovy pasta

75g short pasta shapes (orecchiette would probably be perfect)
100g cauliflower, cut into small florets
1/2 to 2/3 50g tin anchovies, including their oil
pinch chilli flakes
handful roughly chopped parsley

Start the pasta off, and at the same time heat the oil from the anchovies in a frying pan or small saucepan to which you have a lid. Tip in the cauliflower and cover, leaving to brown slightly whilst also steaming in it's own juices. You might need to add a splash or two of water after the first few minutes. Chop the anchovies finely. After 5 minutes, tip the chilli flakes and anchovies into the frying pan, and squish the anchovies until they start melting and forming a sauce. Cover the pan again and cook until your pasta is done; drain the pasta and combine the two with the parsley.

No parmesan; with all the anchovies, you really don't need it!

Facing the inevitable

Well, it had to happen eventually. There's only so long a blog about eating for one can survive without a post about that staple of singleton cuisine: the omelette. Delia dedicates most of a chapter to them, but my inspiration on this topic has always been Elizabeth David's classic essay, 'An omelette and a glass of wine'. Her note at the end, that "the enjoyment of food and wine seems to me to lie in having what you want when you want it" is a rule I live by, although one I sometimes struggle to link to the rushed cooking that life all too often seems to push me in to. So, in the recipes below, I've tried to offer a few suggestions for how one can add a bit of luxury to a simple dinner: if in doubt, though, add that glass of wine.

A month or so ago, I mentioned on twitter that I was planning on writing this post, and one of the most valuable pieces of advice I got back (thanks to my wonderful brother-in-sin) was to get the pan really hot. Of course, to do this, you also need a good pan. I recently purchased myself a 20cm non-stick French skillet, and would strongly recommend it as the perfect omelette pan. Mine is by Meyer/Circulon, cost me £20, and has a gloriously thick base which heats up quickly, holds all that heat, and then gets it right into the eggs like nobody's business. So, please, remove that ancient, slight-too-large frying pan with the rather warped base from your cupboard before trying these recipes.

Another habit I had, until recently, was to try and create an omelette by stirring the eggs once they were in the pan, trying to do that pull-up-the-edges-and-let-the-raw-egg-flow-in thing that I'd read about. I never made it work. Elizabeth David saved me once again: she quotes a recipe where the omelette is created by vigorously shaking the pan once the eggs are in. I had read this several times before, but refused to believe it could work; finally, I thought it was worth at least one try. I put my generous amount of butter in the pan; I waited till it was totally frothing; I tipped the eggs in; and I shook like a woman possessed. And, by some miracle, it worked. I got the lightest, creamiest, most evenly cooked omelette I'd ever made. If you've doubted this method before, please, please, give it a try: it might just change your life.

So: that's the eggs sorted. I need a little more for dinner, though, so beneath are a few ideas for what else to add to your omelette.


A mushroom omelette

This is the basic omelette I make when I have 10 minutes within which to both cook and eat dinner. I use around 5 medium sized basic supermarket mushrooms, very finely sliced, and fry them gently in a decent knob of butter and a beyond-decent amount of salt until they have wilted and their juices have mostly evaporated. You then need to remove them from the pan, and heat a fresh quantity of butter to a higher temperature. Once you've added the eggs and given them a good initial shake (i.e. once the omelette is around two-thirds of the way towards your preferred set), tip the mushrooms back in, and continue shaking. Some of the slices will sink down into the eggs, others will stay on the surface.

This is one omelette I like rolled up in a traditional fashion. In order to do this, you need to keep shaking the pan, but shaking it mostly away from you, so the omelette starts creeping up the far side of your pan. Give the underside of the far edge a little nudge back towards you, and keep shaking away, and nudging the underside towards you, until you have a neat little roll. The hardest part is getting this confection onto your plate without breaking it: I have no solution to this problem. Either way, it will at least taste good.


...and two ways to tart it up

The first way to add a little extra to your mushroom omelette is with a tablespoon or so of chopped herbs. I tend towards tarragon, because it has that highly refined aniseed flavour that is so reminiscent of classic French cookery; chives or some of the very small, soft leaves from a branch of sage also work well.

The alternative is to add a few drops of truffle oil to your eggs. The stuff is pricey (the bottle I'm currently on, from Carluccio's, costs £8 for 50ml), but you need such a tiny amount for such a vast amount of flavour and luxury that it's entirely worth keeping a bottle in your cupboard for emergencies. 1/2 tsp for a 2-egg omelette scents it perfectly; just whisk it in to the eggs before cooking them


Shrimp and pea

I had thought that the idea for this originated with Simon Hopkinson, but re-reading him lately I couldn't find any mention of it. Either way, this is a fairly tweaked version. In addition to your eggs, you need a tub of potted shrimp, a large handful of peas (defrosted frozen ones are fine), and perhaps a tablespoon or so of herbs (again, I tend towards tarragon, but parsley would also be good here).

Take the top layer of butter off the top of the shrimps, and heat in the frying pan. Once bubbling, add the eggs as before, and once they start to set, scatter the shrimps, peas, and herbs over the top. Continue to shake and cook until the omelette is set.


Chorizo, potato, and parsley

This is a recipe for those of you who don't think you like eggs enough to eat omelettes. When very little I was allergic to eggs, and although I grew out of it, I still didn't enjoy eating them in any obviously-eggy format until I tried something like this a couple of years ago. I'm now quite happy eating semi-raw, sloppy, unadulterated omelettes, but I still come back to this dish on a regular basis.

Frying the potatoes takes a while, so this isn't such a fast recipe as those above: one for when you have half an hour, not ten minutes. Also: I don't normally recommend a dish where you use 1/3 of the quantity of an ingredient as normally sold in supermarkets, but chorizo will last for a month or so in the fridge, so you'll have plenty of time to use this in other meals.

You'll need:

1 small potato
around 1/3 of a cooking chorizo
2 eggs
large handful of parsley

Chop the potato and chorizo into roughly 1 cm cubes. Fry the chorizo for a few minutes, until it has released its oil and is crisping up nicely, and then remove from the pan. Tip in the potato cubes, and fry gently for 10 minutes or so, until softened, then return the chorizo to the pan. Whisk the eggs up with the herbs, tip into the pan, and start shaking; you may need to stir this one a little to lift the potato and chorizo off the bottom of the pan and give the eggs a chance to get to the heat. The extra volume also means that it will take a little longer to set than the recipes above: maybe 3 or 4 minutes in total.


Glasses of wine with all the above purely optional, but highly recommended, as ever.

Tomorrow, the sun will come out.

There are some recipes that I can only cook when the weather is absolutely right for them. Salad Nicoise is one of them. I cooked this a couple of weeks ago, when the mercury was hitting thirty, but only just got round to blogging it. The weather's not so great right now, but sometimes you need a reminder that one day, the sun will come out again.

I got a letter in the post today confirming me as the sole tenant of my flat. I was going to have a glass of champagne to celebrate, but I appear to have run out (I'm not sure how I let myself get to such a parlous state), so you're getting this recipe to celebrate instead. You lucky things.

Don't even try making only one portion of this, btw. There's too many different ingredients and you'll only end up with a fridge of quarter-of-a-cucumber, half-a-tin-of-anchovies, etc etc. I suggest cooking one tuna steak, eating most of the salad with that, and having the leftovers for lunch the next day.

Veggies could probably make a decent salad by leaving out the tuna and replacing the anchovies with capers.


Katy's Salad Nicoise

5 or so average-sized new potatoes
handful (80g or so) green beans
100g or so cherry tomatoes
1/2 a cucumber
tin anchovies
handful black olives, pitted (you could be poncily authentic and use nicoise, but I prefer kalamata)
handful basil leaves
handful parsley
1 little gem (or similar) lettuce
1/2 red onion

tuna steak (around 100-150g, depending on personal hunger levels)

1 clove garlic
pinch sea salt
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tbs white wine vinegar
3 tbs olive oil

Put the potatoes on to boil; when they're nearly ready stick the green beans in. Don't undercook them.

Whilst those veg are cooking, halve your cherry tomatoes, halve, de-seed, and slice your cucumber, finely chop your anchovies, roughly chop your herbs, tear up your leaves, and finely slice your red onion. Mix together.

Make the dressing by crushing the garlic and salt, then whisking them together with the mustard, vinegar, and oil. Add a little oil from your anchovies/olives if you like.

Once the veg are cooked, drain and cool slightly under a running tap. Thickly slice the potatoes, then mix the warm veg with the dressing, and then combine with the salad veg.

Put a griddle pan or frying pan on to heat, and brush your tuna steak with a little oil. Grill or fry for a minute or so each side. It will cook much faster than you expect.

Serve the tuna with the salad. And probably a glass of champagne on the side.



PS. Please don't actually serve champagne with this. The salad will slaughter it. A firm rose would be perfect.

In a crabby mood

Sometimes cooking for just yourself can be tough.

Really, really tough.

There's so many yummy foods out there that come in two-person shaped packages.

Like crab. A dressed crab is about right for two people. It's far too much for just one person, right?

So I did an adapted version of this Good Food recipe. And ate the lot.

Tough. Really, really tough.

My crab and asparagus salad

1 dressed crab (around 150g total)
1 tbs mayonnaise
1/2 red chilli, finely chopped
juice 1/2 lemon
100-150g asparagus
50g watercress

Snap the woody ends off the asparagus, and boil for 4 minutes or until you can easily slide a knife into the thickest stem. Drain, then slice each stem into three.

Separate out the white and brown crab meat, and place the white to one side. Mix the brown meat with the mayo, chilli, and lemon juice, then toss the stem sections of the asparagus (but not the tips) in this dressing.

Arrange the watercress on the plate, pile the dressed asparagus in the middle, top with the tips, and then the white crab meat.

Enjoy. All on your own.



PS. Yes, dear readers, that is a *photo* you see there. It would seem that posting on a public blog about missing card readers is an excellent prompt for their return.

A tarragon pesto, and two things to do with it

So... this is what I did with my leftover tarragon and parsley from the last blog. It won't make herbs last quite as long as freezing them, but this pesto should last at least a week in the fridge. I love making my own pesto - it's one of those stupidly easy things to do that makes food so much better - and this is a lovely new variation on the traditional basil flavour.

Ingredients

leaves from half a bunch of tarragon - around 2 tbs in total
leaves from half a bunch of parsley - ditto (don't use the stalks, they're too tough for pesto!)
2 cloves garlic
handful almonds
juice 1 lemon
6 or so tbs olive oil (use a decent one, you can taste the difference)
salt and pepper to taste

Stick everything in a food processor and blitz until very well combined, adding more olive oil to loosen the texture if needed.


Once you've got this quantity of pesto, here's a couple of ideas for it:


Tarragon Chicken Salad

This makes two or three lunch portions (depending on how hungry you are...). I've used green peppers as the veg here, but you could use cucumber or other left-over green veg such as peas, green beans or asparagus.

3 tbs tarragon pesto
cooled cooked rice - around 100g uncooked
cooked chicken breast, torn into little strips
1 green pepper, cut into little cubes
3 spring onions, finely sliced
3 tbs creme fraiche

Combine all your ingredients and munch!


Tarragon and Tuna Pasta

1 tbs tarragon pesto
small tin tuna, drained
75g fusilli

Cook your pasta according to the pack instructions and your own taste, then combine with the pesto and flaked tuna.


I've made both these, and have a tablespoon or so of pesto left... any other ideas for what to do with it?