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.

Heaven is...

Sitting in an english country garden in the last of the late May sunshine, birds tweeting in the breaks between the songs on the Glee soundtrack, getting gently sozzled on gin at your parents' expense, and this for dinner:

Tagliatelle with Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Chorizo

Ingredients
75g tagliatelle
75g chorizo
75g purple sprouting broccoli (the thinner the better)
1 clove garlic, sliced
sherry
parmesan

Method

Stick your pasta on to boil, and, 5 minutes before it's done, put a frying pan on to heat up with a drop of oil in it. Chop the chorizo into very small cubes and fry for 3-4 minutes until it's released its oils and is getting crispy, then turn the heat down low and add the garlic and the PSB. Add a glug or two of sherry and scrape the pan to get any crispy burnt-on bits into the sauce. Drain the pasta, mix with the chorizo and PSB, then serve with a little parmesan grated over the top.


I made this with the very last of the PSB grown in my Mum's garden, but it would equally work well with the very first - you want the thinnest possible stems so that you can coil them round your fork with the tagliatelle.


You should probably also drink some sherry with this, but I'd mixed my second G&T before I thought of that.

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?

More asparagus...

Dinner tonight courtesy of the wonderful Mr Simon Hopkinson's Week In Week Out, probably the second most beautiful cookery book I own. Of course, just because it's beautiful doesn't mean I've ever cooked a single recipe from it before, so tonight was a bit of an experiment.

This is what I was aiming for: Asparagus, Sour Cream and Herb Omlettes. My first attempt resulted in a pile of slightly raw, slightly charred scrambled egg. Lesson: when it says non-stick pan, it means it. The next attempt resulted in an only slightly split omelette, spilling its insides across the plate, but by my fourth one, I got a perfect little swiss roll of soft omelette, tart cream, fragrant herbs and grassy crisp asparagus. Sometimes it's not just the simple recipes that make you happy.

Of course, making mini quantities just for me resulted in my now having, in the fridge, a large bunch of tarragon, one of chives, and one of parsley. So... what to do with them? I may have a little idea of my own - but you'll have to wait and see for that!

First asparagus

Nigel Slater reckons that 'only a prude can ignore the sexual overtones of asparagus officinalis.' Perhaps that explains my even-greater-than-usual desire to get my hands on the first of the British stuff this year. Although, seeing as Slater never seems to have met a piece of food he wouldn't like to fuck, perhaps we shouldn't take the psychoanalysis too far.

Anyway, here it is. Normally I just boil my first asparagus of the year and smother it in melting butter, but I had to eat a proper supper sometime, so this is the recipe I made. If you're using supermarket thin-cut water-pumped bacon, you'll need considerably more than the 6 rashers of thick-cut dry-cured butcher's bacon I used.

Ingredients

200g asparagus
6 rashers smoked streaky bacon
100g (ish) cherry tomatoes

Method

Heat your oven to 200 celsius and get a baking tray out of the cupboard. Snap any woody ends off the asparagus and drizzle with a little oil. Cut each rasher of bacon into two, and roll up, then snuggle them among the asparagus. Place in the oven for 10 minutes.

Take them out after this time and scatter the tomatoes among the spears and bacon. If the tips of the asparagus look like they might be burning, rearrange the bacon to cover them. Return to the over for a further 5 minutes or so.

Munch with plenty of crusty bread to soak up any juices.


No picture, this time because I munched so fast I didn't have time to take any. I burnt my mouth as a result, so I've already been punished for this sin.


PS. Sorry about the Slater quip. I love him and his cooking very much, but the food/fuck alliteration was too good not to say.


2011 edit

I always make this recipe at least once a year, and last night was the night this year. I am one of those people who are simply incapable of following a recipe (yes, even one of my own), and so I had to have a bit of a tinker around the edges. I used thin slices of pancetta instead of traditional English thick-cut streaky bacon, and wrapped the slices around the tops of around half the asparagus (so, around 6 spears and slices out of 12 spears total).

The effect is gorgeous. Somehow, the pancetta traps the steam coming off the tips of asparagus, and they steam in their own juices to a melting softness, giving a lovely contrast with the crispy pancetta and grilled stalks.

Partridge with peas

One of the big problems I have with cooking just for me is that so much meat comes in packages for two. Even shopping at my local butcher doesn't totally solve this; roasting a whole chicken for one person still seems silly (and faintly depressing...), and despite cravings for the sticky bits that lurk under the wings, I can rarely bring myself to do it. The great thing about game birds is that so many of them come in neat little whole-bird packages for one, complete with mini-drumsticks to chew on. They're also much faster to cook - I made this as a quick after-work Monday supper, on the table in 30 minutes.

I used partridge because that's what I had in the fridge, but you could equally do the peas with pigeon, a couple of quail, or most other poultry or game birds.

Ingredients

1 partridge

4-6 spring onions
few sprigs of mint
few sprigs of parsley
80g peas
2 or 3 slices parma ham
half a glass of white wine

Method

First, get your partridge on to roast: heat the oven to 200 celsius, rub the bird with oil and season, then stick it in for 30 minutes or so.

Whilst that's happily cooking away, slice your spring onions (not too finely; they're going to be cooked well so you don't want them to disintegrate totally), chop your herbs (more finely) and tear your parma ham into little strips.

When the partridge has 10 minutes to go, fry the spring onions briefly in a decent glug of oil, then tip in the peas and wine and boil fairly vigorously until reduced by half. Take off the heat and stir in the herbs and parma ham, then stick a lid on it to keep warm whilst you carve the partridge.

By now your partridge should be ready, so take it out of the oven and leave to rest for a couple of minutes before carving it, then dish up with the peas, pouring the winey herby juices over the meat.


PS. Apologies to Josh, who persuaded me to start this blog, but due to his veggie-ness can't eat my first posting. Sorry Josh. More vegetables soon, I promise.


PPS. No photos. I took lots of lovely ones, but it turns out my ex has run off with the memory card reader, so I have no way of getting them to you. As with the vegetables, more soon, I promise.