Smoked mackerel & Mediterranean potato salad - Mediterranean week gets under way!

It seems as though we may very well have had our summer - but in the two days of sunshine that came our way just recently, it sparked off a desire for Mediterranean-style eating.

Ever hopeful that we might get a day or so of sun before winter is upon us again, I thought I'd share the best of the recipes.

Now you know how much hubby loves his smoked mackerel - and I do too, but to a slightly lesser degree.  Hubby will eat his smoked mackerel any way he can get it - hot or cold - but I find that a hot mackerel dish will repeat on me for a month of Sundays.  Now for all that repeated burping causes some hilarity amongst the family, it does get a bit much when it's followed by terminal heartburn - or is that too much information?

As a result, the first dish of our Mediterranean week is smoked mackerel, served cold, with an accompanying warm Mediterranean Potato Salad and a tomato & red onion salad.  If you prefer your mackerel hot, then by all means warm it up - it won't make a jot of difference to the dish.

I spotted the Mediterranean Potato Salad in the BBC Good Food Magazine and it ticked all the right boxes for both son & heir and myself.  I wasn't too sure about hubby, though, as we all know his relationship with potatoes isn't great.  Still, I crossed my fingers that the use of Jersey Royal new potatoes, together with the roasted red peppers and black olives in the dish (both of which are particular favourites), paired with mackerel might do the trick.

Well, it almost did.  It was the garlic that did for him - and oddly, it seemed to be the pairing of garlic and tomato.  Still, there's no accounting for taste - and it will be easy to leave the garlic out next time.

Both son & heir and I really liked the warm salad.  It was a lovely departure and a welcome change from using Jersey Royal New Potatoes in a traditional way (i.e. with butter and mint).  I have also taken to using English rapeseed oil instead of olive oil, now that we have found a couple of suppliers that provide affordable rapeseed oil.  This was, pretty much, my first voyage with using the oil in a salad sense - and we like it.  Rapeseed oil has a much nuttier flavour than olive (not surprisingly) and I've found that it blends very easily with Mediterranean style flavours.  Well worth doing, when you consider all the health benefits of rapeseed oil over olive oil.  If you thought olive oil was good for you, have a look at a comparison between the two.  With half the saturated fat of olive oil and a higher flashpoint which means it can be used in roasting and stir frying, it wins my vote!

It did occur to me, that the salad could be made even more Mediterranean style, by using sun dried tomatoes instead of the tin of tomatoes - but I have yet to try this theory out!

The Mediterranean Potato Salad as it stands, is simplicity itself to make and the sauce can be put together as the potatoes cook.  Paired with the simple tomato & red onion salad and an even simpler smoked mackerel, this really is a meal that takes minutes to prepare - and is good for you on all sorts of levels!

MEDITERRANEAN POTATO SALAD   (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil (I used Rapeseed Oil)
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove (optional, leave it out of you're sensitive to garlic)
1-2 tsp oregano, either fresh or dried
200g tinned cherry tomatoes (I used the other half for breakfast the next day!)
100g roasted red peppers, sliced (I used them from a jar and rinsed off the vinegar)
300g new potatoes, halved if large
25g black olives, sliced
handful of basil leaves, torn.

Method :

1.  In a small saucepan, heat the oil and add the onion.  Cook on a gentle to medium heat for 5-10 minutes until soft.

2.  Add the oregano and continue to cook for another minute.

3.  Add the tomatoes and peppers, season well and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

4.  Meanwhile, cook the potatoes in a pan of boiling salted water for 10-15 minutes or until tender.  Drain well, mix with the sauce and serve warm, sprinkled with olives and basil.

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Turkey & Asparagus Impossible Quiche - my response to the Lean on Turkey challenge!

Well, this Lean On Turkey challenge was a real brain teaser!

"Challenge 2: Cook a low fat/healthy turkey meal for just £10 (e.g. stir fry, risotto or salad).

It’s as simple as that. Simply choose a fresh low fat/healthy turkey recipe of your choice that costs under £10 (e.g. stir fry or salad). All we ask is that it needs to feed at least a family of four and CANNOT be a roast turkey dinner."

On the face of it, it does seem simple.  However, then you consider the "family of four" and it rules out an awful lot of chilli recipes.  After all, what if the family contains young children?  We also wanted to provide something a bit out of the ordinary, yet something that used relatively ordinary ingredients, because the whole point of this exercise is to encourage people to use turkey more often.  It'd be no good making some high falutin' dish that used several hard to get ingredients!  We needed something that would be easy to prepare, yet would look great served up on the plate.  Don't forget the healthy/low fat aspect, or the £10 budget, either!

Our ponderings took us from English pies through Cajun spicing to Chinese sweet and sour - but nothing really caught our imagination or seemed "right".  They were all too ordinary, or too spicy, or too boring.

Until hubby came up with the Impossible Quiche concept.  After all (as he said), we love Impossible Quiche - and we're a family of three, which is almost right!

So, how to include turkey into an Impossible Quiche?

Ordinarily, Impossible Quiche would include cheese and bacon, with onion and sweetcorn.  The basic mix is nothing more than a batter, which when baked, forms a firm edge rather like a frittata.  However, being baked and not fried, means that the fat element is reduced considerably - as is not using the cheese.

What goes well with turkey, that would be good in a quiche?  Well, the cheese was out, so I needed something that would give good flavour in the same way that the cheese did.  Turkey goes very well with bacon - so bacon was in.

What about the onion side of things?  Onion, shallot or chives?  I was conscious of having room for everything in the pie dish - which was only an 8" dish, but enough for four portions.  Hence, I ruled out the onion on the basis that it would take up too much room.  Shallot was good, but very sweet.  I wanted to retain the sweetcorn and with bacon & turkey also having a certain inherent sweetness, opted for the chives.

Thinking about the look of the Impossible Quiche, I needed something to inject some colour.  However all the colourful ingredients such as tomato and red pepper just didn't seem right in the context.  The red pepper was better than the tomato, but still not quite right.  I briefly considered peas - until I hit upon asparagus.  The asparagus would give the colour and the sense of indulgence that was otherwise lacking.

We had turkey, bacon, chives, asparagus and sweetcorn.  We had ourselves an Impossible Quiche recipe!

Next, I had to price up the shopping list.  I took my prices from www.groceries.asda.com, as Asda would be where we would be shopping, and apportioned the price according to how much of each ingredient we'd be using.  I felt that was the fairest way of doing it, as most people have (say) a container of milk in their fridge, or a bag of flour in the cupboard, from which they'd just take the required amount.  I hoped that the circumstance of someone buying the entire shopping list from scratch would be negligible enough not to worry about!  However, if someone had have bought the lot from scratch, it would have cost them £16.04p.


Here's the breakdown :

1.25 cups milk	0.16
0.5 cups self-raising flour	0.05
2 medium eggs	0.35
3 rashers streaky bacon	0.56
Fresh chives	0.20
Tinned sweetcorn	0.15
150g Asparagus	1.00
340g turkey breast steaks	2.73
Pinch of dried thyme	0.02
Salad leaves	1.19
Cherry tomatoes	0.75
Cucumber	0.20
Radish	0.10
Beetroot	0.10
Jersey Royal new potatoes	0.75
Butter	0.10
Total	£8.41

The preparation of the ingredients didn't take very long at all - around 30 minutes, including frying off the bacon and the turkey breast steaks.

The quiche took around 40-45 minutes to bake in the oven.  I took it out at 30 minutes and then had to put it back in for ten minutes longer just to set the very centre.

I'd say the entire process from taking the ingredients from the fridge to putting on the plate, took around an hour and a half.  Of course, you could probably do it quicker, as you no doubt can move around the kitchen far quicker than me!

I expect, after all that, you'll be wanting to know how it tasted?  Well, it tasted very nice indeed.

I kept the turkey pieces in small slices that were cut across the grain so as to make the most of their tenderness.  After all, they were going to be cooked twice (once in the frying pan, once in the oven) and I didn't want them going all hard and tough.  I fried off the bacon pieces and then added a pinch of thyme and the turkey steaks, as it seemed that was the best way of infusing the meat with as much flavour as possible.  I kept the turkey steaks whole at this stage, so as to prevent their drying out.

Each forkful was full of turkey flavour, along with the lovely asparagus which lightened the mix.  Every so often, you would come across a sweetcorn niblet which would give a welcome burst of sweetness and the chives added that background oniony flavour that just gave the flavours depth, as did the bacon.

The overall look of the Impossible Quiche was very green, which immediately gave son & heir cause to treat it with suspicion.  However, he ate every last bit of his piece and liked all the ingredients.  It was hard for him to be a-whooping and a-hollering about how nice it was, as his allegiance is very much with the cheese and bacon version.

Hubby enjoyed his piece so much, that he went back for second helpings!

I served the Impossible Quiche with a mixed side salad which included some more sweetcorn niblets and which helped to bring the salad together with the flavours of the quiche.  Some lovely buttered Jersey Royal potatoes just finished if off by adding the carbohydrate to the protein and vegetable matter and (hopefully) providing a balanced plate of food.

For more ideas as to how to use turkey, have a look at the Lean on Turkey website.


TURKEY & ASPARAGUS IMPOSSIBLE QUICHE    (feeds 4)


Ingredients :


3 rashers of streaky bacon, chopped fine
340g turkey breast steaks
a pinch of dried thyme
0.5 cups of self raising flour
1 cup of milk
2 medium eggs
1 tbsp of chopped fresh chives
1 tbsp sweetcorn niblets (from a tin is fine)
150g asparagus, trimmed and the stalks cut into 5mm logs, the tips retained.

For the potatoes :

750g (or less - it's up to you) of Jersey Royal potatoes, trimmed 
a knob of butter
1 tbsp of chopped fresh chives.

For the salad (for the sake of this recipe, I will presume that it is all washed and you will use the quantities your family like, of each item) :

salad leaves (I used lamb's lettuce & wild rocket)
cherry tomatoes
cucumber, skin removed and sliced finely
radishes, top & tailed and sliced finely
beetroot, trimmed and halved. 


Method :


1.  Place the chopped bacon into a dry frying pan and fry on a reasonably high heat, in order that the fat be rendered and the bacon begins to brown.


2.  Add the pinch of thyme, gather the bacon into a small pile in the pan and add the turkey steaks around it.  Make sure to keep the pan on a high heat, to brown the turkey and prevent it from poaching in its own juice.  Once browned all over and no pink can be seen if cut with a knife, remove the bacon & turkey and reserve to cool.


3.  In a large bowl, add the flour and milk.  Whisk lightly with a balloon whisk to combine, then crack the eggs individually into a small bowl (this way, if one seems not quite right, you can bin it without losing your entire batter mix!) and add to the batter.  Whisk again to incorporate.


4.  Add the chives, sweetcorn, asparagus logs, turkey and bacon to the batter mix and stir to combine.

5.  Carefully pour the mixture into an 8" pie dish, (preferably without fluted edges for ease of removal) and arrange the asparagus tips in an attractive patten on the top.  Transfer to a pre-heated oven (180degF/350degC/Gas4) to bake for 35-45 minutes or until browned and with a set centre.

6.  In the meantime, put a large pan of salted water on to boil.  Once boiling, add the Jersey Royals to it and reduce to a lively simmer.  Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until a potato, when pierced with a knife, falls easily from the blade.

7.  Drain, leave for just a minute or two to let the steam come off the potatoes, then add the knob of butter and the chives and replace the lid.

8.  Assemble the salad on the plates, then once the quiche has been removed from the oven and allowed to settle for a couple of minutes (it will deflate, but that is supposed to happen!), cut into four pieces and serve with the potatoes.

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Smoky Chicken with warm corn & potato salad

This is one of those "disgustingly good for you" recipes that I was talking to Marcus about in the previous post's comments.

However, not only is it disgustingly good for you, it is quite simply delicious.

The original recipe (from a BBC Good Food Magazine, but you can see it on the website as well) states that per portion, this meal is only 343 calories.  Now add a little extra for the salad leaves that I included to make it a bit more of a main course and less of a lunch and it is still extraordinarily healthy.

It is a funny thing, but up until very recently I really didn't like smoked paprika very much at all.  Then, after a period of not having the "good stuff" and making do with a lesser grade of smoked paprika, we got a tin of the proper thing again - and bingo! I like it.  Weird.

However, for this recipe, it stated that sweet smoked paprika was required.  Well we couldn't find any of that for love nor money around here, so I improvised by using a half a teaspoon of the hot smoked and half a teaspoon of just plain paprika.  It tasted fabulous, so obviously worked fine!

Have I told you, recently, how much I love this griddle pan?

Another area where I made a change to the original recipe was in its use of olive oil.  It stated to use just "olive oil", but I felt that a distinction between plain old olive oil (suitable for frying etc.) and extra virgin olive oil (better for salad dressings, as it has a much better flavour) would be a help.  So I used plain old olive oil for the chicken coating, as it is cheaper and more suited to being used in a hot environment.  The more expensive extra virgin olive oil, I saved for the salad dressing.

The Jersey Royals were just perfect for this salad.  Unfortunately, I had to quarter them in most cases as they were so big.  However, this didn't seem to make any difference and the flavour appeared to be just the same.  I only wish I'd have thought to add a little sprig of mint in the cooking water!

Considering how simple the ingredients and their cooking methods are, this is a quite outstanding dish both for flavour and appearance.  I was extremely pleased by how it looked on the plate - and it certainly made son & heir's eyebrows disappear into his hairline, which I can only think was a good thing.  He ate everything except the salad leaves which took dire threats of no ice cream for dessert to make disappear - but then, we can put that down to his natural resistance to anything green, rather than the flavour!

For anyone looking for an extra-light meal that delivers on just about every front possible, this is definitely a winner.

SMOKY CHICKEN WITH WARM CORN & POTATO SALAD  (serves 3)

Ingredients :

Enough Jersey Royal potatoes for 3 people (I quartered mine, as they were so big)
2 large Corn on the cob
a mint sprig (optional - to go in the cooking water)
a small red onion, thinly sliced
juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped finely
half a tsp hot smoked paprika
half a tsp paprika
3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, each cut through to make two thin escalopes
small bunch of coriander leaves, chopped
salad leaves (I used spinach, watercress & rocket).

Method :

1.  Bring to the boil a saucepan of salted water big enough to hold all the potatoes and corn.

2.  While you wait for the water to boil, in a salad bowl mix together the red onion with the lime juice and the extra virgin olive oil.

3.  In a smaller bowl, mix the plain olive oil with the garlic, paprika and some seasoning.  Add the chicken and stir until each piece of chicken is completely coated in the mixture.

4.  Add the potatoes and corn cobs to the boiling water and cook until both are tender, making sure that the potatoes are cooked all the way through.  Drain well and keep warm.

5.  Heat a griddle pan and griddle each piece of chicken for 3-4 minutes on each side, until cooked through.  You will probably need to do this in batches, to save overcrowding the pan, which will cool it too much and result in your chicken braising instead of griddling.

6.  Once the chicken is done, add the potatoes to the bowl with the onions.  Take the corn cobs and cut the niblets off them by standing each cob on its thick end and running a sharp knife down from top to bottom.  Add the corn to the potatoes.  

7.  Add the chopped coriander to the corn, along with a little seasoning, and stir through gently, so as not to break up the potatoes.

8.  Serve the potato mixture on top of a bed of salad leaves, placing the chicken pieces on top of the lot.

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Mouthwatering salad : New potato, bacon & goat's cheese.

I should really, by rights, call this salad "Twitter-created" as that is pretty much how it happened.

I was sitting here doing the menu for the coming week and had included Scotch Broth soup for the Wednesday evening.  However, that didn't seem right to me - after all, what if the weather turned really hot?  I wouldn't want to be sat over a soup pan for an hour or more - and everyone wouldn't really want to be tucking into bowls of steaming soup, when they were far more likely to fancy lazing around on the top shelf of the freezer.

So I began to think down the salad lines, but not your classic "lettuce, tomato, cucumber" salad.  I wanted to do more of a Jamie Oliver style main course salad that included interesting ingredients that you wouldn't have, upon first thought, necessarily put together. 

However, my brain just wouldn't conjure up an exciting combination.  I knew that we'd got a whole shed load of chicken on the menu, so I was trying to think of an alternative main meat ingredient.  Now I know that everyone loves bacon - and our butcher's bacon is just amazing, so that was a good start.  I considered Impossible Quiche, but I have to be in the mood for that - and I just wasn't.

My eyes strayed to the computer screen, where Twitter was open.  So I asked - of the general Twitterati - "@JennyEatwell is trying to think of a salady thing that doesn't involve lettuce, that is a main meal. ~ponders~".  Almost instantly, came suggestions from @presentsqueen, @TheSourceLeeds, @CarolineTecks, @Scarlie_Maere and @rmrezendes, suggesting things like chicory, fennel, new potatoes, citrus dressing, feta cheese, baby spinach and others.


So began the compilation of my Wednesday evening's dinner.  After many suggestions, exclamations of approval, expressions of doubt and alternative suggestions, we came up with a salad which involved a bed of baby spinach & watercress (so good for you), with baby plum tomatoes (so sweet), roasted Jersey new potatoes (so gorgeously earthy) and red onion (so savoury), crispy bacon (so salty), sauteed chestnut mushrooms (earthy again, but a different kind) - all topped off with crumbled creamy goat's cheese (so gorgeous) and a dressing made from wine vinegar (red, in this case) and wholegrain mustard (so tart).



You're salivating, aren't you.  I know I was!

The reality proved to be every bit as tasty as the imaginary creation - in fact, it surpassed my expectations.  It was one of those salads that, every forkful you took, contained different mixtures of flavour that all went so superbly well together.  It was impossible to become tired of eating it.  In fact, where the bacon was concerned, hubby declared himself reluctant to swallow on occasion, so as to live with that gorgeous flavour for as long as possible.  The onion and the goat's cheese, the tomato and the goat's cheese, the potatoes and the bacon, the bacon and the tomato - every bit was as gorgeous as its neighbour.  The spinach and watercress leaves were gently dressed with the red wine vinegar and mustard, which served as a beautiful palate cleanser as you progressed through the meal.

Two cook's notes - firstly, I prefer to use muddy Jersey Royals as they seem to have the best flavour.  For the cost of having to scrub them in the sink, they are well worth the benefits you get in flavour.  Secondly, the goat's cheese I used was a little square one that I got from Asda, called "Poitou-Charentes".  It's one of their "extra special" range and is perfect for the job.


I'm going to ask the Twitterati to create my dinners more often, if this is what they come up with!


NEW POTATO SALAD WITH BACON & GOAT'S CHEESE  (feeds 3)


Ingredients :


500g muddy Jersey Royal new potatoes, scrubbed and halved (or quartered, in my case, as they were mahoosive!)
a drizzle of olive oil
2 red onions, cut into 6 wedges each
12 baby plum tomatoes, halved
a pack of back bacon, diced
140g chestnut mushrooms, sliced finely
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
3 big handfuls of watercress & spinach salad leaves
85g creamy goat's cheese
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper.


Method :


1.  Pre-heat the oven to 200deg C.

2.  Place the new potatoes onto a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and season.  Roast in the oven for 20 minutes, then remove the tray and add the onion pieces.  Give everything a shake and return to the oven for another 20-25 minutes' roasting.  When done, let them cool for a few minutes, before adding to the salad.


3.  While the potatoes are roasting, dry fry the bacon until crispy.  Remove from the pan and keep warm.


4.  Add the mushrooms to the pan and saute them on a high heat until they are softened and lightly caramelised.  Remove from the pan and keep these warm, too.


5.  Make the dressing by whisking the mustard and vinegar with a little water to let it down sufficiently to drizzle.


6.  Place the salad leaves into a large bowl and drizzle 2 tsp of the dressing over.  Toss to coat the leaves lightly, then pile onto the plates - a handful for each plate.


7.  The add the tomatoes, potatoes, onion, mushrooms and bacon, finally crumbling the goat's cheese over the top.


8.  Add a last drizzle of the dressing, and serve.


Utterly, utterly divine.


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Bolognese Pasta Bake & Ras-Al-Hanout Chicken - two days, two dinners

I've decided to lump these two dinners in one blog post because neither of them had us hanging out the flags with delight.  As a consequence, I won't be detailing a recipe for either of them, but they're very worth talking about.

Firstly, the Bolognese Pasta Bake.

Well, it sounds nice enough - Bolognese with pasta, baked with Mozzarella cheese on top.  Mmmmn, sounds promising!  However, and I suspect this may well just be a "Jenny's Taste" thing, as opposed to a general point of view, but I really like my pasta bolognese to stay separate from one another.  That is, the pasta is on the base, with the bolognese sauce in a neat heap on top, sprinkled liberally with parmesan.  Not all mixed into one.

You see, the thing I enjoy most about bolognese, is eating the sauce on its own and choosing to eat some pasta at intervals throughout.  I know, call me picky.  It's one of the rare times when I am picky, to be honest!

I just didn't think about that aspect of it when we agreed to use up the mozzarella in this way.  Of course, the mozzarella melted on top of the saucy pasta was completely divine - but then mozzarella always is!  Unfortunately, it doesn't soak through the pasta and once you've eaten the cheese, all you're left with is saucy pasta.  But hey ho, even if I wasn't impressed - the chaps ate theirs and Son & heir would have eaten the leftovers today, if we hadn't have gone to Cafe Rouge for breakfast!

So, moving on - the next dinner was Ras-al-hanout chicken, with new potatoes and salad.

I suspect there must have been a male:female imbalance thing going on here, because the chaps both declared the chicken to be bland, whereas I was musing approvingly to myself how Ras-al-hanout has a stealth heat which sneaks up on you.  Granted, it isn't ever the sort of heat that you would find too much, but it was very definitely there!

The chicken was simply butterflied, then put into a bowl with olive oil, salt & pepper and the Ras-al-hanout mix where it sat for the next 30 minutes, before going into the oven for 25 minutes, thence onto the plate.  So, simple enough - but obviously lacking in flavour for the chaps.

The salad was just that - salad - however the new potatoes are worth a word.  After much sampling, we have discovered that Jersey Royal new potatoes are far tastier (even to the point where hubby enjoys them - and he hates potatoes with a deadly loathing) when you buy them as "muddy spuds" (i.e. with the dirt still attached) than when you buy them all beautifully washed and ready for the pot, sealed up in a plastic bag.  Now this interesting point is one which I have been sure was true, for as long as pre-packed bags of spuds have been available.  I'm just glad that places like Asda see fit to cater for both types of consumer - the muddy and the clean!

It is hard to consider that mud has any great taste benefits, but I suspect that it may well be the cleaning process that eradicates subtle flavour trails within the potatoes.  Of course, I have no scientific backup for this opinion.  It is just that - my opinion.

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