Cod & Salmon Fish Pie
Salmon Loin, skinned
Cod Loin, skinned
1 pint milk
Dill
5 peppercorns,
1 carrot, peeled and cut into quarters
1 onion, peeled & halved
15g butter
15g plain flour
2 maris piper potatoes
butter (for mashing potatoes)

1. Poach fish in milk with carrot, onion and peppercorns
2. Put potatoes on to boil
3. When fish is cooked, take the fish out & put to one side
4. Remove carrot, onion & peppercorns and throw away (keep the milk!)
5. Melt butter in pan & add flour, cook through for a minute
6. Slowly add milk to the roux and stir until sauce thickens
7. Drain & mash potatoes
8. Flake fish into dish, top with dill and sauce then put mashed potato on top
9. Cook for 20 minutes at 200°c

For dinner we couldn’t decide what to have. It was one of those days when you know what you do not want. So we ruled out pasta (had too much recently), rice, fish & chicken. I flicked through some books for inspiration and came across the LA Burger in Bill Granger’s – Every Day.

Easy and quick to make, but very nice…

Ingredients (for 4)

• 500g lean minced pork
• 1/2 onion, grated
• 1/2 teaspoon toasted fennel seeds, crushed
• 40g breadcrumbs
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• salt
• pepper

Method

1. Combined all ingredients together in a bowl.
2. Shape into 4 small burgers.
3. Cover & leave in fridge for 30minutes.
4. Heat non-stick frying pan & cook burgers for about 5 minutes on each side
5. Serve on a bun of your choice with a handful of rocket and thinly sliced red onion.

And we also made some crispy cakes for Easter!

After the buns were cooked I started on preparing a three course dinner as we had invited my parents around. Inspiration for the dinner came courtesy of Delicious Magazine.

For starters we had roasted parsnip and parmesan soup:

Followed by pancetta-wrapped salmon with saffron and herb rice, served with crushed new potatoes and purple sprouting broccoli:

The salmon was surprisingly easy to make despite having to skin the whole side of a fish! & it looked rather impressive before and after cooking:

Those sticking to Good Friday traditions didn’t eat the pancetta & I substituted all chicken stocks for vegetable stock.

And we finished with Nigella’s molten chocolate baby cakes:

New things

I quite like fish, but don’t eat much of it – with the reason mostly being that Mr C doesn’t really like fishy fish. He enjoys the Tuna Burgers I make but has never really enjoyed any of the salmon dishes I have tried.

Today, however, with the help of a fish booklet that fell out of Delicious Magazine we may now have a salmon dish to add to our menu. The salmon fillet is coated in a Chermoula which was very tasty and served with a light accompaniment of couscous…

Ingredients (For 2)

• 2 salmon fillets
• 1 small garlic clove, chopped
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• just less than 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp chopped red chili
• Pinch saffron strands
• 1/2 tbspn lemon juice
• small handful coriander & same of mint
• 1 tbspn olive oil
• small pinch salt

For the Couscous:

• 1 red pepper
• 175ml chicken stock
• 140g couscous
• 1 tbspn extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 knob of butter
• 1/2 lemon juice
• 1 tbspn chopped mint

How to Do It

1. Pre-heat oven to 200°c (fan)
2. Roast pepper for 30 mins & the pop in bag to cool – once cool remove skin seeds – chop finely
3. Once pepper is cooked tun oven up to 210°
4. Make the chermoula – put all chermoula ingredients into magimix & blend
5. Line baking tray with baking paper.
6. Season skin side of salmon with salt & pepper then spread with some chermoula.
7. Turn fillet over, season again and add chermoula.
8. Cover the baking tray with tin foil – seal tightly
9. Pop salmon in over & set timer for 12 minutes
10. As soon a s salmon goes in the oven, make sure the stock is in a pan & boiling. Take it off the heat, add the couscous & cover (keeping it off the heat).
11. After 5 mins, fluff up the couscous, add butter & olive oil and mix well – popping back on heat briefly to ensure its warm through.
12. Take off heat again and add lemon juice, roasted pepper, chopped mint and season well.
13. Serve couscous and salmon for a very tasty meal…

Speedy things

I’ve used the magimix to make cakes twice. The first time we weren’t impressed by it but yesterday, due to time constraints, I used it to make some cupcakes and they worked much better. I did take a photo but the camera isn’t brilliant so you’ll have to wait until next time ;)

Its Mr C’s birthday on Tuesday though so I will be baking again but I think I’ll stick to my Dualit hand mixer for that!

Today I made some more bread & the magimix comes with a dough hook so I thought it silly not to give it a go. The outcome was a tasty fresh loaf and hardly any mess. All the ingredients are thrown in the magimix, it forms a dough ball and then you leave it in situ for half an hour. After this time you need to pulse the magimix 3 or 4 times and effectively, knock the dough back. The mixture then gets transferred to a big bowl and left to rise for 2 hours in the airing cupboard.

After two hours the dough is tipped out, gently moulded into a rectangle and placed in a loaf tin. I left it settle and rise again for 10 minutes whilst the oven heated up to 200°c. It cooked for about 35 minutes and produced a really nice loaf…

Even Hubby, who doesn’t like fish, thought they were tasty…