Nduja Hash Recipe

January 20, 2012 By 1 Comment

This recipe is inspired by the dish that was made for brunch on Something for the Weekend. Since I had all the ingredients required, I whipped this up in a flash, well almost and it was the most delicious quickie meal ever.

Nduja is a soft salami from Calabria which is made from offal and lots of chilli and it works brilliantly in making a delicious potato hash. Alternatively, you can use the Spanish Sobrasada as it is quite similar.

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Nduja Hash Recipe

Rating: 51

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Serves 2

Nduja Hash Recipe

Nduja Hash - Fried onions, crispy potatoes, spicy and eggs. A perfect combination for brunch.

Ingredients

  • 300g new potatoes
  • 1 sliced onion
  • A few rashers of bacon, ham or any leftover cold meat of sausages can work too.
  • 2 free range eggs
  • 80g - 100g nduja (Available from supermarkets and the De Calabria stall in Borough Market)
  • 2 tbsp cold pressed rapeseed oil

Instructions

  1. Par boil the new potatoes but don't over cook it. Drain them when cooked.
  2. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onions until soft, about 10 minutes.
  3. Add the bacon and fry for a short while until cooked or crisp, as you prefer.
  4. Add the nduja to the pan and stir it into the onions until it melts.
  5. Now add the potatoes and leave it to cook until the potatoes get crispy, even slightly burnt.
  6. When the potatoes has crisped, break 2 eggs onto the hash and cover it until the eggs are cooked to your liking.
  7. When done, pile it on a plate and devour.
http://www.eatcookexplore.com/nduja-hash-recipe/

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Malaysian Pineapple Tarts

November 25, 2011 By 6 Comments

Pineapple tarts are little short crust pastry tarts with home made pineapple jam. In Malaysia, these are made for special ocassions like Chinese New Year, Deepavali and Hari Raya (Eid). Families used to make it but in this age of “I don’t know how she does it”, we tend to buy them from the many cottage industry vendors in town.

I made these for Vanessa Kimbell’s Let’s Make Christmas bloggers’ swap recently as they were suitably festive. The only concession that I made was to use a star shaped cookie cutter instead of the usual round ones.

Every one has their own favourite version of these tarts. I like them with crumbly buttery, short crust pastry and a sweet but tangy pineapple jam. You can cheat by buying in the jam instead of making it yourself but it is quite easy to make. It just takes a bit of time but well worth the satisfaction.

 

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Malaysian Pineapple Tarts

Rating: 51

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours

Makes 30 Tarts

Malaysian Pineapple Tarts

Delicious Pineapple Tarts for any ocassion.

Ingredients

    For the Pineapple Jam
  • 500g grated fresh pineapple. If you can’t find fresh pineapple, you can use the equivalent tinned pineapple in juice (remember to drain away the juice)
  • 250g caster sugar. Adjust to your taste but reduce the sugar if you’re using tinned pineapples in syrup
  • 4 cloves (optional)
  • 2 cinnamon sticks (optional)
  • For the Short Crust Pastry
  • 300g plain flour
  • 175g salted organic butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 egg yolk for egg wash

Instructions

    To make the pineapple jam
  1. Cook the grated pineapple, spices and sugar in a saucepan on medium heat until it starts to bubble, stirring as you go. Note, you can use an electronic chopper instead of grating if you prefer.
  2. Once the mixture is bubbling, reduce the heat to low and stir regularly for about 1 hour or until pineapple jam has reached a sticky consistency. You need the jam to be quite dry or it will run all over the pastry when you bake it.
  3. Make sure you keep stirring the jam as it burns quite easily. Once the jam has thickened, turn off the heat, remove the spices and allow to cool completely. You can bottle this for use later.
    4. To make the pastry
  4. Rub in the butter and flour until the mix resembles bread crumbs.
  5. Add in the beaten eggs to bind but don’t work it too much as the pastry will get too hard. If it is too dry, you can drizzle a few drops of water (ala Delia). Don’t be tempted to make it too wet.
  6. The dough should all come together into a ball. When it does, wrap in cling film and put it in the fridge for a couple of hours.
  7. About an hour before you are ready to roll out the pastry, take the dough out of the fridge and let it get to room temperature or it will be too hard to roll out.
    8. Putting the tarts together
  8. Preheat oven to 180°C. Using lightly oiled hands, roll out about a teaspoon of the pineapple jam into balls and place aside. Don't be tempted to make the balls of jam too big as they will overflow over the pastry.
  9. Roll out the pastry dough to a 0.5cm thickness (pound coin) between two sheets of non stick baking sheet or use a lightly floured rolling pin. Remove the top sheet of paper and use your pineapple tart or cookie cutter mould to cut out shapes of your pastry. Use the handle of a wooden spoon to make a small circular dent in the middle. You can then either remove the excess dough and slide the baking paper with the pastry onto your baking tray or remove each cut piece and place it on a baking sheet.
  10. Place the prepared balls of pineapple jam into the middle of each tart and place decorative pastry on top of jam if you want. Traditionally, small pieces if dough will be rolled out and placed as a cross across the jam. In this case, I used some star shaped sprinkles to match the cookie shape after the tarts were cooked.
  11. Brush pastry with egg wash and bake on the top shelf of the oven for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is slightly golden. Cool on a wire rack to allow the pastry to crisp up and store in an airtight container.
http://www.eatcookexplore.com/malaysian-pineapple-tarts/

 

Make a massive batch to give away. They are always better than the shop bought ones.

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Brazilian Chocolate Brigadeiros

November 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I found this recipe on another food blog and they looked so lovely that I had it on my list to try. Then came along the Let’s Make Christmas event, so I made it for my swap contribution. See below for my adapted recipe.

They are really easy to make and the recipe makes about 30 balls, depending on how big you roll them. This could be a really fun job to involve kids in. Get a lot of different coloured sprinkles and create a whole range of amazing looking sweets.

Sidebar: In the process of making this, I discovered the world of glittery sprinkles in a cake supplies shop nearby. It’s like a kid being let loose in a toy shop. Now I need to find more recipes where I can use the colourful icing, the icing pens, glitter, etc. Fun!

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Brazilian Chocolate Brigadeiros

Rating: 51

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes

30

Brazilian Chocolate Brigadeiros

Really fun Brazillian sweets that you can make in a jiffy.

Ingredients

    For the Brigadeiros
  • 1 400ml Can of Condensed Milk
  • 3 tbsp of Drinking Chocolate Powder
  • 2 tbsp of butter
  • For Decoration:
  • Chocolate Sprinkles
  • Fancy Sprinkles
  • Baking glitter
  • Crushed Pistachio nuts

Instructions

  1. Pour the condensed milk into a medium saucepan and place over medium heat.
  2. Add the drinking chocolate drinking and butter and keep stirring your Brigadeiro mixture until it starts to show the bottom of the pan when you scrape it with your spoon. This is the only crucial bit to watch out for. As you scrape the bottom of your pan with the spoon, the Brigadeiro mixture should be thick enough to show you the bottom the pan for a couple of seconds before the mixture levels out again. This takes about 10 minutes.
  3. Pour the Brigadeiro mixture into a glass container and leave your Brigadeiros aside to cool until it’s room temperature, then you can put them in the fridge. The mixture can stay in the fridge for 3 to 4 days until you’re ready to roll them out.
  4. When you are ready to roll your Brigadeiros, remove the mixture from the fridge and let it warm up to room temperature again as this makes it easier to handle. Using a teaspoon, scoop a small quantity and roll it into a small round shape, about the size of chocolate truffle. If you spread a bit of butter on your palms before rolling, this will prevent the mixture from sticking. (You can make this a fun group activity to get the kids to do this part)
  5. Drop the Brigadeiro ball into a bowl containing your choice of topping and gently roll it around until it’s totally covered. I chose some chocolate sprinkles and some colourful edible star shape sprinkles from Sainsburys.
  6. Transfer your Brigadeiro to a mini cupcake cup. (I bought my mini cupcake cups from ebay where there are loads of choices.)
http://www.eatcookexplore.com/brazilian-chocolate-brigadeiros/

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Coffee Tasting And Coffee Matching Masterclass

November 4, 2011 By 3 Comments

Slurping your food and drink loudly is seen as rude in some cultures but in tasting beverages like wine, tea and coffee, it’s quite essential as the oxygenation releases the flavours and aromas. Up to this point, I have never had much of an occassion to taste more than one coffee at a time and this would be a great tasting lesson.

At a recent Coffee Tasting Masterclass with Cafe Direct,  we were taught about the fine details of tasting coffee with coffee expert Thierry.

As part of the coffee matching, there was a mini competition to make a dessert to match one the 4  coffees, Kilimanjaro, Mayan Palenque, Machu Picchu or Cloud Forest.  Each coffee has its own distinct flavour and characteristics as coffees are much like wine, the flavours are influenced by terroir.

How to Taste Coffee, also called “Cupping”

There are 3 steps to tasting coffee:

When tasting we are looking for these characteristics, fragrance, aroma, acidity, body, flavour, balance, aftertaste.

Fragrance : Firstly, we had to smell each of the 3 ground coffees.

Aroma: This is what we get after adding water to the coffee. Each cup was left to brew for 4 minutes for the aroma to develop. We then had to use a spoon and scoop the liquid away from you and then inhale.

Coffee Tasting Matching

Tasting: Using 2 spoons, we scooped around the edges of the cup to remove the foam that has formed and then had to slurp the coffee to aerate it allowing us to discern more of the characteristics of each coffee. Unforunately, my tastebuds are so insensitive that it was hard to get more than bland, bitter, too strong.  Each coffee was quite different when tasted in succession and surprisingly, the flavour profiles changed a lot when we tasted the coffees at a cooler temperature.

coffee tasting

We also learnt that different coffees should be drunk at different times of the day, like the Kilimanjaro blend is perfect for a breakfast coffee as it warms your tastebuds.

On the the baking competition

I paired up with the delightful Gill from Tales of Pigling Bland where we attempted a Flourless Chocolate Cake recipe from Ferran Adria’s new cookbook, The Family Meal. Our dessert was chosen to match the Machu Picchu coffee from Peru, which has a nutty and chocolatey flavour.  We were given a bag of ingredients to create our dessert.

Coffee Tasting Matching

The recipe is actually really easy and we were all quite anxious to see how it would turn out as there were so few ingredients and steps. The result was surprisingly superb, the recipe yielded a light, spongy and super chocolatey cake. Since we had a bit more time and ingredients, we made some nut brittle to go with the cake and did some fancy plating up, as seen in the picture.

Unfortunately, our dessert didn’t win the competition and the winner was a spiced honey cake made by Team April (aka Rhubarbandrose and 21stCentury Housewife)

 

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Ferran Adria Flourless Chocolate Cake

Rating: 51

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 12 minutes

Total Time: 32 minutes

6 small cakes

Ferran Adria Flourless Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

  • 175g Dark Chocolate 60% cocoa
  • 90g Butter at room temperature
  • 4 Egg whites
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 1/2 egg yolks

Instructions

  1. This recipe makes 6 cakes
  2. Half fill a saucepan with water and bring to boil. Put the chocolate in a metal or glass bowl and place over pan to melt. Leave the chocolate to melt slowly, stirring occasionally with a spatula until smooth. Remove the pan from heat.
  3. Cut the butter into cubes and add into the chocolate. Stir in the butter to melt into the chocolate.
  4. Put the egg whites into a large bowl, then add the sugar. Use a balloon whisk or electric beater to whip the whites and sugar into a soft meringue. Do not allow the mixture to stiffen.
  5. Preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F/ Gas Mark 6.
  6. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks for a few seconds.
  7. Pour the yolks over the meringue mixture, then fold together using a spatula or whisk.
  8. Tip the meringue mixture into the buttery chocolate.
  9. Fold everything together carefully with a spatula until even.
  10. Spoon the cake mixture inot a piping bag and snip off the end. If you don't have a piping bag, use 2 teaspoons instead.
  11. Pipe of carefully spoon the mixture into circular silicone moulds about 12 cm across and 4cm deep. If you don't have silicone moulds you can use metal ones but make sure you grease well with butter.
  12. Bake in the oven for 12mins or until risen and shrinking away from the edes of the moulds.
  13. Leave to cool before removing from moulds.
  14. Serve the cake warm.
http://www.eatcookexplore.com/coffee-tasting-and-coffee-matching-masterclass/

You can read my review of The Family Meal here and buy the book at Amazon.

Ferran Adria's The Family Meal Cookbook

The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria

You can win a cookery master class at L’Atelier des Chefs by submitting a dessert to match one of their coffees. Details here

Cafe Direct buys their coffee directly from traders and not via Fairtrade or the non Fairtrade register. All the coffees are single estate blends. The coffees are available from leading supermarkets.

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Strawberry Yoghurt Ice Cream with Cuisinart Ice Cream Deluxe

September 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

My new new thing all this summer was making ice cream, with lots of summer fruits and experimenting with other strange flavours. One of the favourite recipes was making Strawberry Ice Cream. The first time I made it was such a lovely surprise as it produces a delightful pink coloured concoction and it was really quick to make too.

This Strawberry Ice Cream recipe is very simple and doesn’t require you to make a custard before hand. I have made it lighter by substituting some of the double cream with fat free yoghurt.

For this recipe, I used my new Cuisinart Ice Cream Deluxe Ice Cream Machine which has a 2 litre capacity. The recipe is enough to make about 1 litre which is enough for about 4 servings. Cuisinart makes the best Kitchen Appliances like their amazing Food Processor which we saw recently at the Food Bloggers Connect Conference.

Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker

Before you can use this Ice Cream Machine, you need to freeze the bowl and this takes about 12 hours. When the liquid in the bowl is frozen solid, it will then take about 20 minutes to make the ice cream.

The machine is very simple to use with only one setting. You need to set the machine up with the bowl in place with the lid firmly and turn on the ice cream machine before you pour the ice cream mixture in. If you don’t the mixture might freeze and this will prevent the mixing arm to move around. You will know when the ice cream is ready when you hear the machine change speed, it will sound like it is slowing down.

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Lighter Strawberry Ice Cream with Cuisinart Ice Cream Deluxe

Lighter Strawberry Ice Cream with Cuisinart Ice Cream Deluxe

Ingredients

  • 250ml double cream
  • 450-500g carton of natural yoghurt (I used 0% fat Greek Yoghurt)
  • 450g Strawberries
  • 250g caster sugar
  • 1 tbsp of Vanilla Essence Optional
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice

Instructions

  1. Place the caster sugar, chopped strawberries and lemon juice together in a bowl and leave for about 15 minutes until the sugar dissolves.
  2. You can then mash them up or use a hand held blender to puree the strawberries before the next step. This depends if you like larger pieces of strawberries in your ice cream.
  3. You can take out about 2 tablespoons of strawberries before you blend it to add back a bit of texture.
  4. You can beat the double cream and fold it into the bowl of blended mixture along with the yoghurt and strawberries which you saved earlier.
  5. Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker and churn for about 20 - 25 minutes, checking on consistency as you go.
  6. If it is not frozen enough, you can transfer into a freezer proof container and freeze it for a couple of hours before serving.
  7. Serve with fresh strawberries or other toppings of your choice.
http://www.eatcookexplore.com/strawberry-yoghurt-ice-cream-with-cuisinart-ice-cream-deluxe/

You can buy Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker
from Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Spicy Nduja Palmier Bites – My recipe

August 16, 2011 By 3 Comments

Do you know the feeling like you have won the lottery when you discover an amazing new ingredient? There is this unrational thrill that a  foodie gets when finding and loving a fab tasting new ingredient and my newest one is nduja, which I tasted here.

An email popped into my inbox inviting me to participate in a recipe competition using nduja, I of course agreed. Then came the dilemma, what to cook with it. I had a really busy week and about a day to think of something, get ingredients and to cook it and take some nice photos. The competition is stiff as the other food bloggers involved are great cooks and they all have serious DSLR cameras to take amazing photos with.

What is Nduja ?

Nduja is a spicy spreadable salami from Spilinga in Calabria and it is made of different parts of the pig with about 40% fat, sweet pepper and hot Calabrian pepper. The meat is ground and with spices and some salt and is stuffed into natural casing. This is then smoked for about a week and then left to dry for a few weeks.

The Calabrians like to eat nduja just spread on bread, with fusilli, in a tomato sauce, added to bean stews or soups. My inventive friends on twitter suggested these other ways, spread on top of a burger, and rubbing it on chicken for roasting.

Nduja melts when you heat it up so it is often used in pasta sauces, adding a bit of a spicy kick and the melted pig fat making everything taste extra delicious.

If you don’t fancy cooking with nduja yourself, you can always head over to the best Italian Restaurant in the City, L’Anima as Francesco is from Calabria and he serves a pasta dish with nduja.

 

Food Unearthed Recipe Challenge

Nduja Food Unearthed

For the challenge, I wanted to deviate from the traditional ways of using nduja and find a way of enjoying this without too much fuss.  So I decided to make these delectable melt in your mouth spicy nduja palmiers with a hidden explosion of flavour.  These canapes are really quick and easy to make and is an alternative to how nduja is traditionally used.

The competition is open for voting on Facebook , do have a look and please vote. Thanks.

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Spicy Nduja Palmier Recipe

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

20 pieces

canapes

Spicy Nduja Palmier Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 packet Food Unearthed Nduja
  • 1 packet of All Butter Puff Pastry
  • About 75g Grated Parmesan cheese
  • Honey to drizzle
  • 1 beaten Egg for egg wash - optional

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 220C.
  2. Roll out the puff pastry evenly on a clean and lightly floured work surface until it is about the thickness of a pound coin. I made a rectangular shape with mine to make it easy to fold over. If you are using frozen puff pastry, make sure you take it out earlier to let it thaw before use. There are usually instruction on the packet for you to follow.
  3. For the first layer, spread the delectable spicy nduja all over the pastry leaving a 2cm edge clear. You don't need to have a very thick layer a little bit will go a long way. You can press the nduja down into the pastry to help the salami adhere.
  4. For the next flavour, evenly sprinkle grated parmesan cheese over the nduja. You can substitute parmesan with any other melting cheese that you have to hand.
  5. For an added dimension I drizzled honey all over this nduja and cheese topping. Honey seems to complement nduja really well as it takes an edge off the spiciness and adds an added depth to the flavour to each bite.
  6. Folding the pastry to make a palmier shape.
  7. Fold both the long side of the pasty so that the edges meet in the centre.
  8. Secondly fold the edges again to the centre again. You now have quite a thick piece of pastry.
  9. Lastly, fold this in half along the middle to form a flat sausage like shape.
  10. Alternative to folding: you can roll the pastry from the edge towards to the centre to create a scroll shaped pastry too.
  11. You can now wrap it up in cling film and put the pastry back in the fridge for about 15 minutes to firm up before cutting.
  12. With a sharp knife, cut pieces of the pastry into 1cm thick slices. If your knife is not sharp and your pastry is too soft, you will not get a clean shape. At this point you can egg wash the pastry to give it a gorgeous shiny finish after baking by just beating up one egg and brush each piece on the baking tray.
  13. Place these slices cut side down onto a paper lined baking tray. Spread them out a bit with some space between them on the tray as they will expand as they bake. You can sprinkle more cheese on top of the pastry too.
  14. Place on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 15 minutes until the nduja and cheese melts and the pastry turns golden brown. keep an eye on it as different ovens work differently and take them out when it starts to brown.
  15. When ready, take it out of the oven and carefully place them on a wire rack to cook. When cool it will crisp up very nicely.
  16. Serve.
http://www.eatcookexplore.com/spicy-nduja-palmier-bites-my-recipe/

 

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Chocolate dipped orange shortbread biscuits

August 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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Chocolate dipped orange shortbread biscuits

Chocolate dipped orange shortbread biscuits

Ingredients

  • 100g (3 ½ oz) Kerrygold butter, softened and diced, plus extra for greasing
  • 150g (5oz) plain flour, plus extra for dusting
  • 50g (2oz) caster sugar
  • 75g (2½ oz) dark chocolate, broken in to pieces
  • The grated zest of one orange

Instructions

    Makes 15–20 biscuits
  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°f/Gas mark 4.
  2. Grease a baking sheet with a little Kerrygold butter.
  3. Sift the flour into a large bowl and, using your fingertips, rub in the Kerrygold butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and orange zest and bring the whole mixture together to form a stiff dough. (Don’t be tempted to add any water.) Alternatively, briefly mix the ingredients in a food processor until they come together.
  4. Transfer the dough to a lightly dusted worktop and roll out to about 5mm (1/4inch) thick. Cut into rounds, fingers, squares or dinosaurs, then lift carefully on to the prepared baking sheet with a palette knife, spacing the biscuits evenly apart.
  5. Bake for 6–10 minutes or until pale golden, then remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for a minute or so before transferring to a wire rack to cool down completely.
  6. Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. When the chocolate has melted, dip the shortbread in about half way in to the chocolate, then allow any excess to drip off and place on a plate to cool and set.
http://www.eatcookexplore.com/chocolate-dipped-orange-shortbread-biscuits/

This recipe will be featured in the Free Kerrygold Recipe Book, out Oct 2011.

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Grilled spring lamb cutlets with anchovy, olive and caper butter served with buttered courgettes

August 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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Grilled spring lamb cutlets with anchovy, olive and caper butter served with buttered courgettes

Grilled spring lamb cutlets with anchovy, olive and caper butter served with buttered courgettes

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 12 lamb cutlets
  • Salt and pepper
  • For the flavoured butter:
  • 125g (4 ½ oz) Kerrygold butter, softened
  • 1 tbsp parsley, chopped
  • 2 anchovies, chopped
  • 0 capers, chopped
  • 6 black olives, pitted and chopped
  • A squeeze of lemon juice
  • For the buttered courgettes:
  • 25g (1oz) Kerrygold butter
  • 2 medium courgettes
  • Salt and ground black pepper

Instructions

  1. In a bowl, mix together all ingredients for the flavoured butter. Next, lay out a piece of baking parchment or cling film. Spoon the butter mixture on top of the parchment or cling film in to a rough sausage shape, then use the parchment or cling film to roll the butter into a log about 2.5cm (1in) in diameter. Place in the fridge and keep chilled until needed.
  2. To cook the cutlets, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
  3. Place a griddle pan or frying pan on a high heat and allow to get quite hot, then add the cutlets and cook for 2–4 minutes on each side depending on how well done you like them. Take them off the heat, and allow to rest for a few minutes as you cook the courgettes.
  4. To cook the courgettes, first peel them, then slice in half lengthways and remove and discard the soft inner seeds. Next carefully cut the flesh into 1cm (½in) cubes or slices.
  5. To cook, place a frying pan on a high heat. Once hot, add the Kerrygold butter and when the butter has melted tip in the courgette pieces.
  6. Sauté for 2–3 minutes until just softened, tossing regularly, and season with salt and pepper to taste.
  7. To serve, cut a few slices of your flavoured butter, about 1cm thick, and place a slice on each lamb chop then serve immediately with the buttered courgettes.
http://www.eatcookexplore.com/grilled-spring-lamb-cutlets-with-anchovy-olive-and-caper-butter-served-with-buttered-courgettes/

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Mackerel Tartare with Minted Cucumber Soup

August 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This is a recipe we cooked at the Atelier Des Chefs, a recipe that was created by Andre Dupin for Total Greek Yoghurt.It is a very fresh dish and will be very easy to make for dinner parties as you can prepare most of it before hand.

This serves 6 people.

TOTAL GREEK YOGHURT TARTARE OF MACKEREL WITH MINTED CUCUMBER SOUP
Ingredients

  • 12 Fillets of mackerel
  • 1 Banana shallot (Echalion)
  • 25g Pickled gherkins
  • ½ bunch Flat leaf parsley
  • 50g TOTAL 0% Greek Yoghurt
  • 10g Ketchup
  • 3ml Tabasco
  • 10ml Worcestershire sauce
  • 25g Capers in vinegar

For the soup:

  • 1 Cucumber
  • 1 Garlic clove
  • ¼ bunch Fresh mint
  • 3 pinches Fine salt
  • 10ml White wine vinegar
  • 50g TOTAL 0% Greek Yoghurt
  • Method

1. Start by preparing the mackerel: fillet the fish if necessary and remove the pin bones. Remove the skin from the fish and then cut the flesh into dice. Keep refrigerated while you prepare the rest of the recipe.

2. Peel and finely dice the shallot. Chop the gherkins into small pieces. Pick the leaves from the parsley and roughly chop. Mix these chopped ingredients

3. with the mackerel and add the capers and Greek yoghurt.

4. Mix well and then add the ketchup, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. Taste the tartare mix and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

5. To make the soup: peel the cucumber and the garlic and pick the mint leaves. Place these ingredients in a blender with the salt and the white wine vinegar. Blitz for a minute to make the soup.

6. Add the Greek yoghurt and pulse the mixture for 5 seconds. Check the seasoning.

7.  To serve: place a large quenelle of the tartare mix in the middle of a small

8. bowl and pour the soup around. Serve immediately.
CHEF’S TIP: Try making this tartare dish with fresh tuna as an alternative to mackerel.

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Gwyneth Paltrow’s Hot Nicoise Salad

June 7, 2011 By 5 Comments

I don’t usually like celebrity cook books as they are usually not written by the celebrity and the recipes mostly don’t work. (…Sophie Dahl) After all the publicity around Gwynnie’s new book, Notes from my Kitchen Table, we had to try at least one of them. This is a really easy and quick recipe which is her interpretation of a warm Nicoise Salad.

It took about 10 mins to prepare everything and then 12 minutes to cook. Truly a quick and complete meal in under 30 mins. One thing I would say is that this would serve about 3 people or 4 if you are all on diets and eat very small portions. Also, buy bigger tuna steaks than we did in the photo and maybe serve some boiled jersey royals on the side if you eat carbs. If not, you could parboil the potatoes and add them to the pan to roast with everything else.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Hot Nicoise Salad Recipe

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Hot Nicoise Salad

SERVES 4

* 225g green beans, ends trimmed
* 225g cherry tomatoes, halved
* 75g niçoise olives (preferably pitted)
* 7 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
* 1 large handful fresh basil leaves
* 1 yellow roasted bell pepper (see page 69), roughly torn into strips
* 1 red roasted bell pepper (see page 69), roughly torn into strips
* 12 olive-oil-packed Spanish anchovies
* 4 x 175g tuna steaks about 2cm thick
* coarse salt
* freshly ground black pepper
* 4 organic large eggs
* 1 lemon, halved, for squeezing

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6.
2. Steam the green beans for 4 minutes. Immediately toss them in a large roasting tin (about 30cm x 34cm) together with the tomatoes, olives and 4 tablespoons of the olive oil, crushing the tomatoes slightly with your hands. Tear in the basil and push the mixture around the perimeter of the tin. Nestle the peppers and anchovies in and around the vegetables. Lay the tuna steaks in the middle of the tin and coat each with ½ tablespoon of olive oil and rub with a generous amount of salt and pepper.
3. Crack each egg into a small ramekin and tuck the ramekins into the corners of the tin. Drizzle each egg evenly with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Stick the whole thing in the oven for 10-12 minutes, or until the eggs are just set and the tuna is cooked through but still moist. Pull the tin out, squeeze lemon over everything and serve.

Am glad to say that I was pleasantly surprised with this recipe and will now try out a few more recipes from her book.

You can find lots more easy recipe as per Miss Paltrow in her book Notes from my Kitchen Table also called “My Father’s Daughter” in the US.

 

 

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