Baked seafood with Real green salad, tartare sauce and roast sweet potato

I'm not going to lie, I'm a bit funny about fish and seafood. My friends and my boyfriend are mad for it but I just can't quite decide how I feel. I'll eat it out one day and love it and try it the next day and feel totally disgusted. I do know how good fish is for you though and one way I can always eat it is crumbed, so finding a way to eat crumbed fish without it being laden with fat is very exciting to me! This recipe has no real fat to speak of, and is really yummy and has that same crunch I love with the deep fried version, the secret is in the Panko crumbs I think!

I call the salad real green salad because I believe a green salad should be GREEN, not contain tomatoes, red onion etc etc! But I think they can only be truly good if you use some really interesting green veggies! I love finely shaved fennel, some spring onion, asparagus, broad beans, green beans, anything like that really, just something other than just leaves is great!

Anyway this meal was pretty good, healthy, and simple, and I think would go down well with any age!

Roast Sweet Potato

3 - 4 small sweet potatoes

1 -2 tablespoons of olive oil

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius. Cut sweet potatoes in half lengthways and then into wedges. Place on a tray lined with baking paper and toss with oil and salt and pepper to taste. Place in the oven and roast for approximately 20 minutes, then turn and roast for a further 20 minutes.

Baked fish and prawns

400 - 500g fresh white fish fillets (I used flathead)

Approx 2 Large green king prawns per person

Panko Breadcrumbs

1 egg

Plain flour

Zest of one lemon

2 - 3 sprigs of fresh dill

Place flour onto a large plate (as much as necessary, it depends on the amount of seafood you use), add the finely chopped zest of one lemon and finely chopped dill and mix with some salt and pepper. Break the egg into a medium bowl and gently beat. Place the breadcrumbs onto a large plate also.

Cut fish into strips around 2 cm wide. Dip into flour and shake to remove excess, follow with the egg, and breadcrumbs pressing to coat. Repeat with remaining fish pieces and place on a baking tray. Peel and devein the prawns, and coat in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and keep aside.

bake the fish for 20- 25 minutes, turning halfway through cooking. When 10 minutes remain, add the prawns. I actually forgot oil accidently and it was still really good, but you could add a little oil if you wanted to.

Real green salad

Green vegetables (I used asparagus, brocollini, and green beans)

Any mix of salad greens you like

Oil

White wine vinegar

Salt and Pepper

Blanch any vegetables until cooked but still crisp and refresh under cold running water. Place in a bowl with one part vinegar to three parts olive oil and season with salt and pepper, toss to combine. Just before serving throw in fresh salad leaves and toss to combine.

Tartare Sauce

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

3 -4 tablespoons of whole egg mayonnaise

2 -3 sprigs of finely chopped fresh dill

3 large gherkins, finely diced

1 tablespoon of roughly chopped capers.

Mix all ingedients together, flavour with some lemon if desired and season if necessary.

Serve the salad with the hot fish and seafood, with a good serving of sweet potatoes and a good dollop of tartare.

Homemade Muesli

Now that the weather is warming up I'm becoming increasing sick of porridge for breakfast and decided some muesli might make a nice change!

I'm a fan of toasted muesli but I find the ones you buy from the supermarket are often overpriced and not particularly amazing, so I like the idea of making my own and adding in anything I like (lots of NICE dried fruit, nuts and seeds) and missing out anything i don't (sultanas, sunflower seeds etc). The great thing about it is if you don''t like fruit or nuts you can leave them out or you can add extra ingredients, whatever tickles your fancy!

Ingredients

1 cup runny honey
80g butter (or mild flavoured oil)

1kg of rolled oats (or a mix of oats and other grains)

about 1 cup sesame seeds

125g pistachio nuts

Mixed dried fruit about 500g (I used dried sour cherries, pears and apricots

2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp rosewater, 1 tsp cardamom (or any spices you like)

Method

Firstly preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius and line two large baking trays with baking paper. Place honey and butter in a saucepan and heat over medium heat until the butter melts, at the stage the honey should be more fluid as well. Remove from heat and in a large bowl mix the honey and butter with the oats, seeds and nuts until evenly coated.

Place the mix into the prepared trays and spread out so it's in a layer about 1cm thick. Place in the oven and bake for 20 - 30 minutes stirring every five to ten minutes and bringing the mix from the edges into the centre. Once it's nicely golden remove from the oven and leave to cool then mix in chopped fruit.

This would be really good with milk and fresh fruit, or even sprinkled over some flavoured or plain yoghurt. Yum!

Baked beans with perfect poached eggs

As it's the weekend I feel the need for a proper savoury breakfast, my boyfriend offered to

make porridge this morning, which I like mid-week, but it just wasn't going to cut it on a lazy sunday morning! So searching for something in the pantry led me to a can of fava beans and remembering there was tomato paste in the fridge and brown sugar in the cupboard it just had to be baked beans for breakfast.

These may not look so appealing but are really easy and quick as they are made from canned beans and despite their bland appearance are pretty tasty and make for a high protein meal especially when served with eggs. Poached eggs took me years to get right and were a cause of serious frustration for me for a vey long time, now that I have the technique down though they come out near perfect every time, once you know the tricks yours will too!

Baked Beans

• 1 tbs olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 stick of cinnamon
  1 tsp each of smoky paprika and dried oregano
• 1 can beans (I used fava, but butter beans or canellini beans would work well too)
• 1 tbs of tomato paste
• 1 capful of malt vinegar (or white wine vinegar, whatever you have on hand!)
• 1 heaped tsp brown sugar or to taste

Heat oil over medium heat, add onion, garlic and all the herbs and spices, fry until onions start to turn translucent. Add all remaining ingredients and lower heat slightly so the sauce is at a simmer. Cook until the sauce is quite reduced, about 5 - 10 minutes. I threw in some chopped coriander at the end but this is not a necessity.

Perfect Poached Eggs

• Eggs (preferably free range and as fresh as possible)
• white vinegar

Place your eggs in a bowl large enough to fit water to cover. Pour hot water over the eggs (not boiling, tap water is fine) leave to sit for about 5 minutes, this starts to get the egg whites coagulating. Heat a saucepan with about 1cm of white vinegar and enough water to cover the eggs until at a simmer.

Crack the eggs into a cup before gently slipping into the water, they should start to form straight away.

Leave to simmer for about 1 minute (or more or less depending how soft you like them). Carefully remove with a slotted spoon and place on a clean tea towel or several layers of paper towel, pat gently. This stops you from getting soggy toast due to residual water (my pet hate!).

Serve the eggs with beans and some nice toast if you like, we had rye sourdough which was pretty good.

Pulled pork Burritos with black beans and spiced rice

So my boyfriend is like totally in love with the burritos at Guzman and Gomez in Newtown (I have to admit I get a pretty intense craving for them once in a while myself) and in an effort to please him I decided to make some the other night, hoping they would be at least half as yummy as the ones from Guzman, luckily I must have had a stroke of beginners luck as while they didn't taste the same as the store bought variety they were still pretty great.

I think the secret to their success was the slow roast pork shoulder, it does take some time to cook but you can completely ignore it so is actually really easy! So much so that we just left it in the oven while we were out one night.

Pulled Pork

• 1 - 1.5kg pork shoulder (boneless)
• 1 heaped teaspoon each of ground cumin/smoky paprika/ground coriander and oregano
• 2 whole dried chillis, ripped into pieces
• 4 cloves of garlic crushed
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• juice of 1 orange

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl or deep tray and leave pork to marinate in it for 24 hours (preferably!) turning it once or twice during this time.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celcius. Place the pork into a deep tray with all the marinade, season with salt cover with foil and bake for 4 hours or until incredibly tender (you should be able to pull it apart with a fork). Leave pork to cool then remove from pan, discard any excess fat or skin and shred roughly (two forks work well!). Place half the juices from the pork in a pan and reduce until quite syrupy to intensify the flavours then pour over the shredded pork meat and toss to combine (you can freeze the other half for stock, or discard).

Mexican style spicy rice

• 1 cup white rice, rinsed twice
• 1.5 cups water (or stock, I used some chicken stock powder)
• 1/2 tsp each ground cumin and coriander
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tbs tomato paste

Mix all ingredients together in a pot and bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and cook until water has absorbed and rice is tender, about 10 - 12 minutes. Add in some freshly chopped coriander if desired.

Black beans

• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 a medium onion
• 1 can black beans (or kidney beans if not available)
• 1 tablespoon coriander stalks finely chopped
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tbs tomato paste
• 1/4 cup water

Fry onion gently in olive oil until translucent. Add beans and remaining ingredients and cook until warmed through and liquid is almost all absorbed.

Tomato Salsa

• 3 Ripe red tomatoes
• 1/2 onion (left over from the beans, red is best)
• 1/2 bunch chopped coriander leaves
• juice of 1/4 lemon

Mix. Done!

To Serve

• Any condiments you may like for example, chopped pickled jalepenos, guacamole, shredded cheese (a must I think!), chilli sauce, extra chopped coriander
• flour tortilla wraps

To serve place a few spoonfuls each of the rice, beans and pork onto a tortilla, add some salsa and any extra condiments you might like and enjoy! Make sure you have a plate and napkins aplenty these are messy work to eat!!

Serves 4 at least! However if you do have leftovers the rice is really good the next day for lunch topped with salsa, leftover pork and some grated cheese!

Infallible hash browns and a spiced cheats chutney

Firstly I would like to welcome any visitors to our blog. We are new to this so please be patient while we get it up and running!

So me and Cheese are big time lovers of the potato as a breakfast food and are regularly disappointed by the lack of them on cafe menus around the Newtown area. Naturally this caused me to try time and time again to make my own but with limited success. Until one day at my mums we tried a Deborah Madison recipe which worked a treat. I have altered it to suit my personal taste, i.e. loads more salt than she suggested and more onion. Me and my boyfriend had these the other morning with a cheats chutney I made from some over-ripe tomatoes, not health food by any means but damn good!

Hash Browns

Ingredients
5 large potatoes
1/4 to 1/2 an onion, or a bunch of chives, or a couple of spring onions finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
oil (and butter if you like) for frying

Peel the potatoes cut them in half and bring to the boil in lightly salted water, boil until par-cooked, about 10 minutes or less, and then remove and set aside until cool enough to handle. Grate the potatoes coarsely (a food processor makes short work of this) and place in a large bowl, add the onions or chives and salt and pepper to taste. The mix can now be used but I find it best to make it up early as the time in the fridge helps to solidify it and makes it easier to work with. Heat some oil in a frying pan over medium high heat, you can use just a little but the more you use the crispier the end result will be. When oil is hot use your hands to scoop out balls of the mix, place these into the pan (about 4 at a time) and press to flatten, leave them until golden on the bottom and then carefully flip over when the second side is golden also they are ready to eat, serve them on their own, as breakfast with poached eggs and bacon, with salmon and horseradish sour cream, cheats chutney, or any other combos your heart desires. Yum!

Spiced Cheats Chutney
The reason I call this cheats is because it's not a chutney that you preserve basically because I really cannot be bothered fussing about and sterilising jars! I just use it on basically everything I eat for two days so it doesn't go bad and then it's gone!

Ingredients
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1/2 an onion, chopped
5 - 6 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup vinegar (I used malt, but white vinegar or wine vinegar would be fine)
1/2 a star anise
1 bay leaf, fresh if possible
1 teaspoon each of cumin and coriander (ground)
a few stalks of fresh coriander, chopped

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat, add onion and cook gently until translucent. Add all other ingredients, except fresh coriander, and cook until slightly reduced, about 10 - 15 minutes. Remove from heat, fish out the whole spices (anise and bay) add coriander and enjoy!