Poached Salmon With Pasta and Wholegrain Mustard Sauce

Right, I've been promising to write this recipe up for ages now and, as usual, I've just been too lazy.

This recipe was a result of a lot of experimenting after buying a rather large whole salmon. I found that some of the steaks I'd cut were quite bony so decided to poach a couple of them, break the fish into chunks (picking out the bones while I was as it) and adding to pasta.

The problem was the sauce. It took about four attempts to get to this stage (it was a very big salmon) and I've done this twice now with success, finally getting the all-important 'thumbs up' from The Missus.

Well, I've rambled enough, here's the recipe, as always this serves two.

First, poach the salmon. I've used two steaks but you could use a couple of fillets. Put the fish in a frying pan deep enough to allow you to cover the fish with water. Chuck in a couple of bay leaves and four or five whole peppercorns. Cover the fish with boiling water and simmer for about 8 minutes. You can, of course, bypass this step and buy ready-poached salmon. M&S do nice poached salmon fillets.

Remove the fish from the pan and drain on some kitchen paper, allowing it to cool while you get on with the sauce.

Finely chop 1 shallot and a couple of cloves of garlic. Add this to a saucepan with a couple of glugs of extra virgin olive oil. Soften over a low(ish) heat, taking care not to brown, then add about a wine glass of dry white wine.

Point of interest here. Don't be fooled into thinking you can use rubbish wine for cooking. Rule of thumb, if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it.

Bring the wine to the boil and simmer until the smell of alcohol has gone then add about a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard. Stir this in then simmer for about 5 minutes or so.

While that's simmering away, go back to the fish. Remove any skin and break the fish into bite-sized chunks, making sure you pick out all the bones.

Now, cook some pasta in loads of boiling, salted water for about 10 minutes (check with the packet).

While that's cooking, finish the sauce off. Add a couple of heaped tablespoons of creme fraiche, season with salt and pepper, add the salmon, stir through and warm through over a low heat.

When it's cooked, drain the pasta and divide into two bowls. Spoon the salmon sauce over the pasta, giving it a gentle stir through, then scatter over a handful of roughly chopped parsley.

Goes nice with a glass of ice cold Gavi.


Cheers



The Bloke

Pan-Fried Sea Bream With Pineapple Salsa

This is more to tell you about the salsa than the bream as I've already written about this before - here http://blokeinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2009/06/pan-fried-sea-bream.html. I wanted to do something a little different to go with it and remembered that I had a pineapple and plenty of chillies so I'd give it a bit of a Caribbean treatment.

I filleted, boned and skinned the fish myself but as I mentioned in the earlier recipe, you can get a fishmonger to do this for you. When I finally get my act together, I intend to include how to do this in my video content. In the meantime, see the above post for how to cook the fish.

To go with the fish, I did some cheat's sauteed potatoes. Take a few handfuls of new potatoes and boil them for about 15 minutes in salted water. Heat some vegetable oil in a decent sized roasting dish at 240 degrees (gas mark 9). Drain the potatoes and run them under cold water to cool them enough to handle. Cut the each potato into 8 pieces and season well with black pepper and paprika. When the oven is hot enough, take the roasting dish out and add the spuds. Give them a good toss and put the dish back in the oven for about 20 minutes, giving them a toss after about 10 minutes.

So to the salsa. Very simple really. Finely chop about a quarter of a red onion, a quarter of a red pepper, a whole chilli (depending on how hot you like it, seeds in or out - up to you) a couple of cloves of garlic and about a centimetre of ginger and a couple of slices of pineapple.

Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and fry the salsa until the edges of the pineapple are slightly singed, remove from the heat and add a handful of roughly chopped parsley. Give it all a good stir and you're done.

Serve a couple of fillets of the pan-fried bream with the potatoes, the salsa and some fine green beans.


The Bloke

Bloke Pasta With Chorizo

This is something that I love cooking when The Missus is out, as she is tonight. It only takes about 12 minutes to cook which means that you can knock it up at half-time and tuck in while you're watching the second half.

Right, first get your pasta on. Tonight I used some chilli penne as I had a craving for lots of chilli but I've done this with all sorts of different pasta, whatever I have in the house. Cook the pasta in accordance with the instructions on the packet, normally about 12 minutes.

While that's going on, turn your attention to the sauce, such as it is.

In a frying pan, add a good few glugs of good extra virgin olive oil. Add a couple of cloves of finely sliced garlic, as much chilli as you fancy, and a couple of inches of sliced chorizo. Warm all this through, don't fry it. This will release the paprika from the chorizo into the olive oil and soften the garlic.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it and add it to the frying pan. Chuck in a load of roughly chopped parsley and give it all a good mix about.

Tip the lot into a bowl and grate over a jolly good dose of parmesan. Grab a beer, sit down in front of the telly and watch the rest of the footy while you've got the house to yourself!


The Bloke