Roast Trout With Dill and Tomatoes

As the weather's been getting warmer, I've been looking for nice summery type dishes - a bit of a Med feel.

My thoughts turned to some of the meals we had in Mallorca a couple of years ago, most notably fish, and while I was out shopping a couple of trout caught my eye and this dish was born.

Incidentally, when you're choosing your fish, look at the eyes. They should be clear and bright. If they're cloudy or white, give the fish a wide berth.

So, take 1 whole trout per person and give them a good wash, inside and out. Dry them with some kitchen paper and cut a couple of slashes in the flesh on each side.

Next, peel a couple of cloves of garlic and crush them in a pestle and mortar with a pinch of sea salt, a good few glugs of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

Put your oven on to 240 degrees (gas mark 9).

Cut a couple of slashes diagonally along each side of the fish and rub the garlic marinade all over the fish, inside and out.

Stuff the cavities of each fish with a handful of fresh dill and add a couple of slices of lemon.

Put the fish into a good sized roasting dish and chuck in a handful of halved cherry tomatoes.

Next, put the roasting dish into the hot oven for about 10-12 minutes and pour yourself a glass of Gavi.

Check the fish after 10 minutes. The skin should have crisped, the eyes gone white and if you poke the fattest part of the fish, just behind the head, with the tip of a sharp knife, the flesh should come away easily. Give another 2 minutes or so if you don't think it's cooked but don't over-do it or the fish will go dry.

I served this up with some herby new potatoes and salad. Lovely.

The Bloke

Simple Lamb Rump Steaks

Very simple but really tasty. Here goes.

Put a couple of lamb rump steaks per person into a large dish. Scatter over some finely chopped rosemary and garlic, squeeze over the juice of half a lemon and a couple of glugs of olive oil then season with sea salt and ground black pepper. Leave it to marinade for about an hour.

When you're ready, get a griddle pan ridiculously hot - smoking hot, then cook the steaks for 2 minutes on each side. Transfer the meat to a chopping board to rest for a minute then slice each in half. They should be just pink in the middle and very juicy.

Serve with a green salad and minted new potatoes and a nice glass of Shiraz.


The Bloke

Couscous With Lamb, Chilli, Cumin and Dates

I love couscous! Couscous is little grains of dried semolina coated in flour. You can create so many different flavours by adding whatever takes your fancy. Today I'm going with a Moroccan theme but my couscous paella is also a favourite.

It's very simple to prepare and a great side dish or light lunch.

Weight out 100g of couscous per person in a large bowl. Drizzle with some good quality olive oil and mix the grains around to prevent it all sticking together.

Now, this is where I add all my flavours so that when I add the water, all the flavour is absorbed into the grains.

For this recipe, add about half a teaspoon of cumin (remember, add as much or as little as you like - it's entirely up to you), a good pinch of sea salt, plenty of ground black pepper, a pinch of dried chilli and a squeeze of lemon juice. This is also were I add a handful of frozen garden peas.

Give it all a good mix then add the water. You could measure the water if you could be bothered but I can't. Pour over boiling water to just cover the couscous, give it a good stir and leave it for a couple of minutes. The boiling water should be enough to defrost the peas and leave them lovely and sweet.

Next, chop some cooked lamb into bite-sized pieces. Today I'm using a left-over lamb shank but any off-cuts of leg, shoulder or neck will do just as well. Roughly chop some dates and a big handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley.

Check on your couscous. Give it another stir and it should start breaking up into tiny, plump grains. Once cooled, add your lamb, dates and parsley and mix it all together.

That's it! It couldn't be easier and there's really no cooking involved.

For the paella version, I substitute the cumin for smoked paprika and a pinch of turmeric and the lamb and dates for pieces of cooked chicken and prawns but as I mentioned, you can pretty much just make it up as you go along!

As always, any questions - just ask!


The Bloke

More Pictures Uploaded

OK, I think I'm getting the hang of this Picasa lark. I've uploaded lots more photo's today including shots from various stages of the weekend's recipes - butterfly chicken breast with red pepper tagliatelle and today's lamb shanks.

There's even a picture of my Mum's gooseberry tree!

Check out all the images at http://tinyurl.com/lwsc6n

I will write the recipes for both of these up here as soon as I can, but as always, if anyone has any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!


The Bloke

Finally, food photos!!

OK, I've been taking pictures as I've been preparing and cooking food. Even when it's resulted in injury (see cut finger picture - obviously avoid if you're cooking/eating/squeamish).

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure how to get them on this blog properly but I think I'm safe in posting this link to them:

http://picasaweb.google.com/blokeinthekitchen/Blokeinthekitchen#

Well, if it doesn't work then it's back to the drawing board.

Anyway, I'll eventually get the hang of this and I'll tag up the pictures to the appropriate recipes and it'll all become clear. Hopefully!

TTFN


The Bloke

Salmon With Pak Choi, Mushrooms and Noodles

Another Bloke classic. Very simple but very tasty.

Season two skinless salmon fillets with sea salt and ground black pepper and drizzle with a little olive oil. Grill them under a hot grill for about 3 minutes on each side.

Meanwhile, roughly chop a couple of handfuls of mushrooms, about 3 cloves of garlic, a couple of heads of pak choi and one red chilli.

Get a big pan of salted water on the boil and add a couple of sheets of noodles. I use Sharwood's Medium Egg Noodles. They'll take 4 minutes to cook.

Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan and, when hot, add the mushrooms. Fry for about a minute then add the garlic, pak choi and chilli. Season with a good dose of ground black pepper. Don't add any salt here because the soy that you'll add shortly will be salty enough.

Give the frying pan a good toss and gently tease the noodles with a pair of tongs to separate them.

Add a couple of good glugs of soy sauce to the frying pan and bubble to thicken.

Drain the noodles, tip them into the frying pan and give it all a good toss.

Divide the noodles between two bowls and top each with a salmon fillet.

As those meerkats say on that advert: Simples!


The Bloke

Barbeque Lamb/Souvlaki With Tzatziki

Ok, this started as souvlaki but the weather was so good today that I really didn't want to be in the kitchen for any longer than I needed so the boned shoulder of lamb went on the barbie in one piece!

Get a butcher to bone the shoulder of lamb. Put it in a large bowl and add a good couple of glugs of extra virgin olive oil, the juice of half a lemon, a couple of pinches of dried oregano, a finely chopped clove of garlic, about a tablespoon of finely chopped fresh rosemary and a good seasoning with salt and pepper.

Leave to marinade for an hour or so while you get on with the accompaniments.

Take about a quarter of a cucumber, peel it and grate it into a bowl lined with a could of sheets of kitchen paper. Gather the edges of the paper together, pick it up and squeeze all the water out. Tip the drained, grated cucumber into a clean bowl and add a tub of Greek yoghurt. Add a pinch of dried oregano, some finely chopped fresh mint, a glug of olive oil, a finely chopped clove of garlic and a splash of white wine vinegar. Give it all a good mix and put in the fridge.

Get your barbeque going.

Meanwhile, boil up a couple of handfuls of new potatoes for about 18 minutes, drain them into a colander and add a splash of olive oil to the pan. Chuck in a handful of finely chopped mint and add the potatoes back to the pan. Swirl the lot around, coating the potatoes with the mint and tip them back into the colander.

Next, courgettes. Slice a large courgette into disks, about 1cm thick, line them up on a board, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt. Get a griddle pan over a high heat and when it's smoking hot, lay the courgettes in the pan in a single layer. Leave them for about 2 minutes then flip them over and cook for another 2 minutes. Squeeze over a wedge of lemon and turn off the heat. Remove the courgettes from the pan and lay on a plate lined with a sheet of kitchen paper to drain and sprinkle with freshly chopped mint.

Your barbeque should be just about the right temperature now, with the coals white. Lay the lamb onto the barbeque, skin side down.

Cook for about 5 minutes on the first side then turn the lamb and cook for another 5 minutes or so. Keep turning every couple of minutes to avoid burning until cooked to your liking and serve with the cooled potatoes and courgettes, the tzatziki, a nice feta salad and some warmed pitta.

If you can be bothered and want to turn this into souvlaki, cut the lamb into chunks and marinade as before. Threat onto skewers barbeque or grill until nicely charred around the edges.

Happy barbequeing!



The Bloke

Spicy Chicken with Prawns and Pasta

Another re-vamp of an old blokeinthekitchen classic.

Finely chop a small onion, two cloves of garlic and a whole red chilli. Sweat them all off in a saucepan with olive oil, a dash of salt and pepper and a teaspoon or so of paprika.

While the onion is softening, thinly slice a couple of chicken breasts and place them in a bowl. Add a generous glug of olive oil, a good pinch each of turmeric, cayenne pepper and paprika. Leave the bowl in the fridge while you get back to the sauce.

Once the onion has softened, add a tin of good quality tomatoes and simmer down until the sauce is nice and thick.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and chuck in your pasta. Give it a good stir once and leave it.

Set your timer for 7 minutes, take the chicken out of the fridge and get back to your sauce. Chuck in a good handful of cooked, peeled prawns and a large handful of roughly chopped parsley and stir them into the sauce.

When the 7 minutes is up, set the timer for another 5 minutes and put a griddle pan over a high heat. It should take a minute or so heat up. When it's nice and hot, add the chicken and sear on each side so you get nice char-lines across the chicken and it's cooked through.

When the 5 minutes is up, your pasta should be cooked. Drain it in a colander and tip it back into the pan. Add the sauce to the pasta, stirring it well then divide between two large pasta bowls. Divide the chicken between the bowls and finish with a couple of shavings of Parmesan.

Serve up with a crusty garlic baguette and a nice, crisp with wine.


Cheers!


The Bloke

Home-Made Burger and Chips

Burgers are better when you make 'em yourself, so here goes.

Good quality minced beef - 500g of it or a pound (lb) in old money. Anyway, put it in large bowl and chuck in the following:

A couple of finely chopped spring onions
A finely chopped or crushed glove of garlic
A pinch (of your own choosing) of dried chilli flakes (or chopped fresh chilli if you can be bothered)
A good handful of chopped parsley
A good seasoning of sea salt and ground black pepper
One jolly good, free range egg.

Just as an aside, I'm not getting all Nigella on you here but when I say free range eggs, that's because cheap, battery eggs are horrible, nasty and barbaric. Not to mention that they taste rubbish.

Anyways, I digress.

OK, mix the contents of the bowl well. Shape the mixture into burgers either by hand (by getting a handful of mince, about the size of a tennis ball and pressing it flat - to a burger shape) or using a burger press (you can pick these up for about a fiver from Lakeland). Stick the burgers on a tray in the fridge while you sort out the chips.

Chuck a couple of handfuls of new potatoes into a pan of boiling salted water and boil for 10 minutes.

While I'm on the subject, why do people say par-boil? Shouldn't it just be boil? You can't even part-boil something because by virtue of the fact that it's boiling in water then you're boiling it.

Once again, I digress.

Drain the potatoes and leave them to cool slightly, until you can handle them. When cool enough, slice the potatoes however you fancy then heat up some olive oil in a large frying pan.

Meanwhile, put your grill on high and take the burgers out of the fridge.

When both the frying pan and grill are hot, add the potatoes to the pan and put the burgers under the grill.

Give the potatoes a good sprinkle of paprika and give them a toss every couple of minutes.

Keep your eye on the burgers and when the top looks nice and browned, flip 'em over and do the other side. Don't, whatever you do, however tempted, press the burgers with an implement of some sort. All you'll do is squeeze all the moisture out and you'll end up with coasters for burgers.

Toss the potatoes until they're crisp and golden. This should correspond with the burgers being ready and serve the burgers and chips with a nice, fresh salad. I also like a dollop of mustard and a bunch of jalapenos. Add cheese, onions, mushrooms or whatever takes your fancy.

These are great, quick and cheap and much better than going to MucDonalds any day of the week.

Remember, any questions on this or anything else cooking related, message me on Twitter @blokeinkitchen or Facebook.

Happy eating!




The Bloke

Pan-Fried Sea Bream

The Missus and I had friends (Sles and Jac) round for dinner last night. I did prawn, chorizo and haloumi kebabs with rocket and a red chilli dressing followed by pan-fried sea bream with roasted Anya potatoes (which are, incidentally, my favourite potato), carrots, courgettes, sweet red peppers, red onion and garlic, finishing with Eton Mess, splendidly created by The Missus.

Anyway, here is the sea bream.

Get a fishmonger (and all decent supermarkets should now have one) to fillet, skin and bone your bream - one whole fish per person. You can do it yourself, and I did yesterday, but it's a messy stinky job and, well, if you can get someone else to do it, why the hell not?

Dunk each fillet into plain flour seasoned with salt and pepper, patting off any excess so the fish just has a fine coating. Put them on a plate, cover with cling film and put into the fridge until you're ready to cook.

Next, prepare your veg. Really, you can throw in anything you want. I par-boiled my potatoes for 10 minutes and the carrots for about 5 minutes then cut up the peppers and courgettes into two-inch chunks. Cut the red onion into wedges and chuck the whole lot into a large roasting dish with a handful of garlic cloves.

Drizzle the whole lot with a healthy dose of olive oil and season well with sea salt and ground black pepper.

Incidentally, if you hop over to my Twitter page @blokeinkitchen, the background image you see is the very dish from last night!

Put the dish into a pre-heated oven at 220 degrees (gas mark 7) for about 20-25 minutes. Just keep an eye on it. When it's ready it'll be nicely singed around the edges.

Take the fish out of the fridge when your veg has about 10 minutes to go.

When the veg is almost ready, get yourself a decent sized frying pan and drizzle in a little olive oil. Get it nice and hot then add your fish fillets and fry for just 1 minute on each side.

That's pretty much it. Plate it up and serve it up. Simple but very tasty and impressive.

If anyone wants any advice on filleting, skinning or pin-boning or want the recipes for the prawn kebabs or Eton Mess, just let me know.


The Bloke

It's a Grand Old Team

Yesterday I purchased my first ever season ticket for the mighty Everton FC. My friend, Sles, and I got two tickets plumb in the middle of the lower Gwladys Street end of Goodison Park.

Pooky has never been to Goodison so we took her along as it was a good opportunity for her to see inside the stadium, albeit empty and with no turf!

We were taken in by one of the stewards and got to walk along the perimeter of the pitch. Once we'd chosen our seats, I asked the steward if I could take a picture of Erin in my seat before we left. He told me he could go one better and took us around the pitch to David Moyes' seat!

I took a couple of pictures of Pooky in the dug-out before Sles took one of me. Then the steward reached down to the pitch where there was still a little of the old turf and pulled out a chunk. He gave it to me so I took it home and dug out a chunk of our back lawn and replaced it with the piece of hallowed turf.

When Everton finally move to a new ground and Goodison is pulled down, there'll always be a part of the ground right in my back garden!


The Bloke

Good Old-Fashioned Chilli

This is on the go as I type, with some jacket spuds in the oven, so here goes:

Brown 500g of good quality, lean minced beef in a large hot pan. Meanwhile, finely chop a stick of celery, a couple of carrots, an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. Roughly chop a handful of mushrooms and about half a red pepper (I like the sweet pointed peppers from Tesco). As always with 'Bloke' recipes, just put in as much or as little as you like. Or leave stuff out that you don't like.

Anyway, when the mince is browned, and I mean browned - with nice little charred bits like if you were barbecuing a burger or searing a steak, drain any excess fat and add in the chopped veg.

When this starts to soften, add a tablespoon of paprika (which I think gives it a nice depth of flavour) and an appropriate dose of chilli flakes (p.s. I tend to use a lot of dried, crushed chilli simply because it's convenient and lasts longer than fresh chilli. I do use fresh chilli for things like salsa or if I'm not feeling so lazy).

Season with a good amount of freshly ground black pepper and sea salt and keep it all moving until the veg has softened down.

Next, add a 500g carton of passata (sieved tomatoes). I use this instead of tinned tomatoes in this sort of thing because I think it gives a better texture. Anyway, add the passata followed by half a carton of water.

At this point you might want to add kidney beans, as is the norm. I don't because The Missus doesn't like them. If you are going to add them, I'd recommend using a tin and giving them a good old rinse before you add them.

Give it all a good stir, bring to the boil and then simmer over a moderate heat for about 20 minutes, until the sauce is nice and rich.

That's pretty much it. As I mentioned, I'm doing this with jacket potatoes but it's also good with rice flavoured with turmeric and lots of ground black pepper. The turmeric gives it a good yellow colour.

That's all for now. I'm going to check on my potatoes. As always, any questions just post either here, on Twitter or over at Facebook.

Happy cooking!


The Bloke

King Prawn Linguine

I've Tweeted about it enough and after having a variation of it at Zizzi in Liverpool last week, here's my interpretation.

It's actually only a modification of a Bloke household staple but the addition of the baby plum tomatoes has made a whole world of difference.

OK, here goes.

Sweat off half a finely chopped onion, a couple of finely chopped (or crushed) cloves of garlic and some dried chilli flakes (as much as you dare!) in olive oil with a pinch of sea salt and freshly ground pepper.



As the onion starts to soften, chuck in a couple of handfuls of baby plum tomatoes, each pricked with the point of a knife. Swirl them around in the oil and wait for them to split and release their juice into the sauce. When you like the look of the sauce, squeeze in a bit of lemon juice to taste.

Meanwhile, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and add your linguine. As a general rule of thumb, I tend to use half a standard size packet for two people. Give it a good stir with some tongs and forget about it for 9 minutes (it should take 11 minutes exactly to cook).

When your 9 minutes is up, heat some olive oil up in a wok and add your raw king prawns. Just use as many as you like. We don't get hung up on weights or measurements here at 'Bloke'. Of course, make sure they're cleaned, shells removed, de-veined, or whatever. PS. If anyone has any questions about preparation of prawns, or anything else for that matter, just message me via Twitter or Facebook or comment on this blog.

The prawns should cook in a couple of minutes then toss in the tomato sauce. Give it a good toss and add the linguine followed by a good couple of handfuls of freshly chopped parsley.

Toss the whole lot about a couple of times until well combined then serve with a wedge of lemon and a dry white wine. I'm on a 2007 South African Viognier.


The Bloke