BBC Good Food Asian Steamed Fish with Shiitake Mushrooms and Noodles

There is definitely no such thing as a free lunch.  Where I work, the pork pies are one of the favourite features of a working lunch.  I'm really fussy when it comes to pork pies and will only eat them if they don't have jelly in them.  In some ways that's good because it stops me from eating them too often.  I only really like the pastry bit but when in polite company, it's not really the done thing to hoick out the pink (or more often grey) nugget of 'pork'* and scrape out the jelly bit.  But the work pork pies are pretty good.  Pink meat*.  Crusty-ish pastry.  No jelly.

So of course I had one.  Or a half anyway.  My boss kindly showed his chivalrous side and let me have the only diet Coke to make up for a less than healthy lunch.  But even that did little to negate the impact of my poor lunch options and my need for a consolatory Flake in the late afternoon.  Hence why I ended up with a super-healthy fish dinner tonight.

I wrote yesterday that I'm still having trouble letting go of the Olympic Food Challenge.  Three days on, and I was really tempted to do another foreign recipe, but I ended up saving the Chimmichurri Steak (inspired by our esteemed OFC Coach Ewan**) for tomorrow night and cooking a country-agnostic fish dish instead.

Overdid the veg - the fish and noodles are in there somewhere!

Having not quite managed to let go completely, this allowed me to make a second use of the steamer I bought to make Nepalese Chicken Momos for the OFC.  I need to embrace my steamer and make good use of it before it manages to disappear into the black hole that my tupperware dishes have fallen into.***

The dish is pretty simple in that you just pop everything into the steamer for ten minutes, and hey presto healthy, tasty, low fat dinner for one.  The downside is that it is a pretty expensive dish what with the mushrooms, ginger, chillis etc which you can generally only buy in multiples and not in quantities for one - so something that you would possibly only afford once in a while.  It does use Pollack however which is pretty cheap in the fish stakes (no pun intended!).

I still have my head very firmly buried in the sand about just how much I've spent in this past year buying food I wouldn't normally buy just to complete this 'challenge'.

That point has actually given me some inspiration for my future ramblings over on my new blog which will be coming online in October.  I'll also be doing a bit of guest blogging elsewhere - more on that shortly.  In the meantime, I'm thinking about how to best let go of this blog.  I'd like to do so with some input from the lovely people who've taken the time to read my blog.  At the moment, I've had just over 35,000 page views since started.  This has blown me away and so I feel I should draw a definite line at the end of the year and celebrate the finish.  So I'd like to invite anyone who has read this to ask me a question about the blog.  If you visit 'The Last Post' page and leave a comment then I'll do one final post after 26th September (day 366) where I'll answer them all.

PS In lieu of me posting a flag today, I'll leave you with this cartoon I pilfered from FaceAche on the subject of Tupperware.  This sums up my relationship with plastic boxes perfectly.

PPS: The recipe for the fish can be found here


*factory floor sweepings in most cases
**I stole the asterisk thing from Ewan as I use to many bracketed comments in my stream of nonsense (it's not quite a stream of conscience)
***the husband sneaks things he deems to be clutter into the bin when he thinks I've not used them recently and I might not notice they are missing.  I then end up buying new boxes to replace them.  He then throws them away so I buy more....you get the vicious circle...

Rachel Khoo's Terrine Forestiere

One of the questions I get asked most about this blog is how much has it cost me since day one.  Part of me wishes I'd kept track.  But like when we got married, I just engaged advanced ostrich mode and pretended that it didn't matter.

I'm very lucky to earn a decent salary that allows me to do this although with things rapidly heading south for us financially, it's a good thing that there are only two months left because otherwise I'd be writing about the different ways to serve beans on toast.  Okay, that's a little flippant because I know you can eat really well on a budget if you shop wisely.  And maybe that's what I should try to do over the course of my next blog.  But pretty much with the exception of cooking with expensive seafood (I really wanted to do lobster, scallops and oysters but continue to be put off by the cost), I've not really considered too much about what I've spent.

The most expensive things are fresh herbs which I never would've bought previously.  They really make a difference to so many dishes.  I know I could grow my own - I used to have two huge herb pots when I was a kid and loved the smell of the basil on a hot summer's day - but I've not had any success with growing them at our current house.  Other more expensive items have mostly been meat-related.

So today, I gave some consideration to the cost of this meal.  The recipe is basically a baked mushroom omelette using wild mushrooms.  It's the wrong time to forage and I'd probably end up making myself ill anyway.  I know that our local Morrisons has a good selection of fresh wild mushrooms but last time I bought 100g they cost me a fiver and this recipe called for 450g.  I'm not that stupid - not even for a special occasion.

Low fat and great value

In the end, I made half of the recipe and used 250g of chestnut mushrooms (£1) plus a handful of dried mushrooms (quarter of a £1.99 pack).  The eggs were about 20p each (2 of), half a 90p tub of creme fraiche, quarter of a 60p pack of parsley (15p), three spring onions because I didn't want to buy a huge bag of shallots I won't use (so about 25p-worth).  And some salt, pepper and garlic which don't really count in the budget but probably about 15p worth.  So around £2.75 for the recipe.  Which cuts into about eight small slices if you're using it for an appetiser and would serve four with salad.  I've already road-tested it for a snack and will have another serving for tea.  It will go in my lunchbox tomorrow and I'll probably snack on the rest at some point over the next two days.

At 70p per portion, that's not too bad.  But if you were making it with wild mushrooms, it's ridiculously expensive.

But it's very tasty.  The herbs absolutely make a difference.  And I like the way it was baked in a loaf tin, making it easy to slice and transport rather than faffing around with trying to fry and then grill a round frittata to get it to set.

The only thing I will recommend is using full fat creme fraiche as mine was a bit watery. I used low-fat to keep the calories down.   Or maybe I should've dried my mushrooms in kitchen paper after frying them off.  


And if you're on a carb-free diet, it's a really filling and tasty option.


You can find the recipe on page 130 of Little Paris Kitchen.

Mushroom and Ginger Soup

Today's recipe of choice comes from one of those tomes that you pick up in discount book shops for a few pounds.  It's been sat on my desk for years.  I flick through it at least once a week.  I find something I want to make but yet never get round to making it.  Even though the book is entitled "Quick and Easy" and should be full of recipes perfect for someone as time-poor as myself, I just don't seem to have the time to try them.

Never one to make life easy for myself, in addition to having a two-year-old toddler, a full time job with a ninety minute commute and penning this blog on a daily basis, over the coming month I also have to contend with the following obstacles.  "The Olympic Food Challenge" starting on 27th July, my mother's birthday cake and assorted bits for a celebratory barbecue on August 3rd (you can guarantee rain in Winchester that day), at least two different types of cake for the tea tent at my gorgeous cousin Laura May (aka @BridestockBride)'s Wedding Festival on August 4th, a belated birthday cake for my goddaughter on August 5th, a week long Prince2 Practitioner course and training for the Bristol Half Marathon - which is in late September but the training is going on now.

It took longer to eat than to cook (too hot!)

Oh and planning my new blog too.  Thankfully that's currently in the capable hands of one of my best friends who I've coerced into designing the background and logo for me.  More on that another night.

So forgive me for actually finally choosing a recipe from Practical Cookery: Quick and Easy for once.  It was quick, easy, tasty and meets the current criteria for low in fat too.  It also gave me the opportunity to try out dried mushrooms.  I know they're a little pricey, but given that I'm the kind of person who regularly buys mushrooms and then never gets round to using them and throwing them away when they're slimy, having the dried ones to hand means I won't ever waste them.  Unless of course, I accidentally split the packet and the scatter floor-wards into the mouths of my waiting pooches.

Watching them rehydrate reminded me of some fake worms you used to be able to get from joke shops when I was a kid.  I used to stick them in my grandad's cup of tea and watch them grow.  Highly entertaining to a delinquent eight-year-old.  Just like when my delightful toddler peered into my bowl this evening and announced "Euuuuwww.  Mummy, Dexter's done a pooney in your dinner"  Cue toddler giggles.

I did manage to enjoy the meal despite that image being firmly rooted in my brain forever.

Serves 2 (for a main meal)

• 15g dried mushrooms
• 700 mls good quality vegetable stock
• 1 nest medium egg noodles
• 3 garlic cloves, finely sliced
• 1 tsp ginger paste (or 2.5cm root ginger, shredded)
• 1 tsp soy sauce
• handful beansprouts

1. Soak the mushrooms for at least thirty minutes in half the stock for at least 30 minutes.  Drain, reserving the stock.
2. When the are ready, cook the noodles for 2-3 minutes in boiling water.  Drain and rinse.
3. Spray a large frying pan with spray oil and place over a  high heat.  Add the garlic, ginger and mushrooms and stir fry for two minutes.
4. Add all of the stock and the soy sauce to the pan and bring to the boil.
5. Stir in the bean sprouts and cook for 1-2 minutes until tender.  
6. Divide the noodles between the serving bowls and ladle the soup on top.  Serve immediately.

BBC Good Food (Beef) Stroganoff with Herby Pasta

There was a small flaw in my plan for tonight's recipe.  I forgot to defrost the beef and so it became Mushroom Stroganoff with herby pasta.  Not much to say about this one other than the sauce was really tasty; it worked really well with just mushrooms and I think it's even better with pasta than with rice (which is what my mum always used to serve stroganoff with).  If I'm honest, I welcomed the lack of meat too.

A good store cupboard meal.  You can find the recipe here.

And you can breathe a sigh of relief that for once, I'm not going to waffle.  Goodnight.

It tastes far better than I presented it!

Nigel Slater's Mushroom Bruschetta

This recipe is from an article on the Observer website entitled 'Seven Speedy Snacks'.  I was looking for a really quick breakfast idea that involved mushrooms and leftover sourdough and I just knew that Nigel Slater was the man who'd offer me a recipe.  He just loves putting things on toast.  I assume this is why his autobiography (which I've still got to read - note to self, download to Kindle) is entitled 'Toast'.

Breakfast!

It's one of those really simple recipes that you could probably come up with yourself and I'm sure lots of people will say 'I already make that'.  But sometimes you need inspiration.  Especially with a mammoth task of single-handedly organising a toddler for a weekend away and updating a blog on a Jubilee cake.

I'm also not popular with the hubby because I set the smoke detector off toasting the sourdough this morning.  It goes from stale to burnt remarkably quickly.  But it's a great way to use up the last slice of four-day-old sourdough bread.

And that's it for today.  Just a short blog.  Happy Jubilee weekend!

Baked Breakfast Mushrooms

So I'm off home for a few days and with a fridge full of odds and ends that I'd normally use up over the weekend, I figured I should try and make something interesting for breakfast.

Earlier in the week, I'd been pondering what to do with the couple of field mushrooms I had left after Monday's Baked Mushrooms with Parmesan Polenta and some streaky bacon from Sunday's Bacon Brownies (yep, that's right, bacon and chocolate); and had wondered if it would be possible to bake an egg in one.  Thumbing through Leith's Simple Food, my thoughts were confirmed and thus today's breakfast was born.

As I've struggled to perfect the art of the baked egg - getting the perfect moment when the white has set and the yolk is still runny is a bit of an art form - I decided to cheat a little here and poach my eggs and serve them inside the baked mushroom.  That way I knew I'd have perfect eggs.

Definitely something I'd do again if I was making breakfast for guests or as a meal if I had some leftover field mushrooms to use up.  

Sorry for the short blog this morning - packing to do, child to organise yadda yadda.  A Dan Lepard cake and roast Lamb to deliver over the weekend then blogging service will resume as normal on Monday with yet another cake for my first foray into the world of Clandestine Cake Clubs.  Just a little bit excited!

Recipe - serves 2

• 2 field mushrooms - ensure you pick ones that have a nice lip to the edge
• 2 eggs
• 1 clove of garlic, finely diced
• 2 rashers of streaky bacon, snipped into small pieces
• olive oil
• a small handful of parsley, chopped.
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200c/180c fan.
2. Remove the stalks from the mushrooms and chop finely.   Place the mushrooms skin side down on a baking sheet.
3. Drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle the bacon, garlic and chopped mushrooms stalks into the bowl of the mushrooms.  Season well then bake for 20 mins or until the mushrooms have softened.
4. Five minutes before the end of the cooking time, either crack the eggs into the centre of the mushrooms and return to the oven to continue baking or poach the eggs in a pan of simmering water (check out Kitchen Bitching for the best way to poach an egg).
5. Remove the mushrooms from the oven, place on a serving plate and if using poached eggs, slide an egg into the cup of the mushroom.  Garnish with the parsley.
6. Serve with hot buttered toast.

Baked Mushrooms with Polenta

In the cupboard under the stairs, we have some plastic shelves procured from a large national DIY chain that have become the equivalent of the larder that I would so love to own.  They're currently groaning under the weight of half used bags of flour (plain, self-raising, wholemeal, strong white, strong brown, 00, canadian bread flour, gram, rye, buckwheat); bags of sugar (granulated, caster, light muscavado, dark muscavado, soft dark brown, soft light brown, icing, fruit); various bags of pasta shapes (spirali, rigatoni, macaroni, linguine, papperdelle, spaghetti, vermicelli).  And a bag of polenta.  Plus assorted tins of beans, pulses and tomatoes; more tins of tuna than it's safe to eat in a year; and packets of microwave rice and saag aloo (for the husband).

The husband gets frustrated every so often that they're a mess.  To the untrained eye, they may look that way, but I can lay my hands on anything I need just like that.  When I go to the mothership's for the weekend, the husband occasionally takes it upon himself to 'have a little tidy' and suddenly, things go missing.  If I so much as dwell by the shelves for more than thirty seconds, I get accused of untidying them so I end up buying more of what I can't find in the next weekly shop - only to find a week or so later that I've now got two open bags of xyz flour or abc sugar.  You get my drift.

Sunshiney polenta to brighten a grey day

Anyhow, the polenta has been busy cluttering up the shelving ever since I made cornbread with Miss A.  As that was a resounding failure in terms of broadening the family's food horizon (Miss A and the husband both thought it was cake and were both sorely disappointed), I have - on occasion - been sorely tempted to quietly dispose of the polenta.  In all honesty, there was a time when I probably would've done.  But times are hard now we only have the one salary, a mortgage and an extra mouth to feed, and I am making an effort to be thrifty.  Especially because in doing this challenge, my food expenditure is sometimes higher than it would be if I wasn't.

Having Googled about a bit for ideas for the field mushrooms that arrived with my weekly shop (I don't know why on earth I bought them - I failed on the planning front this week), I happened across a recipe on Taste.com.au for stuffed mushrooms with polenta.  Problem solved.  

I didn't stick to the actual recipe (which you can find here) because I didn't have the fancy-schmanzy shallots and couldn't be bothered to chop a tiny bit of red onion for just one mushroom so I made a simple breadcrumb mix with a little garlic paste, some parsley, olive oil, breadcrumbs and seasoning.  I then made the polenta as per the packet instructions, beat in some parmesan, a teaspoon of half fat creme fraiche (the packet suggested butter and marscapone but I'm trying to compensate for all the chocolate I've been eating of late) and some seasoning.  

Then I licked a bit off of the spoon and nearly binned it.  The package said to cook for just one minute for soft, mash-potato-style polenta and that it would come away from the edges of the pan when it was ready.  Which it duly did.  But the texture was just shy of semi-cooked couscous with a weird "I'm not quite pasta thanks to the parmesan" taste.  But then I got on to having to poach eggs for the husband's ham, egg and chips and whilst I was doing so, the polenta obviously finished expanding and ended up tasting like a really good cheese-mash/pasta/couscous hybrid.  I really enjoyed it.

In fact, I enjoyed the whole dish so much, it's going on my list of new meat-free Monday meals when I'm finished with this blasted blog and it's dictation that I have to try a new recipe every day.  Hugely tasty vegetarian meal and hearty enough that you don't even notice that it's meatless.  I'd always made stuffed mushrooms filled with Philly and topped with breadcrumbs before but always served them on their own with salad.  I couldn't think of an appropriate carb to go with them, but polenta is it.

If you've never tried it, I insist that you do.  I hope you love it as much as me.  

Thomasina Miers' Spring Tacos with Mushrooms

Just after hitting 10,000 views

Firstly, I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to all my readers for helping me make it to 10,000 page views in just over six months.  I am amazed and humbled that people have spent time reading my words.  I never thought in my wildest dreams that anyone other than my mother* and my lovely cousin Laura would read it.  But to reach 10,000 page views in such a short space of time has made me all warm and fuzzy inside.  So a huge thank you to everyone who has read, commented and tweeted me about it.  It's been fun and you've all kept me going.  And given me a reason to see it through to the bitter end in late September.

I would love to name everyone who I know has taken the time to read, but I'm bound to miss someone out.  Don't take offence if I do, but in no particular order thanks to Laura B, Tamara, Chantelle, Pauls L and W, both Kate S's, Dicky, Robs A, B and C, Hubby (for letting me pick on him), Paul L, Phil, Nelly, Sadia, Jaime, @UnderTheBlueGum, Amy (@WeeklyBakeOff), Laura (@Philosophobia), both Jules', Lisa, Allison, Alison (yes one has one 'l' and the other has two), Ewan who is letting me join his Olympic challenge (more about that on another day) and to all the people who have had cake foisted on them when I've had a baking frenzy.

Anyway, on to today's recipe.  Despite living in a 'Market Town' we don't actually have a proper market.  There are a few token stalls strewn down the high street on a Saturday - most selling tat, the with a couple of local producers selling cake and a few veg - but nothing to allow you to stock up.

Driving home midweek and in need of just one chilli I was sulking to myself that I'd be forced to buy an entire packet that I'd either have to use or would end up rotting slowly in the fridge.  That's the trouble with generally cooking for one.  Or cooking for three - but cooking three separate meals.

Fungi

I stopped in Morrisons for some odds and ends and was amazed to see that the latest revamp has turned the fruit and veg section into a proper market place where you can actually buy small quantities of things.  And most stuff is loose.  Meaning if you want one chilli, you can spend 8p (as I did) rather than 65p on pre-packaged ones that will go to waste.  I got overly excited by the fact that you can buy all manner of exotic things which will be great for some recipes on this blog over the remaining months.  

So having fallen out big style with Ocado, I gave up my blessed Friday afternoon off this week in favour of doing my shopping myself and buying exactly what I need with minimal waste on both food and packaging.  See David Cameron, I'm doing my bit.

The most exciting bit is that they sell loose exotic mushrooms so expect many mushroom based recipes in the coming weeks.  I have always loved mushrooms and can't believe so many of my friends don't share my passion.  At one point, I was surrounded by so many mushroom-fearing that like a parched man in the desert, I literally jumped on the husband (he was not even boyfriend back then) like he would be my foodie saviour.  Desperation leads to hasty assumptions.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I'd had a few rubbish relationships around this time so with a good friend, came up with a list of ten criteria that any new beau had to meet.  Liking mushrooms was on the list.  The list became my dating yardstick and the husband was the only one who ticked all ten boxes.  

Cooked mushrooms taste better than they look!

Anyhow, although he's not being subjected to experimental mushroom-ness tonight, tea tomorrow will also contain exotic mushrooms (see no waste here now).  Like my mother, tea for him must contain meat, so I chose a recipe that would allow me to share part of the meal and for him to have chicken.

Thomasina Miers has a section in her book (Mexican Food Made Easy) about tacos and different fillings for each season.  I made the summer ones early on in this challenge.  The spring one is mushroom based so I gave this a whirl to great success.  Instead of using her taco recipe, I made Dan Lepard's corn oil tortillas.  The dough is pretty similar and I really should've just made a few smaller ones to replicate a taco - but I'm greedy so went for two bigger wraps.

As for the taste.  It sounds weird, but it was just like eating a spring woodland, in the nicest possible way!  The mushrooms - being proper mushrooms than bog standard white button mushrooms - had an amazing earthy taste.  I had a mix of Pied Bleu, Shitake and regular chestnut.  And despite having probably sat on a shelf in Morrisons for a day or two, they tasted like they were freshly picked.  I've picked mushrooms in the past with an expert, but wouldn't be brave enough to do so myself.

With a liberal sprinkling of parsley and coriander in place of the tarragon, the flavour was lifted with a kind of fresh, grassy flavour.  And the saltiness of the feta (Miers recommends this if you can't get Pecorino) gave it a depth that seasoning alone couldn't achieve.  

If I could afford to buy piles of these mushrooms (the Pied Bleu were something ridiculous like £30/kg), I'd eat this dish time and again.  As always,  top marks to Thomasina and also to Dan for the tortillas.  These I now make regularly as it's far less stressful than trying to open a packet of shop-bought ones and a darn sight tastier too.

Sadly, the recipe for the tortillas still isn't online but it's just another reason to buy the book.  But they do get rave reviews from lots of the lovely people I Tweet with.

Cooking time: 15–20 minutes

No matter how you look at them, they're not that attractive...

• 25g butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 750g St George's, Morell or mixed mushrooms, sliced
• Sea salt and black pepper
• 1 tablespoon truffle oil (optional)
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped a small handful tarragon, chopped

To serve

• A small handful of parsley, roughly chopped
• Grated Pecorino cheese
• Addictive sweet chipotle paste

1. Heat half the butter and olive oil in a frying pan and add the mushrooms, seasoning with salt and pepper.

2. Cook over a high heat until the mushrooms have released their juices and the juice has started to evaporate, about 10 minutes. Add the rest of the butter and the oil (including the truffle oil if you are using it), the shallots and garlic and cook until soft. Sprinkle with the tarragon and check the seasoning.

3. Spoon the mushrooms into a heated earthenware dish that will look fun on the table and sprinkle over the parsley and cheese. This is incredibly delicious with my sweet chipotle paste, but also yummy with the Fresh tomato salsa on page 26 and a dollop of crème fraîche. 

*My mother doesn't have time to read my blog apparently.  She'd much rather spend her time playing Cityville on Facebook.