Everything but Beetroot

Method

The salmon sprinkled with lemon zest and juice and left for 5 minutes before it is put in the oven for 10 minutes (at 220C).  Once cooked set aside.

Meanwhile, fry a chopped onion, a handful of thyme and a clove of garlic for 5 minutes.  Add 200g of risotto rice and stir for a minute. Pour in a glass of white wine and allow it to be absorbed into the rice.

Then pour in 250ml of chicken stock one third at a time.  Only adding more when the previous lot has been absorbed.  Allow to simmer for 15 minutes (or more) until the rice is soft and tender.

Serve the rice and flake the salmon on top.

This is has minor adaptations from a Jamie Oliver recipe, largely to meet the dietary needs of one of our guests who can’t eat fennel.

Ingredients:

• One red onion, thinly sliced
• One onion, thinly sliced
• One large sea bass
• Salt and pepper
• A handful (or more) of herbs – parsley, dill and tarragon
• 3 lemons
• 6 glugs of olive oil

Method:

Clean the fish.

Get a piece of tin foil – about 5 times the length of the fish – and fold it in half.

Place the sliced onion on the foil. Put the fish on top and season the fish – inside and out – with salt and pepper.

Stuff the herbs into the cavity of the fish.

Pour the juice of two of the lemons on top of the fish, and slice the remaining lemon and place it round the fish.Add the olive oil and make the foil into a package to go into the oven (200C). The fish will need 20 min per kg.

We served with dauphinois potatoes and sugar-snap peas.

Sea Bass Stuffed with Herbs [pdf]

We had a barbecue yesterday and one of the things I particularly wanted to try were the fish; sardines and mackerel.

There’s something very reassuring about cooking on a barbecue; it’s a very bloke thing as this video lampoons so effectively.

I’d marinaded the fish earlier in the day and just turned them once or twice once they were on the barbecue. Because both are quite oily fish they barbecued really well, but I’d say the mackerel were more successful, or probably I should have taken the sardines off a bit before I did.

Marinade

• 2 tsp of black peppercorns, crushed
• 1 tsp of sea salt
• 2 tsp of rosemary, finely chopped
• 2 tsp of thyme, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed

As the photo on the right demonstrates it wasn’t just fish for supper. A friend had given me a recipe for tabbouleh which I made the night before and I spent the morning on a marinade for the chicken and a grapefruit and avocado salad.

Tabbouleh

• 200g couscous
• one red onion, finely chopped
• 400g ripe comatose,diced
• half a cucumber, diced
• juice of 2 lemons

Just mix everything together and leave overnight in the fridge.

Chicken Marinade

•  3 tsp of grated fresh ginger
• zest and juice of a lemon and lime
• a couple of handfuls of coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

• 2 red grapefruit
• 2 avocado
• watercress
• sherry vinegar
• olive oil

Cut the grapefruit up – retaining some of the juice for the dressing – getting rid of all the pith.  Slice the avocados and mix with the watercress and grapefruit.  Dress with the remaining juice, vinegar and oil.