Creamy Leek and Potato Seafood Chowder

I got woken up early this Saturday morning by a parcel delivery. My bell makes a really loud angry buzz noise, and it startles me every time. It also makes me think that the person at the door is angry and impatient (but they're always just lovely, well mostly...), so I scramble to the door phone as fast as I can every time.

I'm in an upstairs flat in a building without lifts, so I feel bad for making the post man / courier man / delivery man walk all the way up just to give me my stuff. This means that I gotta go all the way down to get it.

In mah PJs.
Half asleep.
With real (non-sexy) bed hair.

So after the excursion down to the front of the building (with me running down because I worry that if I make them wait, they'll leave) and then back up again, I'm wide awake.

What do you do when you're up early on a weekend? 

I decided to head down to the local market, which I don't get to do during the weekdays. After walking around a couple of fruit and vegetable stores, and deciding that nothing was terribly exciting (as in exotic or at least uncommon), I picked up some cheap and fresh deals instead.

What caught my eye were some beautiful bright green firm leeks. I haven't had leek in a while, but it's one of my favourite vegetables. Inspired by the wintry gusts of wind this morning, I picked up some more winter vegetables (isn't it supposed to be spring already!?) to make a soup. Or a chowder, as it were. A seafood chowder, with fish and crabmeat.

While I love a good leek and potato soup on its own, I find adding some fish gives it another dimension. The only problem is that it significantly increases the price of this dish... #studentmoneyproblems

I popped into Tesco to have a look anyway, and found some kippers for £1.15 - i.e. £6.49 a kilo! Kippers are smoked fish (similar to smoked mackerel I think) but need to be cooked again before eating.

The instructions on the packet say to boil them in the bag in boiling water for 15 minutes. I adjusted this in order to get maximum flavour out of the kipper into the chowder: I poached them out of the bag in some milk, and then reserved the milk for the chowder. My kippers also came with a knob of butter, which I chucked in as well, but that's probably optional. The smell of this cooking was incredible - smoky and fishy, but in the best way.

The rest of the chowder is pretty straight forward. The hardest part, to me, is the chopping. You gotta slice up the leeks (and wash them thoroughly to get all the sand out) into discs, dice the onion, and peel and cube the potatoes and carrots.

Then it'll all go into a pot and cook.

It looks like quite a lot here, and it is! The higher your vegetables to liquid ratio, the thicker, creamier, or chunkier your chowder will be.

There's not much to it after this. Just add stock, mash / blend (or don't), add your kipper infused smoky milk, and stir in your kipper bits.

As an added bonus, I added in a can of crabmeat. Because it's not really seafood chowder if you've only got fish - it's fish chowder.

I love crab, and canned crabmeat is a far cry from the real deal, but it's affordable, and convenient, so I use it. It's no good for dishes where crabmeat is supposed to the star, but in this chowder, it works brilliantly. You're not relying on the crabmeat for flavour, but texture, as it makes the chowder nice and thick and chunky, and really adds to it feeling like a filling meal (especially if you've blitzed the ritz out of the vegetables!)

This winter soup will warm you from the inside ;)

Full recipe -->

Portobello Mushroom Soup

My local market doesn't understand the use of labelling. I love shopping there, don't get me wrong, but I really think they should start labelling things properly.

So it probably doesn't matter much with things like banana, cherries, broccoli, etc. but it's very unhelpful to label various sizes, shapes and colours of potatoes all as potatoes. Oh sometimes, they put 'large potatoes', 'small potatoes', and 'washed potatoes' but that isn't very informative either. So when recipes tell you to buy some floury varieties like Desiree, Maris Piper or King Edward, I just have to guess and check.

Are all flat-capped mushrooms with black gills called portobello mushrooms? A Google search of portobello mushrooms does show up mushrooms like these. The only reason I wonder is because this entire bag (weighing 1.7kg!) only cost me £1.50! Whereas, in Hong Kong, the supermarkets could sell at up to HK$40 for 4. To put that into comparable terms, that's just under £3 for 4 mushrooms. 

How crazy is the price difference?

These mushrooms certainly look, feel, and taste like the same portobellos I buy in Hong Kong. I'd love to know if they really are the same thing.

I ended up with this whole bag because the man at the store convinced me that a small bag (for 50p) wouldn't be enough. "Eh pet, you sure you don't want a big bag, them mushrooms'll shrink and you'll be left with nothin', go on take a big bag"

So now I have close to 2kg of mushrooms to devour.

The quickest way to use up as many mushrooms as possible is to make soup, I thought. So I went a-chop-chop-chopping.

I used about half my bag - 800g ish. 

Now a lot of mushroom soup recipes call for a variety of other vegetables - potatoes, leeks, onions... but I wanted to let my shrooms shine (well also because I didn't have any of those other vegetables at hand...) so I kept the other ingredients to a minimum.

When cooking portobello mushrooms, I find they have much meatier texture and richer taste than normal white button mushrooms, so I may have been able to miss this next step. But I love mushrooms, and the more the merrier, so I soaked a small handful of dried wild mushrooms too.

With some butter sizzling on a very hot pan, I fried some minced garlic until fragrant, and then poured in my diced portobello mushrooms.

I cooked mine in two batches because I wanted to properly sauté the mushrooms, rather than boil / steam them as can happen when the pan gets overcrowded. It's like tanning on a hot beach, if it's empty and quiet then you can relax and get nicely evenly brown, but if it's crowded, you just feel like is hot and sweaty, and not in a good way!

It's tempting to stir your mushrooms, but I find that if you leave them in the pan to do their own thing,  they'll cook much better. As long as you have enough butter to cover the pan, they shouldn't stick too much. 

The mushrooms will then give off all their water, and at this point I reduced the heat to medium, and let it boil off and then begin to caramelise. Then, I used the soaking water from the dried mushrooms to deglaze any brown sticky bits from the pan.

Add in your now soaked dried wild mushrooms, all diced up too, and give a quick stir.

Top with 1L of milk and chicken stock. I used 500mL of each, but you can vary it according to how creamy you want it. Add some sprigs of thyme, and boil for 5 minutes or so.

If you want it smooth and creamy, scoop batches into a jug blender and blitz all the chunks of mushroom into oblivion. Now season to taste. 

Then you can just gently reheat the soup to serve, with some extra thyme, and sautéed mushrooms. 

It's magical mushroom essence, with all the notes of the outdoors - the trees, forests, muddy woodlands, and tiny sparkly fairies. The velvet texture of the soup also resembles the feel of the tops of raw mushrooms. I can see why the fairies like to perch there.  

I got a good crusty loaf of bread from my local market as well for 50p to dunk with the soup ;)

Salmon en croûte

So much of the time my dinner ideas are just inspired by what I have around. Trying to think of something to make from scratch, then having to go out and grab all the ingredients is a lot harder than it sounds!

We didn't manage to finish the side of salmon yesterday as sashimi (barely had any, really) and it was sitting in the fridge taking up a lot of room, so I decided we'd better finish it. There was no way we could eat up all of it raw (as good as it had been), so it was a matter of how to cook it.

My usual salmon dish is to flake it up with some pasta, or just to bake it in the oven. But with a whole slab, I could try something else! Also sitting in my fridge was a ready-rolled piece of puff pastry and a bag of spinach. A quick google search of these three items told me to make salmon en croûte - a beef wellington without the beef and with salmon instead!

I think I've only tried salmon en croûte once, and it was deliciously moist and succulent salmon wrapped with a light airy and crispy pastry. I was salivating already!

 Fresh baby spinach leaves (the whole 200g pack - washed and ready to go) went into the pan.

While I waited for the spinach to wilt, I tended to the bulk of salmon (minus the chunk we ate for sashimi the night before!) Now the salmon I bought still had skin and bones, so you'll need to take it off if that's the same as yours, then you can clean it off and wipe it dry.

After browsing various recipes,  I decided I liked the look of this one from Gordon Ramsay (when do I not like the look of GR recipes?) and this other one from Woman and Home. They both sandwich a layer of green things between two pieces of salmon, so I cut up my salmon so that I would have a bottom bit and a some top bits. It doesn't matter do you like to do it, as long as its fits together neatly like a puzzle.

Back to the spinach! When it was all wilting, I zested in the zest of a lemon, and seasoned it lightly with some salt and pepper. Then you can remove it from the heat, and set aside to drain.

Or better, put all the spinach into a sieve and squeeze all the life water out of it with the back of a spoon. This is why you need the zest, because if you used the juice, it would all be squeezed out. The more effort you spend on wringing dry your spinach, the better the pastry will turn out, because there won't be all that excess water creating problems.

There is supposed to be 200g of spinach there. What happened to all of it???

Once your happy with your spinach, you can roughly chop it up, although it's probably not necessary (it's just so that it's not one massive clump) and stir in a small knob of butter, enough to make it form a pastey consistency. Crème fraîche could also be used but I find it a little too rich.

Now we're ready to build our parcel. Start by seasoning the salmon. We're going to bone side to the face the middle of the parcel, so leave that side up and season it with some salt and pepper.

Now decide which bit(s) you want for the top and which you want to be on the bottom. I recommend that the thicker piece be for the bottom and the thinner pieces for the top (if there's a difference). Smear the top with some wholegrain mustard and the bottom with the spinach paste.

Then put the top salmon on the bottom salmon, so that the sides smeared with mustard and spinach meet! Time to wrap it up!

Place the salmon onto the rolled out pastry sheet. If yours isn't pre-rolled, aim for the thickness of a £1 coin.

I made a mistake here - I directly transferred mine parcel on, so the bottom piece is still on the bottom here, but this meant that once it was wrapped up, the bottom became the top (because you'll want the seam to be on the bottom!) if you get what I mean. SO in order for you not to make this mistake, please flip your salmon sandwich upside down (i.e. salmon with mustard on the bottom and salmon with spinach on the top) so its the right way up. Although it's only really important if you've got a thick and thin bit of salmon like me, because as you'll see later, the thin side doesn't support the filling as well.

Brush the pastry around the salmon with some egg wash (beaten egg) and season with salt and peppers lightly. Then wrap it like a pressie. A very yummy pressie. The egg wash will help stick the pastry down.

When you've wrapped it, place it in a baking tray (lined if you want) with the seams tucked underneath. Score the top with the back of a knife in a criss cross pattern, taking care not the cut through it (just drag it along lightly - you don't need to use any strength at all!) and score portions if you wish as well. Brush some more egg wash over the top so it bakes with a beautiful golden colour.

Cover and chill for 15-30 minutes or so while you preheat your oven. Yep you gotta wait! I know you're looking forward to tucking in, but chilling it helps it hold its shape that bit better, so it's worth it in the end.

Then when you've baked it for 20-25 minutes at 180˚C in a fan oven (200˚C normal oven), it should look like this.

Beautifully golden!

Leave it to rest 5 minutes (more waiting I know, sorry!) before you cut into it, so set your table, tidy up your kitchen, pour some drinks, stare and drool, and then you can dig in!

The salmon was just perfect (it probably finished cooking while I rested it), so flavoursome and succulent. It was just flaking away and complemented so well by the crispy pastry, and lemony spinach.

The only thing about this was that it had a soggy bottom. This could've been due to various things, which I'll have to change for next time to see if it makes a difference:

• not dehydrating the spinach well enough
• too much spinach? or butter?
• the salmon on the bottom not thick enough (see above about flipping the salmon over)
• not patting dry the salmon well enough

But it was delicious all the same. Try it for yourself! This side of salmon had a chunk missing and still easily fed 4 grown starving students, so it's a great for families and friends!

Dinner Date Night In

Sometimes its just nice to stay in and cook for a date. Together, so you don't have to slave away in the kitchen alone can enjoy the fun of cooking (and washing up later!) with your other half. There are just days when you're not up for fighting the crowds for a table somewhere.

I like cooking dates because that usually means I can try something new that I haven't done before. Two minds (and four hands) are better than one when making recipes that you're not familiar with.

Of course, too (or two?) many cooks can spoil the broth, but Ant and I are very compatible. We have designated roles: He tells me what he wants to eat, I find recipes. I choose ingredients, he pays for them ;) He chops, slices and dices, I wash.  I preheat the ovens and pans, he handles the sizzling oil and hot steam. He seasons, I taste test. I stir, he dishes up. It works very well.

Ant took care of the meat for this Beef Carpaccio Salad, although there wasn't much really to do! We used a thick cut steak of beef fillet for this, because it is such a beautifully tender texture (though the flavour may not be as good as cuts like sirloin), and kept the handling to a minimum.

We just brought it to room temperature about 30 minutes before seasoning it lightly with salt and pepper and searing the outside surfaces on a very high heat to a charred brown (1-2 minutes). In order to be a safe as possible with the raw meat, we didn't cut it until we were ready to eat.

Ant managed to cut it really very thin (considering the soft raw texture), and then we flattened the slices out some more on a chopping board with a rolling pin covered in glad wrap. Then I did the important job of tossing it with some baby spinach leaves, roasted peppers (from a jar!) and balsamic vinaigrette. Ta da! Easy-peasy Beef Carpaccio Salad.

I don't know why we thought it was a good idea to have so much raw food in one night. We just couldn't resist when we saw an entire side of salmon on sale at Tesco for £13! It looked so fresh, we had to try some of it for salmon sashimi!

While the sushi master (educated at the YouTube academy of sushi knife skills) carefully deskinned and deboned the slab of omega-3 goodness, I halved, cored and sliced the creamy butteriness that is an avocado. With similar textures, and rich, creamy, oily-but-in-a-good-way tastes, I think it's weird that salmon and avocado go well together (it seems like it would result in overload!) but they do. It's the ultimate match. I also sliced some cucumber to freshen it all up.

Somehow we survived all the raw meat and raw fish, and made it onto our main course.

This is inspired by some Spanish paella-type recipes that are made with pasta rather than rice. I believe it is something called fideuà. Having never actually tried this dish, we didn't really know what we to expect and what would be a good recipe. So we improvised.

There are various fideuà and pasta/noodle-paella recipes online, and I used a combination of a few, including this one from America's Test Kitchen, and this one. The key concepts to point out are:

• toast the spaghetti in some olive oil to start (break the spaghetti in half or smaller to fit easily into your pan
• cook up a tomato based sauce (I used canned tomatoes, tomato paste, shallots, garlic and fish stock - I don't know where to get hold of bottle clam juice?) and then cook the toasted spaghetti in it
• when the pasta is just done, nestle in your seafood (clams, mussels, prawns, cockles, fish, calamari, whatever you can get your hands on!) and bake in the oven until the seafood is done and the pasta begins to crisp up
• serve with lemon wedges

It definitely tasted delicious, but whether it was authentic or even close to what the dish is supposed to be, I would not know. I think this calls for a trip to Spain (or a Spanish restaurant, but preferably in Spain) to do some research !

The beauty of seafood (if it's fresh) is that it's actually incredibly easy to make. There's very little you need to do with it, because its the seafood itself that you want to appreciate. I love this dish also because it's quick, quite hassle free, and if you're fortunate enough to have a ovenable pan, a one-pan dish that means even washing up is easy.

So it was supposed to be a date night in, but my sister was in as well, so it became a dinner for three instead. That 's how we managed all that food! ;)

She contributed a beautiful red velvet cake, decorated with marshmallows and buttercream. It was the perfect size, and the perfect way to end our meal.

All accompanied with some champagne of course!

Date nights in like these make me less inclined to go out for a fancy (and probably expensive) meal as often. It can be just as perfect at home, don't you think?

Although, I can't give you many tips on improving the next part - washing up. It's probably easiest to pile it all to the side and thinking about it the next day ;)

Smoked Salmon and Courgette / Zucchini Pasta

Now that September is here, it's back to university for me!

That means... lots of lectures to go to, lots of reading to do, lots of work, work and work! So therefore, less time (and money!) to spend on meals. Those summer days of eating out all day everyday are over =( But cooking doesn't have to be a chore. If the meals are easy and quick, yet cheap and delicious, it is more than enjoyable! 

Courgettes or zucchinis are a great summer vegetable and before it goes out of season soon, I want to share a super simple recipe with you!

Only four ingredients needed: dried pasta, smoked salmon trimmings, a courgette, and a lemon.

We'll start off by slicing the courgette. Give it a good wash, because we'll be leaving the skin on, and grab a peeler.

Then, 'peel' off slices of courgette. This is so much quicker and easier than using a knife (especially, if you're prone to cutting yourself instead of your target object, like me)!

You'll then get beautifully uniform and thin slices of courgette, which will cook in seconds!

At this point, start cooking your pasta. (You could even start cooking your pasta at the beginning of the recipe, if you're speedy with the peeler)

Back to the courgettes, drizzle a bit of olive oil over the slices.

Adding the oil to the courgettes, instead of to the pan, means that you use less oil, and you're able to coat each slice much more evenly.

Heat up a frying pan on medium-high heat, and when it's hot, lay down the slices of courgette one by one. The bigger the pan you have, the more you can lay down at once!

After 15-20 seconds, when they start to become transparent and brown a little, flip them over to fry the other side as well. The easiest way to do this is with chopsticks! But I'm sure tongs would work fine too.

Another 15 seconds on the other side will be enough, then take the slices off and set them aside. Repeat with all the remaining slices. Although it seems like a lot of effort, once you get the hang of it, it's really quite quick.

 When the pasta is done, drain it, and add it back to the frying pan with the slices of courgette.

Give it a quick stir, take it off the heat, and add in the smoked salmon. Smoked salmon trimmings are perfect for those on a student budget. It's cheap (£1.50 a pack of 120g at Tesco!), but the smokiness of the salmon makes it feel so much more luxurious, and it doesn't matter that its in little bits either!

Mix it all together, the heat from the pasta and courgettes will be enough to heat up the salmon, without cooking it completely.

Cut your lemon in half and squeeze out the juice. Add it to your pasta, give it all a good toss and your meal is ready!

Dish it all up, serve it with some extra lemon wedges, some black pepper and even some cherry tomatoes if you want!