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 -->

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 ;)