Miso-Marinated Salmon With Soy & Ginger Broccoli

We've become slightly obsessed with miso paste.  We bought a big tub of ready-mixed stuff from the Japan Centre (first used here), and it's our new favourite thing.  It's surprisingly versatile - it makes a deliciously salty soup, a punchy salad dressing ingredient, and, as it turns out, it's also a super-easy, super-quick marinade for fish.  Hooray for multi-purpose ingredients!  Miso paste, we love you.

Miso-Marinated Salmon (serves 2)

You need:

2 salmon fillets

2 cloves garlic, smashed

4 tbsp miso paste

2 tbsp soy sauce

In a bowl, mix the smashed garlic, miso paste and soy sauce into a thick paste.  Add in the salmon fillets, covering as much as them as possible with the marinade, and leave in the fridge for half an hour.

When you're ready for dinner, take the fish out of the marinade and griddle for 3-4 minutes per side, until the skin is crispy but the inside is prettily pink.

Broccoli With Soy & Ginger (serves 2)

You need:

1 small head broccoli, chopped into florettes

1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 small fresh chili, chopped

2 tbsp soy sauce

Steam the broccoli over a pan of boiling water until the pieces are bright green and not too soft.  While they are cooking, mix the other ingredients together thoroughly.  Serve the broccoli onto plates, and drizzle over the dressing.

I'll admit that the picture above doesn't look totally appetising, so you'll have to take my word for it - this was light, bright, and full of punchy flavours.

Pancaken!

Hi!  Happy Wednesday!  How have your weeks been so far?  We're still living in the House of Germs.  We've developed a worrying addiction to Kleenex Balm tissues, and in fact our zealous use of them may well be resulting in severe deforestation around the world. 

The Cat would like it noted that he is also unwell.  He has lost all the whiskers off the right-hand side of his face, and he doesn't feel that this terrible affliction is getting the attention it deserves

When you're not well, it is the law that you're allowed to eat anything you feel like.  Getting Better requires many calories, as everyone knows. 

Which is why we honoured tradition and treated ourselves to all-pancake dinner yesterday.  Cheese and ham pancakes to start, sugar and lemon pancakes to finish.

Scrumbles.  You'll be pleased to hear that we felt marginally better afterwards. 

Valentine's Day Dinner

Firstly, let me start this post by coming out of the closet:  I dislike Valentine's Day.  I don't like the idea of being romantic only on one random day a year.  I think you should buy your wife/girlfriend/partner flowers whenever you feel like it, and not when a calendar tells you to.  I don't like the wave of tacky red/pink rubbish that invades the shops from New Year onwards, and I particularly don't like the idea that people actually buy that stuff.  (Who in their right mind would want to express their love through a gift of a cuddly red devil with a satin cape embroidered with the words Be Mine?  I genuinely saw that on sale in a supermarket this year.) 

I'm also not a fan of going out to eat on Valentine's Day.  I love going out for dinner, and nothing ranks higher on my date-o-meter than an intimate meal for two in a cute, cosy restaurant, but I'd rather go on another day when there's less chance of being surrounded solely by other couples also feeling the pressure of Being Romantic. 

This is why, every 14th February, you'll find B and I at home in our pyjamas, cooking up something special.  While I don't like Valentine's Day providing a reason to be romantic, I do very much like it providing a reason to eat ice-cream.

On the menu this year.....

...an avocado and pink grapefruit salad, with a chili and coriander dressing.  (Via Hugh.) 

This was a lovely, fresh way to start the meal - the grapefruit's zinginess is balanced out by the creaminess of the avocado, and the dressing counteracts the sweetness of the fruit.  And doesn't it look beautiful on the plate?  Like a little bit of summer.  Oh summer!  We miss you!

To follow, we had Dover sole grilled with vermouth and parsley butter:

And broccoli, and chips.  In fairness, we really didn't need the chips at all - the fish turned out to be surprisingly substantial and filling.  But we ate them anyway (we're troopers that way). 

To finish, we had peach melba, which neither of us have ever made before.  It was easier than we'd thought.  Although we didn't skin the peaches, and we really should have, because trying to wrestle a peach with its skin on when only armed with a spoon is somewhat messy.

To make a peach melba, you poach the peaches in water, sugar, and vanilla.  Then you serve them with masses of vanilla ice-cream, and a raspberry sauce which you make by blitzing a punnet of fruit in your food mixer.   Can you think of a more perfect dessert?  Sugar, fruit, and ice-cream.  Sublime.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.  May your boyfriend/girlfriend/lover/spouse surprise you with flowers for no reason, whisk you out for a romantic dinner just because you've had a long week at work, and never, ever give you a cuddly devil in a satin cape.  Cheers!

Eating Our Way Back to Health

B and I both have colds.  We are living in a House of Germs, littered with tissues and Strepsils, and have watched more daytime television than could ever be good for us.  We're also trying to eat ourselves healthy.

Breakfast:

Lunch:

It's no fun at all being ill, but at least you can eat well while you're suffering.

In the meantime, I'll put up a long-overdue post about Valentine's Day next.  Yay! 

Quickest Ever Store Cupboard Soup

Do you ever have a day when you come home, tired and starving, from work?  And you open the fridge, and a solitary yogurt and half a cucumber stare back at you?  And you don't have any cash for a takeaway?  And your poor, tired, hungry brain wails WHAT AM I GOING TO EAT?!

I have those days all the time.  Sometimes the remedy is baked potatoes, or a quick pasta dish (I can usually rely on having carbs in the house).

Or sometimes I don't even have potatoes to hand, and I'm forced to be a bit more creative.

On this particular evening, I had the following unpromising-looking ingredients lolling about in the dark corners of the cupboard:

1 onion
1 carrot
A small, wrinkled nub of fresh ginger
A stub of cabbage (not really enough for even one portion)
Miso soup paste in a big tub
Dried noodles

What to do?  Why, make a delicious faux-Japanese soup, of course!

We sliced the onion, carrot, cabbage, and ginger thinly and stir-fried them in a glug of chilli oil until soft.  In a measuring jug, we made up the miso soup (the instructions are all in Japanese, so we went with a tablespoonful of paste to a litre of boiling water, which worked well).  Once made up, the miso soup got poured into the pan, and the dried noodles added in too.  Allow the noodles to soften, give everything a good stir, and serve. 

Admiring my lovely utensils?  Thank you! I love them too!  I think they make the meal feel more special and more thought out :) 

Making Marmalade

Oh yes, you read the title right.  In a fit of ridiculous domestication last weekend, B and I decided to make marmalade.  From scratch.  Riverford offer a "kit" (i.e., oranges in a brown bag that has "marmalade" written on it, I'm such a sucker for marketing ploys) and since they could deliver it right to our doorstep, we decided to give it a go.

Here are some observations on marmalade-making:

1.)  It is fiddly, and time-consuming.  Don't start the process if you're pushed for time; you'll only end up frustrated and annoyed.

2.)  It will fill your house with an incredibly strong smell of warm oranges.  This is delicious, but it doesn't mingle well with other yummy smells, for example that of a rabbit pie baking in the oven.  Just to let you know. 

3.)  It will be messy.  You will need newspaper. 

4.)  Holy moly, it uses a LOT of sugar.  You'll never look at marmalade in the same way again.

Seville Orange Marmalade (made 7 jars of varying sizes)

(this recipe is via Riverford)

You need:

1 marmalade-making kit from Riverford, or 1.5kg Seville oranges and 2 unwaxed lemons

2.5 litres cold water

2kg bag granulated sugar (although we used caster, because I forgot to take the recipe to the supermarket, and it worked fine.  You don't need that fancy 'jam-making' sugar.  That's one marketing ploy I didn't fall for.  Ha!)

Kit:

Large bowl

Huge pan (we used our tall pasta pan to minimise sugary splashes all over the kitchen)
Muslin

Large measuring jug

Screw-top jars and lids, sterilised (put them through a hot wash in the dishwasher, then don't touch them again until you need them)

Wax discs, if you like (ours came from Lakeland, which is my latest shopping obsession.  I bought a whole reel of labels from there as well.  I could spend hours, and several fortunes, on their gorgeous kitchen knick-knackery.  TANGENT.)

You do:

Firstly, drape the muslin over the bowl, and set aside.  Next, take your oranges and lemons.

Peel with a sharp grater (or knife, if you're handy).  You want thin strips of rind, ideally without any pith.  As each orange is denuded, slice it in half and throw both halves into the muslin-lined bowl, squeezing out the juice as you go.

 

Slice the strips of pith into thinnish slices (depending on how chunky you like your marmalade to be).   These slices can be put directly into your tall pan. 

Once all your fruit has been sliced and diced, gather up the sides of the muslin to form a big bundle and squish it hard to release any remaining juice.  Tie the ends together so that the fruit stays together.

Pour the juice from the bowl into the pan with your sliced peel.  Add 2.5 litres cold water.

Now put the muslin bag, full of fruit, into the pan.  Hang the ends of the muslin over the edges of the pan, so that the bag is easily accessible.  Heat the pan until the water comes to the boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer and leave to bubble away for two hours.  (I wasn't lying when I said this was time-consuming.)

After two hours, when the peel is beautifully soft, remove the muslin bag from the pan.  Put it into a colander over the pan and use a wooden spoon to mush out all of the juice from the bag.  Carefully pour the contents of the pan into a measuring jug, and get ready for some mental arithmetic - you need 450g sugar for every 500ml liquid. Return the liquid to the pan, then add the right amount of sugar and stir.  Gently heat for around ten minutes, until the sugar crystals have dissolved and there's no lumpiness at the bottom of the pan. Turn up the heat and bring the pan contents up to a fast boil.  Keep your eyes on the pan at all times, being ready to turn the heat down slightly if it threatens to boil over.

Riverford will tell you that you need to boil the marmalade rapidly for 15 minutes before its ready.  This, my dear readers, is a lie.  I recommend about an hour.  What?  Don't give me that look.  I warned you not to start this if you were short on time/patience.

Put a saucer to chill in the fridge.  After about an hour of boiling, test the marmalade by dropping a teaspoonsful onto the saucer.  If it looks thick and viscous, push the surface gently backwards with your spoon.  If the liquid wrinkles, it's ready.  If not, stick the saucer back in the fridge and try again in ten minutes.  You might find you do this several (many) times before the all-important wrinkling occurs. 

As soon as you have wrinkly marmalade, turn off the heat and let the pan sit for fifteen minutes.  Take your jars and lids out of the dishwasher and pop them in a low oven to warm through. 

After fifteen minutes, skim the scum off the surface off the marmalade.  Take out your jars, and line them up.  Spoon the marmalade into the jars - this will be messy, but go with it.  Put the wax discs on top of each jar, then screw on the lids while the marmalade is still warm. 

 

Ta da!

You should feel very proud, you marmalade-making, domestic god/dess you.  That's about a year's worth of breakfasts sorted.