Smoked Salmon & Cream Cheese Parcels.

Ana here!

These little parcels are something I conjured up today when I was staring into the fridge. Also the fact that the smoked salmon was going out of date tomorrow really helped me what to decide what to have for lunch! you'll need some form of ramekin or small bowl around 3 inches deep and 5 inches wide, cling film and the following ingredients:

smoked salmon (around 8 slices per ramekin)
2 tbsps cream cheese
2 tbsps diced red pepper
a handful of raw baby spinach
lemon juice
salt and pepper

(I apologise for the lack of measurements, I forget to weigh everything!)

firstly, line the ramekins with cling film, then line with the salmon, covering the sides and the bottom. leave a couple of cms hanging over the edge. But leave a couple of slices free for the top!

in a bowl, mix the cheese, lemon juice and salt and pepper. start layering the cheese and fillings, starting with the cheese on the bottom of the ramekin. layer on the red pepper and squish them down. Spread on more cheese, the layer on the spinach. Finish off with the remainder of the cheese. Cover the cheese with the remaining salmon. Fold over the excess bits of salmon, press down and put in the fridge for a couple of hours. To turn out the parcel, simply lift them out using the cling film and whack onto a plate!. These are a really good starter, served with a small mixed salad however I was eating mine for lunch so had a pretty big salad!

Fish In Bacon.

Does what it says on the tin - as published in some weekend magazine or other; simple, healthy and delcious.

This fed two of us:

2 white fish fillets (we had cod)
4 slices unsmoked bacon (the recipe called for 'thin bacon' or pancetta, but I don't like pancetta and I love bacon, and the cod/bacon combo was delish)

1/2 beef tomato
1 med courgette
1/2 yellow bell pepper

olive oil
thyme
black pepper
chilli (the recipe did call for chillies, but we wouldn't use them again and I had chilli powder in the house, so...)

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Oven at 200 - ours is a fan oven, and the recipe didn't have an oven temperature on it (!) so this is an educated guess...

Chop up the veg. Place on a baking tray and sprinkle with the herbs+spices and drizzle on olive oil.
Place in oven for 20 minutes.

Wrap the fish in bacon and fry for a minute on each side to seal (I assume this part would work better with pancetta as our bacon just flopped about afterwards)
Place in an oven dish and bake for 15 minutes. (Veg and fish should be ready at the same time!)


served with a bit of salad and some crispy fried goats cheese (recipe as this link, but a warning: it is messy!)

Salmon Balls.

salmon balls.

does what it says on the tin.

much like meatballs, but considerably more fishy and pink.

you will need

one small tin of salmon

plain flour

butter

salt, pepper and thyme

drain the salmon and mash it with a fork, in a bowl with the herbs. add some flour and shape small handfuls of the mixture into ball shapes.

heat up some butter in a frying pan.

drop the balls into the butter.

add to pasta - here i added sliced mushrooms, broccoli and spinach to the salmon balls, and then chucked in some cooked pasta with a cream cheese&milk sauce. add some worcester sauce for flavour and flour to thicken if necessary, then grate some cheese on top. et voila.

Noodle Soup.

so the other night i fancied noodles, but not a stir fry.
WHAT TO DO.
soup, that's what.

for two small-ish, but very filling portions, you'll need:

- one portion of noodles (i use sharwood's rice noodles which are perfect cos you can snap them in half for smaller noodle pieces, whereas an egg noodle nest is harder to break into smaller pieces...)
- half a carrot, peeled and sliced into really long, thin pieces.
- a handful of spinach
- an onion, sliced into biggish chunks
- a handful of frozen broccoli

- a handful of beansprouts

- one vegetable stock cube

- sprinkles of salt, pepper, chilli powder, ginger, worcestershire sauce and coriander

- a knob of butter*

- water

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in a large pan, melt the butter and fry the onions until soft.

add the carrots and then add some of the water and all of the herbs and spices, and the stock cube. then chuck in all the other ingredients (snapping the noodles in half so you have smaller chunks!) and cook until the soup thickens up a bit - add flour if necessary.

SO easy; and very tasty.

* or a dairy free alternative for a vegan dish!

Stuffed Mushrooms.

or, more specifically, stuffed mushrooms on spicy rice with salad, taken on an iphone.

sorry for the pic quality...

for the mushrooms

3 big-ish, flat-ish mushrooms*

1 slice bacon

half a white onion

half a garlic clove

a splash of milk*

sprinkles of: basil, oregano, salt, pepper

*i made this a bit spur-of-the-moment, so i just picked the biggest, flattest ones i had, but i've since bought an actual flat mushroom, on of the really big ones. gonna try a different filling, more of a bolognese affair (mince. tomatoes. etc.)

for the rice

one portion brown rice

handful of peas

squirt of ketchup

dash of worcester sauce

sprinkles of: chilli powder, basil, pepper, salt

+ any mushroom filling that won't fit in the mushrooms

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interesting flavours all around here...

turn on the oven; warm it up like.

boil some water, set the rice off cooking.

cut (or pull...) the stalks from the mushrooms, and place the mushroom caps on a baking tray.

fry the rest of the mushroom filling ingredients - leaving the milk til' near the end, it's just to give a little moisture to the proceedings.

spoon into the mushroom caps. drizzle with olive oil, shove in the oven to roast.

when the rice is nearly ready, bung a few peas in there. when there's only a little water left in the pan (or, because i always put far too much water in - on purpose, kthnx - strain the rice&peas and leave a little water in there with 'em) add the other ingredients, including any leftovers from the filling pan that didn't fit into the mushrooms.

check the flavour/spice is to your liking; plonk on a plate next to some salad leaves.

the mushrooms should be slightly browned and a little shrivelled by now, but as long as they're warm through they're done. serve!

course, omit the bacon for a veggie alternative, substituting it for red pepper or parsnip chunks.


* water can be substituted for vegans!

The Old Foil Bag Approach.

this is a genuine Mother Ana method of cooking y'all. I've seen a lot of people use it and i don't blame them, it's simple the easiest way of cooking fish and meat in the easiest way. Basically you bake your chosen food in a foil bag with olive oil and seasoning. it stays tender and juicy and the flavour stays in the bag as theres no evaporation. it's my favourite way to cook salmon.

i used a tattie peeler to get thin slices of courgette, and lay them on the bottom of the foil. topped with a salmon steak, brocolli, mange tout, black olives, olive oil, seasoning, garlic and a touch of water. seal the foil up with a little room for steaming and pop in a 180 degree oven for 20 minutes

i ate a little before i realised i should document what it looks like cooked

please do try this method of cooking, it works well with all fish and chicken. obviously cook it a little bit more :)

All Sorts of Salmon-y Goodness.

i'm not a huge fan of pasta, i think it's boring to be honest. I recently turned to brown rice, pasta and bread and they just bloat me much less. However i do like creating a pasta dish every now and again, its quick, its easy, its my way of using up my veg at the end of the week. i didnt fancy a plain vegetable recipe, so used some salmon i had in the freezer:

1 salmon fillet

half a red pepper

half a red onion

2 handfuls of spinach

4 asparagus spears

1 small can of peeled plum tomatoes

clove of garlic

squeeze of lemon juice

seasoning

olive oil

1 and a half handfulls of pasta

first, bang the salmon in a pre heated oven (200 derees). this is so much healthier than frying it and the salmon flakes easier so equally spreads amongst the sauce.

boil the kettle for the pasta. add the boiling water to the pan of pasta and turn on the heat, and add a sprinkling of salt.

turn the heat onto another pan, and gently fry in olive oil the chopped garlic. after the garlic has cooked a little, add the onions and cook until soft. add the red pepper, which should be chopped quite small. cook for a few more minutes, then open the can of tomatoes and bung it in. the tomatoes will be whole, but are really easy to break up with a wooden spoon. add the chopped asparagus spears and the spinach. stir until the spinach is wilted and add the lemon juice and seasoning and take off the heat. when the salmon is done, flake it with a fork and add to the mix, then add the cooked pasta. give it a quick stir, taste for more seasoning then serve piping hot :)