Sweet Potato Salad and Simple Salmon | You've Got Meal!

This dish started with us buying a couple of sweet potatoes before Thanksgiving,  with the thought in our minds to use them for a dish for that occasion.  Lazy as we (sometimes) are we missed the deadline,  but that doesn't mean that we couldn't make a delicious dish nonetheless.

The pairing between the sweet potato and the fresh salmon works really well, but you can choose to serve just the salad, in which case just use some smoked salmon pieces.

The ingredients for 3-4 portions (depending on who is eating them):

• 600 grams of sweet potato, cut into bite size pieces, 
•  soy sauce, 
• olive oil, 
• pepper, 
• the juice of 1 orange, 
•  pomegranate seeds, 
• 4-5 scallions,  
• sesame seeds, 
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, 
• ginger, one thumb sized piece 

1. In a large bowl, mix together the potatoes with 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, the same amount of olive oil and some pepper. 
2. Place the yams in oven proof tin lined with cooking paper, making sure they're not too crowded. 
3. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top and mix in the tin. 
4. Put the potatoes in the oven, 170 Celsius,  for about half an hour or until the yams are done- do a taste test, they get creamy on the inside and with a slight crust on the outside. 
5. Put the potatoes on a plate and sprinkle the chopped scallions on top, same for the pomegranate seeds and the thinly sliced garlic. 
6. For the dressing mix the orange juice, 1tbs of olive oil, salt, pepper and 1/2 of a teaspoon of finely grated ginger. 
7. Pour the some of the dressing on the potatoes and mix to coat.

The salmon: we had a couple of steaks, 200 grams each.

1. Make sure they are boneless, move your hand on top of the meat, looking for anything resembling the pinch of a bone. Remove them before cooking. I've seen most of these bones especially in thicker pieces of meat. 
2. Sear the salmon on high heat, in a couple tablespoons of olive oil for 1 minute on each side. 
3. Next, pop the fish in the oven,  skin side down,  160 Celsius,  for around 10 minutes.  
4. In the last minute, pour a few drops of the salad dressing on top of the fish, and, if you feel like necessary, turn it up side down in order to get more of a crust on the meat. 
5. Don't put the orange juice too early, the sugars in it will burn.
6. Garnish the salmon with some chives and serve it with the sweet potatoes salad. 

Crazy-simple and goooood!

The fish and the yams go great together and, like I said before, you can choose to use smoked salmon. Or you can decide to use the yams as a side dish for something else.  In any case, the sweet potatoes are (even if a little late) a great Thanksgiving or Christmas side dish recipe.

Enjoy,

Leftover Fish Salad- Express Post | You've Got Meal!

I remember watching this cooking show on TV once and seeing this lady being asked what she and her family eats during the week.  She named some dishes, but there was one thing that kept being repeated: leftovers.

I honestly believe that, sometimes, we waste our food way too easily, creating waste and, at the same time, emptying our wallets. So this is why (maybe not often enough) we make a couple of easy, super fast dishes, that make most of leftover cooked foods or leftover ingredients. In our last post we cooked some haddock and had a couple pieces of fish left. One of the things we love to make when dealing with leftovers is salads, so we’re going to show you how we saved a couple of on the verge of being thrown away ingredients.

We used: 

• about 200 grams of haddock fillets, 
• 1 ripe avocado, 
• a salad mix (of your choice, or you can just use the leaves that you have in your fridge as long as they are eatable fresh), 
• the juice of 1 lemon, 
• olive oil, 
• chives, 
• rosemary, 
• 1 garlic clove, 
• salt, pepper.

Heat up some olive oil and throw a rosemary twig in there. Cook the fillets until they can be easily broken into flakes. Arrange the salad  mix in a plate (we had iceberg, red cabbage and carrots mix) and flake the fish on top. Finely slice a garlic clove and do the same to the avocado, add to the salad and fish. Pour the lemon juice and a good splash of olive oil, salt and pepper. Garnish with some chopped chives. And, the most important part of the recipe, open up a chilled bottle of Prosecco, pour yourself a glass and enjoy your leftovers. Because, sometimes, these can truly be the star of a meal.  

Enjoy,

Comfort Food: Fish and Beans Soup | You've Got Meal!

A tasty, delicious Italian inspired soup that combines the subtle taste of zander with the hearty taste of Cannellini beans, all brought together by a touch of tomatoes and basil.

Fish soups, for me, aren’t really all that much of a great choice in comfort foods, but when combined with some Cannellini beans things change. And with the coming of winter this dish brought a little piece of warmth and comfort into the kitchen. There a still a lot of fresh flavors in this recipe to keep things relatively close to summer, but adding the soup shifts the recipe in a whole different direction.

Ingredients:

• 400 grams of fish fillets, cut into 5-7 cm pieces (we used zander), 
• 1 can of diced tomatoes (400 grams), 
• 200 grams of passata, 
• 800 grams of vegetable stock, 
• 250 grams of cherry tomatoes, both halved and whole, 
• 3 leeks, only the white parts, 
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, 
• 2 tbs. of capers, 
• 2 rosemary twigs, 
• 2-3 bay leaves, 
• 15 medium sized basil leaves, 
• 3-4 tbs. of chopped olives, 
• fennel seeds, 
• salt, pepper, olive oil.

1. Start by cutting the leeks into slices- cook them with the garlic in some olive oil, on medium heat, until softened. 
2. Next add the olives and capers and cook for another 5 minutes. 
3. Pop in the tomatoes (canned, passata and fresh), rosemary, bay leaves, salt, pepper, grounded fennel seeds and the stock, reduce the heat and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes. 
4. 5 minutes before the end add the canned cannellini beans – if you’re using uncooked ones make sure you boil them in advance. 
5. In the final 3 minutes add the fish, after which, near the end, throw the basil leaves in the soup- they need about 1 minute to soften and infuse the soup. 

You can add a touch of lemon juice to the soup, to make things fresher, or you can use a touch of yoghurt in the same purpose.

All in all, an easy to make soup  that can serve either as a great reminder of summer or a comfortable companion for a cold day.

Enjoy 8e5baa17709cf14ece6cea98478e5def9198be9f4387789663,

Fish in Puff Pastry (Julia Child style) | You've Got Meal!

I’m actually super excited about writing this post, it was a wonderful thing to cook and the making of the pastry, although fairly time consuming and not easy, is incredibly fulfilling. Could be just me, but I just loved making the pastry and using it here.  I took the recipe for the puff pastry from this site.

It’s thoroughly explained and detailed and I followed every step there. I’m going to try and give you as much feedback as I can, but let’s be honest you’ll probably check Julia Child and Michel Richard. For my pastry I used half the quantities given by the 2 masters as I didn’t need all that much pastry.  

• 375 grams of all purpose flour, 
• 150 ml of ice cold water, 
• 200 grams of cold butter, 
• 1 tsp. of salt. 

They say all over the internet that the trick behind making pastry is respecting the temperature of the ingredients and there is no room for error there. The way Child makes the pastry is by first creating a dough from the flour, ice cold water and salt. A food processor does do the trick, but I used a whisk and my hands. 

1. First note here – try and use your hands at least as possible as they will heat the dough and, especially, the butter. 
2. After the dough was done, I let it cool in the fridge for 15 minutes, covered in some paper towels. 
3. For the butter, place it between  2 cling films and press it down to a 1,5 cm thickness – give it the form of a square and put in the fridge. Like I said before, limit the direct use of your hands. Also the faster you work, the more steps you can make before having to return the pastry in the fridge. 
4. Take the dough, place it on well floured, clean, dry and flat work surface and shape it in a square shape, about ½ half bigger than the butter square. 
5. Next, with your rolling pin, create sort of flaps form the corners of the dough – those wedges will be thinner and the middle will remain thicker. 
6. Place the butter in the middle of the dough and cover it with the thinned down corners. The thing I did next was to fold the dough one more time, creating something like a rectangle or a book. Keep the work surface well floured. When butter popped out of different places in the dough (and trust me it sure did) I just sprinkled some flour on top. 
7. Next, create another square by rolling the dough with your pin, make the same flaps as before and repeat the folding process.  I only did 2 of those at a time, keeping the pastry for 40 minutes in the fridge. In total I made 6 folds-I would have done more, but it was getting kind of late and I was hungry. 
8. Keep the pastry in the fridge until you are ready to cook it. 

Now, I think, vaguely, I said something about some fish? I got a little carried away with the pastry, so let me get to the filling.

• 3 pieces of perch, 100 grams each (cod works just as well, like sea bass or sea bream), 
• 3 pieces of leek (the white part) cut into slices, 
• 1 chili- optional, 
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, 
• parsley, 
• dill, 
• salt, pepper and olive oil. 

1. Start of by cooking the leek – you can do this while the pastry cools in the fridge. This way will also give you the time you need for the leek to cool, as it needs to be this way before being put in the pastry. Cooking the vegetable is super easy, on medium-low heat sauté the leek (and the finely chopped chili- if you choose to add it) in 3 tbs of olive oil for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally. 
2. Crush the garlic with some salt in a mortar, add 50 grams of water on top, mix and pour the garlic in the leak pot. Cook until the liquid has evaporated and the leak has softened enough to create a base for the fish to have under. 

You can now begin to assemble your dish, roll a sheet of pastry, about 0.5 cm thick, big enough to fit your piece of fish. Place some leek on the dough, the fish on top, sprinkle some salt (careful here, remember that the leeks have also been salted), pepper and some whole leaves of parsley and dill. Close the dough creating (in my case) a wallet. Brush the dough with some whisked egg white, this will close the pocket and it will give a nice shine to the dish. Place the fish in a preheated oven, on medium high heat for 15-17 minutes or until the pastry has a golden- slightly brown color.

The result is a versatile dish, that can be served warm or at room temperature, you can make it in smaller portions and serve it as an appetizer. Use some fresh, crunchy boiled green beans as a side dish, or maybe similar mange tout. Give yourself the time (and the courage) to try and make the dough, it will be worth it. If you’re in a hurry, use some premade frozen pastry and just follow the instructions on the package. Whichever way you approach, you can be assured that this French themed dish is a definite keeper in your kitchen. 

Enjoy,

Noodle Soup with River Bass | You've Got Meal!

River bass is one of my favorite fish. The meaty, lean, white, subtle fish is very versatile and can be cooked in so many ways that is too bad that I don’t get my hands on bass very often.

And considering the fact that Mrs. G’s name day was coming, I decided to turn this fabulous fish into an Asian style noodle soup. To say she loves those is an understatement, and I would really like to see what she would do in a Ramen restaurant.

Cooking this soup is super simple and it’s composed of 3 parts: the fish, the stir fry, the boiled ingredients and the broth (the base of the soup). This feels like actually building the soup from different parts, the ingredients for each being: green onions, carrots, chili, garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce and fish sauce  (1 teaspoon each for the last 3) for the stir fry; broccoli and instant noodles to boil; cardamom, allspice, star anise, pepper, salt for the broth.

Start of by  gutting and cleaning the fish. Next, take all the ingredients for the broth and put them in a tea satchel. Place it in salted water and boil until the liquid has been infused by the spices. Next, massage the fish with some salt and a hint of 5 spice and place it in the oven, high heat, on a rack that has a tray under. Depending on the size of the fish, it will take to cook from 8-15 minutes.

Remove the fish from the oven and set aside. The next 2 parts take literally 2 minutes. At  the same time, boil the broccoli in the broth and stir fry the vegetables in a wok, in a little peanut oil .

Time to plate your soup. First, place the vegetables from the wok, then the instant noodles (that’s the kind I used here, but you can choose a different kind- just be careful with the ones that take longer to cook – boil them in the infused broth before adding them to the soup ), soup (up to 90% of the bowl), pieces of broccoli and flaked pieces of bass. Let the noodles cook- it takes 2-3 minutes, they will absorb a fair amount of liquid so feel free to add more broth to the soup if you feel like necessary.

Now, I’m gonna go and say here that the resulting dish was a comforting, savory soup. Thing is, in order to fully demonstrate this would be to actually show you Mrs. G just munching it away in under a minute (but she hid the recording). Like I said before, she LOVES her noodle soups.

Enjoy,

Seared Salmon, Potato and Sun Dried Tomato Puree and a Lemon and Caper Sauce

This recipe was the result of the incredible power of marketing! A local supermarket managed to get me to buy 3 salmon steaks, 200 grams each, for a decent price. Can’t say that I regret it, the fish was really good and the sauce and side dish proved to be wonderful companions.

Fried Shrimp and Spicy Broccoli

This recipe is one of the first ones that made us into thinking we should make a blog and one of the recipes we like cooking the most. It’s a very easy to make, delicious and packs a lot of flavor. And, hey, you’re eating broccoli, that’s gotta be healthy for you.

For the shrimps, we used frozen (500 grams), but you can use fresh. The idea of cooking the seafood is that you will both boil and fry it for short periods of time, so it doesn’t over cook.

Spicy Fish and Seafood Stew

This is a dish that I’ve been wanting to try for a while now, mainly because I think it is one of those dishes that you must try when you’re visiting a seaside resort or visiting a country with a strong fish cooking tradition. You’ll find a lot of variations of this type of dish on-line, be it Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or Greek, each one of them with its specific flavors and touches. 

For what I did, I mixed a little bit of the Italian touch with the Portuguese ones, using fresh fish and seafood:

400 grams of fish fillets (dorado, white cod and brill), 

150 grams of calamari rings, 

12 mussels

2 extra large whole shrimps (they had about 170 grams together), 

1 medium red onion diced, 

1 fennel thinly sliced and leaves reserved for garnishing, 

3 garlic cloves, 

500 grams of tomato passata, 

300 grams of fresh tomato juice, 

1 chilli, 

5 anchovies fillets, 

about 2 tbs of fresh thyme leaves, 

2-3 tbs of fresh parsley, 

2 bay leaves, 

some lemongrass (optional), 

1 and a half tbs of smoked hot paprika, 

salt, pepper, olive oil.

Just writing these ingredients makes me hungry, everything is so delicious in its own way and together they just create an explosive and amazing tasting dish.

Start of by heating up a couple tbs of olive oil in a heavy base, tall if possible pan, and put in the anchovies, fennel, onion, garlic and chilli. Cook this on high heat for about 5 minutes stirring from time to time. After this, add the tomato passata and juice, the herbs except the parsley, salt, pepper, lemongrass and smoked paprika, turn the heat to a low and simmer for around 30 minutes. 

Meanwhile, prepare your fish: cut the fillets into equal parts (both length and thickness), the rings (give them a good wash) and clean the mussels (rip their beards by pulling them away all the way from the base of the mollusk and remove any barnacles that you may have on the mussel shell). If you buy the shrimp whole, you need to clean it by making an incision on its back, from where the tail begins all the way down and remove the intestines. 

After 30 minutes, add the fish and seafood, cover them with the tomato mix and cook them for 3-4 minutes, then add the chopped parsley. Be careful when you plate your dish not to flake the fillets too much. 

There you have it, a lovely, rich, smooth and spicy fish stew guaranteed to make your day, your lunch, dinner, whatever you want it, it’s just bloody delicious.    

Enjoy,
Mr. G.