These Foolish Things

This gallery contains 8 photos.

One nice thing about living in a rural area is having an abundance of natural harvest, in this case, blackberries. Of course, blackberries grow pretty much everywhere – waste ground, the roadside etc – but picking them in the forest is much more pleasant, and, dare I say, slightly less flavoured by exhaust fumes. Besides, […]

Getting Stuffed & Getting Saucy

It’s a quiet holiday season, with no major celebrating or excessive consumption. Not even having a whole bird of any sort, just a turkey crown, which even as I write, is sitting in a brine bath with assorted flavourings, ready for roasting on the day. There are some things which must be done, however, because they have been done in the Den E Zen household for several years, which makes them traditional. These are the chestnut stuffing and the cranberry sauce.

As ever, ingredients are somewhat variable. Amounts are very approximate also.

Not suitable for vegetarians, vegans, those with dietary restrictions about bacon, people allergic to chestnuts, people who like their recipes with precise amounts, temperatures or people who like their meals to include jus of this, foam of that and who can’t survive without a vacuum pump in the kitchen.

The Stuffing

• Cooked Chestnuts – around a pound or so. Much as I love using fresh ingredients, I find the whole process of roasting and peeling chestnuts somewhat tedious, especially getting that furry inner skin off, so I tend to use pre-prepared ones. Feel free to do it from scratch if you so wish.
• Bacon – likewise around a pound or so. I used packs of cooking bacon, but even there, I prefer to sort through the packets for the ones that have big chunks in rather than lots of misshapen thin rashers. Also, try to use stuff that isn’t too fatty.
• Onions – a couple of medium sized ones, diced
• Dried apricots – a handful or so.
• Garlic – a couple of good heaped teaspoons once minced
• Ginger – a good thumb-sized piece, peeled and minced
• Chilli – this time, I forgot to get fresh ones, so I used a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes.  Feel free to leace these out.
• Breadcrumbs – a nice handful. Preferably fresh ones rather than the lurid yellow sawdust that comes in packets.
• Sage – a few leaves, finely chopped, except I remembered this after I had cooked it, to there aren’t any in this batch.

Roughly chop the bacon, the onions, the chestnuts and the apricots. Sweat the onions in a little oil until soft, then add the bacon pieces and gently cook until just done, but still soft. Add the ginger and garlic and chilli part-way through cooking the bacon. Don’t overdo it as the whole lot is going to get baked in a couple of paragraphs time.

Mix the cooked ingredients all together and place in an over-proof dish. Spray a little oil on the top, then stick in the oven at 180°C (That’s 350°F or Gas Mark 4) for about 25 minutes.  It’s done when you think it is done – I like it to be a little crispy on the top, but maybe that’s just me.

The Cranberry Sauce

• Cranberries – one pound
• Shallots – about a heap tablespoonful once minced
• Ginger – a thumb-sized piece, peeled and minced
• Lime – juice of one
• Brown sugar – heaped tablespoon, or more if you like it sweet
• Salt & pepper to taste

Finely mince the ginger and shallot. Sweat in a little butter until soft and translucent. Add the cranberries and a couple of glugs of water.  Gently simmer until all the cranberries have popped. You can encourage this by mashing with a potato masher or otherwise squishing the few hold-outs.  Add the lime juice and the sugar and simmer for a while until you have a nice gloopy mess that stains your wooden spoons bright red.  Add salt and pepper to taste (and more sugar if you like your sauce sweeter).  Feel free to blitz it with one of those magic wand things, but I like mine quite rough-textured.  Add more hot water if it is too thick. Let it cool a bit and stick it in a jar.

There you go – some things to go with your roast whatever dinner. Enjoy!  And, as ever with any of my cooking, feel free to add, subtract, and modify ingredients according to availability or taste. I promise I won’t cry too much.

 

Vaguely Asianesque Fish-ball Soup

To paraphrase a popular novelty song… “Fish-balls, fish-balls, roly-poly fish-balls…”

I can’t claim that song as inspiration, but, for some reason, I started humming it while I was trying this out for the first time. And, much like the song, we did “eat them up, yum.” Perhaps you will too.

It was my turn to cook. It’s usually my turn to cook unless I am working evenings, or my wife is feeling inspired to cook something Mexican (she’s American, so more experienced in such things). I had in front of me: a vacuum pack of smoked mackerel fillets and an assortment of vegetables. Investigation of the cupboard in search of inspiration came up with a tin of tuna, some packet miso soup, a packet of wakame flakes, fresh ginger root, noodles and such like.  From this, I came up with the idea of making little balls from the fish and cooking them in a somewhat Asianesque soup.  That didn’t quite work out as intended, in so far as the fish-balls disintegrated in the soup, so I ended up with a very fish soup (it still tasted good). Next time, I tried frying the balls first, and that worked better.  After a couple more attempts, I settled on the following… well, I’ll call it a recipe, for want of a better term, but, it could equally well be called an idea, or possibly even the seed for other ideas.  Feel free to experiment.

As usual, all amounts are approximate, depending on what I have lying around with which to measure. Feel free to vary according to taste, size of packet. If substituting dried herbs/spices/breadcrumbs, you might need to add a little liquid.

The Fishballs

• Smoked mackerel fillets (I got the ones that come vacuum-packed from the chiller aisle, but there is no reason you shouldn’t used tinned) – 0.4kg or 14 oz. Where necessary, I have provided translation into American (but not for amounts, unless that is important).
• Tinned tuna, 1 small tin, drained.
• The green parts of a bunch of spring onions (scallions),
• Fresh coriander (cilantro)
• Fresh ginger root – 1 thumb-sized piece, more if you like it
• Minced garlic – 1 heaped teaspoon, more if you like it
• Fresh chilli – about a thumb-sized piece before chopping
• Breadcrumbs – about a handful – freshly made from a slice of bread, not the lurid yellow dried stuff from a packet.
• One egg, beaten

Peel the skin off the mackerel (if using the fillets) and finely shred (I find that you need a knife on the thinner parts of the fillets because they can get quite hard during smoking). Do the same to the tuna.

Finely mince the ginger, garlic (I cheated and used a couple of spoonfuls of Lazy Garlic from a jar) and chilli.  Finely mince a tablespoon (or more if you like it) of the coriander (I used the stalks and reserved the leaves for the soup part). Finely chop the green parts of the spring onions.

Mix everything together into a glorious mess until all the green parts are evenly distributed.  Then take a generous heaped teaspoonful and roll/squidge into balls.  Mine ended up around the size of a thumb-joint, or of you prefer, they could have been moulded using two of my plastic 1 Teaspoon measuring spoons.  You can make them bigger if you like, but then people end up with fewer each. I ended up with over 40 of them. I find wetting my hands before rolling helps to prevent the mixture sticking to my hands.

Stick them in the fridge to chill for a couple of hours, or, if in a hurry, in the freezer for 15 minutes. I’m not sure why, but it does seem to help them to keep their shape. Don’t let them get too frozen though.

After chilling, heat up some oil and deep fry the balls in batches until golden brown, drain on kitchen paper and reserve, keeping them warm.

The Soup

• One bunch of spring onions (scallions), plus the white bits left over from the bunch used for  making the fish balls.
• One quarter of a head of cabbage (I used Savoy, but feel free to try something else)
• A couple of large carrots
• One small tin of water chestnuts
• The rest of the fresh chilli according to taste
• Several large garlic cloves according to taste
• A thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, or more if you like it
• Fresh coriander (cilantro) – one bunch (in my case, I used the leaves left over from making the fish balls, for which I used the stalks)
• One packet of seaweed (e.g. wakame) flakes
• Two sachets of mizo soup mix
• Vegetable stock or fish stock
• Soy sauce
• One nest of egg noodles per person.
• Juice of one lemon (if you remember, you can finely shred the zest and incorporate that into the fishballs).
• Salt & pepper to taste

Halve the spring onions lengthways and cut into one inch pieces. Shred the cabbage finely. Quarter the carrots lengthways, cut into two inch lengths, and then cut into long thin slices (I used a vegetable peeler, or if your grater has a slicing aperture, use that).  Roughly chop the water chestnuts. Finely mince the ginger, garlic and chilli. Roughly chop the coriander leaves, reserving a few for garnish.

Heat a little oil in a large saucepan. Sweat the carrot, then add the spring onions for a few minutes, the garlic, chilli and ginger, sweat a couple of minutes more before adding the cabbage and water chestnuts.  Stir for a few minutes, then make up the mizo soup in a jug with hot water and add to the pan.  Make up the stock in a jug with hot water and add that, topping up with more water; until everything is well covered (I ended up with over 3 litres or roughly 3 US quarts).  Bring to a gentle boil, then turn down and simmer for 10 minutes.  Add the seaweed towards the end, depending on the cooking instructions for it (i.e. if it needs just 2 or 3 minutes in hot water, then add 2 or 3 minutes towards the end. Add the lemon juice and a good glug of the soy. Stir in the chopped coriander. Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed.  Add more soy sauce if you like, tasting and adjusting until you like it.  Turn down to the minimum simmer.

Prepare the egg noodles according to the instructions.

Serving

When you are ready, place a nest of the cooked noodles in a bowl, add half a dozen fish-balls or more (depending on how hungry you are, how big your bowls are, and how many meals you intend to get out of it – I ended up with six servings). Pour over enough soup (with the assorted vegetation) to cover, throw in a couple of the reserved coriander leaves and serve.  There should be plenty for a good meal, but if you need a little more, do as I did and make up a big bowl of prawn crackers to accompany it.

So, that was my fish-ball soup.  Feel free to experiment. If you are trying to cut down on carbs, you could try replacing the noodles with bean-sprouts; in which case, add those to the soup mix a few minutes before the end of cooking.  Next time, I might try a little lemongrass in the soup mix too, if I have any. Or I might replace the cabbage with bok choi – either shredded, or a good handful of the baby ones. Anything is possible.