Honey Soy Salmon on a Carrot and Coriander Purée with Garlic Butter Scallops and Wasabi Mushy Peas

I was lounging around in my sitting room last week in the company of my three housemates, talking about everything and nothing in particular; it had been a reasonably long day for all of us yet we were in high spirits, the hours spent in the grind of our various vocations had failed to dampen the mood on Mysore Road. Or so we thought . . .

Being a trifle on the tepid side in relation to my temperate temperament, I called my housemate Ed up on a particular nuance in his vocabulary that had been niggling at me for some time; his habitual use of the prefix “to be honest” before at least 30% of what comes out of his usually erudite gob. I see no reason for it, a waste of breath, but more importantly, and this is the real issue I take with this particular turn of phrase; is he insinuating that when he doesn’t proclaim the validity of his views that he is in fact lying? How can I trust him? I’m not sure I can!

The same can be said for plenty of other unnecessary phraseology that has crept into the English language over the years; the word ‘literally’ for instance makes my father’s blood boil when it’s used out of context. After a particularly turbulent landing at Innsbruck airport last year one of his friends remarked how he had “literally shat himself”, this resulted in a ten minute tirade and interrogation as to whether the friend in question literally did have shit in his pants. Now even though his loving children instigated this particular exchange, I share his frustration at this grammatical infliction, paramount to the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.

“Like” is another word that fortunately seems to be drifting out of circulation, certainly amongst the older generation, of which we are continually drifting towards, each day another closer to death. A relic of 90’s Americana it rudely invaded the vocabulary of an entire generation of children, infecting their speech via the medium of poisonous movie trash.

“That was like, so cool”, you could hear the youth saying. I was one of them! Afflicted by this linguistic parasite from across the pond. Why was it “like so cool”, and not just “so cool” instead? Why were we living in this perpetual parallel universe where things were not quite what they seemed?

I find myself biting my lip when asked on an aeroplane; “Would you like a drink, at all”?

What do you mean “at all”? Either I want one or I don’t! Or are they inviting me in to a lengthy debate wherein I could establish the level of thirst I would have to reach, to then decide that I did indeed require a liquiditous substance with quenching capabilities?

When we have guests around who ask my mother where the toilet is, she simply replies that we don’t have one. So either they ask where the loo is or cross their legs instead.

I could go on, however there are simply too many of these imperfections to mention, so instead I will simmer quietly, attempting to harness in my emotions until the point when some unfortunate soul offers me a ‘beverage’ with accompanying ‘serviette’ and I will stab them in the face!

After getting so riled up there a few things that can bring me back down again more swiftly than a good meal, and this one is no exception. The Japanese flavours in the Wasabi are warm and comforting when combined with the smooth texture of the peas and crème fraîche, the sweet and salty salmon atop the fresh and spicy carrot and coriander purée is a welcome juxtaposition, whilst the scallops are just a treat that should be eaten far more often.    

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

For the carrot and coriander purée -

6 large carrots

Small handful of coriander, finely chopped (a little for garnish)

2cm of fresh root ginger, finely sliced

2 large red chillies, deseeded, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons crème fraîche

Salt and Pepper

Wasabi mushy peas -

2 cups garden peas, frozen is fine

2 tspns wasabi paste

1 tablespoon crème fraîche

Scallops -

12 scallops, coral removed

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Knob of butter

Salmon -

4 salmon filet sections

1 tablespoon runny honey

8 tablespoons light soy sauce

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce

Toasted sesame oil

4 spring onions finely chopped

Large pinch of poppy seeds

Method:

You will need a blender for this, there’s no way around it.

1) Marinate the salmon filets in both the dark and light soy sauce, with the spring onions as well, for at least an hour.

2) Chop the carrots and cook them until tender, strain and chuck in the blender with the ginger, chillies, garlic, crème fraîche and coriander. Blend until extremely smooth, and then add salt to taste. This is very important, as it will bring all the flavours together. Set aside in a saucepan with the lid on.

3) Boil the peas for 5 minutes until cooked, add to the blender (you may want to rinse it out first) then chuck in the wasabi and crème fraîche and blend till smooth. Season to taste and set aside in a saucepan.

4) Heat a little sesame oil in a non stick frying pan over a medium high heat, take the salmon out of the marinade and add the filets to the pan skin side down and cook for 6 minutes. Then spoon / squeeze the honey over the top of the salmon and add a few tablespoons of the marinade before turning them over to cook on their tops for another 2-3 minutes. The skin should be crispy and delicious looking!

5) Whilst the salmon is cooking score across one side of the scallops in a cross hatch, heat the butter in a pan, add the garlic, then fry the scallops for 2-3 minutes on each side over a medium heat, making sure they have a golden sheen on them.

6) Just before the fish is ready reheat the delicious green and orange mushiness in their respective pans, plate up, garnish with coriander and poppy seeds. Enjoy. 

Brazilian Seafood Vatapa

I do love a Brazilian; well kept, directive, hygienic, hard working, great sense of humour, a love of psy trance, and now thanks to untapped natural resources and all the above it's a pretty good place to be drilling for the crude.

In 2007 I found myself upon Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro buying the country’s flagship tipple the Caipirinha, for 4 Brazilian reais, which at the time equated to just under a pound for a fairly healthy slug of rum that would get you whistling. Four years came to pass and once again I was lying, suggestively perhaps, on the very same beach sipping from the same Brazilian cup, staring out at the same iconic view surrounded by the same humbling physiques, but something had changed. After a short period of mulling it hit me right in the groin; inflation.

Whilst the rest of the world has been nose diving into the worst recession in decades, Brazil has been steadily growing into one of the world’s fastest developing economies, a brick state in an otherwise faltering fiscal environment. Great for the Brazilians but not for the discerning/tight fisted and frugal traveller hoping for a cheap ride; my 2011 Caipirinha came in at almost double the cost of the previous one that I’d ingested only four years earlier.

I’m not here to moan about money, lord know there’s enough of that going on at the moment without me adding to the mix, and although the prices over there are rising they still don’t hold a candle to the cost of a pint in London at the moment (maybe a little moan). I walked into the Earl of Lonsdale last week, a Sam Smiths pub and subsequently the cheapest option in town for beers, to be met with the new price of £3.05, up from the £2.45 I’d paid there a couple of weeks earlier. An outrage, it would almost be cheaper to get pissed on Petrol, although from experience I can tell you that’s not a good idea; not a ‘Withnail and I’ moment I hasten to add, I simply misjudged the ferocity with which to suck on the hosepipe whilst attempting to siphon fuel from my Dad’s tank in order to get to a party a few years ago. Desperate times.

I would like to suggest then, that if you find yourself bent over your flower bed regurgitating any form of distilled fossil fuel after a last ditch attempt to get to a party to drown your sorrows, don’t go. Save the fuel, sell it, along with whatever belongings and dignity you have left, and make for Brazil, the promised land, where you will find beaches paved with sand and bodies paved with gold, more petrol than you could dream of swallowing and an economy booming like a bass bin. Live vicariously, if only for a week or two, I guarantee it’ll put a smile back on your face.

To this and that end, check out my first officially published article in the next edition of ‘Eat Me Magazine’, a city experience of Rio de Janeiro, available in selected W H Smith stores, a number of points of transit, and the big wide web. 

Ingredients: (Serves 6)

20 uncooked king prawns, shells still on

10 Madagascan crevettes, shells still on

500g mussels, de-bearded

110ml coconut milk

70ml coconut cream

440ml fresh fish stock

Chilli oil

1 large white cooking onion, roughly chopped

2 large tomatoes, roughly chopped

30g fresh root ginger, grated

3 large red chillies, seeded and roughly chopped

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon palm sugar

50ml palm oil

Juice of 1 lime

70g roasted peanuts, grinded into powder

60g cashew nuts, grinded into powder

140g fresh white breadcrumbs

Rice for ya plates

Freshly chopped coriander to garnish

Method:

1. Mix the coconut milk and breadcrumbs together in a bowl, set aside and allow to soak for 20 minutes to half an hour before blending it into a smooth paste.

2. Whilst the breadcrumbs are soaking shell the prawns and crevettes and boil the shells in the fish stock, along with the tomatoes, turn the heat down to low and simmer for half an hour. When this is done grab a sieve and strain the liquid into another bowl taking care to push out as much juice from the tomatoes and shells, chuck them away and keep the fishy tomato broth.

3. In a large pan add an inch of water and bring to the boil, throw in the mussels and cover, steam them for a few minutes until they open up, make sure to throw away any that haven’t and put the pan of mussels to one side.

4. In a skillet boil the chopped onion in an inch or so of water till it softens, drain it and chuck it in a food processor along with the chopped chilli. In the same skillet heat a slug of chilli oil and add the blended mixture back into the pan with the palm oil, turn the heat down low and cook for 5 minutes before slamming in the ginger and garlic and cooking for another 3 minutes. Now stir in the finely ground peanuts and cashews and cook for another minute or so.

5. Add the breadcrumb/coconut mix along with the fishy broth and stir well, bringing it to the boil before turning the heat down once more and reducing the liquid to a thick smooth consistency, a bit like your morning oats. Now chuck in the prawns, coconut cream and lime juice and cook for another few minutes till they change from grey to pink, when this happens add the mussels as well. Some in the their shells and others out to give it a nice look whilst avoiding being to shell heavy and frankly annoying to eat.

6. Rice on a plate, bit of coriander, and you’ve got a very tasty supper.

Obviously this one contains nuts and shellfish so be warned. 

Whisky Seared Scallops

We don’t eat nearly enough of our own shellfish in the British Isles, which is a crying shame as we have some of the best in world. Instead it gets shipped twenty miles south to the French who turn it into the sublime, whilst we on home shores make do with cod, haddock, plaice or sole. These are all great fish in their own right, don’t get me wrong, however our general ignorance and frequent stubbornness as a nation of consumers has, over time, channelled us into a rather unadventurous set of fishy doldrums, humoured occasionally by squalls of ‘smoked salmon’ masquerading as faux-swanky-canapés during the small talking foretaste to a dinner party.

‘The Big Fish Fight’ has attempted with some success, to bring back our home grown produce to the tables of Britain, however there is still a long way to go before we are regularly eating mussels for instance. The coast of Britain harvest some of the best in the world yet you’re lucky to find a single bag in Tesco, and if you do they’re more than likely frozen, or worse still ready cooked in a plastic pot. Then there’s the lonesome Cornish clam, Waitrose is the only super market I’ve found that stocks them and even then you quite often have to pre-order.

“But they’re expensive and a hassle”, I hear people say.

Wrong on both counts in fact; you can quite happily feed a family of four with a huge bag of mussels for under a fiver and they cook in five minutes. Cream, leeks, butter, crusty bread, boom. Next question?

There is really no excuse for being selfish to the shellfish, the furthest geographical point away from the sea in the UK is Church Flats Farm near Coton in the Elms, Derbyshire, and that’s only 70 miles from the bountiful Norfolk Wash. So with the planned raise of the national speed limit from 70 to 80mph, you could stay with Henry and Joyce Blackwell in the evening and try some of their home grown lamb, and the following day scream down to Skeggy for a spot of fishing. Perhaps even stay at Butlins, if that’s your vibe?

I conclude then; when Hugh Grant spoke of Britain being “A great country, a country of Shakespeare, Churchill, The Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter, David Beckham’s right foot, David Beckham’s left foot come to that”, he should have spared a word or two for our mussels, our cockles, our clams and our scallops.

Rule Britannia.

 Ingredients: (Serves 4)

20 British scallops, coral on or off, your choice, I like it

3 British shallots, finely sliced

A slug or two of Scottish whisky

Healthy knob of English butter

Olive oil, European but from one of the colonies

Handful of curly British parsley, finely chopped

Method:

1. Using a sharp knife graze some shallow cross hatching into one side of the scallops. Heat a little oil and butter in a frying pan over a medium high heat and sear the scallops for a minute or so on either side. Throw in a wee drab of whisky and using a match, light the pan, it will flambé instantly and rather vigorously so take care not to set light to yourself. Let it burn for a few seconds, actually 3, then blow it out and take the scallops out of the pan and onto a plate.

2. Return the pan to the heat and add a little more butter and oil, when it’s sizzling chuck in the shallots and fry them till soft. Chuck another wee drab of whisky in and set alight to it, again let it burn off for a few seconds. Now add the cream and mix it in thoroughly whilst still cooking. It’ll make a beautiful golden sauce. After another minute chuck in the parsley, stir it around, take it of the heat, plate up the scallops and pour the sauce on top. I actually returned the scallops to the pan when doing my second lot and tossed them in the sauce before serving. It gave them a real good coating.

Crab, Cockle and Mussel Bruschetta with Grilled Mangalica Sausage, Roasted Sweet Soy Tomatoes and a Watercress and Samphire Salad

There were very few lessons that I actually looked forward to at school, being forced to sit through Latin for instance was torturous, whilst surviving a Deutsch double was an achievement paramount to completing a marathon, or swimming the channel. Getting through a Chemistry lesson without event was almost unthinkable, and to that end it rarely actually happened; I recall our teacher (a goth by weekend who re-enacted medieval battles) shouting at my neighbour and close friend Tom. Tom’s answer was to simply stand on his chair and shout back incoherently to cancel out the original directive. Another popular party trick was that of my friend Sam, a Ghanaian of descent and endowed accordingly, who would wait for a quiet moment and thwack the aptly named “Mr Stretchy” against the desk to emanate the sound of a door knocking. Sure enough teach would open the portal to supposed learning to find an empty corridor in front of him and a class of sniggering juveniles behind.

Yours truly wasn’t entirely exempt from the cantankery, and I can assure you that sitting in the second master’s office trying to explain why you mounted a desk, brushed aside a Bunsen and began making vigorous pumping movements with a giant glass gas syringe, is no mean feat. In hindsight I feel rather sorry for the weekly ordeal we inflicted on our professor, trying to explain that to a room of baying fourteen year olds however would be null and void.

I digress. The point which I am trying to make is that the reason we covered so many subjects, which I know now, is so that we are able to home in on things that firstly we are good at, and secondly, and more importantly in my opinion, that we enjoy. Eleven years later and I am still trying to throw myself into new experiences to perhaps find something I will excel at, and if not then just another thing I can tick of my life list.

So it was with intrepidation that I attended the first addition of ‘Supper in a Pear Tree’ hosted by the Partridge sisters; Annabel and Charlotte, in the beautiful studio they work from in Lavender Hill. The evening began with an hour’s lesson in life drawing taught by Charlotte, a fantastic artist and sculptor, followed by a delicious meal cooked by Annabel, who works as sous chef at the Michelin starred ‘Petersham Nurseries’ where I was lucky enough to do a week’s intense work experience. The food was delicious; veal and pork meatballs on polenta in a tomato sauce, along with some delicious fine beans tossed in the signature lemon, olive oil and Tipico cheese that is the staple of the Petersham kitchen.

The evening on the whole was a great success and I imagine will go from strength to strength with the next two months fully booked already, it conspires however that I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, I just about managed to get the gender of my figure right after an hour of scribbling and covering myself in charcoal. Hey ho, another vocation expunged from my depleting list of career opportunities.

To vaguely bring it back to the meal below, this is a not too distant variant on a recipe I made at Petersham that involved Dorset Crab, chorizo and radicchio.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

Small pot of cooked mussel meat from the deli counter, 20 mussels approx.

Small pot of cooked cockle meat from the deli counter, 20 cockles approx.

Crab meat from 2 small crabs

2 Hungarian Mangalica sausages

3 tablespoons of mayonnaise

Juice of ½ a lemon

Zest of ½ a lemon, leave a little for garnishing

Small handful of fresh chives, finely chopped, save some for garnishing

Chilli oil

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and Pepper

1 pack fresh samphire

1 pack watercress salad

1 clove garlic, crushed and finely chopped

Small knob of salted butter

12 cherry tomatoes

2 tspns of white sugar

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

4 slices of fresh brown bread, buy an unsliced Vienna shaped loaf

You’ll need a griddle pan and a frying pan for this one.

Method:

1. Put some tin foil on a baking tray, pierce the cherry tomatoes with a knife to get their juices flowing, sprinkle with the sugar and soy and roast in the top half of the oven for 10 minutes.

2. Pull the skin of the sausages and cut them down the middle lengthways.

3. In a bowl mix the mayonnaise with the lemon juice, zest, chives, a small slug of extra virgin olive oil and the chives, mix together thoroughly with a little seasoning. Add the crab, cockles and mussels to the bowl and stir in well. Set aside. (You can cook the mussels, cockles and crab from scratch, I didn’t because I hadn’t the time).

4. Heat the griddle pan over a medium / high heat and grill the sausages on either side, don’t worry about putting any oil in as the sausages will release their own when they begin to cook. When they are grilled on both sides take them off and keep warm. In the same pan pour in a slug of olive oil and grill the bread on both sides until slightly browned.

5. Whilst the sausages and bread are cooking melt the butter in a frying pan, add the garlic and samphire and fry for 3 minutes over a medium heat. Take off and toss into the watercress with a little more olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice.

6. To plate up whack a piece of bruschetta on the plate and drizzle a little chilli oil on it, add a spoon or two of the seafood mix and sprinkle a little lemon zest and chives on top. Dump a handful of the salad on the plate and half a grilled sausage, a few tomatoes around and about and you’re ready to go.