Friday, June 11th, 2010
My local supermarket, much to my surprise, was selling three chubby little sea bream yesterday. Though not the freshest around, they looked pretty fine so I snapped them up. Sea Bream is a favourite of mine. It has a light, open flesh, but a taste reminiscent of more classy fish such as halibut. A small fish, around the size of a bass, it is easy to fillet with not many bones to pick out. The flavour is not very strong, but has a sweet, pleasing taste that works well with herbs and garlic, so that is what I went for! I served the fish with a light pasta tossed with a little butter, pecorino, pancetta and plenty of black pepper and some lightly steamed cabbage.
So, onto the recipe.
(more…)
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
We get stuck using beef and pork for pasta and I think we forget that there are other things that work well. Lamb is one of them. You can cook it several ways, but today I am sticking with lamb mince, mostly because I had some in the fridge. This dish can, however, be cooked with things like shredded lamb from a shoulder joint – very yummy!
This dish is not a thick ragu such as bolognaise, but a simpler affair that takes only around an hour or so to cook. I suggest serving this with a large form pasta since this is a bit of a chunky peasant dish, but anything will work.
(more…)
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
The Lamb and the Porchetta
I must, before I forget, carry on with the recipes from my family get together the other week. Yesterday I hopefully made you drool over the prospect of fine British Lamb cooked in wine and tomatoes for many, many hours till it simply slid off the bone. At the meal we had two meat dishes, for I am a firm believer that the best meals has not one meat offering but two. And the other dish to grace the table was the wonderful and succulent Italian Porchetta; rolled and roasted belly of pork.
Many British families go into reverse gear when you mention belly of pork. The see in their mind’s eye the fatty offering with thick skin and imagine some greasy morsel swimming about their plate in a pool of dripping. Well, their loss! The thing with Porchetta is that though it is one of the fattier cuts, once it has been roasted for three or four hours, what you are left with is succulent, highly flavoured and quite irresistible. So, to proceed. (more…)
My local supermarket, much to my surprise, was selling three chubby little sea bream yesterday. Though not the freshest around, they looked pretty fine so I snapped them up. Sea Bream is a favourite of mine. It has a light, open flesh, but a taste reminiscent of more classy fish such as halibut. A small fish, around the size of a bass, it is easy to fillet with not many bones to pick out. The flavour is not very strong, but has a sweet, pleasing taste that works well with herbs and garlic, so that is what I went for! I served the fish with a light pasta tossed with a little butter, pecorino, pancetta and plenty of black pepper and some lightly steamed cabbage.
