Category Archives: Recipes that travel well

Fresh tuna fish with caraway cream sauce

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I adore caraway, a taste I fell for when I fell for Prague.  Some people hate caraway however, and even I don’t want it absolutely always. So be footloose and fancy free:  be inventive – the recipe works very well with just about any herb or spice that is your favourite, or which you happen to have available, and changing the herb or spice makes a different dish every time. Just make sure your choice “feels” right with the cream in the sauce: imagine the taste in advance, and think a bit about the geography of the fact that it is marrying with cream.  So smoked paprika would give a touch of Hungarian dash, ground coriander something delicate and aromatic, and even a mild curried sauce works well.  But given the cream, don’t try to go all Mediterranean and slice a few olives in it (that would be a different sauce, probably made with tomatoes …).

If you’ve got just one herb/spice and you’re not sure if it will work – try it anyway!  You’ll find something out, and as long as you don’t tell your diners that you are uncertain about it they will probably wolf it down.

This recipe uses ground caraway, but use whole seeds if you prefer or that is all you have – it makes a slightly different dish, but just as good.

The essence of it

Lightly saute the tuna steaks.  When they are nearly cooked, stir the herb/spice into the oil to cook briefly.  Add some cream and season.  Dish up with the sauce over the tuna.  Voilà!

Bon appétit!

Anna

And now in more detail

Ingredients per person

A tuna steak of the size you like or can get (150 gr will be on the small end of things,  250 gr for heartier appetites)

Cream – a couple of tablespoons (any of soured cream, cream. or creme fraiche are all good)

Ground caraway seed – or unground caraway, or almost any other herb or spice you choose.  1/2 a tsp or so of caraway per person.  Most herbs or spices you could probably use nearer a tsp, but to little is better than too much – this produces a very delicate sauce, to match the delicacy of the cream.

Salt and pepper

Butter or oil to cook

If you think your diners will find tuna quite a strong-tasting fish – it’s always referred to as “meaty”, then have a look at this tip to make the flavour more delicate.

Put a little oil or butter in a shallow pan that is as nearly the size of the pieces of tuna as you have available, and gently sauté the the tuna steaks until they are nearly done.

How long this will take will depend on whether you have ended up with steaks that are thin cut or thick cut – anything from about 4 minutes to 10 or more.  If they are very thick, sear both sides on a high heat and then let them cook as gently as possible so they don’t get hard.

When the steaks are nearly done – test them by snipping through the thickest part with a pair of scissors if you are uncertain – push them to one side of the pan.  (If the tuna fits into the pan so snugly that it is taking up all the room, remove the steaks to a plate and cover them with foil if possible to keep the tuna warm.)

Stir the herb/spice into the oil for about a minute to cook it briefly.  Add some cream and salt and pepper and stir the sauce as it warms through, avoiding boiling it if you can.  If you had to remove the tuna from the pan to make the sauce, put it back in for long enough to warm through.

Dish up with the cream sauce spooned over the tuna.

And now some variations

It doesn’t have to be tuna:  this dish works well with any white fish – cod, plaice, dabs haddock.  And salmon or trout.  Don’t go there though, I think, with mackerel or herring.

You can make the sauce more substantial in all sorts of ways – useful if pieces of fish you bought by pantomine and gestures in a foreign market turn out smaller than you had expected.  Saute an onion before you add the tuna;  or some mushrooms; or both.  If you add veg in this way, you will probably need more cream.

And now you have a dish fit for a dinner party!

Happy quick and easy cooking and – bon appétit!

Anna

 

 

Glorious Butternut Squash Gratin

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This dish combines the sunshine of butternut squash with the tang of red peppers, topped off with either cheese and breadcrumbs for crunch, or else meltingly soft cheese. The perfect antidote to a grey, miserable day like the one when I am writing this, but a wonderful reflection of the weather on a sunny day.

Butternut squash is perhaps the most glorious of the vegetables that are readily available now but were almost unheard of in the UK a couple of decades ago.  It tastes fantastic, keeps extremely well, and it even grows happily in our climate.

But butternut squash is the devil’s own job to peel.  So how can it make an appearance in a blog of recipes for travelling – recipes for cooks who want good food without too much effort and probably with less than first class facilities?

It can do this because a simple trick transforms the murderous chore of peeling butternut squash.  Put the unpeeled squash in a bowl or a saucepan (cut in two if necessary) and cover it as best you can with boiling water.  Let it stand for a couple of minutes and drain it.  Now even a blunt peeler in an ill-equipped holiday cottage glides through the skin.  It’s not a trick for the bivvy brigade, or campers with very limited facilities, but if you have a kettle, a saucepan and a peeler, you’re in the frame!

You can make this dish in an oven, or finish it off under the grill, but it is especially brilliant made in a Remoska.  The top heat does something special to it.

If you don’t have any of these, it can certainly be made on a hob, but you’ll need to be happy with the topping being soft melted cheese – and why shouldn’t you be?!

The essence of it –

 Sauté or roast onions, red peppers and butternut squash, all chopped to bite size.  Top with cheese and breadcrumbs, or just cheese and brown the top in the oven or under the grill (or sprinkle cheese over the top, put a lid on and wait for the cheese to melt.  That’s all!  You have to eat it to believe how good it is.

Happy quick and easy cooking and – bon appétit!

Anna

And now in more detail –

Ingredients for four people

A large butternut squash, or two smaller ones

Up to one pepper per person, ideally red, or yellow, but green is good too and produces a different dish.   Half a pepper per person is fine for smaller appetites

2 medium onions – red onions if you are feeling fancy, but white are good too.

50 gr / 2 oz cheese per person for topping, more for hearty appetites.  Lots of different cheeses will work – see the detailed recipe

A small handful of breadcrumbs per person, if you can get hold of breadcrumbs.  Use just cheese if you can’t – equally good, just different

Your preferred oil for cooking

Salt and pepper

Click here for Remoska instructions, otherwise here is how to make it with just a single burner, or an oven, or a single burner and grill.

Chop the onions, not too finely, and sauté them gently in the pan while you de-seed and chop the peppers, also not too finely.

Add the chopped peppers to the pan while you peel the butternut squash, stirring the pan from time to time.  Turn the heat down or take it off the heat temporarily if the veg are beginning to colour.

The pieces of butternut squash should be bite-sized.  Add them to the veg mix and continue to sauté, stirring from time to time, until they have softened but still have some bite.

If you are lucky enough to have been able to use a pan that will go under the grill or in the oven, add the cheese topping and grill it until brown, or put the dish with topping in a hot oven until the top is browned.  This might be 10 minutes 200C, or 15 at 180C – whatever suits your plans, and the vagaries of the oven you are working with.  Just keep an eye on it until it looks attractive and ready.

If you have no grill or oven, then put the cheese over the top, add a lid and leave it undisturbed for about five minutes on an extremely low heat (you may need to use a heat diffuser).  If your cooking equipment is not that sophisticated, just take the pan off the hob – it won’t lose much heat with a lid on.  When the five minutes is up, open it, discover nicely melted cheese, and serve.

If you ask “what cheese?”, I will answer “what cheese do you have?”.  If you have the wherewithal and time to make decent breadcrumbs, or can get them in a shop (not those horrid yellow-orange things), then a mix of just plain cheddar and breadcrumbs takes some beating. Grate the cheese and mix it loosely by hand on a plate with roughly an equal volume of breadcrumbs (how many breadcrumbs can be very haphazard – it makes a very good but different dish whatever proportions you use).

If you’re using breadcrumbs, Cheshire or Wensleydale or Lancashire could be good, or similar hard cheeses.  You could give it a go with anything you can grate.

If you don’t have or don’t want breadcrumbs, or if your facilities mean you have to just melt the cheese by leaving the lid on the pan, then the world’s your oyster.  You are spoilt for choice.  What cheeses do you know that melt nicely and whose flavour would work with peppers (which are probably more finicky about what they go with than the serene and charming butternut squash is)?  Gruyere is the ultimate melting cheese, with emmental following close behind, and if cutting the cook’s work is more important than keeping to a tight budget, both have the advantage that they are often available ready-grated in supermarkets. Or what about some very ripe camembert or brie that needs eating up sliced over the top?  Or mozzarella roughly torn?

If this dish could ever seem to be putting in too many appearance and to be in need of a makeover (it hasn’t yet here, despite multiple repeat outings), you could dress it in entirely new clothes by using a blue cheese – stilton left over from Christmas (it freezes well for exactly this sort of purpose), gorgonzola, cambozola – a whole range of blue cheeses.

 

 

Monkfish with Poissonier Erquy sauce

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This simple recipe produces an amazingly sophisticated result that you could serve up with pride at a dinner party.   It can be made with monkfish, or any other white fish,

We call it “poissonier Erquy sauce” because the “recipe” was given to us by the fishmonger opposite the Carrefour mini-supermarket in Erquy. This small town had three fishmongers – France is indeed “a foreign country, they do things differently there”.   To be fair, Erquy is one of the foremost fishing ports in Northern Brittany and in France, as well as being the self-proclaimed coquille St Jacques (scallop) capital of the world.

How to say “Erquy”?  “Air key” gets near enough.

It was our first night in Erquy, in June 2013, and we wanted to cook something local (for once we were not flaked out by the journey, having only had a relatively short drive to get there) and in Erquy “local” has to mean fish.

We quickly found the most obvious of the three possoniers, but it was very late in the shopping day and there was not a lot of choice left.  I had never cooked monkfish, and the choice was monkfish, monkfish or monkfish.

We have learnt over the years that French fishmongers can always suggest a simple recipe for all their fish, familiar and unfamiliar, and he didn’t fail us.  This is excellent, slightly surprising, and very adaptable.

A piece of monkfish for each person (think 4-6 oz / 100 – 150 grams per person, more for larger appetites)

1 large onion for 4, adapt up or down according to numbers

2 medium tomatoes per person

A generous teaspoon of creme fraiche per person.

None of these measures is very exact – they certainly weren’t very exact when we were given them, especially as we were having to translate from French!

Chop the onion finely or coarsely according to your preference.  I prefer finely;  others in the family prefer coarsely;  but luckily (since the cook gets to choose and I am not always the cook) I most of all enjoy variety.

Fry the onion gently in a little of whatever oil you prefer, or in butter, until translucent but not browned,  Use a frying pan that will be big enough to take all the fish in a single layer.

Meanwhile, chop the tomatoes ready for later.  Chop them finely if the onion was finely chopped, coarsely if the onion was coarsely chopped,

Push the cooked onion to the edge of the pan and gently fry the fish, cut into a portion for each person, for about 5 minutes, turning half way through,  Remove the fish to a plate.  (No need to worry about keeping it warm, but a sheet of foil over the top would help if you are cooking in very cold weather.)

Now add the chopped tomato to the pan and increase the heat to a fairly strong medium to drive off the watery juices that the tomatoes produce.  Break the flesh down so it is a bit more pulpy.  Season with salt and pepper, and a smidgeon of sugar if your principles allow this: it intensifies the taste of the tomatoes, a very useful tip for supermarket tomatoes.

Turn the heat down to gentle and add the creme fraiche, stirring in well.   Add the monkfish back to the pan and let the fish and sauce warm through for just long enough for the fish to be good and hot, and cooked through.

I was very nervous about the effect of combining tomato and creme fraiche in this way, and almost chickened out, but it works brilliantly!  Serve with a classic crisp green salad, or a green-coloured vegetable of your choice.   Madame in France would inevitably serve haricots verts, green beans, but broccoli or courgettes would be good.  If you serve it with freshly bought local bread to mop up the last of the sauce, washing up can be not much more than the plates, the frying pan and a salad bowl:  real style, and not a lot of effort!.

If you are prepared to wash up two pans (or when you are making it for that dinner party!) you can, if you prefer, make the sauce in a separate pan and pour it over the cooked fish.  It will probably look marginally more elegant, but it won’t taste any better!

If your scope for cooking is very restricted, you could use Lazy Garlic instead of onions, and/or tomato puree (in which case you need slightly more crème fraiche) or passata instead of fresh tomatoes.  I wouldn’t recommend using a tin of tomatoes however, unless you want something with more of a Mediterranean feel – in which case you should probably be rethinking what recipe you are doing.  (Such as, leave out the creme fraiche and add some olives, or capers, or red peppers, or a tin of anchovies.  But now we are onto another recipe …)

Happy quick and easy cooking and – bon appétit!

Anna

Pork with melted goat’s cheese

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Pork with melted goat’s cheese

This recipe started life as a way to use up leftovers from two different entertaining episodes, but it makes a brilliantly simple travelling recipe that can be made in a single pan (though two might be easier depending on what vegetables you choose).

I had a leftover pork loin chop (uncooked), just enough leftover uncooked asparagus for one (it mystifies me now how there can ever have been too much asparagus), and a small knob of goat’s cheese.

I used the asparagus, since it was there, but this recipe will work with many different vegetables, with the bonus that this produces a different dish each time.  Just choose anything that would welcome the sharp astringent taste of the goat’s cheese:  broad beans (frozen are fine); French beans;  mushrooms; even broccoli cut small.

Put a smidgen of olive oil in a pan that will be the right size to be able to take both the pork and the vegetables.  To start with just add the pork, frying it gently.   Meanwhile, cook the vegetables (simmering them in a separate pan or frying them alongside the pork if you are using say mushrooms or tomatoes) until they are not quite done to your taste .

When the pork is just cooked (click here for a tip for testing), add any separately cooked vegetables to the pan and sprinkle the roughly chopped up the goat’s cheese over both the meat and vegetables.  Give it a brief stir and put the lid on the pan on a very low heat, to let the goat’s cheese melt.  Stir again after a minute, and then again after another minute.

Test the mix for seasoning just before you serve, but the goat’s cheese has a tanginess which means you may get away with no salt at all, certainly with the strong flavour of pork, and all you need is a stylish flourish of freshly ground black pepper, if your travelling kitchen runs to this.

Happy quick and easy cooking and – bon appétit!

Anna

And for some variants

Pork is the most obvious meat to go with goat’s cheese, but chicken would work well too, in a different way.  I haven’t yet tried it with lamb but if you added any spice that had a hint of the Middle East (cumin, or coriander say) as you fried the lamb it would probably be brilliant.  I will be trying that variant soon, but let me know what you think if you get there before I do.

If no meal is complete for you without some carbohydrates, then you could serve it with couscous, or some rice, or you could sauté some potatoes in the pan with the pork. If you have walked far enough that day, or have been outdoors enough and are not feeling over-fussy, you could get away without bothering to parboil sauté potatoes, though they will take longer to cook.  Otherwise cut them small, and parboil them for about 5 minutes in the pan you will then use to cook the vegetables (no need to wash up in between – it’s all going to be mixed together in the end).  Anything that is ready too early will happily wait on a plate while the other bits and catch up, so timing is not very crucial.  If the plate can be kept warm, that’s good.  If it can’t, it doesn’t matter because the veg and potato can be added back into the pan  for however long they need to warm through again just before serving.