Post the Twenty-seventh (in which our heroine wishes she liked seafood more)

I want to like fish.  I really, really do.  But, despite years of trying, and with a few exceptions, it just does nothing for me.  I know I *should* like it, and I know I can never be a proper foodie as long as I don't really eat it, but just, no.

Like I said, there are a few exceptions.  I'll eat mahi mahi if it's on a menu where nothing else floats my boat.  The meen balchao in Vermilion is to die for, as are the swordfish tacos in Dillinger's.  And I absolutely love the smell of fish cooking on a barbeque or griddle; to me, it's just amazingly evocative of childhood holidays in Portugal.

And then, of course, there's tuna.  Everyone likes tuna, right?  The "chicken of the sea", to quote a well-known brand in the US.  I wonder how much their marketing people got paid to come up with that?  Now, if you were to compile a league table of the most nutritionally advantageous types of fish to eat, I doubt tinned tuna would even feature, but hey, it's tasty, it's low in fat and you nearly always have a few tins of it knocking around the house, which makes this recipe a good emergency standby.

Tuna Cakes with Onion Salsa- makes 8 cakes

For the cakes
2 tins tuna in brine, drained                        250g mashed potato*
1 small onion, very finely diced                  2 fat cloves garlic, crushed
1 red chili, finely diced                               Large bunch coriander, chopped
Dash of soy sauce                                     Pinch of ground coriander
Zest & juice of 1 lemon                             1 egg
Salt & pepper

1. Chuck all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix really well until everything is evenly combined.  Check your seasoning carefully - you don't want to go mad with the salt, as the tuna is quite salty already.  When you're happy with the seasoning, shape the mix into 8 cakes, then chill for half an hour to firm up.  Make your salsa while you wait.

For the salsa
500g cherry tomatoes, quartered                1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 small chili, finely diced                             Small bunch fresh coriander, chopped
Juice of 1 lime                                            Salt, pepper & a pinch of sugar

2. Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl, mix well and allow to sit at room temperature until you serve.

3. Remove the tuna cakes from the fridge.  In a wide, shallow pan, heat a couple of tablespoons of oil over a medium heat.  Fry the cakes three or four at a time.  Don't touch them for the first couple of minutes of cooking - you want to give the bottoms time to firm up.  Give them a little nudge with a spatula and if they move easily, turn them over and cook the other side.  Remove, drain on kitchen towels & keep warm while you cook the rest.

4.  Serve the cakes on plenty of mixed leaves and top off with a generous dollop of salsa.  Emmet, being a cottage cheese fiend, also had a dollop of that on his.

You could also make these with tinned salmon.  I'm dying to try them with crab, after sampling the FAB crabcakes from McAllister's Fishmonger in Lucan.

Or, you could make them with pretty much any white fish fillet - just blitz the raw fish in a food processor with the potatoes, then make as directed above.  You will, however, need to cook the cakes for a little bit longer, on a slightly lower heat.

*If you're making these a day or two after the potato skins from the last post, obviously just use your reserved potatoes from that, and don't worry too much about the weight - no two sets of fishcakes are ever alike anyway.

Until tomorrow, mes amies, I must bid you adieu.

Post the Twenty-sixth (in which our heroine returns to the world of the gainfully employed)

So, after my false start last week, I finally started my new job yesterday.  Although I also got off to a bit of a bad start this week - I left myself an hour and a half for the journey, just to be on the safe side, and still barely made it in on time.  I got stuck behind not one, but two crashes on the way in.  What are the bleedin' chances?  It was one of those "God hates me and wants me to fail" moments.  I got there in the end, though.  Barely.

Anyway, the new company seems very promising - not only do I have  my own office, which is manna from heaven for a misanthropist like me, but my department has a BAKING CLUB!!!  A different person bakes each week, and everyone meets on Friday morning for coffee and something tasty.  It's my boss's turn this week, which I find kind of funny (in a nice way), cause he's a really, really senior guy in there and I'm finding it hard to picture him in an apron.  But worry not, I shall report back on his baking skills in due course.

The return to work is forcing me to partake in activity I previously wanted no part of - menu planning.  I'm not getting home til about 6.45, which doesn't really leave time for my usual half an hour of staring into the fridge/press/freezer while I consider and discard 17 different dinner options before finally settling on one or making something up off the top of my head.  Spontaneity begone!  Who knows, though, it might save me a few shekels.

So, last night was:

Thrice Baked Potatoes - serves 2

4 large potatoes                                    150g cheddar, grated
6 tbs sunflower oil                                 1 tsp aromat
0.5 tsp garlic granules                            0.5 tsp paprika
1 tsp oregano                                        Splash of milk
Knob of butter or spread                      Salt & pepper

1.  Scrub your potatoes, dry them and prick fairly deeply with a fork a few times on each side.  (I once had an unpleasantly memorable experience with an exploding spud that was insufficiently pricked.)  Bake in an oven preheated to 200C for an hour to 90 minutes, depending on size.  They're done when you can easily slide a sharp knife into them.

2. Remove from the oven and immediately slice them in half lengthways, holding them with a tea-towel so you don't burn the hands off yourself.  Lay them cut-side-up on a wire rack until they're cool enough to handle.  This step is vital to ensure the utmost crispiness of the finished skins.

3. While you're waiting for the spuds to cool, mix your oil, aromat, garlic granules, paprika, oregano, salt & pepper in a small bowl.  I find putting it in the still-warm oven for a few minutes helps the flavours to infuse.

4.  When you can handle the potatoes comfortably, scoop the flesh out into a bowl.  Do not, as I have done on not one but several occasions, feed it to your dogs before remembering that you will, in fact, need it later in the recipe.  With a pastry brush, coat both sides of each potato with the flavoured oil.  Return your oven to 200C and bake the skins upside-down (it stops them closing up) until nice and crispy.  Leave the oven on.

5. While the skins are crisping, melt your butter or crappy low-fat spread in a large pot.  Throw half your scooped-out potatoes into the pot (hang on to the rest, though, cause we're going to use it tomorrow) and mash with enough milk to get a nice, fluffy consistency.  Season well and keep warm.

6.  When the potatoes are crisp, fill each one with a spoonful of mash - you want just enough to coat the skins by a half a centimetre or so, it's not a loaded baked potato we're going for here.  Sprinkle with the grated cheddar and return to the oven until the cheese is browned and bubbling.  You can flash them under the grill for the last two minutes if needs be.  Serve with sour cream and, if you're feeling virtuous, a green salad.

P.S. If you have an avowed carnivore living at home (I'm looking at you, RF), you can fry off some bacon bits or chorizo and add them into the mashed potato filling.

P.P.S.  It's a good idea to cut these using a steak knife - they really are very crispy.  A dinner knife is like to send them shooting off your plate, which causes no end of excitement if you happen to have dogs knocking around the kitchen.

P.P.P.S.  You could totally save yourself a whole lot of time and effort by skipping the second baking and simply frying your scooped-out skins in a couple of inches of oil (or, if such things still exist, chucking them in a deep fat fryer for a few minutes).  I, however, like to fool myself that baking them (albeit coated in oil) is staving off my old pal the rag on a stick for yet another while.  If you do go down the frying route, do it in plain oil and add the aromat, etc. to the mash.







I have a confession to make...

...my camera ate the photo I took of the potato skins.  The one above is an old one of a different skins recipe and they weren't very nice at all.  Don't tell anyone.

Post the Second (in which our heroine contemplates a return to the workforce)

So, a bit more background - I was working in a soul-sucking, going-nowhere job that involved a 160km round-trip every day, for shit money and no respect.  So, I had the bright idea to pack it in - in the middle of a recession - with nothing else lined up.  What could possibly go wrong?  I ended up taking another job, 5 minutes from home, with a German discounter who shall remain unnamed.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be even more soul-sucking and respectless than the old job, so I lasted, ooh, around a month, before I packed it in.  Believe me, I'm not workshy, but this place was like a cross between an industrial school and a gulag.  Not for me, thanks.

So, my lovely recruitment agency lady came back from her holliers yesterday and rang me about a temp admin. job in Tallaght that's available for an initial three months.  The money is absolutely pants - 15c an hour more than I was getting at the National Socialist Discount Store, which would be more than subsumed by the fuel costs of commuting to Dublin again - but €12 an hour is better than nothing, right?  I told her to submit me anyway, but in the meantime, I can remain hopeful that a vacancy as G.R.R. Martin's proof-reader or as a professional first-class airline service reviewer lands on her desk.

In other news, dinner last night was raw-ver tasty.  You simply take these:

And turn them into this:

Ok, so I added the carrots after the first photo was taken, and I'm not exactly the Mario Testino of food photography, so sue me.

Creamy Dill Chicken with Dressed Potatoes & Braised Carrots - serves 2 (Thanks to my friend C for the potato recipe!)

2 chicken fillets                                        125ml chicken stock
125ml white wine                                    1 tbsp flour
125ml cream                                           Salt & pepper
2 knobs of butter                                     4 tbsp olive oil
Large bunch fresh dill, chopped               Enough new potatoes for 2 (depending on how greedy you are!)
Bunch of scallions, chopped                    3 tbsp capers, chopped
Juice of 1 lemon                                      1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil                                        4 carrots, julienned
Dash of white wine

Note: It'll be come increasingly (and often frustratingly) clear over the course of this blog that I don't really "do" quantities.  I'm really, really going to try, but don't go writing me any stinky emails about exactly how much is in a bunch or a glug, cause I won't answer 'em.

1)  Melt 2 tbsps of olive oil and one knob of butter in a pan over a medium-high heat.  Season both sides of the chicken fillets with salt & lots of pepper, and fry for 5 minutes on each side, until golden brown.  Reduce heat, add the stock & white wine, then cover and simmer gently for 10-12 minutes, until cooked through.  Remove & keep warm in a low oven.

2) Increase the heat and allow your cooking liquid to reduce by half.  Meanwhile, combine the cream, flour and 2 tsp of your chopped dill in a small bowl, til smooth.  Add to the reduced stock, and cook, stirring constantly, til smooth & creamy.  If it's too thick, add a bit of milk and whisk like mad til you get a nice sauce consistency.  Turn off the ring.

3) Somewhere in the middle of all this, get a pot of salted water boiling for your spuds.  Halve your new potatoes (if needed), chuck 'em in the water, and boil until just tender.  While they're boiling, combine the rest of the chopped dill, the scallions, capers, lemon juice, crushed garlic, more salt and the remaining two tbsp of olive in some manner of container with a lid, and shake the bejaysus out of it.

4) Get about 300ml of water up to a gentle simmer, add the other knob of butter and a glug of white wine.  Add your julienned carrots (that's just a fancy way of saying carrot sticks) and simmer for about 10 minutes, until just tender.  Drain and plate.  Warmed plates, it should go without saying.

5)  Drain your potatoes - hopefully you haven't forgotten about them and turned them to mush.  Return them to the pot, add the dill/scallion dressing, stick the lid back on, and give the whole lot a good rattle.  Plate up beside the carrots.

6) Plop a chicken fillet onto the plate, and spoon over a ladleful of your lovely (hopefully) cream sauce.  Eat.  Enjoy.  Go to bed and think about what you're going to have for dinner tomorrow.