tasty lunch

From time to time our fishmonger has sprats. They are now in season. This is our favourite way of having them as a lunch. Butterfly fillet a dozen sprats, leave just the tail fins on. Try to get the larger ones and ones still intact, not too chewed up. Cost you less than a £!. Skin and de-seed three tomatoes then finely chop and crush with a fork. Add one crushed clove of garlic and one stem of spring onion finely chopped, season and mix well. Toast six slices of bread. Sprinkle each slice with olive oil spread with a generous layer of the tomato mixture and lay two sprat fillets head to tail, skin side up. Drizzle with oil and return to grill briefly. They will only take a couple of minutes so watch carefully. Lift a fillet up gently to check that flesh has turned opaque. Serve with a light green salad.

Partridge Medley

Still chuffed about the other meal last weekend. No pics again so use your imaginations, this was a reworking of something I did recently. Four partridge was the offer we couldn't refuse. So took the breasts off the birds and set them aside. Then took off all the other useable meats. Carcasses went into a stockpot with an onion and a carrot and a glass of red wine, water to barely cover, then simmered gently.
Checked all the meat for possible shot. The other useable meats I minced on a coarse grade. Then re-minced it again this time with about six spring onions and 8-12 soft no soak prunes. Make sure you mix the prunes in else they will clog up the mincer. Into this mixture one small egg, Tbsp fine chop parsley, 1.5 Tbsp chestnut flour, pepper and 1/8th tsp of cayenne. Mix well together. With wet hands take 30gms of mince mix firm up and roll into balls, should make around 15. They will hold together easily.
Strain of stock into a clean pan, bring back to a very gentle simmer and carefully roll the balls into the stock in batches, after about 15min lift out to dry and set. Roll in chestnut flour, dip in another beaten egg then roll in coarse breadcrumbs.
Now to put it all together. In a hot skillet add a large knob of butter, pan fry the breasts, turning on the two sides and the neck end until coloured and inner flesh just has a line of pink still. Pat dry and rest in a warm place for ten minutes. In a pan of hot oil slide the breadcrumbed balls into the oil for around 6 mins or until they are evenly coloured. Lift out, drain. Assemble your plate, sit back and feast!

panfried scallops

We were in our fishshop and the scallops stared at me saying buy,buy. So we did.

I lightly toasted slices, crusts off, of my 80% white bread, then drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled with crushed garlic. On one half I put a thick slice off a beef tomato and over the other half two thin slices of gruyere cheese. Back into the still warm grill to finish off. Meanwhile I pan seared my wiped clean scallops in butter until just firm then rested them for a few minutes in a warm place.

Served with two strands of chives and scallop on top of the tomato and a light salad What delicious lunch!