Fish and Watercress Soup.

Tried this out for one of our fasting day meals. Worked so well thought I must share it. Again, no photos. Get so caught up in getting it out, the last thing on my mind is taking a snap. As I remember it, here we go: 

0.5lb of monkfish with inner skin removed. 2pt Light fish stock made from monkfish bones.

Small cauliflower. Break into florets. Take half a handful of the smallest florets, slice the bigger ones until they are even sized and good looking, set aside.

Simmer the remainder cauliflower, including the stalk roughly chopped, in the fishstock until tender.

In a hot pan with a small knob of butter, sear the monkfish on all sides, until the sides are lightly coloured. Set aside to rest. Do not worry about cooking the fish through. In the pan juices sweat off a red chilli, without seeds, cut into to small fine strips. Set aside.

Pick through about 100gm of watercress, reserve a few small neat heads for decoration, put remainder into a blender. Scoop out the cooked cauliflower and put on top, whizz, it will thicken very quickly, add a little hot stock, whizz. Continue until you have a smooth fluid paste. It will have very small flecks of green but otherwise no large pieces.

Cut the monkfish along the length into two or three strips, then slice against the grain on the diagonal into 5mm thick slices.

Put back into a pot, add more hot stock to get the consistency you think is right, bring to simmer, add the reserved cauliflorets, simmer for a minute or so to just al-dente. The longer you cook they more you will lose the watercress peppery taste. Add the sliced fish and chilli. For a finally touch stir in two Tblspn of double cream and serve garnished with the reserved watercress heads. Delicious.

Butter Bean Soup

Cheap, simple, easy and tasty soup, what could be better? Soak a 300g bag of butter beans over night. Rinse in freshwater a couple of times. Put in a large pan and boil, add a little oil to control the massive foam, for say five minutes. Discard water and rinse beans thoroughly, to get rid of the sulphur preservative. Put back on more moderate heat with fresh water bring to the simmer. Add one large peeled onion, three large peeled carrots left whole, a stick of celery and a clove of garlic.

After forty minutes check the beans are just tender, may take a little longer if they are old. Discard onion, celery and garlic, gently set carrots aside. Drain liquor off the beans and retain. Pick over the beans for the firm whole ones setting them aside. Liquidise the broken soft beans with say quarter pint of liquor.

Meanwhile in a pint of a rich stock, I used pheasant but duck would be good or even chicken, boil about half pound of celeriac peeled and cut into rough small chunks. When cooked, liquidise.

In a clean pan put the carrots, cut in half or quarters along their length, depending on size, and then cut into slices sat 5mm thick. Add about equal portions of the whole butter beans, say half, the strained liquidised stock and celeriac and then the strained liquidised butter bean and liquor. Gently stir and add more liquor to adjust thickness. A creamy loose soup with a good portion of beans and carrots is the goal. Bring back to heat slowly, stir occasionally, adjust seasoning to taste and serve.

Delicious. Sweet, creamy and rich flavoured. For those not needing to avoid, it cries out for two Tblspn of cream stirred in to lighten the colour. Garnish with four or five thin chillie rings barely softened in hazelnut oil with a couple of drops of the oil.

Me and Food

It's the time of year to lift the gaze and maybe reflect.
Some time ago it dawned on me that all my memories were food based. I would remember incidents and people not by their physical appearances but the food or meal that was mostly connected with it! At that point I came out and admitted to everyone else the already self-evident fact that I was a foodie.
I enjoy all the processes of food, from buying the ingredients, to looking in the larder and constructing a meal from its contents, to the cooking of the meal and eating it with relish. Not so hot on presentation (though I do have opinions on the subject) and certainly I seem to have a blind spot when it comes to clearing up the resultant battlefield. My range is savouries, sweets, puddings and cakes I leave to Anna's skills.
Nowadays when I construct a meal I try to avoid all the old easy taste pleasures of cream, butter, thick sauces and salt, going now for simple but excellent ingredients enhanced with complimentary or contrasting flavours or textures. Cooking has taken a bit of a back seat recently as the people I get to cook for the meals are significantly constrained by dietary or food dislike considerations! A sign of the times, once we all ate the out of the same pot and were grateful for it the more so if it was different to yesterdays.
The intention was to use my web site, http://www.somersetspiess.co.uk/, to post the more interesting recipes that I came up with and maintain links to good food sources as I came across them. However to make to my website more accessible to a wider range of viewer, it is now awaiting a complete re-structuring. So no move on that particular front in the foreseeable future. In the meantime I shall use this blog to make links to these good, quality and empathetic food outlets.
My criteria? Well obviously, the best quality. To me that means it is an outlet that really cares for its product, tries to produce the very best product that they can and take a pride in the products and care for their customers reactions. At the end it is not price, it certainly isn't fancy packaging, it isn't celebratory someones endorsement and the quality may even not be readily discernible to the pallet. Why, because the bottom line is that someone who day-in day-out cares will offer a better product consistently than someone who doesn't. Yes, it really is an act of faith, you buy in or you don't as there are no scientific scales by which to measure quality as experienced in the palate and the nose.
Enough, so why post links. Well some years ago we had a holiday in Scotland and came across a pie producer. These pies were simply the best and tastiest pies I had ever eaten, each of the range of fillings was good, solid with discernible ingredients and taste not drowned in seasoning. Excellent. I wanted to tell the world and now I have the means to.

Before I leave, my recipe for the season:
Large turkey carcass with meat removed and set aside (mine was 18lb drawn weight) simmered in water to cover, un-covered, on low heat for some 2 hours. Sieve and discard carcass, take off fat layer on top of stock.
In stock pot put in peeled and coarsely chopped, large potato, sweet potato and medium butternut squash with seeds removed, 2 carrots, 2 cloves of garlic, 4 bay leaves and seeds only from 8 cardamon. Cover with stock and simmer, un-covered, for about 1.5 hours. Blitz in liquidiser until fine then rub through sieve back into stockpot, adjust seasoning and add more stock if too thick, a loose creamy fluid texture is the aim.
Meanwhile, take a large chunk of turkey breast meat, about 0.75lbs, cut into fine cubes, peel a large potato and cut into similar sized cubes and saute in turkey fat until golden on all sides, reserve. Medium chop 2 red onions, saute in turkey fat until soft and transparent, turn up heat to drive off water, reserve. Chop 2 good handfuls of fresh coriander leaves. To serve, put onion and turkey meat into soup to warm through, serve into bowls and scatter with potato cubes, coriander leaves and a swirl of double cream cos its Christmas.
It is good!!