Herring roes

Herring roes are a fascinating subject.  They are cheap cheap cheap, delicious, nutritious and tempting.
I tried tonight to do something a bit interesting with some roes - with only limited success.
I wanted to recreate something like spaghetti alla vongele  - to create a creamy sauce to combine with some nice organic macaroni.
I started with a couple of home-grown onions and a two garlic cloves, all to soften. Then a glassful of white wine, some cream, and a handful of sweetcorn kernels and some chopped spring onions, with salt and pepper.
I was heating the water for the pasta, and draining the roes which were a bit wetter than I would have liked.
Eventually, in goes the pasta, and then the herring roes go into the sauce - poached, effectively in the creamy winey sauce.
At the end, the sauce with its load of roes and vegetables is blended into the drained pasta, and, against all Italian principles, served with some grated Parmesan cheese....
It was all very smooth and creamy, and quite tasty - but, I don't think this is winning new discovery. The tastes don't really work.
The herring might be better cooked as a crispy fried addition, or cooked with some tomato flavours, or perhaps fennel or other green herbs. But I am pleased with the experiment.  I'll try again.

Sand bream

Not much on the internet about this little fish. It has a jolly face and is caught in local waters, as the name suggests. We will cook it and let you know how we get on.... Watch this space.

Cooking with what you have...

Today I bought a nice cabbage - 50p. We had a carton of chickpeas in the cupboard, and some bits and bobs. From that we constructed an absolutely delicious meal based on a Tuscan recipe: onions and garlic softened in a pan in some oil, a teaspoon of turmeric powder added, a few anchovies melted into the mix and then gently mashed into a paste. Added two kinds of tomato paste - some 'ordinary' and some from a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.
Meanwhile, half the cabbage - finely shredded and steamed with a sprinkle of caraway seeds.
The carton of chickpeas added to the onions, and some salt and pepper.
Finally the cabbage - when cooked - stirred in, and served from the pan, with parmesan to grate over each plate.
It was really gorgeous, colourful, fragrant, delicious and healthy.....  I estimate it cost well under £1 a plate.

Red Salad

Years ago, my lovely Aunt Flora celebrated her 50th birthday with a party at their house in Kentish Town in London. Her oldest son, my cousin Matthew, brought along his Russian girlfriend to help at the party. She was one of quite a long line of beautiful Russian girls he dated, and I cannot now remember her name. But I have never forgotten the salad dish she made for the party. It was beautiful to look at, and utterly delicious to eat. It had in it beetroot, potato and herring.... It was a revelation, so simple and yet so rich and fulfilling.
As the years went by, I tried in a desultory way to find a recipe for this Proustian delight, but Russian cookery books were not that thick on the ground.
Now we not only have the internet and astonishingly efficient search engines, we also have Russian foodstalls in local markets.  I find this same salad - or something very very similar - for sale just up the road from my house, once a week.  It's called Shuba.
I decided to try making it myself. Not difficult, and absolutely satisfying. I served it at a supper party last night - with two gourmet couples as guests - and they loved it. Ha! a hit!
So - I recommend you try this out...
There are various different ways of making this, derived no doubt from widespread family traditions. But - you boil a few potatoes, carrots and beetroot, and let them get cold.
You peel and 'shred' or grate or mash them separately - keep them in separate bowls for now.
You take some sweet-pickled herring fillets and chop them finely, and you do the same to a medium sized onion.
Hard boil a couple of eggs, then when they're cool, crush them into small crumbs.
Have a goodly amount of mayonnaise to hand.
Then - layer these various things with care onto a serving dish, starting perhaps with the potatoes, and finishing with the gleaming beetroot.  Add some salt and pepper as you go. That's it. Simple.
When you've constructed it, put it in the fridge to chill for an hour or two.
It makes a fine filling dish and very impressive to look at.
Sorry this is not a great photo - captured at the last minute.

Blitva

It's quite a while since we first encountered the simple, delicious, memorable dish called blitva on our way to a sailing holiday in Croatia.  Coastal Dalmatia is fascinating for its thousands of islands, rocky cliffs and ancient culture, dominated over the centuries by Greeks, Romans, Turks, Venetians, French, British, Russians and so on...   Meanwhile the peasants had to live somehow.  Fish was there in magnificent quantities, and the steep landscape must have been hard work but provided vegetables and herbs.  Maybe there was always a rich v poor culture. Blitva is definitely on the 'poor' side, being (in our era, at least) a construct of potatoes and chard.  Quayside restaurants tend to be real tourist-traps with highly inflated prices and unlikely to offer this on the menus unless you ask for it - the waiters will look surprised because you are ordering really basic unglamorous stuff, almost like asking for boiled eggs and soldiers in Soho....  But if you step back a street or two, to cafes where the locals are eating, blitva is normal. And delicious.
You boil some spuds cut into smallish pieces. Before they are done, you add some chard - prepared by cutting off the toughest stalks and then slicing into 1" strips.  Put on a lid, and then in a separate pan gently heat a good slug of nice olive oil and some mashed up garlic. When the vegetables are soft (not overcooked), strain them and add to the oil. Add some salt - and that's it.  It's hearty, delicious, healthy, simple and rather basic.  It goes well with spicy fish, or barbecued meat, or eggs, or just on its own.
We cooked blitva tonight to eat with some scallops - if I could load the pictures up now I would... but there seems to be some technical obstacle.
The joy of tonight's meal was that the blitva came almost entirely from our allotment, even at this dead time of year... the potatoes (Duke of York), and the splendid red Swiss Chard, and even the garlics.   Only the olive oil, the scallops and the fish were foreign.

Inspiration

A friend in Australia emailed to say he hadn't notice any posts here.  I've been doing all this other stuff including recently starting a wine review blog and working on a relaunch of my smallbiz network - as well as working on the allotment, going out to EAT, going to Calais to eat, cooking, thinking and all that stuff.
But what's really got me started again on here is this:

I just wonder what that can mean.
It tastes very nice btw.
I should add, today I planted seeds for brussels sprouts, tomatoes (saved from last summer's fruits), culinary hemp, leeks, salads etc.    We have found someone to share the work and proceeds of the allotment - an enthusiastic and careful cook - so I'm hoping that works out well. 
Andrew has also dug a hole and put our smallish garden pond in, and we hope some frogs take up residence - anything we can do to attack the SLUGS which demolished so many seedlings last year will be a great improvement.

John Dory

Sorry for the long absence. I have been preoccupied with Creek matters. See www.favershamcreektrust.com

Meanwhile, I want to sing the praises of the John Dory. This distinctive fish is tall but small, not lavish in its gifts, but deeply rewarding. You can always tell a John Dory by the black mark by the gills.  It is a fish for connoisseurs, something to talk about long in advance of the meal.  Something to invite the boss home for, if you want promotion. No individual fish will give you a huge portion, but - my goodness! - each bite is full of rapture, and holds together, and tells you something flattering about yourself.

In this case, we simply grilled the fish on a flat steel plate. Served with a garlicky gratin of potatoes baked with cream, and some freshly-picked spinach simply washed and heated in a covered pan. 

Superb food. Fit for kings. Cheap, local, simple and fast.  

I just want to ask you, why does anyone think that price should be the first consideration when buying food?