Smoked fish and horseradish is a brilliant combination that happens to go very well with peppery watercress. For this very simple and rather pretty pasta dish I’ve also used wild garlic, since it’s in season and quite abundant in this part of the world. If that’s not the case where you are, substitute some spinach [...]
Making sushi is harder than it looks. It might appear to be just a blob of rice with an offcut of raw fish stuck to the top, but whenever I’ve tried to make it, it lacks a certain something. (Skill, probably – I read somewhere that before they’re ever allowed to wield a knife, trainee [...]
I wouldn’t have thought of putting precious smoked salmon on a pizza, and I’d certainly never have paired it with something as powerfully flavoured as smoked mackerel. However, I had this combination last summer at a cider bar called The Stable in Weymouth, and it was so good that as soon as I’d finished I [...]
This is a salad I used to make with scamorza cheese, which is a kind of rubbery smoked mozzarella. I haven’t made it for years, since my local supermarket stopped stocking the stuff (probably to make space for yet another variety of cheddar) but I recently found a deli that sells something similar. The smoked [...]
I intended for this to be a sort of starter but it’s way too filling for that. Serve it with a salad and some garlic bread as a main course, I reckon.
My Saturday night standby, this paella requires no cooking skill and, being a one-pan dish, generates minimal washing up. I’ve always got these ingredients kicking around – rice, onions, garlic, a bag of mixed seafood in the freezer. I buy saffron in economy-size 2 gram boxes from the Chinese shop, as the measly little Schwartz [...]
This versatile salmon dish is very easy to make – you mostly just stick it in the oven and leave it. Mostly. It’s a good standby, as it works well with lots of different types of vegetables. I’ve tried it with kohlrabi and fennel, so I can promise you at least those two could be [...]
There are countless ways to make fish pie, but a few basic principles apply – you need smoked fish in a sauce that’s thick enough to support the weight of loads of creamy mashed potatoes. Personally I like cheese on top of the mash, but that might not be to everyone’s taste. I’ve also included [...]
Comfort food on a cold winter evening. An ordinary egg would do fine, but duck eggs have nicer yolk (and more of it). Don’t use creamed horseradish sauce in this – it has no punch and hardly any actual horseradish. You can find the proper stuff in jars, usually right next to the fake horseradish [...]
In the tradition of exciting Asian dishes like ‘gunpowder shrimp’ and ‘bang bang prawns’ I considered naming these combustible little devils ‘nuclear rolls’. Not because they’re particularly spicy but because of their propensity to explode without warning. The combination of sweetcorn and boiling oil is particularly lethal – think napalm-coated popcorn. One minute it’s gently [...]