many aeons ago, there was a thread on here about making bread .... it died, perhaps because man shall not live by bread alone ..... anyway, there seem to be a fair number of people on this site who enjoy cooking, so i thought to start a thread for recipes and associated topics.

i'm assuredly no expert, but i reckon i cook tolerably well, and i know that any recipe i paste here, genuinely works - even for those who can only shop from supermarkets!

a starter recipe follows ......

TOMATO RISOTTO WITH MONKFISH AND SCALLOPS

Here you have two recipes for the price of one – both are delicious in their own right.

Recipe for 4
1 kg Monkfish, cut in good sized chunks and rolled in flour
8-12 Scallops – trim as usual and cut in half to give thinnish discs.


50 gm Butter
6 tbsp Olive oil
1 Medium onion, finely chopped
1 Large clove garlic, finely chopped
1.5 kg Fresh plum tomatoes – peeled, deseeded and chopped
1 bunch Flatleaf parsley – chopped, stalk end finely and leaves coarsely
1 tbsp Tomato and olive tapenade
6 Sundried tomatoes in oil – chopped quite finely
1 tspn Saffron strands (very large pinch will do!)

160 gm Risotto rice - e.g. arborio or carnaroli
300 ml Vegetable stock
Water
60 gm Parmesan - grated
Salt and pepper – to taste

Method
Melt the butter in a frying pan, and when it has stopped foaming, add the monkfish (only)
Cook briskly for a few minutes, turning it regularly, until the outside outside is golden and the fish not quite cooked.
Scrape up the crunchy bits stuck to the bottom of the bottom of the pan and remove these and the fish to a bowl or dish.
Be aware that a fair amount of liquid will seep out while the fish is resting.

Heat the olive oil over a moderate heat in a heavy large frying pan.
Add the onion and soften for 5-10 minutes without letting it burn.
Add the garlic and ⅔ of the chopped parsley and continue cooking until the onion is a pale gold.
Add the rice, turn up the heat a little and stir so the rice is coated with oil.
Cook for a further minute or two.
Add a bare 2 teaspoon of salt and a good grinding of fresh pepper.
Turn the heat down to the low side of moderate.
Add the stock, ½ the chopped fresh tomatoes, the sundried tomatoes, the tomato and olive tapenade and the saffron.
Stir the rice regularly to make sure it does not stick, adding quite small amounts of water as necessary as the liquid evaporates.
After about 15 minutes add the remaining chopped parsley and tomatoes and mix in gently.
When the rice is tender after perhaps a further 10 minutes - it should still have a slight bite to it - turn off the heat and add the parmesan.
Check and adjust the seasoning.
Cover with a lid (or tin foil) and leave to rest for 5 minutes.


Scallops
I haven’t forgotten!
Ideally - and I should have written this bit earlier, but I rote this recipe a couple of years back and have now found this better .....
Prep the scallops (please used diver-caught; they should be almost beige in colour)
Put in a single layer in a dish with kitchen paper and some more kitchen paper on top
Put in the fridge for 30 minutes or so, to allow the moisture to be drawn off
Heat a ribbed cast-iron pan (failing that, an ordinary frying pan will do)
When it is seriously hot and everything is ready to serve, add a tiny bit of oil, or even none at all and pop the scallops in the pan for a bare ½ minute on each side.
They should now have a caramelised exterior while retaining a wonderful sweet and juicy middle.

Dish up the risotto adding the the scallops on top.

Serve with a salad of lamb’s lettuce and rocket, dressed simply with olive oil and vinegar.
For this, I like the very fruity Bertolli Robusto olive oil and sherry vinegar.

As to wine, I would recommend either a light Chardonnay or better still, an Australian Semillon.

Very nice, :-))

over the last few years, i have written up about 30 of these for our local fishmonger/butcher
all are pretty basic, and even the fish pie (a stunner), i can do in about an hour from start to finish, though m-in-l reckons it takes her 1/2 a day!

==============

btw, beef cheeks are also really tasty and cheap and take minimal effort to prep
effectively you cook them VERY slowly, as for oxtail, as otherwise they will be tough rather than unctious

Fish pie is a really quick dish. I tend to use smoked haddock, cod or unsmoked haddock and lots of prawns, some large and small. It is pretty much a bechamel sauce and lots of mash.

Talking of mash, how do people like it? I hate the cheffy mash that pervades these days. It is far too much pureed and runny.

I like Edwards or Marris Piper. I use a potato ricer or a metal masher. Add a small amount of milk (whole milk). A generous knob of butter, grated nutmeg and grated parmesan, plenty of salt and pepper. The object being to get a fluffy mash that is not sloppy at all.

Sometimes I add a little fresh cream at the end of mashing with milk and butter and sometimes a laughing cow cheese triangle or two depending on how much I do and what I am having it with. Must admit I always go for King Edwards wonderful roasted as well as chipped. I am apparently renowned for my roasties, so pleased I have a talent somewhere, ha!

It would be interesting to know people's secrets for roast potatoes and of course Yorkshire pudding.

I won't tell anyone my secret for roast potatoes and well Yorkshire pudding is a different matter - I always make the batter the day before and then wiz it before putting it into hot fat in of course the oven. A little lard is, I find the one and don't open oven door until cooked. Just hope the oven light is working so one can see what is happening, tough on those with an AGA although I have made perfect AGA ones in the top oven on timing guess work. Everything I love is fattening or bad for the ticker. I do know of people who use cold oil, the luck of the draw I suppose.

I have done some experiments and it is clear that the biggest mistake with Yorkshires is to use semi-skimmed milk. They only work properly with whole milk.

Correct, I forgot to add that. Toad in the hole is a reasonable family meal for the people who can be bothered - too much convenience crap around these days as we have previously discussed. I remember making my first toad in the hole as a youngster and didn't know one had to cook/part cook the sausages first - what a disaster, a good learning curb though.

3M

I won't tell anyone my secret for roast potatoes = Mcains oven ready, lol

Is it the fat you use ?

Mcains - who the hell is Mcains no I do not use oven ready. I just use virgin olive oil, it is the way I hold my mouth - ha!ha!

yorkshire pud
it depends on the texture you like
i like it quite soggy and eggy, and make it it a fairly large tin, rather than individuals
if you prefer a lighter crispier texture, then you can add a bit of water to the mix - similar to making or changing the texture of pancakes
personally, i don't like using whole milk for yorkshire pud, as i find it makes the mix too heavy

i'm also not sure what difference it makes to the finished texture leaving the mix overnight .... certainly the flour will release more gluten(?), and i think that is why it will then probably need thinning a bit
sorry, i'm not a chemist

Leaving it over night works for me and worked for my late Mother and no it does not need thinning one little bit. Hey ho back to the Rugby.

Fred mentioned using olive oil pomace. I am not happy with using that. The left over pulp that had the oil crushed out of it is then treated with various things to release more oil. Heat treatment is sometimes used, but is not very effective. The main method is to use solvents to release the oil. Spain has found high levels of cancer producing chemicals in pomace oil. They did temporarily ban its sale. They now control the levels of the chemical. You can buy refined pomace oil which is marked that way or pomace olive oil, which is a mixture of pomace and normal pressed oil. I wouldn't touch either of them.

Haze.

Compare it with lard and recent measures for refining.

"Olive pomace oil is refined pomace olive oil often blended with some virgin oil. It is fit for consumption, but may not be described simply as olive oil. It has a more neutral aflavor than pure or virgin olive oil, making it unfashionable among connoisseurs; however, it has the same fat composition as regular olive oil, giving it the same health benefits. It also has a high smoke point, and thus is widely used in restaurants as well as home cooking in some countries."


If you are drinking a pint of it a day I might agree with you.

Unless, you are allergic to "olive oil" (which there are rare individuals) then the chances of harm are minimal.


But the same applies to a hell of a lot of food.

I like fig brandy, but seeing it prepared for and distill reduced my consumption and tremor.

Roasters.... par boil and cook with meat and it's juices and lard, turning up gas for yorks when meat out to crisp up. Yorkshires, meat juice lard heated on gas 7- 8 before putting mixture in and cooking for 20min. I use skimmed milk no probs, and a drop of water.

interesting the different ways we all have in successfully cooking both yorkshire pud ansd roast taters

roast taters
the key here is surely the type of potato used
first choice is assuredly king edwards - any dissenters?
we also cook ours in a separate tray, as we find that if cooked round the meat, they do not get crispy .... too much "shadow" i guess, and also the amount of fat is likely to be too great and also insufficiently hot to give that crisp exterior with fluffy interior

Each to their own, so long as we like and others like the way we do it then it isn't a problem - still interesting to read different peoples variations and how many men cook these days, it is good.

i wish recipes, even simple ones, did not take so long (hard work!) to write up so they are accurate and actually work

i actually have a very simple recipe for monkfish medallions in a slightly spicy tomato sauce, which i really ought to add to my fishmonger's repertoire.

meanwhile, now that cod's roe is back in season and, if you're very lucky, you should be able to buy proper smoked smoked cod's roe, i attach below my recipe for taramosalata.
i reckon this has >40% roe content, unlike the supermarket rubbish which ranges between about 10% and 25% .... mine no silly colorant either!


TARAMOSALATA
Home-made taramosalata knocks the socks off any supermarket version. Provided you have a food-processor, it really is such a doddle (5-10 minutes) that it is hard to believe that more people (especially restaurants!) don't make this minimal effort.

The only very, very minor caveat is that there is no exact science nor precise measurements.
It all depends on the saltiness and amount of smoking that the cod's roe has undergone.

Also, go steady on the percentage of olive oil. Too much, and the result will be very sickly.

Taramosalata - the recipe
Serves 4 greedies!

135 gm Smoked cod's roe
1 Small clove garlic (optional)
1 Thick slice of slightly stale white bread, soaked in water and gently squeezed out
1 Lemon or lime - just the juice
150 ml Neutral oil - e.g. grape-seed
50 ml Good olive oil


Peel off as much as possible (all!) of the thin membrane covering the cod's roe.
I usually use a teaspoon to scrape it out.
Put the roe in the blender with the garlic, the juice of half the lime or lemon and the bread.

Whizz quickly until blended together and then add the oil in a steady trickle, rather like making mayonnaise.

Check for flavour as you go along. If it is too strong or perhaps a little bitter, keep adding oil gently until it is right.
You may also need to add some more lemon juice, but don't over-do it - rely on your tastebuds

It will almost certainly go too thick. That being so, just add a little water, probably no more than a tablespoon, until the correct consistency is restored.

Chill until required - and that is all there is to it.