Baked sea bream with chilli, lime, ginger and spring onion with pineapple sambal

The career of Richard Curtis has covered writing Blackadder, Mr Bean and any unfunny "rom-com" starring Hugh Grant made over what seems like the last couple of hundred pissing years. He has truly covered the gamut from the the sublime to the ridiculous followed by the bag of utter shite. In addition to this, or perhaps as a result of it, a few years ago he decided he'd not made quite enough money, so was taken on by the new owners of the Oxo brand (at that time, Campbell's) to write their adverts. One of the TV ads he was supposedly involved in the writing of had the mother of the now postmodern (and post-Lynda Bellingham "classic") Oxo family telling her soon-to-be wedded daughter to crumble a chicken Oxo cube over a chicken before putting it in the oven because "it makes it taste really chickeny". Now, forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't something become chickeny when it tastes of chicken? I mean, a chicken can't actually taste any more "chickeny" than it already is since it is literally already as chickeny as anything can be, given the fact that it's actually made of fucking chicken. Frigging genius! Until a few years ago I would have said it was a more ridiculous premise than upper class twit, Hugh fucking Grant, being the British PM. This was before 2010, though, when David cunting Cameron managed to scrape his way into power showing truth is in fact just as fucked up as fiction.

Anyway, there is relevance to this preamble. The point is that, although "chickeny" is a good thing if it's describing how your chicken tastes, "fishy" is not necessarily a good thing to describe the taste and smell of fish. Fishiness in fish generally means it's not fresh and that you're fishmonger is taking the piss. Actually, taking the piss is quite appropriate because fishiness in fish arises through degradation of urea, the major nitrogenous component of urine in mammals, which is taste- and odourless until it's acted upon by bacteria when fish goes off.

Of course, being an island nation with our proud maritime history, we Brits love our fish. As long as the fucker is cod or haddock, comes coated in fucking batter and is served with fucking chips. In fairness, fish and chips is a wonderful dish, especially with curry sauce, mushy peas and plenty of salt, vinegar and ketchup, but then we're back to the British obsession with fucking chips (see previous blog entry on potato wedges).

The thing is, despite being surrounded by water, it seems like we can't get decent fish easily. That, and the fact that again, a lot of people say they don't like fish ("eurrgh, it's fishy!"). But, a trip to any decent sized supermarket will reveal a fish counter with some decent offerings. Just make sure they're fresh. Not wanting to sound like regular blog guest star, Rick fucking Stein, but they should have clear eyes and smell of the sea, not of "fish".

This way of cooking fish is easy and tastes great. It keeps the subtle flavour and ensures the fish stays moist. It's based on south east Asian  recipes from places like Indonesia, Malaysia and Hunan in S China. The sambal goes really well with it (riding rough-shod over my previous rant about how fruit doesn't belong in savoury dishes).


INGREDIENTS
For the fish
1 decent-sized, whole sea bream (about 300-400g was enough for two)
Splash of olive or other vegetable oil
1 bunch of spring onions, chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 piece of fresh ginger, about 2cm cubed in size, chopped into fine matchstick-sized pieces
Zest of 1 lime plus half of its juice
Black pepper
Salt

For the sambal

1/2 medium sized onion, coarsely chopped
2 cm piece of ginger, coarsely chopped
1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
The other half of the juice of the lime
1 tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp sugar
flesh of half a pineapple chopped into smallish chunks
1 spring onion, coarsely chopped


Makes enough for two people. Serve it with rice, especially my recipe for pineapple rice which is the next entry of this blog, which it goes with especially well.

RECIPE
For the fish
Pre-heat the oven to 180. Take a piece of foil about three times the length of the fish (enough to put the fish on and fold over to make a cavity with plenty of space for the flavours to mingle). Smear the area you're going to put the fish on with oil. Dry the fish with kitchen roll, inside and out, and place it on the oiled part. Make three deep cuts into the body of the fish.  Mix the other ingredients for the fish in a bowl and scatter them over the top and into the cavity.

California breaming
Ready to go in the oven

Pour on the lime juice then fold over the foil and scrunch it up to seal it, leaving plenty of space for steam to surround the fish. Place it on a baking sheet and put it into the pre-heated oven for 45 minutes.

For the sambal
Put the onion, ginger and garlic into a mortar and pound it to a fine paste with the pestle.  Heat the oil in a pan and add the paste. Fry it until it's cooked and add the chilli, lime juice, sugar and fish sauce. Once it's bubbling, add the pineapple and the spring onion and allow it to warm through.

Pineapple sambal

Serve the fish whole so people can get freaked out by their dinner looking at them.

NOTES
A sambal is the Indonesian equivalent of a salsa.

The fish ought to come prepared (ie be gutted and cleaned). If it isn't, you could do it yourself, but that is a bit of a pain in the arse. so ask the person behind the counter what the fuck they think they are doing for a living and get them to do it for you. Following that, feel free to walk away from the fish counter mumbling how you can't get the fucking staff these days and how they will be bally well horsewhipped when you become prime minister

I did this with sea bream, which is a fantastic fish, but sea bass would also work as would snapper or tilapia. One of the best things about a whole fish is the fun in dissecting it to get every last morsel of flesh, including around the head where some of the sweetest meat actually is. It also really grosses out some people. Fish head curry is actually a well known (and fucking delicious) dish in Singapore.

Pollo Español (Spanish chicken)

There is a long relationship between Britain and Spain. However, the traditional British image of Spain is quite lopsided and very different to the reality. It's Manuel from Fawlty Towers (as portrayed by a Jewish Englishman). It's colonies of retired middle-Englanders who want warm weather, bingo and the Daily Mail. It's holidays on the Med. It's places you can get egg and chips and a pot of sodding Tetley's or a pint of pissing Tetley's any time of day, where you can buy a souvenir straw donkey that disintegrates into razor-sharp fragments that are just the right size to lodge in a toddler's windpipe as soon as it encounters the British climate. It's Torremo-fucking-linos, Costa del-shitting Sol, Beni-cunting-dorm.Yes, this is a seriously fucking skewed image of what is actually a magnificent and varied country.

Salvador Dali's The Great Masturbator
Well, this is a blog written by a massive pretentious wanker

OK, from that opening paragraph, two things are plainly obvious. 1: I'm an insufferable snobby and arrogant prick as far as travel is concerned and 2: I absolutely fucking love Spain. I love the food, the wine, the people, the lifestyle, the climate, even the language. Their beer's not all that, but, hey, nowhere's perfect. Besides, since this is also the place that gave the world Velazquez, Dali, Picasso, Miro, Gaudi, Cervantes, Almodavar I can let them off that. Anyway, since this is a food blog, let's concentrate on that aspect of Spanish life. Spanish food is hugely varied from region to region but is crystallised in one thing: tapas. Plates of food you get in a bar when you order drinks. Often they're even fucking free! And it's not even crap food, either. It's usually things like jamon iberico, chorizo, seafood morsels, portions of hearty stew, paella. FREE! And the ingredients are so fucking fresh. It's all about meat with real flavour and vibrant vegetables. You can actually taste the sun in this food. It's like felching a star. Seriously, what's not to love about a country who approaches food like that?

That brings me onto this recipe. It's yet another quick and cheap meal that tastes frigging great. In reality it's a pretty pale imitation of a genuine Spanish stew like carcamusas*. For a start it's got tinned tomatoes, the peppers are most likely to be from Holland or Morocco, the onion is British. The chorizo is probably Spanish, mind. On the other hand, while it's a diluted version, it still tastes very much of Spain though.

TIMING
Preparation: 10-15 minutes
Cooking: around 90 minutes in total

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp olive oil
500g chicken fillet, cubed
1 large onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, crushed
100g chorizo, chopped
1 sweet pepper (red, orange or yellow), chopped
1 tin of tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp smoked paprika
Pinch dried thyme
Black pepper to taste.
150 ml dry sherry
juice of half a lemon (or 1tbsp of bottled stuff)
1 tsp sugar

RECIPE

Onions, garlic, pepper and chorizo frying in olive oil

Heat the oil and add the chicken to seal and gain a little colour.

After about 5 minutes, remove it with a slotted spoon and add the onion and garlic to the remaining oil and fry gently for 5-7 minutes until the onion is softened.

Add the chorizo and fry for another of couple of minutes.

Throw in the pepper and fry up for another two minutes before adding the tomatoes.

Return the chicken to the pan and stir in the tomato puree, paprika, thyme and pepper.

Leave to simmer for another 5-10 minutes.

Add the sherry and lemon juice and stew for 30-60 minutes, at least until the chicken is cooked. Taste and add the sugar if necessary (it's to offset the sourness of the lemon juice).

Add salt if required.

Works well with fresh bread and sauté potatoes, especially if you tart them up with a bit of rosemary and salt.

The stew ready to serve

NOTES
*Carcamusas is a stew of pork in tomatoes which is from the city of Toledo. That's a sweary blog to come.

By sherry I mean a manzanillo or fino. It has to be dry and pale. Not QC, not "medium" and definitely not Harvey's fucking Bristol cream. This is not the same drink associated with the WI. Real sherry is a wonderful, crisp drink that is a great aperitif or actually goes well with the dish instead of a regular white wine.

For something that's essentially just a fancy sausage, chorizo is one of the most fantastic ingredients in savoury cooking. It makes almost anything taste fucking great.

While the recipe above works all year round, you could make it that much more authentic at the height of summer with ripe, fresh tomatoes, fresh thyme and better quality peppers.

Pasta Arrabiata

There are few dishes that are truly as easy to make, as cheap or as utterly fucking delicious as this little gem. You could buy a jar of factory-made pasta sauce, but you'd be frigging stupid when this will take probably just as long and tastes infinitely better. It's really like the difference between Corn Flakes from Kellogg's and corn flakes from a chiropodist.

In our house we call this recipe "bacony thing" for some historic reason we can't remember. It is probably the stupidest name for a meal there has ever been, but it's ours. This is especially the case because, in many restaurants, arrabiata is made as just a spicy tomato sauce without the bacon (or in some cases the bacon is replaced by salami or even chorizo). There would be other differences between "bacony thing" and "arrabiata" on a menu, most obviously about ten quid a fucking portion as a second language supplement, because anything in a foreign language costs more.

Naming issues aside, I started making this many years ago when I was a student. A wanky, pretentious student with a foul mouth so, obviously, I've changed in the intervening time: I'm no longer a student. Yet, I still come back to this fantastic dish. It's a family staple which we have every week. It's usually the first thing we make when we have our first dinner after coming back from holiday. I got the idea of this from a recipe book I purloined from my Dad before I went to university. That recipe is called penne arrabiata, meaning angry (pasta) quills.

Funnily enough, in Italian, spelling penne with one fewer "n" apparently means penis. Pene arrabiata is therefore "angry penis". This makes me think of Noel Edmonds getting upset and stamping on the pavement after receiving a parking ticket. Why is he called "Noel"? Because there's no "L" in "smug, hideous shirt-wearing, bearded prick"

INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed (or more, you can't put too much garlic in this dish)
220g smoked bacon, finely chopped (an odd quantity, I admit, but that's how they package it)
1 medium red pepper, finely chopped
1 tin tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
Black pepper
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1/2 tsp mixed herbs (dried work, but fresh are better if they are available)
1 bay leaf
2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Arrabiata Ingredients

The bacon, finely chopped along with the fresh vegetables. Note the fresh thyme on the plate

RECIPE
Pour the oil in a pan and heat before adding the onion and garlic. Fry for 5 minutes until translucent then add the bacon and continue to fry until that's cooked. Throw in the pepper and fry for another minute or so. Pour in the tomatoes, add the puree and stir well. Grind in plenty of black pepper, add the chilli, the herbs and bay leaf then pour in the balsamic vinegar and stir well. Cover and simmer on a low heat for 30-60 minutes. You may need to reduce the liquid in the pan if it's especially runny.

How it looks when it's finished
Note bay leaf

 Serve it over pasta with bread on the side to mop up the sauce

NOTES
The recipe I developed this from didn't have red pepper in it but it bulks out the dish and works well. It needs to be fairly finely chopped like the other ingredients to make a smoother pasta sauce.

As I mentioned above, this recipe can be made without bacon for an even cheaper, vegetarian/vegan version which is still better than some ready-made crap you can buy in a jar.

Unlike most of my previous entries, whilst containing chilli, it's only there to add a slight kick. It does need shitloads of garlic though. It can't really have too much garlic.

While the original recipe was penne, virtually any type of pasta would do: spaghetti, fusilli,even tagliatelli. You'd probably be best drawing the line at tinned ravioli, mind.

Steak night! Peppered steak, potato wedges and the trimmings

Vegetarians might be advised to skip over this entry, though the wedges will go with anything.

Former Smiths front-man, longstanding vegetarian and twat*, Morrissey, stopped a festival show at Coachella, California in 2009 because he said "the smell of burning flesh is making me sick". Personally, I find the smell of burning flesh generally makes me feel fucking hungry rather than nauseous and it doesn't get any more orexigenic than the smell of searing steak. A good piece of steak really doesn't need much more than seasoning to make it fantastic. However, thanks to the queen of TV chefs and the GILF of modern cuisine, Delia Smith, this recipe makes a good thing great. Of course, this recipe was taken from a more innocent time when when the fondu set was the height of sophistication, Vesta curries were regarded as exotic food/foreign muck (depending on your POV) and Delia herself was such a young slip of a girl, she was a merely a MILF (do I need to put a link in for this, after the one for GILF? Isn't it fucking obvious?) and I have updated it a little. It was also before this happened:

Fucking chips! As Kevin Kline's character said in A Fish Called Wanda: "the English contribution to world cuisine: the chip". Go to any regular/"family" pub and whatever you order will be served with fucking chips. You can have shepherd's pie which is generously topped with mashed potato and they still serve that with fucking chips. Even, in the north of England, if you sample some of the delights of exotic oriental cuisine you get them with fucking chips. Lamb shish kebab WITH FUCKING CHIPS! Chicken tikka masala WITH FUCKING CHIPS! Sweet and sour fucking chicken WITH FUCKING CHIPS! The humble and overworked chip does have a time and a place, however. There is little better than enjoying good fish and chips on a windy seafront, or a tray of chips slathered in gravy as you walk down the street. More relevantly, a great steak is so much better when it's got a side order of chips. As anyone will tell you, real chips are hand cut and deep fried which is a bit awkward since deep frying is a regal pain in the arse. Also, as much as I loath to bring healthy eating into this blog, real chips are relatively high in fat. A great alternative is this recipe for potato wedges which are baked with a generous covering of oil and turn out like a cross between baked potatoes and deep-fried chunky chips.

*Just to be clear, these two qualities are not in any way related. I have many family members and friends that I love dearly who are vegetarian - indeed, I was vegetarian myself for a short while as a student - and many meat eaters who are such twats I wouldn't waste a full bladder on in the vanishingly remote possibility that it might prevent their nasty and painful death from spontaneous human combustion.

INGREDIENTS
Steak
2 steaks (personally I like ribeye or sirloin, but rump is also great)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp black pepper corns
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
Dash Tabasco sauce
1/2 tsp English mustard
Salt
Half a glass of red wine (about 100ml)

Wedges
500g potatoes, washed but not peeled
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
pinch mixed herbs
A good pinch of salt (to taste)
Lots of black pepper (to taste)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Trimmings
2 big portobello mushrooms, whole (you could use big field mushrooms or a few regular small mushrooms)
1 onion, sliced

Tomatoes (depends on size, but 1 medium one each or more if they are smaller)

RECIPE
Crack the black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar. Alternatively, if you're not as big of a foodie wanker as me, you can put them in a freezer bag and bash them with a rolling pin for the same effect. Add these to a large, flat dish (big enough to lay both steaks down flat) and pour in the olive oil, garlic, Tabasco and mustard then mix. Place the steaks into the mixture and turn them over in order to give both a nice coating of pepper. Repeat a few times until they are both well studded with the peppercorn fragments. Cover the dish with clingfilm and leave on the side for at least an hour or two before you want to cook them. It is important that they are left at room temperature.

Steaks marinating

For the wedges, cut the potatoes lengthwise into thick chunks, or wedges, and dry them with kitchen roll. Throw them into a roasting dish and sprinkle on the rest of the ingredients. Toss the wedges so they all get an even coating of the mixture. Preheat an oven to 180 and put the wedges in for 45 minutes, turning them half way through. At the same time as putting the wedges in the oven, put the tomatoes in a shallow ovenproof dish and put them in the oven at the same time. As an alternative, you could actually just griddle the tomatoes at the same time as the steak but roasted tomatoes have so much more intense and concentrated flavour.

Potato wedges before cooking

Potato wedges cooked and ready to serve

Add a little oil to a frying or a griddle pan and fry the onions, long and slow, (OK, 5-10 minutes, so not that slow) on a fairly low heat. If they get too dry, add a splash of water to keep them moist. Add the mushrooms and fry them gently on either side along with the onion. When they're done, remove them and keep them on the side.

A good couple of minutes before it's time to cook the steaks, stick the same pan on to heat. Once it's nice and hot, throw on one of the slabs of meat. There is no need to add oil to the pan because the steaks are already oiled from the marination. Obviously, cooking steak depends a lot on how you like them between rare to crucified (and if it has to be very well done you have no business reading a food blog you fucking philistine), and how thick they are, so this step is about trial an error. Pressing the steak will give you an idea: the softer, the less done. As a rough guide 2-3 minutes per side will make it rare, 5 minutes for medium. Any more than that and I'll deal with you later, see below.

When cooked to your required level of doneness, put the steaks on their serving plates and leave to rest for a few minutes, adding a little salt to both after a minute or two. Meanwhile, turn down the heat on the hob and return the mushrooms and onions to the pan for a minute or two then throw in the red wine to wash out the pan. plate up the mushroom and pour the rest of the pan's contents onto the steaks. Serve up the wedges and tomatoes and eat, washed down with the rest of the red wine.

Steak night! All ready to eat

NOTES
Steak is truly wonderful, but only if it's not overcooked. Personally, my instructions for a perfectly done steak are "wipe its arse and walk it onto the plate", or "blue" if I'm in a restaurant amongst polite company. However, if the steak is taken out of the fridge just before it's cooked, rather than being cooked from room temperature, a blue steak will be cold in the middle (hence the point of stating the marinating steaks are not put back in the fridge). The steak must be at least as warm as it was when the animal was slaughtered, in my opinion. However, blue isn't for everyone but it should be at least pink in the middle (little more than medium-rare). If you like your steak well done, remember that a cow died to give you this piece of itself. It deserves to be treated properly. It needs to be trans-substantiated so it can gambol on your tongue for one last time in the succulent juices of your steak. If there are no juices this isn't going to happen and that herbivore will have chewed it's last cud in vain. Worse still, it will probably be tough as shoe leather and taste like shite.

Orange-fragranced couscous

Couscous is the New York of starchy meal bulkers: so good they named it twice. Before the British public became all up to date on their international foods, if you asked the man in the street what it was, he might have thought couscous was some horrendous tropical disease, up there with dengue, ebola or gonorrhoea contracted from a kathoey you picked up in a bar in Pattaya. Now, of course, it's common knowledge that it's the stuff that's a bit like rice that they have in Morocco. It's the height of sophistication, Mockney wanker Jamie Oliver uses it because it's "pukka" (whatever the fuck that means). It's made of wheat. If you were a foodie wanker, in fact, you could say couscous was deconstructed pasta or pasta not yet constructed. It's so fucking exotic! It's semolina made from durum wheat. Hang on a minute, but isn't semolina that gruel-like stuff they used to serve for dessert in school dinners in that dazzlingly day-glo pink sauce? Oh, yeah. So it is. Shows you, repackage any old bollocks and you can make a fortune.

Anyway, that reminds me of a joke. What is the Pink Panther's favourite type of wheat? Durum, Durum, Durum-Durum-Durum-Durum. OK, that works better if you say it out loud and you know this tune

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 small red onion, finely chopped
Zest and juice of 1 orange
1 red pepper, finely chopped
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
5 cherry tomatoes (or about 100g regular sized), skinned and chopped
handful of green olives, sliced
pinch of saffron
pepper
salt
1 mug of dry couscous (see instructions, but should be about 125g for two people)
1 mug of boiling water

RECIPE
In a shallow pan, heat the oil and fry up the onion and garlic on a medium to low heat until soft.

Add the celery and pepper and continue to fry for another couple of minutes until they are also soft.

For the saffron and orange zest, put it in a cup and add about a tablespoon of boiling water and let it steep for a couple of minutes.

Add this to the pan along with salt and pepper to taste.

Throw in the chopped olives, tomatoes and pour in the couscous.

Stir well so all the grains of couscous get a good coating of oil. Pour this mixture into an oven or microwave-proof dish.

Next add the boiling water and orange juice. The total volume you add needs to be the same as the volume of the couscous added, so add the orange juice to a cup then makeup the volume with the boiling water.

Mix well, cover as tightly as possible and put in an oven for 5-10 minutes if you happen to have something in it (such as the previously posted recipe of lamb tagine) or else, stick it in the microwave for about a minute then leave to stand for another two or three.

NOTES
This dish is a great accompaniment to Moroccan food such as my lamb tagine, but it can work as a meal in its own right, especially if you add a few more vegetables. Also, it's got no meat in it

There's none of this "boiling for a few minutes" bollocks with your couscous. Oh no. Just add boiling water, let it soak in and it's pretty much cooked.


I said it above and I'll say it again. It's made of wheat. There's a big, faddy movement against wheat in some circles, especially in the fitness business. Wheat is often portrayed as the most evil foodstuff in the larder, responsible for many of the dietary ills of modern life. Probably the most vocal of these critics are those selling the Paleolithic Diet. Proponents of the Paleo diet believe that we should be eating only food that cave-people ate before the dawn of organised agriculture because it is is what we evolved to eat. This is the cuisine of Luddites. These people really are drawing the fun out of food. They are the Jimmy Savile presenting a really good episode of Top of the Pops 2 of the food world. No pasta, no couscous, no bread, no beer and absolutely no scientific basis for the whole Paleo dietary movement. If, however, you do want to make a Paleo version of this dish, simply substitute the couscous for shredded sabretooth tiger.

Sorry for no pictures in this recipe. I shall take some next time I do this recipe and post them as an update.