I am never one to shy away from washing up, but even I like to make meals which only require one pan. This curry could equally be made with chicken or just vegetables, or maybe lamb fillet or pork chops. I am in the habit of making it on a Friday night, as I love a curry, and making it in the oven means that the fish does not have to be stirred in a pan and potentially spoilt. Friday for us is nearly always fish, as old habits die hard! It is also the day we tend to do our shopping, and I like to have fish as fresh as possible. Plus, Waitrose has a 20% off fish offer on Fridays!
Tray-bake Fish Curry for 4 people
Ingredients
Fish pieces weighing about 1 1/2 lbs (600g) – I used trout, but you could use salmon, cod, hake or other white fish. Something chunky works well
3 Portobello mushrooms
4 medium-sized tomatoes, quartered
1 can of chickpeas
A few handfuls of spinach – about 4oz (100g)
2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
3 medium-sized new potatoes, cut into big slices or chunks
1 large onion
Half a 400g of chopped tomatoes
2 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 fresh chilli, deseeded and sliced
small piece of fresh ginger
1 tsp turmeric or a lump of fresh turmeric if available
2 tsp garam masala
Half a large can of coconut milk
3 tabs full-fat Greek yoghurt
Oil such as rapeseed or sunflower
Tray-bake Trout Curry
Method
Put your sweet potatoes, onions and potatoes into a large roasting tin – mine measures 30 x 22 x 6cm (length, width, depth). Scatter over the spices. I bash up the ginger and turmeric in a pestle and mortar. Mix in some oil and coat well. Season with salt and pepper. Roast in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes. The vegetables will not be fully cooked – all the other ingredients cook more quickly, so you need to give the potatoes and onions a head start. Take the tin out of the oven and add the mushrooms, chickpeas and fish. You can cut the fish into four pieces or leave it as one big piece. Sprinkle over some more oil and roast for another 20 minutes.
By this time, everything should be more or less cooked and smelling good. Add the canned and fresh tomatoes, spinach and coconut milk and mix them gently into the vegetables. Leave the fish exposed. Roast for another 5 minutes. It should all be cooked by now, but do check that everything is soft. Mix in the Greek yoghurt.
I served this with beetroot raita (a grated, raw beetroot mixed with 3 tabs yoghurt and a tsp of cumin seeds) and a freshly cooked poppadum.
Tray-bake Trout Curry with Poppadom and Beetroot Raita
I love squid, and fortunately Paul does too! Even my daughter Jess is gradually getting a taste for it. She prefers it cut into rings, in breadcrumbs or batter, deep-fried. This however is one of my favourite ways of serving it. Do try it, and I can assure you that it will not be tough and rubbery! You probably know that squid either needs to be cooked very quickly in a hot pan, or long and slow in a casserole, for at least 45 minutes. Anything in between and it will be as tough as old boots.
Squid stuffed with Spinach and Pinenuts, served with Roasted Vegetables and Tomatoes
Ready to cook in the above photo
Ingredients for 2 servings
6 squid
4oz Fresh Spinach
2oz Pine Nuts
1oz Chunky breadcrumbs (make your own from stale bread)
3 sun-dried tomatoes
1 fresh chilli
4 medium-sized new potatoes
1 courgette
Olive Oil
Stick of fresh rosemary
Half a 400g can of chopped tomatoes
Method
Slice the potatoes into chunky pieces – about 4 slices from each. Put in a small roasting tin. Drizzle with olive oil, add the rosemary stick and seasoning and roast for 20 minutes at 200 degrees. Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts in a small, dry, frying pan. Slice the deseeded chilli and cook for a few minutes in a little olive oil. Put the spinach in a colander and pour boiling water over it. This will wilt it. Mix the spinach, breadcrumbs, pine nuts, chillis and chopped, sun-dried tomatoes. Prepare the squid by pulling the legs out of the bodies. Make a small snip down the side of the body, about a quarter of the way down. Fill the bodies with the stuffing mixture and secure with cocktail sticks. When the potatoes have roasted, add the courgette to the tin, sliced into chunky pieces. Roast for another 15 minutes. Meanwhile, heat a griddle pan until it is smoking. Add a small amount of olive oil and sear the squid bodies and tentacles for a couple of minutes each side.
Squid cooking on the Griddle
Remove the tin from the oven. Add the tomatoes, then put the squid bodies and tentacles on top. Cook for another 5 minutes in the oven.
This is a meal in itself, but if you are like me you might dollop a spoon of thick Greek yoghurt on the top!
Squid stuffed with Spinach and Pinenuts served with Roasted Vegetables and Tomatoes
You may have spotted by now that I cook proper meals every day, and that I use a fair number of recipes from cookery books and magazines/newspapers, as well as devising my own recipes. I thought it would be interesting to sometimes write a diary for the week showing you what I have cooked for dinner. I am not including breakfasts, as my breakfast is usually the same each morning – Greek yoghurt with fresh fruit and honey. I have not photographed every meal, especially as sometimes we eat left-overs of a previous meal. For lunch I usually make sandwiches or have left-overs of some dinner which needs eating up. I’ll include the lunches if they were particulary notable or if I made some bread from a recipe that I’d like to share. Sometimes I shall also include some home-bakes for afternoon tea or pudding.
Sunday 10th September
Dinner: Roast Chicken and Potatoes with Apple Stuffing, Carrots, Peas and Gravy
Although I have no photo of this meal, I’d just like to tell you about the stuffing. We have three apple trees in our garden, all of which produce reasonable crops each year. Having not had time to make an apple pudding, I decided to make an apple stuffing. For this I mixed 4oz breadcrumbs, 2oz melted butter (you could use suet instead), a handful of freshly chopped herbs such as parsley and thyme, a beaten egg, two grated apples and a little lemon rind and juice. On this occasion I stuffed the body cavity of the chicken, but you could also make stuffing balls. To make this meal easier, as we were sitting in the living room having drinks and nibbles with relatives whilst it was cooking, I put some unpeeled maincrop potato pieces in the tin with the chicken whilst roasting it.
Later on I cooked fresh carrots and peas together in a pan with a small amount of water, rosemary, vanilla extract, a knob of butter and a teaspoon of sugar. I cooked the carrots for about 10 minutes before adding the fresh peas and then cooking them together for another five minutes. I always make my gravy by adding some vegetable water, wine, dijon mustard and a spoon of home-made jelly to the juices in the roasting tin.
Monday 11th September
I unexpectedly went out for an early dinner/meeting, so made pizzas for Paul and Jess. My dinner is pictured below. We went to the Black Boy pub in Shinfield: https://www.baronspubs.com/blackboy/
Fish Tortillas at The Black Boy in Shinfield
The meal was excellent, and the staff were really helpful and available with accurate information for a colleague who is gluten intolerant.
Tuesday 12th September
Pork Osso Buco with Aubergines, Apples and Chickpeas, served with mash
Okay, confession time! This recipe was not one of my best! I wanted to leave something for Paul to put in the oven whilst I was out at yet another meeting. I could then make the mashed potato on my return. The dish would have been perfect without the aubergine, but it was in the oven too long and was of too soft a texture to go with the other ingredients, particularly serving it with mash. I cooked the meat in some lovely cider which we bought on holiday in Spain this year: http://www.agroturismoarratzain.com/
So in future, I’d leave out the aubergine and use some fennel instead for a crunchier texture.
Wednesday 13th September
Ratatouille and Melting Mozarella Crumble from Sainsburys Magazine September Issue
This dish was a real winner! We eat vegetarian food at least a couple of times a week, and this dish fitted the bill and satisfied Paul, who misses the solid taste of flesh more than I do! It is a fairly standard ratatouille recipe with the addition of spinach. It is piled into a baking dish and has mozarella torn over the top before adding a crumble topping made with breadcrumbs, rosemary and toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds. You then bake it until it is crisp and bubbling. I think that my breadcrumb mixture was particularly tasty, as I was using up some mini bruschetta topped with tomatoes and olive oil. They had gone soft, but were perfect blitzed into crumbs, tomatoes included.
Thursday 14th September
Indian-spiced Celeriac Rosti with herb yoghurt from Sainsburys Magazine September Issue
Indian-spiced Celeriac Rosti with Herb Yoghurt and Left-over Aubergine Sauce
In the picture you will see that I did also eat up the remains of the aubergine sauce left-over from the pork casserole, so for me this was not quite a vegetarian dish. Rosti are a fun dish to make and to give a different texture to vegetables. Apparently celeriac is also very low in calories. The suggestion was to serve the rosti with mango chutney, and I just happened to have made a couple of jars of that recently – so much better home-made!
Friday 15th September – Fish Pie made according to a Jamie Oliver recipe (The Return of the Naked Chef 2000)
Fantastic Fish Pie from The Return of the Naked Chef
I have made this wonderful pie many times, and have adapted the recipe to suit my tastes and preferences. The best tip I learnt from Jamie by making this pie was that it is not necessary to cook fish before putting it into a pie. This means that you use fewer pans, and that the fish holds its shape better. Jamie includes spinach and carrot in his recipe. I have always used more carrot than he suggests, and I also add fennel and celery. Originally this was a way of bribing my daughter Jess into eating more vegetables, as she has always loved fish pie. I continue to make the pie with these additions even if I am not trying to deceive children.
Saturday 16th September Chicken with Chorizo, Chick Peas and Kale from Davina’s 5 Weeks to Sugar Free
I was not particularly looking for sugar-free recipes, but I spotted this book in my mother’s house and noted a few really good recipes in it. Chorizo and chick peas are two of my favourite ingredients and I could happily just make a meal out of these ingredients. This went really well with a jacket potato and butter.
