Something fishy's going on...

It was my Dad’s 60th birthday at the weekend and since my mum and sister had cooked on Christmas day, I offered to do this one. I got most of my recipes from Nigel Slater’s new book, Tender v. 2, which my boss kindly bought me for Christmas. The book is really beautifully presented, and worth the price alone for the gorgeous photos. However it is chocful of wonderful ideas for growing and cooking fruit and nuts. Each fruit is dealt with separately, a little about the author’s own experience with growing the fruit, followed by a run through of some of the common garden varieties and then ideas for pairing the fruit with other flavours. The recipes follow after that. I already own the first volume of Tender, and found it invaluable as a source of ideas for flavour combinations. I haven’t cooked many of the recipes, but I have featured the pumpkin scone recipe a few times here. All in all, the books have made Nigel Slater my current favourite food writer because the books are about growing AND cooking- they cover the whole process, and they are both beautiful ‘coffee table’ books and yet full of information.
I used his measurements for the New Waldorf salad, but skipped the mayo dressing and made my own with the same herbs (mint and parsley) but with lemon and walnut oil. The salad was served with smoked mackerel, homemade toasted no knead bread and a horseradish crème fraiche with the fish.



For the main courses I did two dishes- a pork, perry and pear dish,



and a chicken, lemon, celery and grape dish, both from Tender v.2. I skipped this course (I don’t intend to expand my diet beyond eggs, dairy and fish).



Dessert was a hazelnut praline tiramisu




and a pudding cake of plum, honey and cinnamon (again from Tender v.2).


My piece today with a little yogurt. The cake tastes like ginger cake because of the dark treacley sugar.



Aside from the party, I did a bit more experimenting with fish over the weekend. I had a smoked salmon scrambled egg and salad breakfast,




and a Cornish yarg (type of artisan cheese), smoked salmon and apple sandwich for lunch on saturday.



This morning I was back to fruit and brown rice puffs and a big salad for lunch (although with some leftover mackerel) and dinner was stir fried leeks, portabello mushrooms and lots of collards with soy sauce, rice vinegar and toasted sesame oil. The photo is rubbish because I took it with my laptop cam as I'd left my phone in my car. The photo is really just here to prove I'm still eating all plant meals, but the photo is so bad, that could be beef rather than mushrooms!



I am finding my meals much more satisfying and my IBS continues to stay away despite the cheese and yogurt. Out of curiosity, I ‘nutritiondata’ed the smoked salmon scrambled egg breakfast and it came in at around 370 calories (58% fat, 23% protein, 19% carbs), about the same as a typical bowl of oatmeal and nut butter, but kept me full longer. The dish is a little high in salt but I didn’t add any and of course plenty of cholesterol which isn’t a big worry for me since I eat so little normally. I found myself eating a lot less carbs and sugar with the additional of these foods. I’ll be keeping a log of what I eat for the first while, something I usually do when I change my diet.

I haven't been exercising much, it's quite cold and wet here. Yuck. I have done some indoor cycling and weights, but that's the height of it. I can't get up early enough to go to the pool before work, and once I get home from work I just can't face going out again. I have been a few times at the weekend over the winter months, but that's it. And I haven't got up the Mourne mountains at all because every weekend I'm free the weather has been rubbish. We're hoping for this weekend! I hope I will have some nice photos of the mountains to show you at the weekend, as well as some winter picnic food.

Winter festivities

I'm not a big Christmassy person, it takes me quite a while to get into the 'spirit'. Yesterday, however, I had my boyfriend's brother and his wife around for dinner in the evening so that was the incentive to put the Christmas decorations up and that got me in the mood. What I like about the time of year is indulging in the year's harvest after sprucing up the house to bed in for the cold spell. I decided to get a real tree this year and some new decorations. With the decorations sorted, I got the dinner made. First I made some bread dough and mixed in some black olives after the first knocking back. I cooked the bread first on a hot dry skillet and then into the oven for 15 minutes or so to cook through. I served the bread with dukka and olive oil and vegan cream cheese with chives (the 'Sheese' brand).

I served the bread and dips with hot spiced cider and hot berry cordial for the driver. I added Steenberg's mulled wine spice and a little vanilla extract to the cider before heating.

For the main course, I had been waiting to try out this tofu pot pie. I changed it about a lot, making an ordinary shortcrust with some turmeric in (no sweet potato). I baked a homegrown kabocha (cut in half, seeds scooped out, baked cut side down for an hour), then peeled off the skin and chopped into chunks, I filled the bottom of the pie crust with the kabocha and sprinkled over the nutritional yeast.

In went the filling, which was:

1 red onion

1/2 cup edamame

2 blocks flavoured Taifun tofu, cubed (1 smoked, 1 basil)

1/2 pint soya cream

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

2 teaspoons herbes de provence

1 small tin cooked chestnuts

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

Fry the onion in some oil, add in the tofu, edamame and chestnuts and heat though. Then stir through the paprika, nutritional yeast and herbs and lastly the soya cream. Let everything heat through and mingle for about 15 minutes, then let it cool off before piling on top of the kabocha and putting the top on the pie. I baked it for about an hour.

As the pie was quite substantial, I freshened it up with a festive salad- toasted pumpkin seeds and 100g pecans (dry fried and a little soy sauce at the end), the seeds of half a pomegranate, half a fennel bulb, very finely sliced, 2 grapefruits (supremed), lots of rocket and baby leaf spinach. I tossed the lot up with balsamic vinegarette.

Dessert was spiced pear and almond cake with a new blueberry ice-cream (Swedish Glace brand).

Cake:

Cream 250g caster sugar and 250g vegan margarine.

Beat in 3 teaspoons of egg replacer, 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice or other mixed spice, 200g self-raising flour, 100g ground almonds. Use some non dairy milk to loosen the batter up a bit (I needed about 1/3-1/2 cup).

Line the tin and fill with preserved pear halves, or home poached pears if you're a domestic goddess. Pour over the cake batter, sprinkle with a little demerara (sucanat) and bake for an hour. I mad the cake by topping the batter with the cake, which made it sink a bit.

Try adding the pear first and then the batter, it should stop a sinky cake. It tasted great anyway, adding ground almonds in place of some of the flour makes a cake really luxurious:)