in search of a sauce

Fish. I’m a fan. I normally stick with buying fresh fish from our poissonnerie (fish monger), but for the first time, I bought frozen cod, and it will not be the last time. It was easy, I didn’t have to think about it going bad, and it is quite a bit cheaper.

delicious. magazine called these “Two Potato Fishcakes,” but I would call them fish fingers for grown ups. Even though it isn’t shaped like a fish finger, the crunchy outside with a fishy-potatoey inside gives the fish finger an adult makeover. The ingredients are basic: sweet potato, potato, frozen cod and parsley. It’s a blank slate kind of dish that can be spiced up or kept simple. The original recipe called for a parsley sauce, but I wanted to try something different. Sweet potato is a wonderful mix for chili and curry flavours, so I wanted to make a curry sauce.

How hard could it be, I thought? Fry some onions, curry leaves, curry powder, add a bit of water and coconut milk, and then….It was a bit like an overly-flavoured chicken curry gravy with a bitter aftertaste, and the texture was grainy and wretched. It will need some work, so for now no recipe.

• Two Potato Fishcakes      I followed the recipe fairly closely. For what it’s worth, there can be a lot of variation here. Want to cut either potato? No problem, just double the other one. Give it an Asian feel? Chop a chili in, substitute the parsley for coriander, grate a bit of ginger in, too. Maybe more of an Indian flavour? Sprinkle chili powder and a bit of cumin or curry powders and chopped coriander. Make sure your oil is nice and hot before you put the fishcakes in the pan, and let them really sizzle in there for a crispy  exterior. This is a simple dish to make and cook, but it involves a bit more time in the preparation department as the potatoes need to be chopped and cooked, and the fish has to be cooked and then flaked before it can all be made into the little cakes. It’s not work that requires skills, but it is still work.

fish soup

Is it possible to start the nesting phase at week 21 of pregnancy? Because I think I’m there, complete with the to-do list that I put things on after I’ve done them just for the thrill of crossing it off. Kitchen cupboards? Re-organized completely with the promise of more to come. Living room rug and lamp? Perfect for the bedroom. Tangled jewelry????? Re-use old Christmas decor for a necklace tree, of course. This doesn’t have much to do with cooking except for a new, possibly-permanent addition to our kitchen, which is the table photographed under the bowl of soup. We found it in Sri Lanka, shipped it here and for several months it’s been in the living room waiting for its corner of the kitchen.

Then nesting came along, and we finally put it in its place. We’ll see if it stays, but in the mean time, I enjoy looking at the splash of colours. When summer is here, it will be a perfect place to have a late-morning breakfast.

In the mean time, it is busy holding my fish soup.

As previously mentioned, fish is now a prominent part of my weekly meals, so I try to find different ways to eat it to keep my cooking life and eating life more interesting. I turned to Taste for a recipe and found a basic one that sounded good but revamped it quite a bit. I loved the way it turned out and ate it for lunch or dinner for four days in a row. Making it again as a vegetarian dish will be easy, but the fish added a wonderful flavour to it.

• Curried Fish Soup heat oil in a large pan, add a nicely chopped white onion to it. Once the onion is fragrant and soft, toss in a bit of curry powder (the flavour you get from the soup is somewhat dependent on the type of curry powder you use – I used a Madras Curry powder and a Jaffna Curry powder) and lentils.
• This is where I deviated a bit from the original recipe, which calls for powdered mashed potatoes as a thickener (the kind you buy in a tin and then turns into real potatoes later on). I skipped that and poured in a red lentils instead. The quantity will depend on how thick you want the soup to be. Keep stirring to let the flavours mix together for a minute or two, then add water – a litre to two litres, depending on the quantity of spices and lentils. Also add some vegetable bouillon. Bring to a boil and then simmer until the lentils are mostly cooked.
• Add a can of drained chickpeas (or two, depending on the quantity) and chopped tomatoes. I also added some left over potatoes we had in the fridge.Check the seasoning and see if it needs anything else – typical flavours that complement a fish curry could be a bit of lemon, tamarind, or just more salt, pepper or chili.
• For the final five minutes, chop white fish into reasonable-sized pieces (I used cod), and toss into the soup. When the fish is cooked, take it off the heat. Watch this carefully as overcooked fish will go to pieces.
• I didn’t have coriander, but I think it would have finished the taste of the soup off nicely. A dollop of yogurt or creme fraiche is also a tasty topping.

finding nemo

Fish was a family staple while we were growing up. We probably ate it once a day until I was 14-years-old. These were the cheapest kind of Filipino fish – galungong, dalagang bukid and others. We only ate it deep fried from the top of the head to the tail. The eyeballs were doable, but other than that, I was not a big fan. It has taken me many, many years to realize that fish can taste fantastic and be as satisfying as meat or chicken.

These days I have even more incentive to eat it as much as possible because its omega 3 and DHA are excellent for the small one inside of me. White fish is my preference, and so far cod – or le cabillaud royale in French – is definitely my favourite.

Cookbooks are one of my favourite wedding presents and some of the presents that I use most frequently. A friend of mine bought me the Thai Bible by Jacki Passmore, and the Fish Cooked in Butter recipe is a winner for cod. I followed the recipe closely with the exception of putting very little butter and no cornflour on the fish. I skipped the breading part entirely and put the fish directly in the pan. I also left out the bamboo shoots – didn’t have any – and added pak choy instead.

• Fish Cooked in Butter season with salt and pepper 400 g of firm white fish (sliced), coat evenly with 1/2 cup of cornflour (no need, really), shaking off the excess. Melt 120 g butter in a large pan over medium heat and cook the fish slices for about 40 seconds on each side, until golden brown and almost cooked through. Carefully lift out of the pan and onto a plate and set aside.
• In the same pan sautee 4 thin slices (shredded) of ginger, 3 spring onions (chopped), 1 clove of garlic (sliced), and 1 chili (sliced). Sautee for about a minute, stirring. Add 60 g of bamboo shoots and 2 tomatoes (cut into wedges) and simmer for a few minutes, stirring. I added the pak choy here instead of the bamboo shoots.
• Season with 1 tablespoon of fish sauce and 1/2 a teaspoon of brown sugar, and add 3-4 tablespoons of water to make a sauce. Simmer for 1-2 minutes, then return the fish to the pan and heat gently in the sauce. I also added some lime juice to it because I think lime juice is always a good addition to Thai dishes.

gourmet pizza with…

When I find a good thing, it’s all I want for a season. Salmon is that thing right now, and I hope I’m not going to be sick of it after this week is done. Husband loves smoked salmon, and I do too. It’s also perfect in the summer. The 300 gram pack of it in the fridge got used for my lunch (on toast) and our breakfast (with scrambled eggs on toast). Last night I put it on pizza.

I found Taste* the last year I was in Australia, and it became the source of my recipes. Everything I’ve made from this site has been a success (I do pick carefully and read the user reviews as well). The gourmet pizza with salmon recipe stood out to me because it was simple, had few ingredients and I’ve never made something like it before.

I have no idea how to find yeast in Switzerland, so I skipped making my own pizza dough. Finding a pre-made crust at Coop turned out to be easier than I thought.

Devi: (to a shop assistant) Pardon. Bonjour. Je cherche pour…les pizzas..pour le..le.. (gestures with hand something under) – in English: Excuse me. Hi. I’m looking for … the pizzas.. for the.. the.. (gestures, etc.).

Ready-made pizza dough is available in Switzerland, and now I know what it’s called – le pate (with an accent on the a). This recipe was a plus for another reason, homemade pizza sauce. It was simple – onions, garlic, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, salt and pepper. It would also make for an excellent tomato base sauce for pasta – I’ll be using this recipe for a while and creating variations of it.

Husband rated this pizza as a five out of five. I loved it. All the main ingredients are uncooked on top of the baked pizza, so it’s summery, fresh and fun. The smoked salmon is strong, but the tart dill mayonnaise takes the edge off the fishiness. Coop didn’t have baby spinach; I used watercress instead – at least, I think it was watercress. I’m not sure about that, actually. The leaves were small and green.

Prep time for the sauce was 15 minutes, and it takes 40 minutes to cook. Cooking the pizza with the tomato sauce was probably 15 minutes, assembly of the pizza about 5 minutes. Technically this took “longer” to cook, but it really doesn’t seem like it at all because it was so simple.

• Smoked salmon pizza with dill mayonnaise I skipped the cheese on the pizza because I think cheese and fish is a strange combination. I loved it with the “watercress,” so if I make it again, I don’t know that I would use baby spinach. The mayonnaise was creamy, light tasting (not feeling) and tart, and for me it made the pizza. We both thought that the pizza was heavier on the tummy than expected, which we attributed to the mayo (I might use a light mayo next time).

• Pizza base and tomato sauce we don’t have a food processor, so our sauce was straight out of the pan and chunky. We loved biting into bits of onion and garlic, and I’m not sure we would put it through a processor now even if we had one.

* For other people’s recipes (books or online), I won’t be putting the specifics of the recipe on here because of copyright reasons and that sort of thing, so click on the link and it will take you to the recipe. If I put the specifics of how I made the dish or meal, it’s my own “invention.”

salmon for one

The $2.50 smoked salmon and avocado sushi rolls in Melbourne were my introduction to salmon. It was my favourite way of easing hunger in the middle of the day. These days salmon is frequently on sale (or “action” – pronounced acsyon in French), so the fridge is full of it. Husband and I began the morning on the balcony eating smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on toast, and I ended the day with more of the pink fish.

It was over 30 degrees yesterday, the warmest day in Geneva I’ve ever experienced. I had a Starbucks date with a friend in the late afternoon and walked home. Thursday evening is one I have alone, and I am not often inspired to cook for one. Case in point – for lunch yesterday I had a bowl of muesli, natural yogurt and chopped nectarine (I told myself I had a high protein breakfast).

But cooking for myself is one of the best things I can do to value my life. In one simple action, I tell myself that I’m important, special and worth taking care of. It was past eight in the evening when I got home, so I made a simple dinner.

I fried salmon in butter – one day, I’ll give my opinion about butter and health – and tossed some garlic in with the butter and ate it with broccoli and yellow peppers. The whole meal melted in my mouth (and took less than 10 minutes).

• Salmon salt both sides with rock salt, pan fry each side in butter for less than two minutes, crush a clove of garlic and toss into the pan. The garlic infuses in the butter, and it made for a nice “sauce” on top of the salmon at the end. The bits of fried garlic made for tasty bites with the salmon, and the rock salt creates a nice salty crunch on the outside of the salmon, which I loved because good food is salty food.

• Broccoli boil in salted water – I didn’t keep track of the time, but I monitored it carefully because I hate overcooked vegetables.

• Yellow capsicum (peppers) chopped