Smoked Mackerel Noodles In Minutes

Replace fast food with good food fast.

How long does it take to cook a ready meal, 10 minutes perhaps, a little more with standing time?

And what about the time wasted trying to remove the film lid, tearing a thin edge from around the perimeter without actually gaining access to the main tray at all. Then cutting out the middle of the film and picking at the bits that are glued down to try and make sure you don't end up eating plastic with your meal...

I urge you to try this instead, you can have it dished up in 10 minutes and is our favourite super fast mid week meal and unlike the microwavable cr*p it tastes amazing and is really healthy! I'd even take this over most of the Asian takeaways i've had.


Ingredients, approx 3 servings - 

250g Rice Noodles

3 tbsp Dark Soy Sauce

2 cloves of minced Garlic and 2cm piece of Ginger grated (you can use garlic puree from a tube and ginger paste from a pot to speed things up)

Chopped birdseye chillis, to taste

Half a large cucumber, halved lengthways and then sliced

Bunch of Spring Onions, sliced

Handful of Coriander Leaves

4 Smoked Mackerel fillets, peppered ones work well, torn into small pieces 

• Boil the noodles until cooked and then rinse in cold water
• Meanwhile mix the soy sauce, ginger, garlic and chillis with 3 tbsp of water, this is the dressing
• Throw the noodles into a large bowl with the spring onions, cucumber and some fresh coriander. Pour over half the dressing and stir.
• Serve in bowls with a good drizzle of the remaining dressing and topped with the mackerel and the rest of the coriander.

Curried courgette soup (with rice)

Rachel has made this a few times and it's really tasty but, as with salads, soups tend to be a little light for me to classify as a whole meal. Rach will make a large batch and take a small amount for her lunch and at first I'd pretend to do the same. What my girlfriend didn't know, but surely suspected, was that the soup wouldn't be my lunch but would end up as an addition to my usual lunch....  

Thinking about this while scoffing a bowl of soup plus sandwich, crisps and chocolate, belt buckle straining, I thought 'there must be another way to fill up over lunch' and came up with the idea of adding a little cooked rice to the soup to fill it out and provide my body with the fuel it craves to keep going through the afternoon. I told Rachel and she informs me that this is 'a very Mexican thing to do' , think burritos filled out with rice. 

So that is what i now do, the extra carbs add the sustenance that was missing, i save money from not eating a multi course lunch and probably most importantly i am less of a gordito.

 

Ingredients - 

2 tsp Butter

1 large Onion, chopped

900g Courgettes, sliced

450ml Chicken or Veg Stock

Heaped tsp Curry Powder

100ml Soured Cream and extra to garnish

Salt and Pepper

Cooked Rice (optional)

 Makes 4 servings

• Melt the butter in a large saucepan and fry the onion for a few minutes
• Add the courgettes and cook for another couple of minutes
• Pour in the stock and curry powder
• Bring to the boil, then simmer covered for approx 20mins until the courgettes are soft
• Blend the soup with a hand blender or in a blender until smooth
• Stir through the soured cream and season with salt and pepper.

Serve in bowls with a dribble of soured cream or with a spoonful of rice stirred through.

Avocado On Toast

This is a great light breakfast, we were first served it sat on a beach in Sir Lanka it's so tasty and simple. It's also filling enough to keep the stomach from rumbling until lunch.

Add a little of your favourite chilli sauce, we've got a super hot bottle of scotch bonnet 'scorchio' sauce by the fat man chilli company, to get the blood pumping and serve with a big cup of coffee.

Now you're ready to start your day!

Ingredients for 2 servings-

Ciabatta or panini, halved and toasted

2 ripe avocados

Juice of half a lime

Freshly ground black pepper

Grated mature cheddar cheese

Your favourite hot chilli sauce

• Cut avocados in half, remove stone and then chop the halves in half again length ways. Use a knife to scoop out the flesh and then roughly chop in a bowl.
• Squeeze in the lime and add a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper, mix everything together and mash very lightly with the back of a fork. you still want it quite chunky
• Spoon the avocado onto the panini halves and top with cheddar
• Dot with your favourite chilli sauce

Caribbean Rum Muffins with Lime Kulfi

This started with a simple idea one Saturday morning to cook some muffins and evolved into an international dessert with influences as far apart as India and the Caribbean, the Mrs was away for the weekend and i get bored quite easily if i'm not kept entertained...

We were in the middle of a particularly vicious 'cold snap', minus 5 outside, and i was looking for something spicy to warm me up, the sash windows may look lovely but they let in a bit of a draft... Noticing the remnants of a bottle of Havana Club rum on the shelf i could feel my belly warming already and grabbed the bottle. About to take a big swig i remembered that despite the snow on the ground my lacrosse game was still on and i was due to be running around a field in a few hours time. So, realising that getting half drunk was probably not an option anymore, at least until the official call came that the game had in fact succumbed to the weather, i decided to bake some muffins and add some rum into the mix, along with a good sprinkling of nutmeg and cinnamon.

These were great as a warming snack with a big mug of coffee but once the game was finally called off the mind started wandering to how they could be improved, what goes great with rum....? Well Coca Cola obviously but i couldn't think of how to add coke to the muffins... What else? Lime, perfect!

So first of all i made a thick lime cream from whipping cream, a little condensed milk and lime juice, which went well but didn't add enough wow factor and i still had almost a whole can of condensed milk left over... It was then that i remembered seeing a recipe some time ago for Kulfi and that basically it was made with whipped cream and condensed milk, so decided to have a go at that. kulfi is Indian ice cream, denser and creamier than normal ice cream, stopping it melting so quickly (handy in India), and creating an even more luxurious taste.

We first tried Kulfi in Mumbai, purchasing 2 generous slabs, served on large banana leaves, from a kulfiwallah on Chowpatty Beach and sitting back to enjoy the intense and creamy flavours while people watching during a monsoon downpour. We were told by many happy men that the rain was 'very very good', i don't think Rachel or i could really get on board with how 'very very good' the rain was but we sure thought the Kulfi was head wobblingly splendid!

 

Ingredients -

Approx 10 Muffins:

125g unsalted Butter, softened

110g Sugar, i used golden caster

2 large Eggs

300g Plain Flour

2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp ground Cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly grated Nutmeg

125ml Milk

5 tbsp Caribbean Rum

3 tbsp Dark Muscovado Sugar (or whatever you have in)

Lime Kulfi:

300ml tub of fresh Whipping Cream

350g Sweetened Condensed Milk

6 tbsp freshly squeezed Lime Juice

Start by making the kulfi -

• Whip the cream until firm
• Stir together the lime juice and condensed milk in a separate bowl
• Fold the lime mixture through the cream
• Whack it in the freezer in a large tub or small individual containers and cover with cling film.

Next the Muffins -

• Preheat oven to 175c/190c (fan/non fan)
• Beat almost all of the butter until creamy in a large bowl, keep a little aside for greasing later
• Add the caster sugar and continue beating
• Break the eggs in one at a time while still beating
• In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together
• Combine 3 tbsp of the rum with the milk
• Add a quarter of the flour mixture to the butter mix along with a quarter of the milk mix, beat until smooth. Repeat the process until it's all mixed in.
• Rub the last little bit of butter evenly into the inside of a muffin tin and spoon the mixture into approx 10 of the pans, you should fill them approx 3/4 full.
• Bake until golden, 20-25 mins
• Remove from oven, take out of the muffin tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.
• Add the muscovado sugar and remaining 2 tbsp of rum to a small pan, warm on a low heat and stir until fully dissolved.
• Brush this over the warm muffins to give a lovely even glaze (unlike mine, i didn't have a brush so tried to pour it over, i was tempted to use Rachel's tooth brush but it may have added a weird minty taste and i like my girlfriends to have teeth)

The Sri Lankan Menu

Rach and I fell in love with Sri Lankan food on a trip through Asia in 2010. We had worked our way overland from Tibet to the Southern tip of India and had suffered with 'stomach problems' since Nepal which had culminated in us spending 2 weeks recovering in Udaipur - for anyone visiting you simply have to stay where we stayed - The Mahendra Prakash.

 

Fast forward another few weeks and we arrived in Kandy our first stop in Sri Lanka, our appetites had fully recovered and we were primed for some re energising feasting. We were like 2 bears stirring out of hibernation and just like a grizzly coming across a river filled with stupid salmon swimming up stream we had arrived at The Pink House in Kandy and hit the food jackpot!

The Sri Lankan cuisine consists of a variety of different curries served with chutney, sambol, rice and parathas/chapati. Our first Sri Lankan meal was made up of a daunting number of vegetable curries along with a fish curry plus the rice, parathas and sambol. Sambol is simply freshly grated coconut mixed with finely chopped shallot/red onion and chilli, although a number of other ingredients are often added. Sambol is believed to increase appetite (i am a believer!). We were also served a mango curry which added another intense flavour to the mix!

After being presented with the many, many dishes we were taught the traditional way of eating with our hands, picking small amounts of different curries and combining rice and sambol into a bite sized ball before using the finger tips to gently place this into the mouth. The owner and Rachel laughed at me for literally throwing food at my face but it was the quickest way i could find to get the deliciousness into my body...

And so we spent a few days pottering around Kandy with the guesthouse owners dog, seeing the sites and regularly returning for another banquet and a nap until with heavy hearts it was time to move on. We had to force ourselves to  pack our bags and leave the comforts, nay love, that the Pink House and it's incredibly hospitable owners were providing but there was so much more of this incredible island that we still had to see.

Even now, getting on for 2 years later i find myself day dreaming back to those few days and a smile comes across my face, and a little saliva runs down my chin as i recall one of the greatest experiences of my life!

The only negative of our stay was the reversal of the good work that the stomach bug in India had done to my waist line... 

 

 

I went from the slender figure you see standing on a pier in Kerala in photo 1 to the bloated man you see in photo 2 within just a few days... It is not that the food is unhealthy, because it really is, but the quality and amount of flavours can lead to overeating...

 

Upon arriving back to the UK we quickly tried to replicate the food but were less than satisfied with the first couple of attempts. It wasn't until i received a Sri Lankan cook book as a present and happened to start working with a Sri Lankan girl that i was able to fill in the missing pieces of the jigsaw and add to the knowledge taught by the lovely owner of Pink House. The cook book filled out the minimal notes Rach had taken in the kitchen, her short hand left us trying to guess the exact steps needed to put together each dish (I had warned her) and my new colleague pointed me in the direction of the nearest Sri Lankan supplied grocers/mini market  where i could pick up the necessary ingredients to add the distinct flavours that had been missing from the earlier attempts. 

 

You cannot underestimate the difference it makes getting fresh curry leaves and the Sri Lankan mix of curry powder also adds to the distinct flavour of the dishes, if you use normal curry powder then check that it includes fennel if it does not then add some some seeds in.

Don't worry about doing everything just pick out a couple to try with some sambol and rice / bread. You can always freeze portions and then bring out a bigger selection for a dinner party or for when you need a real treat! I'd also strongly recommend purchasing this cook book, Serendip by Peter Kuruvita, which has a great selection of Sri Lankan goodies and has been an invaluable aid to me recreating the food i enjoyed in central Sri Lanka, it'll also give you exact recipes for making your own Sri Lankan curry powders.

I'll add more dishes to the list as and when i perfect them and will also update the existing recipes if i improve them further!

RECIPES -

Pol Sambol (THE most important bit!)

Ingredients - 

One Shallot finely chopped
Approx 1 cup of Freshly Grated Coconut (you can use frozen or dessicated with a little hot water added)
Dried Chilli Flakes
A good squeeze of Lime Juice
A good pinch of Salt and a little freshly ground Black Pepper

Maldive Fish Flakes (optional)

• Add the shallot and chilli flakes to a large mortar and use a pestle to grind together, add salt and pepper and fish flakes if using.
• Continue to grind together and slowly add in the coconut until the mixture is an orangey colour.
• Squeeze in the lime juice and mix.
• Check the taste, add extra chilli or salt if needed.

Beef Curry

Ingredients - 

500g top rump / silverside / topside, cut into bite sized pieces.

Spices: tsp ground cumin, tsp chilli powder, tsp of ground coriander, 4 cloves, cinammon stick, 1/2 tsp tumeric, 2 bruised cardamom pods, 3 tsp meat Sri Lankan meat curry powder, tsp roasted fenugreek seeds, salt and pepper.

2 Tbsp Veg Oil

1 Onion, finely chopped

3 Garlic Cloves, crushed

5cm piece of Pandanus Leaf

3cm piece of fresh Ginger, finely chopped

Approx 15 fresh Curry Leaves

Tbsp Tomato Puree

1 Litre Beef Stock

• Add the chopped meat to a bowl with the spices and marinate for a few hours or over night.
• Heat the oil in a large saucepan and add the onion, garlic, ginger, pandanus leaf and curry leaves and cook on a medium heat until the onions are softened.
• turn the heat up to high and add the meat and spices to the pan, cook quickly until the meat is browned.
• Add the stock and tomato puree, bring to the boil then simmer for at least an hour until the sauce is thickened and the beef is really tender. This may take a while longer.

Mackerel Curry

Ingredients - 

500g Mackerel Fillets, skin on, chopped into 3cm pieces

2 Heaped Tbsps Goraka Paste (this is essential but may be hard to find... It adds a lovely sour taste to the dish)

250ml Coconut Milk and 50ml Water

2 Tsp Roasted Curry Powder

1/2 Cinnamon Stick

1/2 Tsp Tumeric

Tsp Fenugreek Seeds, lightly roasted

1/2 Tsp Dill Seeds

1 Onion, finely chopped

3 Green Chillis, sliced

2 Garlic Cloves, crushed

Approx 15 Fresh Curry Leaves

Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Salt

A good squeeze of Lime Juice

• Rinse the fish and then put in a bowl and cover with the Goraka paste and leave to marinade for a while.
• Put the coconut milk, water, spices, onion, chillis, garlic and curry leaves in a saucepan, bring to the boil and then simmer until the onions are soft.
• Add the fish and goraka, gently stir in well and let it all simmer for 8 mins.
• Take off the heat and cover for ten minutes.
• Check the fish is cooked through and then add salt and lime juice to taste.

Dhal

Ingredients -

250g Red Lentils

1.25 Litres Water

Heaped Tsp of Tumeric

4 Dried Red Chillis, left whole

Red Onion, finely chopped

A good quality Tomato, chopped

2 Garlic Cloves, chopped

5cm Piece of Ginger, chopped

2 tsp Cumin Seeds

50g Ghee or Butter

Approx 10 Fresh Curry Leaves

2 tsp black mustard seeds

• Add the lentils, tumeric, chillis, onion, tomato and water to a saucepan, bring to the boil and then simmer until the lentils are soft and starting to break up to thicken the sauce.
• At the same time grind the garlic, ginger and cumin seeds in a pestle and mortar until combined into a paste.
• Heat the Ghee/Butter in a frying pan, add the curry leaves, spice paste and mustard seeds. Cook until the seeds start to pop and the mixture is beginning to brown, be careful not to burn the butter though.
• Add the spicey butter mix into the lentils and give it a really good stir then simmer for another ten minutes. Season with salt to taste.

Breadfruit Curry (substitute pumpkin if you can't find, i could only get ready chopped frozen breadfruit from an Asian supermarket)

Ingredients - 

1 Breadfruit, peeled and cut into 3cm pieces, approx 450g.
Tsp Ground Cumin
Tsp Ground Coriander
Tsp Curry Powder
Red Onion, finely chopped
2 Green Chillis, sliced
Approx 12 Fresh Curry Leaves
1/2 Tsp Tumeric
Cinammon Stick
400ml can of Coconut Milk
A little Freshly Ground Black Pepper

• Add the cumin, coriander and curry powder to a dry frying pan and dry roast over a low heat until dark brown.
• Add all the ingredients to a saucepan and simmer for 10-15 mins, until the breadfruit is softened.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.

Chorizo, Tomato and Avocado Salad

I've always been of the opinion that a salad is a side dish rather than a main course and perhaps still am, but this salad tastes so good that i eat two huge bowls of it everytime i make it and am left fully satisfied however hungry i was before i started!

The dish combines some of my absolute favourites, chorizo and avocado, and the balsamic vinegar brings all the flavours together beautifully. It only takes a short time to throw together and is best served warm.
 

The below should serve 4 but Rach and I finish it off in one sitting....   

Ingredients -

4 Tbsp Olive Oil

Garlic Clove, crushed

Pinch Dried Oregano

1 Small Ciabatta, torn into small pieces

150g Chorizo, halved lengthways and sliced

250g pack of good quality Cherry Tomatoes

2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar

Pinch of Dark Sugar

2 or 3 ripe Avocados, stoned and sliced

Approx 150g Salad Leaves, eg. rocket/spinach/baby leaf and herb

• Heat half of the oil in a large pan with the garlic and oregano, add the ciabatta and fry for about 10 minutes, tossing occasionally, until crisp and browned, tip them into a large salad bowl
• Give the pan a quick wipe and add the chorizo until it realeases it's oils and starts to crisp up, approx 3 minutes.
• Add the tomatoes and toss to mix, cook for a short while until they start to soften.
• Drizzle over the vinegar, add the sugar and some freshly ground black pepper
• In the salad bowl, add the salad leaves and sliced avocado and gently mix with the remaining olive oil and croutons. Spoon over the chorizo and tomatoes and drizzle with the juice from the pan