HFW's saltfish and parsnip rosti fishcake

I haven't tried this recipe yet, but I intend to. I copied it out of Anna's copy ofHugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Fish on Boxing Day, with a black crayon onto an old airmail envelope, the only writing tools that could be found. Now I'm in danger of losing the envelope, so I'm posting to keep it safe: I'm unlikely to buy Fish until I've given away a few more recipe books :)

I've never cooked saltfish, though I've meant to ever since I ate it at the end of a long day's train journey from Brittany to Lyons to fetch my (then) 10-year-old daughter, who had been staying with friends in the French Alps. I volunteered for this break from our family holiday because I wanted to go to a museum in Paris during a two- or three-hour pause in the journey, and because I wanted to visit the Jean Moulin Museum in the old Gestapo headquarters in Lyons (I was studying 20th century French history at the time). But it was August, and both were shut. I'd also taken the wrong book: one about the history of the English landscape - singularly inappropriate when every time I looked up I saw the markedly different French landscape.

But dinner that evening was magical: in a little street restaurant, not on the tourist map, hardly any choice, and starting with a saltfish puree - oily, garlicky, almost worth the hours and hours of solitary journeying.

It used to be a trek to the next town to buy any interesting fish, but now the butcher is my wet fishmonger, and the supermarket in my village stocks saltfish, so there's no excuse - except my lingering suspicion that I'm going to be the only person in the house who will actually want to eat anything I make with saltfish. And Elizabeth David - SO discouraging about making brandade de morue at home.

Saltfish and parsnip rosti fishcake

for 4-6 as a starter, 2-3 main course

1-2 parsnips (250-300g), grated
1 small onion
100g rehydrated* hard salt fish (or 200g lightly salted white fish fillet) cut into 1 cm cubes
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
rosemary, finely chopped
1 beaten egg
oil for frying

* to rehydrate saltfish, soak for 48 hours in cold water, changing it twice daily (and HFW says that it's important to taste - I think he means the water, but perhaps someone with a copy of the book can enlighten us?)

Mix everything together. Heat the oil, drop in handfuls, squashing them to a cake 8cm in diameter and 1 cmthick. Fry gently so that they don't burn, but enough that they heat through to the middle - 5-7 minutes. Flip, brown the other side, rest on kitchen paper. Eat hot with a green salad.

Doesn't that sound good? That's why I didn't want to lose it!


Related posts:

Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food
Would you like me to give you a recipe book?

Baked scallops

Lettice and I were on our own for lunch - Lucius was playing in a real tennis tournament, the boys ate early before rushing off to play hockey. So we treated ourselves ... just how much, we realised when we started to eat: this is a simple dish which transcends its ingredients.

We used a small bag of frozen scallops which have been sitting in the freezer for a couple of months since I impulse-bought them. And we used crumbs made from the last of the bread I brought home yesterday from my day's baking with Richard Bertinet. The crumbs on the top make a pastry-ish lid; the ones on the edge crisp up and provide contrast to the creamy texture of the lemony sauce in the centre. I don't think this would work with Mother's Pride.

Baked scallops for 2

6 scallops with their coral
20-30g fine fresh breadcrumbs
lemon zest and juice
coarsely ground black pepper
olive oil

Heat the oven to 250C. Grease a couple of small shallow dishes. Put the crumbs into a bowl, mix in lemon zest and pepper. Add the scallops and toss them until they are completely coated with crumbs. Arrange carefully on the dishes, making sure that the fish is completely covered with crumbs, and that there are a few round the edges. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the two dishes, then drizzle with oil.

Bake for 15 minutes. Leave to settle for a couple of minutes before eating.

This could be a starter or a light lunch (we ate it with raw beetroot salad). Next time, we're going to make it with mussels.


















There's something pretty similar in Nigella Lawson's new book, Nigella Express ... but her version is heavier, less heart-healthy, using butter, and there's no zest, which seems a wasted opportunity.

Related link

Scallop and chorizo salad

Spiced chicken livers

These are quick, easy, delicious, low-fat, a treat ... and something you should try even if you think you don't like liver (like my pasta con sarde for sardine haters). The gentle spicing emphasises the creamy sweetness of the meat. I can't tell you what a treat this is, at £1.59p for 400g organic chicken liver in Waitrose (and I think organic is probably a given for liver).

This recipe is from Good Tempered Food by Tamasin Day-Lewis.

Spiced chicken livers

400g chicken livers
1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp Maldon salt
1 tsp peppercorns
2 dssp flour

Dry fry the cumin and coriander seeds until they start to brown. Tip them into a bowl and bash them with a pestle or the end of a rolling pin. Add the flour and the rest of the spices. Coat the livers in this mixture, and fry in hot olive oil for a couple of minutes each side.

Serve on a bed of mixed leaves with the juices poured over.

This will do two for a light lunch, or 4-5 as a starter.


PS Some of you may be surprised to see a recipe for chicken liver on this blog, because it is high in dietary cholesterol. This is disputed stuff, but my understanding is that dietary cholesterol is not on the banned list, as it does not translate into the kind of cholesterol that clogs up arteries. Here's up-to-date information on dietary cholesterol from Harvard, where a lot of the research has been carried out.

A plate of nibbles for drinks

The night before my sister and her family left for home (California) via a week in Spain, she had a drinks party. It's been non-stop partying for nearly three weeks while she's been here, so no-one felt like making a huge effort. But, at the same time, drinks without nibbles - well, it's not really a party, is it?

I needed to reduce the croissant mountain (not many of the young felt like breakfast the morning after the night before), so that was my starting point. I halved them and stamped out rounds, using a biscuit cutter ("You mean a cookie cutter?" said my sister, who no longer speaks entirely the same language as I do, after 20 years in the US). Normally I'd use bread, then toast it in a hot oven, but the essence of this sort of cooking is to use what you have.

Next I spread a little light Phillie on them, and, finally, put tiny dabs of this and that on the top - chorizo, ham, chilli jam, pesto, olive. They went in seconds, despite fierce competition from the cocktail sausages my father insists on at every party.

Pea puree

My sister-in-law Kirsty and her family produced a delicious lunch on Sunday for Matilda's christening: a summer's cold buffet for a really hot spring day - cold salmon, ham, a delicious lentil salad, pink fir apples with chopped herbs. The bruschetta were particularly fine, striking and very pretty as you can see, with their strongly contrasting colours. The black ones were an olive tapenade, which you can easily buy in a jar in most supermarkets. The green ones were very moreish - peas, with garlic and butter.

Here's the recipe for my version:

Boil a couple of handfuls of frozen peas with one fat clove of garlic (peeled). When the peas are tender, drain them, and whizz to a puree (a hand blender is ideal for the small quantities here, but if you were making enough for a crowd, then the liquidiser would be better). Mix in one tablespoon of 0% Greek yoghurt, and serve on little toasts. You could also flavour this with mint, in which case, put one or two raw leaves into the whizzer.

Kirsty often makes the lentil salad, and it's wonderful: puy lentils, mixed through with a few sun-dried tomatoes which have been soaked in olive oil, and some little torn pieces of ricotta. This is all dressed in a vinaigrette, with chopped herbs strewn over the top. It would make a good light lunch all by itself.

Fantastic puddings, especially Emily's richly chocolate-y brownies, at least, those few not stolen by Coco, the black not-quite labrador (but labrador enough to be a well known food thief!).

My first photograph shows us walking through the field to the church, little Cecily running to catch up. The second shows Matilda with her parents Susie and Nat, and the vicar, my newly-discovered cousin Robin Ewbank.

Kale salsa

This is a lot nicer than it sounds, particularly if you have bad memories of the cabbage family from your schooldays. And I think it's probably good enough to be a winter substitute for salsa verde, which we use a lot during the summer. At least, it would be if I could only get the kale to grow.


I know what I did wrong, I put the seedlings in the ground far too late for them to make any significant growth before winter set in. So they sat there, not growing and looking exactly the same as when I planted them, for the whole winter. Except for the moment, in early January, when Lucius let the chickens out, and they made a beeline for the kale and stripped it bare of such leaves as they had. I chased them away, and they haven't been back to that particular part of the garden, which goes to show that Buff Orpingtons are cleverer than you might imagine. I'm slightly mystified that the kale isn't growing at the moment, because you can practically see the grass getting higher, and there are weeds sprouting up all over the place.

This morning I went out to pick the leaves. Nothing at all on the green kale (signs of something eating it - cabbage white caterpillars ALREADY??), but quite a lot of the black. I wasn't really following a recipe, but I did have a look at a couple of books this morning, and the one that was still open on the worktop said you needed 400g of leaves to make enough for six as a starter. So I weighed mine: 35g. That's it - the plants have been there all winter, and there's not enough to make a starter for one person!

But what leaves: soft enough to eat raw, and I did just that. So I cooked about 25g in a lot of water, which turned the most beautiful greeny purply colour, and which I have saved, although I don't know what I'm going to do with it (use it as the stock for more nettle soup, perhaps). I meant to put a whole clove of garlic in too, but I forgot. I put the kale, a finely chopped very small shallot and a few capers into a jug with a slug of olive oil, and whizzed it with my Braun wand.












As this is part of an on-going experiment, I used it on three different types of base, each spread with a blob of 0% Greek yoghurt. Delicious. I think I like the toast cup best.

As for the books which inspired me, Sarah Raven's Great Vegetable Plot has something similar, only with gherkins, olives, parsley, mascapone and crostini (and only using a knife, far too much like hard work!). I looked in the River Cafe books under kale, found nothing, rather puzzlingly, and only later realised that it was indexed under cavalo nero, with no quarter given for the English reader. Hey ho.

And this is my final entry for this month's Heart of the Matter event, hosted by Ilva at Lucullian Delights.

Nettle soup

I've got a cold this week, so need something to build me up. Nettles (urtica dioica) fit the bill perfectly, as they are full of iron, and, I think, vitamin C. As so-called hedgerow food, they have the added advantage of giving you something for nothing. But in this garden they grow in huge profusion, great clumps of them. They're only just beginning to show now, which is perfect, because you need young shoots if you're going to eat them (they get very stringy indeed, and mature plants can be made into clothes, just like hemp).











It's hard to believe that this clump of three-inch high nettles will be four feet tall by midsummer.










Even nettles this small carry quite a sting, so you need to wear gloves: finding them is probably the most difficult bit of making this soup.

Quick nettle soup

For two, you'll need half a colander full, one potato, one onion, some stock or water, and nutmeg.

Chop the onion, and sweat in a little oil. When they're soft but not golden, add potato chunks, stir round for a few moments, then add the nettles. The leaves will fill your pan pretty full, but, like spinach, they wilt right down, so when you add liquid, don't put in too much, there's no need to cover the leaves. Bring to the boil, put on the lid, and simmer gently for 10 to 15 minutes. Liquidize, & season with lots of nutmeg. Reheat, and serve with a swirl of fromage frais.



This is my entry for weekend herb blogging, hosted this week by Becky at Key Lime and Coconut

Retro fish mousse

There's something rather 70s about using gelatine, and it's probably 30 years since I last did. This was a way to use up the end of the Christmas smoked salmon, although I think it would work with any kind of fish, fresh or smoked. (Actually, I don't yet know if it's "worked" because I haven't turned out the mould, but it looks and tastes good.) We've got some neighbours coming for supper in the kitchen tomorrow, and this seemed an elegant but not over-the-top way to begin.

Blitz 700g smoked salmon trimmings with a 500g tub of 0% fromage frais, and the juice & finely grated rind of a lemon. Meanwhile, soak in water two small sheets of gelatine (I used Costa fine leaf, bought in Waitrose), and heat 250ml fish stock. Take the stock off the heat, squeeze the gelatine and drop it into the stock. Stir to dissolve, then leave to cool. When it's cold but not set, mix it into the fish. This is enough for about eight people, so I put some into four little ramekins, the rest into a terrine mould lined with cling film. I'll freeze this and use it next week when we've got a few more people coming round.

I bought the fish stock, even though I normally try not to use industrially processed food. It was Waitrose Cooks' Ingredients, the sort that comes in a plastic bag. I read the ingredients list carefully, and decided to buy it because it had no salt, and contained only things that I use in my kitchen - white fish, lobster, langoustine, carrot, onion, white wine, tomato puree, celery, lemon juice, tarragon, bay leaf, white pepper. It doesn't say how much water there is - my guess is lots, because you would have been hard pressed to taste many if any of those flavours. Next time I'm at the fishmonger, I think I'll get some trimmings and make my own, so that I can freeze it in very small amounts.

14 in the house, so pumpkin, pork, lamb - but no oven!

Last week Johanna "the passionate cook" posted a recipe for roast squash bites with pumpkin seed pesto, and I thought it sounded good to eat. She published a photo of beautifully presented canapes of the sort I can never get right. So I simplified it, threw it on a plate, and three people asked for the recipe. With apologies and thanks to Johanna, this is what I did:

Pumpkin and pesto

Peel and chunk one butternut squash, put in a roasting dish, drizzle with oil and roast in a hot oven until cooked through. Meanwhile, dry roast 2 tablespoons of pumpkin seeds, and put in the food processor. Add an equal quantity by volume (by eye) of finely grated parmesan, and 4 tablespoons of oil. Blitz.

When the pumpkin is done and slightly cooled, put it in a single layer on a plate, and arrange the pesto over it in little dollops so that each chunk has some pesto on it. Spear a few of them with cocktail sticks and hand round.

Johanna specifies pumpkin oil, which I couldn't get in my local Waitrose, so I used something called Cool Oil, made by The Groovy Food Company, which my local Waitrose does stock and which I bought in a fit of keenness last year, because it's made with flax oil, hemp oil, evening primrose oil, and pumpkin seed oil, so it's rich in Omega 3, 6, 9. The trouble is, it doesn't taste very nice, and my search is for food which is good for us, and particularly healthy heart food, and which - most importantly - tastes good. But it was good in this dish, and it doesn't stain - Johanna says that pure pumpkin seed oil stains yellow. My nicest jumper got stained last weekend with saffron which I can't wash out ... on the other hand, it was delicious!


My oven still isn't working, so everything has to be cooked on a small hob (two rings, one big, one small) - tricky when we are so many. On the other hand, a great opportunity to cook new things. I got out the Moro cookbook - although I've read it, I haven't followed many recipes from scratch. This lamb (simplified) is a great one-pot dinner full of lots of flavours. I'm going back to the amounts for six, although I tripled this last night, and almost all of it got eaten.

Slow-cooked lamb with artichokes and mint

Slow cook an onion in olive oil until it's soft. Add 1.5kg neck of lamb cut into chunks. Brown the meat. Then stir in a little flour to thicken the sauce. At the same time add some garlic (3-4 peeled cloves), and some thyme (if it's from the supermarket, then chop it; if it's tougher and from the garden, then put in a small branch which you can retrieve later). Also some bay leaves, if you have them. Add 200ml dry sherry, let it bubble and cook for a couple of minutes, then barely cover the meat with water. Simmer gently with the lid half off until the meat is tender. After 1-1 1/2 hrs, add small new potatoes. When these are almost cooked, add a couple of jars of drained artichoke hearts to warm through, and a bunch of chopped mint.



Porridge for breakfast. Then we all had to build up an appetite for lunch, so ... Lucius carried on planing wood for a new ceiling he is making for our dining room; Lettice (15) went to county hockey training; Horatio (17) and Alfred (13) played on the PS2 (although in fairness they played football after lunch); Catrin fed her lovely new baby Cecily (7 weeks); and the rest of us went to the farmers' market in town.

Meanwhile, simmering in my biggest saucepan were two joints of pork in milk. I'm not sure whether we were following the recipe in Moro or the very similar one in the blue River Cafe book. Whichever, it was great, although the sauce didn't caramelise in quite the way described. This is what we did:

Pork in milk

Menna took the skin and most of the fat off two roasting joints of pork. Meanwhile, I bashed up some salt, mixed colour peppercorns and chopped thyme. This we rubbed into the meat and tied it up again. I browned these in oil, then covered the meat with milk. Neither of the recipes specified what sort of milk we should use, so I used what I had, which was semi-skimmed. I now think full fat would have worked better. I lobbed in a stick of cinnamon, some bay leaves, and a little lemon zest. This we simmered for 1 1/2hrs. We served it with mustardy mash and a courgette salad.

Lettice said there should have been peas as well. Catrin said she had cooked a chicken using the same method from a Jamie Oliver recipe. Either way, it was delicious, and there was nothing left, even though in the end we were only 11 for lunch, not 14.

Then we had homemade membrillo made by Bruce and Menna from the quinces in their garden with manchengo, a dry Spanish cheese, and wonderful rosemary and potato bread from the farmers' market. No need for supper.