Delicious Kake Food

A light dinner tonight since bob and I had dim sum for lunch.

Tuna salad. Mix drained tinned tuna with grated carrot and finely-chopped celery. Season with fish sauce and black pepper. Bind with mayonnaise. Serve in sandwiches or on toast.

Salmon en papillote with sundried tomato and anchovy tapenade.

Red pepper salad. Slice a red pepper thinly, dress with seasoned sushi vinegar.

Steamed tenderstem broccoli.

Cold boiled potatoes. Left over from earlier in the week.

Olive ciabatta. Bought from supermarket and warmed in the oven.

Fish soup with pickled greens. Made with coley and home-made chicken stock.

Stirfried eggs with tomatoes.

Shredded kelp. From a packet. This was a replacement for dry-fried green beans, since I turned out not to have green beans in the house after all.

Jasmine rice. Done in the rice cooker.

Eels Landaises. Cooked entirely in the cause of my guest post for the Vintage Cookbook Trials.

Served with some leftover boiled sweet potatoes that I had in the fridge.

Salmon en papillote with sundried tomato and anchovy tapenade. Pound sundried tomatoes, fresh garlic, capers, and anchovy fillets to a paste in a mortar (you could use an electric mini-chopper; I didn’t, because mine has died). Leave for an hour to let the garlic mellow a bit. Spread on top of skinless salmon fillets, wrap in a foil or baking parchment parcel, bake in oven until done (they won’t take very long).

Sweetcorn polenta with black olives. Cut the kernels from fresh corn cobs, put in a pan and add just enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes. Add a spoonful of dairy-free spread (or butter, if you’re not cooking for a lactose-intolerant person) and a few cubes of fermented tofu. Blenderise it all up, then stir in some finely-chopped black olives. Return to the heat and cook, stirring, for at least 10 minutes (cook longer if you want to drive out more moisture and make it thicker). (This is a lactose-free adaptation of Yotam Ottolenghi’s sweetcorn polenta recipe.)

Red pepper salad. Deseed a red bell pepper and slice it thinly. No dressing; you don’t need it with the above dishes and it would clash with their flavours.

Mackerel and cucumber salad. Simmer a mackerel fillet very very gently in Hugh F-W’s fish poaching liquid for 2-3 hours until it’s cooked and flavourful but still moist. Leave to cool, remove and discard the bones and skin, and pull the flesh into large flakes. Mix these flakes in a bowl with chopped cucumber, and dress with sushi vinegar.

Tomato and avocado salad. Peel and cube an avocado, and toss with freshly-squeezed lime juice. Add halved or quartered cherry tomatoes, season with celery salt, and toss again.

Quinoa with preserved lemons. Cook quinoa until done in vegetable stock, then drain, spread on a large plate, and leave to cool and dry. Mix in some chopped preserved lemons, some snipped garlic chives, and a few spoonfuls of liquid from the preserved lemon jar. Mix well and transfer to a bowl to serve.

(Spreading the quinoa on a plate before mixing in the other ingredients helps to stop it getting mushy.)

Grilled mackerel. Fillet, bought frozen, defrosted and patted dry, grilled on a piece of foil, skin-side down first then turned to crisp the skin. (Note that “grilled” in UK English means the heat comes from above.)

Mashed potatoes. Peeled, cubed potatoes, boiled until soft, mashed with Eastern European-style sour cream.

Caponata. Made with courgettes and cherry tomatoes instead of my usual aubergines and tinned tomatoes, hence more watery/saucy than usual. This came from the freezer too; it was a spare portion I froze a while ago.

Salmon and pepper stew. Chopped onion and sliced garlic, softened in olive oil; red peppers, chopped; canned chopped tomatoes; capers and green olives; balsamic vinegar and honey; cubed salmon fillet; fried chopped aubergine.

Served with vermicelli rice.

Fish and red pepper curry. Filleted and cubed red bream; sliced red peppers; finely-chopped onion; thickly-sliced garlic; hot curry paste; shrimp paste; tamarind paste; fish sauce; palm sugar.

Served with basmati rice.

Fish and pepper stew. Onion and garlic, chopped and softened in olive oil; tinned chopped tomatoes; red and yellow peppers, sliced; white fish (coley), cubed; balsamic vinegar; sugar; celery salt; veg stock concentrate; capers; pickled chillies.

Served with jasmine rice done in the rice cooker.