A week of freezer management
The next supper club is imminent so Jenny and I got together for a planning session this week. Our plans for a temperance evening went awry as soon as Jenny arrived and opened a lovely bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio. We did eat a light dinner, as intended though, while talking at great length about food. This is a bigger supper club than usual, so extensive thinking is required – full report to follow. Anyway, we had beetroot soup.
I have mentioned before how much I love this – there was a twist this time though. I decided to call it smoked beetroot soup. This is what happens when you slightly get distracted (I was watching the end of Down By Law, possibly one of my favourite films ever) and let the beetroot boil dry. I smelt it in time to save it, but there was a definite hint of smokiness about the soup. Obviously I pretended I was trying a new recipe…
I really needed to clear out the freezer a bit to make room for the supper club preparations, so I made these lovely little smoked haddock and leek tarts when Pam came over, thereby using up some pastry and some smoked haddock. We had these with a green salad and a tomato salad (found more of those fabulous coeur de boeuf tomatoes again – so gorgeous!!).
Thought I’d better not neglect to feed the family, while plotting for the big supper, so on Friday evening I dug out a Rick Stein recipe that I tore out of a newspaper ages ago: cod with aioli. The cutting now has copious notes about which bits you can prepare in advance, as it was a bit of a mad dash to do when I got back with Missy B from her circus skills class. And this meal can be done in a much more leisurely fashion.
It was really a lovely dish though and I’ll definitely do it again – butter beans, fennel, aioli, grilled cod and a sauce comprising leek, onion, carrot, celery, red chilli, dried mushroom, cognac, fish sauce, balsamic vinegar and a bit of basil towards the end. I think I’ve remembered all the ingredients… That was labour intensive but a truly delicious sauce. Now I’ve added the picture, I remember that there is also a hard boiled egg in the dish.
Not content with giving Missy B a spot of brandy in her main course (she barely touched the sauce, your honour), I made a slightly odd, but very tasty dessert featuring a dash of rum from my El Bulli book. This is a pina colada in a dish – it’s very easy and in the unlikely event you can’t find any spoons, you could probably drink it. Give it a try – this is for 4-6 portions:
1 pineapple
100ml coconut milk (also from the freezer on this occasion)
1½ tbsp white rum (you could use a bit more if you are not feeding children)
Peel the pineapple and cut into chunks. Process with a hand held blender or in a food processor.
Add the coconut milk and rum, then blend again.
Strain through a sieve, put into bowls or glasses and chill.
I decorated mine with some toasted almonds, the book suggests meringues or freeze-dried fruit. I have many many egg whites in the freezer, but no time to make meringues on this occasion!