Salmon Baked in Prosciutto

I've heard an awful lot of chatter about it now being too hot to cook.  We don't really do summer that well*.  If it's not a barbecue with cremated burgers then it's a sad salad or a limp sandwich.  Well I can't stand it any more.  It's not too hot to cook.  It may well be too hot to spend time stood over a hot pan stirring, but that isn't the only way to cook.

For tonight's menu I decided to cook a dish that I first heard about at university.  The recipe comes from back in the days when Jamie Oliver worked in a restaurant and lived in a flat.  Before he was married, while he was still naked**, young Jamie shared a recipe for salmon wrapped in prosciutto.  It was possibly one of the first "foodie" things I ever cooked and I've been cooking it ever since.

It's not a cheap meal but it is an easy one, especially if you don't want to be spending time in the hot, hot kitchen.  The secret to the simplicity of the dish is that it all gets cooked together.  Salmon wrapped in ham, green beans and cherry tomatoes are all roasted together in olive oil and lemon juice.  To bulk the meal out I've started adding some parboiled potatoes as well.

While the food is roasting for around half an hour, you're free to sit on the patio with a glass of chilled fizz and enjoy summer.  By the time the fizz is gone, the salmon is ready and you have a plate full of hot tasty summery food without a flaccid sandwich anywhere in sight.  Yes it's hot at the moment but that is no excuse not to eat good food, not in my house anyway.

*we don't do seasons very well at all. It would probably be better is we just had slightly over-cast mild days 24/7 but we'd only complain about that too.
**it wasn't him, it was the food.

Olympic Food Challenge: Great Britain

Way back in April, when the initial draw for the Olympic Food Challenge took place, a kindly soul* suggested that since I had drawn Great Britain I should cook a four course meal.  The idea being that each course should represent one of the home nations.  Of course I laughed off the idea as sounding like far too much work.

Tonight I have cooked a four course meal, one course for each of the home nations that make up The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland**. 

Starter: Wales - Glamorgan Sausage

I suppose the obvious choice for a light Welsh starter would have been rarebit but I have always had a soft spot for Glamorgan sausages.  For a long time they loitered as a poor vegetarian option on pub menus but I think they are due a come back.  Caerphilly cheese, leek, breadcrumbs, parsley and thyme are mixed together with some beaten egg and formed into sausages.  These are then coated in breadcrumbs and shallow fried.  A very simple and very tasty starter.

Fish Course: Scotland - Smoked Salmon and Oatcakes

Anyone who knows me may well be surprised that I have not picked haggis as the Scottish part of the British meal.  Well, haggis season starts today***, but even if I had managed to shoot a wee beastie this morning, it would still need to be hung for a couple of days before we could eat it.

The other thing synonymous with Scottish cuisine is smoked fish.  From Arbroth Smokies to Cullen Skink, smoked fish gets everywhere.  As we're eating four courses I decided to keep the fish course light and opted for smoked salmon with oatcakes.

Main Course: Ireland - Bacon Chops with Braised Cabbage

I did a fair amount of research for Ireland****.  I wanted to do the kind of dish that turns up on family dinner tables not a cheffy reconstruction, so I was happy when I was told I had to make boiled bacon with cabbage and potatoes.

Those of you who have been following the Olympic Food Challenge may have felt a little queasy earlier this week when we cooked pigs trotters.  We were certainly unsure about how they would turn out.  In fact, we were so unsure that I had bought emergency bacon chops just in case we had to throw the meal in the bin.  Surprisingly we ate the trotters and the chops ended up in the freezer.

Tonight they have been briefly pan fried, not boiled, and finished in the oven.  The cabbage was then braised in the bacon pan to make sure they benefited from the bacony goodness that was left behind.  Served with boiled new potatoes, this is not the most glamorous meal I have cooked in the last two weeks, but it is one of the best.

Dessert: England - Trifle

This was the first dish on the menu.  I love trifle.  Not the hundreds and thousands topped jelly-fest, but the sherry soaked, fresh fruit filled and almond topped grown up version.  We would normally make a huge trifle but as we are going on Holiday tomorrow we decided to make these two dainty individual trifles.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that.  Nineteen dishes, nineteen countries, nineteen days and one challenge.  The Olympic Food Challenge has opened my eyes to ingredients that I have never heard of before.  I have braised more food in two weeks than I have previously.  I have also met, and found a huge amount of admiration for, a group of food bloggers who have helped me cross the finishing line. Thanks for joining me over the last nineteen days.  Thank you for cooking, for blogging and for reading.  And thank you for your support.

*Yes Dan, you!
**I really am a sucker for a challenge!
***The Glorious 12th is not just for grouse.
****I asked J, the 29 year old receptionist at work, who happens to be of Irish decent.

Gravad Lax

There are some dishes in the world that make me want to cook them.  The idea of making my own bacon at home sounds great.  I'd love to have a go at making black pudding or haggis from scratch.  The only reason I haven't been allowed to make my own brawn is Z wouldn't let me buy a pan big enough to fit a pig's head in*.  However, at no point in time have I had a burning desire to make gravad lax.  I do like salmon, in fact there aren't many denizens of the deep that I don't like, I've just never felt the need to cure my own. 

So why, ahead of all of the other potential food challenges, have I ended up making gravad lax?  The answer lies, as is so often the case, on my weekend forray to Kirkgate Market.  I was shopping for the ingredients for our mezze meal on Saturday and in the back of my mind was the potential of making my own dolmades.  I already had most of the items I needed in the house but I was lacking vine leaves and dill.  I finally tracked down the leaves but not until it was too late to do anything with them and I had already bought a large bunch of dill.

On Sunday I had a different mission, I was off to Blackburn to pick up a Victorian cast iron fireplace for the living room.  My first stop was the local Co-op to get the money to pay for the fireplace and to purchase something to break a tenner, so that I had the right change.  One of the items I bought was a packet of salmon.  I now had dill and salmon and my mind started racing.  On returning to Leeds with a rather large item of antiquity my first priority was to look up a recipe.

Dill, sugar, salt, white pepper and gin were all mixed together and used to cover the salmon.  The recipe said that you should leave the mixture for at least 48 hours and by the time it came to eat the fish, we were well over that.  I was dubious as to whether the cure would have worked but I needn't have worried.  The cured salmon was as good as any smoked salmon that I have bought and the accompaniments of pickled cucumber, mustard sauce, a side salad and brown bread were perfect.  To say that I hadn't planed to make gravad lax, I am glad that I did. The flavour was fantastic and after the hot sultry day we have had, it was the perfect evening meal.

*I am still working on this one.

Coulibiac

It's Christmas Eve and a chance for a sit down.  All of the presents have been loaded onto Santa's sleigh, the reindeer have been fed and watered and the big man is having a massive bowl of pasta (something has to soak up all that brandy).

Food prep has already started for tomorrow's cook-athon.  Two of the three stuffings have been made and the chipolatas have been wrapped in their bacony overcoats.  The veg will have to wait until the morning as will the bird as tonight, we are having coulibiac.

Coulibiac is a Russian pie stuffed to the gills with salmon, rice and mushrooms.  I first heard about coulibiac watching Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour.  He was visiting St. Petersburg and his researcher had lined up a cosy vignette of Anthony visiting an elderly Russian lady as she lovingly prepared this festive dish for him.  It took her roughly 4 hours and, by the time it was served, Bourdain was on his second bottle of vodka.

It's Christmas, so of course we have had the odd tipple or two but not to the extent of AB.  Fortunately our coulibiac was prepped yesterday and only the veg needed seeing to, so we were sober enough to enjoy it.