LMAO at Falling Standards and 35 mm Fish Cakes

I look at lots of blogs where the photography is taken using either iPhone or Android. There is no difference, I hear, between a well, considered, correctly composed, nicely lit photo and something “…that the phone can do.” This depresses me. It depresses me on two fronts. Firstly, I have spent a few years now, working hard, in my spare time, to improve my photography skills. It would appear that I have been wasting my time. The phone can do it. Secondly, I have been using my blog as an outlet for my creative side. This is supposed to help keep me calm and to allow me be nice to everybody. I’m failing on that front too. While I’m at it, there is a third niggle and I must get it out there. 

Salmon with Homemade Teriyaki Sauce, Spinach and Noodles – Fine Dining at Home!

The Wife and I are pretty ordinary people. That is the wife is pretty and I am ordinary. We don’t go crazy with fine dining in multi-starred restaurants and I usually restrict my wine budget to less than the price of a tank of petrol. It’s not that I object to great food and fine wines. I did a lot of fine dining in my younger days as an advertising account director. Not quite the stuff of Mad Men, but close enough. Nowadays, I get a bit miffed when my partaking in a meal is like a bit-part actor in a Broadway show, where the chef is the star with a chorus line of waiters in support. My role is only to eat the food, not complain and then pay the exorbitant bill when the culinary curtain falls. No, This is not for me. I prefer simpler things.

Smoked haddock, goats cheese and spinach ravioli. This one’s a must for Facebook!

 I want you to think of this ravioli as the culinary equivalent of a Facebook post. Not because I went to the trouble of digging out the fancy plate with the blue edge, the matching napkin and the table cloth in a colour almost exactly that of the Facebook logo. These all give some subtle brand support but, they are not the point. In reality it’s all a bit more psychological. 

Haddock in Panko. Unfashionable when it comes to the crunch.

When I go out to buy the ingredients for our meals, I tend to not have a hard and fast list for the meats and fish. I like to see what looks good and choose the best available ingredients (subject to affordability and availability). When it comes to the fish, haddock tends to get overlooked. It is not a particularly fashionable fish. Fashion plays a role in all these things. 

Gravadlax with Beetroot and Ginger – Truly a Christmas Miracle.

A Christmas Miracle, I hear you say. To answer your unasked, and possibly even unthought, question. No, I haven’t found religion. Though, there seems to be more of it about at this time of year. I will enter into the festive spirit and avoid going off on a rant about the damage organised religion seems to do to our world. Instead, I will get back in the kitchen and prepare a true miracle of flavour, texture and colour. That miracle is Gravadlax with Beetroot and Ginger.

A recipe for Thai Green Prawn Curry that shouldn’t jar with you.

I get mad when I see recipes that include “ingredients” that really should be made up, from scratch, by the cook, to get a half decent result. When researching Thai Green Curry, I got depressed to see the BBC (UK state broadcaster), RTE (Irish state broadcaster), Bord Bia (Irish Food Board) and a raft of other popular (more popular than this) websites promoting recipes that call for a measure or two of ‘Green Curry Paste’ as part of authentic Thai curry recipes. Without a recipe for the paste, we have to assume they mean from a jar. This is not cooking. This is culinary laziness and will lead to ineptitude in your kitchen if you swing with it. If you are happy to slop some manufactured sludge from a jar into your home cooking, go for it. But, if you want to prepare a delicious, tasty, easy, Thai Green Curry, read on my friends, read on…..

Authentic Irish Whiskey Irish Cold Smoked Irish Salmon.

What a mouthful of a headline. But, what a mouthful of delicious home smoked, Irish whiskey flavoured, Irish salmon. The words are carefully chosen to avoid ambiguity. I could go on a rant here about authenticity of food origins. But, there is little point. Food companies spend a lot of money to fool the unsuspecting consumer that their products are something other than as presented. In Ireland, one can buy ‘Irish’ salmon that has been reared in Scotland. The practice is totally legal. The food retailers and producers are just that bit smarter than the legislators. The average consumer doesn’t seem to care as long as the price is right. Anyway, I promised to not rant so, let me tell you about my salmon smoking experiment instead. 

Not much in the cupboard. Even less in the freezer. It’s crab and prawns with pappardelle pasta.

I am a pretty well organised person. Too well organised, some might say. Often, I hear the family muttering of OCD as I arrange neat rows of tins in kitchen cupboards. I must have a list when I go shopping. I like to have it in ‘Notes’ on my phone so I can delete the items as I pop them into my trolley. Nothing left in the note means everything I need has been purchased. However, I have a blind spot. A big blind spot. My weeks’ thinking starts on Sunday (my usual blog post cooking day). As a result, I have everything planned for Sunday breakfast, Sunday’s Family Dinner and for evening meals for the early part of the following week. I do the shopping on Saturday morning. I have a dreadful habit of forgetting to get anything for Saturday evening. If I lived alone, this would not be a problem. However, I live with the Wife….

Monkfish in a pool of pea.

It’s your own fault. I didn’t write it. You didn’t see it, because it isn’t there. Yet planted in your mind is the inappropriate image. The awful picture of something that I didn’t compose and certainly didn’t intend. No. this is a food blog. I try to elevate your standards, not drag them into the gutter.

Easy Oriental Part 16 – Steamed Monkfish with Spring Onions

It’s a while since I have posted something from further east than Howth (A fishing port on the far side of Dublin Bay). This is a slight variation on a classic, served in some of the best Oriental restaurants around. It is not dished up in the average Chinese where the height of culinary ambition matches the diners’ desire for a gooey sauce and a slice of pineapple with their sweet and sour chicken balls. This dish has finesse. It has class and refinement. It does not go well with beer and it will never become a post-pub favourite in the way that chicken chow mein or prawn curry with fried rice have. This is a good thing.