Tuna pasta bake

I made this yesterday for Blistering Barnacle and his girlfriend (OK, mostly for myself). It's quite simple, but you have to do lots of things at once towards the end so you need to be good at multitasking. It's also very easy to adapt to whatever vegetables you have lying around.

Ingredients:

• One onion, chopped
• One pepper, chopped
• Some celery, chopped
• Some mushrooms, chopped
• A glug of olive oil
• A tin of tomatoes
• Some tomato purée
• A tin of tuna
• Some pasta shapes
• A knob of butter
• A couple of tablespoons of plain flour
• Some milk (about a glassful (a reasonable-sized glass))
• Some cheddar, grated
• A pinch of cayenne pepper

Method:

• Soften vegetables in a reasonably big pot with the olive oil.
• Add the tinned tomatoes, adding about another half-tinful of water and some tomato purée.  Leave to simmer for a while as you grate cheese and switchon the kettle
• Put pasta on to boil and switch on oven. GM7/200 C is OK.
• Melt butter in a separate pan and add flour. Stir together and gradually add the milk to make a white sauce (PRO TIP: warm the milk first to avoid lumps). Slowly add the grated cheese and allow to melt into the sauce. Stir in the cayenne pepper.
• Add the tuna to the tomato sauce and stir in well.
• Assemble! (I put pasta in an ovenproof dish first, then add the tomato sauce and stir it together a bit, then add the cheese sauce and sort of fold it in so there are cheese-saucy pockets in places. Then sprinkle the rest of the grated cheese on top (see below)).

•  Bake in the oven for at least 20 minutes.
• Eat!

 I was a little bit too enthusiastic about the last step, and only just remembered to take a picture of the finished product!

We have spent most of this evening watching clips of comedians on youtube (I recommend the Australian Adam Hill!) so I am going to go to bed now.

Beautiful braai

Rainbow Fish posting from Cape Town. Had a wonderful braai with the ab fab sister yesterday! Sadly no photographic evidence, but we had gammon and a chicken done to perfection on the Weber and washed down with a v fine red. I was too busy talking to note the name, but it was smooth and full-bodied as the b-I-l always selects for us! Heaven!

Home-made pizza

 

On Friday night, we made pizza. There is something about home-made pizza, loaded with all the toppings you can fit on it and hot out of the oven, which beats takeaway and restaurant pizza every time.

As far as recipes go, it's a bit DIY. Make the pizza dough (we use our bread machine for this, which saves a lot of effort), cook up a very tomato-y sauce and chop up whatever vegetables and meat you fancy. I can heartily recommend using thinly sliced chorizo.

 

 The important thing is to make sure you have lots of mozzarella, and to have everyone assemble their pizza at the same time, so no one hogs all the toppings.

Then just pop into the oven to bake, and test your endurance as the delicious smells start to fill up the house.

 

 We also had a go at making fruit brûlées, with strawberries, a peach and a nectarine with a good dollop of crème fraîche and a thick layer of brown sugar on top.

 

 The trickiest part was covering them in sugar without also covering the kitchen in sugar. This was not helped by the fact that as soon as you'd finished on one, the sugar started to sink into the crème fraîche.

 

 We spent a while working out how to make our oven's grill work, then shoved them under it to caramelise. A blow torch would have made this a lot easier. We ended up leaving them under the heat a bit too long, which slightly cooked the fruit inside, but the result was still delicious.

I think the main thing is to be able to crack the top with a spoon.

In other news, my brother (aka Blistering Barnacle) and his girlfriend are here this week, so hopefully they can be persuaded to share some recipes of their own. It's completely grey and misty today, so I am dreaming of spicy stews.

Chicken & chorizo jambalaya

I made this recipe a few days ago and hadn't got around to posting it yet, which is a shame because it was actually very tasty. It was a modified version of this recipe on BBC GoodFood, which doesn't have nearly enough chilli in it for my taste. Also we didn't have any peppers but we did have some celery which was looking rather the worse for wear and needed eating.

Ingredients (in units of 'some', 'a bit' and the occasional 'dollop'):

• Some chopped chicken breasts, cut quite small (1 per person is quite generous)
• A medium onion, chopped
• Some celery, also chopped (or you could use peppers, or both)
• A handful of jalapenos, chopped
• Chorizo, cut into quite thin slices
• Garlic, crushed or chopped small
• A good glug of olive oil
• A dollop of lazy chilli/chilli paste/chilli powder (I use lots, but you may value your sinuses)
• Basmati rice (enough to feed everyone who will be eating)
• Boiling water or vegetable/chicken stock (1 1/2 times as much as rice, roughly)
• A tin of chopped tomatoes
• Red wine, if you have it
• Frozen peas

Method:

• Chop everything (you can do this as you go along, of course, just make sure you don't forget!) 
• Cook chicken in olive oil, then turf out into a convenient receptacle when cooked through. I added some paprika while cooking, but you don't have to.
• Fry garlic and chilli in olive oil left in the pot for a few seconds (until it smells delicious but before it starts to burn), then add onion.
• When onion is softening, add celery and jalapenos.
• When vegetables are mostly cooked, push to one side of pot and put the chorizo in the other side. Let it cook for a minute or so, until it starts releasing oil, then stir it all up together
• Add the cooked chicken and a glug of red wine. Enjoy the fumes. When the wine has reduced a bit, stir in the rice and leave it to soak up oil while you boil some water.
• Add stock and the tin of tomatoes.
• Cover the pot and let the rice do its thing. When almost soft, stir in some frozen peas. If not spicy enough for your tastes, add half a bottle of Tabasco.
• Serve!

The rentals are en route to not-so-sunny South Africa as I type, which of course means that it has briefly stopped raining. I'm off to have some delicious cold pizza now, of which more anon.

Queen of Fishcakes!

It is official: Clever Kelp is the queen of fishcakes. We arrived home late, after end-of-term concert etc, to find her at the stove in her cute apron, frying her spicy tuna burgers. These were served with sweet chilli sauce, boiled potatoes and a crunchy salad and made the hungry rentals purr!

The recipe is very simple. Boil two small potatoes until very soft, then mash them with a bit of butter. To this mash add:

• Two tins of tuna, drained
• One small onion, finely chopped and fried
• One small egg, beaten
• Plenty of paprika
• Tobasco if you like things spicy

Mix well, form into burgers and roll in plain flour. Fry them quite soon after making, as otherwise they get sticky again. 

Instead of dessert, we used up the ripe apricots that had been lurking in the fruit bowl, along with a mango, a couple of bananas and a generous helping of apple juice to make smoothies. They were rather delicious, as well as being very thick.

It is a good thing that we have been eating so well, as the weather has been RUBBISH! So much for it being summer!

Introducing Rainbow Fish

Rainbow Fish here. I am pleased to report that the state of cooking in Scotland has not yet reached the point where we need to be concerned. Came home to find a pot of chicken and chorizo jambalaya made by Clever Kelp. 'Twas brillig!

Welcome to the Kitchen

Welcome to Kitchen of Doom, a blog about cooking in Scotland, and probably various other places as well. This is the place where I, and most likely various other members of my swashbuckling family, will share recipes, life skills and rambling anecdotes. Come for the linguine, stay for the llamas.