Crab Salad with Apple

 

Oh, all those plans I had, to spend Christmas with our friends aka the childcare bubble, and have some semblance of normality. I have bought plenty of food to please all tastes and diets (gluten free, vegetarian, meat eaters). But as they say, man proposes, God disposes. On the last day of school our son got poorly, and a few days later we discovered he tested positive and we all needed to self-isolate.

We informed our friends, and I felt rather guilty that they had to change their plans accordingly, and would need to buy and prepare their own Christmas meal. 

I had to re-think what to do with some of the foods. The turkey crown went in the freezer. I did cook a small ham for our boys at Christmas and also a nut roast, plus lots of veggies for grown-ups, but didn't bother with the cranberry sauce or any side dishes like pigs in blankets or stuffing. 

On the original menu I was planning to do a big platter with blini as a starter - with smoked salmon and crab meat, as well as vegetarian "scampi" and pickled carrots. The crab meat tin has been sitting in the fridge for several weeks, and finally I decided to make a crab salad with it. It is similar to the Soviet crab salad, though in the days of my childhood we rarely had access to the crab meat (you had to live somewhere nearby the sea to get access to this product, or be a member of the apparatchik's family), and used the seafood sticks, which of course, are anything but crab meat. 

For this quick and easy recipe you will need:

100g crab meat (or seafood sticks)

1 small apple, grated or finely chopped

2 hard-boiled eggs, grated or finely chopped

60g hard cheese (like Emmental), grated or cubed

1 small carrot, cooked and chopped finely

1 medium potato, cooked and chopped

3tbsp aioli with garlic (or garlic mayo)

juice of 1/2 small lime

lettuce, to serve in

First, cook a potato and carrot in slightly salted water. Peel and chot finely. Hard-boil a couple of eggs. Once cold, grate them.

In a big mixing bowl, mix together grated eggs, potato, carrot, crab meat, grated cheese. Add the aioli and lime juice, and mix well. 

If you don't have aioli, mayonnaise (with/out garlic) will do, and lime could be substituted with lemon juice. 

Season with salt and a bit of pepper.

Spoon the crab salad into salad leaves to serve.

There are several variations on the theme. Some cooks prefer to use rice rather than potato. Many add several tablespoons of tinned sweetcorn.

It's a lovely, quite light old-fashioned salad.

I have googled what could be a vegetarian/vegan substitute for crab meat, and apparently, it is a shredded jackfruit, palm or artichoke hearts. I haven't tried them as a crab meat substitute, so cannot vouch for how much the flavour is altered. I love artichokes in oil, and often use them in salads, but the taste is very distinct, and nothing like seafood. I guess, you just need to re-think the whole concept.

In this recipe I used Leon Aioli, which was one of the products from the latest Degustabox. This garlic mayo has been the heart of LEON restaurant menus since 2004. This mayo is made with aquafaba (chickpea stock) instead of eggs, and happens to be vegan. To be honest, if I didn't know it is made without eggs, I wouldn't have guessed. So, if you're doing a Veganuary (which I don't), and are looking for great subs for family favourites, this mayo is very creamy and tasty.

I Sea Pasta Tagliatelle from Seamore

If you watched the latest episode of Outlander season 3 on Amazon yesterday, you might remember the scene where Jamie asks the prison governor if he would allow prisoners to go on the moors to catch rabbits and collect seaweed from the shores. The governor seems to be taken aback, until Jamie explains that the seaweed is a food source and a known cure for scurvy.
Years ago, I remember reading The Camerons by Robert Crichton, and the famous scene with the kelp soup prepared by the poor Highlander Gillon.

These days of healthier food trends as well as challenges towards a more sustainable future, seaweed is becoming in vogue as an alternative to everyday foods.
Seamore is a brand on a quest to change the way we eat with their healthy seaweed range.
Seamores founder Willem Sodderland is on a mission to replace half the world's pasta with seaweed alternatives. While I think it's not going to happen very soon (and we are not ready to give up on pasta; it would cause a revolution and chaos in Italy), I'm happy to explore the healthy food niche and discover new foods, especially that I do enjoy seaweed products.
I often buy seaweed thins (I find them very addictive) and sea salt with seaweed.

Infographics credit: Seamore

I Sea Pasta Tagliatelle from Seamore is a low carb alternative to pasta. It is full of natural goodness, with 50% of your daily vegetables, 80% fewer calories and packed full of iodine, iron and Omega 3.
I Sea Pasta is available from Planet Organic for £5.99 and several London stores (check out My Organic Hunter).

I was very curious to try this alternative to pasta.
As I was cooking seaweed tagliatelle, our house started smelling like a beach on a hot day, with the salty seaweed baking in the sun. It's quite a pungent smell, not unpleasant but strong nevertheless.
It reminded me of our holiday to Agropoli in Italy, where the local beach was covered with big cushions of seaweed after every high tide.

I Sea Pasta Tagliatelle look like something you would kick with a foot on a beach.

What does it taste like? Definitely not like pasta, so you won't be able to deceive anyone. Not even like a squid ink black pasta. It tastes, well, like seaweed, which is not a criticism, just an observation.
I served it with a few prawns and tomatoes (fresh and sun-dried) scattered over seaweed, with a bit of chopped basil and mozzarella (I wasn't cooking this for vegetarians or vegans).
I think I will be also trying to add a little bit of this seaweed pasta to a fish-based soup.

One 100g pack of I Sea Pasta provides 4 servings when cooked. This is 100% wild, handpicked seaweed from Connemara, Ireland and Brittany, France.
Nutritional information: 178kcal per 100g uncooked pasta. It is a great source if fibre, protein, potassium, calcium, iodine and vitamin C.

It is non GMO, seastainable, vegan, gluten free, organic, low cal - all great credentials.
Once you cook it, the levels of potassium, sodium and iodine go down. If you fancy it super healthy, then soak it in cold water for 45 minutes rather than cook.
I confess I haven't tried it raw, I will leave this foodie discovery to you, please do share what you think with me if you have tried it uncooked.

Disclosure: I received a pack of I Sea Pasta for the purposes of testing and reviewing. All opinions are my own.

New foodie discoveries (August)

The summer is officially over today. The school is looming, and we look back at the summer with nostalgia and fond memories.
Last month we also tried a variety of new foods and drinks
New food products appear on the shelves of supermarkets on a daily basis. It's impossible to try them all. Some are limited editions and are available only for a short time, some come to stay, some get discontinued after a while, perhaps due to a lack of demand.

Here are some of our food discoveries that merit a mention this month.

Palacio de Oriente Squid Pieces in olive oil octopus style was one of the foods which appeared in the Mediterranean food promotion in Waitrose recently.
These specially selected large premium quality squid with tentacles are cut in the traditional "Octopus" style. Can be enjoyed either hot or cold in any dish which uses Octopus or Squid as an ingredient.
Surprisingly low calorie - 120kcal per 72g (drained weight of the tinned squid)
Produced in Spain.

Very handy to have in the pantry for quick salads and pasta.

Another product which I have spotted and bought in the same Waitrose Mediterranean promotion was Merchant Gourmet Smoky Spanish-style grains & rice. It is a combination of wholegrain rice, wheatberries and black barley, cooked with red peppers and a good pinch of smoked paprika.
This is one of my new favourites. I have already bought several packs to have in the kitchen as a base for quick meals.

I have tried it with chilli prawns, and it was delicious. Use it as a base for either vegetarian or meaty/flexitarian meals.
It has low saturated fat, it's a good source of fibre and is suitable for vegans.
Allergens alert: it contains gluten (wheatberries and barley).

Recipe suggestion: heat up the rice with a dash of water, mix with tinned (drained) octopus, slice hard boiled eggs and avocado and arrange on top of the meal. Serves 2.

Most Sundays I go to Waitrose an hour before closing time. There are rarely big savings to be had, nothing like I see on Instagram of one blogger who buys a whole trolleyfull of food for a couple of quid in Tesco before closing time. Our Waitrose is rather stingy at giving good discounts.
But whenever they have sushi at reduced price, I buy it. I love sushi. A couple of weeks ago I have found an Aloha Poké next to the sushi.
I have never heard of the Aloha Poké, but as it had sushi rice and seaweed, I couldn't resist buying it.

This is a Hawaiian salad/Salmon Poké - a poke bowl with sushi rice, raw salmon, wakame seaweed salad, edamame beans, rocket & spring onion with soy sesame dressing & avocado mousse.
It's a delicious flavourful salad.
Don't think I'll be buying it often, but if it comes at a reduced price, I'll gladly buy it again.

Skyr yogurt has been around for a while, but there are so many good yogurts in the shops that I haven't had a chance to try it until recently.
This Icelandic-style yogurt is a source of high protein, it's fat free and has reduced sugar.
The tubs promise -  "It's a delicious way to stay healthy"
Smooth and not sweet at all, even with a layer of berries.

Yollies have recently added a new flavour - chocolate - to their range of yogurt lollies. When Eddie and I spotted them in Sainsbury's, he was very excited to try them. However, after eating just one he mentioned that he prefers the strawberry flavour.

Yollies are a good source of calcium and vitamin D. They contain no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. Suitable for vegetarians. A lovely snack to add to a school lunchbox. There are 200kcal per 100g pack, which makes it 50kcal per yogurt lolly.

This summer we have been enjoying Paul Hollywood Ready To Bake Crusty Rolls a lot.
These part baked flour dusted white rolls with added rye flour are very handy to have in the pantry.

We don't have access to fresh bread in the village where we stay in Cornwall, and cannot have grocery deliveries on a daily basis. These delicious rolls, made with a slow fermented starter, are easy to bake, it takes about 8-10 minutes in the oven. They have a crispy crust and soft inside, which is just perfect for a butter and jam sandwich.

We ate them hot, straight from the oven, with a warning "Very hot, eat carefully or you'll burn your tongue!"
Each roll is 120kcal. The packs are suitable for home freezing
Though pre-baked, these rolls contain no preservatives.
A bit ironic that Mr Hollywood has a range of pre-made bread, when he's extolling virtues of bread made from scratch, but we are glad he did it. These rolls are fabulous. Big well done, Mr Hollywood!
There is also a seeded variety, which we haven't tried yet.

Talking of bread creations, if you are in Waitrose, pick a few of Waitrose 1 Seeded Cheese Straws, they are very moreish, though not cheap, at £1.35 for a small stick.

Another big favourite of the last summer is Hellman's Australian Sweet Grill sauce. We first sampled it on a Bank Holiday in May, when we had friends over for a BBQ.
It is an excellent sauce which can be used as a marinade, glaze or dip.
Made with honey, molasses, white wine vinegar, sugar, tomato paste, anchovies, spices and more, it has been inspired by Australian recipes.
It's great with sausages, grilled meat or even fish. I found it in Tesco, but it might be available in all major supermarkets.

Tesco Finest is a range, where we have quite a few family favourites.
Their recent addition to the range includes Tesco Finest Tri-colour Tomatoes on the Vine.
They look so pretty and taste sweet and tangy.

These tomatoes are great in salads, but also tasty just on their own, as an accompaniment to fried potatoes.

Since our Italian from bean to coffee machine has died over a year ago, we acquired a small Nespresso, and I have been buying different brand varieties to find the one we love the best.
I'm not a big fan of Starbuck's, but I was curious to test its nespresso capsules.
Starbucks Guatemala Antigua Espresso (Nespresso compatible capsules), with cocoa & subtle spice, medium roast was not too bad, but not my favourite either.

And I'm finishing my eclectic round-up of the latest foodie discoveries with a delightful Cornish chocolate. I love dark chocolate, ginger and Cornwall, so for me it was a win-win purchase. We bought a few bars on our trip to Penzance, to take home as souvenirs. But one of the bars has conveniently got broken in the suitcase, so we ate it.
I also adore the design on this chocolate bar, it's so cute and makes me smile.

Did you discover a food product recently which made you smile?

Sea bass with prawns and black garlic ketchup

You would have thought that with over a hundred cook books at home, I would be more organised with the meal planning.
I admire people who plan their dinner menus a week in advance. Though I often have a shopping list with me with ingredients to buy for that evening, there are days when I have no clue as to what I might serve for dinner. I wander around the shop, looking at the ingredients, trying to find inspiration.
Last Friday I stopped by the deli fish counter in Waitrose (they have 20% off promotion each Friday) and decided to buy two sea bass fillets.

Sea bass with prawns and black garlic ketchup
Ingredients:
2 sea bass fillets
3tbsp olive oil
1 medium carrot
a handful of baby tomatoes
a squeeze of lemon juice
3tbsp black garlic ketchup
fresh parsley, chopped
Peel and slice a carrot, and place in the oiled roasting dish. Place the fish fillets on top, scatter the tomatoes around the dish. Spread black garlic ketchup over the fish and squeeze a bit of lemon juice over. Cook in the oven at 180C for about 20+ minutes. Add the prawns in the last five minutes of cooking.
Serve hot, with a bit of fresh parsley sprinkled on the top.

In this recipe I used a Black Garlic Ketchup, an innovative product from Hawkshead Relish. The flavour of black garlic is created with baking whole, fresh garlic bulbs for 40 days at a very low temperature creating an extraordinary flavour.
"Combining the pureed garlic cloves by hand with fresh tomatoes, olive oil & Anglesey sea salt this ketchup sauce is the ultimate addition to cooked meats, tartlets, potato wedges, roast veg, shell fish, stews and glazes".

Image credits: Hawkshead Relish

Maria Whitehead, co-owner of Hawkshead Relish, says: "The flavour of black garlic is exquisite & relatively new to the British palate, although seen on some adventurous menus, we wanted to bring this tremendous innovation to the public in a way that it can be easily appreciated & enjoyed! We've made it in a way that the unadventurous will just love as a dynamic dip for chips, to those who will delight in its versatility in adding luscious flavour in cooking & preparation".
Handmade with optimum quality ingredients & completely natural without any artificial flavouring, colouring or additives, free from gluten & nuts as well as suitable for vegetarians.
It is rich, smooth, sweet, almost treacle-like in appearance and consistency, with a good garlicky punch.

This excellent condiment could be added as an ingredient to a whole variety of dishes.
For example, yesterday I cooked a one-pan chicken and vegetable dish. I have sliced two sweet peppers, a big courgette and drizzled them with the olive oil, before placing a chicken breast joint on top. Drizzle more olive oil over the chicken, season with a bit of salt and pour a mix of 2tbsp of maple syrup, a good squeeze of lemon juice and 2tbsp black garlic ketchup. Cook at 180C for 40+ minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Add more black garlic ketchup on top in the last 10 minutes of cooking. Serve hot with crusty bread.

Have you tried this innovative ketchup?

Disclosure: I received a bottle of ketchup for the purposes of testing and reviewing. All opinions are our own.

Seafood Fregola Sarda

First time I heard of Fregola Sarda was just over a month ago, when I had a masterclass on Southern Italian cooking with Francesco Mazzei at his restaurant Sartoria. He offered to show me how to cook several dishes. I read the menu of Sartoria with great interest, and asked what Fregola Sarda was, as I've never come across this dish before. As it happened, it is a Sardinian type of pasta. It looks like a giant couscous from Israel. It's made of rolled semolina dough, shaped into mini-balls of 2-3mm in diameter and baked in the oven. It is used in soups and stews, often with seafood.
After the class, Francseco gave me a big bag of goodies to take home, including most delicious Italian breads, pasta including some Fregola Sarda and wonderful cakes too.

I tried to recreate the dish I sampled in Sartoria, though I cooked with less glamorous ingredients (I didn't have the lobster or lobster stock). It was still absolutely delicious. Next time I'm visiting Italy, I'll see if I can find this specific pasta.to bring back home.
I looked up for some fregola sarda recipes online, some suggest pre-cooking the pasta.

Seafood fregola sarda
Ingredients:
1 sweet onion, finely chopped
3tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
1 tomato chopped
2tbsp chopped parsley
250g fregola sarda
500ml fish stock
500ml water
250g fish pie mix
200g shrimps

Finely chop a sweet onion, and fry it in a deep frying pan with the olive oil for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the chopped garlic, parsley and tomato in the last couple of minutes of frying the onion.
Add the pasta shapes, and cook for a minute, stirring, until the pasta is well coated. Add the fish stock and water, cook for about 5 minutes, then add the fish pie mix and shrimps and cook simmering for another 10 minutes. Season with sea salt.
Serve hot with a chunk of bread to mop up all the juices.

Oriental mushroom and prawn soup

Once my boys are asleep, I'm usually too tired in the evening to watch TV, but I find reading in bed might be conducive to nodding off more smoothly. If not reading the never-ending War and Peace (I swear, the war scenes are the best sleeping remedy), then I pop into one of the famous parenting forums for the latest gossip.
Thus recently I came across a discussion of myths perpetuated on forums, including a never-ending chicken. I confess that it made me smile. I don't doubt that in some families who have hearty appetites or simply  bigger number of family members, there are no chicken leftovers.
In our case, we always have leftovers, I'm not inventing stories just for the blogging purposes.
Whenever I buy a whole chicken and cook a roast, I save the carcass and small pieces like wings to prepare a fresh stock for a soup.

Oriental mushroom and prawn soup
Ingredients:
chicken stock made with a chicken carcass + 2 wings
1 carrot
1 leek
1 vegetable stock cube
1tbsp olive oil
200g mixed speciality mushrooms like enoki, eryngii, shiitake and oyster
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1tbsp soy sauce
juice of 1/2 lime
200g king prawns

First prepare the stock or broth with the chicken leftovers and peeled whole carrot.
After simmering the stock with the carrots and stock cube, I discard the bones, leaving any pieces of meat for the soup. Take the carrot out and chop it into smaller pieces, put back in the broth together with the finely sliced leek. Cook for about 5 minutes.
Slice mushrooms and give them a quick fry with the olive oil and a clove of garlic. Add the mushrooms, soy sauce, lime juice and fresh king prawns (shells removed) to the soup and cook for another 3-4 minutes.
Serve hot. Sprinkle some chopped fresh coriander or flat leaf parsley before serving.

This is a lovely light soup, flavourful and fragrant. I buy a big pack of Oriental mushrooms at Sainsbury's. The same pack of exotic mushrooms in Waitrose is twice as much. If you cannot find this selection, you can use either oyster or shiitake mushrooms.

Prawn salad with sweet beetroot

Let's just say my guys are not keen on beetroot. A real shame, as in a true Russian fashion, I love it. The beet soup borscht was (and is) my Mum's speciality, and when I grew up, I have eaten it regularly. Plus the Russians have a variety of salads which include a delicious beetroot as one of their ingredients. When I moved to the UK, I discovered that the Brits have a love-hate relationship with this root vegetable. They also pickle it to death until it tastes of nothing but vinegar. It's not easy to find a decent beet pickle.That's why I was a bit uneasy when the latest Degustabox arrived with a jar of pickled beets.

Bourne & Wallis British Sweet Sliced Beetroot is cooked and packed in Cambridgeshire. This was a brand I wasn't familiar with before. That's what I like about Degustabox, you receive foods and drinks you wouldn't usually buy or even know of.

Bourne & Wallis produces "a range of contemporary tasting pickles rooted in the Victorian pursuit of preserving, using only naturally grown vegetables, herbs, spices and fine traditional vinegars"

Their sweet sliced beetroot is lovely. You get a combination of flavours - sweet and sour. You can actually taste the sweet vegetable itself, which is great. 

I'm going to look out to try any other products from the range, as I love a good pickle.

I have been munching this pickle straight from the jar, but also used it in a simple salad.

It's not exactly a recipe, more of a suggestion. I am not doing a Nigella and claiming that I've created a recipe, when I only just assembled a few ingredients together as a quick meal. 

I used 1 pack of Whitby Seafoods Prawns in Garlic & Ginger, one big tomato per person, an avocado, a handful of caperberries and a  few tablespoons on pickled beetroot, all drizzled with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I cooked the breaded prawns in the oven for 10 minutes, and assembled the salad while the prawns were still piping hot. A quick and easy meal. And very tasty too.

Crab, lemon and cheese souffle (The Cornish house)

I feel affinity with Cornwall, and bought the Cornwall-inspired trilogy by Liz Fenwick purely on the basis of its titles. I knew nothing about the author or her novels. I really wanted to like The Cornish House by Liz Fenwick. I truly did.
I liked the cover illustration, the blurb sounded mildly interesting too.
I found the setting fascinating, an old house with a sad history, which keeps repeating in the devastating lives of its inhabitants. Old houses all have a tale to tell, and Trevenen has its share of tragedies and secrets, including a ghost.
Maddie, an artist, who was recently widowed, inherits a house in Cornwall (very conveniently, as looking after her dying husband has left her with a lot of debts, so she had to sell her house in London). Her step-daughter Hannah has severe behavioural problems. The relationship between two female protagonists is at the heart of this novel.
The story was quite cliched in many aspects. There's a handsome dark Cornishman (of course! are there any other in Cornwall?!), a love interest of Maddie. And another man: a viking with chiselled jaws. Love triangle develops under a watchful eye of a hating step-daughter. Well, add the whole village to it, as apparently everybody knows everything that goes on.
The village gossips who come across you in the pharmacy exactly when you buy a pregnancy test.
Knees go week. The earth moves after a kiss under a mistletoe, etc.
The best part for me was the story of the old house.
It's the characters I had some issues with.
I felt like slapping both Maggie and her stepdaughter Hannah. Hannah, for being so obnoxious that it was becoming too tedious. Maggie, for letting her stepdaughter treat her that way. She's an adult, and she should have set the boundaries. Hannah sounds like a teenager from hell, not very believable as a character, more of a caricature, of what an evil stepchild should be like. I also found hard to believe that Maggie would go along with her dying husband's decision. If she wanted a child that much, she should not have gone through what she did.
Her new flame Mark too. Most people do mistakes in life, and have tragedies too, but that doesn't make them behave like idiots, or at least not all of them.
I wanted to know more about the house than the main protagonists, who annoyed me one by one.
Tamsin? I cannot abide nosey people who think they have a right to ask everything about your life.
I think the only character I liked was Old Tom.

Saying all that, I now moved on to the second book in the trilogy, A Cornish Affair. So far it hasn't been connected to the first novel in any way.

There were a few mentions of the food in the novel. I liked the sound of the crab souffle.

"The souffle melted in her mouth. Maddie would love to know how the chef blended the crab, lemon and cheese in such a divine way.
"The starter please you?" Gunnar smiled.
"Very much so. It's so light yet so rich. Would you like a taste?"

Crab, lemon and cheese souffle
Ingredients:
melted butter, about 30g, enough to coat four ramekins
breadcrumbs, 2-3tbsp
crabmeat of 1 crab (over 200g)
zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp butter, melted
2tbsp self-rasing flour, heaped
150ml semi-skimmed milk
150ml double cream
75g grated Grana Padano cheese
1tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped
3 egg yolks
4 egg whites
salt, pepper

First deal with the crab. I bought a ready-cooked crab from Tesco, claws and all bits and bobs still there. For a fiver it was a big beast.
It took me a while to remove the meat from all the pieces. I don't have any special kitchen tools for crab eating, as I don't buy it often, and when I do, it's already dressed, i.e. it's just a big shell filled with meat, without any legs etc. I used heavy kitchen scissors to open the claws and a wooden toothpick to get the meat out.

If you don't want all the faffle, just buy a tin of crab meat in brine though the taste won't be as good.
Butter the ramekins with the melted butter and sprinkle with fine breadcrumbs inside. Shake off the excess breadcrumbs.
In a medium sized pan melt 1tbsp of butter, then stir in the flour, cook stirring for a minute. Pour milk and cream a little bit at a time, keep stirring until you get a smooth creamy consistency. Add the zest and grated cheese, mix well. remove from the heat and beat in the egg yolks. Add the crabmeat (I used both white and dark meat) and chopped dill. Season well.
In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until all fluffy, then carefully fold the egg whites into the crab-cheese mixture.
Ladle the mixture into the ramekins.
Place the ramekins into a big baking tray and pour enough water around them about halfway up.
Put the tray in the oven preheated to 180C and bake for 35+ minutes until they're golden brown and all risen.

My souffles looked pretty puffed and quite high when I took the tray out of the oven. By the time I found my camera, they went down, eeek.
One day I will bake a perfectly risen souffle and keep it that way until I serve it.

They were delicious, if not perfect in shape. I can imagine the hosts of GBBO would tut-tut at my semi-floppy souffle, but hey, my family is more forgiving.
I did read you need to add a bit of cream of tartar to the egg whites for the souffle to keep its shape better. Have you tried it? Any tips on making a perfect souffle?