St Martins Weekend Fish Pie

For various reasons we decided to celebrate St Martins day, but least because of its religious nuances, more because of the Goose and also it was The Nordic Film Festival in Lübeck and My daughter and partner and our dear friend Kalle were coming to stay.

Bit of Luxurious Fish Pie.

 My Daughter and partner were coming to stay for the weekend, they would be arriving Friday evening and as normal hungry (when are they ever not?). So I decided on something that could be made up front and just slipped into the oven either just before or on arrival, so it was a pie, always a good one that can be made up front, We decided on a Fish Pie as it is easy to assemble, can be made well before hand and is one of Janice’s favourites (and surprise, surprise also Linda’s).

I sorted out what fish I had in the freezer, I had of course plenty of cod from my last fishing trip, I had a few pieces of Pollack, some frozen King Prawns, a small amount of Fruiti-de-Mare . I went to my local fish monger (Gosch) to see what was offer, I bought 2 filets of Plaice, a nice piece of Tuna, a piece of smoked Halibut (this was in place of the none existent smoked haddock) a slice of hot smoked salmon (Stremmellachs) and some cooked prawns. So that was the fish taken care of.

Ingredients:

1kg Selection of fish both smoked and unsmoked.

500ml of milk

1 clove of garlic, crushed

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 tsp of mace

1 pinch of cinnamon powder

2 bay leaves

Remove the skin and bones from the fish

In a saucepan, add this to the milk and add all of the above spices, onion and garlic, heat gently and allow to infuse at a very low heat for  30 mins. Strain the liquor through a hair sieve, discard the residue. 

Poach the rest of the fresh and defrosted fish in this, when cooked, remove from the liquor with a slotted spoon into an oven-proof flat terrine. Break the smoked fish into bite sized pieces and scatter with the cooked prawns

In a clean saucepan make a Roux, with 30g of butter and 30g of plain flour, slowly adding the warm poaching liquor while whisking all of the time, allow to cook out, the resulting sauce should just coat the back of a spoon, add a good handful of defrosted garden peas.

Pour the resulting sauce over the fish in the terrine, cover with cling film and put into the fridge overnight.

Next day make your potato topping.

1.5kg of floury potatoes

50g of butter

50ml of catering cream (you can use real cream if you wish)

1 large egg

Small handful of chopped parsley

50g of grated cheese (Emmentaler, Greyér, Cheddar or whatever takes tickles your fancy)

1 heaped tsp of English mustard

Salt and white pepper.

Peel and boil your potatoes until they are just starting to break up, strain and allow to cool a little, push through a ricer, add the egg and beat in slowly, add the butter and cream (warmed together) beating with a wooden spoon until smooth and creamy, stir in the mustard and the parsley.

Add the cheese, reserving 10g for the top, adjust the seasoning (you may not require salt, depending on the cheese).

Using a palate knife and starting at the outside, pile the topping over the fish filling (none of the filling should squidge out as it will be set firm from being cooled overnight). Now run the back of a fork along the top of the topping (this is not only for decoration but also makes for crispy browning, sprinkle with the remaining cheese.

This can be set aside in the fridge until required.

Pre-heat the oven (fan assisted 180°C) and place the pie on a grid in the oven for 15 minutes, raising temperature to 200°C for a further 5 minutes to crisp up top. (You could put it under the grill if you wish for the last 5 minutes). Serve at once, we had it with broccoli.

A nice crisp white wine goes excellently with this; we had a German White Burgundy. 

My Stockelsdorf Pasties (after the Cornish art)

We had, had a very nice weekend and I was wondering what to cook for dinner (I am now a full trained houseman), I thought that as we had really enjoyed our Cornish Pasties from Helston, I would make a batch for our evening meal. I was wondering what type of pastry was used to encase the filling as I remembered the pastry was very nice and flaky.  This had lead me down the road of thinking it could have been puff, though I had my doubts, after a discussion with some members of the wildfoodboard.info, I was informed that it wasn’t puff but short crust, but a flaky short crust ( seem to remember “Wor Mam” making this for her pasties, but that had been lost  somewhere in my remembering cells. I also had a look at a lot of recipes and these all confirmed this.

It is also the general opinion that beef skirt is the meat to be used, the other ingredients being turnip, (Swede for the foreigners amongst you) potato, onion, plenty of pepper and salt.

I found a nice recipe in a pie book that I had and with a few twists of my own used that as the basis of my pastry and filling.

So here it is.

Rough puff pastry

425g of flour
100g of lard
100g of butter
Good pinch of salt
Enough water to pull it all together (not too much it should be quite a firm dough)
1 beaten egg to seal and glaze

Method:

Freeze the butter and lard for a couple of hours. Mix the flour and salt into a basin and grate the fats into this, mix in with the back of a knife until it looks like very course bread crumbs, add enough water  and bring together into a ball (do not over knead). Wrap in cling film and chill for half an hour.

While you are waiting make the filling:

300g of beef skirt (my butcher had no skirt so I got some well-marbled rump steak)
225g of turnip
225g of potato
1 medium onion (I used 3 shallots)
1 tbsp. of veg oil
Plenty of pepper
A teaspoon of marigold vegetable stock

Dice all of the vegetables and the beef into uniform sizes, quite small approx. 5mm

Mix together and add a good sprinkling of pepper (some say white, but I like fresh ground black), here my recipe differed from most as this one said add 1 table spoon of oil, this I did as I could see that it would help in the cooking of the filling. I also added a few finely chopped thyme leaves, not a lot but just enough to give it a subtle taste. Normally it a Cornish pasty would have salt added but I used marigold vegetable stock powder to give it the salt content.

So the filling is mixed

Cut the ball of pastry into 4 pieces, form into balls and roll out on a floured board and place a 20cm plate on top and cut around to form 4 discs, I found I had enough off cuts to make another disc so though my recipe said makes 4 mine made 5.

I have been informed that traditionally the true Cornish Pasty has the plait on the side (it was originally not eaten, as it would have been used by the tin miners to hold it and because of the  muck and dirt would be thrown down the mine for the Pixies or whatever that small folk are called that live down the mines ). Mine not being made in Cornwall and up here on the Baltic, pixies are as rare as rocking horse poo on the moon, mine went on the top, I did manage to get a rope type twist, but I will have to practice to get it a bit better, I suppose I would have gotten a “he tries hard but not with a lot of success”.

So filling piled in the middle egg wash round one half of the circle and then joined together at the top and using finger and thumb managed a rope plait (of sorts). Egg wash all over the top and pierce with a knife in a couple of places to allow the steam to escape.

Place them on a baking tray covered with baking paper (or a silicon mat if you’re really up to date)

Put them into a pre-heated oven (fan assisted) at 180°C for about 40 minutes until the they are golden brown, if they are browning too quickly turn off the fan  or reduce the temperature and just use top and bottom heat.

Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.

 

Turn up the oven and place your  oven chips in (I used McCain ones)at the required temperature.

Heat your beans in the microwave (or you can dirty another pot if you wish).

Linda just arrived through the door as the meal was ready, so it was Baltic Pasty with oven chips, baked beans and a splodge of brown sauce.

These below are before the embellishments

Not bad, not bad at all.

Tricky Dicky’s Plum Duff.

 

I have just finished making my Festive puds for this year, I don’t know if they will be all eaten but I put enough rum in to fill all of the tot glasses on the old HMS Ark Royal.

I started last Thursday soaking the currents and cranberries in rum. At the same time I soaked the prunes in Brandy (Weinbrandt). But let me say this is a recipe straight out of my head, I have made Christmas puds and over the years have used a mixture of “Wor Mams, Nigel, Marks and Sparks, Marguite Patten, Keith Floyd and the Diabetic UK one. This time I thought I would go for it on my own, so here are the ingredients to My Plum Duff  

150g big juicy sultanas

200g raisins
100g dried cranberries
200ml dark rum

Soak the above fruits in the rum for at least 24 hours (mine was 3 days)

100g dried Apricots (diced)

 

100g dried figs (diced)

100g dried dates (diced)

50g candied ginger
100g Glazed Cherries (diced)

100g dried soft prunes (diced)

100ml brandy
25g diced candied lemon peel
25g diced candied orange peel
200g suet (mine was real pukka gen, but the squeamish can use vegetable)
250g dark soft brown sugar
2 table spoons of black treacle
350g flour
100g soft bread crumbs
100g chopped walnuts
50g nibbed almonds
1 large carrot grated
3 large eggs beaten
Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Zest and juice of 1 orange
1 tsp of mixed spices
½  tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 nutmeg grated

1 bottle of dark stout like beer (I used German Köstring black beer)

I put the soaked fruits and the chopped dried fruits, peel, grated the carrot and gave it a good mixing (to distribute the alcohol evenly, we don’t want some being more intoxicated than the rest).

Added the rest of the dry ingredients and gave it another stir (I done this on Stir-up-Sunday so had to give it a real good stir as it wouldn’t be a proper Christmas duff if you don’t. (P.S. I forgot to make a wish, anyone one want to make a one on my behalf?)

Next added the liquids (eggs, and fruit juices) and finaly adding the beer a little at a time until it reaches a good dropping consistency (at this point you can cover the bowl put in a cool place and allow to macerate for a few hours (some of mine didn’t get cooking until Monday and Tuesday)

Grease a pudding bowl and fill tamping down. Cut out a round of grease proof paper and place on the top, cover with a piece of pleated aluminium foil, tie this with kitchen string around the lip. (the pleat is to allow for expansion). I used my slow cooker for the dariol moulds and the pressure cooker for the large pudding basin.

Put a grid in the bottom of the SC and PC put the basins and moulds into them, poured boiling water into the base so that it came half way up the sides of the moulds and basin, lids on.

Timings.

I put the SC on high and put the timer on for 6 hours,

When the PC came up to blood (I have an automatic that has a little red pop-up marker) turn the heat down so that the PC just merrily blubbers along. 2 ½ hours later, turn the heat off and allow to cool down, you can run it under cold water, but I think the extra bit of cooking won’t do it any harm.

The Sunday roast a leg of Lamb

Roast leg of lamb

2.2kg of leg of lamb

1 leek white only

2 carrots

1 large piece of celeriac (or stalk of celery)

1 onion

A couple of tomatoes (I used 4 small ones, the last of Linda’s balcony harvest)

10 cloves of garlic cut 2 into 15-20 slithers

 5-6 salted anchovy filets in oil cut into 15-20 slithers

Bunch of mixed herbs

2 stalks of rosemary (picked into sprigs)

1 tsp. capers

400 ml of vegetable stock

100 ml of red wine

Remove the lamb from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature, trim any excess fat.

Roughly dice the carrot, leek, celeriac, onion put this into a deep roasting tin, peel the remainder of garlic cloves, ¼ the tomatoes and put into the roasting tin,

 

 

With a small sharp knife make small slits in the leg of lamb (15-20 depending on the size and how much you like garlic) push a slither of garlic, anchovy and a sprig of rosemary into each slit. 

 

 Chop the capers and add to the roasting tin, add the herbs (you can remove some of the thyme leaves and sprinkle over the  leg of lamb) 

 

 

 

Put the oven on to 225°C to heat.

Make your stock and add the wine, pour the whole lot into the roasting tin. Put the studded leg on top and drizzle all over with olive oil, give it a good grinding of salt and pepper.

Into the oven (rare 12 min per 450g – medium rare(pink) 15 min per 450g), cook at 220-225°C for 20 minutes and then reduce to 180° until it is cooked, if you used a meat thermometer for rare you are looking for 60° at the centre and for pink 65 - 70°.

 

I cannot help you for anything else, I only cook well done meat in a casserole, stew or Eintopf. I always use a meat thermometer when roasting, it takes the guess work out of the roasting process. There are two main types a round analog one with a long steel probe, this gives the oven temperature as well as the internal meat temperature, these are very cheap and well worth the few pounds – Euros investment. Then there are the digital ones, you can pay a hell of a lot of dosh for a real good one (I have an engineering one with about 5 different functions including measuring high temperature flue gasses) but even a simple one is very good and can be used for measuring freezer temperatures as well as oven temperatures

I keep a jug of water to add to the base of the pan in case it is evaporating too quickly (keep having a peek).

Remove the leg of lamb put it into a dish and cover with aluminium foil to rest, the resting process is as critical to good joint of meat as the rest of the cooking procedure, as it allows the juices that have been driven to the centre of the piece of meat to slowly permiate outwards making for a juicy, succulant joint

 

 

Pour the roasting tin liquids and vegetables through a sieve, into a sauce pan, pushing as much of the liquid out of the vegetables as possible.

Add another slug of red wine if you want a stronger tasting sauce, bring to a rapid boil and reduce by half, add 2 tsps. of redcurrant jelly to the sauce and thicken with a buerre manié (made by mixing butter and flour together at a ratio of 50/50).

When it is thickened to your liking, strain once again into a sauce boat. Serve with the lamb.

Traditionally roast lamb is served with mint sauce and we are very traditional.

A jolly good plate of meat.








The accompaniments, Yorkshire puddings, roast vegetables (parsnips, potatoes, beetroot and kohlrabi), glazed carrots and Brussel sprouts.

Linda Has also made a Damson crumble for pudding, I only had a tiny little bit honest Gov.