kai sen udon

kai sen udon
Originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg

Another 'noodle post'. This one is a (very) quick and easy dish that we prepared yesterday (Friday) evening. While cycling past Cho Mee, the Chinese Supermarket in Mill Road on my way home, a quick glance told me that they had taken delivery on some fish earlier in the day. Whee! This was exciting news because Cho Mee is one of the few places we can easily get really fresh fish here in Cambridge - at a reasonable price. I popped in and bought a very fresh sea bass and a handful of great-looking tiger prawns. While I was shopping, I tried to justify buying a bunch of razor clams too but failed - and left them where they were.  Maybe next week... Anyway, when we got home I looked in my Wagamama Cookbook (I was in the mood for noodles...) for a suitable recipe. I found this one. As it happens, we didn't have all of the ingredients called for but we were able to improvise with things like Chinese fish balls and spring onions. Remarkably, just few minutes of working together in the kitchen yielded this very tasty and satisfying dish.  I would have been eager to work far harder to achieve this result!  I heartily recommend this recipe (and the book!) to my noodle-loving friends!

I will post the recipe at a later date so 'stay tuned'!

Happy 'slurping'!

Pizza with Cheese and Anchovy

Pizza with Cheese and Anchovy
Originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg

I had a lazy weekend, punctuated, now and then, with bursts of activity. The activity was pizza-making - my first pizzas in a long, long time. Between working at my new job and my new-found love of bread baking, there has been little time to indulge in pizza-making. Today I managed to do it! It certainly helped that I made our bread on Saturday, leaving today free for pizza. The recipe was very simple and only the mozzarella was bought especially for this purpose. Everything else was in the store cupboard. (Hooray! My tendency to 'hoard' food pays off, once again!)  The bottoms of the pizzas, with the exception of the one pictured above, were not cooked as much as I would have liked. They really needed another couple of minutes to be more crisp. I plan to solve that fairly soon by getting myself a stone to cook my pizzas on. I'll be sure to post when I get one!

I made 3 pizzas - plain packaged mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and anchovy and mozzarella and goat's cheese. They were all good and each of the steps involved were gentle and easy to execute. There was *way* too much pizza, though, in the end. We'll be having pizza tomorrow!

Happy baking!

Dorade with Fennel and Orange

Dorade with Fennel and Orange
Originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg

I been away too long - but that doesn't mean that I haven't been cooking! Today Steve and I went in search of fish - and we found it. Earlier in the week we'd received our weekly box of local, organic vegetables, which included fennel. What to do with fennel?? Well, Googling around provided the answer, as usual. This recipe is courtesy of Beyond Salmon. Thanks, Helen! It was very tasty, indeed.

More to come - I am a bit behind in my blogging! x

Choucroute Garnie

Choucroute Garnie
Originally uploaded by Lisa Fagg

This is one of the first dishes I cooked after getting back from France earlier this year. My mother first introduced me to this dish when I called her asking what to do with kielbasa sausage other than treating it like an overgrown frankfurter. She suggested this traditional Alsace dish of sauerkraut flavoured with juniper berries and 'garnished' with sausages. It was with much expectation, then, that I ordered this dish in an Alsatian restaurant. I was really impressed at the variety of the meats that were in this dish - an effect I tried to duplicate here. The 'authentic' dish also has pork and thick bacon in it. Next time I'll try adding more meats. All in all, it's a simple repast; easy to prepare, satisfying and warming. Not much to look at on the plate, though!