The Sugar Bar

I have a disease and it’s not curable. And when it worsens, my financial health goes plummeting as well. This sticky situation one may be familiar with and call it the Shoppers’ Syndrome. I believe the release of the film ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ is an overt sign from the heavens to me. In other words, flippin’ sort my life out. Cut up all credit cards, debit cards, throw away VIP shoppers accounts, leave your Kate Spade wallet at home, ban yourself from getting on the train into town, ignore magazine adverts (this is going to be hard since my language paper focuses on beauty adverts) and so forth. Generally, practice self-restraint!

What a bummer.

Just when I was having fun, I now have to be very careful with my awful spending habits. And therefore, cooking becomes a little more exciting too. The task of the month? 1) Using ingredients to the max, i.e. cooking dishes that can last me forever. Right, I do exaggerate. But last me long enough so that I can delay the next trip to the supermarket. 2) Cooking dishes that I can keep for the next day. Given, I am a lazy arse. But this time that isn’t my excuse. Staying in the library working on my paper for 7 hours straight can really take it out of me. Living away from my parents, specifically from my mum, makes me miss home-cooking very much. Makes me miss coming back to mum’s dinner and eating with the rest of the family. A little tired, a little dizzy, cooking dinner for 1 is something I’m starting to feel a little restless and annoyed about. So it’s an easy way out when I can take out a pre-prepared meal (by myself, not by Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s or M&S), whack it in the microwave or oven and then tuck in.

Pre-prepared meals, especially if storebought, are usually rather boring. And in my dictionary of cooking/food, dishes can be as quirky, weird, special, and most importantly as fun as possible. This curry was created in a rather haphazard way, the process sort of like a try and error. A little special, not very aesthetically appealing. Very different from the usual Chicken Korma, Lamb Jalfrezi, etc. However, this was tasty as! And with the spices, it kept me nice and warm in front of the telly for Comic Relief, warming me-self well and good.

From now on, when I’m feeling a little dead inside, a little in need of comfort food, my advise? Eat curry!

What sort of curry? Get creative. Be special.

This makes about 2 large servings.

Tuna, Apple & Raisin Curry
Ingredients

1 can tuna, in springwater
about 3/4 cup water
1/2 can chopped tomatoes, with juices
1/2 a red onion, chopped
2 tbs balti curry paste
1/4 cup raisins
1/2 a Pink Lady apple, chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp hot chili powder
pinch of ground cinnamon

Heat some oil in a deep pan or wok. Add the onions and sauté. Now add the apples and sauté. Add the paprika and cumin and fry. Add the tuna followed by the balti curry paste and cook for about a minute. Add the chopped tomatoes, water and ground cinnamon, turning the heat down and let simmer for about 15 minutes. Taste curry a little in between the cooking process and should it need more spices, add a little by little to taste.

Serve with naan bread or rice. If kept til the next day, I suggest frying this with rice for an amazing curry fried rice!

Has anyone been watching ‘Big Chef Takes On Little Chef‘? Heston Blumenthal, owner and chef of 3 Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck in Berkshire, attempts to restore the British chain of motorway restaurants Little Chef from financial crisis by revamping its menu. I am actually hooked! 9pm Channel 4 every night. The tension between the owner of Little Chef and Heston just leaves me totally on edge. But what really draws me to this show is Heston’s creativity and innovativeness (that’s not a word isn’t it?) when it comes to cooking methods and creating (quote Little Chef’s ridiculous CEO) “taste explosions”. This man is famous for creating Bacon & Egg Ice Cream and serves dishes where you can listen to the sea as you eat – literally, an iPod in a conch shell! I wanna go the The Fat Duck. I admire this man who creates such amazing food. Some think it’s all poncy. I think it is wonderful. To be that daring and creative, on the verge of seeming radical is just brilliant.

So anyway, one must have the perfect relaxing comfort food for supper. TV food. No. I don’t mean frozen dinners. I mean something you make in advance, bang into the oven and have it ready in time for your favourite TV show. That’s what I did. Also, Ben recently got offered a job in the merchant navy. We’re all delighted for him. He can finally leave Starbucks for something better paying. This is my celebratory meal for him and also my own indulgence as I love fish pie a whole lot!

When it comes to pie, I don’t like to feel restricted with ingredients. As with cottage pie, shepherd’s pie, I like to bung in whatever I have in the fridge. This time, there obviously isn’t much, hence the name ‘Anything-Sorta-Goes’. Despite the lack of funky ingredients and a smoked fish, this still turned out amazingly well. If you’re not prepared to slave away for a long time in the kitchen, leave this to a day when you can. By the end of this, although my tummy was all cozy warm and satisfied, my shoulders were aching bad!

The pictures this time round are quite horrid, I admit. The lighting in the kitchen is bad and since daylight hours are short during British winter, and my camera is the shittiest piece of crap ever, I apologize really. I can vouch for this recipe, however, as it is honestly good and I will make this again for sure. Also, this recipe has earned me a promise – YES. a trip to The Fat Duck during the summer with Ben. He’ll probably have gotten his driving license by then so it’ll be a tranquil, afraid not, more like banging roadtrip to Berkshire and some gastro-delights at Heston’s. At 125 quid for a 12 course tasting menu, I am so certain the whole experience will be orgasmic and totally unforgettable!!

*Note: The cooking time for this is about 2 hours or so. It’d be great to use 1 smoked fish to give the pie more flavour and some shrimp for a variation of texture. If you like, you can even get creative and add more vegetables like fennel and peas. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any around. So this was deviating a little from the classic fare of an average British pub/restaurant ingredients wise.

This recipe was created to serve 2 — 1 man with a bottomless pit for a stomach and 1 lady who ate two scoops of pie. I used a whole round casserole dish and a small gratin dish for this.

Anything-Sorta-Goes Fish Pie
Ingredients

For the pie:
2 boneless salmon fillets, cut into chunks
1 boneless cod fillet, cut into chunks
2 medium carrots, cut into small cubes
1/2 a medium-sized onion, chopped
300ml fish or vegetable stock
500g floury potatoes
knob of butter
some skimmed milk
1 cup grated medium-strength cheddar cheese
1/2 cup fresh white breadcrumbs

For the white béchamel sauce:
30g butter
2 heaped tbs flour
stock from poaching the fish
3 tbs double cream
salt and pepper, for seasoning
mix of herbs such as dill, parsley, oregano

Have the stock ready in a large saucepan. Bring to the boil then add the vegetables and cook for about 3 minutes or so. Lower the heat. Add the fish and cook gently for 2 minutes. Drain the stock into a separate bowl. This cooking liquid will be used to make the sauce. Let it cool. Set aside the cooked fish and vegetables, keeping it slightly warm covered.

To make the sauce, melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan. Add the flour and stir in, letting it cook on low heat for 1 minute. Gradually add the cooled cooking liquid and stir until just incorporated. Bring to the boil, then lower heat and let simmer for 20 minutes. Add the double cream and simmer for another 10 minutes or until thick. Add the herbs, season and let cool for 15 minutes. The flavours of the herbs will infuse the sauce and it’ll thicken just slightly as it sits.

Fold the fish and vegetables into the sauce. Spoon into a large pie or casserole dish, filling to 3cm below the top. Let it set for about 30 minutes – this is so layering on the mash later will be a simpler task and wouldn’t mess up the top layer of pie.

Preheat oven 180d Celsius.

While waiting, peel, chop then boil the potatoes. Drain away the water once cooked. Mash with some butter, a little skimmed milk til smooth, and very fluffy. When the pies are set, pipe or layer on the mash potatoes evenly with a spatula, starting from the edges to seal it. Work one way round the edges and then fill the centre. Using a fork, ridge the top.

Bake 20 minutes. Then, remove from oven. Scatter cheddar cheese and breadcrumbs over the top. Bake for another 10 minutes until golden. Serve on warm plates.

Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins and should be unthinkable within the walls of a kitchen.

I must apologize firstly, for not posting at all; second, for not posting anything exciting; lastly, for being so damn boring and lazy! Life seems to be getting a little in the way, what with all the applications I have to prepare for, three massive essays and the random bursts of inspiration that hit me, which means having to go off somewhere with my laptop (nope, not to watch porn) to let it rip (I mean writing, chucking, rewriting) for hours. I can’t say that the future posts will be brilliant but I promise to post, in all honesty, quick lunch or sugar fixes that I prepare when I find time from my essays. It is partly true that I munch on junk now and again when I’m writing, or sometimes, forget to eat at all in the ‘heat of the moment’. But when I am ready and able to whip up something worthy of putting on a plate, I promise to photograph it and blog it! I’ve been awfully sad to have been apart from The Sugar Bar for such a long while now. It’s unforgivable.

Instead of resorting to lazy food, I hope to come up with clever quick dishes that are tasty, good to look at and not requiring ridiculous amounts of effort and time. Also, I’m feeling Christmas. The tree is arriving in a few days. And I’m thinking, Christmas cookies anyone?

So. Before I bugger off back to this monster of a thesis, let me just say that this recipe is pretty straightforward. Salt the mackerel for a few hours before grilling. Come back to it later and chuck it under the grill whilst you prepare the vegetables. It’s so quick, I can honestly say it’s a good student meal and healthy too! And if you’re in a bad way needing a salt-fix, this is great. Just remember, you gotta leave it to salt for a while or you ain’t gonna get any taste on the mackerel.

Wondering about servings? Split the mackerel down the bone and then half both portions. 1 mackerel fish should then serve up about 4 small portions, unless you’re hungry for more. The following recipe is good for 1.

Salt-Grilled Mackerel with Fried Shallots & Mentaiko on Long-stemmed Broccoli, Rocket & Baby Red Chards
Ingredients

1/4 of a mackerel fish
1 tbs crushed sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 shallot, sliced
1 tbs mentaiko of choice
2 tsp salted butter
handful of long-stemmed broccoli
handful of favourite salad leaves
black & white sesame seeds, for garnishing

Wash the mackerel and pat dry with a paper towel. Rub salt all over the fish and leave for about an hour.
Preheat grill to about 185d Celsius.
Season fish with pepper. Place mackerel on a grill tray under the grill for about 5 minutes or until just beginning to crisp up and brown.
In a frying pan with hot oil, fry the shallots till golden brown. Cook the broccoli in boiling water until al dente and then toss in butter. Layer out on a plate the salad leaves and broccoli. Then place fish on top and serve with mentaiko of choice. Finally, garnish with fried shallots and sesame seeds.