Recipe #45 – hot spicy fish

Hot and spicy fish or samak harra (under Coriander, page 234 in my edition of the book) was my first recipe since returning from 2 weeks holidays overseas. My jet lag forced to me to look for something that was going to be easy and this certainly fit the bill. But its ease to make was overtaken by its tastiness from the first bite. 

The combination of coriander, garlic, lemon and walnuts (left over from previous walnutty recipes)  together with a small palatte of spices was simply a superb sauce / baked topping that perfectly accompanied the beautiful whole sweetlip that I picked up in the morning from my favourite fishmonger. While Stephanie gave no serving / accompaniment suggestions, I took advantage of the additional space in the baking tray to bake some zucchini in the sauce which worked (I think at least) well with the fish as well as reducing the number of pans that had to be washed up the next morning. 

This was rated by the punters at last night’s dinner as a “definitely a make again” recipe.

Recipe #36 – date and walnut biscuits

Date and walnut biscuits were on the agenda this afternoon. These little drop cookies, full of dates and a few walnuts provide a lovely little bit of sweetness to that afternoon cup of peppermint tea or maybe a small bit of sweet, sweet closure after the evening meal.

I quite like these – not too sweet but so tasty. They will definitely be on the future cookie roster at our house I think.  And because the recipe makes about 30 biscuits and my sweet tooth daughter has gone on an overseas jaunt for 5 weeks, I get to share a few of the extras with work colleagues tomorrow morning.

 

Recipe #18 – walnut spread + Recipe #19 – italian black olive paste

Weekends are the perfect time to consider cooking those recipes that take more time and perhaps (but not always) a little more effort. And that’s what would have happened at our place this weekend but for the fact that we decamped our pile in Brisbane and travelled to Uki in Northern NSW for the weekend and dinner with the in-laws. A thoroughly pleasant affair and a lovely dinner of beef and stout stew was eaten. I was not required in the kitchen however.

What I was responsible for was some pre-dinner nibbles and for that I pulled together two recipes that could be easily transported and that would accompany a few pre-dinner drinks. Walnut spread was the first and Italian black olive paste was the second.

The walnut spread is the first time I think I have ever used walnuts in any sort of recipe but I soon had those walnut shells crushed under the weight of a macadamia nut press and dispatched into the food processor along with other assorted ingredients including 100g of blue cheese which is the variation of the recipe noted in the book. Lovers of garlic would love this recipe. For everybody else, this recipe is very garlicky – like VERY garlicky – so a little goes a long way.

The second recipe was italian black olive paste which, according to the notes in the book is the Italian version of the french tapanade sans anchovies, capers, tuna and lemon juice. These are four of my all time favourite ingredients but leaving them out did not mean that the paste was not a tasty treat for the back deck drinks. Having said that, if you don’t like black olives, chances are that you are not going to like this.

As it happened, these pastes did not make it to the back deck (problems with the supply chain and logistics planning meant that there was no bread or crackers to eat them with so they cam home largely intact. As a result, there was no rating given to either recipe by the general population. I tasted them though and would make the italian black olive paste again but would probably look for an option other than the walnut spread next time I am making the pre-dinner nibbles