Warm pan-fried scallops with lemon, parsley and crispy bacon crumbs

Scallops

Still emptying the freezer! This time it’s scallops – a bit of a weakness of mine. I bought these to practise a fish mousse with, but didn’t need all of them, so into the freezer they went.

Scallops are hands-down my favourite shellfish. Their shells are beautiful, although they’re the bane of my life because I can never bear to throw them away, so I end up with piles and piles of them. The only solution is to buy them already out of the shell!

If you do buy scallops in the shell, you’ll need to remove them before you cook them. If the shell is closed, just slip a thin-bladed knife in at the hinge end and run it down the flatter shell. Do this for both sides and the shell should open for you. Then you just ease the scallop out (a spoon works well). To clean it, just remove all the gross-looking bits with your fingers and you should be left with a pure white cylinder of muscle, possibly with a bright orange, claw-shaped coral attached. Some people don’t like the coral, but I think it’s the best bit!

Last note on buying scallops: please buy ‘diver’ scallops, not dredged ones. This means that a diver has gone down to the sea bed and hand-picked the scallops. They’re more expensive, but much preferable to the alternative: dredged scallops are obtained by running a huge net along the bottom of the sea, dragging up all sorts of innocent fish minding their own business and generally messing with Mother Nature. They’re also worse quality, because banging about in a net damages the scallop and drives lots of sand and grit into the shell, so they are often gritty and broken.

So that’s dredged scallops. Don’t do it.

My absolute favourite to cook scallops is very simply, just pan-fried with some lemon juice and parsley. This time I had a rasher of bacon hanging around in the fridge, so I decided to include it the rather posh lunch dish which was shaping up.

Cooking scallops in butter

A lot of people like to pan-fry scallops in butter. While I agree it’s totally delicious, I do have one problem with it – scallops need to be seared at quite a high temperature, and if you heat butter that hot, the milk fats in it will turn brown (technically known as a beurre noisette) or even burn (technically known as a cock-up...) This is what causes the little brown speckles you sometimes see on cooked scallops in restaurants.

There are two solutions to this, both of which produce lovely milk-white scallops with the only brown on them being that beautiful golden-brown seared crust which gives pan-seared scallops their flavour. The first is to use clarified butter (also known as ghee) which you can buy in the shops or make: very gently melt your butter, skimming the impurities off the top, then pour off the pure butter and reserve it, discarding the milky substance at the bottom. Using clarified butter keeps the buttery taste, but means there’s no milk fat in the butter to burn.

The second solution is the one I used, purely because I didn’t have any clarified butter. It’s a bit of a cheat, but who doesn’t love a good cheat? Basically, you just use a small amount of hot oil for the actual cooking of the scallops, then let the pan cool slightly and add some butter right at the end of cooking (off the heat). This creates a buttery flavour, but the butter can’t turn brown because you take the pan off the heat and let it cool before adding any.

I like the second method because it saves you the hassle of buying or making clarified butter, but classically speaking it’s bad because you shouldn’t mix your fats in a sauce or dressing – in other words, if you’re using butter you shouldn’t also use oil, and vice versa. But to be honest, my method tastes great and the scallops look nice too, so who cares!

Finally...

This dish also works very well with some finely chopped chilli included – just throw it in the pan when you turn the scallops (see the recipe below).

Ingredients

3-6 scallops per person, depending on size and your appetite!

1 lemon

Handful chopped parsley

1 rasher of bacon

Splash of olive or vegetable oil

Chunk of butter

Salt and pepper if needed

Salad and your favourite simple dressing

Method

First, you need to make sure the scallops are really dry. Lay them out on a piece of kitchen towel and cover with another, pressing down gently. You can also use an old dish cloth (needs to be clean, obviously, and you’ll definitely have to wash it afterwards). If you don’t dry the scallops, the oil will spit when you add them to the pan, and they won’t get that lovely golden crust on the outside either.

Cook the bacon until it’s really crispy – the fat at least should all have gone brown and crisp. If you really hate crispy bacon, cook it how you like it, I can’t stop you. But I think this recipe’s best with crispy bacon!

Chop the parsley if you haven’t already, and cut the lemon in half ready to squeeze. When the bacon’s really crispy, chop it up very small – to about the same size as the parsley pieces.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan. Place in the scallops and let them fry in the oil for a couple of minutes on each side, or until both sides have developed a golden, caramelised crust. If your scallops are those huge king-sized ones, you might stretch to 3 minutes each side, but they honestly shouldn’t need much more than that. Scallops can be eaten slightly underdone in the centre.

Once the scallops are cooked, take the pan off the heat and let it cool for a few seconds. Then squeeze over plenty of lemon juice and add the butter. Let it melt in the residual heat from the pan, but don’t put it back on the heat. Add the parsley and bacon, and give it a shake to mix it all up. It may not need seasoning – bacon is pretty salty anyway. Taste it and see.

Serve with a nice salad – some rocket and baby leaves. A simple lemon juice and olive oil dressing goes really nicely here. Pop the scallops in and/or around the salad, and spoon over lots of the parsley and bacon mixture from the pan. The pan mixture is the key to this dish, don’t waste it. 

Cougette Carbonara - Comfort with a Twist

There are some days when I long for some comfort food. After the long, rainy week we’ve had (which, incidentally, I’ve spent working very hard catering in the North of Scotland!), it’s just what I need. My ultimate comfort food is my Mum’s spaghetti Carbonara. It’s not the traditional Italian recipe – we add cream and white wine.

Totally traditional Italian spaghetti Carbonara just uses eggs; bacon or pancetta; a hard cheese like parmesan or pecorino; and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. In fact, on a family holiday to Italy a few years ago, I mentioned to a local lady that I needed some cream because I was making Carbonara for my family that evening, and she was horrified!

Nevertheless, I’m not ashamed to say that I love a bit of cream in my Carbonara sauce, and even some white wine for that extra bit of flavour. This time, though, I wanted to take it even further. I felt like the comfort of Carbonara, but with a twist.

There was a courgette in the fridge, so I thought I’d inject a few vitamins into what is, let’s face it, not usually the healthiest of meals. I remembered a method of making courgette ‘spaghetti’ I learned recently, so I thought I’d try mixing the courgette stuff with the real thing. In fact, if you wanted you could even try doing the whole thing with courgette spaghetti. I think you might find it a bit squishy, though.

Then I noticed half a leftover bread roll lurking at the bottom of the bread bin and figured I’d top my concoction with toasted breadcrumbs, just to use it up. I liked the result so much I thought I’d write it down for you all.

One last note – Carbonara isn’t really a suitable dish for expectant mothers, the very old or the very young, because there’s a slight risk of the egg being undercooked. If you are cooking for any of these groups, it’s better to overheat the egg and have it scramble a bit in the sauce than to give somebody salmonella. Safety first.

And now that I’ve put you all off, on with the recipe!

Ingredients

(per person)

½ a courgette

Small handful of spaghetti (a bit less than you have of courgette)

½ a small bread roll or one piece of sliced bread

A bit of butter

2 rashers of bacon

A slosh of white wine

A bigger slosh of double cream

1 egg

Grated hard cheese such as parmesan or pecorino

Salt and plenty of ground black pepper

Recipe

First of all, get your bacon in the oven to cook until crispy. Put the bread roll in the oven at the same time, until it’s turning brown and completely dried out.

Meanwhile, you want to slice the courgette into long, thin strips about the size and length of your spaghetti. I did this with a knife, but a mandolin works even better if you have one. Set it to thin julienne and just run the courgette up and down. There are plenty to choose from here if you’re interested in one – and no, I’m not being paid by Amazon, or by a mysterious consortium of mandolin-makers. I just like mandolins!

Whiz up the bread roll in your blender or magi-mix to make breadcrumbs. If you don’t have any fancy electric gadgets, you can always wrap the bread in a bag or tea towel and give it a good bash with a rolling pin. When you’ve got some nice small breadcrumbs, fry them off quickly and gently in butter until they’re hot, brown and crispy. Remove them from the pan onto some kitchen paper to drain.

Boil some salted water for the pasta and get the spaghetti going. Once the bacon is ready, chop it into bitesize pieces. Put it in the pan you used for the breadcrumbs, get it hot, then add the wine and reduce it by about half. Add the cream and bring the mixture briefly to a simmer. Then remove it from the heat, let it cool for a few seconds, and add the egg, stirring well so that it combines into the cream mixture without becoming scrambled. The egg will be cooked by the residual heat from the pan, but it should remain liquid.

When the pasta is about a minute away from being fully cooked (when it’s just too al dente for your taste, in other words) add the courgette strips and let them boil with the pasta for the remaining minute of 30 seconds – that’s all they need to cook.

Finally, mix the pasta and courgette into the cream, egg and bacon. Season it well with salt and lots of ground black peppercorns. Plop plenty into your bowl and top with the grated parmesan and breadcrumbs, and maybe a sprinkling of chopped parsley for some extra colour. Comfort with a twist!

Creamy Spinach and Smoky Pancetta Soup

A simple and delicious soup (if I do say so myself). Dad always has soup for lunch, and a couple of days ago - shock! - we had run out of the usual 'Covent Garden' style stuff. Well, no worries, because it's not too hard to knock up a soup from a reasonably stocked fridge. Ours wasn't bulging, but it did contain some spinach and industrial quantites of smoked pancetta. Bingo.

Your basic soup method is pretty consistent. Cook all the meat/vegetables, involved, add some sort of liquid, usually stock and perhaps some cream or creme fraiche, simmer, liquidise, and (if necessary) strain. Exceptions are things like broths and chowders, which need a very good quality stock and are not liquidised. But for the minute our focus is on the classic 'vegetable soup with some sneaky meat involved'. This, incidentally, is not what the French call it.

Without too much fuss, then, we'll get on to recipes. The only other thing to bear in mind is that in this recipe the bulk of the spinach - which is to say the stringy bits - is sieved out before the end, so there will be less soup than you'd think.

Ingredients
(for 2)

Knob of butter
50g smoked pancetta (or use smoked streaky bacon)
Large bunch fresh spinach (one supermarket bag, or equivalent. Use frozen if you need to, but please defrost and thoroughly drain first, and bear in mind cooking time will be reduced)
Glass of white wine
200ml chicken stock, or more if necessary
50-100ml of cream or creme fraiche, depending on your calorie wants!
Salt, pepper
Generous grating of nutmeg


Method

Simple. Melt your butter in a medium pan and cook the pancetta until golden brown/crispy. Add the spinach and the white wine, and cook until the spinach has wilted. Add the warm stock.

Liquidise by whatever means available and strain thoroughly (you have to be tough with it. Knock it about a bit with a spoon).

Return to the pan and stir in the cream or creme fraiche. Season to your taste. Incidentally, nutmeg is always a winner with spinach - if you're serving it as a vegetable side dish, a grating of nutmeg on top brings out a whole new range of flavours.

This is a lovely soup, almost game-y in its combination of earthy spinach and smokey pancetta. Even if you're not the biggest spinach fan, I do urge you to give this a try.

Risotto!

General chatter:

I LOVE a good risotto. By which I don't mean basmati rice overcooked with some sad looking peas added, but a proper Italian-style dish with arborio rice or similar, which takes time and attention to get right. Once you've got the basics of a dish like that, it'll repay you a thousand times by acting as a delicious blank slate on which you can draw up the exact meal you feel like eating. It's reliable in its basic ingredients, which are almost all things you have lying around in the average kitchen, and in its timing - my risottos always take at least 40 minutes, and never more than an hour. It's great as a starter or a main, if you're eating alone or with friends. If you haven't already, I hope you'll give risotto a good couple of tries, and come to love it every bit as much as I do.

A light risotto makes a lovely lunch, say with crayfish, crab, chilli and coriander (I ate this while out for lunch last week, and it was fantastic). A big bowl of risotto with bacon (pancetta if you've got it) and peas, liberally sprinkled with parmesan shavings, is my best friend when I'm curled up in front of the telly with a glass of white wine after a long day. Somehow it feels like more of an achievement than spaghetti and tomato sauce, although it takes about the same amount of effort (if maybe a touch more time in the kitchen)!

For a big dinner, I always think risotto makes a stylish accompaniment to your main dish - if you're sick of potatoes as a side, give risotto a go. Try something like thyme and wild mushroom risotto with lamb, perhaps, or a chilli-based one with asian braised pork belly. Pork belly's very trendy at the minute too, and it's quite a cheap cut. If you're serving your risotto as a side dish, it might be best to dole it out yourself - and think 'less is more'. You want the risotto to be a partner to your meat or main dish in this instance, rather than the main event - although, of course, it can certainly hold its own as a centrepiece if necessary. Try serving it in a roasted, scooped-out half of butternut squash.

Pre-cooking risotto (for dinner parties) 

Another little tip, which I learned from the Food Guru, is that you can actually part-make risotto in advance. PLEASE bear in mind when I say this that I don't mean days in advance - if you leave rice for too long before re-heating and eating it, it can harbour various very nasty little stomach bugs, which anyone who's picked at an ill-advised morning-after Chinese will vouch for. They don't just stop at a dodgy tummy either, and your life is (hopefully) worth more than a couple of grains of rice.

Bleak warning over.

Anyway, to pre-cook risotto just do the basics the hour before your guests arrive rather than the hour after they get there, when you're busy trying to be a star hostess (or host...). Make up the basic recipe (which I'll stick below in a bit - apologies to all who know it back to front, some people aren't so lucky!) to the point where the rice has nearly absorbed enough stock, which you'll know by tasting and feeling the hardness of the rice in your mouth. 

So you've got your risotto base and any other extra bits ready, and when zero hour comes you just need to mix it all together and reheat, adding extra stock and a bit of wine if necessary: it tends to thicken as it cools. You can do that after you've seated your guests, and they'll all be SO impressed that you whipped up a risotto by magic in five minutes.

Enough chatter. Here's a basic recipe, with tips on how to start making alterations:

Ingredients
(For one)

A small onion
Risotto rice - three small handfuls for a generous serving. Or three big handfuls, if you have small hands... Remember that it increases 3x in size while it cooks. Arborio rice is the easiest to get your hands on, I'm pretty sure they sell it in Tesco!
Glass of white wine
Stock - 500ml or so. The type depends on your flavours - chicken for a risotto involving chicken or other pale meats, vegetable for vegetarian risotto. I've never heard of risotto with beef stock before, but I suppose you could try it...
Grated cheese - cheddar is ok, but parmesan or really nice peccorino is best.
Salt and pepper


Method

This method will make you the absolute blank canvas of risottos. To alter them, you just put whatever ingredients you're adding in the following categories, and add them when I mention that category in the recipe. A lot of things, including all meat and vegetables like butternut squash, which makes a fantastic risotto by the way, need pre-cooking - just cook then however you like them most.

Category 1. Hard-stemmed herbs (thyme, rosemary, any whole or freshly-ground spices); onion-style ingredients (garlic and chilli are the most common here)

Category 2. Herbs which can be tough (mint is the main one, as it needs a bit of extra cooking time. Possibly also tarragon is you use it, but add some chopped leaves at the end too); dried herbs (All of them. But please don't use them if you can help it, they're honestly gross); vegetables which barely need any cooking (frozen peas, which you can add straight from the freezer by the way; spinach)

Category 3. Pre-cooked additions (pieces of chicken, beef, pork, fish or shellfish, vegetables with a long cooking time or which you want to roast before adding - No1 here is butternut squash, which makes a yummy risotto when oven-roasted in small chunks and added last-minute); soft herbs (for mixing through; examples are coriander, parsley (lovely!), dill)

Category 4. Finishers (a knob of butter just before serving makes it nice and shiny; some cheese, preferably shavings of parmesan or peccorino, is essential, either mixed through or scattered on top - or both; fresh herbs to scatter on top for a nice final presentation)


Bearing all that in mind (phew!), here's your basic method:

Finely chop the onion to about the same size as your grains of rice. Don't panic, it can be bigger if it must be. Sweat the onion and any ingredients from Category 1 in some butter or olive oil until softened and translucent. By this point your stock should also be ready and within reach. Add the rice, raise the heat a little, and mix around until all coated with the oil. Add the wine.

From now on, your rice is going to absorb liquid until it's cooked through, which will take around 40 minutes. During this time, don't just leave it to spoil, keep a close eye on it. For the next 40 minutes, this thing is your baby. Your job is to keep adding stock in small amounts, so that there's enough liquid there for the rice to absorb, but not so much that the risotto will be runny when it's finished absorbing. It shouldn't be swimming in liquid, but it shouldn't be sticking to the bottom of the pan either. It's a delicate balance and will probably be a bit scary the first time, but you'll get the hand of it!

The mixture will thicken gradually as the starch in the rice cooks. Just how thick it should be is up to you - various different regions of Italy have their own traditions. My favourite way of describing traditional risotto is "all'onda", which literally means 'like a wave' - the risotto should make little waves on the plate as you tip it up. This is traditionally achieved by adding cold butter and cheese at the end of cooking, but you don't need to worry too much about that with this basic recipe.

The most important thing is to keep on tasting. You know how pasta is best al dente, with just that touch of bite left in it? Well, when your risotto rice gets to al dente stage, it's about ten minutes before it's ready. This is the time to add your Category 2 ingredients. Be very careful with stock from now on - do add if it needs it, but beware of adding too much at once. If you do, you'll end up with rice soup, not risotto.

This point - just on al dente - is also the time to remove your risotto from the heat if you're pre-preparing it. Carry on from this point in the recipe later, once you've brought your pan back up to heat. You may need to add a little wine or stock to loosen it up a bit if you've let it cool.

When the rice reaches the texture you like best, add your Category 3 ingredients (they should be at room temperature, don't add chicken and so on straight from the fridge) and combine, cooking for a minute more just to heat them through and allow the flavours to combine.

Cheese, salt and pepper, and any Category 4 ingredients in, and serve straight away, topped with more cheese. Even the plain risotto needs some cheese stirring through before serving, and make sure you check your seasoning before you finish cooking.

With the babble removed, that's:
'cook chopped onions, rice in, stir, wine in, stir lots and add stock slowly (c.40 minutes), finish with cheese and seasoning.' 
That simple. When you've sorted that out, you'll have all the wonderful world of risotto at your fingertips. 

Happy exploring!

Lemon, Bacon and Parsley Pasta

Greetings, dear followers. Back again after the usual long absence, and today, on my first evening home, I thought I'd knock together an easy supper. I'm not entirely sure where the idea for this first came from, but it combines some of my favourite ingredients. It's a dish I often turn to when the idea of pasta appeals, but a heavy cream or tomato sauce doesn't. It has the added benefit of being super-easy. And tasting good.

Ingredients
(for one)

Pasta for one - my favourite kind is fusilli, the twisty ones (named after rifle barrels, by the way), of which you need about three handfuls for a fairly generous serving. Spaghetti is next favourite, and to measure that you bunch it together in your hands and allow a bunch about the size of a one penny piece (or a little bigger) per person.
Three rashers of bacon
Olive oil
One clove of garlic
Juice of just under half a lemon
Glass, or just over, of white wine
Around a tablespoon of chopped parsley (PLEASE don't use dried, it honestly tastes like dead grass. You're better off using none if you can't get it fresh. You could substitute for a different herb as well)
A tiny splash of cream if you feel like it
Salt and pepper to season


Method

First, cook off the bacon however you like it best and set it aside to cool off a bit. If you're a veggie (or even if you're not, actually), I think pine nuts would be kind of yummy with this dish as the sauce is almost like a hot salad dressing anyway, so it builds on the 'pasta-based salad'. You can leave the bacon out, although I think it brings something nothing else really can. I also thought about the uses of halloumi cheese here - it would make the dish richer, but the lemon juice might help cut through that. If you wanted to use halloumi, you'd coat it in seasoned flour and fry it off until golden brown, then add it at the point in the recipe where the bacon goes in. 

Right, the bacon should have cooled off a bit by now, so tear it up into bitesize chunks. This is the kind of pasta you can eat with just a fork as you crouch like a praying mantis over the latest episode of Glee.


Now set some water on a high heat to boil for your pasta, with a generous pinch of salt added. While you wait for it to come to the boil, crush and finely chop the garlic and chop the parsley ready to add later. When the water's boiling, add the pasta. 


In a separate, smaller pan, put a splash of olive oil and the chopped garlic, and cook over a medium heat for a minute or two until the garlic softens and the oil begins to bubble a bit. At this point, add the lemon juice and white wine. 

Just a quick note about the lemon juice. You're about to reduce the wine, garlic and juice mixture, which will boil off some of the water and intensify all the flavours. One thing I've found is that if you add too much lemon juice, it can begin to taste too strongly sour, so go reasonably easy with that lemon half. If it does mess up on you, a good way to rectify the situation is with a spoonful of cream and judicious seasoning.


The next bit is easy: keep an eye on the pasta and the lemon and wine mix as they bubble away. You don't want the pasta to overcook or the sauce to reduce right away; if the first looks like happening, drain it; if the second, lower the heat and add a little water or a bit more wine if necessary. Once both pasta and sauce are cooked (the sauce should hopefully be ready first), drain the pasta and pop it back in the pan. Add the sauce, bacon, chopped parsley and a splash of cream if you feel like it. Stir it all in and season to taste. Instant supper. 

Ok, almost instant. 

Toby's BLT

A crunchy classic from that budding new cook, my boyfriend. This is definitely and absolutely the perfect bacon sandwich ever. I've called it a BLT in the title above, but this is in fact a blatant lie, because there's not a T in sight, and very little L. All you lads with hangovers out there - this one's for you.

Ingredients
(For 1)

2-3 rashers of bacon
2 slices of bread
English mustard (Colman's is my favourite)
Mayonnaise
Ketchup
Some lettuce, iceburg for preference

Recipe

It's a pretty simple one, let's face it, but the beauty is in the detail.

Cook off the bacon - in a frying pan is best, rather than on a tray in the oven, because you can keep an eye on each individual slice and make sure it's done to perfection. Fry it just as you like it - for me, the fat absolutely has to be crispy, and the meat pinkish with a lovely golden-brown crust.

While you're cooking the bacon, you need to prepare the rest of the sandwich. Lay out your two pieces of bread, and spread one with mayonnaise and the other, fairly thinly, with mustard. Put as much lettuce as you can handle (so in the case of my brother, about half an inch square) on the mayo side, and, when your bacon's ready, put it on the mustard side so the bread is well covered. Squeeze some ketchup over the bacon: again, the amount will depend on you, so if you're my brother you may need several bottles. Slap the bacon side (quickly, or it'll all fall off...) onto the lettuce side, slice in half, and chow down.

Creamy Bacon Cabbage

A very quick offering again tonight, as once more I really need to get to bed. I hope everyone's Christmas was as merry as mine - and by the way, the Christmas Pudding went down a treat, despite those dodgy plastic pudding bowls. I re-potted it in proper ceramic ones with muslin, and steamed it on Christmas morning. It was delicious, despite a slightly alarming last-minute blast in the hot oven, because it needed browning up a bit. The Anonymous Bystander has since announced that while it was very nice, we're all sick of Chrissy Pud now and tomorrow it will be fed to the birds...

Now it's Boxing Day, though, and I'm frankly far too exhausted by all the rich Christmas food to be keen on cooking very much. I had, however, made a somewhat unwise promise to the Anonymous Bystander that I'd cook some cabbage for lunch tomorrow before heading to bed. So cabbage it is.

With this recipe, you can vary your ratio of cabbage to bacon and cream, depending on how healthy you're feeling. I used nearly a whole pack of bacon and about 250ml of cream...but then again, I was cooking for 15.

Ingredients:

A cabbage - savoy or white, it's your choice
Lots of bacon
A slosh of white wine
A smaller slosh of water
Plenty of cream
Salt and black pepper
  
Recipe:

1. Chop your cabbage into quarters or eighths, cut out the tough part at the bottom, and slice along each quarter so that it's fairly thinly shredded.
2. Cook off your bacon in the oven so it's about half done, and let it cool until you can handle it. This makes it easier to chop up - I hate chopping raw bacon, because it always slips around, won't cut evenly, and sticks to the knife/scissors. Yuck.
3. Chop the bacon into dice or slices, about the same size as your cabbage pieces.
4. In a large pan, carry on cooking your bacon until it's fairly crispy.
5. Add the sloshes of wine and water, and let it bubble for a minute.
6. Add your cabbage. Give it a stir so that the bacon is mixed in.
7. Cover with a lid and leave to simmer for 5 minutes or so, or until the cabbage is cooked to your satisfaction.
8. Add ridiculous quantites of cream and stir well. Season.
9. Allow to cook for a little while longer until the cream has thickened a bit, and taste for seasoning one more time. The cardinal rule of seasoning, by the way, is that if you think it needs a certain something but don't know what, it's 99% certain to be salt.
10. Serve hot with pork or game birds. Alternatively, set aside and re-heat - it'll keep a day or three in the fridge.