Fresh ideas for a fishcake!

If you want a neat idea for an appetizer or a starter, how about a smaller scale of fishcake with a generous drizzle of rendang sauce, topped with mango chutney – a spot of fusion with small tortilla wraps or flatbreads to mop up the leftover sauce and chutney – outside the box I'd say!

There's a foto in the Fishcake foto guide if you wanted inspiration, in the meantime here's the recipe for the rendang curry sauce :

Rendang Curry Sauce

100 ml coconut cream

50ml water

3 tsp brown sugar

2 tsp curry powder

(I used mild)

1 tbsp kecap manis

(also known as sweet soy sauce)

Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan over a low heat and

serve. Can be made ahead and re-heated.

If you like your curry hotter then you can use a medium or hot version of the curry powder – either way to suit your palate!

A few fotos for you ...

Editor's February Pick #7 - Fishcake Foto Guide

Editor's note: It's quite on trend these days to rice anything and everything if it isn't nailed down. I mean cauliflower rice? Surely just eat the vegetable! I'm a traditional kinda guy and I think a ricer is for potatoes! What a satisfying sight - lump-free potatoes ready to transform into fab fishcakes. Feast your eyes on these!

Fishcake foto guide

There are quite a few fotos, here goes :

Finely chopped onion with the spices

Fluffy mashed potato, riced

The ingredients, ready to form into cakes

The cakes before flouring and frying

The cakes fried, ready to bake

Three different sizes of cake

The appetiser size of cake with rendang sauce

and topped with mango chutney

A size to suit every occasion!

Saturday night is “Retro” night.

Here's the plan – Saturday night should be easy in every way – to prepare and to eat from a plate on your knee watching your favourite programme/film – whatever is your bag.

With that in mind the following suggestions don't take any time and effort and you don't have to produce them all – it's just a selection of bits and pieces that would hit the spot.

Here goes :

Baked Camembert

250g Camembert

1 clove garlic or garlic paste

olive oil

Bread of your choice

Pinch of sea salt

Handful of chopped dried cranberries

Handful of chopped mixed nuts

Preheat your oven 180/350/Gas 4. Leaving the Camembert in the box, score around the top about half cm in and cut off the top layer of skin. Slice the garlic clove and poke into the top of the cheese. Drizzle with a little olive oil then bake in the oven for 15 minutes – or until gorgeous and oozy in the middle.

Serve the Camembert with warmed flat bread or French bread – dunk the bread into the cheese and then into the cranberries and nuts – repeat!

Cream cheese and cashew nut paté

1 carrot, finely grated

225g cream cheese

100g roasted cashew nuts, crushed to a rubble – not

to a dust!

1 tbsp of chopped chives

salt and black pepper

black olives – pitted and sliced (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together, box and fridge. If you are feeling really virtuous have a side of raw carrots.

(any leftovers are perfect for lunch, served on whatever takes your fancy – rice cakes, gluten free cheese oatcakes, toast or even as a sandwich filling – a toasted bagel would be good too – sounds positively healthy).

Retro Rooms

Serves 6

750g chestnut mushrooms cut into quarters

2 tbsp flat leaf parsley – finely chopped

2 tbsp lemon juice

Glug of dry sherry

6 tbsp rapeseed oil

100g unsalted butter – at room temperature

4 garlic cloves – or equivalent paste

salt and black pepper

Mix the butter with the garlic. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the mushrooms and season with salt and black pepper. Add the lemon juice and a glug of dry sherry. Add the butter and garlic mixture and cook for 5/7 minutes, fold in the chopped parsley.

Serve in ramekins with warm crusty bread to mop up the garlicky yumminess.

As an alternative you could add croutons to your mushrooms and not bother with the crusty bread.

Speaking of bread … read on

Class Report

This time I decided to mix it up a bit and “fly by the seat of my pants”.

I know that I'm always suggesting using the humble beetroot and one of my most favourite recipes is Honey Roasted Beetroot. Recently I demonstrated a pie with the beetroot recipe as a side. One of my friends, who has been coming to my classes since they began had clearly missed the previous occasions when I'd used it – she absolutely loved it. So, that set me thinking and here's the result.

Honey Roasted Beetroot

& Goats cheese Crostini

or

Fly by the seat of your pants!

Ciabatta, sliced

Goats' cheese, sliced

Garlic paste, mixed with a glug of olive oil

*Balsamic vinegar – 2 tsp

*Olive oil – 2 tbsp

*Clear honey – 2 tbsp

Cooked beetroot – 500g

Salt and black pepper

*Chopped fresh thyme – 2tsp or a sprinkle

of dried if you can't get fresh

If fresh beetroot is in season, choose beets of a similar size and roast in foil - @ 180f/200c/Gas 6 for an hour and then test, leave to cool, peel and slice thinly.

For speed and/or when beets are not in season, you can use the vac packs you can get in the supermarket - as an indicator I choose beetroot that is approximately the same size – a 300g vac pack gives you 8 small to medium beetroots. Slice thinly but not so that you can see through – don't use the ends of the beets – they won't “sit” on the bread evenly – save them for a salad or a sandwich.

Combine the ingredients marked * above and season with salt and black pepper. Arrange your slices of beetroot in a foil tray, overlapping the slices to a similar size as your slices of ciabatta. Pour your combined ingredients over the beetroot. Roast in a pre-heated oven 180fan/200c/gas 6 for 10 minutes until the beetroot is sticky and glazed. Set aside.

To assemble your crostini, toast one side of the bread and spread the other, sparingly, with the garlic and oil paste, layer with beetroot and top with goats' cheese. Warm through in the oven for 10 minutes and serve.

I'll save the comments from the Ladies until later, in the meantime, here's a couple of photos

The beauty of this recipe is that you can leave it as it is – an appetiser, or you can scale it up for a lunch or a supper with a side salad.