Mackerel with Madeirean Special Sauce and Cooked Maize (Mihle or Polenta)

This is my take on a dish we enjoyed at the Apolo Cafe in Funchal, Madeira.  We had just visited the local farmers market, including the fish market and it had whetted our appetite for lunch.


The Cafe Apolo is right in the centre of Funchal right opposite the Cathedral and we were tempted by the special 'Fresh from the Market' lunch of 'Mackerel Fillets with Madeirean Special Sauce and Cooked Maize (Polenta)'.

We really enjoyed eating at this street cafe, it is frequented by locals and tourists alike and is a great place for people watching.

This was our meal, a bowl of creamy polenta and a plate with two huge fillets of mackerel with a pool a lovely Madeira sauce flavoured with thyme.


I wanted to recreate this fish dish, all I had to go on was the name of the dish and what I had tasted.  I reckoned that if it was a Madeirean Sauce it would contain Madeira, don't you think?  We had really enjoyed drinking a glass of Madeira on our holiday and had also been to the tour of Blandy's to learn about how Madeira was made and the history of this group of producers.  I was pleased to find a bottle of Blandy's Duke of Clarence Madeira in my local supermarket.  I had also definitely seen and tasted thyme in the sauce and that's about all   Here is what I came up with:

Mackerel in Madeirean Special Sauce with Cooked Maize (Mihle or Polenta)
Serves 4

For the Polenta
1.5 litres water
1 tsp salt
180g polenta
100g grated cheese
20-30g butter

1. Bring the water to the boil in a large pan, add the salt.
2. Pour the polenta in a stream into the boiling water whisking gently.
3. Keep whisking until the polenta has thickened.
4. Cover the polenta and either keep cooking on the stove at a low heat, or put in the oven at 150C.  Stir well every 10 minutes scraping down the sides.  Cook for about 30 minutes.
5. Stir in the cheese and butter and serve immediately.

For the fish
4 fresh mackerel fillets

Labels: Blandy's, Italian, lemon, Mackerel, Madeira, Polenta, Polenta Chips, recipe, thyme, UFUUD

posted by Janice @ 19:51 5 Comments

Heritage Tomatoes with Mixed Herb Dressing

It's salad time!  Gardens, markets and supermarkets are full of lovely salad vegetables and they all taste so much better with a simple herb dressing.  OXO Good Grips, have a couple of great new kitchen gadgets to help you along.  The new herb mincer in green features stainless steel blades and OXO’s trademark grip to keep hands safe when in use. Ideal for keen cooks who are not confident with their knife skills, the ergonomic handle allows for a smooth rocking action, mincing herbs with ease in all directions without bringing the blade away from your chopping board. The peaked lip cleverly gathers herbs into a neat pile ready to season food. Designed so that it can open partially to wipe the blades free of collected herbs when in use, the mincer also separates completely into two pieces for easy cleaning and is
dishwasher safe.  RRP £12 from John Lewis.

Making a quick dressing is easy with the OXO Good Grips Little Salad Dressing Shaker. The watertight Shaker offers a clean, neat and convenient way to mix, serve and store dressings, sauces and marinades. The top unscrews to reveal a wide opening ideal for adding a range of ingredients like oil, vinegar, mayonnaise, mustard, garlic, onions and spices. The Shaker is made of a BPA-free, break-resistant and dishwasher safe material. Once ingredients are added, screw the top on and shake to quickly mix dressings with no spills.  I love how the top lever flips back for pouring and forward to seal. You can use the airtight Shaker to store leftover dressing and sauce right inside the fridge.  RRP £10 from Lakeland 


Mixed Herb Salad Dressing 
50ml Fillipo Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil
25 ml Fillipo Berio Balsamic Vinegar
1 tbsp  mixed herbs, finely chopped with the Oxo Good Grips Herb Mincer (I used chives, thyme and rosemary)
1/2 tsp sugar
salt & freshly ground pepper

Place all the ingredients into the Oxo Good Grips Salad Shaker and shake until the the mixture emulsifies, then pour over sliced heritage tomatoes, or other salad.

Labels: chives, Herb Mincer, OXO Good Grips, Rosemary, salad dressing, Salad Shaker, thyme

posted by Janice @ 19:53 7 Comments

February Slow Cooker Challenge Round Up

Thanks to everyone for all the lovely slow cooker recipes entered in this month's Slow Cooker Challenge.  The theme was an open one, so any dish could be entered and we had a giveaway of The Southern Slow Cooker by Kendra Bailey, details of the winner at the end of this post!

Corina at Searching for Spice created a Chicken Chilli in her Slow Cooker, it looks so full of colour and packed with veg, its got to be good for you.

Old fashioned Slow Cooked Oxtail is the dish prepared by Deon at Food Jam.  Deon ate this stew growing up in Africa and highly recommends it.  It's years since I had ox tail and this has certainly put me in the mood for it again.

The Love Pie is a special treat made by Lou of Eat Your Veg for her family.  The Slow braised shin of beef filling is slow cooked  in red wine before being turned into this very special love-heart adorned pie.  Now that is really special.

This Slow Cooker Pork and Orange Casserole is an adaptation of a popular Pork, Leek and Apple casserole that Ness at Jibber Jabber has been making for some time.  It certainly looks like a rich and satisfying recipe.

I'm delighted to see a joint of meat amongst the entries.  The slow cooker is perfect for the long slow cooking of joints like brisket and Elizabeth at Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary cooked her piece of Rolled Brisket with Red Wine and Thyme.  

Karen at Lavender and Lovage has come up with a very European dish, Polish Sausage and Sauerkraut Casserole with Beer  she serves it on the plate as above or as a sandwich in a baguette as a more informal meal.

 Claire at Good Egg Foodie was trying to recreate a Greek holiday dish of Slow Cooked Rabbit.  It didn't quite meet her expectations but still made a substantial and tasty dinner.  Keep trying Claire, sometimes with the slow cooker you have to take the stock out and reduce it on the stove to get that sticky sauce.

And so to dessert!  Sarah, of Tales from the Kitchen Shed,  is a bit of an expert with the slow cooker and has even published her own e-book Pukka Slow Cooker Recipes.  This gloriously sweet and sticky pudding is a Slow Cooker Molten Chocolate Mocha Pudding which comes with it's own pool of Tia Maria sauce, how delicious.

It's so good to see some less common cuts of meat coming into their own through the slow cooking.  We've already had Oxtail and Shin of Beef, now Helen at Fuss Free Flavours bring us Slow Cooked Ox Cheeks with Red Wine and Pickled Walnuts. Helen gives us some great tips to get the best from your slow cooker meals, so be sure to pop over and check them out.

I hope you have enjoyed this Slow Cooker Challenge Round Up, the March challenge will be posted on Monday 3rd March.

And the winner of The Southern Slow Cooker by Kendra Bailey is  #3 Lou at Eat Your Veg, Congratulations!

Labels: Beef Pie, Chicken Chilli, chocolate, Mocha, Ox Cheeks, Oxtail, Pickled Walnuts, Polish Sausage, Pork and Orange, pudding, Rabbit, Red Wine, Rolled Brisket, Sauerkraut, Shin of Beef, Slow Cooker Challenge, thyme

posted by Janice @ 21:15 29 Comments

Baked Beetroot with Local Honey and Thyme

Some days you get a bonus!  Last week when I had a few days off work, a neighbour saw me and offered me some of the huge crop of beetroot that he had grown in his garden.  His car boot was full of beetroot and he reckoned he was feeding half the village.  I certainly wasn't going to turn down these beauties which I saw him pull from the ground just a few minutes before I took these photographs.

I made Beetroot Chutney with the biggest of the beets, like this monster above.  I kept the four best beets to bake.  I cleaned the worst of the earth off them in a bucket outside, then removed the leaves and scrubbed them.  You can bake them as they are but I like to wrap them in foil to save them from burning or drying up.  The baking time depends on the size of the beetroot, I cooked mine at 180C for an hour and a half.  When the beetroot is cooked, take them out of the foil and while still warm, slip off the skins (I usually wear rubber gloves, otherwise you end up with purple hands) and quarter the beets.


Place the quartered beetroot into an ovenproof dish and spoon over two teaspoons of good local honey, 1 tbsp of rapeseed or other light oil and a tsp of fresh thyme leaves.  Put this back into the oven for about 5 minutes to warm through, then add 2 tsp of balsamic vinegar.


This is the fabulous local honey I used from John Mellis Apiaries at Auldgirth.  It is thick but not grainy, the flavour is intense and so good.  A little goes a long way and I'm guarding it carefully from Mr Farmer who would have it finished in a matter of a couple of days.

I'm entering this recipe for Shop Local, the Blogging Challenge run by Elizabeth's Kitchen.

 I'm also entering this for Cooking with Herbs, the monthly blogging challenge run by Karen at Lavender and Lovage, for any recipe cooked with herbs.

Labels: baked beetroot, beetroot, honey, Shop Local, thyme

posted by Janice @ 07:30 11 Comments

Baked Chicken with tomatoes and olives - Dish of the Month August

It's summer and, for once, we really have had some summer weather. I find that I am less motivated to cook when it is warm so simple, throw it all in one pan, recipes are very appealing...oh wait...simple, throw it all in one pan, recipes are very appealing to me all year round!

Nigel Slater is noted for the simplicity of his recipes, he cleverly combines a few key ingredients to create delicious dishes you want to make again and again. The August chapter of The Kitchen Diaries II features a number of ingredients that are not quite ready yet in Scotland, but tomatoes are at their peak and I can hardly keep up with my pots of herbs as they are loving the warm weather.

Nigel suggests chicken thighs for this recipe, but I bought a whole chicken and jointed it, I also used some green olives rather than the black ones in the recipe as I had half a jar left over from another dish.

It's a great recipe, just brown the chicken and throw in the tomatoes, garlic and olives and thyme. put it in the oven and leave it to cook. I did cover it with foil after about 10 minutes because the olives were drying out, the chicken was lovely and moist and the we mopped up the juices with some mediterranean bread.

Enter Dish of the Month in August for a chance to #WIN a copy of Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food. This is a classic Nigel Slater book suitable for beginners and experienced cooks. This giveaway is run in good faith and only open to those resident in the UK. The winner will be picked at random using the random number generator. Sue, from A little Heaven on a Plate, and I will be excluded from the draw.

If you would like to take part, then please:

• Make a Dish of the Month from ANY recipe by Nigel Slater
• Link to Farmersgirl Kitchen or A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate
• Use the Dish of the Month logo in your post
• If you use twitter, tweet your post with @serialcrafter or @Heavenona_plate and #DishoftheMonth and we will re-tweet it to our followers.

Rules:

• If you own The kitchen diaries II please do not publish the recipes on your blog without permission, they are copyright.
• If you are using recipes from the BBC Food website, please link to the recipe on BBC Food rather than publishing the recipe. Likewise recipes on the Guardian Lifestyle website.
• One entry per blog.
• Recipes must be added to the linky by the 28th of each month.

Labels: A little bit of Heaven on a Plate, Chicken, Dish of the Month, garlic, Nigel Slater, thyme, tomatoes

posted by Janice @ 08:00 6 Comments

Summer Vegetable Soup with Granary Bread

Summer is not really a time I associate with soup, however, it has been rather chilly recently and as I was going away for a few days, I realised I needed to use up the vegetables that I had received in my Farmison Vegetable Box.  Soup is the perfect vehicle for any kind of vegetables and with some beans added it makes a the soup into a meal.


So here are the vegetables: celery; carrots, onion, quarter of a fennel bulb; 2 courgettes, 2 potatoes and about a third of a head of broccoli.  It doesn't matter what you have although onion and carrots are always a good base.  Oh and there was on runner bean that had escaped me when I cooked those the other day, so that went in too.

Summer Vegetable Soup

1 onion, peeled and chopped
4 stalks of celery, finely chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 potatoes, diced
1/4 fennel bulb, chopped
bunch of thyme, rosemary and marjoram tied together
2 courgettes, diced
1/3 head of broccoli, chopped
4 tomatoes, seeds removed and chopped
100g canellini beans, soaked and cooked for 20 minutes until just tender
3 litres vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper

 1 tbsp olive oil

1.Heat the olive oil in a pan.   Add the onion and celery and cook for 2 mintues, add the carrots, fennel and potoatoes, cook for another minutes.  Add the stock and herbs, season well and cook until the carrot is soft (20-30 minutes)
2. Add the chopped courgettes, broccoli, tomatoes and canellini beans and cook for a further 10 minutes.
3. Remove the herb bundle, adjust seasoning and serve with a sprinkling of fresh chopped thyme and rosemary and some Granary Bread.

I'm entering this soup for Karen's  'Herbs on Saturday' blog challenge, it was a really good tasty soup and the flavour of the herbs came through stongly without overpowering the flavours of the different vegetables.

 

Granary Bread

500g Granary Bread Flour
1 1/2 tsp easy blend yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
50g butter
275g lukewarm water

I put all of the ingredients into the bread maker on the dough setting, then shaped the dough onto a baking tray, left to rise again and baked for about 30 minutes at 200C.  If you don't have a bread maker, follow the recipe on the Granary Flour packet.

Labels: Broccoli, celery, courgette, Farmison, Fennel, Herbs on Saturday, onion, potatoes, Rosemary, Soup, thyme

posted by Janice @ 16:30 5 Comments