Recipe: Simple salmon salad

By: Mrs Robot

It's probably a little late in the year to blog this recipe now, but I thought I'd put it up anyway. It's a dish I came up with on my own, but I've seen similar things all over the place. I'm pretty sure Mi Mi Aye has one in Noodle!, for example.

You will need
The salmon (recipe will do one or two servings)
A salmon fillet per person
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon each chopped garlic and ginger.
(I cheat and use the Nishaan ready-pulped ginger as it's brilliant stuff, but there's no substitute for fresh garlic, the ready-chopped stuff in jars has lost its punch.)

The salad
Noodles – egg or soba are best; I used soba in the version in the photos.
Carrot
Spring onion
Light soy sauce
Sesame oil

Mix together the dark soy sauce, sugar, garlic and ginger in the bottom of a flat dish, then lay your salmon fillets fleshy-side-down on top to marinate. The longer you leave this, the more the marinade penetrates; half an hour is a good time to leave it.

I haven't given quantities for the salad because how much I make depends on how greedy I'm feeling and how much of each ingredient I have in the house. You want the salad to be half noodles, and a quarter each spring onion and carrot.

Cook your noodles. As soon as they're done, rinse them with cold water and pop in a bowl. Cut the carrot and spring onion into matchsticks about two inches long. Toss it all in with the noodles, dress with a slug each of light soy sauce and sesame oil, and toss it again. The dressing helps to stop your noodles sticking together.

To cook your salmon, put it fleshy-side down in a hot pan and cook it halfway through, then turn it over and finish cooking it on the skin side.

Bung salad on plate – you can sprinkle on some sesame seeds if you have any in the house, just to look pretty – then put the salmon on top.

Actual Recipe: Duck Terrine with Pineapple Innuendo

By: Mr Robot

Not just any Duck Terrine: this is Robot Duck Terrine

We're not really in the business of posting recipes but as Christmas is looming I thought I'd offer up one of our festive staples, which I made up my very own self: my duck terrine with a pineapple relish type thing which Mrs R calls Slutney (salsa / chutney) and which her brother - admittedly a tad under the influence - christened Sexual Marmalade: a name I love though figured is probably sub-optimal as a title for search engine purposes.

Anyway, this is meaty, rich and fragrant and makes a jolly good starter. You will need:

For the terrine
Serves 6-8 as a starter, or 2 with no shame

• 2 duck breast
• 3 top quality sausages
• 1 slice white bread, crumbed
• 1 egg, beaten
• About 8 rashers streaky bacon
• 2 tbps port
• 2 tbps brandy
• Zest of 1 orange
• 5 cloves
• 3 juniper berries
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• Pinch salt (edit: actually a pinch OF salt. Don't steal salt, kids)

Finely chop the duck breast – I like to do one in tiny pieces and other about 3-5mm chunks: partly for the varied texture but also because all that chopping gets to be a pain in the arse, frankly.

A note on the sausages: you want the best you can get, fairly traditional but not overly flavoured or herbed. You don't want Cumberland for this. Lincolnshire maybe, at a push. I know which ones I want from my local butcher (Walter Rose & Son Old English, if you care) and at worst you can intend to make this terrine purely as an excuse to try all the sausages. I know I would.

Duck, sausage, orange, brandy, port, optional dribble

Take the skin off the sausages and break the meat up. Put in a large bowl with the duck meat, breadcrumbs, port, brandy, orange zest & egg. 

Blitz the spices in a blender or coffee grinder to a fine power and add to the meat mix. Squidge it all really well until all the liquid is fully incorporated.

Gratuitous spice shot

Rub the terrine dish with butter. Use the back of a knife to stretch the bacon, and use it to line the terrine with plenty hanging over the edges.

Pile the mix in, and wrap the bacon ends over the top. Doesn't have to be that pretty because this will be on the bottom when you serve.

Ducks in blankets

Cover with lid or foil, and put in a roasting tin or oven-proof dish. Pour hot water into the tin to come about halfway up the terrine dish. Put your bain-marie (for it is she) in preheated low oven, about gas 3, for an hour and a half.

Once it's cooked, press the terrine overnight: make a flat lid of thin wood / double thickness cardboard covered with foil. Weight it down with heavy books, tins etc. MAKE SURE you’ve still got it inside a roasting tin or something – lots of juice will get squished out.

Other unruly-haired chefs are available. Probably.

Remove from the terrine dish and gently scrape off any excess jelly with the back of a knife.

Serve with crusty bread, leaf salad, and chutney or Sexual Marmalade.

For the Sexual Marmalade
(by which I think my dear brother-in-law meant "sexy" but as I say he was somewhat tired and emotional)

Fruity... Hot... Juicy... Stick(y)... Seed.... What???

• 1 big / 2 little tin(s) in of pineapple rings or chunks in juice
• White wine vinegar
• Caster sugar
• Salt & pepper
• 6-10 Coriander seeds
• Cinnamon stick
• Small chilli (optional)

This is all about getting a balance through tasting and tweaking so calling it a recipe is a bit of a lie but anyway.
 
KEEP THE JUICE FROM THE PINEAPPLE

Chop the pineapple into about 1/2cm dice and set aside.

Mix the pineapple juice with a tablespoon or so of vinegar and have a taste. You’re looking for a sweet/sour tang. Too sweet? Add a touch more vinegar. Gone too far? Balance it with a bit of caster sugar. Keep going in small dabs ‘til you’re happy. Don't forget to season with salt & pepper too.

Once you're happy with the basic flavour, put into a small pan with the pineapple and spices. Bring to the boil and then turn down to a lively simmer. Cook through until the liquid has reduced to nearly (but not quite) a glaze. You’re looking for a sort of loose chutney consistency. Keep tasting as it reduces though, since the flavour profile may change a bit. If the chilli is coming through too much, counter it with a bit more sugar.

Simmering...

Set aside to cool and remove the chilli and cinnamon stick – you can pick out the coriander seed too if you like, but I prefer to leave it in for little taste explosions.

These are ideal to make a day or two ahead since they'll only get better for maturing. Serve up a good slab or two of terrine and a dollop of you-know-what, crack open the fino and don a paper hat. It's Christmas after all....

All images (c) PP Gettins

End this madness now

By: Mr Robot

Among my many failings neurotic pedantry has always been a favourite, and recipes provide almost infinite opportunities for a crisis of common sense.

I've been playing with Jason Atherton's Social Suppers - a fine book which I won in Page to Plate's giveaway (thanks!) and am enjoying greatly - but today ran into a particular bugbear: the ludicrously unnecessary precision that comes up in these things.

Not that I'm singling Chef Atherton out by any means - it's just the book that happened to be in front of me - but here he gives a fine example of this pernicious habit.

Very slightly less than half a bottle of wine

The recipe calls for, and I quote:

2 onions

2 carrots

2 sticks of celery

1 head of garlic

1 leek

...

125ml soy sauce

375ml white wine

etc etc

Go through that that again, slowly. Three hundred and seventy-five ml of wine? Really?

If you have a certain mindset, that already looks suspiciously precise for what is basically half a bottle, but read on and it gets better.

Once the veg are softened the (also dubiously specific) soy sauce goes in and gets reduced "by half". Then the wine goes in, again to be reduced "by half".

Never mind that my veg are beardy organic types in deviant sizes, how in the name of sanity am I supposed to establish that, of this pan of vegetable, cooking oil, soy sauce and wine, precisely 187.50ml of it is el vino?

I reckon that's 203.48ml wine - another 2 minutes then 

It's absurd, clearly, and drives me mildly potty. So why bother with it in the first place? I have two theories. Either:

• The obsession with detail required to become a Michelin-starred chef is so all-consuming they simply can't help measuring absolutely everything no matter how inappropriate - which begs interesting questions of, say, the wedding night, or
• This is something dreamed up by editors and publishers who believe that we, the humble book-buying public, need it for the sake of credibility or overcoming our own ineptness. 

I lean toward the latter, and imagine the editorial meeting thus:

Editor:  This "half a bottle" of wine you've got - can we change that? It's a bit woolly.
Chef:    That's how much goes in
Ed:       But it's not very cheffy is it? They'll think you're just winging it.
Chef:    Ok then, put 350ml
Ed:       Nah, no good - they'll see right through that
Chef:    [sighs] Fine, make it 375ml but don't blame me if some nutter starts ranting on the internet

Not that I want everything to be like our venerable Quaglino, where the assumption is that the cook knows practically everything anyway and the book is largely redundant. Opening a page at random we find
FAISAN CASSEROLE: cook pheasant in butter and finish with pieces of bacon as a garnish, a little gravy and serve 
which is followed by
FAISAN DEMIDOFF: Same procedure as for Quail Demidoff 

(I suspect M. Quaglino was a fan of Spinoza)

Quaglino's Complete Hostess

But there must be some middle ground where we can get useful detail without being treated like children with recipes that, if you think too hard about them, start to look like fairy tales.

Perhaps it's just my peculiar mental frailty that I even notice these things, never mind get wound up by them. But if the interweb is good for anything, it's surely the opportunity to inflict our personal neuroses on the world.

Incidentally, the recipe in question was Braised Pork Belly with Chorizo & Pepper Puree and Spiced Onions. Once I'd stopped ranting and actually cooked the thing, it was absolutely magnificent.