Tuna Burgers

This evening I made Tuna Burgers. You may remember I did make them last year, adapting a Simon Rimmer recipe for Salmon burgers. Anyway when I went to retrieve the recipe it was not on my blog so here goes - a slightly further adapted recipe:

250g - 300g Tuna Steaks
2 slices brown bread, crusts off (& magimixed into bread crumbs)
1/2 egg white
1 shallot or small chunk of red onion
Tablespoon dill
Salt & Pepper

1. Put bread into magimix & made breadcrumbs
2. Add red onion, and dill & blitz
3. Season
4. Add tuna (cut into chunks) & egg white - pulse magimix so small pieces of tuna remain

Turn the mixture out & shape into 2 'burgers' - cover them up and pop them in the fridge for 1/2 hour

Heat some vegetable oil in a frying pan and lightly fry for around 3 or 4 minutes (depending on the thickness) on either side until cooked through in the middle

We served this with some organic mayonnaise flavoured with a little garlic, a squeeze of lemon juice & touch more dill.

We also had some homemade chips courtesy of 'Cook with Gordon' -
2 Desiree potatoes scrubbed (skin left on) cut into eighths & parboiled for 3 minutes. Season, add a touch of olive oil & chilli flakes & pop on a hot baking tray in the oven set to 200°c for around 40 minutes until crisp.

The Results

It is an impossible task to cook, photograph & blog all at the same time. Especially when Gordon cooks so quickly! But we managed, just about, to keep up with the cooking & here are the very tasty results - even the steak was delicious...

Scallops with a warm tomato & olive salsa

Sirloin Steak with homemade chips & a rocket salad

The rocket dressing was simply 1 part white wine vinegar to 3 parts extra virgin olive oil but it was really, really lovely

And finally Chocolate Mousse


Mmmmmmm. Thanks Gordon.

Cooking with Gordon

I think I'm just about set... I'm taking up the challenge tonight on two fronts.

Firstly, I am Cooking With Gordon - after getting ready Hubby will hopefully be updating my Flickr set as we go along -click here if you'd like a nosey

Secondly, and part of cooking with Gordon, I will be cooking and eating meat. Eeeek is all I can say. I am trying to re-introduce it so why not jump in the deep end with a Sirloin Steak!

Wish me luck!

A rather busy weekend

I cant believe it's time for bed on Sunday night already. The weekend has flown by.

On Friday evening a made a rather enjoyable dinner of sole goujons with dill mayonnaise and a buttery jacket potato. It was surprisinglyeasy to make - the sole goujon recipe is from Nigella Express.

On Saturday evening we ate out at Est Est Est at the Albert Dock. We had reasonably high expectations as we spent 06/07 New Year's Eve there & it was really nice. Unfortunately last night the staff & food let the lovely surroundings down. My porcini risotto was a very small portion, in the largest ever bowl & Hubby's pizza came covered in mushrooms - which it did not mention on the menu but we were out for a friends birthday & having everyone together was really nice. Afterwards we just about managed to grab a seat at the Pump House pub as we seemed to finish the meal at the same time as Ringo & Co. who had officially opened the Liverpool Echo Arena next door.

Tonight we ate at my parents again as its my brothers birthday tomorrow - but unfortunately he has been poorly so we ended up enjoying a creamy chicken & tarragon pie followed by marmalade pudding without him :( (Happy Birthday for tomorrow Michael xx)

Good Intentions

We did our first weekly shop of '08 today and I did feel very proud of our trolley whilst walking around Tesco - 23 out of the 43 items were from the fresh fruit 'n' veg section. Hopefully we'll start purchasing more of this produce from a local farm but today it just wasn't viable.

On top of all our fresh fruit and veg we bought two lots of fish and some chicken breasts. And the rest was all healthy & wholesome breads, milk, pasta, lentils & teabags etc.!

It's a start anyway. Now we have to use it all up.

Tonight I made a courgette & dill soup (for dinner tomorrow & a batch to be frozen) and then I made some Herb Crusted Tuna served with green beans & tagliatelle. It was really delicious and light.

Herb Crusted Tuna
2 fresh Tuna steaks
1 tablespoon chopped of each - dill, parsley & spring onion
1 tomato (pips discarded, skin chopped up)
1 tablespoon low-fat fromage frais
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
30g brown breadcrumbs

Preheat the oven to 190°c

Rinse & pat dry the tuna steaks. Put them on a baking tray (I put them on a sheet of tin foil too) and season with salt & pepper.

Next, combine all the other ingredients in a bowl & then spoon this on top of each tuna steak.
Cook for 20 minutes & serve (I put the water on to boil for the beans & pasta at this point and then put the pasta & beans into the water at the 10 minute mark & it was all pretty much ready at the same time).

The Three Chimneys

For Christmas I bought my mum & dad a recipe book called The Three Chimneys, Recipes & Reflections from the Isle of Skye's World Famous Restaurant. Hubby & I came across the beautiful book when we were in the Spey Larder, Aberlour. My mum & dad where in the shop at the same time so we didn't get long to look through it, but we instinctively knew (well, we hoped) it would make a great present.

To go with the book, I decided to make their recipe for Scottish Shortbread as an extra present and I am soooooooo glad I did. After trying to make vanilla shortbread a while back from a BBC GoodFood recipe which was nothing short of disappointing (they were vanilla biscuits, not shortbread). This new recipe was nothing short of fabulous. I think the main difference was that T3C recipe called for rice flour.

Now two days before Christmas (yes, it was a Sunday too), in a Tesco Extra the size of, erm, something very large with two floors I didn't think this would cause me too much of a problem. After failing on my first visit, Hubby reluctantly came back with me after I got home & found out rice flour is gluten free. Disappointingly I still couldn't find any. So we drove to Sainsbury's. Nope, no rice flour. So we tried the larger Sainsbury's - that had closed 5 minutes before we arrived. Gah.

Christmas Eve arrived and I was in work but Hubby had a list of things that we still needed to get so he tried a smaller (not small) Tesco in Chester & found me a packet of all that is light and crumbly, rice flour.

I made 3 trays full of biscuits on Christmas Eve and threw away a lot of dough. Everyone who tasted the biscuit the next day were very complimentary, even though they were made with Danish butter! A few biscuits were more golden than the others but here is a couple of wee photos...
My mum & dad seemed very happy with their new cookbook and after leafing through, my dad decided to tackle T3C famous Marmalade Pudding (which even has it's own club) on New Years Day. It was simply fantastic...
I'd love to visit T3C restaurant one day soon and if we were ever to have a few hundred pounds to spare it would to be great to spend a night. Another thing to add to my A girl can dream To Do list!

The New Year

Happy New Year to you all

As the Zutons sing 'this is just a night in the city of culture'. Well it is now. 2008 is finely upon us. For some it may just be another year but for us up here in the Northwest it is a date that has been slowly dawning for nearly 5 years - I even remember hearing the announcement that Liverpool had won the badge for '08 on Radio Merseyside! I digress...

Anyway, ever since the announcement, the construction world in Liverpool has gone crazy mad. The skyline shows the splendid waterfront interspersed with huge cranes. Liverpool One is well on its way to being opened in the Spring. It should be great with lots of new shops & I believe a new flagship store for John Lewis!

As you probably already know we don't live in the City of Culture but we do have a rather grand view from our flat & it was here that we welcomed in the New Year. Despite being told that there were no fireworks display for the Capital of Culture, there was a service at the Catholic Cathedral & at midnight they did have some lovely fireworks - together with a lit up 2008 sign. As we weren't expecting any, we didn't have the camera ready but here are a couple of pics we managed to get...
So, its the new year and that means lots of resolutions. Here are a couple of foodie ones I'd like to share:

• Cook new recipes more often - try something new each week
  
• Eat more healthy foods - we are hoping to sort out a weekly veggie box
  
• Eat at Simon Rimmers restaurant
  

I hope 2008 is a good year for you all.