Sesame, Chilli and Ginger Salmon Sashimi with Watercress and Radish Salad

What a beautiful late spring/early summer dish!

Yesterday I noticed that Marks and Sparks had some fresh salmon fillet in, so I decided to eat it raw. I normally only eat fish raw if I can guarantee its freshness, and with supermarkets you can never tell 100% how long it has stayed in some cold storage unit in an industrial estate in Derbyshire (or somewhere equally inauspicious). So when I'm not certain of provenance, I use my nose - and some salt.

Salting raw fish does various great things: 1. It makes it taste nice; 2. It firms it up for slicing; 3. It cures it. How long you decide to cure it for will depend on what you what to do with it. For Gravadlax, I cure for it for a few days - for sashimi just a few hours.

The rest of the ingredients for this stunning dish are also found in supermarkets across the land. In a few minutes, you have a great dinner party starter or a lunch dish all on its own.

Maybe this dish could be made with other fish just as well - bream or sea bass would be great I reckon. Mackerel: Yes. Tuna: Of course. Cod or haddock? Not so much.

Get sashiming! It's cheap (£3 worth of salmon fillet feeds two easily), healthy, and most of all, a bit... 'WOW HOW DID YOU DO THAT?'!

All-in, this is a Potless thrift speciality - £2 per serving is all.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

250g very fresh salmon fillet
3 tablespoons salt
Large handful baby watercress
12 radishes, halved
2 large red chillies, sliced into 5mm rings
Thumb of ginger, finely chopped
Pinch of red chilli flakes
1 tablespoon each of rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame oil, dark soy sauce, honey, wasabi paste
1 tablespoon of sesame seeds

Sprinkle the salmon with the salt and refrigerate for an hour or two, until the fish has released about two tablespoons of moisture. Remove from the fridge and slice thinly (about 4mm thick). Arrange the watercress and the radishes on a serving plate and surround with the salmon slices, topping each slice with a piece of chilli. Mix the chilli flakes, ginger, vinegar, oil, soy, honey and wasabi together to make a dressing. Dress the plate generously. Sprinkle with sesame seeds immediately before serving.

Razor Clam Spaghetti Vongole

Every now and again I pop up to Church Street market and see what's new in. The market is a bit crappy and very functional - no Portobello Road antiques or Marylebone farmers market Jerusalem artichokes here; because this market is for local people, buying day-to-day food at knock-down prices. There is, of course, the odd exotic bargain to be purchased, which is the sort of exception which makes the rule.

At one of the three fish stalls dotted down the street (it's the one outside the manky pub where my dad bought me my first beer - I was about twelve. How times have changed - now, twelve year olds take drugs, probably) the fishmonger normally selling 'four bream or sea bass for a tenner', happened to have some fresh razor clams in at £8 per kilo.

I've never cooked razor clams before, but how hard can it be? Just steam them like other clams and eat them, right?

Well, you could. But then you would be eating a ton of black gunk that sits in their guts, and your dinner would be ruined. Therefore a little dissection is going to be needed between par-cooking them, and gently re-heating them in the sauce. That being said, the meats are sweet, tender and delicious, and the shells make a fantastic garnish talking point. As you can see from the photo, I re-assembled the cleaned cooked clams back into their shells 'for their close-up, daahling...'

Oh, one thing, you may get a bit attached to their antics, which may make them hard to kill without feeling a bit guilty and sad. I bought the razors, put them in a big pot of fresh water to purge them, and then watched as their little noses poked out of their shells to check out their new environment. Inquisitively, I picked up a clam, and it spat a stream of water six feet across my kitchen! Brilliant!

Oh well, can't be a wuss about these things. As much as I quite liked having some molluscan pets for an hour or two, their necessary despatch ended up with me and Mrs Ribeye enjoying one of my best ever home-cooked seafood dishes. And so easy to prepare too, with very few ingredients to make an authentic Italian vongole.

As far as vongole is concerned, the dish should be 'blanco', not thickly red from tomatoes (the way they always seem to serve it in 'Italian-style restaurants' Or tins.) No, the dish should be light and fresh, with a hint of spice from a fresh chilli, fragrant from a light white wine, and carpeted in fresh parsley.

Cost wise, razor clams are about half the price in Church Street than anywhere else in London, I reckon. For two people, 750g is adequate - about 4-5 clams each. The dish may look fantastic and taste luxurious, but at £3 per serving, it's another Potless miracle.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

750g razor clams, in their shells
75ml olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 fat red chilli, finely chopped
125ml dry white wine
300g cooked spaghetti
Handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
Sea salt and black pepper

Wash the clams in plenty of cold water and leave to stand for an hour or two, then drain. In the meantime, in a hot pan, fry the garlic and chilli in the olive oil until soft. Add the wine to the pan and bring to the boil, and then  add the drained clams and cover the pan. Cook the clams for 4 minutes until they open, then remove from the pan. Leave the pan on the heat, to reduce the cooking liquor by a third, while you remove the intestinal sac and black gunk from the clams with a sharp knife. Chop the clam meats into bite-sized pieces and add them to the clam liquor with the cooked spaghetti. Toss everything together and transfer to serving plates. Carpet with the parsley and  serve immediately (you can place some of the meats into a couple of reserved shells, for aesthetic effect, as pictured).

Roasted Asian-Spiced Mackerel with Egg Fried Rice

Having just come back from spending Easter weekend with Mrs Ribeye in Weymouth in Dorset, I noticed just how in love with mackerel the locals are. Every fish and chip shop and cafe in the area screams about their mackerel baps (as invented by Tim Maddams on the TV programme 'Hugh's Fish Fight'), or their mackerel curry, or their mackerel lettuce and tomato sandwich, or their Big Mac (er, actually that last one may be a burger).

Anyway, I, along with Tim and his former mentor Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, firmly believe that the mackerel is the under-ratedest fish in the sea. It's sustainable (whatever that means), its flesh is salty and sweet, it's easy to fillet (just hold it cut side down after gutting it and press it flat, then simply pull out the spine), it's full of omega-3 oily goodness for the ticker, and because it is no namby-pamby breed, its characterful rich fillets can take really strong flavours without being overpowered.

Oh, and at around a fiver a kilo, it's dirt cheap (mm, maybe that's the reason I like it so much).

Anyway, whatever the reason, today's dish really is such a winner for a mid-week dinner or a weekend lunch. I love Asian-ing up a bit of fish. All you need is a bit of ginger, garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce, and all of a sudden you're a chef. The secret is, that the whole dish takes five minutes to prepare and fifteen minutes to cook.

As you can see from the picture, my egg fried rice is quite a dark oak colour. This is due to some very thick sticky soy sauce I accidentally bought from my local Asian grocery. Until I poured it over my rice, I had no idea that it would be quite so creosote-ish. But as sometimes the best accidents make the most innovative dishes, I couldn't be happier. The black glue ended up being a fantastic glossy coat to my rice grains and lent my dish quite an exotic earthy tint. It tasted great too.

A whole good-sized mackerel at my local Waitrose (not exactly a budget supermarket, so you might be able to buy cheaper elsewhere) is about £1.50, which means that this dish comes in at a very sustainable (yes Hugh, you're not the only one to over-use the word you know) £2.25 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 whole mackerel, filleted, but left whole (see note above)
Half a thumb of ginger, peeled and minced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
Black pepper

For the Egg Fried Rice:

1 small onion, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of sunflower oil
Half a thumb of ginger, peeled and minced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 beaten eggs
200g cooked basmati or short grain rice
75g frozen peas
2 tablespoons of sticky dark soy sauce

Preheat the oven to 230c. Slash the skin of the fish three times along each fillet and rub in some ginger and garlic into the slits. Place onto a non-stick baking sheet and pour over the sesame oil and soy sauce. Place the fish on the top shelf of the oven and cook for fifteen minutes (I don't bother turning it over), until the top skin becomes crispy and the slits open up. While the fish is cooking, fry the onion in a wok with the sunflower oil and then add the ginger and garlic until soft and translucent. Add the beaten egg and scramble lightly. Add the cooked rice and the peas and carefully turn through the onion and egg mixture without breaking up the rice grains. Finally, add the soy sauce and carefully coat the rice. Plate the dish by serving a fish over a mound of the fried rice, then spoon any remaining baking tray juices over the fish. Serve immediately.

Seared Scallop Salad with Ginger and Sesame Dressing

I haven't been blogging for a while, because my 'real life' has taken over and sucked every last drop of creative writing energy from my soul.

However, in a fit of pique, I put pen to paper (actually finger to keyboard) and decided to fire up the old Potless machine to tell you about a very piggy weekend Mrs Ribeye and I had a few days ago.

On Friday night, I told Mrs Ribeye that any of our usual weekend festivities (er, pub with mates to be exact) would be put on hold for a well deserved night in. As an inducement in lieu of external entertainments, I explained that we could spend our money and efforts on a stay-at-home-night-out. Which meant extravagant wine and food.

So, today's dish was the starter to our main course of chorizo and cheddar quesadillas with sour cream. Slight problem: Both dishes (delicious on their own and eaten in moderation) don't go together particularly well - which meant a night feeling sick and eventual dreaming of being waterboarded with dairy products.

Next time, this salad will be a main course, and the quesadillas will be a main course... on a different day entirely.

Scallops are really reasonably priced these days. I bought eight big fat fresh King daddies from Morrisons for just over a fiver. What a bargain! And they were totally delicious! And I loved them (as did the missus)! And they looked so pretty! And I wish I hadn't eaten quesadillas straight after them!

The dressing is so so easy. Basically stem ginger in syrup (from a jar) with garlic and a few store cupboard ingredients, which makes the dish taste quite Japanese and exotic and very special. From beginning to end, the whole dish took 5 minutes to cook, and 3 minutes to eat. Oh, and at £3 per serving, a bargain too.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

8 king scallops, shelled, with roes still attached
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Salt and black pepper
3 pieces of stem ginger from a jar, finely chopped, with a tablespoon of the syrup
Half a clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon each of rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce
2 large handfuls of salad leaves

In a blisteringly hot pan with the olive oil, sear the scallops for a minute on each side until crispy on the edges and still slightly raw within. Season the scallops as they are removed from the pan and set aside while you make the salad. Mix the dressing ingredients together and dress the salad leaves. Place a pile of leaves on each serving plate and dot with the scallops. Serve immediately.

Mother-in-Law's Spice-Rubbed Roasted Mackerel with Roasted Mediterranean Vegetables

Having a Russian mother-in-law is fun. She smiles whenever I talk to her. She doesn't understand my sarcastic jibes. She (not so) secretly thinks I beat her daughter. She cooks interesting food. What's not to love?

Last summer, Mrs Syktyvkar Sr gave me a small paper cornet of Ukranian dry spice rub, bought on a trip she and Mr Syktyvkar Sr took to Kiev, and (via Mrs Ribeye's translation) explained to me that it should be sprinkled on anything to 'make it taste better'. With a barely concealed sceptical look in my eye, I graciously accepted the package and placed it into my spice rack (actually more of a shelf) in my kitchen when I got home and then totally forgot about it. It's not that I don't believe my mother-in-law, it's just that the Russians are not particularly known for their spicy cuisine.

Last year, on a trip to Mrs Ribeye's homeland, Mrs Syktyvkar Sr fed us about eight times a day. So for the week we were there, Mrs Ribeye and I ate 56 meals and not one of them contained a single spice. Yes, there were fresh herbs - chopped dill (or 'oo-crop', as it is known) seems to find its way into every dish - but spices? No. I tried to buy some dried spices to add to some food that I was cooking for the family, but couldn't find anything beyond black pepper in any supermarket. As Mrs Ribeye says, 'we like to let the flavour of the ingredients speak for themselves.'

Oh, come on! What about a delicious cuzza once in a while?  Or a chilli con carne? Or anything Spanish or, Chinese? I like basic flavours as much as the next guy, but until I went to Russia, I had taken for granted how many tons of dry spices I get through every year. It's not to say my mother-in-law's cooking isn't fab (in fact, we're going back there in a few weeks and I can't wait), but how often can you eat meat, fish and veg flavoured with garlic and dill? A week is fine, but a lifetime?

Anyway, the fact that Mrs Syktyvkar Sr brought me a paper cornet of dry spices touched my heart. Is it maybe a tiny fractional shift towards my Russian family acquiring a taste for spicy food after having come over here and eating some of my more 'exotic' creations? I can only hope and pray.

The rub I was given contains a mysterious blend which might be ground coriander, cumin, fennel, celery seeds and a host of other delights. Make your own, by combining earthy dark spices and roasting them in a dry pan before grinding them up. Any combination will do - experiment.

I used the rub on a mackerel fillet that was left over from my New York Sushi night, and it was a REVELATION. I am not making mackerel again without liberally coating the flesh side with dry spices and then roasting it for a couple of minutes in a searingly hot oven. The oiliness of the fish works brilliantly with the warm muskiness of the spices. Oh, and it's cheap too. I served it with some roasted Mediterranean vegetables, and the whole dish came to a bargain £2.50 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 large mackerel, filleted but with the skin left on.
1 tablespoon of dry spice rub - any will do.
Salt and black pepper
500g mixed Mediterranean vegetables - I used courgette, onion, peppers, aubergine and garlic
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of dried basil

Preheat oven to a very hot 250c. Rub the flesh side of the two mackerel fillets with the spice rub and some seasoning and place skin side up on a baking tray, and then set aside. In a roasting tin, toss the vegetables and garlic in the olive oil and dried basil and seasoning. Roast in the hot oven for 45 minutes, or until slightly charred on the edges. About 4-5 minutes before the vegetables are completely cooked, place the mackerel on the top shelf in the oven and cook until the skin is crispy. Do not turn the fish over - the flesh will dry out. remove from the oven and serve with the roasted vegetables.

New York-Style XL Sushi Nigiri

Having eaten sushi a number of times at Sushi-Waka in Camden Town - assured by the owner as 'pure Japanese sushi' - and in New York at various sushi bars - I can tell you that the Big-Appley (even their fruit is big) ones like to do it bigger. Not necessarily better, but definitely bigger. Well actually, maybe better.

While my nigiri and maki purveyors in Camden prefer the more no-frills austerity 'minimalist' style of presenting the subtle delights of the raw fish, the guys over in Giant Granny Smith feel that unless they present you with a monster selection straight off the pallets at Fulton Fish Market, and then doll it up with numerous multi-coloured garnishes and accoutrements, that they are somehow short-changing you. 

I cannot say objectively whether authentic Japanese or Massive Cox's Orange Pippin-style sushi is better. The most I can say, is that if I'm in the mood for purist traditional food sold in draughty London premises by the stern looking wife of the jovial chef, I'll take a bus to Camden, and when I'm in the mood for over-the-top metropolitan pescatarian ostentatiousness served by Abercrombie & Fitch models, I'll catch a plane over the Atlantic to the Large Orchard Fruit of the Deciduous Tree. It's nice to have options.

My good friend Ophelia came over for dinner this week, and so I decided to offer her some sushi; as (a) I don't eat meat on a school night; (b) I like sushi; and (c) I like pretty food - and sushi is the veritable supermodel of the culinary universe. But which style should I go for? Proper Japanese sushi (small portions/beautifully presented), or Gargantuan Pink Lady style (enormous slabs of fish/tiny rice/presented like a fishy Carman Miranda's hat)? Well, no contest really. I went BIG.

As for the types of fish I chose. I went to Waitrose on the Edgware Road and interrogated the fish counter guy as to when his fish were caught. Not placed on ice on his counter, but actually caught. He assured me that his stock arrives daily from a boat arriving from the fishing grounds in the middle of the night. Good enough for me. I chose a plump sea bass, a shiny mackerel and a glistening salmon fillet and asked him to make sure they were entirly bone-free (I can be very assertive at times). Great fish choices, and a nice set of contrasting textures, colours and flavours.

I have advocated buying fresh fish for sushi before, but all I can say is: If you're queasy about eating raw supermarket fish, then don't. But then don't eat your tuna rare, or go to one of those sushi conveyor belt restaurants either - the right supermarket (ie a good quality one) trumps a dodgy faux-Japanese disco blaring High Street fish cafe any time. As they say; you pays your price, you takes your risk.

The nice thing about this dish, is you don't need to be an artist to make dinner look amazing. Just cut the fillets up into large chunks and place over torpedoes of rice. Then garnish the plate like its New Year's Eve. Easy. As you can see from the picture, this dish looks a bit of a crazy mess- which is the WHOLE POINT.

Cost-wise, the fish came to £4.50 for three fillets, with the rice and garnishes bringing the whole dish to £3 per serving. Really good value, and a true mid-week treat. As they used to say in New York (I'm out of Big Apple gags): Have a nice day.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

150g sushi or risotto rice
50ml rice vinegar
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 fresh salmon fillet, skinned and pin-boned
1 mackerel fillet, pin-boned, but with the skin left on
1 sea bass fillet, pin-boned, but with the skin left on
Large handful of salad leaves
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into fine strips with a potato peeler
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
25g sesame seeds
25g nigella (black onion) seeds
1 teaspoon of prepared wasabi paste, to serve
75ml dark soy sauce, to serve
Pickled ginger, to serve

To make the sushi rice: Add the rice to a pan with twice the volume of water. Cook the rice on a moderate heat until the water has fully absorbed (15 minutes approx). While the rice is still warm, add the vinegar, salt and sugar and fold in gently to ensure you don't break up the rice grains. Set aside until needed. In the meantime. slice all fish fillets across the grain, until you have 3-4cm strips of 1cm thickness. Form the cooled rice into 3cm torpedoes with your hands, and place attractively around a large serving platter with a fish fillet on each. Dress the salad leaves and carrot strips with the oil and vinegar and place in the centre of the dish with a ramekin filled with soy sauce and wasabi nestled in the middle. Sprinkle sesame seeds on the salmon and nigella seeds on the mackerel. Serve the sushi immediately with pickled ginger on the side.

Salad of Seared Scallops with Butternut Squash Puree

Mrs Ribeye loves scallops. She didn't used to love scallops, but now she does.

Last year, I made the wife some delicious seared scallops, to which she replied: 'Why are you serving me eye-balls?' Not a good day. However, at a dinner party given by our friend Axel at Beach Blanket Babylon in Notting Hill last weekend, she ordered scallops again and found that she actually loved eye-balls after all. So so fickle.

Ok Ok, maybe last time I hadn't cooked them to her Holy Magisterial Regalness' highest standards, but all of a sudden she started to obsess about them. 'When are you making scallops again?' 'Why aren't we having scallops tonight?' 'It's my birthday next week. Can we have scallops?' 'It's Thursday - scallop day!' etc.

So, because today is my wife's twenty-seventh birthday (27? Eek! What an oldie), her wish is my desire and I managed to convince my local eye-ball merchant to set me aside a few plumptious specimens.

Ok Ok, maybe I learnt from my mistakes and Ok Ok, maybe I have now learnt to get the pan hot enough to allow the scallops to slightly caramelise, but this time there was no eye-ball comment; there was just a look of delight on my crusty old (mmm, still a decade-and-a-half younger than me) bird's face. Happy birthday indeed.

To pair up the scallywags, I decided to make a butternut squash mash - because it's easy; pairs up well with the sweet seafood; and is cheap to make - in line with my Potless budget.

Dare I say it? Yes I dare: My dish is better than Beach Blanket Babylon's. Not to say that BBB's isn't nice, but their scallops are a bit... eye-bally (joke). No, actually, their dish came with truffle oil, which I reckon is a bit musky for such sweet shellfish as scallops, and mine came with a balsamic-dressed salad which has more contrasting rich sourness than their (fairly nice, in all honesty) fried carrot garnish.

Oh, and mine's better because BBB's dish is £25, whereas mine comes in at £3 per serving - because I got my scallops for £15 per kilo. Not that I particularly cared last week, because Axel picked up the bill. But still.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 small butternut squash, halved and de-seeded
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon of Chinese five spice powder
Salt and pepper
250g shelled scallops (just the white meats, not corals)
2 tablespoons sunflower or olive oil
2 handfuls of mixed leaves
2 tablespoons of walnut or olive oil
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
Walnut pieces, to garnish (optional)

Rub the exposed flesh of the squash with the olive oil, five spice and seasoning and roast at 200c for an hour. In the meantime, rub the scallops with sunflower oil and black pepper. In a pan blisteringly hot pan, sear the scallops for 1-2 minutes on each side and then remove from pan to relax. Dress the salad leaves with the walnut oil and vinegar and place a mound on each serving plate. Remove the squash from the oven and mash the flesh, discarding the skin. Dot a small pile of squash in equal spaces around the salad leaves and top each with a scallop. Season to taste and garnish with walnuts, if using.

Fish 'n' Champ

Fish 'n' champ? What am I going on about?

OK, this dinner is a compromise, and I'm not big on compromising. Occasionally, my wife questions my wisdom and asks why we eat healthy. So I tell her: 'It's because I'm old and you're not, and although I worry about such things, you don't, but I know better, and I want to live a long time more, and you don't care because the 'future' is a long time away for you, and a lot further than it is for me.'

So fish 'n' champ - rather than fish 'n' chips - was for dinner tonight. I'm pretty sure that she didn't notice the difference, because 'chips' and 'champ' sound nearly the same, and fish is fish, right (oh, and don't forget my cunning use of the abbreviation 'n'). Err not exactly. But because my wife is a good(ish) person and likes to humour her old fart of a husband, she didn't complain when I served her grilled pouting fillets, instead of fried cod in batter, and didn't pull (much of) a face when I served mashed new potatoes with leeks instead of deep fried crispy chips (which I had promised her earlier).

So, was our dinner a compromise? Well, actually... NO WAY. Look, I love a take-away from The Seashell in Lisson Grove like the next guy, but tonight's dinner was absolutely delightful, so I couldn't say that it was a compromise. As for Mrs Ribeye? well, you'll have to ask her - which will be hard, because she is too busy cramming fish 'n' champ down her throat to be able to give you much of a coherent answer.

Try this recipe. It's easy to make, delicious, healthy and cheap. The leeks were a quid for two of us, and the potatoes were 50p. The pouting fillets were a bargain at £9.99 per kilo, which meant that the whole dish came in at a bargain £2.50 per serving. A quarter of the price of a decent take-away, and chances are, far more conducive to me living a few years longer than I might have done. Not that Mrs Ribeye cares...

OK, if you can't get pouting, try any white flaky fish. River cobbler is great if you're skint, cod if you're flush, or monkfish if you're a millionaire.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

500g new potatoes
500g leeks, finely chopped
4 tablespoons of olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
300g pouting fillets, skin-on
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
Salt and pepper
Fresh parsley, finely chopped, to garnish

Boil the potatoes in a pan until par-cooked and set aside. In the potato pan, add the leeks and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and sweat the leeks until tender but not coloured. Add the potatoes back to the pan and break everything up with a fork until you have a coarse-textured mixture and continue cooking until potatoes are fully cooked. In the meantime, get a frying pan blisteringly hot. Fry the fish on the skin side until crispy. Turn the fillets over and remove the pan from the heat. Place a mound of champ on each serving plate and season to taste. Sprinkle lemon juice on each fish fillet and place the fish over the champ on the plate. Season the fish to taste and sprinkle with the parsley immediately before serving. Last thing: Drizzle the plate with the reserved olive oil for a nice cheffy touch.

Spaghetti with King Prawns and Chilli

Mrs Ribeye and I are quite the fans of Gordon Ramsey's US series Hell's Kitchen ('IT'S RAAAW!!! SHUT IT DAHHHNNN YOU DONKEYS!!!').

It's good entertainment, but not exactly a master class in fine dining. Most of the food that the brow-beaten contestants have to produce is pan-fried this and sauteed that - basically anything that you can cook or reheat in five minutes - while the crusty-faced chef bollocks them for not having enough sear on their scallops (ouch).

At some point I will attempt to make Ramsey's lamb wellington as it looks quite delish, but I will have to save that treat for the weekend as the wife and I only consume bird and cat food during the week. Yup, we're still on the weekday veg and fish diet. I'm not sure it's doing us a whole lot of good - especially as on Friday to Sunday we turn into the great white shark from Jaws - but the school night food bill certainly is a whole lot cheaper.

Today's dish looks at first glance like a dear one, but Tesco has raw jumbo king prawns on offer at half price, so I thought I'd try a Hell's Kitchen special - the seafood spaghetti. Of course, I probably haven't got the recipe exactly right, but then I am not constrained to one pan, three ingredients and five minutes like the dopey bozo 'chefs' on TV. Where do Ramsey's scouts get these guys from? Starbucks?

Oh, one thing about this dish: I loved it, but the wife prefers Linguine Mrs Ribeye - a similar pasta dish but with no prawns, and made with mozzarella and basil instead. There's no bloody pleasing some people. She'd get on well with Ramsey (oh, and I would have saved a few quid too).

Oh and one last thing (absolutely the last thing): I use dried chillies in the sauce and fresh chillies to garnish. To set off the dried chillies, I cook the sauce with fresh finely chopped red sweet pepper and so I have three different pepper textures in the dish: Dried chilli, cooked pepper and raw chilli. How very cheffy of me.

Because of today's super bargain shellfish, this dish came in at a wallet-friendly £2 per serving. An absolute bargain, whatever Mrs Ribeye might say.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 red pepper, finely chopped

1 x 400g tin of Italian tomatoes with a half tin of water

1 teaspoon of dried oregano

1 teaspoon of dried chilli flakes

Salt and pepper

250g raw king prawns

300g cooked spaghetti

Fresh chilli rings, to garnish

In a hot pan, fry the garlic and pepper in the olive oil until soft and translucent. Add the tomatoes, water, oregano and dried chilli and cook until reduced to a thick sauce. Season to taste. Add the prawns to the sauce and clamp down the lid to allow the prawns to poach gently in the residual heat. When cooked (the prawns will have turned coral pink), add the spaghetti to the pan and mix well. Serve. Garnish with the fresh chilli rings.

Sesame-Roasted Salmon with Stir-Fried Vegetable Noodles

Only a few days in, and I'm TOTALLY over the London effing Olympics.

I've been stuck in traffic for hours to make a simple journey, all because someone from China wants to beat someone from Australia in a running race in my home town. Whoop-de-do.

Haven't these people got anything better to do with their lives than be good at table tennis/archery/judo/diving? I like diving as much as the next guy, but I don't expect people to gather at the pool in my summer holiday hotel and see whether I can hold my arms in the air really parallel while I try not to make a splash. GO HOME!

Anyway, just a fortnight to go and our London mayor Boris Johnson can begin the process of taking down all the posters, scrubbing out the new cycle race lanes and putting the Olympic stadium to good long term use. Then, our chancellor, George Osborne, can figure out how we are going to repay all our spent Olympic money. Good luck to 'em.

As for me? I just go to work as usual, come home (a bit late, thanks to the traffic -grrr) and cook my adorable wife, Mrs Ribeye, today's delicious dish - sesame-roasted salmon with a Chinese stir fry. The thing about stir-fries, is that you want to keep the flavours as clean and simple as possible. AVOID those disgusting brown-paint sauces you always see next to the packs of vegetables in the chiller counter. They're not remotely authentic, or even delicious - you may as well coat your stir fry in HP sauce or Marmite.

Having spent a lovely night recently at my Chinese friend Ying's house, where a sumptuous Chinese feast was laid on for me, I can tell you that there was not a creosote-coloured stir fry sauce to be found on any menu item at all. Instead, all of the bright colourful dishes were briefly introduced to maybe some soy, sesame oil or Shaoxing rice wine, before being quickly roasted, poached or fried in spring onion, garlic, ginger, chilli and/or Szechuan peppercorns. Incredible. I can't wait to be invited back.

The other thing about stir-fried vegetables, is that I have always been told to fry them over a searingly hot heat, for a very short time, to keep them fresh and vibrant. I can see the logic in it, but I don't agree. If you do that, then the minute you take away the heat the vegetables become soggy, as their moisture has not been allowed to fully evaporate away. I prefer to stir fry my vegetables over a lowish heat and make sure they are fully-cooked to intensify their flavours. If you then want to add just a little of the almost raw vegetables before serving, to give some vibrancy, then feel free.

I like salmon steak with my stir fry, with a little sesame oil and soy marinade - but you could give the same treatment to pork fillet, chicken breast or prawns. All are delish.

Morrison's Supermarket on the A1 near Elstree in north London are selling salmon, on offer, at a fantastic £6.49 per kilo (which they do about once a week/fortnight), which means that I can cook this dish with salmon and still come in at under my Potless budget - £2.75 per serving. Otherwise, I'd probably use their always reasonably-priced pork fillet instead, whether it's on offer or not.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 salmon steaks
1 tablespoon of dark sesame oil
1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 x 600g pack of stir-fry vegetables
2 tablespoons of sunflower or vegetable oil
1 thumb of ginger, grated
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 x 400g pack of cooked egg noodles
2 tablespoons of light soy sauce
Sesame seeds, for sprinkling

Marinate the salmon steaks in the sesame oil, dark soy and olive oil for an hour and then sear them in a blisteringly hot ridged grill pan on one side. Turn down the pan to moderate and turn the steaks to cook them until done (10 minutes approx). In the meantime, stir fry the vegetables in a wok on a moderate heat in the sunflower oil with the ginger and garlic (15 minutes approx). Add the noodles and the light soy sauce and heat them through. Transfer the stir fry to serving bowls and top with the salmon steaks. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve immediately.

The 2012 London Olympics Special: Traditional Great British Fish and Chips

The 2012 London Olympics are finally under way!

I live right in the heart of central London, so cannot avoid the new temporary traffic restrictions, the threefold increase of tourists, the hugely increased numbers of joggers/cyclists who have become inspired to get off their fat behinds and actually do some sports, the countless bomb threats, and Coke adverts EVERYWHERE.

So, what is the fuss all about? Olympics is really just a school sports day, but on a massive scale, right? Having looked at the list of events, I noticed all of the usual suspects - running/jumping/swimming/gymnastics etc, but there are also plenty of other obscure things to compete in and watch : Trampolining?! Are you kidding me? Water polo? Beach volleyball? Apparently until a few years ago, there was even a tug-of-war!

If this rubbish is being allowed, I'm going to petition the next Olympic committee to add the egg 'n' spoon and the sack race. I think it would be hilarious to watch pairs of our nation's best athletes tie their legs together and enter the three-legged race. Why not?

But for me, the best part of sports day - and the bit I would be most interested in recreating on the modern Olympic stage - would be the parent's race. We could get every single parent of every competitor from every nation to gather at Hyde Park for a 100 metre sprint. It would be fantastic for international relations to get everyone together for a single event, but it would be more hilarious to watch the parents overshadow their offspring's performances with such a display of raw competitiveness and a bit of... cheating.


How much would you love to see Usain Bolt's mum standing next to everyone else's parents, hitching up her skirt and taking off her shoes. There she would be, jostling for position against Roger Federer's mum and Ryan Gigg's dad. The Chinese synchronised swimming team are all there to cheer on their folks, as are the Russian table tennis players and the Saudi badminton squad. Suddenly, the starter pistol fires and they're off - Mrs Bolt gets an early lead, but Mr Giggs seems to be slyly making good ground on the inside. At the tape it's too close to call - Mrs Federer wins by a hair.

In the car on the way home:  'Well done Usain, you made mummy very proud in your little race, but if I see your friend Roger's mum, Mrs Federer, again I'm going to punch her. Bloody cheat'.

What fun! - I'm phoning Seb Coe.

The fabulous thing about the Olympics is the opportunity to show London off to the rest of the world. My home town really is amazing, and I'm very lucky to have been born here, work here and live here. I wouldn't think about living anywhere else (mmm, apart from New York, maybe).

The tourists will love visiting our famous landmarks and museums, walking in our parks and eating our food. And what dish is more patriotic than good old British fish and chips? Just down the road is the fabulous Seashell fish and chip restaurant on Lisson Grove. It's an institution - selling the freshest fish in crispy golden batter, with the crunchiest chips. I always order cod (pictured above), but the haddock and plaice are equally lovely. At home, I cook with plaice, pouting, flounder, river cobbler, or any other white-fleshed fish on special at my local supermarket's fish counter. It's all good.

British chip shop chips are absolutely unique. For a recipe which is only two ingredients, I would know whether a chip was made in Great Britain or not. You could take our potatoes and oil to the USA, Africa or Spain and I would definitely know that the chips weren't made here. It's what the French called 'terroir', but it's what I call 'the taste of home' - somehow it gets right into the food. Take a look at the picture above - don't the chips look incredible? Of course, I can't recreate the exact taste at home, which is why an occasional trip to the Seashell is such a treat.

You've got to order a 'wally' with your fish and chips as well - a huge dill pickle. They're made with industrial spirit, probably, and not some sort of fancy balsamic vinegar, but they are perfect to cut the oiliness of the rest of the meal, and very authentic to London.

I don't make batter at home - I prefer matzo meal, to give a more breaded and healthier finish. Again, reserving battered fish as a monthly Seashell treat, rather than an artery-clogging regular fixture on my weekly meal rota, keeps my waistline a very respectable 'could do with a trip to the gym', rather than 'morbidly obese ready for death'.

Cost-wise, doing it my way, this dish will come in at £3 per serving. If you take a trip to the Seashell, or the many other top London fish and chip places, the cost can be up to four times that.

My Home-made Fish and Chips:

Serves 2


INGREDIENTS:

2 large white-fleshed fish fillets
2 tablespoons of plain flour, with pinches of salt and pepper
1 beaten egg
100g medium matzo meal, or dried breadcrumbs
3 large floury peeled potatoes, such as King Edward or Maris Piper
Sunflower oil, for frying
Rock salt, for sprinkling
Large pickled gherkin, to serve

Coat the fish in the seasoned flour and dip the fillets in the beaten egg. Finally, cover the fish in matzo meal and set aside to firm-up. In the meantime, heat a large pan full of oil and cut the potatoes into 1cm long batons. Fry in the hot oil until crisp (30 minutes approx) and remove to drain, sprinkling them with the rock salt. In the chip oil, add the fish and fry until golden (5 minutes approx). Remove the fish from the oil and allow to drain. Serve immediately with the chips and the pickle.

Pan-Fried Salmon with Mushroom Cream Sauce

Here's a tip, which I have just learnt, which has taken my cooking to a whole new level.

The picture above was the main course, following the Thai Coconut and Coriander Soup starter, of the birthday lunch I made for my mum and sister.

The key to this dish is the sauce. I don't know why, but good sauces always elevate a mundane set of ingredients into 'dinner party fare'.

The tip:

With any sauce, simply infuse your chosen flavour ingredient, then discard it, then add some of the fresh ingredient again just before serving.

I'll explain:

If, like I have in this recipe, you fancy a mushroom sauce; infuse some finely chopped mushrooms into a cream/white wine/stock vegetable sauce base for an hour or so, and then sieve the sauce to remove all of the vegetables, including the mushrooms. Then, gently fry some new mushrooms to remove their acidity and water, and then add them to the sieved sauce just before serving. Easy. You can do the same thing with pretty much anything. Soups are the same - carrot and coriander soup is made exactly the same way.

Making sauces and soups this way gives the finished dish a background depth of flavour from the slow cooking, followed by a fresh burst of flavour from the newly introduced ingredient. Its seems like a lot of bother, but it isn't. You just need a sieve (no muslin - you don't need to be a fanatic about it) and a spare clean pot to transfer the newly strained soup/sauce into. Now that I have discovered this easy trick, my cooking has improved tenfold. Try it - you'll see.

Salmon fillet portions at my local supermarket were on offer at half price £6.49 per kilo, so that this recipe came in well under my Potless budget at £2.50 per serving. On a full price salmon day, I would choose bream, rainbow trout or even river cobbler fillets instead. It really doesn't matter - my simple sauce will transform any fish into a top notch dish.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

4 large salmon fillets
4 tablespoons of olive or sunflower oil.
1 large onion finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 stalks of celery, finely chopped
300g mushrooms (button, or closed cup are fine), finely chopped
Large pinch of salt
300ml medium white wine
300ml double cream
1 tablespoon of honey or sugar, to taste
300g shitake, or chestnut, or any wild mushrooms, finely chopped
Boiled new potatoes ( I used new season's Jersey Royals), to serve
Steamed green beans/sugarsnap peas, mange touts, to serve

In a hot pan, sear the salmon steaks in two tablespoons of the oil until golden and crunchy (5 minutes approx), and then transfer them to a baking dish. Preheat oven to 200c. In the meantime, in a saucepan, fry the onion, garlic, celery and button mushrooms in a tablespoon of the oil, until soft and translucent. Add the wine and reduce by two-thirds. Add the cream and reduce by a further third. Strain the sauce to remove the vegetables. Season to taste, and add the honey or sugar if the sauce is too acidic. Place the salmon steaks into the preheated oven and cook for 10 minutes, then remove to serving plates. In a separate frying pan, fry the shitake mushrooms in the remaining oil until golden and crunchy, and then add them to the sauce. Nap the sauce over the salmon and serve with the boiled new potatoes and green beans/peas.

Thai Coconut and Coriander Soup with Courgettes and Mussels

Over the weekend, I made a joint birthday lunch at my sister Roxanne's house for her and our mum, Mrs Ribeye Sr; and the rest of our family were in attendance to shower them with gifts and love. It was a fantastic day.

Because it was a lunch do, and my stepfather Stefano was taking my mum out for a birthday dinner in the evening, I decided to cook a fairly light fish-centric meal, consisting of this soup as a starter, followed by my Pan-Fried Salmon in a Mushroom Cream Sauce (recipe to follow soon click on the link!) as a main course. 

The 'eating light' plan got buggered-up though when Roxanne presented a chocolate birthday cake, jam doughnuts and assorted sweets to the table as dessert. As a token gesture, she also brought to the table a large platter of assorted fresh berries and grapes - it was barely given the time of day.

Neither my stepfather, nor my eight year old nephew Rocky can stand too much spice, so I decided to adapt a Thai green curry recipe, but take out the curry part, or at least the chilli, to make this soup. The result was amazing. A fragrant coconut broth which can be used as a soup base for almost any garnish ingredient. I chose cooked and shelled mussel meats, which are delicious and cheap to buy, together with courgettes, which add a welcome vegetable-y accompaniment to the shellfish.

Of course, Roxanne and I piled on the chillies ourselves after the soup was served. The Ribeye family are total chilli-heads - and I'm sure Rocky will follow suit once he is a year or two older.

You could make this soup with chunks of chicken, king prawns, or even butternut squash, instead of the mussels/courgettes if you fancy; but you must try this combination. It really went down a treat. 

Cooked mussel meats to buy from the local supermarket are about £1 per three generous servings, for a starter. Using these ingredients, I managed to keep the cost down to a very reasonable £1.25 per serving. Even if you used lobster meat instead of mussels, I reckon you'd still be under your Potless budget.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

1 portion of Thai Green Curry Paste - but omit the chillies, if you like

2 tablespoons of olive or sunflower oil

1.5 litres of chicken stock

1 x 400g tin of coconut milk

2 large courgettes, cut into 1cm dice

300g cooked and shelled mussel meats

Pinches of salt and pepper

Fresh basil, to serve

Fresh chillies, finely cut into rings, to serve

Fry the Thai paste with half of the oil until fragrant, and add the chicken stock. Simmer for 20 minutes and add the coconut milk, and simmer again for a further 20 minutes. Sieve the soup to remove the paste ingredients and return to the hob. In the meantime, fry the courgettes in the remaining half of the oil, until soft and translucent, and add them to the soup with the mussels. Season to taste. Heat the soup through for a further 5 minutes to warm up the mussels without overcooking them, and serve with the basil leaves and fresh chilli rings as a garnish.

Easy Japanese Fish Katsu Curry with Rice

WARNING: This recipe will offend food snobs everywhere.

Today's recipe is inspired by Wagamama (a chain of Japanese-themed cafes), who serve a breaded chicken breast with a katsu curry sauce over rice. I have since discovered that the sauce in question (or one that tastes suspiciously similar to it) can be bought in any Asian cash and carry grocers and it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, called 'Chinese curry sauce', rather than the Japanese sauce it is supposed to be - see the picture below.

Hardly Japanese and hardly home-made. Sorry Wagamama, you're busted.

Instead of chicken, I use a frozen breaded haddock fillet instead, not just because of my new 'meat in moderation' mishigas, but because breaded fish is DELICIOUS! I would eat it every day (in a plastic basket with chips and tartare sauce with a parsley and lemon wedge garnish. And a pint of Stella, naturally.) if I could, but then after a week I would probably hate the sight of it. If you haven't got haddock, you could even use frozen fish fingers - don't laugh, you snob, they are almost equally as delish as a whole fish fillet.

I know this recipe ain't actually haute cuisine, but it's not supposed to be. It's a stop-gap to discourage you from resorting to fast food places, and encourage you to eat cheaply, healthily and easily at home instead - as I did yesterday in front of the TV. Last night I prepared this whole dinner in the 15 minute half-time break in England's opening game against France, at Euro 2012.

By the way, did you see England play? They were brilliant. Even though the score ended 1-1, the French team, former world champions and considered by many to be this tournament's favourite team, were pegged right back. Our defence looked (almost) impregnable. It would be ironic if our new coach, Roy Hodgson, the cheapest England manager in years, might end up as one of the greats (but what a savage indictment of our domestic team, when a draw excites us to this degree).

Back to the recipe: I serve this dish with some steamed pak choi sprinkled with sesame seeds to give the meal a bit of green stuff; but Wagamama serve Japanese pickled vegetables with their katsu instead. I think steamed veg is better.

Morrison's supermarkets sell four large breaded haddock (or cod, if you fancy) fillets for a fiver. Unbeatable value, which means that this entire dish, including the pak choi, comes in at a fantastically cheap £2.50 per serving. About a quarter of the price of the Wagamama chicken katsu - and in my opinion healthier and more delicious (and in front of the TV while England manages to not lose to France). What's not to like?

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 frozen large breaded haddock fillets (or fresh - no-one's stopping you)
2 tablespoons of Chinese curry sauce concentrate
200ml water
2 large pak choi, split into two pieces each
300g cooked basmati rice
1 teaspoon of sesame seeds, for sprinkling

Bake the haddock fillets, as per the instructions on the box (if fresh, then it's 200c for 20 minutes). In a saucepan, make the sauce by combining the concentrate with the water and boiling until reduced to the consistency of thick cream. In a colander over the saucepan, steam the pak choi for 5 minutes, until tender. Place a mound of rice on each plate and top with a cooked fish fillet, Smother in the sauce and serve with the pak choi on the side. Sprinkle the sesame seeds over the veg.

King Prawn and Chickpea Madras Curry with Rice

On a boiling hot day like today, the best thing to eat is a super spicy curry.

Spicy food stimulates the sweat glands that cool you down, which is why the hottest countries on the planet generally feature curry as their national dish. Seems like a lot of bother to me. Why warm your body up to cool it down? Surely it would be more efficient to eat cold food, thereby cooling your body from within and not waking up your sweat glands at all? Quick, I must write to a consulate or three...

I'm not making curry today for any other reason, other than... I LOVE A CUZZA!

Depth of winter, height of summer, I don't care - as soon as I smell the waft of the chilli and spices I'm like a Pavlovian hound sitting in my own saliva. Today's recipe is a king prawn madras with Indian flavours, but I'm equally happy with a Thai Green Curry, or a Singaporean Rendang, or a Malaysian Fish Curry, or even a Veggie Curry, come to that.

I have used king prawns as my main ingredient today, because they are so cheap to buy and so delicious. I remember a time when these Crustacea were considered 'rich man's fare' - but not any more. I normally buy two 225g bags of fresh raw shelled de-veined king prawns for a fiver at my local supermarket, and then bung one in the freezer for next time. You could use chicken, any meat or fish, or a combination of vegetables instead, if you like.

I'm sitting here, waiting for Mrs Ribeye to come home from work so that I can put dinner on our patio table on the roof terrace and eat al fresco while the wife sweats her a**e off eating a hot curry in 75c weather and griping as to why I am torturing her. 'Don't moan' I'll say. 'People in India eat curry all summer long.' 'You're an idiot', she'll say.

She may have a point...

Budget-wise, this luxurious dish comes in at a non-luxurious, pretty standard, £2 per serving. If you make it with other meats or veggies the cost will go up or down a bit - but not by much.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of olive or sunflower oil
1 teaspoon each of ground coriander, cumin, turmeric, chilli powder, ginger and salt and pepper
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
400g tin of chickpeas in water
225 raw shelled king prawns
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
Fresh chillies, cut into fine rings, for sprinkling
300g cooked basmati rice, to serve

On a moderate heat, cook the onions and garlic until soft and translucent (10-15 minutes approx). Add the spices and cook until fragrant. Add the tomatoes and chickpeas and cook until the sauce is thick and unctuous (30-45 minutes approx). Take the sauce off the heat and add the king prawns and lemon juice. Fold the prawns through the sauce until cooked in the sauce's residual heat (5-10 minutes approx). Sprinkle the curry with the fresh chillies just before serving, and serve with the rice.

Malaysian Fish Curry with Rice

It's rare when healthy food tastes decadently indulgent - but when it does, you have to embrace it. Like todays recipe for instance.

Since Mrs Ribeye and I made a pact to eat less meat, we were worried that our diet would become a bit less varied and monotonous. Far from it. Because I find myself cooking things I normally wouldn't have done a few weeks ago, the opportunity to create new and interesting dishes has meant that I have a new lease of cooking life, and I love it!

Whereas before, I would have been content to cook meat or chicken curries, I now make fish or vegetable curries. Wow, what a revelation. Fish curries are so light and tasty, with fresh-tasting flavours, that I feel a bit lighter and bouncier in myself. I kid you not, I love eating meat with a passion, but I'm quite getting into this whole 'pescatarian' thing (actually, shoot me now - a year ago someone called himself a pescatarian to me and I fell about laughing at the pretentiousness, and now look at me, the hypocrite).

Anyway, buy any white fish and whip up a quick curry paste, add some coconut milk and in minutes, dinner is made and another meat-free day chalked up. Today, I chose to make a Malaysian curry by adding nuts to the paste ingredients, but you could omit them and add fresh coriander for a sort of Thai green curry, or fresh grated coconut flesh for an Indonesian touch instead. Experiment!

I used black bream from my local fishmonger, at £7 per kilo, so this dish came in at £2.75 per serving. If I had used cod, it would've been dearer, or river cobbler would've been cheaper. Your choice.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

Malaysian Curry Paste:

1 tablespoon of sunflower oil
2 tablespoons of either candle nuts, peanuts, hazelnuts or pine nuts
2 shallots, peeled
3 cloves of garlic
Thumb of ginger or galangal, peeled
2 stalks of lemon grass
2-3 dried chillies, to taste
3-4 curry leaves
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon each of ground coriander, cumin, turmeric and fennel powder
Pinches of salt and pepper

400ml coconut milk
4 large fillets of white fish - bream, haddock, sea bass, river cobbler, cod etc, cut into thick strips
500g cooked basmati rice, to serve
Fresh chillies, cut into rings, to serve
Asian broccoli (kai lan), to serve

Blend the curry paste ingredients together, and heat in a saucepan to release the aromas. Add the coconut milk and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the fish and cook for a further 5 minutes. Sprinkle with the fresh chilli rings and serve with the rice and kai lan.

Chinese Smoked Mackerel Pancake Canapes

I love drinks parties and I especially love food served at drinks parties.

Last weekend, my friend Andrea had a wonderful 30th birthday party in a wine bar in the newly refurbished St Pancras station, and laid on some delicious canapes brought over by white-aproned bar staff. There were cubes of succulent pork belly, salt cod fritters, goats cheese tartlets and roasted tomato bruschetta. Mrs Ribeye and I made utter pigs of ourselves.

This weekend, alas, no party. However, did that stop the missus and I eating canapes in the comfort of our own home? Oh no! Still in pyjamas at 5.30pm on a Sunday afternoon, I prepared our very own cocktail party for two at home, featuring my Chicken Liver Pate on crackers and these little pancake delights. The decadence!

The thing is, I had bought a large free range duck and fancied making crispy duck with all the Chinese accoutrements, but after making my Confit Duck the day before and my Seared Duck Breast with Roast Duck Wings (recipe to follow later this week) the day before that, I didn't fancy eating another meal featuring our webbed-footed friend - especially as we are still on our 'meat-in-moderation' schtick.

So, with the Chinese pancakes, sweet hoi sin sauce and spring onions burning a hole in my pocket, I had to come up with a solution: Smoked mackerel! Crispy duck is a bit smoky and oily like mackerel, isn't it? So I tried it, and I PROMISE you, it is better than crispy duck! Mrs Ribeye couldn't believe how delicious these pancakes were, washed down by some of her sickly sweet rose. I can't wait to try these out on some actual friends - even though these cocktail parties a deux are quite fun.

Try making these Chinese pancakes with smoked mackerel - they are lighter, tastier, less rich and healthier than duck, and a lot less bother. I just took the mackerel out of its vaccuum pack and wapped it straight in the pancake with the sauce and veg. Canapes in 2 minutes. Eaten in 2 seconds.

I buy the cheapest 'value' smoked mackerel in the supermarket, at £1.50 for four large fillets. The sauce and the pancakes come from my local Asian cash and carry. All-in, these canapes cost about 30p each.

Serves 2 (makes 10 pancakes)

INGREDIENTS:

10 Chinese pancakes
3-4 tablespoons of sweet hoi sin sauce
1 smoked mackerel fillet, flaked
Half a cucumber or yellow sweet pepper, sliced into 5mm strips
1 spring (salad) onion, sliced into 2mm strips

Spread a little hoi sin sauce onto a pancake, and top with the mackerel, cucumber or pepper and spring onion. Roll the pancake into a cone and serve immediately.

Anchovy, Marinated Artichoke, Tomato and Basil Bruschetta

Mrs Ribeye is away visiting her folks in Russia for her annual Easter trip home. Unfortunately, that means that left to my own devices, I cannot be bothered to cook a proper meal for myself.

Today, I have made my Courgette Soup and will be eating it with this delicious bruschetta.

I know that this might sound a bit like a proper meal, but the truth is, I made the soup a few days ago in anticipation of not feeling particularly inspired to create a sumptuous meal for one in the coming few days, and let's face it, the bruschetta cannot justifiably be called 'cooking'.

Another reason to pair these two dishes together is that I am quite loving the 'eating meat in moderation' schtick, which we started a couple of weeks ago. I know it probably won't last, but I will keep it going for as long as I can.

Use plum tomatoes, if you can, for the bruschetta. I don't know why, but plum tomatoes remind me of Italy in a way that the bog standard packs of supermarket light red tomatoes never do - and this dish is Italian after all, so authenticity will elevate this dish beyond a mere open sandwich. For this reason, I'm calling my courgette soup 'zucchini soup' for today, and I'm going to eat this meal while watching The Godfather. Any excuse...

You can buy jars of ready-marinated artichoke hearts in  most supermarkets (life is way too short to marinate your own artichokes, surely?), which are great with this bruschetta, and also an essential ingredient on my Quattro Stagioni Pizza.

These bruschetti (excellent use of Italian pluralisation here - I hope I've got it right) would also be great with cubed mozzarella, shaved parmesan, goats cheese, or other marinated vegetables, like sweet red peppers. This combination here will set you back £1.50 per generous serving.

You could also make these bruschetti in a smaller size for a summery drinks party.

Serves 2 (2 large bruschetti each)

INGREDIENTS:

4 large plum tomatoes, deseeded and chopped into 1cm dice
12 pieces of marinated artichoke hearts, cut into 1cm dice
2 tablespoons of olive oil (or the oil from the jar of marinated artichokes)
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
Pinches of salt and pepper
1 ciabatta
4 anchovy fillets
4-5 basil leaves, torn

Mix the tomato, artichokes, oil, oregano and seasoning in a bowl and refrigerate to allow the flavours to mingle. In the meantime, split and toast the ciabatta. Spread the tomato and artichoke mix onto the bread and lay the anchovy fillets over. Sprinkle with the torn basil leaves immediately before serving.

Gefilte Fish with Chrain (Horseradish and Beetroot Sauce)

So so so happy that my 'meat-free' week has fallen on Passover - because it means that I am going to overdose on gefilte fish. I don't follow the Jewish religion at all - I just love the food.

Gefilte fish originated in eastern Europe at a time when fresh fish was expensive and scarce, and so a recipe needed to be created to stretch a meagre fish ration to breaking point. And here it is - a sort of boiled fish sausage or dumpling, with a light texture and a fresh flavour and adorned with a carrot on its head. It must be eaten with chrain - a fiery relish made from horseradish and beetroot. Totally delish.

In theory, I could eat gefilte fish all year round, but for some reason, it only feels right to eat it at Passover. A lot of the reason is that shop-bought gefilte fish is foul, in a cat-food kind of a way, and my mum only cooks it at Passover - which means that I am confined to an annual seven day gefilte season.

If you ask my mum, Mrs Ribeye Sr., how she makes her gefilte fish ten different times, she'll give you ten different recipes. It's not that she's secretive or mentally challenged (that we know of), it's just that she cooks by touch, never writes anything down and therefore never remembers from one year to the next what the recipe should be (although amazingly her gefilte fish tastes the same every single year). She sort of knows, but would need to actually be in the process of making it before she recalls all of the steps.

So, this year, I decided to have a lengthy chat with her about the recipe and finally got what I was looking for - a definitive list of ingredients... to make enough gefilte fish for a hundred people. So, after cutting down the volumes to allow me to make this dish for, say, only four people, I now finally have the perfect recipe to make the perfect amount of gefilte fish. Phew.

You can use any sort of white fish for this dish. A hundred years ago, the authentic recipe probably called for ornamental carp stolen from the town square pond, or your next-door-neighbours son's pet goldfish, but these days, a mixture of haddock, halibut, plaice or bream would be great. Tailor-make your recipe to suit your budget. Because I like value for money, I use whatever the cheapest white fish on offer is - whole pouting or coley at £3.50 per kilo is perfect.

As befitting a century-old thrifty recipe, this dish comes in really cheap. £1.50 per serving, including the chraine, is all.

Serves 4 (Makes 16 Gefilte Fish)

Gefilte Fish

INGREDIENTS:

1 kg whole white mixed fish (including the heads, skin, fins and bones)
2 large carrots, peeled
1 large whole onion, peeled
2 sticks of celery
2 tablespoons of salt
100g medium matzo meal or white breadcrumbs
100g ground almonds
1 large white onion, grated
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon of sugar

Fillet and skin the fish, and pulse blend until you have a coarse paste. Take the fish heads, skin, fins and bones and place into a pan with a 1.5 litres of water and the carrots, celery, whole onion and half of the salt. Boil the stock for three hours on a low simmer and discard the flavouring ingredients, but reserve the carrots for later. In the meantime, mix the minced fish, matzo meal, ground almonds, grated onion, egg, sugar and the other half of the salt in a mixing bowl and refrigerate to allow it to firm up. After an hour, form the mix into 16 fish balls and plop them into the stock. Poach for 30 minutes and remove to a serving dish. Slice the reserved carrots into thick slices and top each gefilte fish with a slice. Chill before serving. Serve the gefilte fish with the reduced stock as a kind of thin gravy, together with the chrain.

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Chrain (Horseradish and Beetroot Sauce)

INGREDIENTS:

200g jar of pickled beetroots
10cm length of horseradish, peeled
1 tablespoon of caster sugar
Pinch of salt

Blend all of the ingredients until smooth. Refrigerate until needed.

Salmon Fritters

As a kid, salmon cutlets were always my mum's surefire way to get me to eat fish.

Not only were they fried (excuse me, which food ISN'T enhanced by a dip in boiling oil?), but also they weren't particularly fishy. My mum's cutlet mixture used a 60/40 ratio of tinned fish to other ingredients - which I found to be a perfectly acceptable dilution.

However, on a trip to visit the Russian in-laws last summer, I thought I would impress them with a dish which was not a million miles away from traditional Russian fish 'kotleti' - and I set about making my mum's salmon cutlet recipe. I totally messed it up. I used one 400g can of salmon and I ended up making about twenty cutlets. I don't know what went wrong, but the mixture seemed to just keep getting bigger and bigger, as I absent-mindedly added more and more eggs, flour and potato. Whatever I added, the mix was way moister than my mum's recipe. 

In the spirit of 'doing my best' and not wanting to add even more bloody flour to the mix, I heated up a pan of oil and spooned the batter into it to cook. Surprisingly, although the cutlets resembled fritters instead of cutlets, they did not fall apart in the pan. I finished cooking them all and they turned out fantastically. Nothing like a salmon cutlet, but in some ways better - lighter, and more authentic to the thrifty recipe that they were designed to be. The ratio of fish in my fritters was about 30/70 to the other ingredients, but I didn't care. The in-laws loved them, and my reputation as a buffoon remained nicely hidden from them for a bit longer.

Now I don't cook my cutlets fritters any other way. When I have kids (hopefully in the not-too-distant future), they will probably love the 30/70 ratio, but will probably make salmon 'muffins' for THEIR kids, with a 10/90 mixture. No doubt, my grandchildren's salmon fritter recipe will omit the fish entirely.

Thanks to my unintentional thriftiness, this recipe is cheap - £1.50 per generous serving of four fritters.

Serves 2 (Makes 8 Fritters)

1 x 200g tin of salmon

3 small potatoes, peeled, boiled and mashed

1 large onion, finely chopped

4 tablespoons of flour

1 egg

Pinches of salt and pepper

Sunflower or vegetable oil for frying

Mix the ingredients together (not the oil, obviously) well, and refrigerate to allow the mixture to firm up. Heat the oil until moderately hot. Using two dessert spoons, form the mixture into fritters and plop them into the hot oil. Fry the fritters in batches until golden and crunchy, and drain onto kitchen paper.