Japanese Coleslaw

I adore Japanese food. It's light and flavourful and mostly colourful and beautiful too.

If I'm out in town and I want to eat healthily, I always try to eat sushi or some kind of Far Eastern broth. If I fancy a bit of both, then a bento box from a Japanese cafe would be perfect. In reality, it looks like a TV dinner with compartments in an oblong box for different bites. There's always some rice, topped with a protein of some kind. Maybe a salad, maybe soup, maybe some pickles, and maybe something sweet. I adore the variety.

When I'm home, I sometimes try to re-create the bento by serving some Miso Soup along with a main course and a side dish. Today's coleslaw accompanies some Teryaki Haddock (recipe to follow soon) I made with brown rice. The coleslaw is so easy to make and uses very similar ingredients to the western-style one, but with a sweet and sour dressing instead of the usual heavy mayonnaise. I think it may be time to ditch the mayo out of my life. The regular stuff is too fattening (it's basically a pure oil/egg emulsion - why do it to yourself?) and the light stuff is not mayo - it's house paint.

The dressing ingredients were all bought from my local Asian grocery, but you can easily find the same stuff in you regular supermarket.  Cost-wise, the dressing ingredients set you back a bit when you buy them, but they last forever. Cabbage and carrot are cheap as anything. All-in, this lovely side dish comes in at 50p per serving.

Ideally, I would buy some bento boxes with compartments to use at home. But I think that it may be taking my Japanese obsession a bit too far. What would be next? A kimono and a ceremonial sword?

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

Quarter of a white or green cabbage, shredded
1 large carrot, grated
1 teaspoon of black onion (nigella) seeds
2 pieces of stem ginger in syrup, grated
Half a clove of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon each of sesame oil, rice wine vinegar and brown sugar
Salt and black pepper

Mix all of the ingredients together and refrigerate for an hour or two to let the flavours develop. Serve as part of a bento box-style meal

My Sister's Baby Tomato, Chilli and Black Olive Salad

My sister Roxanne never cooked much until she had kids, and now she's forever placing fish 'en papillotte', or gratinating various vegetables, or layering things. Nothing tastes as good as when it's layered. Apparently.

Today's simple recipe was an accompaniment to a main course (err, fish en papillotte, of course) for a dinner party she had on the weekend. I don't normally rip my family's recipes off - unless the food is sensational despite the shoddy photograph (my mum's baked cheesecake recipe springs to mind) - or the food is good but the photo is knockout.

Hence today's inclusion. Have you ever seen tomatoes look quite so delectable? Olives have never looked blacker or shinier. My sister can not only cook, she is also a great photographer. Maybe one day she'll think of doing one of these things as a job. But I doubt it.

Anyway, this simple summer salad goes well with fish or perhaps as an accompaniment to a ploughman's lunch. Either way, I would be delighted to have something so colourful put in front of me at any mealtime.

The only thing is, Roxanne tells me that the dressing is olive oil, with no acidic counterbalance.  Maybe the tomatoes will add an astringent note, but I would add a teaspoon of lemon juice or red wine vinegar to the mix just to enhance the sharpness of the dish.

My sister is as thrifty as I am. I would guess that she paid no more than £1 per serving for this salad. A bargain I reckon.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

300g mixed baby tomatoes (I prefer cherry plum tomatoes myself)
2 large red chillies, de-seeded and finely chopped
100g pitted black olives, halved
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped (make sure you remove the bitter centre stem)
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon juice or red wine vinegar (optional, see note above)
Salt and black pepper
Handful of fresh parsley leaves, finely chopped

On a large serving platter, arrange the tomatoes and chillies, with the olives arranged in neat rows on top. Scatter the salad with the garlic and then dress with the olive oil and lemon juice or vinegar, if using. Season the salad and garnish with the parsley immediately before serving, and not before.

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.

Caprese Salad

I am convinced that the live basil plant found in the 'living herbs' section, found in every supermarket in the land, is a complete racket.

The concept is simple: Buy a vaccuum pack of basil leaves for 80p, OR BUY A WHOLE PLANT FOR £1!!! No contest really. (a) The pack, once opened, is ruined - which means that you must eat the basil within an hour before the leaves get all soggy and shocked that they're now inhaling central London fumes and cooking smells after they were all used to being cosy in their hermetically-sealed plastic environment; (b) Who wants to eat a whole pack of basil in one sitting? The live plant will allow me to keep going back to the well for days (certainly)/weeks (hopefully)/months (can it be possible?)/years (dare I dream?) on end; (c) Live plants look good in my tiny kitchen - slightly like I'm living in Tuscany. All I need now is a lemon bush and an olive tree.

However, after TWO days, and a few snippets of leaves later, this is what my plumptuous basil plant looks like:

A ragbag of wilting blackening pulpy leaves and bent stalks.

Having tried every single tip on the internet to breathe life back into my herbal disaster zone (you can forget the care tips on the pack: 'Water when needed'. Bahh!), and failing miserably, I realised that I have been completely conned. The supermarket are injectingt the plants with fungus to get you to keep buying them! It doesn't matter where I live, how hot/cold my flat is, how sunny/dark my kitchen is, how much/little water I give the plant, how many times I crop/leave the plant alone, if I give/don't give the plant Baby Bio; the fact remains, I buy a new plant every week with the same steadfast optimism that 'this time, I KNOW where I am going to put it/when to water it/when to crop it' etc, but the plant curls up and dies within a day or two.

And I do buy a new plant every week. Why? Because basil rocks. I put it into as many dishes as I can justify: Italian, Thai, salads, stews and soups. Today's dish is a stalwart weekday light supper which I serve with some fresh bread and butter, and is so pretty and wholesome that Mrs Ribeye hardly notices that I've made very little effort.

Caprese salad is the simpler brother of the insalata tricolore. I barely buy avocados these days because I reckon only one in three is ever any good - and that is a risk-to-benefit ratio that I'm not happy with. Better to keep spending my money on those bloody basil plants...

Mozzarella cheeses seems to be getting cheaper and cheaper these days. A 125g ball of the cheap stuff is now 43p! Which means that this dish comes in at a crazily cheap £1.25 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 x 125g balls of mozzarella cheese
4 plum tomatoes
Quarter of an iceberg lettuce
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
Handful of fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Slice the cheese and tomatoes into 1cm thick rounds and arrange in rows on a plate. Finely chop the iceberg lettuce and place in a neat row down the centre of the plate. Sprinkle oregano over the cheese and tomato and dot the basil leaves around the edge. Dress the salad with the oil and vinegar (not on the basil) and season to taste. Serve immediately.

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.

Crudites with Anchoiade

I'm sitting in my central London flat huddled over my laptop, wistfully looking out at the sunny morning (although in full knowledge that while the day looks deceptively warm and summery, the fact that I am necessarily sitting in copious layers of poly-viscose tells me that it is bloody freezing out there) and wishing I was back on my summer holiday in Nice on the French Riviera.

So, there's only one thing for it: No. Not giving up my life in England to become a street artist in Provence. I'll make some summery grub.

For some reason, anchoiade and crudites seems like something that you should only eat when you're on a patio overlooking the Med, while drinking a long-stemmed glass of local rose and surreptitiously ogling French strumpet. But no! I made I made some this weekend while sitting in my draughty London apartment, drinking a long-stemmed glass of non-local rose and overtly ogling my own strumpet. And it was (almost) as good.

Anchoiade is a fairly punchy dip, made with tinned anchovies, a fair amount of garlic (not too much - I'm not actually French), a dash of vinaigrette ingredients and a handful of fresh parsley from the old window box. Terrific. Just pair it with some vibrantly colourful raw vegetables or even crusty bread, and in no time, you'll be back on your summer hols with nothing to worry about, except for a bit of garlic breath and a slight mid-afternoon hangover. Truly lovely.

No kidding, though; try this dip, it is absolutely my newest favourite thing in the whole wide world. I made it for the first time this week, and I have resolved to make it again at the earliest opportunity.

A 70g tin of excellent quality anchovy fillets are 79p at Waitrose, which means that including the lovely vegetables, this dish comes in at a very reasonable £1.50 per serving, for a super duper starter, snack with drinks, or weekend treat. Ooh-la-la, as some would say (not me).

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

Anchoiade

6 tinned anchovy fillets, oil drained
1 fat clove of garlic, centre stem removed
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil
Fresh black pepper

Fresh, raw salad vegetables, cut into two-bite-sized chunks, for dipping

In a pestle and mortar, crush together the anchovy fillets and garlic until you have a smooth paste. Add the red vinegar and olive oil until you have a smooth emulsion. Set aside until needed, to allow the flavours to intermingle and develop. Serve with the crudites.

Rainbow Greek Salad

The weekend is upon us! Which means boozing, partying, eating meat and no bloody work. Nice.

Mrs Ribeye and I have been pretty pretty good at keeping away from the flesh during schooltime, but as soon as Friday night approaches, our carnivorous instincts re-awaken and I break out the beef. That's not to say that we exactly suffer for the other 5 days a week, but man oh man, those vegetarians do not know what they're missing.

Still, if was a veggie I wouldn't exactly starve. As long as you've got a nice bit of feta cheese and some crunchy salad veg, you're going to eat well - as today's recipe testifies.

I love a Greek salad. But as always, I reckon I can improve on it. Go to any Greek restaurant and the salad arrives after the main course and just before the baklava. I'm a big fan, but why have the Greeks decided that a salad has to be so damn boring? I've been to tavernas in Corfu, Crete and London, and they all seem to agree that a salad should consist only of tomato, cucumber, sweet peppers, onion, olives and cheese. All very good, but not colourful enough. With our supermarket shelves heaving with fresh colourful produce from all over the world, why stick to the basics?

Nowadays, a Greek salad for me is a challenge to buy the most eclectic mix of colourful vegetables I can find. Hence, my 'Rainbow Greek Salad'. Try making yours with beetroot, radishes, baby corn or roasted aubergines. It's a chance to put the 'Wow' back into your meze!

Feta cheese tastes the same to me whether I buy the dearest artisan block or the cheapest value range - so I always buy the cheapest. I'm not sure why feta cheese is ever expensive. After all, it's only separated milk (which can be bought for 45p a pint). Be a skinflint like me and this dish comes in at a very pocket-friendly £1.50 per serving. Or buy the dearer stuff if you like. After all, it is the weekend...

A great lunch dish, starter, or pre-baklava meze staple. Just don't tell the Greeks...

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

Tomatoes, cucumber, yellow and red peppers, spring (salad) or red onions, peeled carrot - all cut into 2 cm dice
Handful of pitted black olives
1 x 200g block feta cheese, cut into 2cm dice
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
Pinches of salt and pepper

Arrange the vegetables on a serving plate with the olives and top with the feta chunks. Sprinkle oregano over the cheese and dress with the oil and vinegar about a half hour before serving. Season to taste (remember that the cheese is naturally quite salty).

Insalata Tricolore

It's such nice weather for a September morning, that it was a pleasure to do my new early morning 6k trot around Regent's Park.

In the last month or so, I have managed to keep up my 'three trots around Regent's Park per week' routine fairly well, and I am pleased to say that I have managed to shed a whopping 7.5 kilos. I am now half way to my target weight of 80kgs.

Of course, it's not all about exercise - I need to stay away from my hamburger obsession. I haven't totally managed it (McD's on the weekend - oops), but I am definitely doing better than usual. One way to keep eating well is to eat a lot of raw foods. Today's dish is a perfect example.

I have no idea  how many calories are in a ball of mozzarella, or in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, and I don't care. If this dish is all I'm eating for a meal, then BRING ON THE CHEESE! Obviously, my lackadaisical attitude towards dairy consumption can't be all bad, or I would not have lost a few inches of tread from my spare tyre so effortlessly. So there.

The key to a good insalata tricolore, is to use lots of fresh basil - like a salad garnish rather than a herb - lots of good quality dried oregano to season the cheese, and lots of top quality peppery extra virgin olive oil. I also use a splash of red wine vinegar to cut the richness of the cheese and avocado, but this is strictly a personal preference.

Oh, and one last thing: I only use cheap mozzarella (not the hard or grated stuff, but the 'value' one in the plastic bag full of water). For some reason, a good quality buffala seems a bit to gooey and jelly-like for this recipe. Buffala is great in cooking, but when eaten raw in a salad, the firmer cheaper stuff compliments the other ingredients a little better.

Because I'm using cheap mozzarella in this dish - 44p per 125g ball - this recipe comes in at a fab £1.50 per serving. Great as a starter or lunch, or as a dinner with garlic bread if you're not feeling as wobbly as me.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 large avocado, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 balls of mozzarella cheese, cut into 1cm slices
4 tomatoes, cut into 5mm slices
Large handful of fresh basil leaves
2 teaspoons of dried oregano
3-4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
Splash of red wine vinegar (optional)
Salt and black pepper

Arrange the avocado, mozzarella and tomatoes in to three strips down the centre of the plate to make the stripes of the Italian flag. Garnish with the basil leaves and sprinkle the oregano over the cheese and tomato. Sprinkle with the oil and vinegar, if using. Season liberally - the ingredients are deliciously bland and need heavy seasoning.

Asian Salad

Asian food is so delicious and appropriate at this time of year; when your dietary requirements are lighter and  your palate has taken a summer break from needing to be satisfied by large plates of lardy goodness.

Don't get me wrong, I love eating winter warmers, but at the beginning of September, I'm starting to get a bit anxious that the autumn chill is nearly upon us, and so, in denial, I carry on with my summery diet until the last leaf has fallen of the trees.

I actually love autumn. Mrs Ribeye and frequently I take a nice evening stroll through Regent's Park, just a few hundred yards away from Potless Towers, and we love to notice that the evenings are getting a little chillier and the trees are starting to lose their fresh lustre. You'll notice that the photography on the site will start to be a little less bright as I take photos indoors instead of on the roof terrace during the summer months (I was a bit worried that I would need to get a bright lamp to take pics, but why? I think it's nice to chart the seasons on the brightness of my photos).

On the weekend, we had an Asian-influenced dinner party with some very close friends, and this salad started us off nicely. The main course was a delicious Malaysian Laksa (recipe to follow), and the two courses complimented each other beautifully. The evening was a little bit spicy, a little bit rich, a little bit fresh and a little bit drunk (oops).

For your Asian salad; just choose the crunchiest, most colourful vegetables you can buy. Even raw cabbage is brilliant. The dressing is inspired by my many visits to the Benihana chain of restaurants - Benihana pretends to be Japanese, but it's really American. My dressing pretends to be Asian, but it's really from Marylebone in London. I bought a ton of specialist ingredients from my local Asian grocery and whacked them together with no idea if it would all work out.

I needn't have worried. The salad was incredible, and my laksa was equally terrific. If you serve these two dishes together as a dinner party menu, then make life easy on yourself and serve a flavoured yoghurt with fresh fruit as a dessert. It sounds a bit easy and a cop-out - except that I was served it at my friend Ying's house, and if it's good enough for a real Asian person, it's good enough for an aspiring one! Needless to say, our guests scoffed the lot (one of my most important criteria in selecting friends, is their capacity to greedily scoff).

Cost-wise, this recipe is as reasonable as it is tasty. £1.25 per serving is all it is.

Serves 4 (as a starter)

Salad ingredients:

1 small packet of wild rocket leaves
1 yellow pepper, cut into 5mm matchsticks
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into 5mm matchsticks
Third of a cucumber, deseeded and cut into 5mm matchsticks
Handful of beansprouts

Thumb of ginger, peeled and cut into 2mm matchsticks, for sprinkling
Sesame seeds, for sprinkling
Fresh coriander leaves, for sprinkling

Arrange the vegetables in a haphazard manner - you are looking for a light, random colourful pile. Dress the salad first, then garnish with the ginger, sesame seeds and coriander leaves.

Dressing ingredients:

3 pieces of stem ginger in syrup, drained
2 tablespoons stem ginger syrup
1 clove of garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 tablespoons of water

Whizz the ingredients up in a blender and refrigerate for at least an hour to let the flavours mellow and develop. Serve the salad immediately after the dressing has been added.

Italian Mixed Salad

What a lovely weekend Mrs Ribeye and I just had.

We had plans to go to a big party at our friends in Brixton on Saturday night, and then skipped it to spend a much-needed afternoon at home with just our thoughts - and a big bag of peanut M&M's while watching DVD's, followed by an evening of Fish and Chips from the Seashell in Lisson Grove and more DVD's.

The next morning - Sunday - we took a slow walk through the rose gardens in beautiful Regent's Park, on our way from our home in Marylebone to Camden Town. After a massive fry-up at the Goodfare Cafe on Parkway, we got the papers and spent the afternoon lazing around at home. Heaven. Slight problem: Too many calories and not enough exercise.

So, to avoid the 'Creeping Gut' syndrome, I resolved to make a healthy Sunday night dinner - and this is it. Italian mixed salad. Basically, it's just a whole load of things that you might put on a pizza, but in raw form and without the pizza base, but with lettuce as the base instead. Of course, being English, the bread could not be omitted entirely - slices of olive oil-soaked toast with dried oregano sprinkled on top were the perfect accompaniment. I said 'eat healthily', not become an 'Atkins-obsessed, carb-hating fanatic', did I?

The result was absolutely incredible, and I didn't feel even a tiny bit bad about eating a whole mozzarella cheese. When you eat it raw, it feels healthier. Deluded? Probably.

This week is a big socialising week, with plans for about four nights in a row. No rest for the wicked - unless we cancel, that is.

Cost-wise, this dish comes in at just on your Potless budget. £3 per serving is all.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 soft round or frisee lettuce
1 large red pepper, cut into large chunks
2 large tomatoes, cut into large chunks
2 spring onions, finely chopped
2 balls of mozzarella, cut into large chunks
Handful of olives
1 x 75g tin of anchovies in olive oil
Handful of fresh basil
Half a ciabatta loaf, cut into 1cm thick slices
Pinch of dried oregano
Pinches of salt and pepper
Dash of olive oil
Dash of red wine vinegar

Arrange the salad vegetables, with the mozzarella, anchovies, olives and fresh basil on top. In the meantime, toast the bread and sprinkle with some of the reserved olive oil from the anchovies, then sprinkle with the oregano and salt and pepper. Dress the salad with the fresh olive oil and red wine vinegar and serve with the ciabatta slices.

Toasted Goats Cheese Salad with Red Onion Marmalade and a Creamy Vinaigrette

One of the best things about French food, is their love of the salad. On nearly every restaurant menu is a selection of different salads, all featuring local ingredients, and which are almost always served in huge portions. I love them all.

One day, I might fancy a salad with chicken livers, as I did in Langres; on another occasion I might fancy a selection of crudites, as I did in Kaysersberg. However, if I absolutely had to choose a death row salad (sorry - a bit of a contrived scenario, even for me), I would choose a good old salade de chevre chaud.

I don't know why goats cheese tastes so much better once it's had a bit of a heat-up under a grill, but it takes on a sort of souffle'd quality with added richness. I know - it's like eating a savoury cheesecake!

To cut the richness, I have added a red onion marmalade to each toasted cheese slice. I know it's a bit fiddly and a bit poncey to start smearing your own home-made jams onto bread before covering them with cheese and popping them under a grill, but I promise you, it is well worth it. The marmalade is only 3-4 ingredients anyway. Try it - you can also use it as a nice accompaniment to an after-dinner cheese board (another brilliant French invention) or as part of my Mozzarella, Sweet Red Onion, Garlic and Rosemary Foccacia recipe.


By the by, I watched a fantastic episode of Raymond Blanc's 'The Very Hungry Frenchman' the other day, which was set in Lyon. Not only was the cheese board creatively constructed out of a wooden packing crate (tres sauvage), but the episode reminded me of when Mrs Ribeye and I visited an authentic Lyonnaise bouchon to eat the local specialities of tripe and andouillette (intestine) sausage. I shall report back soon, of course - suffice to say that the not-easily-forgotten experience has left me with conflicting feelings of strange cravings/revulsion. An ex-girlfriend once described her feelings for me in a similar way.


Back to today's recipe: If I'm honest, I would have grilled the goats cheese a little more to really melt it down, but I was afraid that I would burn the bread (see how dark it is in the picture - oops). Next time, I'll turn up the heat on the grill to maximum and reduce the cooking time. I reckon that that'll do the trick.


A quick note on the vinaigrette dressing: I now add a little boiling water to my mix, which takes away the sharpness and aids in creating a smooth creamy emulsion - a tip I picked-up from a Marco Pierre White recipe. He's quite the chef, you know.

I served this dish as a main course, but you could halve the portion and serve it as a starter. Or do as Mrs Ribeye and I sometimes do: Don't halve the ingredients, and still serve it as a starter nonetheless. All-in, a large portion of this salad comes in at very reasonable £2 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 small sourdough loaf, cut into 8 thick slices
1 portion of red onion marmalade
150g goats cheese log, cut into 8 slices
1 soft round lettuce, leaves torn
3 large tomatoes, cut into 1cm dice
1 large spring (salad) onion, finely chopped

Creamy Vinaigrette:


4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons boiling water
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Large pinches of salt and pepper

Firstly, make the vinaigrette by blending the ingredients and setting the dressing aside until needed. Then, grill both sides of the bread - one side slightly less than the other. On the lighter sides, spread a spoonful of the onion marmalade, then top with a slice of goats cheese. Grill the goats cheese slices under a hot grill until bubbling (3-4 minutes approx). In the meantime, arrange the lettuce, tomato and onion on a serving plate, and dress with the vinaigrette. Top the salad with four goats cheese slices each. Serve immediately.

Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto and Vegetable Couscous with Fresh Oregano

So, here are a few facts to ponder:

1. I make Mrs Ribeye's packed lunch every day for work (henpecked, me? nah...).
2. Mrs Ribeye and I are on a 'meat in moderation' pact, meaning we mainly reserve eating flesh for weekends and special occasions.
3. I have a new herb garden (more like a couple of terracotta troughs, actually) on the roof terrace.

Put these seemingly independent facts together and what do you get? Couscous! With vegetables! And fresh herbs! Not so hard to guess really.

Mrs Ribeye loves pasta salad, but wasn't so keen on couscous until I told her that couscous is in fact pasta, but smaller. Now she loves it. I can't wait to tell her that liver is made of strawberries and black pudding has chocolate in it. No, really. Couscous IS made of semolina flour like pasta, so it is (in theory anyway) small pasta. In theory.

Anyway, since I started making this dish, the old finicky eater can't get enough of it. When she saw the fresh oregano, she asked me why I had put bits of the hedge on her packed lunch. Give me strength...

In the new herb 'garden', I have put oregano, French tarragon, apple mint and rosemary. Mrs Ribeye likes nicking off bits of the mint to put in her tea (bless her and her Russian ways) and I like nicking bits off the rest to jazz up our meals. Apart from using the oregano in this vegetarian recipe, I'm looking forward to the weekend to use it to 'herbify' a Greek lamb dish, or something.

This weekend is the Eurovision Song Contest and I have Ophelia, Kumar, Tanya and Ricardo over here for a barbecue/Eurovision extravaganza - let's hope this heatwave holds out (it probably won't). Watch this space for a barbecue recipe after I've figured out what I'm going to make. I'm feeling a bit hamburger-y, but peri-peri chicken is also on the cards. Go Engelbert!

Back to today though. Just gather up some spring vegetables and add them to a sun-dried tomato or basil pesto-flavoured couscous and then get busy with the fresh herbs. It's a wonderful late spring/early summer lunch or supper, or if you're Mrs Ribeye, a fabulous packed lunch to eat with your workmates in sunny Hyde Park. Luckyyyyyy.

Cost-wise, this set me back £1.50 per serving, but feel free to add whatever you like and you'll still stay way under your Potless budget.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

100g dried couscous
150ml boiling water
50g sun-dried tomato pesto sauce
Pinches of salt and pepper
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
200g chopped vegetables (I have used artichoke hearts, fresh tomatoes and black olives)
Fresh oregano leaves to sprinkle

Add the couscous to the boiling water with the pesto, salt and pepper and dried oregano. Leave to stand, covered in clingfilm, until the water has been absorbed (10 minutes approx). Once the couscous has cooled to room temperature, add the vegetables and fold through. Sprinkle with the fresh oregano leaves just before serving.

Greek Halloumi Salad with Hummus Dressing

I love that squeaky, rubbery cheese halloumi. After a few minutes of frying in hot oil, it transforms from an unpalatable bar of white waxy soapy stuff to a delicious savoury crispy gooey treat, perfect for a meat-free dinner. It's still a bit squeaky though.

So, with a bar of halloumi and the omnipresent tub of hummus in the fridge, I thought, let's make a bit of a healthy meal, after all of the birthday weekend tomfoolery. And this is it. I simply loosened the hummus into a vinaigrette base and coated a few salad vegetables with it before topping the whole thing off with fried halloumi slices. Delish.

In what other way could I fry a lump a cheese and call it a 'healthy alternative'? You gotta love the Greeks.

However, hummus is actually not Greek, despite it being served it in Greek-Cypriot restaurants up and down the UK. A decade or two ago, I went to beautiful Crete (I accept, not in Cyprus) and spent the entire trip searching for what I thought was the traditional Greek dish of hummus. No such thing. Yes, taramasalata and tzatziki adorned every dish in every taverna on the island (whether I asked for it or not), but hummus? No.

So, in the end, we ended up in a Cypriot restaurant, in Greece, before I got served the chickpea dip. And very delicious it was too.

I served this salad with Flatbreads, as you can see from the picture, and a very substantial and lovely meal it was too. Not exactly health food, but not too far off - especially if you fry the halloumi in olive oil, like I did.

All in all, this recipe comes in at a very reasonable £2 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 block of halloumi, cut into 6 slices
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Mixed salad vegetables (I used lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, olives, sweet peppers, chillies and radishes, all cut into 1cm dice)
Flatbreads, to serve

For the hummus dressing:

2 tablespoons of hummus
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar or lemon juice
1 teaspoon of mustard
Pinches if salt and pepper

Fry the halloumi in the olive oil until brown on each side. Arrange the salad vegetables in large bowls and top with the halloumi slices. Mix the dressing ingredients together and pour over the salad. Serve with the flatbreads.

My Mother-in-Law's Russian Salad 'Olivier'

Please welcome my mother-in-law to Potless!

Each year, Mrs Ribeye and I take a trip together to Syktyvkar in northern Russia to visit with the eastern wing of the family. We absolutely love it and I especially do, because it gives me a week-off from cooking and a chance to sample and learn to make for myself some authentic Russki cuisine from someone who has been cooking it for the best part of 50 years. I can't learn it from my wife - she hasn't cooked a dish in her entire 26 years. Bless.

Today's dish was invented 150 years ago by Lucien Olivier in the Hermitage restaurant in Moscow, and traditionally contained all sorts of decadent ingredients: Veal, caviar, duck, crayfish etc. These days, the salad is a mayonnaise-y delight featuring everyday stuff (the more humdrum the ingredients, the better and more authentic the dish - tinned peas are preferable to fresh etc), but is still utterly delicious and reminds me of family. I love it.

Anyway, Mrs Ribeye also takes an annual Easter trip home, without me, to get some quality time with her parents without having to be chief translator, and on this year's trip, her mum made her her favourite Olivier salad - and the missus had to take a picture of it to make me all jealous.

We're both going to visit at the end of the year for Russian New Year (on 7th January - don't ask) and we'll sit down for something to eat at whatever time of day or night we arrive. It's always dinner time at the in-laws place - I am hoping for some Olivier salad, my favourite Seledka pod Shuboy, and some various Pirogi (recipe to follow soon).

Excuse the quality of the photo - it has been taken with an iPhone in Russia, emailed to my Blackberry in London and passed through a filter to make it the right size and give it the right border. That's a lot of technology! Oh, but check out the crockery and tablecloth patterns - how pretty and adorable are they?

Due to the recent Russian clamour for western capitalistic values, food in England is now a lot cheaper to buy than in Russia. £1.50 per serving is all it'll cost you in London. Twice that in Syktyvkar.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1cm dice
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into 1cm dice
200g cooked ham, cut into 1cm dice
1 small tin of peas, drained
2 hardboiled eggs, cut into 1cm dice
2 spring (salad) onions, chopped
100g mayonnaise
Pinches of salt and pepper

Crusty bread, to serve.

Combine the salad ingredients and chill for an hour or two to allow the flavours to intermingle and develop. Serve with the crusty bread.

'Victims Of Their Own Success' #3 (in a series): Coronation Chicken

The buffet.

Not sure how I feel about a buffet. On the one hand, there is the argument that a table groaning with platters of tasty, attractively laid-out delights is a feast for the eyes and an unrivalled chance to scoff a wide range of things - which you wouldn't normally get to do with a stuffy sit-down meal.

On the other hand, the buffet can also be a selection of same-same salads and cold cuts, which, although exciting for the first minute you lay your eyes on it, really is less than the sum of its parts. ie a load of food which you wouldn't want to eat at any other time anyway, and which has been hanging around unrefrigerated for an hour longer than is good for it.

My old man, Mr Ribeye Sr., LOVES a buffet - I'll bet he never sits down to a meal at home. He's such a picker - constantly eating but doesn't ever have a plate in his hand (or a fork.Yuck). But who can blame him? As soon as you pile stuff onto your own individual plate, it looks terrible. Why would you want to eat chicken, salmon, salami, pasta salad, bread and cheese on one plate, all piled up like a Dali-esque, surrealist, mayonnaise-coated sculpture?

The only buffet I actually adore is the rubbish salad bar at crappy restaurant chains, like Pizza Hut or the Harvester. I have no idea why I get so irrationally excited about covering a load of iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes in Thousand Island dressing and soya bacon bits, because I'd never normally buy any of these ingredients for consumption at home (actually, that probably is the reason). Crazy.

My wife, Mrs Ribeye, loves carvery restaurants - you know the ones, with a fat jolly chef behind a counter cutting up a turkey the size of a Volkswagen, and a dessert menu featuring 'bottomless custard'. To be honest, I don't think she likes carveries, because she never really eats much of a main course. She just likes custard.

Anyway, why bang on about buffets? Well, the buffet is the battle scene for a true 'victims of their own success' dish: Coronation chicken. No right-minded 1970's buffet table would be complete without a tureen of good old cozza chicken. In fact, 1970's buffet tables normally contained at least six curry-flavoured mayonnaise dishes - remember curried eggs, with the piped yolks etc?

Anyway, thanks to its popularity all over middle class England, the supermarket buyers latched onto the phenomenon to create those disgusting pots of deli sandwich fillers (don't get me started again) in the noble name of 'coronation chicken'. Don't buy them - they're fowl.

For my recipe, I combined a few bits from that other 70's classic, the Waldorf salad, and the result is brilliant. For a true retro-style treat, pile the chicken up on a melba toast cracker and top with a half moon of cucumber (see my pic at the top - that is my very own hand by the way, not a stuntman's) and serve with drinks. I eat mine while dancing to the Bee Gees.

I use free range chicken thighs at £2 for four, which makes this dish a 1970's priced bargain at 20p per melba toast canape.

Makes enough for 20 canapes

INGREDIENTS:

4 large chicken thighs
1 apple, cored and finely chopped
25g sultanas
25g pine nuts
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of mango chutney
100ml mayonnaise
1 tablespoon of mild curry powder

Melba toast crackers, to serve
Cucumber, sliced into fine half moons, to serve

Cook the chicken thighs in boiling water until cooked (30-45 minutes approx) and remove the skin and bones. Break the chicken up into small pieces and place in a bowl to cool to room temperature. Mix the chicken with the rest of the ingredients and chill. To serve, pile some chicken onto a melba toast cracker and top with a half slice of cucumber.

The Sunday Night in with a DVD, Antipasti Platter

What a delightful weekend. Friday night's two parties were excellent. Happy birthday to Sandy, again, and bon voyage to Magda, again.

Saturday and Sunday were far more relaxed affairs, with the weekend culminating in me making a delicious Sunday night dinner for me and the missus, while watching Meet the Parents for the squillionth time on DVD. I made some Bread Dough on Friday and froze most of it, ready to make my quick foccacia recipe, to serve with this dish, a completely inauthentic (you know I don't play by anyone else's rules, baby) antipasti platter.

I piled coleslaw in the centre of a large serving plate and basically surrounded it with everything I love to eat. I had Black Forest ham and salami from Germany, Pecorino cheese and marinated artichokes from Italy, olives from Greece, coleslaw from who-knows-where (with bacon bits from nowhere at all), and my own foccacia from Marylebone in London. A European Union(ish) of flavours!

I know that antipasti, strictly translated means 'appetiser', but you won't want to eat anything else after this beast. Even Mrs Ribeye got well beat - and she's a 6 foot Russian.

As you can see from the picture, the platter makes an attractive, easy to prepare feast (the plate above is a single serving- don't judge).

As for my Five Minute Focaccia recipe, I'll post the recipe very soon. It's a winner. It's now posted - just click on the link!

Cost-wise, this dish is right on budget at £3 per serving.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

200g coleslaw with 50g bacon bits on top
100g Black Forest ham, thinly sliced
100g German salami, thinly sliced
150g marinated artichoke hearts
100g Pecorino cheese
100g stuffed olives
4 pieces of home-made Five Minute Focaccia

Place the coleslaw in the middle of a large plate and sprinkle the bacon bits on top. Arrange the other ingredients attractively around the sides of the plate and serve.

Smoked Mackerel, Cheddar Cheese and Bacon Caesar Salad

I admit, this salad don't look pretty.

On certain days of the week, I'm busy doing not much - my sister's friend Alex calls these days 'Bedroom Admin' days - and on these days I often forget to eat lunch. Which means a 3pm rummage around the fridge to assemble whatever I find, and either get lucky, or end up eating a Scotch egg with a packet of rice cakes.

Today was the luckiest day. I managed to find almost all the ingredients you would expect to find in a Caesar salad, and some extra ones that you might not. Never mind, everything combined and complimented each other like a dream, and although not the Scarlett Johansson of lunches, looks-wise I would still call this salad a Katie Price - a bit of a mess, but you still would, wouldn't you?

Taste-wise, however, this salad is a Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley - so flawless, that you think it may have been manufactured. But why wouldn't you put smoked mackerel in a Caesar salad? You put in anchovies, and a mackerel is just a huge anchovy. The rest of the ingredients are just store cupboard staples- even the bacon is that cooked sandwich strip stuff, perfect for this recipe. No traditional parmesan in the fridge? No problem, grated cheddar will do.

In five minutes flat, I had made an enormous portion of this conglomeration of ingredients, and since I had a bottle of Caesar salad dressing in the fridge, I'm calling it a 'Caesar salad'. If I only had had oil and vinegar, this dish would have been called a 'Salad' instead.

Cost-wise, this is on budget at £3 per ginormous serving. It would have been cheaper if I had cooked some bacon from raw, used block cheese instead of pre-grated. and omitted the mackerel. But I didn't. Delicious!

Serves 1

INGREDIENTS:

1 little gem lettuce
1 smoked mackerel fillet, flaked into 2cm pieces
4 strips cooked bacon, broken up into 2cm pieces
75g tin of anchovies
100g grated cheddar cheese
100g croutons
100ml Caesar salad dressing
Black pepper (no need for salt)

Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and eat with gusto.

Seledka pod Shuboy (Herrings in Fur Coats)

First hand knowledge of the world will beat theory, every time.

From reading books on the subject as a schoolboy, I was aware that the Earth tips on its axis, so that we have seasons. I was also aware that towns near the north and south poles enjoyed long hot summer days and suffered long cold winter nights. But what I was not aware of, was that even though the sun may shine twenty four hours a day in July, it is impossible to get a tan during those Russian 40c summers (it may have something to do with magnetic forces, but I didn't get to that chapter in my geography textbook - I was too busy passing notes to Lindsay, the hottest girl in class).

Forty degree Russian summers! Who would have thought it? Before I met Mrs Ribeye, who is from Syktyvkar near the Ural mountains in northern Russia, my knowledge of Russia was almost entirely confined to Rocky IV. Completely ignoring that it was high summer in 2011, I genuinely believed that I would fly in a twin-propeller plane to a deserted airstrip, and then take a snowchain-wheeled Mercedes to a snowy log cabin in the middle of nowhere, to meet my wife's parents, clad in fur - in the middle of July.

I though everyone would be amazing at chess and that I would be eating potatoes and drinking vodka every morning for breakfast. I thought that all women would be either hard-faced, super-skinny and wearing stilettos, or hefty, mono-browed and carrying a discus.

I thought we would be skiing to the shops and speed skating down the local river. I thought the cars would all be eastern bloc Trabant-like crap heaps. I thought that I would bump into Uzi-wielding groups of Ivan Drago lookalikes at every corner.

All wrong.

Syktyvkar in Russia is actually a bit reminiscent of an American 1950's small town, as portrayed on the big screen in Back to the Future, not Rocky IV. There is a town square. Everyone seems to know each other. Everyone looks middle class. There is one of everything - one cinema, one restaurant, one hospital, a park with swings, a river and a small forest. The girls are neither hefty or super skinny, the guys are neither particularly tall or blond or with a flat top haircut, and there are children everywhere. Everyone owns a Toyota.

I'm very much looking forward to visiting the in-laws in the depth of winter at the end of this year, when some of my Rocky IV fantasies may actually come to fruition.

Today's recipe is, I have been assured, a stereotypical Russian summer dish, and is similar to the famous Spanish tapas dish, which I raved about in one of my earlier posts: Insalata Russa. My mother-in-law made Seledka pod Shuboy when I visited last year, and I absolutely loved it. I'm sure you will too.

Cost-wise, this recipe is a bargain at £1.50 per serving.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

275g jar of herrings in sweet dill marinade with chopped onion, finely chopped
4 medium-sized floury potatoes, peeled, boiled and cut into 1cm dice
250g tin of carrots, finely chopped
4 large beetroot, peeled, boiled and finely chopped
4 eggs, boiled and finely chopped
250g mayonnaise
Crusty bread, to serve

In a serving dish, mix together the herrings with onion, potato, carrots and beetroot until everything is well amalgamated. Top the mixture with the egg, then a thick layer of mayonnaise. Refrigerate to allow the flavours to combine, and the mayonnaise to re-set. Serve in thick slices.

Black Pudding, Bacon, Poached Egg and Avocado Salad with Mustard Dressing

Mrs Ribeye and I have not long woken up after an excellent evening. Our good friends Ophelia and Kumar came over last night for dinner and we managed to put the whole world to rights in just five hours of rapidly escalating drunken chattering. My poor neighbours.

I made this salad as a starter, Beef Rendang with Roti as a main course, with Apple Pie for dessert. What a blow out.

Having checked the rubbish bin this morning, I noted that we had also consumed four bottles of wine and a fairly large chunk of a bottle of Scotch. Ouch! Order was restored to my constitution this morning after a hearty breakfast, a black coffee and about four pints of water.

It is now mid-afternoon, and the only regret I now face is the mountain of washing up that Mrs Ribeye and I left, and which has not magically disappeared overnight - despite my wishful nocturnal fantasies to the contrary.

Anyway, this salad was, if I do say so myself, utterly fabulous. The black pudding mixed with the soft poached egg complemented the chewy bacon lardons, smooth avocado, slightly bitter salad leaves and mustardy dressing absolutely perfectly.

Cost-wise, the dish looks and tastes so luxurious, but is, in actual fact, very cheap to produce: £1.50 per serving is all.

Right, now for a half-hearted stab at those bloody kitchen chores.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

4 thick slices of black pudding
200g unsmoked bacon lardons
1 tablespoon of sunflower oil
4 eggs
1 teaspoon of cider vinegar
150g mixed frisee and radicchio leaves
1 avocado, cut into large chunks
50ml olive oil
25ml red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Pinches of salt and pepper

In a large frying pan, fry the black pudding and the lardons in the sunflower oil until crisp (5 minutes approx) and set aside in a warm oven. Clean out the frying pan and fill it with water and the teaspoon of cider vinegar. Bring to the boil and then turn off the heat. Crack the eggs into the water in separate areas of the pan and leave for four minutes to gently poach. In the meantime, arrange the salad leaves around the edge of four plates. Place a slice of black pudding in the centre of each plate and top with a poached egg. Scatter the bacon lardons and the avocado chunks around the leaves. In a bowl, mix the olive oil, red wine vinegar, mustard and seasoning, and then sprinkle the dressing onto the salad leaves. Serve immediately.

Wild Rocket, Smoked Bacon, Sweet Roasted Pepper and Camembert Salad with Sourdough Garlic Croutons

When I'm not in the mood for carbs, I often take my favourite sandwich fillings and convert them into salads. This dish is a sandwich that I normally make with a sourdough baguette. However, trading the bread for sourdough garlic croutons is a reminder that no-one loves a health fanatic.

You could easily make a club sandwich-converted salad the same way, with chicken, bacon, lettuce, tomato and cucumber - hardly a particularly healthy alternative, but any gesture in the right direction will do for me (I may even try a Whopper or Zinger Tower salad one day, if the mood strikes).

Anyway, get busy with the salads and that winter spare tyre will simply melt away. Today is actually the first warm day since October last year. Gotta do something about that spare tyre, before the spring really springs...

While your bodyweight plummets, your wallet-weight will stay nice and plumptious with this budget recipe. £2.50 per large serving for this dish, is all it'll cost you.

Serves 4

Rocket, Bacon, Roasted Pepper and Camembert Salad

INGREDIENTS:

200g wild rocket
200g smoked bacon lardons
4 tablespoons of sunflower oil
2 sweet red peppers, sliced into 2cm wide strips
200g camembert, cut into 2cm dice
100ml olive oil
Juice of 2 lemons
Pinches of salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200c. Dress a large serving platter with the rocket. In a frying pan, fry the lardons in half of the sunflower oil until crisp, and allow to cool. In the meantime, roast the peppers, with the other half of the sunflower oil, in the oven until slightly charred in places and the flesh is soft and translucent (30 minutes approx). Arrange  the cooled lardons, peppers and the camembert chunks over the rocket. Mix the olive oil, lemon juice and salt an pepper in a bowl and dress the salad. Sprinkle with the warm sourdough garlic croutons immediately before serving.

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Sourdough Garlic Croutons

INGREDIENTS:

Half of a sourdough baguette, cut into 1cm thick slices
4 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Handful of parsley leaves, finely chopped
Pinches of salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200c. In a bowl, gently toss the bread in the oil, garlic, parsley and salt and pepper until evenly coated. Place the bread in a single layer on a baking sheet, turning once until golden and crunchy (15 minutes total, approx). Serve warm.