Lemon Linguini with Sea Bass and Chilli Breadcrumbs

Yes, determinedly sticking to my guns, making summer salads and light healthy food despite the torrential rain coming down outside, despite an inner urge to make soup and despite wanting to get under a blanket, scour the channels for the X-factor and pretend its October. This weather will pass... probably the day the children go back to school, only then will the sun come out and the temperatures rise.

Either way, I wanted pasta but not a heavy wintery ragu or rich creamy carbonara but something light, (despite the addition of double cream, this feels incredibly light and fresh) fresh-flavoured and substantial enough to feed a crowd without needing salads and side dishes.... I used some sea bass that had been lurking in my freezer but any white fish fillet would be lovely with this zesty lemon sauce and chilli crunch.

Lemon Linguini with Sea Bass and Chilli Breadcrumbs

For the breadcrumbs:

100g fresh breadcrumbs 

zest of 2 lemons

2tsp hot chilli powder 

large handful fresh flat-leaf parsley

Toss the breadcrumbs with the chilli powder, parsley and lemon zest. 

Bake in a low oven for 10-15mins until crispy and lightly golden.

Set aside to sprinkle over the pasta before serving.

For the linguini

750g linguine

4 sea bass fillets

2 egg yolks

200ml double cream

juice of 2 lemons

30g butter

Cook the pasta according to pack instructions.

While the pasta is cooking, grill the sea bass fillets until lightly cooked.

Whisk together the egg yolks, cream and lemon juice. 

When the pasta is cooked, toss it in the butter till it melts and then add the egg and cream mixture. 

Serve a pile of pasta, topped with a few chunks of fish and sprinkled liberally with breadcrumbs.

Bruschetta with Chard, Anchovies, Garlic & Lemon

At last, I am starting to see the fruits of my labour, (if you can call scattering a packet of seeds from a height very quickly on a wet day, labour) ... the vegetable patch is a late starter this year because of all the rainy weather, but today it has come good and I picked a huge bowlful of rainbow chard. The leaves are small enough to use in a salad but I wanted to make my very favourite chard dish. Super healthy, and super tasty and can easily be made with baby spinach or even spring greens (though aren't the jewel colours of rainbow chard beautiful? Do find some if you can. )

This is not hard to make, takes only a few minutes to prepare and doesn't have a huge list of ingredients. It is simply one of those Italian-inspired recipes where the freshness of the ingredients shines through - made for eating outside in the sunshine with a glass of red for lunch.

Bruschetta with Rainbow Chard, Anchovies, Garlic & Lemon

4 thin slices of baguette or crusty bread
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
2 handfuls of rainbow chard (or other leafy greens: swiss chard, spinach, cavalo nero etc)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 anchovy fillets, chopped finely
juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
1tsp sea salt
                                                      drizzle of olive oil

 Heat a griddle pan (or pre-heat the oven and bake till crisp) and toast the slices of bread until crisp. 
Rub the clove of garlic across the bread  and set aside.
Saute the chard in the olive oil and garlic until wilted then add the anchovies, lemon juice and lemon zest and warm through.
Serve the chard on top of the bread and sprinkle with sea salt and drizzle with olive oil.
Quite lovely.

Spicy Hummus with Crispy Lamb

Middle Eastern and North African food is a wee passion in my kitchen. Whenever I search for dinner ideas, I return again and again to the books that experiment with flavours of the east: Claudia Roden's 'Arabesque', Sam Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi's 'Ottolenghi: The Cookbook' and Sam and Sam Clark's Moro books among others. For me the attraction is in the aromatic spices, slow cooking and liberal use of beans and seeds.

Hummus is one of my favourite foods of all time, we eat our way through an astonishing amount of hummus each week, served with salad on flatbreads for lunch, as afterschool snack with carrots and sugarsnaps, or as late night snack with pitta bread and a glass of wine.

No matter how good some of the shop bought versions are, it never tastes as good as when you make it yourself. Hummus itself takes five minutes to throw together but this recipe transforms it from a simple dip into a more luxurious starter or supper.

For a vegetarian version, liberally sprinkle with toasted pine nuts, or with chickpeas cooked in place of the lamb.
Spicy Hummus with Crispy Lamb

For the hummus:
400g tin chickpeas, drained
1 lemon, juice and zest
2 tbsp tahini
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
100ml olive oil
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne powder
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbsp plain greek yogurt

For the crispy lamb:
100g minced lamb
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp harrisa or chilli paste
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp smoked paprika (optional)
drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Blend all the hummus ingredients together in a food processor until smooth.
Spread thinly across a large plate.
Heat the olive oil in a non-stick frying pan and saute the minced lamb till browned. Add the harissa, cumin, coriander and cinnamon and cook gently for around 5 minutes until the lamb starts to become a little crispy.
Scatter the lamb over the hummus and sprinkle the smoked paprika over everything. Just before serving anoint with a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and serve with flatbreads.

Lanark Blue and Leek Tartlette

I love cookbooks, actually I love all books, but the more cookbooks in my collection the better. I have shelves and shelves filled with them. Some I pick up in charity shops, some were Christmas presents, birthday presents, the results of late-night Amazon shopping, others I have inherited from family and friends.

One of my many new year resolutions is to cook more from the beautiful collection of books I have, however this recipe, like so many we use regularly in our kitchens didn't come from a glossy magazine or cookbook, instead its a version of a quiche I had at a friend's house which she made from a recipe her mum passed on to her. I have messed around with it a little: I wanted small tarts to serve at breakfast, but the recipe started life as a full size quiche served with salads for lunch and would make a gorgeous starter at dinner.

The kitchen fills with a fug of steam as these emerge, the tang of leeks hangs in the air and the salty pungency of strong blue cheese makes your mouth water as they cool. These are a Scottish take on a traditional French recipe.

Lanark Blue and Leek Tartlette
200g shortcrust pastry
1 egg, beaten (for sealing pastry)
2 leeks, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
50g butter
2 eggs
100ml cream
1 tbsp grainy mustard
100g Lanark Blue Cheese (or other strongly flavoured blue cheese)
Freshly grated nutmeg and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C .
Roll the pastry out as thinly as possible, cut 12 rounds and line a muffin or tart tin with them.
Allow the pastry to stand higher than the rim of the cups to allow for shrinkage.
Prick the bases and brush with beaten egg.
Blind bake pastry for 8 minutes until lightly cooked.
Cook the leeks and garlic gently in the butter until tender, around 10-15mins. Do not allow the leeks to colour.
Beat the eggs, cream and mustard then add leeks and blue cheese.
Season to taste with a few grinds of nutmeg and pepper, the blue cheese should add enough saltiness so no salt should be required.
Spoon the mixture into the tart tins then bake for around 15 minutes until golden and puffed up.

Cullen Skink

My camera is not working.... but I wanted to post this anyway. The wind is howling a gale outside, the rain lashing against the windows and I have a huge list of things to do but can't be bothered so am staying home to make soup. It is time, finally, to lay aside the hot weather food of summer months and embrace winter flavours, I need to make food to warm our bones and comfort us as we pack away the holiday clothes and break out the thermal underwear.

This truly Scottish concoction is not just a soup, more of a stew, a bit like an American chowder, rich dense and warming - perfect for a day like this. Although my version is not entirely authentic, it is exactly what I crave today. Hot garlic, potatoes and cream all flavoured with salty smoky haddock.

The village we live inis a good drive to the nearest fishmonger so we rely on a couple of salt soaked vans travelling through each week to provide us with our fish course. This week its the smoked haddock I can smell as I walk through the village square.

Cullen Skink
500g smoked haddock fillets (undyed if possible)
500ml milk
25g butter
2 leeks, white only finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
500g potatoes, peeled and chopped into 5mm dice
Salt and Pepper
Double Cream to finish

Put the smoked haddock fillets in a pan with 200ml milk. Add a little water to cover the fish if necessary. Boil for 6-8 mins depending on the thickness of the fish, until the fish is just cooked. Remove the fish (reserve the liquid) and flake into chunks.

Add the potatoes to the reserved milk. Boil for 10-15 mins until the potatoes are soft. remove the pan from the heat and mash the potatoes into the liquid until thick, smooth and creamy.

Melt the butter in a large pan and saute the leeks and garlic until they are meltingly soft. Do not allow them to colour, this soup should be a pallid creamy shade, no speckles of green or brown.

Combine the potato mixture and cooked fish in one pan with the leeks and add the remaining 300ml milk. Season well with lots of pepper (white if you have it). Smoked haddock can be very salty so taste before you add salt - you may not need any.

Warm through at a low heat for a few minutes then serve with a swirl of double cream on top some buttered soda or country bread on the side.

Garden Soup

There is nothing like an unseasonably cold and rainy day (think 11 degrees and torrential rain in September) to make me hanker after a steaming pot of soup. It was too wet to venture out to the shop so I got soggy wet digging the last of the summer vegetables fresh out of the garden, jewel-like rainbow chard, fragrant young garlic, and every size and shape of carrots.

I've been thrilled in my first year of growing produce by my garden's ability to nurture real food. I'd love to take the credit myself but I really don't think I've been as involved in the process as I'd like to pretend. This deeply flavoured forest green, iron and vitamin hit should rival the copious variety of supplements I'm taking to ward off winter colds. It has an intrinsic healthiness to leave you feeling sated and smug and the added bonus is that children seem to like it too.
As with all home made soup, you don't have to stick religiously to the recipe, this soup can be made from any assortment of fresh vegetables, whatever you have in your vegetable plot or can find in the farmers market. Spinach can replace chard, sweet potatoes can substitute for carrots, peas for beans, leeks for shallots etc.

Garden Fresh Soup with herby marscapone swirl
25g butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 shallots (or 1 onion), finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 large potatoes, peeled and diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1 large handful of spinach
1 large handful of rainbow chard
200g fresh peas or broad beans(frozen would be fine)
1litre of chicken (or vegetable stock)
Salt and pepper to taste

for the marscapone swirl:
50g marscapone cheese
1tbsp finely chopped chives
1tbsp finely chopped parsley
1tbsl finely chopped oregano
salt and freshly ground pepper

First prepare the herbed marscapone. Add the chopped herbs to your marscapone cheese and beat together with a wooden spoon. Set aside to come to room temperature.

Heat the butter and olive oil togeher and add the finely chopped shallots.
Sweat over a low heat for a few minutes then add the garlic and diced potatoes.
Sweat for a further 2 minutes stirring constantly to stop the potatoes from sticking.
Finally add the rest of the vegetables and saute for a further 2 minutes.
Pour the stock into the pan and bring to the boil.
Turn the heat down low and simmer gently for 15-20 minutes.
Allow to cool a little and liquidise.
Check seasoning then serve topped with a swirl of herbed marscapone.