Thursday, July 9, 2009

You asked for it :)


OK after my last post I've had the lovely Miss Mimoo and Mrs Fudge request the recipe for that Fish Pie. It's dead simple but really was very tasty. My guess is they key ingredient like most of Kym's cooking is 'salt'... he he

Oh and taste as you go! Don't try and adjust the seasoning at the end. Some people like more salt or less dill and so on - make it to suit your taste buds. And we found it makes a fair bit - maybe about 6 big serves.

Here were go...

Ingredients

- 2 fillets of fresh fish, chopped into pieces (we used king snapper, but any white fish will do as long as you put it in at the end so it doesn't break up)
- 1/4 large fennel, finely chopped
- 1 leek (white only), finely chopped
- 1 carrot, finely chopped
- 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 6 or so mushrooms, sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 500 ml fish or chicken stock (we had our own homemade chicken stock and found this worked well and I preferred that it wasn't as 'fishy')
- 1/4 lemon, zest only
- 1 small bunch of dill and parsley, finely chopped
- Shortcrust pastry - enough to make a top and bottom. (we needed about 3 sheets)
- Approx 100ml Pastis (French digestive drink which has an aniseedy flavour, Ricard is a good one, but Pernod would do for a cheaper alternative). Now I'm told this is 'essential' to the recipe by Kym too!

Method

-Line a large pie dish (I use our big lasagna one!) with the pastry (make sure you cover the sides) and blind bake for 10 minutes or so. You can do this first or as you're cooking the mixture if you can multi-task :)
- Saute in a large onion and garlic lightly in a fair bit of vegetable oil and approx 1-2 tbsp butter until clear.
- Add the Pastis and let it cook off a little.
- Add carrot, then celery and then fennel, sweating these for about 5-10 minutes.
- Then add the leak and mushrooms.
- Add your stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring back to the boil and then reduce heat to a simmer.
- Add the zest and additional water if needed. Taste and add more Pastis if necessary.
- While the mixture is simmering away, make a white roux. Basically this is just butter melted in a pan, add some flour or cornflour and keep stirring. It will go into a ball and you just keep stirring it over the heat. Then take a little of the liquid from the simmering mixture and add it to the roux, continuously stirring so there's no lumps. Add the roux slowly to the pie mix to thicken. Taste it and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Apparently a brown roux is when you keep it on heat and the mix darkens, and a white roux is when it's just mixed together and removed from heat.

- Add the parsley and dill - enough to suit your taste preferences. Keep tasting!
- Add the fish pieces and stir in. Try not to break up the fish too much, so stir carefully!
- Add the pie mixture into the dish, add pastry as a lid and bake in a moderate oven. We found about 20-25 minutes did the trick - just until the pastry is cooked on top.

Well good luck :) Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of it before we ate it all... hence the best I could do was our Pastis bottle :p

If you've got any questions just ask away! Love to hear your feedback too if you give it a go.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Living the dream baby!

Chocolate & Raspberry tart made a few weeks back - so so rich but so so good!

For years I've had people say to me 'you're so lucky being married to a chef!'. What, being married to someone who works 70-90 hours a week and is too tired on his days off to cook? Spending 5 or more nights by yourself every week. Really, you want that?

Eating out all the time rather than staying in and cooking. I guess that part wasn't too bad. Or having your own personal food critic??? Just kidding. Kym wouldn't dare criticize my food or anyone else's in my family (not if he knows what's good for him!!!). No of course not, but that statement used to bug me a little. I also seemed to be married to one of the few chefs who DOESNT like cooking fabbo meals on his days off. Lucky me :( So many friends who were also with chefs used to talk about the meals they'd cook up on their days off. Lucky them! I've always said Kym seems to enjoy 'creating' new menus and food ideas than he did actually cooking them. The 'ideas ' man so to speak!

No, it's not all bad. There's been trips to Hamilton Island, Melbourne, Sydney, dinners, and lots of other perks. Free food, free alcohol. 'Special treatment' at other restaurants. And I've gotten used to my own little routine and watching my favourite TV shows and never having to share the remote!!!

Where am I going with this? Well since having Jett things started to change. I was too busy feeding Jett to worry about cooking meals so on his days off Kym started doing our cooking. Yay! But things have really changed since the restaurant closed for reno's. Now we really are getting gourmet meals for dinner. And I'm itching for someone to tell me how lucky I am being married to a chef as now I can honestly say 'yes it's great I know!!!'.

Last night was snapper pie (this was devine, if anyone wants the recipe let me know!), the night before was stir fried flathead fillets with ginger, garlic and greens, and well the night before was take out at Bec's place, but you get my drift. I'm not sure how Jett and I will cope when he goes back to work at the end of the year. Jett's already being very spoiled with his meals - I mean, how many babies have tried and liked truffles before they are 18 months old?

Anyway, this was just a little self indulgent post to say 'yay for me!' and achknowledge how lucky I am. People so often focus on the negative aspects of their life and I don't want to be one of those people :)

Thanks for reading :).