#20 - Ways to cook salmon no. 2

So what is an easy way to cook succulent salmon? Answer - marinated stir fry! So this is what I did for my friend T coming over for dinner.

This time my salmon recipe did not go wrong lol!

I marinated the salmon fillets in an oriental mix of light soy sauce, thai fish sauce, chili oil, seasame oil and with fresh chillies, lemongrass and garlic:

A stir fry veg pack from Sainsburys was sliced and diced for the stir fry:


Then the salmon was grilled whilst the veggies were stir fried with the rest of the marinade from the salmon and served up together - too yummy to stop and take a picture I'm afraid!

For a palate cleansing desert and to use up a lot of blood oranges (also to avoid chocolate as this was lent time) I made a orange 'marinaded' desert:

The oranges were soaked in Grand Marnier and should have been served with a little cream, but were perfect with out = kinda like a lumpy cocktail! *hic*

The Camden Road Cook

#19 - What to do with lots of brown bananas....

Make banana cake!!

J had a tonne (not literally!) of bananas going brown, I had seen a recipe for brown banana cake on telly (BBC Nigel Slater) - so it was game on..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/black_banana_cake_52982

First we had to break up the chocolate

The Camden Road Cook does not own a rolling pin, however this is substituted by one of the numerous bottles of wine hanging around to good effect:

Apart from a vast number of bananas, chocolate, & nuts the recipe required a lot of butter and some flour type ingredients

Batter was tasty - and here it is in the tin ready to go in the oven

And after coming out of the oven!

Ummm tasting time!!

Seeing as we had a LOT of bananas we ended up with 2 cakes and enough to feed all our friends and colleagues (but I resisted sending cake abroad!)

The Camden Road Cook

#18 - Chocolate cake/mess?

So my lovely friend T signed me up to a subscription for Oive magazine for my birthday this month - this is us celebrating the Royal Wedding in style (well champagne and PJ's!)

Having seen the front of the current magazine showing a gorgeous chocolate cake my flatmate J suggested this would be a good recipe to try out for Royal Wedding day - this is what I was trying to recreate:

ummm - yummy!

Suffice to say mine didn't *quite* turn out like that!:

The chocolate ganache icing just wouldn't set - so mine was more a chocolate soup with a rather large crouton in the middle.... however as you can tell from the picture, this didn't stop people from eating it and given the large quantity of sauce, the overall verdict?:

Fudgy 'death by chocolate'...

Next time its suggested to use less cream to allow the ganache to set quicker - will let you know what the outcome is when that happens!

The recipe if you are interested in trying it out for yourself can be found here:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1190635/bestever-chocolate-layer-cake

The Camden Road Cook

#17 Pancake day!

So for pancake day this year we had an extravaganza!!

Starting out with the basic pancake - read crepe - recipe by Delia:

2 eggs
110g plain flour
pinch of salt
200ml milk mixed with 75ml water
2 tbs melted butter

Sieve the flour & salt into a large mixing bowl, then make a well in the centre and break the eggs into it.

whisk the eggs - with a fork or electric whisk if you have it - incorporating the flour from around the eggs bit by bit.

then add small quantities of the milk/water mix gradually - ignore any lumps becuase they'll disappear

the batter should end up smooth with the consistency of thin cream

when you are ready to cook the pancakes add the 2 tbs melted butter into the batter and stir in

melt a small amount of butter around the pan & tip excess out - next get the pan really hot and then turn down to medium - pour in about 2 tbs batter (you'll need to test for the optium amount for your pan - yum!), and swirl around until the pan is evenly coated with batter

cook for about 1/2 minute and then loosen from the plan and get ready to flip!

The result:

Savoury fillings came first:

A ham, mushroom, garlic, cream and parsleymix:
Et volia:-

Sweet fillings:

Banoffee pie! Bananas, duche de leche (sp?) and the ultimate base - crumbled oreo cookies:


All rolled up ready to devour!

Enjoy!

The Camden Road Cook

#16 - Exploding lentils! (way to cook salmon no1)

So whilst trying to create a short cut for dinner tonight I managed to explode a pack of ready made lentils all over my clean microwave.....





I'm sure I followed the heating instructions ok!





Anyway tonight's dinner was grilled salmon with lemon juice and chilli flakes, with ready made puy lentils (tomato & basil flavour - can be found in Waitrose).





To tart the lentils up, especially after losing some of the pack by *wallpapering* the microwave, I fried some sliced red peppers and mushrooms in olive oil and added chopped parsley et voila:




The Camden Road Cook