Very lazy fish pie

The only way this could be lazier is if you bought it as a ready-meal!

1 packet fish pie mix (mixed fish - salmon, cod and smoked haddock), thawed and drained

1 hard-boiled egg, peeled and chopped (I even bought these ready-boiled in Germany!)

1 tsp fish seasoning (I used Dunn's River, but other seasoning mixes are available)

A couple of tablespoonsful of frozen peas or broad beans

1 packet pre-made parsley sauce

1 packet gnocchi

Put the first five ingredients in an oven-proof dish and stir.  Top with the gnocchi.  Put in in an oven you have pre-heated to Mark 6, and leave to cook for about 50 minutes.  So easy it couldn't be easier.

Sandwich fillings: Hummus and fishpaste

These are two separate things, you understand!  I always thought I didn't really like home-made hummus, but discovered recently that you should take the skins off the cooked chickpeas, and believe me, it is well worth spending five minutes or so doing that.

So, hummus:

1 tin chickpeas (one of the rare occasions I'll use a tin!)

1 large tbs tahini

1 tsp garlic paste (or crush a couple of cloves of garlic, up to you)

2 tbs lemon juice

Scant tbs olive oil

Seasoning as liked.

Drain the chickpeas and rinse well.  Now put into a bowl and cover with cold water.  Using your hands, rub at them until the skins come off, which float to the surface and you can discard.  You don't have to get absolutely every skin, of course, but it's worth repeating a couple of times until you are fairly confident you have the vast majority of them.

Now put the peas, and everything else, into a food processor and work until smooth, and then go on working for awhile until it is really smooth and creamy.  Adjust seasoning as necessary.

Fishpaste

I tin salmon - pink or red, your choice

1/2 tub cream cheese

Scant tbs lemon juice, wine vinegar, or, if you have some pickled vegetables (I see I haven't yet posted my recipe for those, but am still experimenting.  If you want a recipe, google "Bread and butter pickles"), the juice from the jar.

Seasoning as liked

Maybe a small sloosh of tomato paste, for colour?  Up to you.  I didn't.

Drain the salmon and, if you can be bothered, remove most of the skin and bone.  Put it, and all the other ingredients, into a food processor and work until smooth-ish.  

Red pepper sauce

 I am absolutely sure that, back in the day, I had a recipe for red pepper sauce which involved a red pepper (well, duh!) and lemon juice, but couldn't find it until this minute.  So I googled a bit and made up this one, which was delicious with sea bass earlier this evening.  I'll post the original recipe below, for comparison purposes.  The sauce is, of course, vegan, so you can use it in all sorts of ways if you don't eat meat or fish.  It would be very good on roasted vegetables, for instance.

1 sweet red pepper

1 small head garlic

1 tbs lemon juice

Seasoning, as liked.

Pre-heat the oven to Mark 6, 200C. Remove the stalk from the pepper, and place it on a baking tray.  Remove the papery outside from the garlic, and, using a very sharp knife, cut through the top of the head, exposing all the cloves.  Spray with a little cooking oil, and wrap with foil.  Bake both pepper and garlic in the oven for 40 minutes.  Then put the pepper in a plastic bag to "sweat" so that you can easily remove the skin after ten minutes or so.  

Put the pepper into a food processor along with the garlic, which you have squeezed out from its skin, lemon juice and seasoning, and process until smooth.

This, now that I have found it, was my original recipe.

1 small onion
1 clove garlic
1 large or 2 small red sweet (bell) pepper(s)
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper

Chop onion and garlic and microwave for 5 minutes, or dry-fry*. Flame pepper(s) or toast under grill until skin blackens. Place in plastic bag for ten minutes, then peel skin. Remove pips and white veins, and chop roughly.

Place peppers, onions, and garlic in a food processor, and blend, adding lemon juice until mixture resembles a thick cream in texture. Season to taste. This is glorious with fish - salmon, trout, white fish.....

* These days I'd probably cook them gently in a little oil until translucent.

Fish'n'rice

 I expect there are almost as many variations on fish and rice as there are on chicken and rice.  My current favourite is called Samak Meshweh, from a local Lebanese restaurant, which we have had delivered several times during lockdown - it's basically sea bass, marinated in lemon and garlic, served on a bed of rice with garlic sauce.  Very yummy.  But one can't always eat takeaway, nor, indeed, sea bass (not at £4 for 2 tiny fillets, you can't), and I love things-in-rice, so this was an Interesting Dish of my Own Invention. 

2 frozen haddock fillets (or cod, or any other white fish that takes your fancy)

knob of butter, for frying

1 red onion

2 cloves garlic

1/2 red pepper

1/2 cauliflower

1/2 punnet mushrooms

4-5 sun-dried tomatoes

1/2 cup rice

1 1/4 cups boiling water with seasoning added (see method)

1 tbs cream cheese - optional.  I used a new Philly with smoked salmon that was on special offer in Tesco.

Peel and chop the onion, peel and crush the garlic, chop the pepper, cauliflower, mushrooms and tomatoes.  Put in a heavy-bottomed casserole with a little cooking oil, and sauté for a few minutes.  Now add the rice and stir thoroughly, then add the water, which you have seasoned with - well,  your choice of seasoning.  1 used 1 tsp of a lemon/garlic/herb mix I just bought from Tesco, 1 tsp sumac, 1/2 tsp  all-purpose seasoning (Dunn's river) and 2 teaspoons of "fumet de poisson", which is a French fish stock powder, although it sounds as though it's fish manure... Also sea salt with oregano and sorrel, and black pepper. 

But use what you fancy - chicken or vegetable stock would probably work if you have no fish stock.  Bring back to the boil, stir thoroughly, cover and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes.  

Just before the rice finishes cooking, fry the fish fillets in the butter on both sides for about 5 minutes - they'll take a bit longer if they are frozen, but not much.  If you are using cream cheese, stir it through the rice, and then serve with the fish on the top.

Stewed squid

The thing about squid is that either you need to just barely show it the stove, as in a stir-fry or battered squid rings, or else you need to stew it thoroughly.  Anything in between and you have india-rubber!

This was a concatenation of several recipes, but I used too much liquid and it came out more like soup than stew - none the worse for that, I may say.  I thought the beans would absorb more than they did.

About 250 g squid - whole, if possible, but rings is fine if that's what you have.
1 large onion
2 carrots
1 leek
1 chili pepper (optional)
1/2 courgette (this would have been a whole one, but I found a half in the fridge that wanted using)
Several small potatoes
1 sloosh tomato paste
1 tin tomatoes or passata
200 ml cooking wine (I used white, as there was some open)
1/2 cup dried pinto beans, soaked overnight
A little cooking oil
Stock cube and other seasoning, as liked.

Peel and chop the vegetables - I didn't peel the potatoes, but did slice them - and do feel free to substitute any or all of them.  Many recipes include celery, but we are not fans of cooked celery, so I tend to substitute leek.  I did think of using a "casserole mix" as Lidl sells pre-prepared vegetables you can use in a casserole, and which make very good soup, too, but had too many vegetables in the fridge to justify doing that.

Sweat the vegetables in the cooking oil,

then add the rest of the ingredients.

I then added 500 ml water, which turned out to be far too much as I was using my Instant Pot for this.  I think probably 200 ml would have been ample, maybe even less, but I hadn't pre-cooked the beans (if I had, I probably wouldn't have added any extra water).  Then cook on high pressure for 20 minutes, or, if you are not using a pressure cooker, simmer for about an hour.