Cooking

How to cook the ultimate homemade fish and chips

July 9, 2018 by Erica Hughes 2 Comments

How to cook the ultimate homemade fish and chips

After a long and tiring week at work, you’re probably not looking forward to slaving away in the kitchen – but then again, you might not fancy forking out your hard-earned pennies on eating out, and you can’t bring yourself to face the queues at the takeaway. Well, why not treat yourself to a delicious homemade version of a Friday-night classic?

Pure indulgence

A British stalwart since the mid-19th century, fish and chips can be a highly satisfying source of vitamins as part of a balanced diet, as well as a rewarding, meat-free indulgence – and if you’re looking for a healthier alternative to your local chip-shop offering, why not try making your own? You can recreate a tasty take on this seaside staple from your kitchen with minimal effort, saving yourself a trip out – not to mention a few pounds (and calories!).

Ready in just 20 minutes, McCain’s flavoursome Triple Cooked Chips provide the perfect accompaniment to a crisp-baked cod or a succulent slice of haddock. And with a pre-prepared sachet of seasoning in every pack, you can switch on the oven and switch off your brain as you nestle in for an evening in front of the television, or get ready for your evening out, knowing that a satisfying meal for the family is less than half-an-hour away!

Fish is a simple and delicious meal, and these triple-cooked chips take away the time and painstaking effort needed to make your own. So, have a break from complicated cooking and try this simple yet delicious recipe for a long-standing family favourite.

Ingredients (for four people)

4 cod fillets

1 packet of McCain’s Triple Cooked Chips

300g frozen peas

Salt and pepper

Half a lemon

Parsley

1 knob of butter

Cooking oil

Method

Preheat the oven to 230°C/220°C Fan/Gas Mark 8
Remove the chips from their packaging (don’t forget to remove the sachet of seasoning)
Tip the chips on to a preheated baking tray, spreading them evenly, and place on the top tray of the oven for 18-20 minutes, turning every now and again until they are crisp and golden
Lightly coast the base of a non-stick frying pan with cooking oil and put over a medium heat
Gently pan fry a cod fillet (skin-side down) for 2-3 minutes until it is golden and crisp
Flip the fillets and fry until the reverse side has crispened and the flesh becomes opaque
Place the frozen peas into a saucepan of lightly salted boiling water and simmer for three minutes
Squeeze half a lemon over the fish fillets and sprinkle with parsley
Remove the chips from the oven, open the sachet and sprinkle the seasoning over them
Drain the peas and mash or blend them with salt, pepper and butter until creamy
Serve up your delicious homemade fish and chips!

This is the perfect tea-time option if you’re facing a rapidly disappearing evening. To give the meal an extra kick, add a side of tartar sauce, or simplify your dinner by switching out the fresh fish for a couple of breaded fillets to slip in the oven alongside the chips for a satisfying and healthier takeaway alternative.

Next time you’re trawling the aisles on your weekly shop, racking your brain for what to put in your trolley, why not take a trip down the frozen food section and grab a couple of boxes of chips to slip away into a draw of your freezer. so next time you’re stuck for the energy or motivation to decide what to eat, you’ll have an easy, taste bud-satisfying solution waiting for you.

A Trip to the Spring Fair

February 12, 2016 by Erica Hughes 13 Comments

This year for the first time I went to the Spring Fair at the NEC. It’s an enormous event and it’s impossible to get round all of it in one day. It is a great place to look at the latest products and the trends for the year ahead. One of my focuses was on kitchenwares and tablewares.

There were some lovely things. I love these egg racks. They’d look wonderful in my kitchen, although I think I’d feel the need to keep them full to get the overall effect.

The Spring Fair is a trade show which is for buyers to decide what they would like to stock for the coming seasons. I was there in a press capacity, but most people attending are buying for shops. You can’t just go and buy stuff off the stands to take home.

It was good to get an idea of what will be available in the shops soon. Some of the ranges are very new and the Spring Fair is the perfect way to get a sneak preview.

There are also some very practical, but still beautiful, pieces of kitchen kit available and I’m wondering if I can justify ‘investing’ in some of them.

Later in the year there’s the Autumn Fair, which will have the latest things for the new season. Tickets are free to trade customers.

A Day At River Cottage HQ

September 30, 2015 by Erica Hughes 18 Comments

It all started off very early in the morning when I was picked up at 5.30am for a car trip down to Dorset with 3 other local food bloggers. Arriving a River Cottage HQ‘s car park we waiting for a tractor to take us down to the main building. It’s quite a way down a very steep track and the ride was a little bumpy. On arrival we tried some goodies from the kitchens.

These little omelette slices went down very well with their fermented salsa and spring onion topping. There was something for those with a sweet tooth too, with some very moreish mini chocolate croissants.

My first session was in the cookery school. Gill (if you watch the River Cottage programmes you’ll have seen him) taught us how to make soda bread and butter. First of all we made the butter. We started off whisking by hand, but it was soon clear that most of us would need mechanical help, if we were to make butter this side of Christmas, so out came the electric mixers. From there on it was child’s play. I was genuinely surprised how easy and quick it was to make butter from double cream.

Next up we made soda bread with spelt flour and the buttermilk which we’d made as a by-product of the butter making. This is the kind of thing I love about River Cottage: the philosophy of making good use of everything. This was no ordinary soda bread either because we added interest by adding some freshly picked blackberries ( plucked with our own fair hands) and some apple from the River Cottage orchard.

Next up was a session with food photography session with Capture by Lucy. It was the first time I’d attended one of Lucy’s sessions and I found it very useful. We got to play around taking lots of arty photographs with food, but there were some concrete tips on how to take better pictures. I learnt a lot and I now know where I can look for more inspiration too as Lucy shared a number of her influences.

After all that taking pictures of food, we were ready to eat some. We had lunch in the barn. It was really, really good.

For our main course we had Dexter beef (reared at River Cottage HQ and aged for 5 weeks), which had been slow cooked (for 36 hours) till it was meltingly tender. It was served in a wholemeal ravioli on a bed of vegetable ragu (from the kitchen garden), with oh-so-freshly baked bread and the most wonderful corn on the cob that I have ever tasted.

Dessert was a fennel flower meringue, served with vanilla and coffee infused ice cream, with salted caramel and damsons. I’m not a coffee drinker, although I often eat coffee flavoured cake, but I’m not sure that I’ve tried coffee ice cream before, and it was delightful. The salted caramel really lifted the dish and the damsons were full of rich, autumnal flavour.

After lunch we went on a tour of the kitchen garden and the farm. As we went round it became clear that vegetables are now at the heart of the River Cottage philosophy. I think a lot of people associate River Cottage with meat or fish, but it’s moved on to bring vegetables to the heart of things. After all River Cottage is all about sustainability and making the best use of things, so vegetables are key. Even within vegetables some produce is makes a lot more sense than others. Food fashion fads like micro-greens can be wasteful of seeds and soil resources, so when you are trying to feed large numbers of people sustainably they just don’t make sense. River Cottage HQ is no longer self-sufficient in terms of fruit and vegetables grown, but they do as much as they can themselves and then source as locally as possible.

The stars of the garden and farm tour were the very friendly pigs. They looked so happy and well cared for. The same was true of the chickens. River Cottage rears animals for the table and makes good use of all parts of the pig (or other animal), which I think is a very respectful way to farm. If the pigs taste as good as the Dexter Beef that we had at lunch time, I’m sure there will be many visitors that agree. In fact, it’s the Pig in a Day course that is beckoning me back to River Cottage. I think I’ll be doing making sausages before long.