Monday 27 April 2009

STARTING SIMPLY

On Sunday I was finally ready to plan cooking, photographing, and blogging a meal. What a breakthrough. Maybe it's something to do with putting all of the books on the shelves and getting rid of the majority of our cardboard boxes in the process. While three (large) sets of bookshelves filled to bursting is quite a sight, it is a much more pleasant one than a room filled with heavy boxes. I now have one entirely food related set of bookshelves (uh oh). That shouldn't come as too much of a surprise (yet somehow still did).

Maybe my first blogged meal in the flat should have been something elaborate that tested the abilities of my new kitchen equipment to the limit. Maybe it should have shown off the finest ingredients of the English Spring. Maybe it should have been something that we set the table for and ate with friends.

It wasn't any of these things.

It was a one pot dish and as such will probably come to represent a new style of cooking in this more confined space. It was a dish with a taste of Spring but using ingredients that can be bought at any time of the year without resorting to out of season vegetables. It was designed to use up some hot smoked trout without needing to buy much to go with it.

It was simply a pan of cooked pasta, a few teaspoons of chopped capers, a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley, the zest of half a lemon, a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, a dash of garlic oil and some freshly ground black pepper. Mix everything together and add some flaked hot smoked trout (that's hot smoked rather than smoked and hot, does that make sense?). Eat and enjoy the end of a sunny weekend while keeping fingers firmly crossed that there are more to come.

4 comments:

Sam said...

I like the sound of your pasta dish, hot smoked trout is absolutely delicious it's just a shame it's so hard to find.

I make a similar thing with cold smoked salmon, obviously it's not the same but it is really nice.

Linds said...

As simple as it is, it sounds delicious. I think it's something my brother and I would love. Sometimes one pot meals are just what you need. I love hot smoked fish too but my other half wont eat fish at all.

Alicia Foodycat said...

That pasta, but made with a can of tuna in chilli oil instead of hot smoked fish, is the first thing I ever cooked for my now husband. Such a great dish! Fresh and comforting. Well done for getting the boxes unpacked.

Gemma said...

Sam - try M&S for the trout. They often have offers on oacks of smoked fish and it is really good.

Linds - Hope you enjoy it if you give it a shot. One pot meals keep me cooking on otherwise uninspired weekday evenings!

Foodycat - It's such an easy but good option isn't it. I wish I liked tuna but it is a fish that I have only ever enjoyed raw. And, on the boxes, clearly the exertion of unpacking all the boxes in record time is to blame for the horrible cold that I am yet to throw off (maybe)...

Gemma x