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5 Minute Meal: Prawn Cocktail With Apple and Cucumber

It doesn’t look the most appetising in the image.

This was thrown together quickly for my mother’s lunch today, and I forgot to pop a little something on the top.  Anyway, she was in a hurry with an empty stomach so it was a quick snap before dumping it onto the table and letting her dig in.  I don’t get the prawn cocktail as a starter thing.  By the time I eat any prawn cocktail, I’m in no position to eat a main course.

Personally, I’d prefer my sauce laid on top of the lettuce and the prawns laid on top of that and not mixed in, but that’s not the way she likes it.  Fresh prawns can be used straight away but frozen ones will need to be thoroughly defrosted first.

Boiled Prawns
Getting vegetables into my elder is almost as difficult as with my children, so I have some chopped up pieces of apple mixed in with the prawns, though they are not actually visible in the image.  A little lemon juice, some tomatoes and cucumber along with the lettuce and she was fed in five minutes flat.

That’s the kind of fresh but quick meal I like.  Faster than fast food!

Prawn Cocktail

Prawn Cocktail With Apple & Cucumber

Lesley Smith
Prep Time 10 minutes
Total Time 10 minutes
Course Appetiser
Servings 4

Ingredients
  

  • 500 g Boiled Prawns - Defrosted if not fresh.
  • 1 Apple - Peeled Cored and Diced
  • 16 Baby Tomatoes
  • 1 Lettuce
  • 1 Cucumber
  • For The Sauce
  • 5 Tablespoons Mayonnaise
  • 1 Tablespoon Good Tomato Ketchup Not the Vinegary Kind
  • 1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice

Instructions
 

  • Shred or place your lettuce in the bottom of your bowls.
  • Place tomatoes and cucumber in the bowl, along with your apple pieces.
  • In a separate bowl, mix your sauce ingredients together.
  • Choose to either layer your sauce above the vegetables and place the prawns on top, or mix the sauce in with the prawn to add to the bowl.

 

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Haddock & Mange Tout Fish Pie Recipe

Haddock is a pretty reliable and easy fish to work with.  It would have been the dish that my grandparents and their parents mostly lived on as they grew up.

As versatile as it is, a fish pie is really an easy option to make with it.  I swithered between a fish pie and fishcakes, and this time round, the fish pie won for ease of simplicity.

This is another recipe for our Healthy Happy Hearts campaign with fish is the dish.

Haddock and Mange Tout Fish Pie Recipe

Lesley Smith
Prep Time 45 minutes
Cook Time 35 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 20 minutes
Course Mains
Servings 6

Ingredients
  

  • 5 lb Potatoes Peeled and suitable for mashing.
  • 5 Haddock Fillets Ours were quite large.
  • 1 Lemon
  • Salt & Pepper
  • Milk For the sauce.
  • Cornflour 3 Tablespoons mixed in a little cold milk.
  • Butter I use a knob of butter, but not too much to make the sauce and the same to mash the potatoes.
  • 500 g Mange Tout
  • 200 g Peas I like petit pois for the sweetness.
  • 1 pinch Nutmeg
  • Rapeseed Oil

Instructions
 

  • Put the potatoes on to boil before creating the fish and sauce for the pie. They need to be cooked in some salt and left to simmer for approximately 20 minutes to be suitable for mashing.
  • Wash and dry the fish. The fish can be dried in kitchen roll, or simply rolling in a little plain flour.
  • I put the fish in a pan on a low heat for a few minutes in rapeseed oil to allow it to slowly cook while I prepare the white sauce. Put the oven on to approximately 120 C.
  • In a pan, mix 1 - 2 pints of milk and a knob of butter. When the butter is almost fully melted and the mix is almost at boiling point, remove from the heat and stir in the cornflour and milk mixture. As it thickens, return it to the stove until you have a smooth white sauce. If it isn't thick enough for you, simply add a little more cornflour to it.
  • Add the sauce to the fish along with the mange tout and the peas. Allow the mix to simmer on a low heat with a pinch of salt and pepper to taste, and add the nutmeg.
  • Mash the potatoes using a little butter and milk. You want the texture to be manageable without being slimy or runny.
  • In a large dish, put your fish in sauce, and cover fully with your mashed potatoes.
  • Put your fish pie in the oven, and cook for approximately 30 minutes, or until the potatoes turn golden on top.
  • Serve and enjoy.

Notes

For this recipe, I use rule of thumb quantities to go with how much fish I have.  I've not put dedicated amounts as that depends on what you are cooking with your fish pie.  Almost anything goes, so make it up as you go along.

 

 

 

 

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Retro Prawn Cocktail Recipe

Making a prawn cocktail is something that the man of the house does quite often.    We had king prawns to hand and since we are doing the Healthy Hearts campaign with Fish is the Dish, it seemed a good idea to make a King Prawn Cocktail in the old-fashioned way.  We don’t use Worcester sauce so ours misses that out.

King Prawn Cocktail Recipe

Lesley Smith
Prep Time 10 minutes
Total Time 10 minutes
Course Starter
Servings 6

Ingredients
  

  • 800 g King Prawns
  • 270 g Mayonnaise
  • 150 g Tomato Ketchup
  • 1 Iceberg Lettuce To Serve
  • Salt & Pepper
  • Tomberries To Serve
  • 10 ml Lemon Juice

Instructions
 

  • Mix the tomato sauce, mayonnaise, lemon juice and a very small pinch of salt and pepper in a bowl to create a Marie Rose Sauce.
  • Wash the King Prawns, dry them (I used kitchen roll) and add them to the mix. Ensure are fully covered with the Marie Rose Sauce you made.
  • With your serving dishes, decide whether to shred your lettuce, or layer it in your dish. I layered this version.
  • Serve on top of the lettuce, add tomberries and a little seasoning if desired.

 

 

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Roasted Whole Rainbow Trout Recipe (Lemon & Parsley)

Roasted Rainbow Trout

Roasted Rainbow Trout was a mixed bag for us.   More commonly known as Baked Trout, it’s actually so simple that any recipe can be used for it.  All we are doing is taking the rainbow trout and baking it whole in the oven.  I flavour with lemon and parsley on top of salt and pepper – and that is really it – simple baked rainbow trout.

The kids washed their hands to touch the rainbow trout before it was cooked.   Don’t ask me why, I have no idea.

Rainbow Trout 1

I wasn’t too sure how the kids would take having it to eat for tea, especially cooked with the head on, but it really looks impressive served on a platter.  My kids were a little squeamish at seeing the eyes cooked as they go from having a black pupil to going white like our blind dog.

Here’s how we made it.

Whole Baked Rainbow Trout with Lemon and Parsley

Lesley Smith
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Course Mains

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Rainbow Trout Per Person The bones easily separate once cooked.
  • 1 Lemon Per Person
  • Cherry Tomatoes To Serve
  • Parsley To Garnish and Serve
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Salad To Serve

Instructions
 

  • If your rainbow trout are shop bought, they'll already be gutted and opened along the belly. If you catch them while fishing, you will have to perform that task. Make sure you rinse them well under the tap, inside and out. When you open the trout to wash it, you'll see a blood line along the backbone. Scrape that off before cooking, or it might affect the taste. Set your oven to approximately 130 C / 250 F.
  • Fill a large dish with tin foil, enough to make a parcel shape for your baked trout. You don't want your fish tightly bound. Lay your fish on the tin foil and fill with thinly cut lemon slices, salt, pepper and parsley.
  • Loosely enclose the parcel with the tinfoil and bake for 30 minutes.
  • Remove from oven, serve whole with salad or vegetables, garnish on plate with lemon and parsley.

Middler was the one who chose the Rainbow Trout as a meal option, so I think he felt he had to give it a go, so he had a nice big plateful and wanted more.   I really wish I was as healthy an eater as he is.

 

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Breadcrumbed Cod and Chips with Healthy Happy Hearts


HHH Logo

As discussed before, The Healthy Happy Hearts Campaign runs for a 6 weeks spell to introduce families into eating more fish, more regularly.   I agreed to be up to the challenge of eating two portions of fish a week with my family for 6 weeks.  Fish is the Dish sent us enough fish for the whole family to eat two portions of fish a week for 6 weeks.

For my second Healthy Happy Hearts post, I’ve chosen to tell you how to breadcrumb cod.  We were sent some lovely pieces by Delish Fish as part of the Healthy Happy Hearts Campaign being run on the Fish is the Dish website.

Breadcrumbing fish for cooking is something we do fairly frequently when fish comes our way.  It seems to taste better by using this method for white fish and helps kids with the fast food type appearance it has, while giving them good and healthy food that I know the ingredients of.

This is really simple to do and beats the shop bought versions hands down.

Give it a try, you won’t regret it.

Breadcrumbed Cod and Chips For A Homemade Fish Supper

Lesley Smith
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Course Lunch
Cuisine Mains
Servings 4

Ingredients
  

  • 4 Cod Fillets
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Flour
  • 3 Beaten Eggs
  • Chips Frozen or fresh, cooked.
  • Lemon and Parsley Garnish
  • Rapeseed Oil Optional for shallow frying.

Instructions
 

  • Place flour, beaten eggs and breadcrumbs into three separate dishes and lay them out.
  • First the fish needs to be dried. The easiest way to do that is to roll it in the flour until it is dry or coated.
  • Then dip it in the beaten egg until fully coated.
  • Finally dip it into the breadcrumbs until the fish is fully covered with a thin coating.
  • Shallow fry in a frying pan on moderate heat for a few minutes until cooked. I prefer to cook in rapeseed oil. You could oven bake on a moderate heat for 15 - 20 minutes, but we prefer the shallow fry for speed.
  • Garnish and Serve with Chips

 

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Fresh Mussels in a Sherry and Shallot Broth

HHH Logo

I grew up with fish from an early age as I lived in a fishing community.  Up until my own parents generation, all my ancestors were into food farming of one kind or another.  On my grandmothers side, it was fishing and on my grandfathers side it was farming, although he left the industry as a second son who inherited nothing on his own fathers death.

My ancestors had 4 fishing boats as a family at one time, but the great storm in 1881 took most of them.  Three generations of family men were lost in one day and I believe the youngest was 15.  In those days, there were no insurance policies, so everything was instantly gone.  As the eldest of the surviving children, my great grandfather had to go to sea at nine years old to earn enough money to feed the children left alive.

Fish is what the industry survivors passed down to the bereaved families to keep them alive.  The traditions spread down the generations until it got to us.  Eating it all their lives left my mother and grandmother as complete fish fans and we were never very far away from a fish pie, fish cake or fish in ruskoline.  I don’t have much in the way of memories for shellfish and I’ve not been one for giving that sort of fish a try, but that is all about to change.

Fish is the Dish have a new campaign going which set an Edinburgh family the challenge of eating fish twice a week to help transform the way the family look and feel for the long term.   Over on the Fish is the Dish website, they have been releasing new tips, recipes and advice from their three Healthy Happy Heart Experts.

Anyone can take on the challenge and you can register on their website to join in.  As an incentive to help 6 lucky readers along, Fish is the Dish have added a fabulous competition to their Facebook page, with 6 fishy family hampers on offer to help get started.

Mussels 1

The Healthy Happy Hearts Campaign runs for a 6 weeks spell to introduce families into eating more fish, more regularly.   I agreed to be up to the challenge of eating two portions of fish a week with my family for 6 weeks.  Fish is the Dish sent us enough fish for the whole family to eat two portions of fish a week for 6 weeks.  We needed to eat the Mussels quickly, so they are our first recipe.

The fish we have to make incredible dishes includes haddock, cod, scallops, prawns, fish pie pieces, pollock, salmon, swordfish and more.

Fish helps us with our health by providing us with marine Omega-3 fatty acids that are good for us.  With an FAS child living here, the association with brain development could be an interesting one and I’d just be happy with reduced joint pain.   Ironically, given our family history, fish is probably the one food that our family has not eaten enough of over the last few years.

I had no idea how to cook Mussels, so I had to look up how to prepare them for the pot.  Most of the Mussels will be beard free when they arrive, but if there are any traces, you need to scrape them off.  I used the back of a knife to get the last wee bits off.

Mussels in Sherry & Shallot Broth

Lesley Smith
I didn't know how to cook Mussels, but as long as we stick to the steaming, it seems we can cook them in just about anything we want to.
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Course Mains
Servings 6

Ingredients
  

  • 1 kg Live Mussels
  • 4 Shallots Chopped
  • 1 Clove of Garlic Chopped
  • 1 tablespoon Butter
  • 2 tablespoons Olive Oil
  • 200 ml Sherry
  • 1 Lemon Juice Squeezed
  • Salt and Pepper To Taste
  • 200 ml Water
  • 2 teaspoons Chopped Parsley

Instructions
 

  • Mussels need to be cleaned, rinsed several times and have any traces of beard removed. Most prepared Mussels will be prepared for you just to rinse with perhaps a little beard to remove, but with wild Mussels you need to take a little more care.
  • Tap the shells of any Mussels whose shells are open when you are clearning. If there are any Mussels with open or broken shells left, remove them and bin. I only had to discard 3 Mussels out of my bag. Mussels must be cooked live, so they need to be fresh.
  • Use a large pan, add the olive oil, butter, shallots and garlic. Shallow cook until the shallots are soft and then add the water, sherry, parsley, lemon juice and a touch of salt and pepper. Simmer for a minute while stirring.
  • Add the live Mussels to the pot and steam them for 5 - 10 minutes. Mussels don't take long to cook. Shake the pan a couple of times while cooking to move the broth and the Mussels around. When the shells open, the Mussels are ready.
  • Remove any unopened Mussels and serve them in a dish with their broth and some bread.

The easiest way to eat them is to take one Mussel out of a shell and use it like a pincer to pull the next ones out of their shells and eat them.  Eldest tucked in, as did the Scottish Mum Grannie.

Mussels 2

Mussels 3