The Family Cook Book

I love Sea Bass, alongside Turbot it is my favourite fish. This recipe is a very slight adaptation of a River Cafe recipe (it uses fillets of Sea Bass) so it's obviously brilliant. If you dont fancy doing the filleting thing or don't like seeing the fish head then use fillets and reduce the cooking time by about 3 or 4 minutes. The other great thing about this recipe is that it is all done in one pan so there is very little washing up to be done, which is definitely a big bonus in my book. Lisa and I had this on Saturday night and ate every last scrap of it Ingredients (serves two) 1 lb waxy potatoes Note: Choose a thin-skinned, yellow, waxy variety of potato that will not break up when cooked a second time 10 cherry tomatoes 4 rosemary sprigs ex. v. olive oil 1 whole sea bass 4 anchovy fillets 175ml white wine Method Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Put two to three slashes in the side of the Bass. Use a very sharp knife and try not to cut too deeply. Peel the potatoes. Cut the

Lisa and I had this on Saturday night. The Tuna was from Waitrose and was delicious, I spotted it when I went into the supermarket, they had the tail end of a whole loin and it had that fantastic dark dark red colour and very few of those lines of sinew that you sometimes get. If the tuna looks pink or remotely grey don't even bother doing this recipe as you are going to be eating this pretty much raw. Ingredients tail end of Tuna loin 1 lemon Extra virgin olive oil 1 red chilli (de seeded and chopped finely) 1 bag of rocket maldon sea salt freshly ground black pepper Method About half an hour before you want to eat heat a heavy non stick frying pan for about 5 minutes until it is absolutely smoking hot. DO NOT ADD ANY OIL Get a chopping board and cover it with some freshly crushed malden salt ( about a dessert spoon) and some ground black pepper. Roll the loin in the mixture until it is has a nice even covering. Immediately put the loin into the frying pan and sear it all over. It

Yesterday, along with my good friend and partner NIcholas Hastings, I slipped off for a quick lunch at the estimable Medcalf in Exmouth Market. (www.medcalfbar.co.uk) With metronomic predictability Nick chose the steak, 'as well done as the chef is prepared to do it', I however was delighted to see that they had risotto Nero with squid on the menu. It was absolutely excellent. Now, I fully accept that squid ink risotto is unlikely to be everybody's cup of tea. For a start the resultant black teeth cut it out as a suitable choice for a first date, or any date for that matter. It is also only fair to point out that, rather like beetroot it can give you a bit of an alarming surprise the next day. Delicacy forbids me from explaining any further. However once you have got past that it is one of the most delicious and surprising tastes you can imagine. Go on, be brave, give it a try. Here's a slightly amended version of Rick Stein's recipe Ingredients (4 people) 450g sma

Last weekend witnessed the magnificent victory of England over France in the Rugby world cup. Joe was home and I decided that a full stomach would make the tension slightly more bearable. Obviously we weren't going to be eating french food ..... and somehow the situation didn't call for Italian, we decided on Spanish and Paella so obviously we turned to the fabulous Casa Moro cookbook for their chicken and prawn version. ingredients (serves 4) 300g uncooked prawns I lire chicken stock pinch of saffron - 20 threads 6tbs olive oil 350g boned and skinned chicken cut into 2cm cubes 300g chorizo sliced into thick slices 1 1/2 spanish onions finely chopped 1 green pepper halved seeded and finely chopped 4 garlic cloves finely chopped 150g green beans cut into 3cm pieces 1 tsp sweet paprika 250g paella rice (calasparra) 75ml white wine sea salt and black pepper 2tbs chopped flat leaf parsley 1 lemon cut into wedges Method If prawns still have shells, remove them and put shells into ch

We have just returned from krow's 2nd birthday celebration in Cornwall. All twenty something of us headed off to Watergate Bay where we persuaded everyone (aside from Malcolm who doesn't swim) into the sea for a day of surfing.... after a night of some considerable excess. My favourite comment on our trip came from Georg, our German creative, who described the arrival of the main team at the hotel as being rather akin to us dropping a box of giant cocroaches on them. Apparently we were lucky to avoid either death or being chucked off the premises. All very interesting, I hear you say but what has it got to do with cookery. Well, Watergate Bay is also home to Jamie Oliver's West country outpost of Fifteen. We had dinner in the restaurant which has an absolutely spectacular location overlooking the gorgeous beach. We had the tasting menu, and aside from some slightly underwhelming Borlotti beans and non-existant Samphire, we had a great evening, particularly aided and abetted

Cookery books are a bit like albums. Quite often the first one contains the pent up creative energy of years of unrealised ideas and the unbridled enthusiasm of being published for the first time. Whereas the difficult second and third are there to feed the publishers desire to maximize financial return and the writer’s to be on TV. This recipe is from Jamie’s classic first outing as the Naked Chef (UPDATE. After I wrote this I realised that this actually came from Jamie's immaculate second outing 'The return of the Naked chef'. so all that stuff above is clearly rubbish. Good recipe though) The only variation I make is to slightly change the ratio of spinach to lentils. This recipe is very easy, the parma ham keeps the salmon beautifully moist and the lentils, spinach, herbs and yoghurt combo is absolutely pukka …. As Jamie would have said

 For 4 people 
 Ingredients 
 175g/6oz lentils 
 4 x 225g/8oz salmon fillets, skinned and pin-boned 
 salt and freshly ground black p