Greetings!
I guess I do have things to say!
What I made for dinner
Fish finger bhorta: Last weekend I got around to watching all six episodes of Nigella Lawson’s latest show, “Cook, Eat, Repeat,” a BBC series based on her cookbook of the same name. I’ve had the book for a few months now and I read it cover to cover when I got it — it’s full of Nigella’s funny and personal writing and has excellent little essays sprinkled between the recipes. But embarrassingly, I hadn’t made anything from it yet. Then I watched the tv show and it made me want to cook everything, especially this fish finger bhorta.
What is fish finger bhorta? Well, first we’ve got to get past the fact that fish fingers is the British English term* for fish sticks (better than the original “herring savouries” I guess). Regardless of the lexicon, I love fish sticks and haven’t shown them enough appreciation in my adult years (my feelings about chicken nuggets are similar) so I was excited to try Nigella’s interpretation of Birds Eye bhorta. It’s a dish that she learned about via a tweet from journalist Ash Sarkar:
Birds Eye is a multinational brand that produces fish sticks (sorry, fingers) in the U.K. Bhortas are a group of dishes mainly associated with Bangladesh that feature various combinations of mashed herbs, vegetables or fish.
In this recipe, you saute onions for about 20 minutes until soft. Then you add garlic, ginger and chile (I used a jalapeno), dollop in some English mustard and toss in a huge amount of spinach (it will wilt down into practically nothing). Finally, crispy baked fish sticks are smashed into the whole mixture until everything is harmoniously wed. Everything gets a good squeeze of lime, followed by chopped cilantro and quickly pickled red onions overtop. It’s comforting without sacrificing flavor, and pretty economical to boot. I am now adding fish sticks into my weekly freezer stock-up.
*My godmother is British and I’m wondering why this was never discussed. Perhaps we were too busy talking about my favorite U.K. candy Maltesers — “for women!”
Sheet-pan Italian sub dinner: This is basically Nancy Silverton’s chopped salad for sweater weather. It’s delicious as written—especially since I’m someone who prefers cooked tomatoes to raw ones—but I’m going to do a few things differently next time. Chiefly, spreading everything out between two pans. I only used one (as called for in the instructions) and things didn’t get as crispy as I would have liked. I’m also going to skip the suggestion to serve bread on the side and toss everything with cubed toasted bread at the end, like a hot panzanella salad. If you’re interested in making this vegetarian, just skip the salami!
Honorable mentions:
Sous vide cod with cilantro-mint chutney: This cod recipe is great for cooking fish from frozen (you don’t even need to bother with the sear if you’re feeling lazy). The chutney was the real star, though. In a world where I am smart and prepared, I’d have a jar of it in the fridge at all times.
Arugula salad with shredded chicken and mint: This was a repeat recipe from issue #12. I added radishes and cooked barley to bulk things out and also drizzled the last of the aforementioned cilantro-mint chutney overtop.
What I made that wasn’t for dinner
This beet and blueberry smoothie can be made in the small window of time I now have to make breakfast while the puppy is occupied (with, say, an ice cube). I used the oven method at the bottom of the recipe to roast and freeze a big batch of beets for future smoothies and god, that was probably six months ago? I still. Have. Beets. Left. If you’re beet-agnostic, don’t be afraid — they keep the smoothie from being too sweet, and their ~earthiness~ is cut by the ginger and coconut. It’s also pretty.
See y’all next week.