What to do with an entire salmon

My dad brought be a big fish as a 'just because' present. We're tight like that, yo.
The first thing I did was to cut off and clean the tail to prepare gravadlax. I've done this before and it's a great simple way to preserve something as big as a salmon when there's only you and and fish-picky bf in the house.

The recipe I used came from Everything Raw which a dated book with a liberal interpretation of what raw food is. The only reason I bought is is because it's looked amazeballs in this Flickr set, I love the drab, morose food styling of old Penguin Books, hopefully something that will become more of a trendy thing to do (check out these shots for German food mag Essen und Trinken).

This preparation highlights just how oily and rich salmon is.Very good.

Next, I decided to teach myself a lesson against experimentation with When French Women Cook. It's a sweet memoir which I read on the tube for a week and tried to pretend I was back in Chamonix. I tried a recipe from the Alsace region which called for reducing a glass of wine and onions to a tablespoonful to make the sauce for basically fried salmon. A delicious syrup which would have been nice as salad dressing, rendered the colour of a filthy rag you use to clean a blackboard by the addition of cream. Alsace Rouge, called for in the recipe, is apparently not red but rose wine. White would have been even better. The visual element of the dish was actually a big turn off for me, but the taste was fine. get it into your head that red wine and cream = vomit. I'm not happy, Maurice :(

Finally I made a stock (fume from the Paella book) with the head and bones and used it to make a paella. I really follow a recipe, but referred to 1080 Recipes for the rough proportions of ingredient. Incidentally, 1080 has a recipe for a paella made entirely out of tinned ingredients. I love the idea since it's such an expensive dish to make and it's difficult to concentrate on proper technique and timing when you're worried about preparing vast quantities of expensive, difficult to obtain ingredients correctly. Essentially it's an all in meal and fiddling about with a tin of tuna here or frozen cod steak there is a good way to get confident before you move on to one of the excruciating recipes in the Paella book.

What was that? Throw some shrimp on there too? You got it, pal.

Double Cheeseburger with Pickled Onions

I'm renewing my commitment to put to use all the silly, gimicky cookbooks I pick up a the charity shops by the arm load. ALL the silly cookbooks, which brings us to the I Love Elvis Cookbook.
I'm not sure a cookbook inspired by a man who died eating a sandwich on the toilet is the best tribute, but then I'm not morbid like that. I am morbid enough to notice the lack of a recipe for this disgusting thing.
Here's an Amazon review of this book, in case you're on the fence about getting yourself a copy.

Thrilling.
The best part of this recipe are the pickled onions, which are thin slices of red onion left in sugar and vinegar overnight. These were great and I sprinkled the leftovers in a salad the next day.
The burger itself is two patties of seasoned beef squashed together over a couple of pieces of cheddar to make one fat wad of meat, which you grill and place in (home made) buns. Also, this cooking method invites the hot beef fat to splatter the heating element of your oven, meaning that when you try and bake some cookies the next day they will come out tasting and smelling like meat. That's what is know as a twofer.
A single sad leaf of lettuce and sprig of parsley are the garnishes.
This was ok, but not as delicious as going out for a burger. Personally I like my beef cooked medium rare and in order to do that safely you either have to grind your own meat, which is time consuming and messy, or go to a good burger place, which is fun and enjoyable. What would Elvis do?

Cherry pie

Some family came to visit this Sunday. The boyfriend and I went to an all day extravaganza wedding the day before, so thankfully they were nice enough to come along at 4pm which gave me enough time to lazily roll out of bed at the crack of noon, shop for cheese and charcuterie, bake some bread and make a cherry pie with some of the cherries that haven't been eaten by the snails.
The real reason I like having people round is that it forces you to to clean your house before they show up. You curse yourself for past laziness, ever dumping the entire contents of your bag onto the dining table, leaving piles of laundry lying around the living room and vow never to do those bad things again. If you're really lucky you can get your boyfriend to do this while you leisurely prepare the meal.

I used the same crust recipe for this pie/ tart as I did for the rum and raisin pies last week, and this amazing and simple filling from Ideas in Food. I also made the lemon and olive biscuits from New Portuguese Table again which completely failed to impress me the second time around, but kind of went well with the cheese.
Here's the pie, it's absolutely gorgeous but had a few faults. I still like the dark chocolate taste of the crust but will never make it in a ceramic dish again because no matte how well you grease it, it will stick to the sides like cement and instead of pretty slices you will serve your guests cherry compote with gravelly shards of crust studded in. Metal pie tins only. It also improves from sitting with the filling for a few hours, the combination of flavours is better and because it's so hard to begin with it doesn't get too soggy.
And final lesson, don't buy anymore plates with pictures of faces on them.

Rum and raisin pie

Before I moved in with the boyfriend I never experienced any kind of beyond-the-basic TV. The idea of paying for extra channels was ridiculous to my dad, damn kids spending too much time in front of the box anyway!
Now of course I tape all of my ridiculous shows to have on in the background while I play with my Tumblr machine
Parenthood is one of 'my shows'-so incredibly flat and featureless that you get the sense that all the dialogue was written by one guy talking to himself in the mirror. High drama is story lines featuring vegetarianism *GASP*, black boyfriend *SWOON*, and being punched on a boat *PLOP*. Don't judge!
I was watching the Thanksgiving episode a couple of days ago which featured the perfectionist of the family, Julia, making some pies. I really love Julia, she is the character I can identify most in the show because she brings home the bacon and cooks it in the pan while her husband deals with most of the childcare.
Anyway, so she's making all these pies in random weird/traditional flavors, like pumpkin and potato or whatever and her kid walks into the kitchen and knocks the rum and raisin pie off the counter.
I've never heard of rum and raisin pie before, but it sounded immediately delicious and alcoholic.
Here's what I did
Pie crust is from Brave Tart and is incredible. Her blog is amazeballs enough that I don't mind the fact that she doesn't update very often. Its a very good example of the fact that a food blog should have beautiful and creative photographs, ahem.
The rum and raisin filling is from here (basically a custard with rum and raisins added)
And the Italian Meringue topping is by Monica Galetti

Chocolate pie crust - this makes enough crust for 8 mini tart tins
3.75 ounces sugar
1.25 ounces brown sugar
scrapings from half a vanilla bean
1/2 tsp instant coffee powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt
4.5 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
2 egg yolks
9 ounces all purpose flour, sifted (use white rice flour for gluten free)
1.75 ounces cocoa, sifted
Mixture for rolling
2 ounces cocoa plus 2 ounces powdered sugar, sifted together
With a hand or stand mixer, combine sugars, vanilla bean seeds, coffee powder, salt and butter on medium speed. Mix only until ingredients are thoroughly combined, but by no means light and fluffy. Add in the yolks, one at a time then reduce speed to low. Add in the dry ingredients all at once and mix until homogenous.
If you’re comfortable with dough and a pin, you can roll it right away. Otherwise, form the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate about 15 minutes to make the it easier to handle.
You can refrigerate the dough for up to a week or freeze for several months. Before rolling, set the dough out and let it slowly come to room temperature over a few hours.
Preheat the oven to 350° and prepare a set of 4” tart shells by greasing very lightly with pan spray.
Dust the counter with the prepared cocoa/powdered sugar mixture. Don’t use flour, it will toughen the dough and dull the richness of the chocolate color. Divide the dough in half and roll to 1/4” thickness. Use a knife to portion the rolled out dough into squares just slightly larger than each tart shell.
Set a dough square over the tart shell and use your thumbs to press the dough into the corners of the pan. Press the overhanging dough against the edges of the tart pan to trim off the excess and leave the dough flush with the edges.
Repeat with the remaining dough until all tart shells have been filled, then dock each tart lightly with a fork. The dough is extremely forgiving and can be rerolled two or three times.
Bake for 15-18 minutes. After 7 minutes or so, check on the tarts. Some may have formed an air bubble; use a fork to gently poke a small hole in the bubble to deflate it. Continue baking until the tarts have become firm and dry to the touch.

Rum and raisin filling 
2 cups golden raisins 
1/4 to 1/3 cup dark rum 
1/2 cup sugar  
3 tablespoons cornstarch 
1/4 teaspoon salt 
2 large eggs 
1 1/2 cups milk 
3 1/2 tablespoons butter  
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
1 1/2 cups frozen fat-free whipped topping, thawed

Soak the raising in the rum for 2 days
Combine the sugar, cornstarch, salt, and eggs in a large bowl, and stir well with a whisk.
Heat milk over medium-high heat in a small, heavy saucepan to 180° or until tiny bubbles form around edge (do not boil). Gradually add hot milk to sugar mixture, stirring constantly with a whisk. Place mixture in pan; cook over medium heat until thick and bubbly (about 10 minutes), stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in butter.
Spoon custard into a bowl; place bowl in a large ice-filled bowl for 10 minutes or until custard comes to room temperature, stirring occasionally. Remove bowl from ice. Stir in raisins and vanilla; spoon mixture into prepared crust. Spread whipped topping evenly over filling. Loosely cover and chill 8 hours or until firm.

Italian Meringue topping
2 egg whites (leftover from the crust)
125g caster sugar

Dissolve the sugar in 35ml of water then heat to 121C (use a thermometer).
Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks and in a slow steady stream whisk in the sugar syrup. Continue to whisk until the meringue is cold and smooth.

Pipe the meringue over the pies and colour with a blowtorch or under the grill. And then omnomnomnomnom

What the fuck is this?

Yeah, zoom in. It's a snail that's sick of eating all of our herbs and decided to climb a fucking tree to get to our cherries!
I called my dad infuriated and asked 'Can they do that?', like it's against the rules or something! Pathetic

Focaccia x 2

More bread. I'm very hormonal about cooking, by which I don't mean that I want to cook myself a chocolate cake, but that I swing form wild optimism to crushing self doubt.
I'm currently convinced that baking bread is actually very easy and virtually foolproof, but I know myself well enough to realize that self confidence can and will be taken away randomly and quickly, so I just had to ride the wave!

Here's an example of what I am talking about - on the day we arrived back in London I dropped my bags in the doorway, strolled into the kitchen and mixed a batch of focaccia dough from Supper Club cookbook. I was in a great mood, all sunburn tingly and still slightly drunk from the plane. The recipe is for focaccia shots, so you are meant to divide the dough into little balls, but I didnt do this and instead made a couple of really big balls. Yes to big balls, this is what you get
Not really focaccia, the texture is moist and light but too soft to be what I consider to be focaccia. Having said this, it's delicious - the bottoms, which have been resting on an oiled tray in the oven are crispy and unctious and there is a light, fresh taste of olive oil throughout. Definitely getting copied into my little spiral bound recipe book.

Fast forward to the next day. I stumbled home from work, kicked my handbag under the table and crawled in to the kitchen to make Antonio Carluccio's focaccia from Complete Italian Food. The main difference with this recipe was that the dough was only given one rise. I don't know if that's because nobody bothered to test the recipe or if the resultant 'loaf' is really meant to be a hard, dense cracker, but it totally killed my buzz. No more bread making. Go away and leave me alone.