Thai-Style Green Vegetable Curry (serves 2)
Curry paste
4 spring onions, finely sliced
2 lemon grass stalks, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2cm root ginger, peeled and chopped
6 dried red chillies
handful chopped coriander (keep a little for decoration)
tsp each ground coriander and ground cumin
juice of a lemon
Put all ingredients in a blender and blitz until a smooth paste forms. No need for any oil as the juice will come out of the onions and ginger.
I used dried chillies but if you have fresh use them, or if you can't find either, put in a couple of guindillas but wash thoroughly to remove vinegar.
If you don't have lemon grass throw in some chopped lemon rind.
Last week Thomas and I had a busy one with a trip to Malaga and night at the Cirque du Soleil, followed by a weekend in Granada with copius amounts of craft beer. Which meant whilst we tried to stick to our flexitarian plan we ended up with midweek meat based meals and seemingly a great deal of bread and cheese. However despite this we did manage to keep 4 days meat free, though not with the healthiest of choices!
This week we've had 4 days of vegetarian options. An impromptu bbq invite had us eating fish and chicken on Wednesday so Sunday was a veggie day with a hearty bean chilli. I got creative with some salads using sauted peaches, courgettes, mixed beans and pears to add texture and different flavours. I baked savoury carrot muffins fora mid-hike snack on Thursday whilst Saturday night was a mixed tapas which included beans and chorizo, peas and serrano ham, patatas bravas and stuffed pimentos, before going to watch the football in our local.
All this good food but if I had to pick a favourite meal it would be Friday night's panfried mackerel fillets with chorizo, leek and pear slaw. I'd never cooked mackerel before, let alone filleted them myself so after a quick watch of a "how to" video on YouTube I set to work in the kitchen. My attempts were fairly successful, perhaps leaving a little too much fish behind but the end result was pleasing. You could of course ask the fishmonger to do this for you but my Spanish is not that good yet.
Here's the recipe...
3 whole mackerel (approx 600g), filleted
1 pear, grated
2 leeks, finely sliced
1/4 Spanish onion, finely sliced
1 carrot, peeled and grated
2inch piece of picante Chorizo, skin removed, sliced and halved
Olive oil, butter, salt & pepper
Heat a little oil and butter in a pan, when the butter is bubbling add the onion and leeks then saute for a few minutes, cover and allow to wilt.
Put the chorizo in another frying pan over a medium heat and cook until crispy on both sides (about 5 mins).
Grate the pear into a bowl, squeeze out the juice and set aside (or just drink it, yum yum). Add the grated carrot.
When cooked add the chorizo, leaving the oil in the pan
Season the mackerel fillets then place skin side down in the chorizo oil pan, pushing down on each one to ensure they don't rise up, which would stop the skin getting nicely crisp. Cook for approx 5 mins then using a fish slice, flip over to cook on the flesh side for 1 min.
The leeks and onion should now be cooked through, tip into the bowl with pear, carrot and chorizo and give a good mix, season then spoon onto plates.
Top with the mackerel fillets and drizzle the remaining chorizo oil over the top
Curry paste
