MARK ANTHONY LOW

Broad beans with mushroom, spinach and Tahini

This is something i started doing a few weeks back. Yet again it was another throw everything together after raiding the fridge but this turned out damn good and i now cook it as a regular lunch, its cheap, its filling and its damn tasty.

for 2:

2 handful of mushrooms, chopped

2 hand fulls baby spinach

1 garlic clove chopped

1/2 red onion sliced

600g cooked broad beans

2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tblsp coriander powder

olive oil

salt and pepper

handfull of chopped parsley

juice of 1/2 lime

2 tbsp tahini

Right, fry off onions garlic and mushrooms in a little oil, as soon as soft chuck in the beans.

Now add the coriander and cayenne,

stir you dont want the beans to burn, after a few minutes add the spinach

you want the spinach to wilt down a bit

when its wilted add the tahini and keep stirring now, if you leave it it will stick and burn, pull off the heat, add lime juice, parsley and seasoning, stir, serve. sorted

Asian Grilled Prawn salad.

I have certainley been eating over the past few weeks but have been neglecting to continue putting up on here what i have been eating, well the other night i went to cook at Marias and decided for a healthy option so knocked this little beauty up. The Iranian shop down the road has a excellent selection of vegetables and costs a fraction of what it does in the supermarket so managed to put this together very cheaply.

for 2:

200g big prawns

2 garlic cloves

zest from 2 limes

tbsp olive oil

salt pepper

Salad:

1 carrot, peeled into slivers

4 spring onions. chopped

1 red pepper, sliced

2 tomatoe, diced

2 sticks celery sliced thin.

dressing:

juice from 2 limes

tablespoon of soy sauce

salt

tablespoon of water

Mix all the marinade ingredients together for the prawns, garlic, oil, zest and marinade the prawns. they only need about 10 minutes. Get a griddle pan hot then chuck them on, they will only take a few minutes.

Mix the salad, add the dressing, stick on a plate, top with prawns.

Eat, sorted.

Mackarel with rocket salsa verde, roast tomatoes and grilled courgette

Cooked this the other night, was international womans day so I cooked maria something nice, then she did the washing up.Anyhow I do love mackarel and it is one of the cheaper fishes due to its prevalance, as with most fish you dont need to do to much with it.

two whole mackarel, filleted, get your fish monger to do this.

2 tsp sambal olek or chilli paste

1/2 courgette sliced

2 handful cherry tomatoes

olive oil

salt

Salsa verde:

1 garlic clove

handful of rocket/arugula

thumb size gherkin/pickle

2tsp capers

handful of parsley

salt

30ml olive oil

Get your oven on, 180 c, put the tomatoes in, sprinkle with olive oil and sea salt, they will take about 15 minutes

Get your grill pan hot for the courgettes and sear them off then bang them babys in the oven too.

Blend all the salsa verde ingredients together, season

score the skin of the mackarel, not too deep

get your pan smoking hot,

brush the skin of the mackarel with a mix of the chilli and oil, season

cook the skin down first, slowly put the mackarel in from end to end, dont chuck the fillet in the whole go.

It will only take a few minutes, dont try to check too early as the skin will just stick to the pan and then your fucked. Be a proffessional, leave it a while but make sure you dont leave it too long as it will burn, and then your fucked.

turn it over, it will take roughly half as long to cook as it took the skin to brown. should be about 5/6 minutes in all.

Remove your veg from the oven, arrange all prettily.

slap a spoon of the salsa verde on the plate, mackarel on top.

Open some wine, white, not to sweet, sorted.

extract from journal-21 April 2011

Hah, so thats what my socks feel like in the washing machine. I have got fed up now with bouncing off the walls of this boat, the weather has really picked up over the last day and the sea is bouncing us around like a little toy, was pretty hard to sleep last night as well as every time you started to drift off, BOOM, the boat slammed down off another big wave catapulting me upwards into the hard wooden bunk above me. think tonight i will cling film myself to the bed. kind of erotic as well as practical. Anyhow, we are somewhere in the atlantic, somewhere between Brazil and Africa. that some where is a pretty broad area but its all looking the same now, just big waves and salty spray. We set out down the amazon on the 23th from Manaus, didnt get long in manaus and everything was closed for the easter bunny so not much to write about there. Cruising down the amazon was ok, but after 3 days it did get a bit samey, ooh brown water, ooh a tree, ooh some green stuff. no amazonions chucking spears and poisnous blow darts whizzing by your ears, no sir, none of that indiana jones malarky here. but none the less you do have to step back from the incessent boredome and say to yourself, holy shit i am motoring down the Amazon. the lungs of the earth indeed, and it looks pretty vibrant, didnt get much sleep their either though as there is a huge amount of partly submerged trees that play their wooden form on the hull of the boat like a big bongo drum, reverberating inside as if a bomb went off. not nice at 3am when you are dreaming of caprihinhas served by nubile amazonions. Anyhow, unscathed we escaped the clutches of the coffee coloured river only to suddenly find ourselves screeching to a halt, we hit a sand bank. Not fun for the captain, but did give me a bit more stable time in the galley, quite a few hours in fact until the tide rose enough to get us off safely. Now we have been underway for quite a few days, the sea gradually picking up, all the girls are off puking their guts up and cursing neptune. One good thing is people are eating less, saves me a job or two. Should be in cape verde in about 4 more days, few hours to refuel then continue to Europe.

Chicken, lemon and Vegetable Broth

With the weather as shite as it is right now everyone seems to come down with something. This sorts you right out. I made fajitas at the weekend and bought a whole chicken to make it with, i used the fillets and the thighs and legs and made a good proper hangover cure, that worked for that. I kept the carcass as you can always get something out of it.

For the broth:

1 chicken carcass

1 onion rough chop

3 clove garlic

2 stick celery rough chop

2 carrots rough chop

handful of parsley stems

crack the bones of the chicken  with a heavy knive, this makes sure you get good flavour. drizzle with oil, chuck in the cloves

put in a oven tray in a hot oven 220c and roast for about 40 mins till dark brown.

get a saucepan, add a little oil and fry off the veg, let it brown slightly.

add the chicken bones and make sure all the juices go in the pot as well.

cover with about 1.5 litres boiling water and let it simmer for 1 hr.

strain off. This is your broth.

Now for the icky part, try and remove any good bits of flesh that now come easy off the chicken, you wont get much but reserve this and throw the other remains away.

Rest of broth:

1/2 head broccoli broke into small florets

1 carrot peeled into strips with a peeler

1 lemon- remove a thumb size peice of zest and slice fine

1/4 of a red chilli diced fine

1 stick celery sliced fine

1/4 onion diced fine

1 clove garlic sliced fine

fresh parsley, chopped.

fry off the onion lightly, then add the garlic and celery.

add the broth to this then chuck in the broccoli and lemon zest and simmer, should be about 6 minutes.

add the lemon juice and chilli.

add the carrot.

chuck in the chicken you saved

test for seasoning.

chuck in parsley.

serve. sorted. feel better.

Smoked pork, spinach and chickpea salad with roast garlic and paprika dressing

Ah well it had been some time since i had wrote up a recipe, thats not to say i havent been eating. I have been consumed partly by laziness and partly by other things, had to do alot of writing, job, drinking, etc, all of those activities that take up our day. Anyhow, their is a nice hungarian butchers down the road, smells awesome when you go in, a melange of smokiness, all different smoked sausages and bits of pig, from the head to the feet. Its a nice little place and quite popular. I picked up some smoked pork fillet and some good paprika. Then the rest of this dish just kind of fell together. Worked well.

250g smoked and cured pork fillet. sliced thin

1 stick celery

150 g baby spinach

50g chickpeas-cooked

1 red onion, cut in wedges

1 red pepper, diced 1 cm

1 head garlic

1 teaspoon paprika

cider vinegar

olive oil

1 teaspoon mustard

To start slice the celery very thin then leave to soak in vinegar for about 30 mins.

Now get you garlic, slice in half through the middle, wrap in aluminium foil but leaving the cut bit exposed, drizzle with bit of oil and stick in hot oven, 220c for 20 min

when garlic is nicely roasted, browned not burnt, remove

add the onion and pepper to the oven, drizzle with oil and roast for 25 min

now make the dressing-

squeeze the garlic cloves, the soft mushy garlic should just pop out, remove any harder bits.

Mash this garlic up with a fork- if you want this is great to spread straight on bread, its very sweet and garlicky.

Add a teasppon of paprika and mix

drain the celery and use the vinegar in the dressing:

add 1 tablesppon of vinegar.

now slowly drizzle in about 3 tbsp of olive oil, whisking the whole time

add 2 tsp of cold water and mix, this should bring it all together.

check for seasoning

If the pepper and onions have finished roasting then its time to assemble.

Mix the spinach, onion, chickpea, pepper, celry well, add dressing and mix till well coated. now add your smoked pork, mix again. serve. sorted. This dish came out nice, a good mix of smokiness and textures.

Smoked salmon, chilli and rocket Pasta

This was another last minute jobby, looking in the fridge to see what was left and what i could possibly throw together. I couldnt be bothered to walk to the shop so it was going to be a ready steady cook day again. As fortune normally has it i usually have plenty of bits to throw together into something resembling a meal. I had a chunk of smoked salmon sitting at the back of the fridge and some rocket which was just beginning to wilt. perfect.

For 2:

around 100g smoked salmon, i had a big chunk, bought as a whole fillet, i prefer it this way so i can slice my own thickness- dice this into 1/2 cm cubes

1/2 onion, fine diced

1 clove garlic, sliced thin

1/2 red chilli, deseeded and sliced thin

1 hand ful of rocket, cleaned

1 spoon cremefraiche

olive oil

enough pasta for the two of you, probably about 120g.

Get your pot of salted water on, when it reaches a rolling boil chuck in your pasta and cook, times change so check packet.

1 min before its time, bring out, drain and leave on side

in same pan you cooked pasta, heat it up to dry then add oil

once hot cook off onion and garlic till soft.

add chilli, cook for 1 minute

then add salmon and rocket stir for 30 seconds then take off heat, add creme fraiche then add your pasta, stir, serve. nice one.

Tomato and Basil soup

 It has got bloody cold here now, was cold before but now its just cold, wet and windy, bloody miserable, but on a brighter side, perfect for soup. Most of the time i cannot be arsed to make soup, doesnt seem to feel like a proper meal, but when your sitting there wind and rain howling against the window and a steaming bowl of soup in front of you, dipping a good bread into it, then thats when it seems all proper. So made this, nice and simple, can omit the cream if you want but i quite like it to finish it off:

1 tin chopped tomatoes

2 good tomatoes, deseeded, chopped

2 clove garlic

1 white onion, diced

1 carrot, peeled and diced

1 stick celery, diced

salt,

1 tbsp sugar

50ml cream

handful of fresh basil.

olive oil

Saute the onions, celery, carrot and garlic in olive oil till soft, try not to brown them

add the tomatoes,

stir for a little while

fill the empty can of tomatoes up with water 1 and a half times and add to pan

let simmer for about 20 minutes

add sugar

blend, till smooth

add basil and give a rough blend

add cream and stir in,

season to taste

serve with some good bread. sit and stare outside at the shitty weather wondering just why on earth your not living somewhere hot and on a beach, somewhere where there is no reason for eating soup. why? WHY?