Slimming World Linguine with Crab and Chilli

This dish reminds me of something I would order in an Italian restaurant or better still, eat while on holiday somewhere sunny, ideally with a view of the ocean. It's actually based on a Slimming World recipe for the rather more prosaically named 'crab noodles' and is really quick to throw together.

Cook some linguine or spaghetti according to pack instructions; when is cooked, drain, and add some tinned crab (a small tin will do 1-2 people depending on how generous you want to be with the crab), a few dried red chilli flakes or a pinch of fresh chopped red chilli, some finely chopped red onion, a squeeze of lime juice, and the grated zest of the lime, and some fresh parsley on top. Serve with broccoli or a salad on the side. Delicious!

Slimming World-style 'Crab' Pate

 

 



It's hard sometimes to find 'syn free' snacks that you can eat on the Slimming World programme if you've had enough fruit and cooked meats - I seem to live off roast chicken pieces at the moment. Someone in my SW group shared this recipe and I loved it - it's a seafood pate that tastes a lot like crab, which you can take into work and dip crudites into.

 

It's very easy to make and you only need three ingredients, which are all syn free: seafood sticks, a small tin of mackerel and some Quark or fat free natural yogurt.

 

 

Place eight seafood sticks, the tinned mackerel and 2 tbsp. of the Quark or yogurt in a food processor and blend until smooth.

 

Spoon out the resulting pate; I've decorated mine with a little chopped up seafood stick, and serve with crudites. This will keep for a few days in the fridge and is really tasty.

 

 

Chesapeke Bay Stuffed Cod

Have you ever seen Funny Girl, the classic musical mocie starring Barbra Streisand? I hadn’t – but had heard a few of the songs – so when I acme to guest host Food ‘n’ Flix in September, I thought it would be a great choice. It isn’t a movie specifically about food, but there is all sorts of inspiration that can be taken from it and translated into cooking – at least I thought so!

The film is peppered (pun intended) with food references, for instance Fanny Brice, describing herself as something of a misfit, says: "I'm a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls!".

 

Food also serves to underline the naivety of Fanny in contrast with her future husband Nick’s worldliness and experience; for instance he takes Fanny to a restaurant in Baltimore for lobster, which she has never eaten before and falls upon with gusto, and in another scene they are eating dinner together and Nick orders filet de boeuf, sauce bordelaise.

Fanny: I would have ordered roast beef and potatoes.

Nick: I did.

The locations – New York and Baltimore, the era, the world of vaudeville and theatre, the cruise ship they travel on, their wedding and indeed any of the songs (including Cornet Man – you could make ice cream cornets!)- all provide a starting point.

 

I visited Baltimore last year so was keen to make something from that city, which is famous for its seafood, in particular crab, and also a seasoning called Old Bay. I have a large bottle of Old Bay that a colleague brought back when they visited our office in Baltimore (I used to work for the London office of a company that was based there, but I have since changed jobs). Old Bay seasoning – named after the Chesapeke Bay area around Baltimore, where it is made – is a blend of herbs and spices including mustard, paprika, bay leaf, red pepper, nutmeg and ginger, and is used as a seasoning for crab but afficionados use it on all sorts of things.

 

I have been very pushed for time recently, having moved house at the very end of August and spending the whole of September redecorating and unpacking. So I was in a bit of a hurry to find a recipe and had a hunt around on Google and found this recipe on AllRecipes.com for Chesapeke Bay Stuffed Rockfish. I used cod instead of rockfish and changed the quantities slightly as it seemed a lot of mayonnaise but otherwise largely followed the recipe as it was given.

This is what I did:

Mixed the cubed bread with fresh parsley, Old Bay seasoning, dried mustard, black pepper, lemon juice, 6 drops of Tabasco (I didn't think it was coming out and realised afterwards it was, and I'd used too much!), mayonnaise (I left out the butter) and a tin of crabmeat.

Mix all the ingredients well in a small bowl.

Lay out a piece of fish and spoon half the filling onto the fish (there is enough filling to serve two)
 

Roll up and bake in the oven
 

Serve with vegetables and a nice glass of white wine. This was a delicious dish that was very easy to make but tasted fantastic; I will definitely do it again. Hopefully it's a dish worthy of Fanny Brice!
 

This is my entry to the Food 'n' Flix challenge which I am guest hosting this month, you can see my announcement post here. The round-up will follow in October - I should do it by the end of this month but you will have to forgive me as I have just moved house, am redecorating and haven't even unpacked yet!

 

2 course menu: cod en croute with crab and sticky toffee apple crumble

 

I love apple crumble and I love sticky toffee pudding, so I decided to combine the two and create my own pudding - which tastes amazing! I've never come across this before though perhaps someone has already invented it, but I am very pleased with my sticky toffee apple crumble.

I made this for the SACO Kitchen Challenge. SACO is a company that provides serviced apartments worldwide - as an alternative to staying in a hotel, where you might have more space but also the ability to cook your own meals, an option you don't have in a hotel.

The challenge is to come up with a two-course meal for two, that guests could cook in a SACO apartment kitchen with the standard equipment provided in the apartments. They sent over the inventory and I was impressed at the range of utensils, pots and pans and so on - there are too many things to list here but you get things like a mixing bowl, pie dishes, cheese grater, glass oven proof dishes, tea towels and so on.

This time of year is great to get friends and family together whether it's to go and see the fireworks on November 5, visit another country for a Halloween break or to check out the Christmas markets, or to do your own take on a Thanksgiving meal with family or friends - after all, not many people have enough room in their homes to put up that many people overnight, so you might be better off renting an apartment for a night or two!

With that in mind I wanted my two-course menu to be fairly autumnal - hearty food with warm flavours. I decided to make cod en croute stuffed with crab with potato wedges for the main course, and sticky toffee apple crumble for pudding.

Cod en Croute stuffed with  Crab - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

serves 2

2 cod fillets

170g tin of shredded crab meat

1 piece of day old bread, chopped into small cubes

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tbsp mayonnaise

1 tsp capers, chopped plus two extra for decoration

dash of lemon juice

200g ready-made puff pastry

1 egg

For the potato wedges:
5-6 potatoes depending on size
olive oil
salt

Preheat the oven to 175C. First prepare the potato wedges. Wash and dry the potatoes with a clean tea towel. Slice with a sharp knife on a chopping board into wedges.

Line a large baking tray with foil or grease with a little oil. Toss the potatoes with the salt and a dash of oil and spread out across the tin. Bake in the oven for one hour, turning half way through.

For the fish:
Roll out the puff pastry on a lightly floured chopping board. Using a sharp knife, cut out a fish shape slightly bigger than your piece of fish; use that as a template to cut out another three.

Drain the tin of crab meat and mix in a small bowl with the bread, salt, cayenne pepper, mayonnaise, capers and lemon juice.

Place the cod pieces onto a piece of fish-shaped puff pastry and spoon half the crab mixture on top of each piece of fish, spreading out evenly.

Place the other piece of pastry on top. Place a caper where the fish's eye would be.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden brown. Serve with green veg and the potato wedges.

For the sticky toffee apple crumble
Serves 4 - ideal if there are two of you because you will want some more of this the next day!
75g unsalted butter
125g light brown sugar
2 eggs
200g self-raising flour
2 apples
50g light brown sugar
50g unsalted butter
75ml double cream

Preheat oven to 175C (or make this and the main course at the same time).

Grease a glass oven proof dish.

In a bowl cream 75g butter with 125g light brown sugar. Beat in two eggs and 200g self-raising flour.

Thinly slice two apples.

Spoon half the cake mixture into the base of the ovenproof dish and place the apple slices on top. Spoon the rest of the cake mixture on top of the apples.

To make the toffee sauce, place 50g light brown sugar, 50g unsalted butter and 75ml double cream into a small pan.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 1-2 minutes then pour over the top of the apple and cake mixture.

Place 200g plain flour, 120g butter and 120g caster sugar in a bowl and rub together with your finger tips to make a breadcrumb-like texture - this is your crumble topping. Spoon the crumble mixture over the top of the pudding.

Place the ovenproof dish on a baking tray in case of any leakage and bake in the oven for half an hour.

When you dig in you will see the base is like a sticky toffee pudding - the caramel sauce will have soaked in to the cake mixture as it cooks, giving a lovely sticky, moist base. Then you have the layer of apple in the middle and the crumble topping which will be a lovely golden brown. This is a very sweet pudding but absolutely delicious.

 This is my entry in the SACO Kitchen Challenge - thanks to SACO for providing £20 with which to purchase all the ingredients for these two courses.

I am also sending this to a blogging round-up called the Four Seasons Food challenge, hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux. Their chosen ingredient this month is fruit.

Chilled Watermelon Soup with Crabsticks and Crayfish

I had some watermelon to use up after making this salad and found a recipe in the Saturday Kitchen cookbook for chilled melon soup with langoustines and mint. It uses Cantaloupe and watermelon, but I decided to make it just with the watermelon that I already had. It also uses langoustines which are quite expensive; I'd just bought a packet of crayfish tails from Lidl and always have crabsticks in the fridge - I've loved them since I was a child and more recently found out they are syn-free on Slimming World so I like them as a snack. I thought they would work well in this recipe, so adapting it from the one in the Saturday Kitchen book, here's what I did.

Chop the leftover watermelon - about a third of a large slice which I think was about a quarter of a watermelon overall - and place in a blender.

 Add a splash of white wine and lime juice and blend to a liquid

Marinate the crayfish in 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 1 tbsp white wine vinegar with some shredded fresh mint

Whip about 100ml double cream until thick

Mix a little chopped mint into the cream. I used an ice cream scoop to make it a nice shape

Stack four crabsticks in the bottom of a soup bowl

Pile the marinaded crayfish on top and pour the soup around the sides

 Use the ice cream scoop to add a scoop of cream on top

 I wasn't really sure I was going to like this but it tasted absolutely amazing - I highly recommend it! A chilled soup is lovely for lunch in this hot weather and the zingy lime and sweetness of the watermelon, with a hint of seafood, works wonderfully together. I don't think I would bother with the cream next time, and would probably use a scoop of fat-free Greek-style yogurt instead. You could also try swirling the yogurt through the soup rather than placing it on top.

 I'm sending this to Credit Crunch Munch, as I used up leftover melon and swapped the langoustines for cheaper ingredients for this recipe. The challenge is hosted this month by Fish Fingers for Tea, on behalf of Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food 4 All.

Coca-Cola Bayou Gumbo

 

As I've mentioned before, I bought a recipe book called "Cooking with Coca-Cola" when I was on holiday in America last year. I've already made this "Perfect Brisket" and wanted to try another savoury recipe, and this time went for fish.

 

Bayou gumbo is traditionally a Cajan dish; a bayou, for those who don't know, is a body of water in a low-lying area and are common to the area around the Mississippi and Louisiana in particular. A gumbo is a kind of stew, that can be meat but is often shellfish; it originated in Louisiana. This recipe uses Coca-Cola to flavour the broth; I adapted the recipe however to use the fish that I had available - it asks for 'fish fillets' and crabmeat, so I used tinned crab, a white fish fillet from the freezer and a piece of salmon. The recipe also needed a cup of clam broth - I have no idea if you can get hold of that in the UK - and okra, which I've never eaten and didn't fancy trying on this particular occasion! So here's my version of the recipe:

 

To serve two:

1 white fish fillet

1 salmon fillet

1 small tin crabmeat

1 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup Coca-Cola

tin of chopped tomatoes

3 cups cooked rice- or one pouch of microwaveable rice!

1/2 onion, chopped

 

 

Cut the fish into pieces



 

Put the fish and all the other ingredients in a deep pan, apart from the rice.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 10-20 minutes.  Season.

Serve with rice - and that's it!

This was a tasty and easy dinner; I couldn't particularly taste the cola but I guess that's the idea!