Fish Pie and a New Gadget

Well it's 4.35am and I can't sleep. The dawn chorus started at about 4.32am so there wasn't much chance of getting back to sleep with all the twittering and tweeting and downright screeching going on outside my bedroom window so, I thought I might as well do something useful and write a blog post.  A couple of weeks ago, my youngest daughter bought me a new gadget. Awwww, how sweet, you might be thinking and you would be right ..... well, you would be half right because she actually had an ulterior motive for buying this particular gadget. She bought me a potato ricer. And the reason being ....... she says my mashed potatoes are always lumpy! Now I completely disagree but she insists it's true and when she comes to stay, she won't let me cook anything that has anything to do with mashed potato. Yesterday, I decided to give it a go and make a fish pie topped with mashed potato or in this case ..... riced potato :-)

When I make fish pie, I buy a fish pie mix from my local supermarket. This is 3 different types of uncooked fish. prepared and cut into chunks ready to just turn into a pie. It probably works out a bit more expensive to do it this way but I feel that when I'm only cooking for myself it's the most sensible way for me to buy the fish. I usually poach the fish in white wine, pepper, a knob of butter and half a chicken stock cube, for about 3 or 4 minutes-ish and then take the fish out of the pan with a spoon with holes in it so I can save the cooking liquid and I put the fish in the pie dish. I then turn up the heat and reduce the liquid down to about half and stir through a spoonful of half fat creme fraiche and then pour the sauce over the fish in the pie dish. I then top the fish with mashed potatoes or in this case, riced potatoes and I pop it in the oven for 10 mins or so until the top browns. Sometimes I sprinkle cheese on top too although I didn't yesterday because I didn't have any left. I have to say, the potato ricer is a wondrous gadget!! The potatoes were perfectly squished with not a lump in sight and it only took a couple of minutes to turn them from chunks of potato into fluffy mash. Once I had put them through the ricer, I added a knob of butter and a splash of milk and they were delicious. 

Oh and I forgot to mention, yesterday morning I had a delivery from the postie. A parcel. Not in the best condition ever, as you can see, and when I saw the state of the box I was worried that the contents would be damaged but, thankfully, everything was fine. 

My beautiful samphire plants arrived. 

Fabulous aren't they :-)

Samphire, Sunday Lunch and Spiders

I am so excited. I follow a few blogs, well a lot actually, and on one of the blogs I follow, the lovely blogger mentioned the fact that she had bought a samphire plant. I was amazed. I had no idea that you could grow samphire, I though you just had to pick it from the wild. I know that makes me sound a bit dumb but I guess I never even thought about it and, the very nice bloggy lady (link to her blog here) had actually included a link to the nursery that she had bought the samphire from. I was thrilled. I love samphire so, how could I resist the chance to have my very own samphire plant ....... so I ordered three :-) I can't wait til they arrive, I will be sure to post some pictures of the actual plants and here is a link to the nursery, just in case you're interested. 

Samphire in it's natural habitat ..... Source 

I absolutely love cooking and I really miss the days when my daughters all lived at home so I had lots of excuses to cook and bake or the times we had a houseful of people over for supper or lunch and even now, even though it's only me now, I still like to make a Sunday lunch for myself. I love pottering in the kitchen and I love trying new things and although sometimes it doesn't seem worthwhile to cook something from scratch for one person, I still make the effort to cook something nice almost every evening. This weekend, I found a bargain breast of lamb for £4.15. I love lamb but it's quite expensive, in fact, meat in general is getting more and more expensive and although I use everything I buy and very rarely throw anything away, I simply can't justify spending £9 or £10 on a joint of meat. I recently watched a cooking programme, I forget which one, but it showed how the cheaper cuts of meat can be just as good as the more expensive ones and it mentioned breast of lamb. So, I grabbed my bargain and set about deciding what to do with it. When I spotted the roll of butcher's twine in the drawer, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. I was going to stuff it and roll it then tie it together and roast it. 

So ..... I made up a garlic and rosemary stuffing and turned it from a flat piece of meat into a lovely joint of stuffed lamb. I even remembered to take some pictures while I was making it although sadly, I did forget to take some of the finished roast, I was just too hungry and couldn't wait to have a taste. I was quite proud of myself I have to confess. 

Et voila, 

And now to the spiders! I hate them. I live in the countryside and the spiders we have here are BIG. I'm talking Godzilla-sized spiders and in the autumn and winter, they are all on a mission to get inside my house! Not cool! Now, don't get me wrong, although I really don't like spiders, I don't mind them too much in the rest of the house but I really can't cope with them being in my bedroom so, from about the end of September, I usually close my bedroom window to stop them taking up residence. It's now May and it's getting to the time of year where I need to open my bedroom window again to let the fresh air in at night and like every year, I am faced with the dilemma of "How do I open the window to let the fresh air in but the stop the spiders that are going to sneak in and try and eat me?!" One of my neighbours bought some spider repellent last year which she said actually worked but spraying chemicals around my bedroom was not something I really wanted to do so, I had a look online to see if I could find an alternative. And I did. Apparently spiders hate the smell of lavender. Well, lavender and lemons but I figured lavender would be a better choice for my bedroom and would have the added bonus of helping me sleep. Now, lets bypass the fact that I had no idea that spiders had a sense of smell, I was thrilled that I had found an alternative to the bug spray. I unearthed a small spray bottle, added some water, sploshed a generous amount of lavender essential oil into the bottle and sprayed it liberally around the open window of my bedroom. I awoke this morning, after a fabulous nights sleep, spider free and totally refreshed. I'd say that was a result!! :-)