Salmon on a Bed of Leeks

I usually do veggie food, but occasionally I go for a meal with a bit of fish, mainly salmon, because I am told it is a healthy option with Omega 3 fatty acids, amino acids and pretty OK on the vitamin front. So much for the apologies, because this is not only a quick and easy dish, it is also light and simply delicious, especially if served straight out of the oven.

Now I used to do this many years ago and recently, because we still had quite a bit of leek left in the garden (unharvested this keeps well over the winter), I decided to try it again. Here it is.

What you need (for two!)

• 300 g salmon (150 g slice per person) with or without skin
• 2-3  leeks without too much of the tough green bits at the top (they can be put in a soup), cut into fine slices
• 1 small onion finely sliced and mixed in with the leek
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, squeezed
• 100 ml good (!) white wine
• spice mix (Cajun or Oriental flavour) to taste
• salt or veggie broth dissolved in the wine
• olive oil
• a little freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice (not pictured)
• wild rice mix or long grain rice with saffron, cooked with a dash of dry sherry and veggie broth

What you do

1. Prepare the wild rice mix or long grain rice (sauté a few onions in olive oil, add the rice and stir till it is glassy, add the sherry and top up with water, about twice the volume of the rice).
2. Preheat the oven to 180°.
3. Line the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the leek and the onion, season with a bit of the spice mix.
4. Add the garlic and the wine.
5. Put in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes until the leek looks a little softened.
6. In the meantime drizzle a little olive oil on the top of the salmon, season with the spice mix and some salt (rock or sea) and squirt a little lemon or lime juice over the fillets.
   
7. Place on top of the leek and onion bed and put in the oven. Check after about 8 minutes: the fillets should look opaque and flake a little when squeezed with the back of a fork.

Serve immediately.  

Chestnut and Buckwheat Pizokel with Veggies

I had these pizokels, a kind of pasta looking a little like crude noodles, in a restaurant near my office, which specialises in the cuisine of the Grison part of Switzerland. Massimo, who runs the place, has connections to the Italian Valtellino, but also to the Valley of Poschiavo in the Grisons. In December I ate at the restaurant with a friend and the speciality of the day was this dish. I loved the slightly sweet taste of the pizokel, and Massimo was so generous as to give me his recipe. 
So here is my take (actually, the topping) on his dish. We had it on Christmas eve and the kids seemed to like it too.

One last thing: the recipe as suggested in the picture makes enough for two very good sized meals for a family of four.

What you need

• 150 g wheat or spelt flour
• 150 g buckwheat flour
• 150 g chestnut flower (or purée , but then you need to adjust the liquid)
• 300 – 400 ml milk
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 10 g salt
• a bunch of parsley, chopped
• 1nob of butter for frying
• one good-sized onion chopped
• for carnivores, thin slices of streaky bacon, cut into mouth-sized pieces
• 1 – 2 largish leeks, cut into 1cm slices
• ½ cabbage (any kind, perhaps except red cabbage), cut into 1cm strips
• 2-3 cloves of garlic (not in the picture) in thin slices
• 3-4 carrots, sliced
• 80 ml of white wine
• salt and pepper
• 200-300 g mature cheese, an Alp cheese preferably, grated

What you do

1. Mix the flours, milk, eggs and salt into a fairly thick batter (I made it a bit too thin) and beat with a wooden spoon until bubbles rise to the top if you stop beating it.
2. Add the parsley and leave to sit for about 20 minutes.
3. Bring a large pot of salt water to the boil.
4. On a wet chopping board spread some of the batter, which you then cut with a large knife into noodle width and wipe into the boiling water. Traditionally the batter is run over a wet board into boiling water (you can see how this is done very briefly, 1:20 – 1:28 in this video. I was lazy and used a special contraption for making “Spätzli”, which are small dumplings instead of the flat, thickish noodley things)
5. When the pizokels, come to the top they are done. They are skimmed off and cooled in a sieve with ice-cold water running over them (to keep them firm and allow the excess to be frozen).
6. Place them in an ovenproof dish, about 3 cm deep. (Add butter flakes if you like and don’t mind the calories…)
   
   
7. In a large frying pan melt the butter, add the onion, the garlic (the bacon now if you are using any) and the vegetables. Stir vigorously as if stir-frying.
8. Add the wine and a little veggie broth if it looks too dry.
9. When the vegetables are done to the level of bite you like, distribute them over the pizokels and cover with the grated cheese.
10. Bake in the oven or under the grill, making sure the pizokels are hot and the cheese is melted.

Leek, Pear and Blue Cheese Pasties

At the moment we reap the benefits of Caroline’s careful cultivation of our leek bed. As happens so often with such a vegetable bed, you end up with a glut. This dish was one way of dealing with this. The pears, which don’t appear in the “What you need” photo, were Caroline’s afterthought to use up slightly overripe fruit, and an inspired one as it turned out.

 

 

 

What you need

• 2 leeks sliced, including the green bits
• 1 onion, diced
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, pressed (optional)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp mixed spices (e.g. black pepper, cayenne pepper, hot paprika, ground coriander)
• 1 tbsp instant vegetable broth
• 1 tbsp dried herbs (e.g. Greek oregano)
• 100 ml dry sherry
• 250 g mild blue cheese, Gorgonzola, bleu-de-Bresse or our very own Blaues Wunder
• 2 sheets of puff pastry about 300g each
• 1 or 2 pears, peeled and sliced (not pictured)
• 1 egg, beaten

What you do

1. Sauté the onions and the garlic, if using, with the mixed spices until the spices are a bit darkened.
2. Add the leek and stir-fry until the leeks are wilted.
3. Sprinkle with vegetable broth and dried herbs.
4. Pour in the sherry and the blue cheese in small cubes. Stir until the cheese is melted.
5. Finally, add the pieces of pear.
6. Lay out one sheet of puff pastry, distribute the vegetable and cheese mix for the pasties. Brush the area where the pastry sheets are meant to stick together with part of the beaten egg.
7. Cover with the second sheet of puff pastry and press together with a fork. Brush with the rest of the egg for a glazed finish.
8. Bake in a hot oven (200°) for about 20 minutes – until the pasties are golden brown.

Served with a mixed salad this is a lightish meal.

"Riis und Pohr" (Leek Risotto from Uri)

A couple of remarks to begin with

It is just over a year now since I started writing this collection of recipes. It seems fitting to mark this event with the first recipe I learnt to cook from my Mum in the place where I cooked it for the first time: in the mountain hut which her father built in the central Swiss canton of Uri, where she grew up. What fits very nicely also is that this is a traditional Uri recipe reflecting both the simple fare the relatively poor farming population could afford and the Italian influence (“Pohr” coming from Italian porro for leek), which is the result of the proximity to Italian-speaking Ticino, but also the fact that the Gotthard train line and the complex series of tunnels that characterise it were largely built by Italian workers, poor and badly treated, a fact that is also reflected in the simplicity of the dish. It was originally served as a complete meal and works as such, but my Rwandan son Charles loves a bit of meat so it is accompanied by a robust, coarse-grained pork sausage in the picture.

To add a bit of atmosphere, there is also picture of hut and the weather conditions on the day I did the dish.   

What you need

• 1 leek (large is good) with the green cleaned, cut into 5 mm strips
• 2 medium onions chopped
• 2 tblsp butter
• 350 g risotto rice (Carnaroli, Riso Nostrano)
• 200 ml white wine
• 400 ml vegetable broth
• (optionally 100 ml of cream)
• salt and pepper for seasoning
• grated cheese (Bergkäse/Alpine cheese)

What you do

1. Melt the butter in a pan and sauté the leek and the onions until the leek is soft (about 3 to 5 minutes).
2. Add the rice and stir till it is glassy, then add the wine and reduce.
3. Add the vegetable broth in portions always making sure that the rice is just about covered. You may need to stir to prevent sticking (the more you stir, the creamier the rice will become; if graininess is preferred, stir as little as possible).
4. Stop adding broth when the rice is soft. At this point you may add salt and pepper and the cream (if you use it).
5. Serve with cheese sprinkled over the top. 

Papet Vaudois (The Fall?)

This week I am looking after and cooking for my non-vegetarian Dad again. This meal is very loosely based on the traditional Papet Vaudois; I tried to recreate if after I had been invited by my friends Dewi and Janine, who didn’t know that I don’t really eat meat (OK, I admit, I’m not a real vegetarian, it’s also a taste thing.). Janine’s papet was so tasty, I just had to try it out at home. So now I usually cook it when I cook for my parents; I make a large amount and freeze the left-overs. Like with so many of these types of traditional dishes, they taste even better warmed up...

What you need

• 50 g butter
• 300 g smoked speck, cubed
• 800 g leek, cut into slices
• 5+ cloves of garlic, sliced thinly or pressed
• 500 g waxy potatoes generously cubed
• 400 ml white wine
• vegetable stock cubes or paste to taste
• 2 Vaudois sausages (one could be a saussice aux choux)
• Salt and pepper.

 What you do

1. Fry the speck rind and the speck in a bit of butter until the speck is slightly glazed.
2. Add the onions and stir until they are glassy.
3. Add the leek and the garlic and stir continuously till the leek get soft.
4. Pour in the wine, add the vegetable stock and the potatoes.
5. Last put in the sausages , making sure they are covered and allow the pot to simmer. The dish is ready when the potatoes are done, but it gets better the longer it is allowed to simmer (not to mention that warming it up)
6. Before serving, pierce the sausages with a fork so they release their juices, then slice them and return them to the pot. 
7. Season to taste with pepper and salt.

Serve in bowls to catch all the juices…