the other book

I chose this book at the same time as I chose "Fish" but because of the weather and well quite frankly life its rather been put on the back burner.

I loved Nigel Slater"s series about simple suppers on the BBC last year. It a weird effect Id be standing in the kitchen about to decide what to cook for dinner and 30minutes later would have
created something completely different.

So it seemed a great idea that the second book should behis book *Tender* A cook and his Vegetable Patch. dont worry the reasons will become clear ...to me if not to you.

Spaghetti with carpet shell clams, chilli, and parsley

I decided to make this for Neil when he got back from a training weekend at Bala.

As described in Fish it really is simple, spaghetti cooked until tender is added to a pan that has had the clams cooking for a few minutes in olive oil garlic, white wine, parsley and chilli.

It was simple and tasty, the clams did seem like they had a lot of shell for the amount of meat

In the book Mitch comments that he likes carpet shell clams I think mine were more rug clams.
Wonder how one tells the difference between the different types?

scores on the doors - 5 for now needs more practice and bigger clams

Grilled Herring with Devilled Butter

So starting the fish dishes would have seemed simple... just go to the fishmonger and buy what is in season. Except, due to all the recent snow the car has decided that it doesn't really want to go anywhere. So, knowing the month was ticking on I resorted to some supermarket Herring with little idea what I would do with them.

Getting home Fish came up with grilled herrings with devilled butter. whilst the fish was grilling I mixed parsley, ginger, curry powder into some soft butter and melted over the fish.
Whilst I prepared the fish Neil made some potatoes and we were off.

I wouldn't say it was a flying start but it was a start.

I had some 2 fish left over and by chance saw The Hairy Bikers recipe for Fish cakes with cheese sauce so the next day we made a variation herring fish cakes with Cheese and horseradish sauce.
If anything it was better than the first dish and made me realise that fish cakes are often a bit dry so in need of a sauce.

Score 5 for the devilled herrings and a 7 for fish cakes with cheese sauce

Take 2 - first book choice

mmm, so easy to get side tracked into the real world, and before you know it is near the end of January.
Anyway back to the big decision ... which books to follow, I could spend a whole year just on this alone so I'm just going to dive in and pick 2 just on gut feel.

The first book is Fish by Mitch Tonks
I first saw it a few months ago and was drawn to the full page photographs of the raw fish.
It just look so clear and uncluttered with notes on when to buy the fish and how to prepare it . It covers a good selection of fish I know from my childhood and some more exotics that I will have to build up to .

Quite frankly the picture of the cuttlefish on p278 has me quaking, and I haven't even looked at the recipe yet.

It is also gives you the local names for the fish in Europe so now when I have fish on holiday I can come back and look it up.
I have since read that Mitch Tonks is the chef who did the series about Fish with Matt Dawson, currently being repeated on Dave and there was I thinking I was ahead of the trend.

Too late now I've made my choice.

better late than never?

What's the latest one can reasonable start a New Year's resolution. For a procrastinator January 22 seems very reasonable... well you can't just rush into these things.

Actually for once I do have pretty good excuse, multiply ones in fact.... the weather, illness the list could be endless but enough of them, time to get down and get on with-

The Project know as " Take 2"

"Take 2" cook books and work through them over 52 weeks using our vegetables from the garden and fish from the local fishmonger. Of course along the way I am bound to get sidetrack into other books and ideas but it is a place to start.

Now I just have to finalise the 2 books