Love is Simple

ADVERTORIAL

By Gillian Balcombe

The name of our magazine is Cibare, an Italian word meaning to nurture and nourish. It resonates with the concept of preparing your food with love, with the idea of using the best ingredients in simple ways to produce delicious, satisfying dishes. With this in mind, and knowing that not everyone has either the time or the inclination to spend hours in the kitchen, here are a couple of recipes to enjoy with your nearest and dearest or significant other, that will demonstrate the love and leave you time to enjoy it too!

For a classic but yummy starter, most of us enjoy the luxury of smoked salmon. This particular SMOKED SALMON PÂTÉ is very tasty and quite low in fat, so you’ll be showing how much you care in more ways than one! Ingredients 150 grams of good quality smoked salmon trimmings (this is a better option than cheap smoked salmon) 100 grams of cottage cheese 1/8 of a medium sized onion, roughly chopped (you don’t need much - this is for a hint of flavour, not to overwhelm that wonderful salmon) 3 tsp of lemon juice 1 to 2 tsp of chopped parsley (it’s fine to use frozen parsley here, it’s so convenient and really saves waste if you can’t use up a fresh bunch all at once) Freshly ground black pepper

Method Food processor – put all the ingredients into the bowl of the machine, starting with the onion and the salmon trimmings, and blitz till well blended. Carefully lift out blade, scrape out the pâté and put it into a serving dish. Stick blender – put all the ingredients

into a bowl, blitz everything together till well blended. Transfer pâté into a serving dish.

Refrigerate till needed – it can be prepared a day in advance. Serve with toasted sourdough or rye bread and lemon wedges. If you want to be really fancy when you serve this, make quenelles out of the pâté with two dessert spoons. For a light lunch, add sliced avocado and slices of cucumber and tomato.

The next recipe cannot possibly be described as low in fat, however it does at least use unsaturated fat and it is hands down the easiest recipe for HOME MADE MAYONNAISE you will ever find. I have never, in all the years I’ve been making this, had my mayonnaise fail or split. And I promise you will never look at the stuff in the jars again…

Ingredients Yolks of two large eggs (I prefer organic, or at the very least eggs from chickens who’ve had a good scamper over the landscape) 1 heaped tsp of Dijon mustard (not the stuff with the grains, it won’t work) 250ml of sunflower oil 1/4 tsp each of ground pepper, caster sugar and fine salt 1 tsp of lemon juice, wine vinegar or cider vinegar

Method Place the egg yolks and mustard into a small bowl. Using an electric hand mixer, whisk them together well.

With your mixer on the slowest setting, start drizzling the oil very gently into the egg and mustard mixture. Once you can see that it is emulsifying, that is holding together and thickening a little, you can speed up the mixer and drizzle faster. You will end up with a wonderful, unctuous pale-yellow mixture. Now whisk in the basic seasonings to finish.

This mayonnaise forms the basis for so many sauces and salads, is a marvellous accompaniment for fish dishes or slathered on your sarnies. There’s always a jar in my fridge!

Now here’s a main course that just screams flavour - and it’s gluten free. These SMOKED HADDOCK FISH CAKES can be made in advance and reheated – they’ll taste just as good as when they were first fried.

Ingredients 375g undyed smoked haddock fillets (this is important – natural smoking is a much healthier option) Large (approx 300g) baking type potato 1 leek 1 to 2 tsp frozen chopped parsley 1.5 to 2 tbsp chickpea (gram) flour 1 large egg, beaten

Method Pop the fish in a pan, cover it with a mix of two thirds milk, one third water and poach till it’s soft. The milk is necessary to take out any excess salt. Remove the fillets from the liquor in the pan, flake the flesh from the skin, extracting any stray bones that you may find, and set aside in a bowl.

Peel and dice the potato and pop it in a pot of slightly salted water to boil. Finely chop the leek and add that to the pot so

that the vegetables cook together. When the potatoes and leeks are done, strain and rinse them and crush them up, so that there’s still a bit of texture to the potato, then add them to the fish.

Mix in the chickpea (gram) flour, parsley, ground black paper and beaten egg till all the ingredients are combined, then refrigerate for about half an hour to let it firm up - this just makes it easier to handle.

Divide the fish mixture into six patties of around 125g each and fry in about 1cm sunflower oil till golden brown on both sides, turning once. Place them on a plate lined with kitchen towel to drain off any excess oil. Serve hot with green vegetables (maybe slightly wilted spinach or Tenderstem broccoli) or salad, and a good dollop of the homemade mayonnaise you’ve just made! If you like tartare sauce, simply chop a few capers and cornichons very finely and stir them into the mayo.

These fish cakes are also a great ‘batch cook’ as they freeze beautifully. When reheated in the oven at 170°C (fan) they will be just as crispy and tasty as they were when they came out of your frying pan.

Continuing the theme of using good ingredients and not messing around with them, my go to dessert to end this meal would be delicious strawberries or raspberries (or a mixture of both while we’re at it!) with cream or a topquality vanilla ice cream. If you want something a little more indulgent, you’ll find a recipe for a super gooey chocolate brownie that you can serve with the fruit elsewhere in the magazine. Whatever you choose, relax and enjoy the moment and the simple pleasures of life.