Shrimp Saganaki

One of my favourite Greek dishes. This is a great and easy idea for a mid-week, quick meal. Shrimps baked under tomato and feta sauce. It is very forgiving and you can experiment with it adding different ingredients and spices like bacon, chilli etc.


Shrimp Saganaki
(serves 2)

-300g shrimps (peeled, tails off, if raw cook them for 2 min until they turn pink)
-olive oil
-3 garlic cloves
-small onion
-can of good quality chopped plum tomatoes (original recipe calls for fresh chopped ones but the can works well for me)
-paprika
-dried oregano
-black pepper
-200g feta
-handful of fresh chopped parsley


Preheat the oven to 180°(350°F).
On a med-low heat preheat 3 tbs of olive oil and add chopped onion. Sweat until translucent, add chopped garlic and fry for a minute. Add tomatos, paprika, oregano and black pepper and simmer for 20-30 min.
In a baking dish arrange the shrimps, cover them with the tomato sauce and crumbled feta and bake for 20 min.
Sprinkle with parsley and olive oil.


Goes well with salads, rice and pastas but my favourite accompaniment is crusty bread which you can dip in the sauce.

Enjoy!

Scallops with Chorizo Full Of Flavour Version

My other great purchases from the market were scallops,
amazing traditional Spanish chorizo picante and marinated garlic. The last one is my favourite. Even though I adore chorizo and it's definiately my favourite sausage, the flavour of that garlic is just divine. So I was thinking how to combine those three and then quickly reminded myslef of a Nigella's recipie for scallops and chorizo and decided to update it with some other flavours. The result was a extremely flavourful dish which warms you up like a Spanish sun and it leaves distingue heat wave in your mouth. A real show-off! And it takes 10 min to prepare! Loved it! Here it is:

Scallops with Chorizo Full Of Flavour Version
(serves 2)

-300g scallops
-150g chorizo (depends how flavourful you want it to be, I used picate version which is preety spicy)
-1/3 red chilli pepper
-juice of 1/2 lemon
-5 cloves of marinated gralic, roughly chopped (optional)
-handful of rocket
-drizzle of olive oil

Slice chorizo, scallops (around 1/2cm thick), chilli pepper and garlic. On a medium heat fry chorizo until crispy (do not add any oil as chorizo will release it own fragrant, orange, smoky fat).
Remove chorizo from the pan leaving all the oil inside and return the pan to heat.
Make sure that the pan is almost smoky- if needed turn up the heat- that will help scallops to caramelize.
On the same pan fry scallops- around 30-45 sec per side (do not leave for much longer than that as they will become chewy).
After both sides has caramelized, turn the heat off, add joice of 1/2 lemon, garlic, chilli, rocket and chorizo, give it few stirs and sprinkle with olive oil.

Serve with crispy garlic bread.

Enjoy!

Monika

Mussels A La Creme

I knew from the beginning that when it comes to my mussels, I'll be going for a simple recipe. Decided on a variation of a classic, French Mussels Marinara. And it was a real jackpot! They were sooooo delicious, fragrant and delicate. All you could expect mussels to be. And here it is:

Mussels A La Creme

(serves 2)

-1 kg fresh mussels
-100g butter
-2 shallots (which I replaced with 1 sweet onion)
-garlic (the amount of cloves depends on which level of garlic freakness you are, I added 4)
-glass of dry, white wine
-2 bay leaves
-fresh chopped parsley
-200ml double cream
-black pepper

-crusty bread to serve (I went with garlic baguette)



Prepare the mussels (tips- previous post), chop the onions and garlic.
In a large pan heat the butter, add onion, let it sweat for a 1-2 min, add garlic, leave for a minute.
Add bay leaves, wine and mussels. Cover the pan and cook on a high heat for 3-4 min, shaking the pan several times.
Remove the pan from the heat and transfer the mussels to a serving bowl leaving the sauce in the pan.
Put the pan back on the heat, add double cream, parsley and pepper, whisk for 2-3 min and pour over the mussels.
Serve with bread.

Bon Appetit!


Oh and I've already found Thai version of this dish- mussels cooked in coconut milk. Can't wait to cook it. Yummy!

Monika

You can't go wrong on mussels - preparation tips

Going to start fancy, why not? London's Borough Market which I visited few days ago was amazing but that going to be a subject of another post. The main reason why I decided to visit it was to put my hands on some fresh sea food. Had a real dilemma what to choose as all the fish was big, fresh and beautiful. After sniffing around the stall for couple of minutes the first choice was made: mussels.

On the way back home I started panicking a bit- what on earth I'm going to do with them. Have never cooked them before and they definitely do not look like a piece of cake (ok that wasn't the best comparison as I find cakes to be much more difficult to prepare than dinners but you know what I mean). I hit Google and supprisingly everyone around has some simple and magic ways to prepare them. And I must say that they're right. Mussels are easy and relaxed dish yet very fancy and original. Oh and I think thay're an afrodisiac :)

Now look at those:






















Did all my research and that's what I've learned..

Cleaning tips:

-if you don't cook mussels on the day of purchase, store them in a bowl covered with damp cloth in a fridge
-do not keep them in water for a long periods of time
-before you start washing them, check for any open ones
-if there're any open mussels, tap them on a hard surface- if they close- you can use them, if not, make sure you discard them as they are dead and may cause food poisoning
-if you stored them in a fridge, give them a minute to close after tapping as they reaction time is slower. I would put some open ones aside to throw as they wouldn't really move after tapping them couple of times ( was trying really hard, didn't want to waste any of those little treasures) and then after couple of minutes found them almost all closed. Now thats retarded!
-clean them properly under running water, you can use a sponge to scrub the dirt
-make sure all the mud on the shells is gone
-discard all the broken ones


Simple as that. To minimize the chance of food poisoning by eating dead mussels just follow this simple rule:

Discard all the open ones before cooking and the closed ones after.

Enjoy!