Sunday, December 29, 2019

Mark Bittman's Mushroom Barley Soup: Simple Comfort for Souper (Soup, Salad, & Sammie) Sundays

I wanted a simple soup to close out the year with and I have been craving mushroom soup and barley so a quick Internet search turned up Mark Bittman's Mushroom Barley Soup.


It's simple and wanting the most mushroom flavor possible, I added some porcini broth cubes and Trader Joe's Umami Seasoning Blend to pump it up, along with a shot of sherry vinegar.

Mushroom Barley Soup
Slightly Adapted from Mark Bittman via Epicurious.com
(Makes 4 Servings)

1 oz dried porcini mushroom (about 1 cup)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 lb shitake or button mushrooms, stemmed & roughly chopped (I used cremini & button)
3 medium carrots, peeled & sliced
1 cup pearl barley
salt and pepper
1 bay leaf
1 Tbsp soy sauce (I used low-sodium tamari)
(I added 2 porcini bouillon cubes)
(I added 1 Tbsp Trader Joe's Umami Seasoning Blend)
(I added 1 Tbsp sherry vinegar)

Soak porcini in 3 cups very hot water. Put olive oil in a medium saucepan and turn heat to high. Add shiitakes and carrots, and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to brown. Add barley, and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until it begins to brown; sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. Remove the porcini from their soaking liquid, and reserve liquid. Sort through porcini and discard any hard bits. 

Add porcini to pot and cook, stirring, for about a minute. Add bay leaf, mushroom soaking water and 3 cups additional water (or stock, if you prefer). Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer; cook until barley is very tender, 20 to 30 minutes. Add soy sauce, and taste. Add salt if necessary and plenty of pepper. Serve hot.


Notes/Results: Just a simple soup, full of good mushroom flavor and chewy barley. I think adding the porcini broth cubes and dried porcinis gave this soup even more flavor and the tamari and the sherry vinegar add a richness to the broth. Hearty and filling without being heavy, I am looking forward to lunches in my cold office this week. I would make it again.


Linking up with I Heart Cooking Clubs where it is December Potluck this week.




Tina of Squirrel Head Manor is here in the Souper Sundays kitchen with A Portuguese Soup: Caldo Verde that she made for Food 'N Flix. She says, "Over a year ago Debra at Eliot’s Eats hosted for Love, Actually and I participated with my favorite storyline, Jamie & Aurelia’s. Without looking at my offering then I laughed once I chose to make a Portuguese soup. Again. Ha! This time it’s not a  Fish Chowder but a Portuguese classic called Caldo Verde, a pantry soup for hard times. I found the recipe at The Guardian in Nigel Slater’s column. A British cook inspired a Portuguese Soup for a London based Christmas movie. Brilliant."

Thanks to Tina for joining me this week!

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

  • Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
and 

On your entry post (on your blog):
  • Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
  • You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter
Have a happy, healthy week!

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Ottolenghi Instagram-Inspired Butter Braised Chickpea & Parmesan Soup for Souper (Soup, Salad, & Sammie) Sundays

Do you ever have recipe obsessions? I get them often especially when I see a post on a favorite chef's Instagram. When Yotam Ottolenghi posted a picture of Butter Braised Chickpeas on his account back in October, I waited for it to move from the testing kitchen to one of his newspaper columns but it was taking too long, and maybe it was for an upcoming cookbook, and who knows when it would be published, so I decided that there was enough of a description for me to just cook it--adding a little extra broth to make it more of a soup for Souper Sundays.


So the below recipe is my interpretation of the recipe from what was posted on Instagram but the mix of ingredients and basic processes are all Ottolenghi and his team.


Butter Braised Chickpea & Parmesan Soup
Inspired and Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad via Instagram, Interpreted here by Deb, Kahakai Kitchen
(Serves 6)

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 sweet onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
3 small bay leaves
1 package dried chickpeas (about 4 cups)
6 cups liquid (4 cups lite veggie broth + 4 cups water)
3-4 Parmesan-Reggiano rinds
3/4 stick of butter, chopped 
juice & zest of one lemon, or to taste + one lemon to grill
salt and black pepper to taste
grilled spring onion, grated Parmesan, & grilled lemon slices to serve

Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and saute about 10 minutes, until softened and just starting to brown. Add the garlic and saute another 2 to 3 minutes. Add the bay leaves, broth and water and Parmesan-Reggiano rinds and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer about 1 1/2 - 2 hours, until chickpeas are soft. 

Place the rinds and a couple of ladles full of chickpeas and broth into a blender and blitz until smooth. Pour back in the pot, along with the butter and lemon zest and bring to a simmer. Taste and season with salt and black pepper. Cover again and cook on low for another 30 to 40 minutes or until chickpeas are very soft. Add lemon juice and season with more salt and black pepper if needed.

Serve ladled in bowls with grilled spring onions, grated Parmesan cheese and more black pepper to taste. (Whether eating as a soup or not, bread would be very welcome at the bottom of the bowl or on the side.) Enjoy!


Notes/Results: So comforting and indulgent and really, really delicious. I can't wait to see the actual recipe to see what quantities of things Ottolenghi and Murad used and how close or not I was. Regardless, I am pretty happy with how it turned out--the nuttiness and slight funkiness of the Parmesan-Reggiano, creamy chickpeas, acidity from the lemons and rich butter all work together for layers of flavor. My only regret was not having any good sourdough bread to dip into the broth. I will happily make it again.


Linking up with I Heart Cooking Clubs where the theme is Good Tidings of Comfort & Joy where we make comfort food from any of our nineteen featured chefs. 


It's just me in the Souper Sundays kitchen this busy pre-holiday week with the Simple Greek Salad with Roasted Shrimp I made earlier in the week. I kept it simple with wild shrimp from the freezer and tomatoes, cucumber, onion, freeze-dried dill, capers, lemon, and yogurt that I had in the fridge. It was light but satisfying and delicious with the sweet roasted shrimp on top. 



(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

  • Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
and 

On your entry post (on your blog):
  • Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
  • You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter
Have a happy, healthy week!
 

Thursday, December 19, 2019

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "The Playground' by Jane Shemilt, Served with Simple Greek Salad with Shrimp

It's hard to believe that Christmas is less than a week away and this is my last TLC Book Tour review of 2019. I am excited to end the year with a domestic thriller from an author I enjoy, The Playground by Jane Shemilt. My review is paired with a Simple Greek Salad with Roasted Shrimp, inspired by the book.


Publisher's Blurb:

Big Little Lies meets Lord of The Flies in this electrifyingly twisty follow-up to Jane Shemilt’s breakout debut The Daughter.

Over the course of a long, hot summer in London, the lives of three very different married couples collide when their children join the same tutoring circle, resulting in illicit relationships, shocking violence, and unimaginable fallout.

There’s Eve, a bougie earth mother with a well-stocked trust fund; she has three little ones, a blue-collar husband and is obsessed with her Instagrammable recipes and lifestyle. And Melissa, a successful interior designer whose casually cruel banker husband is careful not to leave visible bruises; she curates her perfectly thin body so closely she misses everything their teenage daughter is hiding. Then there’s Grace, a young Zimbabwean immigrant, who lives in high-rise housing project with her two children and their English father Martin, an award-winning but chronically broke novelist; she does far more for her family than she should have to.

As the weeks go by, the couples become very close; there are barbecues, garden parties, a holiday at a country villa in Greece. Resentments flare. An affair begins. Unnoticed, the children run wild. The couples are busily watching each other, so distracted and self-absorbed that they forget to watch their children. No one sees the five children at their secret games or realize how much their family dynamics are changing until tragedy strikes.

The story twists and then twists again while the three families desperately search for answers. It’s only as they begin to unravel the truth of what happened over the summer that they realize evil has crept quietly into their world.
But has this knowledge come too late?

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (December 30, 2019)


My Review:

I was pulled to this tour both because of the author (I read and reviewed her novel The Daughter a few years ago) and the premise of "Big Little Lies meets Lord of the Flies" which I thought was interesting. I also do like a good domestic thriller and I think The Playground is a pretty solid one. I won't go into the story details for fear of spoilers but the basic premise is that three different families (with differing types and levels of dysfunction) come together when one of the mothers, Eve, begins giving Sunday lessons for the dyslexic children of the group and they and the siblings that tag along quickly bond and become friends and their parents soon follow. It turns out that all is not well. There is a tragedy and it becomes quickly apparent that these people are not great parents and have completely lost control of their children and things quick spiral downward for each family. It's a bit like watching a train wreck and most of the riders are not at all likable which makes it easy to judge them and their self-absorbed lives. Although there were twists and turns in the book, there were no big reveals and I could fairly well predict what would happen but I think the point of this thriller is in the anticipation and the voyeuristic glimpses into these crumbling lives--which definitely kept me turning the pages. 

-----


Author Notes: While working full time as a physician, Jane Shemilt received an M.A. in creative writing. She was shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbit award and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize for The Daughter, her first novel. She and her husband, a professor of neurosurgery, have five children and live in Bristol, England.
 
Follow Jane on Twitter and Instagram.




-----

Food Inspiration:

There was quite a lot of food mentioned in The Playground, much more than in Shemilt's first book. Mentions included: homemade bread, rolls and croissants, coffee, strawberry jam and butter, carrot sticks and small sandwiches, homemade pizzas, beef daube, beer, pizza and French fries, tea and lavender cakes, Malteasers, Manchego cheese, bananas, potatoes, salmon, broccoli and new potatoes, fruit cake, chocolate cake, cupcakes, sponge cake smothered in strawberries and cream, apples, filo with lemon cream, fresh dill and tiny shrimp, bouillabaisse, marinated salmon, baked crab patties, broad beans in oil, pureed raspberries, orange juice, champagne, steak, pies, salad, bread with olives,ginger beer, sausages, okra, sage, wild thyme and honey, wine, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, pots of yogurt, black olives, cheese-and-spinach pie, flat yellow peaches, lemon cake, ice cream, cherries, flaky fish and curled tentacles in tomato sauce, casserole, baked potatoes, fruit smoothies with tamarind, potatoes with butter and parsley, chicken in an herb-scented sauce, tomato soup and toast, jam sandwiches, crisps, chocolate biscuits, macarons, crumpets, chocolate cake, toast, sausages and beans, chocolate mini rolls, mashed potatoes, and lemonade.


For my book-inspired dish, I went with the trip to Greece the families in the book made which was basically the beginning of the end of the happier times. A Greek villa owned by Eve's family was the setting and so I thought a Greek salad would be a good pairing with the book. Since I needed some protein and had wild shrimp in the freezer, I decided to roast some to top my salad.


Although it shares some of the ingredients mentioned in the book for characters' time at Eve's house in Greece, the recipe for this salad and the shrimp came mainly from the ingredients I had available in my pantry saving me a midweek grocery run. You could of course add things like olives and mint and other veggies and leave off the shrimp or replace it with another protein. The beauty of salads is how adaptable they are. 

Simple Greek Salad with Roasted Shrimp
By Deb, Kahakai Kitchen
(Serves 2)

Shrimp:
12 extra jumbo (16-20 per lb) shrimp, peeled and deveined
olive oil
sea salt and black pepper
smoked paprika

Salad:
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved 
3 mini persian cucumbers sliced, or 1 English cucumber, halved & sliced
2 Tbsp red onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons chopped dill (fresh or freeze dried)
1 1/2 Tbsp capers, drained 
1/3 cup Greek yogurt
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp lemon juice, or to taste
sea salt and black pepper to taste
3-4 oz feta cheese, in chunks

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. cover a roasting pan with foil. Toss shrimp with olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika and spread in a single layer on pan. Cook for about 7-8 minutes or until shrimp is opaque, pink and cooked through. Set aside.

Meanwhile place tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, minced garlic, dill, and capers in a bowl and gently mix together. Add Greek yogurt, olive oil, and lemon juice and gently toss together with ingredients until everything is mixed and coated. Very gently mix in feta cheese chunks. Taste and season with salt, pepper and additional lemon juice as needed. 

To serve, mound salad on plates and top with the roasted shrimp. Enjoy.


Notes/Results: A fresh tasting salad in a creamy dressing, topped with the sweet and juicy shrimp and salty feta cubes made for a quick and tasty dinner--satisfying while still light. With the capers I didn't miss the olives--although they would have been a nice addition, as would more herbs like mint and parsley. Everytime I make and eat a Greek salad I always wonder why I don't make them more often. yum. ;-)


I am sharing this salad with Souper Sundays here at Kahakai Kitchen--a weekly opportunity to share soups, salads, and sandwiches from me and other bloggers who join in. Here's the link to this week's post

I'm also sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event at Beth Fish Reads, a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. For more information, see the welcome post.

Note: A review copy of "The Playground was provided to me by the author and the publisher, Harper Collins, via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for my review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own. 
 
You can see the other stops for this TLC Book Tour and what other bloggers thought of the book here.

 

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Jamie Oliver's Speedy Spiced Shrimp Soup for Souper (Soup, Salad, & Sammie) Sundays

It's that time of year when life is busy, busy and I don't want to put a big effort in the kitchen so when I saw Jamie Oliver's Speedy Spiced Shrimp Soup recipe in his 5 Ingredients: Quick & Easy Food cookbook, I knew it was perfect for today's soup.



With frozen cooked shrimp and curry paste, it couldn't be easier and is ready in 20 minutes or so.



Speedy Spiced Shrimp Soup
Slightly Adapted from 5 Ingredients by Jamie Oliver
(Serves 4)

8 oz small frozen cooked peeled shrimp
2/3 cup white basmati rice
8 scallions
2 heaping tablespoons korma curry paste
1 x 14-oz can of light coconut milk

Place the shrimp in a bowl of cold water so they start to defrost. Meanwhile, dry-fry and toast the rice for 3 minutes in a large shallow casserole pan on a high heat, stirring regularly, while you trim and finely slice the scallions. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil, the scallions, and korma paste to the pan. Stir for 2 minutes, then pour in the coconut milk and 2 1/2 cans' worth of water. Boil for 12 minutes, stirring everything occasionally.

With 6 minutes to go, drain the shrimp, finely chop, and stir into the soup. When the rice is cooked through and the soup is your desired consistency, taste, season to utter perfection with sea salt and black pepper and dish up.



Notes/Results: Did I like this soup? Yes, obviously if you look at the final picture. ;-) It is simple but flavorful from the curry and rich from the coconut milk. My neighborhood grocery stores did not have a korma curry paste and I didn't have time to run to the Indian mercantile in town so I used the butter chicken curry paste I had in the pantry, planning  to make a butter tofu. I think it is fairly close to korma curry in flavor and equally as good. I like how quick and easy this soup is. I might add some spinach to it--maybe to the bowl so it warms and softens instead of gets slimy but otherwise, this was a tasty, low-effort soup that I would happily make again.



Linking up (and stretching it a bit) to I Heart Cooking Clubs where this week's theme is December Cuisine Spotlight: Holidays Around the World. I think you could take this Indian-inspired recipe from a British chef and serve it at an Italian-inspired Feast of the Seven Fishes dinner on Christmas Eve! ;-)



Have a soup, salad or sandwich that you'd like to share with the Souper Sundays kitchen? See the details below.

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

  • Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
and 

On your entry post (on your blog):
  • Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
  • You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).
You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enter

Have a happy and healthy week!
 

Friday, December 13, 2019

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "Africaville" by Jeffrey Colvin, Served with Griddled Fish Cakes

It's Aloha Friday and time for another opportunity to be a stop on the TLC Book Tour for Africaville, a new novel by Jeffery Colvin. I've paired my review of this absorbing debut novel about a Nova Scotia black community and multiple generations of a family with Griddled Fish Cakes from an article on black cooking in Nova Scotia.


Structured as a triptych, Africaville chronicles the lives of three generations of the Sebolt family—Kath Ella, her son Omar/Etienne, and her grandson Warner—whose lives unfold against the tumultuous events of the twentieth century from the Great Depression of the 1930s, through the social protests of the 1960s to the economic upheavals in the 1980s.
A century earlier, Kath Ella’s ancestors established a new home in Nova Scotia. Like her ancestors, Kath Ella’s life is shaped by hardship—she struggles to conceive and to provide for her family during the long, bitter Canadian winters. She must also contend with the locals’ lingering suspicions about the dark-skinned “outsiders” who live in their midst.

Kath Ella’s fierce love for her son, Omar, cannot help her overcome the racial prejudices that linger in this remote, tight-knit place. As he grows up, the rebellious Omar refutes the past and decides to break from the family, threatening to upend all that Kath Ella and her people have tried to build. Over the decades, each successive generation drifts further from Africaville, yet they take a piece of this indelible place with them as they make their way to Montreal, Vermont, and beyond, to the deep South of America.

As it explores notions of identity, passing, cross-racial relationships, the importance of place, and the meaning of home, Africaville tells the larger story of the black experience in parts of Canada and the United States. Vibrant and lyrical, filled with colorful details, and told in a powerful, haunting voice, this extraordinary novel—as atmospheric and steeped in history as The Known World, Barracoon, The Underground Railroad, and The Twelve Tribes of Hattie—is a landmark work from a sure-to-be major literary talent.


Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Amistad (December 10, 2019)

My Review:

I love when I find a book that teaches me about a piece of history that I never knew about and Africaville did exactly that. Chronicling the history of the Sebolt family, it tells the tale of the community a group of former slaves from a variety of origins establish for themselves on the windswept bluffs of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Established in the 1800s, it was a hardscrabble life for its occupants who faced poverty, prejudice and turmoil through decades before it was ultimately designated as a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996. The history of the community itself is fascinating and the story of the Sebolt family and the other families who made it their home touches the heart. Kath Ella Sebolt comes of age in the 1930s and wants nothing more than to leave Woods Bluff and works for a scholarship to study in Montreal. Her son Omar spends little time there after single mother Kath Ella marries, and goes by his new first name of Etienne. He spends his life distancing himself from his Halifax relatives and lives as white in Alabama while Etienne's son Warner learns of his heritage and wants to know more. All three generations are seeking a sense of belonging and look for it in different and sometimes destructive ways. I don't want to go into too much detail of how the plot unfolds so I will just say that Africaville is a beautifully written book that moved back-and-forth through time, place, and point of view, which made it a bit slow moving at times, but kept my interest throughout the stories and made me think about race, prejudice, and identity. Readers who love history--especially the lesser-known bits, family dramas and multi-generational sagas, diverse books and characters, and powerful and poetic writing will find themselves as caught up by this moving and memorable  novel as I was. 

-----

Author Notes: Jeffrey Colvin served in the United States Marine Corps and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Harvard University, and Columbia University, where he received an MFA in fiction. His work has appeared in NarrativeHot Metal BridgePainted Bride QuarterlyRain Taxi Review of BooksThe MillionsThe Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and is an assistant editor at Narrative magazine. He lives in New York City.

Find out more at his website.

-----

Food Inspiration:

There was a mix of food in Africaville, some familiar and some not, and included dishes from Nova Scotia and Montreal, Alabama and Vermont like sweet milk and lemon bitter, butterscotch jawbreakers, a hard biscuit with a smear of canned raspberry preserves, hindquarter meat, potatoes, hard-boiled egg, a thumb-sized portion of dried goose dusted with bee sugar, walnut trees, sausage and potatoes, Strawberry Cassandra, spaghetti with clams, four-layer lemon cake, cantaloupes, Jump-Up cake with peach jam icing, buttered bread and soup, butter cookies, iced tea, onions, sandwiches including a pork chop sandwich, fried potato wedges, saltwater taffy, cold fried chicken, egg sandwich, beef Stroganoff, peppermint candies, cream soda and a bag of pommes frites, "a cocktail of prune and apple juice," trays of pies and cakes, fish cakes, meat pies, and lime punch, fried code, chicken, rice and greens, cheese sandwich and stewed figs, fried eggs and potatoes, rabbit and wild cabbages, broiled halibut and kidney beans, haddock cake, a dinner at a steak house, ice cream, crushed pistachio nuts, oranges, beer, bottles of cranberry carbonate, vodka, tequila, corned beef and cabbage, bratwurst, freshly baked rice pudding, Scotch and ginger, Vienna sausages in tomato sauce, Nehi soda, rum shots, popcorn, peanut brittle, MoonPies, green beans, rum and coke, grilled chicken thighs, assorted donuts, potato salad, creamed carrots, runny corned-beef sandwiches, soggy apple pie, peach-chester cake, a bag of apples, scrambled eggs and grits, poison-laced gumbo, oatmeal, salmon minicroquettes, sardines, pecan saplings, Italian food, delivery dinners of chicken, fried shrimp, spaghetti with meat sauce and ham with mustard greens. 


I wasn't sure what to make and ended up googling "black cooking Nova Scotia" and there were several articles but a Saveur Magazine article was the first thing that popped up. It's very interesting and I highly recommend it if you have an interest in the food of the region, culture and era. Attached to the article was  a recipe for Griddled Fish Cakes that immediately caught my eye as I rarely meet a fish cake that I don't like. ;-) This recipe says it might be served with green tomato chow-chow but as green tomatoes are scarce this time a month, I just served mine with a simple aioli with smoked paprika and cayenne. 


Saveur Magazine says, "Haddock is often used for these fish cakes, though any firm white fish will do. This recipe, adapted from Nova Scotia Cookery, Then and Now (Nimbus, 2018), creates tender cakes with golden edges. The mixture can be shaped into patties a day ahead and refrigerated, but don’t roll the patties in bread crumbs until just before frying."

Griddled Fish Cakes 
Slightly Adapted from Saveur Magazine
(Makes 8 Cakes

1 small Yukon Gold potato (5 oz), peeled (I used prepared mashed potatoes)
2 lbs firm white fish fillets (haddock, cod or hake) (I used monk fish)
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs (I used seasoned panko)
1/4 cup finely-chopped parsley 
1/4 cup finely chopped scallions
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (I used 1 heaping teaspoon of this Where the Crawdads Zing seasoning blend from bookclubcookbook.com)
fresh lemon juice
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
In a small pot, add the potato and enough cold water to cover; bring to a boil over high heat and cook until the potato is tender when pierced with a knife, 13–15 minutes. Drain, and let cool. When the potato is cool enough to touch, coarsely mash with a fork and set aside.

Meanwhile, cook the fish: Set the fillets on the baking sheet, transfer to the oven, and roast until the fish flakes easily, about 15 minutes. Pour the bread crumbs onto a plate and set aside. Remove the fish from the oven and cool slightly. In a large bowl, break the fish into chunks. Add the mashed potato, parsley, scallion, sour cream, and cayenne; mix well, then season to taste with fresh lemon juice, kosher salt, and black pepper. Form the mixture into eight patties, then roll each in bread crumbs.

Line a platter with paper towels and set by the stove. In a heavy skillet over medium-high heat, add the oil. Once hot, add the fish cakes in batches and let cook, turning once, until golden brown and heated through, 3–4 minutes per side. Transfer the cakes to the platter and serve hot, with green tomato chow-chow, if desired.


Notes/Results: These were not the firmest fishcakes--my first few broke up a bit but they were quite delicious and I got a few good ones. I attribute it to deli prepared mashed potatoes but on a weeknight, I didn't want to take the time to boil and mash one. I liked the seasoning blend I used which is nicely spicy but adds additional flavor--as did the seasoned panko bread crumbs. Monkfish looked the freshest at the market and its mild flavor worked well. I ate my crumbled fishcakes that didn't hold their shape for lunch the next day as sort of a fish "pie" and enjoyed it as much as the whole cakes. I would happily make them again. 


I'm also sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event at Beth Fish Reads, a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. For more information, see the welcome post.

Note: A review copy of "Africaville" was provided to me by the author and the publisher, Harper Collins, via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for my review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own. 
 
You can see the other stops for this TLC Book Tour and what other bloggers thought of the book here.