Oysters and Samphire

I know most of my recent posts have been about fish and shellfish but with the weather like it is and being from a seaside town it’s what I have been mostly cooking, it’s seasonal and it’s what I feel most passionate about at the moment and I’m just going to write about what I love.

So with bank holiday weekend coming up I decided to put a couple of specials on and one thing that I had not done in a little while were oysters, so I went down to weyfish and got a dozen for the evening.

If you have never had oysters before I really recommend that you try them at least once, and I mean try them raw as long as they are really fresh. I have introduced them too so many of my friends and colleagues and once they got past the texture of oysters most of them liked them or at least admitted it was nicer than they thought it was going to be. 

You don’t however have to eat them raw, I have tried them poached, baked and grilled and they have always been good, you do not need a lot to go with them either, just a splash of lemon juice with a drop of tobacco sauce does it for most people.

When preparing oysters you must make sure you are careful as if you are too rough you run the risk of breaking the shell, not getting the oyster from the shell cleanly or wasting all the good sea water that is inside the oysters.

So for my special I had the option of just straight up raw oysters with a choice of simple dressings or baked with garlic, paprika and chives, served with a simple garnish of samphire.

Samphire or sea asparagus is a perfect garnish for fish; it’s quite salty but a great colour, tastes lovely and can be found around Weymouth and Portland.

Scallops and chorizo in a garlic cream sauce

Scallops are one of the most popular dishes I have cooked, they can be found all over the world including Weymouth and Portland, they can be found in the intertidal zone or the deep sea and they have very easily recognisable shells. I have spent a lot of time in the past getting scallops from their shells and the shells are very handy to keep too, they can be used as dishes to serve the scallops in and I have even seen them used as ashtrays. I have a couple of friends who like to go diving for scallops and a couple of times I have been bought a couple to cook, not that when they are that fresh they need to be cooked.

 

There are so many different ways to cook scallops and things to serve them with, I especially like them with black pudding and a pea puree or as a surf n turf with a nice rare fillet steak, but today I want to share my scallops and chorizo recipe with a garlic cream sauce. This is only a fairly small dish as its quite filling but you could make it into a larger course by simply doubling the ingredients. This dish is so tasty and I would definitely recommend getting some nice bread for the sauce.

Ingredients:

3 fresh medium sized scallops

A couple of slices of chorizo

¼ small white onion diced

1 small clove garlic pureed

150 ml double cream

Large pinch of paprika

Large pinch of curly parsley chopped

1 tbsp butter

1 tsp oil

Method:

Start off by melting the butter with the oil in a pan on a low heat, once heated turn it up a little so it is on a medium heat then once hot add onion, garlic and scallops.

Next add the chorizo and check the scallops, once they have started to brown on the bottom turn them over and cook them on the other side, then add the parsley and paprika.

Once the scallops are just about brown on both sides add the cream and turn the heat up a little a little and season the pan, keep stirring to ensure the scallops or chorizo do not stick to the pan, reduce the cream by about a quarter.

Finally when dishing up make sure you have a big enough bowl for all the sauce as trust me you do not want to waste a drop. When I make it at work for other people I always have someone around with a chunk of bread waiting for me to put the pan down so they can dig in.

 

The perfect treat

 

One of my favourite places to go when I fancy a treat whether it is for breakfast or lunch is to waffle on, I love sweet food and I have been a few times I even went on my birthday last year and it was the best way to start the day. It is close to where I work now so I had a couple of hours break so I took Izi. Waffle on is a nice little place situated just across the bridge from the busy town towards the harbour.

When I first started working in Weymouth the choices were fairly limited, you had your fish restaurants all up the harbour and your pubs all in town but there was not a lot of variety so it’s nice to see in recent years the introduction of new places with more variety whether you are in a burger mood, a pizza mood, a pie mood or like I was today in the mood for waffles there is something for everyone.

It was not the sunniest day but who says it needs to be sunny for waffles and ice cream? We went down and I was feeling brave so I took on the challenge of the super-size waffle whilst izi went for the specialist.

For my waffle I went for double chocolate ice-cream with chocolate sauce on one, and honeycomb ice-cream with toffee sauce and to top them all off I had bananas, squirty cream, marshmallows and chopped nuts. Izi went for cookies and cream ice-cream with maple syrup, strawberries, squirty cream and chocolate chips and they were both as good as they sound.

Waffle on was recently number one on trip advisor in Weymouth and it is no surprise it is so high up, what’s not too love, the produce is local  the food the service is always great and each time I have been they have had specials such as cookies and cream and Turkish delight. You can also find them on Facebook.

Bream with grenobloise sauce

Being a seaside town it’s no surprise that most of what I cook especially around this time of year is fresh fish and it was to my delight my boss had gone fishing and caught some bream and some plaice and bought it back for me to play with. Despite Weymouth being full of restaurants, pubs and cafes with so many chefs and kitchen staff it is a shame that a lot of people I have worked with do not even like fish, I however love to eat it and love to cook it too, so I was happy to see the fish come in and I got to cook myself a lovely lunch with it I am going to show you.

To start I had to gut, scale and fillet the fish, once filleted I cooked it and served it with crushed new potatoes, a mint pea puree and a grenobloise sauce. You do not have to use bream with this dish I have also used cod, hake, skate, sole and plaice before all with this same grenobloise sauce as it is a quick, simple but tasty sauce and just great with fish.

Ingredients:

1 fillet of bream

1 portion of new potatoes

20g Soft butter

A couple of sprigs of Mint

½ cup flour

Splash of oil

For pea puree:

½ cup peas

Few sprigs of mint

20g soft butter

Splash of cream

Salt and pepper

For grenobloise:

30g salted butter diced (kept in fridge)

1 shallot diced

2 tsp. capers

2 tsp. chopped parsley

½ lemon juiced

Method:

Start off by dicing the onions, capers parsley and mint then keeping to one side, then put the new potatoes on with a pinch of salt on a medium heat, once the potatoes are cooked drain the water, crush then mix in the butter, chopped mint and season, keep warm until ready to serve.

 Next put the peas on, once the peas are boiling strain the water and put the peas with the other ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth, then transfer back into pan and keep on a very low heat to keep hot.

Put flour on a plate and season, heat up a pan on medium heat with a splash of oil and whilst it is heating up press the fish in the flour, turn and then take off and shake off any excess flour, place the fish skin side down in the pan and cook until the edges are golden brown then turn and cook until flesh becomes white and flaky throughout.

Once cooked dish up the crushed new potatoes, pea puree and fish and put a pan on a high heat for the grenobloise, once hot add the diced butter from the fridge and cook until it becomes a nutty brown colour, then add the shallot then capers, parsley and finish with lemon juice then pour sauce over fish.