Moroccan Mussels, Tapenade Toasties and Cucumber Salad

Meal 105 - December 8th - Moroccan Mussels, Tapenade Toasties and Cucumber Salad

Well the good news is, Lolz overcame her sickness in time for a festive trip to York. Foodie highlights included Fat Rascals and afternoon tea at Betty's (those who are not of a northern persuasion or have never been to York will obviously have no idea what I'm talking about). The bad news is, I am now drastically behind in my attempt to get this challenge done before big ben strikes midnight on January 1st. I've got 15 meals to do in just 24 days. Since we still had many of the ingredients left over from last weekend, Lolz bravely agreed to give the Moroccan mussels a go (with a fresh batch of mussels of course) - how unlucky would you have to be to get food poisoning twice in 8 days?!

Flashy Fish Stew, Saffron Sauce and Garlic Bread

Meal 3 - 12th Jan - Flashy Fish Stew, Saffron Sauce and Garlic Bread

If my previous pork dish was venturing into "slightly less well know territory", then this Flashy Fish Stew was breaking new frontiers. The challenge was not in the execution of the recipe (it was probably the easiest of all I had done so far) but in procuring the ingredients. I decided to embrace the Jamie ethos, don an aura of middle-class-ness (well, my gilet, which apparently is kind of the same thing) and negotiate North End Road market.

I was surprised and delighted to find the market chock full of bargainous delights, such as saffron for about a third of the Waitrose price and shell-on king prawns for 25p each! 25p!! I bought two red mullet from the fishmonger who happily gutted and scaled them for me (I was only cooking for two people, so assumed this would be enough...). Getting home I did encounter a few problems - the fish, when fully prepared into fillets (the fishmonger did not fully debone or remove the heads from the mullets) were a little on the small side, while a good proportion of the mussels (bought from Waitrose I might add) were unusable. I also broke the garlic crusher with some over enthusiastic garlic crushing, while Lolz later broke the pestle / mortar (not entirely sure which is which) in what can only be described as an evening of mixed fortunes.

Fortunately the finished dish was hearty and flavourful if lacking a little in seafood. The garlic bread was simple and much needed for mopping up the copious amounts of sauce. The real triumph of this dish though was that I really learned that the buying and preparing of seafood is not as scary as I once thought, and to really make it as flashy as the title promises, you probably need to buy a bit more seafood than you might imagine.

Lolz gave the dish 7/10. Said it would have been an 8 with less chilli and more fish. Difficulty factor 3/10.