Striped bass has to have one of the best looking skins out there. An amazing metallic silver color, with darker stripes. Just beautiful. Course it tastes great too. A firm flesh, that is meaty and light tasting. Just perfect for baking as it doesn’t fall apart on you too much. What is more the neutral flavor of the flesh means that a nice flavorful sauce is in order.

This is a modification of a recipe by Jamie Oliver, from his book Jamie’s Kitchen. A lot has been said about Jamie Oliver. Personally, I think the bloke is great. Good simple food, that is pretty easy to cook and gives consistent results. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Jamie is the accessibility of his food. I haven’t met anyone (home cooks) that doesn’t enjoy at least some of his food. It is universally acceptable. Some professional chefs have said some not so great things about him (”he is neither naked nor a chef”), but I like the bloke. And to top it off he did a decent make-over on school dinners in England. I have to say actually that I don’t remember school dinners being that bad. Of course, that was obviously quite a while ago now. Things have changed, fresh food has gone off the school menus, and been replaced by fast food. It is good to see a celeb chef really wanting to try and sort out the bad nutrition in schools. Hopefully something similar will happen here, because frankly the school dinners I have seen here have been dire. I wouldn’t mind getting involved in all that over here I have to say, good nutrition is really important in kids (well duh.).

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Somtimes it is good to defy the weather. Today is one of those days. Grey and overcast, yet food for a hot summers day. As you might have gathered by now, I really enjoy simple preperations of really fine ingredients, and this is one of those dishes. Certainly not the most attractive thing I have ever cooked, but the taste was really fresh and amazing.

Lets start with the beans. Really simple to be honest. A can of cannelli beans is heated with a little olive oil and lemon juice, until warm. Then just puree this in a mini food processor. To serve, pop it on a plate, a drissle with really good extra virgin olive oil, and some fresh ground pepper. Now, I am not normally one for pureed beans. Personally, I think the texture is far better when they are left whole, but this was really enjoyable. The lemon gave it is a much needed lift, and didn’t make it too heavy.

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You have to love all of the fresh vegetables available at this time of year. The beans are amazing, whether it be green beans, yellow beans, runner beans or favas, they just taste great. I always like to find new ways to use them, that often get pretty creative. Sometimes though, something a little more classic and robust is in order. This fits that bill. For once, this dish isn’t really about the salmon. Shock horror! This is a salute to all the vegetables at this time of year.

Just a walk around a farmers market is inspiring at this time of year. So much produce. So many possibilities. The Ballard farmers market has been my favorite for a long time, even though it is a bit of a drive for us. I get a lot of my weekly produce from the local stalls there, and have never been dissapointed. For this dish we have a mixture of green beans, yellow beans, burgundy beans, fava beans, potatoes, fennel, walla walla onion and garlic. Phew. A lot of veggies. But that is a good thing. I often get stuck cooking the same veg, and this is a great way to work with different vegetables (and to get your fair share of them!).

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Some may have noticed of late that posts have been a little less frequent than usual. There is a reason to everything, and this is certainly no exception! In a couple of weeks I have to give a best man’s speech at my baby brothers wedding in Holland. I say baby, we are actually twins, but heck I am five minutes older, and never let him forget it! I wonder when that age is where it is better to be younger. We are in our early thirties, and certainly not there yet!

He gave a great best man’s speech at my wedding a couple of years ago. It included A/V equipment, which is always a worry. Embarrassing photos of me were dug up (of which there is a lot), and much hilarity was had. We are competitive brothers, so obviously mine has to be better than his. The biggest problem is that I have procrastinated on this a little too long, and am now rushing. Doh. 

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Blimey, now this was tasty. I haven’t done a huge amount of citrus seared fish before. Ceviche is a great example of this technique. You are really just using the natural acidity from citrus fruit to cook something. In the case of this bigeye only the outside couple of millimeters is actually cooked.  What results is some tuna that has an incredibly fresh taste thanks to the lime juice, and this really neat looking cooked edge all the way around the slices.

I was in the mood for something light and tasty this evening. We spent the morning at Ballard Farmers Market, picking up some vegetables for the week. I have to say I just love this farmers market. By far my favorite. I love the market slowly gets progressively bigger through the summer months, with new vendors popping up as the weather gets better. It seemed like the quality of the stalls was super high this week, everything looked good, and we were hungry. First stop was at the great crepe stand for a quick on the go lunch - a chicken, spinach avocado and feta crepe. It was fabulous. I had Drake Baby Bjorned to me, and I think the little guy ended up with some of the crepe on his head. This often happens when I eat with Drake still in the Bjorn! A couple of stands saw most of the shopping done, some great tomatoes from Billys, and some veg from a stand of which I forget the name (pity on me). Fabulous stuff anyhow, but that doesn’t help much if I cannot say where we got it!!

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We have a Whole Foods close to work, and I have to admit to frequenting it quite a bit recently. Nothing wrong with Whole Foods of course in the grand scheme of things. They have lots of organic produce, and a really pretty decent fish counter (still not a patch on Mutual Fish though). My problem really is that they are the “walmart” of organic stores. They are huge. They have everything. They make it easy to shop there. They charge a lot for what they have (but their fish counter is actually pretty reasonable) though if you ask me (ok.. that one isn’t like walmart). I have bought quite a bit of salmon from them, halibut, whole red snapper, scallops and squid. All has been pretty decent. A couple of times I have bought mussels from them, there was no where else close to this store that would have done any better. Unfortunately they were pretty terrible. This happened twice. After I get funky seafood from a place twice, I tend to avoid that product there. I would generally avoid the whole store, but in this case the rest of their stuff is pretty decent. Oh, and their “local” signs on products are misleading to me. I have seen “local” signs on produce that is from California. For me, that is a 8 hour drive into Northern California. That isn’t local to me. But enough about Whole Foods.. The only reason I am mentioning them is that we got the coho from them today, and it was really fabulous.

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Finally. A date night. After much hinting at Danika’s parents, and shuffling of schedules we get a date night. Her parents are awesome. They have offered to watch Drake whenever we need, but for some reason it doesn’t work out all that often. So, we get to go out. Ohhh the excitement is honestly unbearable. We have been out to dinner with Drake lots of times, but there are obviously places that aren’t that suitable for a little hyperactive 8month old.

This is one thing I love. Picking a new place to go eat. We don’t eat out that much these days, which is good in all honesty. I get to cook much more at home, work on the Wrightfood cookbook more, and we eat a lot healthier. Eating out has become more of an event now too. Before Drake, we would go out around 3 times a week, and it just got boring. We often didn’t go to amazing places, just something local and quick. Thankfully the Crowused to be a short walk for us, and we would eat there often. I loved that place. We now live bloody miles from it, so we haven’t been in nearly a year now.

So we ended up picking Lark. I say we, I mean me. Danika is fantastic, she lets me choose on our date nights. So far she has been happy with the places, especially Lark.

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Ahhh chicken kebabs. You call em kebobs, we call them kebabs (us British folk). Food on a skewer, what could be simpler! We have a couple of kinds of kebab in England. Something like the picture you see here, but often with veggies on (your standard US kebob I guess), and then you get the kind that is somewhat like a Greek sandwich. Meat is mashed together, jammed onto a pole, and grilled or roasted. This is then thinly sliced, and popped into a pita, normally with some kind of sauce. We call those kebabs too. Funny story to the second kind of kebabs…..You will see kebab shops throughout most UK towns. All they do is kebabs. They have a variety of meats on sticks, which they slice up on demand, and pop into a pita for you. Some mystery sauce is then bunged onto it, and off you trot. The funny thing is that you always see them close to pubs. There is nothing better after a night out then a greasy kebab. OK, there is actually a lot better. Almost any food I can think of. But somehow in the dark of the night after way too many beers, a kebab sounds just perfect. Of course, the kebab store owners have it made. They can pretty much charge what they want… you are drunk, what do you care? The quality of the food can also be terrible. Heck, if you wake up in the morning, being sick and feeling terrible, you are more likely to blame it on the beers than that dodgy meat you scarfed down at 2am. Course, the only thing they do have to deal with is rowdy drunks, demanding badly cooked meat. Hats off to you kebab store owners, you have certainly found a niche market! Some in fact don’t even bother opening until 10pm or later. They know when they make their money!

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There is a lot of British food that I adore. Pies and pasties for one. A great roast dinner on Sundays. But nothing, absolutely nothing compares to my love of Summer Pudding. This is an English classic. So much so, I have a couple of different recipes of it planned for the Wrightfood book. As soon as fresh local summer berries are available, this gets made. Over and over again. And I never bore of it. I also have a small confession to make. I have even made it with frozen berries in the winter, and it wasn’t half bad. It wasn’t a patch on the summer version, which uses amazingly ripe fruit, but well, it did lift a rainy grey day or two in the winter!

I should say that I don’t do a lot of desserts. Not that I don’t like desserts (or pudding as we call it in England - all desserts are called puddings), far from it. I just don’t cook a lot of them. I like to focus, and to me desserts are something that you must do a lot of to get perfect. It is another job entirely. There are a few desserts I really like to make, and summer pudding is definitely one of them. Incidentally, if you want to check out a great desserts/baking blog take a look at a http://rhid-baked.blogspot.com. This is a new(ish) food blog run by a friend, and she makes incredible desserts. Right now she is studying at University, and does desserts in her spare time (or summer holidays). I am lucky enough that she brings them into our office through the week, and her husband that we work with gives us first dibs. Works for me! Anyhow, she is really bloody good at baking, and her blog is a great read of recipes.

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Scallops really are brilliant. But by now I imagine you know that I think that. I cook them pretty much every week, and we never get bored of em. NEVER! But what to do with them.. well, for me that really depends on what is in the fridge. What I did have was some baby bok choy, kale, shallots, garlic, ginger and green onions. Well, that is decided then. A simple Asian stir fry, and some sushi rice. Nothing deep and meaningful, no funky backstory, just a desire for some scallops, along with a desire to use up some stuff in the fridge before it goes bad.

I like to slice bok choy lengthways and reasonably thinly when stir-frying, making almost “bok choy sticks” if you will. This makes them easier to eat if you ask me, and you don’t get such a large mouthful of soft leaf. The kale is also sliced thinly, avoiding the thick stalk. The shallots are sliced, along with the garlic. About a thumb sized piece of ginger is finely grated. The aromatics get thrown into a really hot wok, and when starting to cook, I throw in the greens, and a little red pepper flakes.. I like a small amount of spice to my leafy veg.

So this is really just simple honest food. Nothing poncey or pretentious.