Fish, Leek and Blue Cheese pies

I adapted this recipe from a Marcus Wareing recipe. I love his book, I genuinely want to cook everything in it… Anyway, he uses cod and I used halibut… He uses a lot of blue cheese, but I wanted to retain the flavour of the beautiful milky fish sauce, so I added small chunks of Roquefort cheese so when you ate it, you got the occasional hit, rather than a dominating flavour. The ramekins that we bought for the chocolate mousses we made a while back were the perfect size, which was nice.

Ingredients

• 400 ml of semi skimmed milk
• 200 ml chicken stock
• 1/4 bunch of thyme
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 1 bay leaf
• 450g cod or halibut
• 1 leeks chopped
• 100g unsalted butter
• 50g plain flour
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 50g of blue roquefort cheese
• handful of chopped flat leaf parsley
• 1 egg yolk, from a free range egg
• puff pastry

Method

In a deep saucepan, add the , milk, 100ml of the stock, thyme and garlic and warm through on a low heat, do not boil.

Season the white fish with salt and freshly ground black pepper, then add this to the sauce, and poach for about 7 or 8 minutes.

You’ll see it turning from translucent to white. Remove the fish and put to one side. Then put the sauce in a jug and put to one side as well.

Melt half  the butter in a frying and cook the chopped leeks for 5 mins, then add the other half of chicken stock to the leeks and cook for a further 5 minutes and then set aside.

Now in a another (or the same frying pan if it’s been washed) melt the other half of the butter over a medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook for a couple of minutes. Now get your jug of white sauce (garlic and bay leaves removed) and add a dash of the liquid to the flour and butter, whisk vigorously, then, when that has blended in, add the rest of the liquid slowly to create a nice creamy texture. Check the sauce for seasoning.

Take your ramekin and evenly disperse the white fish, the leeks and the crumbled Roquefort.

Place a disc of fresh puff pastry over the ramekin, brush with egg yolk and bake in the oven at 180C for 20- 25 minutes. I think this would go well with steamed broccoli and buttery new potatoes.

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Spinach, Cheddar and Roquefort Quiche

Decided to attempt a quiche. I have made one once before. The pastry turned out really well, and took all of 2 minutes to make… I really liked the way the dish looked and luckily how good it tasted. The bacon I used was a little bland, and you need good quality bacon so that it works well with the cheese… Oh and leaving the pastry to rest in the fridge is essential.

Ingredients

for the pastry

• 175g  plain flour,
• 75g butter
• splash of cold water

for the filling

• 250g cheddar, grated
• 50g of roquefort cheese, crumbled
• 2 large handfuls of spinach
• 1 large tomato, sliced
• 200g bacon, chopped
• 5 eggs, beaten
• 100ml  milk
• 200ml oz crème fraiche
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• fresh thyme

Method

For the pastry

To make the pastry, put the flour into a bowl, add the butter (which shouldn’t be straight from the fridge) in small chunks and blend together with your fingers. Don’t over work this. Next add a splash of cold water and it should start to come together to form a smooth dough, I added a tiny bit too much water and rectified it by adding a touch more flour. Wrap in cling film (shrink wrap) and leave in the fridge for at least 30 mins. Pre heat the oven to 190C . Just to say this recipe is for a 29cm diameter dish. Ok, now dust a surface with flour and roll out your pastry thinly and then line it in your greased dish. You are going to blind bake the pastry for 20 mins(which means covering the base of the pastry with greaseproof paper and then covering that with dried beans to weigh it down, so that it doesn’t rise. After the 20 mins, reduce the temp of the oven to 160C, remove the beans and paper and cook for a further 5 minutes. Then remove from the oven.

for the filling

Wilt the spinach in a pan, fry the bacon in a pan until crispy, Mix the beaten eggs with the milk and the crème fraiche, add a large pinch of salt and don’t over whip. Now you are ready to assemble the quiche. First put all of the grated cheddar cheese on the base of the pastry, then add a layer of chopped tomato, then pour your mixture over the top, finally adding the spinach and the bacon, the sprinkle the top with Roquefort and thyme. Bake in the oven at 160 for about 30-40 mins (mine actually took about 45 mins to set, but we don’t have a fan assisted oven. Serve in slices with a nice salad.

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