Clam chowder

I can't believe I haven't posted this recipe yet. Maybe we went a little while without making it, but it's a tasty warming bowl for a chilly evening.

Start by making up a roux sauce, adding some chicken stock along the way - either paste, or in liquid form instead of some of the milk. You can also add a splash of white wine for extra flavor. Either way, you want to end up with a sauce that is thin enough to pour but not too thin.

Add a tin of drained clams, some finely-diced and pre-cooked potatoes and carrots, and optionally a handful of peeled shrimp. You can also throw in other veggies such as sweetcorn if you wish. Season with salt and pepper, serve with toast (or garlic toast).

Shrimp salad

After enjoying this light and easy meal while we were away camping this summer, we had it again tonight. Just because ...  :)

Mix a good portion of cooked and peeled shrimp into a Marie Rose sauce (equal dollops of mayonnaise and tomato ketchup mixed together.

Serve with a generous mixed salad, and fries or buttered new potatoes.

For a fresher and lighter taste, serve the shrimp without the sauce on top of a mixed or Caesar salad.

Seafood pasta

Quick and simple.

Fry a small onion very finely chopped. Add some diced white fish and a chopped tomato. Add a generous quantity of cream and a dash of tomato ketchup. Bring to the boil and simmer to cook the fish and thicken the cream. Add some peeled shrimp.

Separately, fry some finely-cut slivers of bacon until crisp, and cook your pasta of choice (penne, fusilli, linguine, macaroni ...).

Serve the seafood sauce and bacon over the pasta.

Stir fry

Quick and easy, with flavor.

Fry up:
   Onions
   Meat of choice - usually chicken or prawns, maybe pork
   Finely-sliced veggies of choice - carrots, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, baby corn, pineapple
If using chicken or pork, make sure it's cooked through. If using prawns, leave them until last as they only take seconds.
Stir in a jar of sauce - sweet & sour, or ginger.

Serve with fried rice or noodles.

Fish pie

No list of ingredients today, just directions. This is supposed to be a quick & easy reference, after all.

Make a roux sauce (melt butter, add flour to make a thick paste, cook for a few minutes over a low heat then slowly add milk whisking out any lumps to make a thick sauce). Optionally add a spoonful of chicken stock paste and a pinch of garlic powder to add flavor. Add in diced pieces of white fish, shrimp, and any other seafood you fancy (scallops, squid...) and stir them in to cook.

Boil and mash potatoes with an egg, a knob of butter, and cream or milk.

Pour the fish sauce into a baking dish and spoon the mashed potatoes over the top. The sauce needs to be thick enough to allow you to spread the mash over the top - too thin and dollops of potato will sink and float around like icebergs :)

If you want to get fancy, you can use a fork to make pretty patterns on the top.

Sprinkle grated cheese over the top and pop into the oven until the topping is nicely browned.

Serve with veg or salad, and lashings of chilled white wine.

Thai curry

Something to tingle the tastebuds. All sorts of variations are possible depending on the mood and what's in the larder ...

Ingredients:

Onion - finely chopped
Meat of choice - usually chicken or prawns
Veggies of choice - thinly-sliced carrot, sliced pepper
Sauce of choice - yes, we cheat and buy a cooking sauce, usually a Red Thai sauce, maybe satay

Method:

Fry the onions
Fry the meat - unless it's prawns, in which case you want to keep these out until the last 5 minutes to avoid overcooking - and any "hard" veg such as carrots
Stir in the sauce and simmer
Add any "soft" veg that you just want to heat through

Serve with any kind of noodles or rice