It's the dreaded time after Christmas. In Finland we call the bleak weeks after Epiphany the Oxweeks, presumably because we go back to working like oxen instead of forever lying on our backs eating nuts and watching Love Actually.

You can get all pretentious with your layers, but I think this looks pretty good. And bottom is not soggy in case the dirty old Hollywood would like to give it a little pat.

I hate working like an ox OBVIOUSLY and not eating nuts and all kinds of goodies all the time. And not having at least one nap a day. Sometimes two, one in the AM if I accidentally got up too early (excited that it was Christmas) and one in the afternoon. But at least one in the afternoon. It's a basic human right.

The other nigh I had a box of ham and pickle flavoured luxury Yorkshire crisps for dinner. They were left over from a Christmas hamper I won in the charity raffle at work. And it was all going so well, healthy lunch at work and only one Thornton's chocolate. So much for the couscous and rocket salad that was the original dinner plan. I wonder what else is left in the hamper.

And there is the added emotional turmoil because the jolly inflatable polar bear has been shoved back into its box and Christmas lights have come down. The last hyacinth is slowly dying on the mantelpiece, there's very little food and a funny whiff in the fridge and husband has found and emptied all the chocolate hidey-holes.

We had a wonderful Christmas time though, must count blessings and not moan like some miserable ungrateful misery gut. Lots of lovely foods, some traditional Christmas stuff but mainly really just things that we love. We had lots of long nature walks inspired by husband's new iWatch and activity tracker. While walking we had deep conversations about love, life and such like. I would ask husband if he could even believe how much he actually loved me and if he loved me more every day, and so on. On one of our walks we saw a big flock of Egyptian geese on a field. My eyesight is not great, I first thought they were deer. Husband asked, what they were, why they were there and how people were supposed to play football with all of them crowding the place. I told him they were Egyptian geese, and that they'd just flown in to eat some worms or something, or maybe just grass and roots and stuff, if they were vegetarian, and then they would fly back out. "What? Back to Egypt?" marvelled husband the ornithologist.

My answer to the burning Catalan independence question is paella. We love paella in this household and this time I wanted to find a way to make it really healthy without compromising the taste. Not that paella is that unhealthy to begin with, but still wanted to see if I can pimp it up a bit with great ingredients and lots of veg and herbs for our fish Friday dinner last night.

This is what this awesome seafood bonanza looked like. And it tasted awesome.


And this is how husband repaid my lifesaving efforts the day after:

Fish and vegetables - what could be wrong with that, he says.

Actually I am all for giving yourself a break every once in a while. Or that's what I say to maintain a more relaxed and tolerant image. At least this time it was a very good plate of fish and chips. I know because on top of my tiny beetroot and goat cheese salad I had some space to try some of it.

This was the park cafe in St. James Park, but next time we will stay inside, just too many pigeons and pigeon poop everywhere it the outside area and kids feeding pigeons off the tables and wings flapping everywhere. Why their parents thought it is OK to feed pigeons in a restaurant I do not understand, but I understand that better than kicking pigeons which is another habit a lot of kids seem to have that their ignorant parents think is acceptable.

That's all I have on pigeons this time.


So this is what I did to the good old paella. To keep the glucose index lower than traditional paella for husbands diabetes I replaced the bomba rice with black venere rice, which is a whole grain and on top of it's better glucose profile apparently also has all kinds of antioxidants and other healthy stuff. It is the veritable blueberry of the rice family. And I upped the veg content to add lots of fibre to soak up some of the glucose and ensure slower release in the body.

I left out the chorizo which is full of salt and saturated fats, cooked the seafood by steaming it on top of the dish rather than frying it and of course used healthy rapeseed oil and was a bit careful with salt.

The end result was absolutely delicious, but the black rice has a different taste and texture, so it is a bit of a different experience from your traditional paella.

Black venere rice paella with lots of vegetables and seafood.

Serves 4-6

1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 fennel
1 bell pepper
Pinch of dried red pepper flakes (or fresh chilli)
1 tsp of turmeric
3/4 tsp smoked paprika
Pinch of saffron
Salt
Black pepper
1.5 cups of black rice
Zest and juice of one lemon
1 glass of white wine
Small bunch of parsley
Small bunch of dill
2.5-3 cups of low salt fish stock
Fresh or frozen peas
2 fillets of cod
2 fillets of redfish
250g mussels
250g squid rings
Fresh herbs or spring onion and lemon wedges

Chop all the vegetables and herbs. Heat oil in a paella pan. Add the onion and saute on low heat until the onion starts to soften, add the minced garlic and continue to cook. Add the spices and mix well. Add the chopped fennel and bell pepper.

Crank up the heat, add the rice and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the lemon zest and juice and he wine. Let the wine evaporate a bit before adding the herbs and the stock. Reduce heat, cover and leave to simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the rice is almost done (check pack instructions). Stir every once in a while and add water if necessary

While the rice is cooking cut the fish fillets into quarters, season the fish and squid with salt and pepper and you can drizzle on a little rapeseed or olive oil and lemon juice. Clean the mussels well and throw away any that don't close when tapping the shell.

Once the rice is nearly done stir in the peas. Then add the seafood in the order of required cooking time pushing the fish pieces and mussels into the rice. I added the mussels and fish fillets first, let them steam on top of the paella with a lid on for 6-7 minutes until they were almost done, then added the squid for just 2-3 minutes.

Sprinkle with some lemon juice, fresh herbs or chopped spring onion, add some lemon wedges on top and serve with a crisp salad.

Some Italian inspiration for a change in the form of this lovely creamy seafood risotto which combines my favourite tastes of saffron, dill and seafood. The thought was brought on by our Roman holiday last weekend. We had a lovely four days in the eternal city and I got to practice my Italian which I have studied with a mobile app since January.

I don't think I am as fluent as the ad for the app promised, but what I had learned came handy as soon as we arrived. The housekeeper at the B&B we were staying at didn't speak a word of English. So I managed to get us through the check-in process and understood most of her explanations of where everything was and that it was not so much a B&B as just a B since there was no breakfast unless you made it yourself. But when she said (as she was leaving us to our own devices), if you have any problems call me, I thought to myself I would not be able to make much sense of her or she of me on the phone. The communication was heavily reliant on lively gesticulation, pointing and pantomime and not many full sentences were coherently delivered or understood.

Husband was not particularly impressed with my Italian (=repeatedly saying "si" whether I understood what the housekeeper was saying or not) at this stage. And I have to admit this whole monoglot housekeeper scenario came a bit too quickly for me. I did a lot better in situations were I had more time to prepare sentences in my head, like purchasing medicine for husband's man flu in a pharmacy when I had had the whole morning to prepare what I would say. Or talking to the taxi driver on our last day asking him to make two stops, one at the hotel so we could pick up our luggage and then at the airport.

Although afterwards I realised I had probably asked for two roasts (arrosto) rather than stops (arresto), but the driver didn't laugh at me, I didn't tell husband and no one will ever know. In all fairness they should make words more different from each other to avoid these sorts of mix-ups.

So I was pretty proud of myself and at this point husband was so impressed that he asked me to act as an interpreter while he wanted to discuss the Roman housing market with the driver. I did manage to ask about the house prices in general and how much a two bedroom flat in the centre of Rome would cost and even understood the answers, but further than that my linguistic skills wouldn't take me.

Still, well done I think. I will continue my studies as we are planning to go to Venice later this year or at least at some point in the next future. I also have a business trip to Milan in September, so can impress my colleagues by casually chatting to hotel staff in Italian.

Otherwise the holiday followed our normal format of energetic (maniacal) sightseeing with the minimum of 10k walked each day and husband happily following me wherever I chose to take us. I once tried to let him lead. I was walking ahead of him on a narrow cobblestoned street in Trastevere and decided I'll let him go first for a change, so I slowed down and tried to fall behind him, but he slowed down at the same rate and by the time I was behind him we had come to a complete stop. "Why did we get stuck", asked husband. I resumed my leading position.

And we had coffees, teas and glasses of wine in pavement cafes people watching and just enjoying the fact we didn't need to be anywhere else. In Vatican I nipped into a little shop to send my father, the philatelist, a postcard with a Vatican stamp on it, because I thought that's the kind of thing that will get him all excited and he can go to his weekly philatelist meeting and show it to the others and they can all be completely awed by this thumb sized miracle. Anyway, when I came out I couldn't find husband anywhere. Finally I spotted him behind one of the drinks vans drinking a Corona sitting on the pavement. He encouraged me (not a difficult job to be honest) to get a drink, so I got one of those little chilled bottles of wine. They had no glasses so there we sat hiding from the Pope and the sun behind the van swigging our sinful drinks straight from our bottles.

Wearing our newly purchased rosary necklaces.

I don't think God minds though. If he did, I don't think he would have let Jesus in on the water to wine trick.

We did a tiny bit of shopping as well. Husband bought the inevitable hat he always buys when we go anywhere and I bought the inevitable scarf.

We also ate lots of good food of course. The lack of breakfast initially was a bit of a disappointment, but on the first night we nipped to the corner shop on our way home and got some cereal, juice, cheese, butter, bread and tomatoes and actually it was really nice to start the days this way, just the two of us putting a simple breakfast on the table planning the day ahead.

And then of course we would eat out wherever we happened to be when we got hungry. My favourite was Linguine allo Scoglio which I had a couple of times and I think husband's favourites were the swordfish and the tagliatelle bolognese. He wasn't impressed with his lamb chops, which he felt were a different dish to the juicy and soft chops I cook for him (bless him). Another disappointment was the seafood pizza which had no cheese and was just "bread, ketchup and cockroaches" (mussels, and clams). Oh, and I had a lovely pizza on the first night. My health-consciousness doesn't allow me to have restaurant pizza often, the last time was a seafood pizza in 2011 in a restaurant in Pimlico, so it was about time. It was gorgeous.

Swordfish - this chef might not be focusing much in his garnishing and plating, but the fish was very tasty.

Bread, ketchup and cockroaches or Pizza allo Scoglio as it's known in Italy

Linguine allo Scoglio - loved it!

Pizza Cappricciosa - because it is so very thin apparently it has less calories than a banana.

I also got pooped on by a pigeon. Only on my arm but husband helpfully told me it was all over my hair and videoed my panicked wet wipe action. There was no poop in my hair. Sometimes husband's taste for comedy surpasses his survival instinct.

Prawn and crayfish risotto with saffron and dill

This risotto is a lovely meal on its own served with a crisp salad. But this time we had it with some seared tuna,

Oil
1 leek
2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
pinch of saffron
2-3 tbsp chopped fresh dill
4 cups of low salt fish stock
180g king prawns
150g asparagus spears
120g crayfish tails
50g butter (or less if you want to be healthy)
50g grated parmesan
Salt and pepper

Wash and chop the leek. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a deep non-stick pan and add the leek. Saute for a few minutes and add the rice. Keep frying on medium heat for another 3-4 minutes stirring so it doesn't catch. Add the lemon zest and juice, crushed saffron, dill and wine.

In the meanwhile bring the fish stock to boil in another pan. Once the wine has almost evaporated start adding the fish stock one ladle at a time stirring until it has been absorbed then add another label. Keep going until the rice is almost cooked, then remove the ends of the asparagus spears and cut the spears into one inch pieces and add to the pan. A couple of minutes later add the prawns. Once the prawns are cooked, add a knob of butter, the parmesan and the crayfish. Season to taste, stir until all is incorporated and crayfish are heated through. Serve immediately.

This Aegean prawn recipe is all mine, but the idea is completely stolen from the new menu at the Real Greek restaurant. I've had it a couple of times. It's a lovely mix of plump prawns, rice, tomatoes, saffron and feta. Other than that I'm not sure what's in it. I would not pass the masterchef palate test, I can't necessarily pull apart a dish into an exact recipe. But I can build one of my own, because Monica Galetti is not here to roll her eyes and frown at me.

One ingredient that I added that definitely wasn't in the original is every Finn's favourite herb, dill. I love dill in almost anything. It's great with feta, surprisingly goes really beautifully with saffron rice which the Persians figured out 2000 years before me, and of course is the natural best friend of fish and seafood. So leaving it out of this dish should in fact be a criminal offence. Insprired by my own writing I just actually went to the fridge and scooped in a couple of spoonfuls. I know you're not supposed to eat rice cold like that, but this is good enough to risk a bout of food poisoning for.

You could leave out the dill or replace with another herb if you are insane not so fond of dill.

I haven't done a lot of cooking lately because husband has been away for a shocking three weeks visiting family. The only proper meal I've cooked during the time was a pot of squid puttanesca two weeks ago. We'd had our work Christmas Party (a slight timing misshap by the organising committee) and I was hungover and thus in acute need of carbs, so whipped up a quick puttanesca with some squid rings, wholewheat pasta (healthy healthy!), shook a quarter of a bottle of tabasco and about a pint of parmesan on top, sat on the sofa to watch cookery programs and shovelled the whole lot in my gob before muting Jamie and enjoying a refreshing 5 hour powernap.


Other than that I have been eating bread, cheese and tomatoes, which is my favourite food. But still, a bit pathetic. I did buy a couple of microwave meals at some point, but was disappointed so returned to bread, cheese and tomatoes which never disappoint.

Apropos of calamari and puttanesca I have started to study Italian. Knowing myself this will not last long. I can speak a few languages but I have also energetically studied many without learning a bloody thing: French, Arabic and Spanish to name a few. And Esperanto. Yes, that would have been a waste of time even if I'd learned it.

But so now I have a plan to take husband to Rome for a romantic long weekend as a birthday present later this spring, so I though it would be nice to be able to chat relaxedly with the locals over a limoncello and someone had told me Italian was an easy language. Complete lie, or alternative fact like obvious and proven untruths are called nowadays.

Anyway the plan was to become fluent in Italian in a couple of months which is pretty much how far my attention span streches. So I downloaded an app which I've been using instead of playing candy crush in the evenings for the last couple of weeks. And I even watched the Sleeping Beauty and an animation about a zoo escaping lonely elephant in YouTube in Italian. Still can't speak it. Vaffanapoli!

So I was originally thinking of cooking something Italian today for a friend I had invited for lunch. But in the end I went for more of a Greek influence. It was so much fun to cook again. I clearly need someone to cook for, I am not enough of an audience for myself.

I had made a couple of dips for starters, a tuna caper butter, roasted red pepper hommus and a feta, olive and sundried tomato spread which we ate with some bread and pitta crisps.

For mains I did the Aegean Prawns which we've both had and loved at the Real Greek. I also made some greek spiced chicken, pan-fried halloumi with vine tomatoes, asparagus, and oven chips.

The dessert was a chocolate fondant with rasperry cassis coulis and vanilla ice-cream. I've never made chocolate fondants before. I can't believe how easy it is. I thought it would be a bit more complicated as they keep doing them in Masterchef and then oohing and aahing when they come out right and are all gooey inside. I did take them out and put them back in the oven about 27 times, but in the end I thought they were pretty well executed and gooey. And I even managed a cute ice-cream quenelle on top.

Easy peasy

But mostly I'm proud of these Aegean prawns, I don't want to brag, because I'm such a naturally humble person, but I think my dish beat the original Real Greek one hands down. Sorry Tonia Buxton.

Aegean prawns - prawns with rice, feta, saffron and tomato 

Oil
1 small red onion
Brandy
2 large tomatoes
Pinch of saffron`
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
Juice of half a lemon
1 cup of risotto rice
Vegetable stock pot
Abt 2 cups Water
Salt
Pepper

200g Prawns
Feta

Chop the onion and tomatoes finely. Add a splash of oil in a deep lidded sauce pan. Add the onion and saute for a few minutes on medium heat. I added a generous splash of brandy and flambed the onions, I'm not sure if it did anything to the taste of the end result, but I just think it's fun. I often flambe things whether it's in the recipe or not.

Add the tomatoes and continue cooking until tomatoes soften. Pound the saffron in pestle and mortar and add boiling water and leave to soak for a few minutes. Chop the fresh dill.

Add the rice, dill, lemon juice and saffron to the pan. Add  2 cups of water, the vegetable stock pot, salt and pepper. Bring to boil, cover and leave to cook on low heat stirring every once in a while until the rice is done. This should take about 15 minutes. Add water if necessary, in the end it should be reasonably dry, much drier than a risotto. If the mixture is too wet in the end, leave to cook without a lid for a few minutes.

In the meanwhile devein the shrimp and season with salt and pepper.

Once the rice is almost done add the shrimp and continue cooking for a couple of minutes until the shrimp have turned pink. Fold in a handful of crumbled feta. Serve immediately.

Tomorrow this time we will sit with husband (and his nephew) in a romantic little street cafe in ISTANBUL! (Probably will be asleep in our beds actually - it's quite late.)

But HOLIDAY!

We booked a week in Istanbul. We never do holidays just the two of us. We are always visiting his family or mine, usually with his kids, which I don't mind. But still. You know. Actually Istanbul will include a visit from husband's nephew, but hey ho. I've met him before, he's a nice young man and will just follow us happily like a puppy dog whatever we choose to do. The more the merrier, right?

At least I cleverly averted the family room idea by lying that there were no family rooms available in the entire country for the entire year. Although I was momentarily excited by the idea of getting an apartment and cooking for us, but when in Istanbul, we must eat all the lovely local lovelities. Fresh salads,seafood, mezze and dips and things. The boys will take care of the kebabs, I'm sure. Yum.

And so much history and so much to see. We will have a fantastic time and hopefully won't be blown up.

I told Dad (didn't have the nerve to tell mum, so Dad can either tell her or keep her in the little bag of cotton wool that she's lived in most of her life) and that was his first question, are you going to blow up. But we live in London and could be blown up anytime we go to Westfields. And where would be safe to travel these days anyway, Brussels? Paris? Palmyra? Actually Palmyra might be OK now after it was freed by Russia and Assad, the two great forces of good in the world. Oh, it hurts my head.

My parents' village though, which I will be visiting again end of the month, that one's not a good spot for a suicide bomber, you'd never find a bigger crowd than two people and a dog in your bomb's catchment area. UNLESS!! Unless your target the annual charity auction organized by the local sports club. Gets very busy. My Dad successfully got rid of some of my belongings there after he got sick of them gathering dust (and mice and moles) in his what was supposed to be woodshed, but became the adventurous daughter's crapshed. I cleared it all out a few years ago. He was happier than on his wedding day getting his shed back. I actually caught him coming back from the veggie patch and just opening the shed door a bit and looking in. Bless him and his simple pleasures.

So off to Istanbul we go. He who is afraid does not gain or whatever the saying says. Also I have heard that Turkish people are really lovely, friendly and hospitable, so we want to do something for them. Tourism is very important for the economy and they are struggling now with so many people staying away. So it's not about cheap flights and hotels, but philantropy, charity, can't help it, I just have to help others.

I am looking forward to the bazaar - I want to buy colourful tablecloths, bowls, spices and other local food things. I know we will end up being completely freaked out by the hassling and will do some quick desperate purchases and run away as always happens when we enter a bazaar or souk, I'm even freaked out by the ever so slightly too friendly lady at the John Lewis Foodhall cheese shop who explained to me all about the dresses she'd already bought for her son's wedding which is in May 2017 if anyone's interested. Lots of dresses, is what she's got. And she will get more. And I just wanted some taleggio.

So tonight's dinner was from the "empty the fridge" category. In the fridge I had a pack of filo pastry and a selection of herbs and vegetables, cheeses and stuff, in the freezer half used packs of smoked salmon. So a lovely salmon and veg tart and green salad was our leaving dinner tonight.

Left-over fish and veg tart

1 pack of filo pastry
Oil
Sesame seeds
whatever's in the fridge
some kind of cheese, or even better two kinds of cheese

Here's another easy, healthy weekday dinner. We were good boys and girls with husband today, he went to gym and I went for a run up and down the hills of Ealing. I made this sound maybe a bit like an Alpine ultra-marathon which husband was slightly dubious about not being able to think of any particularly steep hills around our area. Which is because he drives everywhere. But really it is quite hilly or does he think the streets are called Highview, Edgehill or Mount Avenue for nothing. What? No, they are called so, because they are designed for particularly fearless and hardy runners like me with legs and wills of iron.

Not the type who once they get to the top of the hill mountain stop there pretending they are looking at their runner's app  on the smart phone strapped to their arm for a quick check on distance / pace / vitals or something, but really are just stopping because otherwise they might actually die.

Afterwards while husband was showering I put together this quick soup. He's a thorough and slow showerer so usually that's not such a limiting factor in recipe choices, could manage a roast dinner in the time, but this soup is quite a favourite with us anyway. I modify it in many ways depending on what veg I have, but the four key ingredients that remain are chicken, dill, leak and lemon. White wine goes really well of course, but I omitted it today not for any particular health purpose, but actually just forgot.

Chicken, leak, dill and lemon soup (serves 4)

Oil
1 leek
4-5 of spring onions
Juice and zest of half a lemon
1/3 cup chopped fresh dill (I added in some parsley as well)
1/2 cup white wine (optional)
500g chicken (skinless and boneless thigh or breast)
1 cup of chicken stock
1/2 - 1 cup water
salt
1 level tsp lemon pepper
1 large courgette

Excellent Sunday - I was testing my new walking shoes. We did a 5k test walk yesterday, and today a 10k walk around the sunny Ealing stopping at the shops in Ealing Broadway on the way home. I found some much needed work attire. I used to be quite a keen shopper, but lately the focus has not really been there. I found two pairs of heels, nude and black, same style. I couldn't decide which colour to get, so I got both. They were quite cheap. And 3 really nice tops for work and some bits and pieces (camis, t-shirts etc). Oh, and the obligatory scarf. I love scarfs. I think my neck has become so accustomed to scarfs that I feel cold and vulnerable without one. Which is fab because once my neck becomes too wrinkly to see daylight it doesn't really matter because it never would anyway.

Back home I made husband a big pot of creamy salmon and cod chowder to keep him fed and warm while I'm gone for Monday and Tuesday in a meeting somewhere near Coventry in a place called Coombe Abbey. It looks lovely and I'll take my running gear in case there is time after the meeting for a quick run in fresh country air. It makes me think of Combe Magna and Marianne and Willoughby and the wonderful Colonel Brandon. Maybe it will start raining and I'll faint daintily while running on the moor (not sure if there is a moor there) and I'm not sweaty at all in my running pants but fresh and fragrant and Alan Rickman who's obviously not dead comes and sweeps me on his arms and so on.

I love Jane Austen (the actual books also, not just the films and Alan Rickman and Colin Firth). We watched the Jane Austen Book Club this weekend and husband pronounced it was the most boring film ever. Whenever something bad happened to someone he suspected someone else or FBI or CIA and I was trying to explain it's not that kind of a film, there is no FBI or CIA or MI6 there and the book clubbers aren't really probably trying to kill each other. I of course loved it.

Then husband watched the Hateful Eight, which I couldn't stomach. I hate Quentin Tarantino films. I think he must be mentally ill. So it looks like even if mostly dear husband and I have but one mind and one way of thinking it doesn't seem to stretch to motion picture arts.

I just realised this soup is very close to the traditional Finnish salmon soup which I make quite often, just more finely cut and mushy of texture. But ingredient and flavour wise very close. Yummy and comforting.

Salmon and cod chowder (serves 4)

Oil
1 leek
1 yellow onion
500 g potatoes
2 cups of fish stock
1/2 cup of milk
2 tbsp fresh chopped dill
2 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
zest and juice of a lemon
100g garden peas
140g can of corn
salt
lemon pepper
250g salmon
250g cod
2 heaped TBSP of creme fraiche

Debone your fish and remove any skin. Cube the fish and sprinkle with salt. Zest your lemon keeping the zest to one side. Juice the lemon and pour the juice on top of the fish.

Wash the leak. Chop the leak and onion. Peel potatoes and cut to small cubes. Heat oil in a pan. Add the leak and onion and sauté on medium heat until soft. Add the potatoes and continue cooking for a few minutes. Add the fish stock. Cover and cook on low to medium heat until potatoes are soft.

Add the milk and mash some of the soup with a potato masher, or you can use a hand blender. Leave about half of the soup unmashed. Add the herbs, lemon zest, corn and peas. Season with salt and lemon pepper. Cook for a few minutes and add the fish. Cook for a minute or two on gentle heat until the fish is done. Blend in the creme fraiche, check seasoning, sprinkle with fresh dill and serve with fresh bread.

Baking salmon with a sour cream topping is quite a traditional everyday way of cooking salmon in Finland. We like our sour cream, we call it Smetana. It's one of the few good things that has come to us across our eastern border. No, just kidding, although miraculously can't think of anything just now. Other than that the Finnish food culture is indeed very interesting, because we have all the western Scandinavian influences as well as the Eastern European touches on top of our original Finnish cuisine. We love smetana with fish roe and pretty much anything fishy and many a soup and sauce is improved by an added blob of Smetana.

This was our Saturday dinner with the kids last week. I often opt for meat, because I think kids like that more, even though they have been pretty good with salmon. But this time traumatised by the Friday night meat fest at my company Christmas do (I don't know why he chose the turkey and pigs in blankets etc. when there was also fish on the menu) husband specifically asked for fish, so I thought I'd make this juicy version.

If you want to go all fancy-pants, you can do the same with wild Atlantic salmon and crayfish tails. Not long ago I did exactly that inspired by the crayfish that I found on the fish counter. I asked for a whole side of gorgeous, bright orange wild Atlantic salmon. As the fishmonger weighed it on the scales he mentioned the price which was quite a lot. I had read the wrong label with less than half the kg price.

At that point I should have said "oh dear, that's a bit expensive, how about that perfectly fine looking piece of farmed Norwegian salmon, how much would that be". That would have been completely reasonable and the fishmonger probably would not have laughed at me or pointed at me with his fish scaly finger shouting to all other customers: "look at this one - can't even afford to buy a piece of fish - should have gone to Lidl".

Instead I just smiled slightly stiffly and took the package without a flinch pretending I routinely buy stupidly expensive food and wished the stupid greedy monger a nice day. It's the same with the hairdresser, sorry, stylist, you can never tell her that she has completely fucked up your hair and happiness for the next 4 months, you thank her smiling sycophantically in your horrible 3-year-old-boy-hair, buy some stupidly priced heat protection spray you're never going to use and leave the salon to run into the dressing room of the first women's clothing store (in my case it's the Covent Garden Next) and burst into tears while trying to stretch your hair to cover your forehead, which in my case is a long distance.

So my advice regarding the fish (for hair I have nothing), is to do this with a normal lovely fresh salmon and prawns. It's just as lovely unless it's a special event and you want to impress. You can even skip the prawns, but they make it a bit more interesting.

Salmon topped with sour cream and prawns

1 side (750g-1kg) of Scottish, Norwegian or Atlantic salmon (or appropriate amount of fillets)
Bunch of fresh dill
1 lemon
Salt
Lemon pepper
1 pot (170ml) sour cream
1/4 cup single / double cream
 200g prawns (or crayfish)

If you can, season the salmon a few hours before cooking with salt and lemon pepper, a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh dill and the zest and juice of half a lemon. Let it sit in the fridge for maximum flavour.

When ready to cook heat the oven to 190C. Mix the sour cream and cream, season with salt and lemon pepper, zest and juice of half the lemon and a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh dill. I just thought of this, a spoonful of runny honey might work really nicely here, Spread about half of the sour cream mix on the fish. Mix the prawns with the rest of the sour cream mix and keep for later.

Place the salmon in the oven and cook for about 20-30 min (depending on thickness of your salmon) until the fish is almost done. Insert a knife into the thickest part of the fish to check doneness. I like my salmon pretty well done but not overcooked, so I will cook it until it flakes and has just turned pink. Some people like it a bit underdone in the middle and leave it slightly orange.

So about 5 minutes before your salmon is perfectly done to your liking take it out and spread the rest of the sour cream and prawns on top. Cook until the prawns have just turned pink. Garnish with fresh dill and lemon segments serve immediately with potatoes or rice and salad.

This week's #fishfriday meal was going to be whatever would catch my eye at the fish counter at John Lewis Foodhall. I often work Friday's at our London clinic just behind the Oxford Street John Lewis so I pop over at lunch or on my way home to get something nice that's not necessarily available at my own local not always so versatile supermarket.

This time I kind of had halibut in mind because I've never cooked it, but then saw these interesting looking Norwegian deep-sea red fish fillets which I have never tried before either. I asked the fish guy what kind of fish it is, like taste and texture-wise and he said it was like bream but fishier and meatier. After establishing how fishy and meaty exactly (not mackerel fishy or monkfish meaty) I asked for three fillets, two for husband and one for me and the fishmonger agreed that it sounded like a good plan.

I decided to gently bake them rather than pan fry. I'm sure they'd be lovely panfried with a little bit of butter. I just seasoned them with salt, lemon pepper, chopped fresh dill, lemon zest and juice and let sit in the fridge for an hour before pouring some Sauvignon Blanc on top and baking for 15 minutes. I served the fish with basil and tomato gnocchi. It was a lovely dinner and just light enough for us to go out for a sophisticated little drink to our favourite Soho cocktail bar and get completely hammered. Oops.

Recipe: White wine baked redfish fillets with lemon and dill (serves 4)

4 Redfish fillets
Salt
Lemon pepper
2 tbsp chopped dill
Zest and juice of half a lemon
Oil
100 ml white wine

Place the fillets in a baking dish. Season them with salt and lemon pepper, lemon zest and juice and chopped dill. drizzle over a little bit of olive oil and let marinade for a couple of hours in the fridge.


Heat oven to 200C. Pour the white wine in the baking dish and bake for about 15 min (depending on the thickness of the fillets).

This is one of my mum's recipes. Fish soup is a popular everyday food in Scandinavia and there are many versions. I'm not a huge fan of all of them, I remember the horrible burbot soup with the slimy fish that a friend of dad's, an avid fisherman, used to bring us. Just seeing him walking up the path to the house with the ominous looking plastic bag in hand would send shivers down our spines. The soup wasn't improved by mum using all the bits like the skin, bones and head to add taste to the stock and not always getting them all out before serving.


And the regular school lunch, a soup of grey frozen saithe that somehow managed to taste bland and bitter at the same time - not my favourite.

This soup is a totally different animal, creamy and mellow. No bones, skin or eyeballs, just tender cubes of salmon and pink prawns. You can leave the prawns out to keep it super simple, it is lovely without them also.

I think the key is the sour cream, you don't need much of it, so this really is a very healthy dish. But a couple of tablespoons of sour cream will transform it. And a knob of butter is not going to hurt. I left it out just to keep it healthy.

It's best served piping hot with toasted sourdough rye bread slices, but if you're not into sourdough, have a nice warm home-made crusty roll.

Recipe: Salmon and prawn soup with dill and sour cream (serves 2)

4 large potatoes or 8-10 new potatoes
3 shallots or 1 small yellow onion
2 cups of fish stock
lemon pepper
2-3 tbsp fresh dill
2-3 fillets of salmon (about 250g)
12 raw king prawns
2 tbsp sour cream (or more if you want to be decadent)
1 tbsp butter (optional)
dill for garnish

Cut the potatoes into about 2 cm chunks. Chop the onion. Place the potatoes and onion in a pan with the fish stock, lemon pepper and chopped dill. Cook until potatoes are soft.

While potatoes are cooking cut the salmon to 2cm pieces and devein the prawns. Once potatos are done add the fish, prawns and sour cream and cook gently until the salmon and prawns are done. This should only take a couple of minutes. Check the seasoning, garnish with fresh dill and serve with toasted sour dough rye bread.

I saw these lovely looking fish plaits made from two kinds and colours of fish on a Finnish recipe site some time ago. I think the recipe called for arctic char and sander, but it could really be any fish from the salmon family and a white fleshed fish cut into strips and plaited.


I decided to do these for our Friday's fish dinner and got a couple of fillets of rainbow trout and sea bass, but you could use salmon and cod. You could steam these, but I cooked them in the oven with a splash of white wine.

Lovely and delicate they make an elegant and impressive main course.

Recipe: Trout and sea bass fish plaits with dill and thyme in white wine (serves 2)

2 fillets of trout or salmon
2 fillets of sea bass or other white fish
salt
lemon pepper
zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tbsp fresh dill
1/2 tbsp fresh thyme
oil
1/2 cup white wine

Cut the fish fillets into 2 or 3 strips each depending on the size of your fillets. You should try and end up with a number that divides by three, so either 9 or 12 strips altogether. You need 3 strips for each plait.

Season the strips with salt and pepper, add the chopped herbs, lemon zest and juice and drizzle with olive oil and leave to marinade for a few hours if you have time. If not you can cook immediately.

Heat the oven to 200C.

Grease an oven dish lightly. Plait the fish (like you would hair) and secure the ends with toothpicks.

Place the fish plaits on the oven dish. Pour in the white wine and cover. Cook until fish is done, approximately 10-15 minutes. Don't forget to remove the toothpicks before serving.

Here's another very traditional Finnish recipe that everyone's grandmother used to make every summer. In the old days cucumbers were not available year round, so this was a real summer recipe made with the fresh harvest of homegrown cucumbers. Nowadays with greenhouses and imported cucumbers we could do this any time of the year, but it is so rooted in summer that it would be wrong somehow to serve it in January.

I have always loved these. You can put pretty much anything in vinegar and I will eat it. I am an avid fan of pickled eggs. They were actually one of the first things I loved about this adopted home country of mine when I first visited England when I was 13.

I came for a 3 week language course in the little town of Sidmouth in beautiful Devon of all places. I did learn some English, but mostly I remember the pickled eggs. I remember exactly the lunch salad with segments of pickled eggs, that my host mum had left for me ready for when I got home from the language school. I thought they were normal boiled eggs and I can't describe the ecstasy as I bit into the acidic gorgeousness of these epic eggs.

I also clearly remember the light blue bags of salt and vinegar crisps which I had never had before, and evening snacks of chips with malt vinegar from the little chippie next door. From the non-vinegar category it was Maltesers that made an everlasting impression. I also remember my host-dad's outrageous ginger sideburns, the endless cups of tea offered at every turn, the donkey sanctuary and becoming embarrassingly homesick on the phone to mum and dad and then explaining to my hosts that it was the seawater from an earlier swim that made my eyes red. Yes, of course they believed me.

I remember the two days we stayed in London that would become my hometown 20 years later. It was scary, exciting and completely mind-blowing to me coming from a little town of 8000 people. I remember the smell of fast food on the hot summer nights and the visit to Wimpy. In my little home town there were no fast food restaurants, believe it or not, just a "grill kiosk" where dad got us hamburgers on a Saturday night every once in a while. Or for some inexplicable reason I always chose boiled wiener sausages over hamburgers. So a fast food restaurant would actually have been more or less lost on me.

This recipe is very simple and goes wonderfully together with barbecued meats or fish or boiled wieners if they're your thing. You can heap them on an open sandwich or serve as a nice summery little side with almost anything. They are beautifully fresh, sweet and tart all at once.

I don't often make these because they are not husband's cup of tea at all. This time he wouldn't even try them smelling the vinegar and saying they looked dead. Which was completely unfair - they are vibrant green, crisp and full of life.


I made them this time with our #fishfriday BBQ which for a change wasn't a massive wild sea bass and a grouper, but cute little skewers of salmon, tuna, scallops and prawns that I marinated with herbs and lemon.

After dinner I topped up the liquid with more cucumber slices, you could go on like this for a couple of days just adding more cucumbers to replace what you have eaten. I suggest after a week either make a new batch from the beginning - the liquid doesn't keep forever - or maybe take a break so as not to aggravate your vata energy. I'm not much of a hippie, but I just put that in there to honour my bebirkenstocked friends who tirelessly try to lead my limited mind towards the enlightened paths.

Grandma's pickled cucumber's recipe

1/2 cup of vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
pinch of salt
1/3 cup of chopped dill
1 cucumber (or 2 if very small)

For vinegar I use a basic distilled white vinegar, because that's what my grandmother would have used, they didn't have fancy wine or cider vinegars then. For cucumbers I found cute small curly ones, but just a normal cucumber works perfectly.

Some people just put the vinegar, sugar and water in a tight container or bottle and shake until sugar is dissolved. But you can also quickly bring the water and sugar to boil so that the sugar dissolves. Then add the vinegar and salt. Check the taste. If you like it less sweet you can add a splash of vinegar (yes, please!) or if you find it too sharp add sugar.

You can peel the cucumber if you like, it makes it a bit more pretty and delicate. But be sure to peel a bit haphazardly leaving some strips of peel on the cucumber. It looks nicer that way. But if you don't want to bother, leave it unpeeled. Slice the cucumber with a mandolin or cheese slicer into thin slices. Layer the slices with the chopped dill in a container until full. Pour as much of the vinegar mixture as you can fit in the container. Seal and place in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.