Cooked out

The young men's Bolognaise was a brilliant success and I prepared gooseberry fool to follow it. But even with a night off I'm still cooked out and plan steak frites for this evening with the rest of the crumble from Monday.

It's a grey wet day and I'm having trouble getting the young men out of bed - even at 10.30. This provides me with some quiet time to think about some suppers we are giving over the weekend and early next week. On Saturday we have eight - the young man's friend's mum and some friends we met last year in Antigua at Xmas who have a house nearby. On Monday we have the family - at least two cousins (possibly three) and their associated husbands, wives and offspring. This could amount to twelve or more. What to eat?

I'd like to do fish for both meals. Traditionally I have done a large monkfish outside for the family meal but this year, since we have not lit the charcoal grill even once, I'm toying with the idea of a big hake cooked inside. As I mentioned in an earlier post I have great difficulty resisting local line-caught hake even though the MSC would have me eat hake only from the Cape. Actually, they are considering downgrading their advice on channel hake as the stocks have recovered very well but the issue is that Spanish trawlermen hoover up hake wherever they can get it as the market for merluza is so strong at home. Anyway, Dave is on standby to buy a big one on Monday morning. This leaves me toying with the idea of a Turbot for Saturday.

The one piece of batterie that I have always coveted but never justified is a Turbotiere. The English and European markets almost completely ignore this historic pan. There seem to be no European retail offers on the web but Mauviel, whose various pans I use and really rate, do make one for the US market. It's listed only at Williams of Sonoma and will set you back a cool $1090.


A mid Victorian antique version in very heavy copper is therefore a snip at £575 but it will need re-tinning. Either way since I only cook whole turbot once or twice a year these magnificent pans are an extravagance too far.

Catch of the Day have been stocking 'chicken turbot' at around 1 Kg but in my opinion these are too small and the flavour is inferior to 3 or 4 Kg fish. Given the lack of Turbotiere and the desire for a fatter fish perhaps I will divide the fish into fat tronçons and overcome my desire for the theatre of a whole fish and the opportunity to excercise our fish servers...

The boys are now up and my quiet perusal of Grigson, Stein and Fearnley-Whittingstall has been interrupted by the sound of music videos on the television.

What are we going to do today?