The post Watercress and Trout Pie – Fit for a Watercress Queen appeared first on Miss Foodwise.
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Let me tell you a story about a strong independent woman, a working class woman who became one of the most iconic figures in British food history. Her name was Eliza James and she was called ‘The Watercress Queen’.
In the late 1800, the little Eliza went from factory to factory in Birmingham with her bunches of wild watercress. As ‘the poor man’s bread‘ was so popular with the working class she soon started to sell larger and larger quantities. She worked her way up and moved her business to London where she soon became the favoured supplier of nearly all the London restaurants and hotels. She was able to acquire watercress farms in Hampshire and Surrey making her the biggest owner of watercress farms in Europe. But even when she became part of a well-to-do class, she remained to work at her Covent Garden stall for over 50 years.
Steve – who you might remember from last weeks post – explained that Eliza founded the James & Son company and trade marked the name Vitacress, the name Vitacress was then sold on to Malcolm Isaac who founded Vitacress Salads which is the name of the company today. Eliza’s Hampshire farms are still producing watercress to this day and are still a part of Vitacress. The farm I visited was one of the original farms and made me think about Eliza James and her hard work. I think she deserved her title and isn’t it just one of the most romantic stories of a working class woman trying to build an emporium out of watercress, to do well by herself and her family.
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| The stream that feeds the watercress beds |
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| Baby cress |
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| Steve and his Poor Man’s bread from previous post |
As promised earlier this week here I am with my watercress and trout pie. Spring has been dreadfully cold and rainy and although I am longing for crisp green salads a pie is now very much needed to warm the spirits.
With my last bit of watercress from the farm in Hampshire I opted to bake a silky smooth fish pie. The river that feeds the watercress beds in Hampshire is full of brown trout so when I was at my fishmonger I opted for trout. With my only option being Steelhead trout today, the meat resembling more that of a salmon though less strong tasting and more delicate. I don’t care for salmon at all and avoid it where I can, unless cured, I do like salmon cured..
Water is so very important to watercress, it has to be clean spring water. The watercress leaves and stalks seem to be holding the water tightly, hanging on to all the goodness is has to offer.
Thank you Steve for showing me around, it was lovely meeting you!
What do you need
For the filling
- 1 teaspoon butter / 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 2 small celery sticks cut into small cubes
- 1 shallot cut finely
- 25 ml white wine
- Roux, enough to bind the sauce: see how you make it on this post >
- 400 ml water
- 1 large handful of fresh watercress chopped
- 2 trout filets or salmon if you rather use thatpotato 1 cup of 1 cm cubes
For the Rough puff pastry
- 225 g plain flour
- 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt
- 125 g unsalted butter in small cubes, fridge cold
- 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
- about 125 ml ice cold water
For the pastry
- Sift the flour and salt into a bowl
- Add the cubes of cold butter and stir using a round bladed knife until all the butter is covered in the flour – do not break up the pieces of butter at this point
- Add the lemon juice and the water, one tablespoon at a time (you might not need it all) to bind the mixture into a lumpy dough with a wooden spoon or spatula, if the dough is too wet add some flour
- Turn the dough out on a clean lightly floured work surface and shape it gently into a brick, do not overwork the dough with your hands as it needs to stay cold
- Use a floured rolling pin to roll out the dough to a rectangle from about 5 mm thick
- Fold the dough in 3 by folding the bottom third up to cover the middle part of the dough and the top part you should fold down to cover the other 2 folded parts.
- Seal the edges firmly by pressing them down
- Wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for 15 min
- Take the dough out of the fridge and place it on a floured work surface, turn the dough so you can now do the same folding routine but in the other direction
- Repeat this process two more times so you have folded the dough in different directions 4 times
- Chill for 30 min before using or while you prepare the filling
For the filling
- Melt the butter and the olive oil in a pan big enough so your trout fillets can fit in nicely.
- Soften the onion and the celery for 5 minutes and add the wine, let it simmer for 5 minutes
- Pour in the water and bring to a gentle boil, leave to simmer for 5 minutes
- Gently place the trout fillets in the saucepan, make sure they are both covered with the liquid
- Let it simmer for 15 minutes until flaky but not completely done.
- Turn down the heat and remove the trout, put on a plate and cover with tinfoil to keep warm.
- Transfer the liquid to a deeper saucepan and bring to the boil
- Add the roux and cook until thickened
- If the sauce is too liquid, add more roux if you have some left or let it reduce on a medium fire while stirring
- Taste your sauce and add salt and pepper to taste.
- Now mix the sauce for 1 minute using a hand mixer with a chopping knife appliance
- Blanche the potato cubes briefly, they should still be quite rare
- Chop the watercress (with stalks) roughly
- Butter your pie dish and place in the blanched potato cubes and flake over the trout fillets, sprinkle over a few leaves of chopped watercress.
- Add the rest of the watercress to the sauce and simmer for a further minute
- Pour the sauce over the trout and potato and mix gently with a spoon so the sauce is evenly divided
- Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out on a floured surface until around 2cm larger than the pie dish.
- Brush the edge of the dish with beaten egg and lay the pastry over the filling.
- Trim off any excess pastry using a sharp knife, and knock up the edges with the back of a knife to create indentations.
- At this point you can decorate your pie with the leftover dough
- Brush lightly with beaten egg
- Bake your pie in a preheated oven at 200°c for about 25 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.
You might also like
Stout, beef and oyster pie – poverty and oysters
The Poor man’s bread – a day at a watercress farm
The post Watercress and Trout Pie – Fit for a Watercress Queen appeared first on Miss Foodwise.
]]>The post Mussels with Belgian fries for Food Revolution day appeared first on Miss Foodwise.
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As Jamie says in his article for the Huffington Post, “Food Revolution Day is an opportunity for everyone around the world to
do something. The Food Revolution and Food Revolution Day is about
empowering people through education or, frankly, just inspiring people
to be more street-wise about food, where it comes from and how it
affects their bodies. If you know how to cook you can save yourself
money, feel better and live longer, and the chances are, your kids will
follow suit. After all, we all kind of become our parents in the end.”
People tend to see Jamie as that cheeky guy from Essex, the naked chef. What a lot of folks don’t realize is the fact that he actually uses his ‘celebrity chef’ status to do good, to make a change. In 2005 he declared war to the unhealthy British school dinners, in 2010 he took the fight to Amerika. He has built kitchens all over Britain with his Ministry of Food, to learn people how to cook so they can teach others to do so as well. He is passionate about food and people’s relationship with food.
Today on 19 May, Food Revolution Day will happen in kitchens, homes and communities around the world.
We are friends who have one big thing in common; our love for food – real food. So we found it very important to get involved. As we live in various places around the world and we couldn’t sadly be together for this day, we
are having a ‘virtual Potluck‘ dinner, this is where every guest brings a dish
she or he made to the table. We are
all preparing local sustainable food, in the hope to inspire others to
cook on this day. The dishes will be easy to cook and no processed food is allowed.We can’t be together today ladies, but we are closer together than some people will ever be. Have a wonderful Food Revolution Day!
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Vanilla honey rhubarb galette by Zita from ‘Zizi’s adventures’ in Hungary
Rhubarb Panna Cota by Sarka from ‘Cook your dream’, England-originally from Czech Republic
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I am preparing Moules et frites, Mussels with real Belgian fries.
Like oysters and clams, mussels actually clean the water they’re grown in.
They have no impact on the water because they don’t require treatment against disease.
Mussels are also high in protein, zinc, vitamin C, Iron and omega-3 so they are a healthy food choice.It has been said for hundreds of years that mussels are in season in each month that has an ‘R’ in it, but this is an old tale that originated from a time when there was no cooled transport. The fishermen couldn’t get the mussels live and well to their destination.
Now the season runs from July until april for the ‘Zeeuwse’ mussels, so I was very lucky to get the last of the catch.
I live just a 15 minute drive from Zeeland, where the ‘Zeeuwse’ mussel happily lives and thrives in the protected waters from the River Schelde.We are going to bake the Belgian fries in the traditional way using ‘Beef tallow’ for frying. The real ‘Frit kot’ (chip shops) in Belgium still uses this Beef tallow -rendered beef fat- and swear by it because it is actually healthier than the vegetable oil that is been used in a lot of places these days.
Beef tallow is highly resistant
to rancidity and much more resistant to high temperatures than the
vegetable oil. To be safe to eat you can only use the vegetable oil once
but due to its higher price a lot of places use it twice or more,
leaving the customer often with stomach and intestinal pains. Also in flavour, the vegetable oil can’t compete with the beef tallow and as for sustainability… beef tallow also wins because its a by-product!
So if you want to start eating from nose to tail, beef tallow is the way to go. Just ask your local butcher and I’m sure he’ll be happy to oblige.
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| Zeeland |
What do you need (serves 1 as a main and 6 as a starter)
• Seasalt and pepperFor the Real Belgian Fries
• 1 kg potatoes, you need a good starchy potato like Bintjes and Berkeley Bowl
• ‘beef tallow’ for frying, very important to get the real ‘frites’ (ask your butcherfor it)
• SeasaltMethod
The mussels
Select mussels that are tightly closed or that close when you tap them.
Discard the ones with cracked shells.
Use you nose, they should smell clean and salty, like the sea.
Rinse them under running water and don’t be too gentle because you want all the sand to come out.
Remove the beards, clean the shells if you need to.
Cut your vegetables in small dices and put aside.
the ‘allumettes‘ (0,5cm), the ‘mignonettes‘ (0,7cm) and the ‘pont-neuf‘ (1,5-2cm).
The ‘mignonettes’ is the one you want for this dish and also the most common.We have to bake the fries twice to get the result we want.
If you are using a Frying pan, add the beef tallow to the fryer and set your thermometer to 150°. It’s very important to use the right temperature!Peel you potatoes and rinse them.
Cut you potatoes into +/- 0,7 cm discs, don’t be too fussy about the size but do try to keep them all around the same size so they bake evenly.
Then cut the discs into fries.
Dry the fries with a tea towel.If you fat has reached the right temperature, add the fries and fry slightly golden in small batches. (see image below)
Dry them with kitchen paper and leave them on a tray to cool.
You can leave them until the rest of your food is ready and fry them a second time just before serving.
Now back to the mussels
Add the diced vegetables to a large pot to hold all the mussels, sweat the vegetables and add the water. Leave it to boil a few minutes.
Now back to the fries
Get the temperature of the fat to 190°.
Fry the fries in small batches until a beautiful golden color.
Before you put the last batch of fries in in the fat, add the mussels to the boiling water, add the lid and shake.
Leave for 5 minutes and shake.
The mussels should have opened now.
Put the lid back on. Turn of the fire.
Fry the last batch of fries.
Get some mayonnaise and add 1 teaspoon of mustard and 1 teaspoon of cooking water from the mussels. This is you mussel sauce, traditionally you should also add a bit of vinegar to the sauce.
When the fries are ready, sprinkle them with seasalt and serve with the mussels!
Delicious with a pint of real ale or a nice glass of dry white wine!
*Waste none: the leftover vegetables and cooking water of the mussels makes a delicous tomato soup, just add a tin of skinned tomatoes and a tin of tomato puree and bring to the boil. Puree the soup and bring to the boil again.
Enjoy!
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| Ah Belgian pride in a cone |
Try and find out if you can buy meat and or vegetables straight from a farm so you reduce your carbon footprint but also by creating awareness about where your food comes from. I will probably mean ordering your meat, veggies and dairy in advance sometimes but this will reduce the trips you usually make to the superstore.
More time to cook!
By buying straight from the producer you reduce the amount of food that is thrown in the garbage and you also have a hand in the fact that less animals will be killed in vain.
I strongly feel that no animal should be slaughtered if it’s not going to be eaten nose to tail.
Not just for animal welfare but also for environmental reasons.
The carbon footprint of livestock is huge and if we keep up the current way of life, we will one day need to go vegetarian because the earth is just not producing enough food to feed the whole planet.
Eat less meat, but good quality meat from local farms instead of intensively reared meat.
Happy animals produce better and healthier meat!
Would you like to donate to Food Revolution Day? DONATE
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| The complete picture, mussels, fries and beer |
Please feel free to leave a comment, I love reading them!
The post Mussels with Belgian fries for Food Revolution day appeared first on Miss Foodwise.
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