Three effortless dinner ideas from his new book, Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers.
The king of seafood is back with a cookbook jammed with a joyful collection of 100 genuinely easy and delicious recipes. Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers has informal recipes for midweek, weekends and every eventuality in between – but we couldn’t go past these effortlessly delicious seafood options to put in the regular weekday repertoire.
Crispy-skinned salmon with cucumber, apple & dill salad
Serves 4
Being an oily fish, salmon lends itself to being cooked so the skin is crisp. The method is simple: cook the fish skin-side down for most of its cooking time, then turn it over for just a minute or so. Aim to leave the centre of the fillets slightly undercooked. A temperature probe is very useful for this sort of cooking, and for this should ideally read 55-60C in the centre.
4 x 120g salmon fillets
Oil, for brushing
1 cucumber, finely sliced
1 crisp apple, finely sliced
1 red onion, very finely sliced
Handful of dill, roughly chopped
125g creme fraiche
Squeeze of lemon juice
Salt and black pepper
To serve
New potatoes
Mint sprigs
Butter
1. Cook the new potatoes in a pan of salted water, preferably with a few sprigs of fresh mint, until tender. Add a knob of butter, set aside and keep warm.
2. Brush the salmon fillets with oil and season with salt and pepper. Cook them, skin-side down, over a medium heat for 4 minutes, then turn over and cook the other side for 1-2 minutes only.
3. Mix the cucumber, apple, onion, dill, creme fraiche and lemon juice in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper and stir well to combine.
4. Serve the salmon with the salad and new potatoes.
Gnocchi with tomatoes, prawns & basil
Serves 4
Using a pack of ready-made gnocchi makes this a really quick supper. Peeling the prawns and boiling up the shells takes a few moments but it’s well worth it to extract every bit of their wonderful flavour.
300g raw prawns in the shell (defrosted if frozen)
40ml olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
250g cherry tomatoes, quartered
150ml chicken stock or water
600g gnocchi
Pinch of chilli flakes
Small handful of basil leaves, shredded
Salt and black pepper
1. Peel the prawns, cut the meat into small pieces and set aside.
2. Put the heads and shells in a pan with half the oil, half the garlic and half the tomatoes, then fry gently for 3 minutes.
3. Add the chicken stock or water and boil until the liquid has reduced to 4 or 5 tablespoons. Pass this through a sieve, taste and season and set aside.
4. Cook the gnocchi in a pan of salted boiling water until they pop to the surface, then drain.
5. Heat the remaining olive oil in the pan and add the rest of the garlic and the chilli flakes, then the prawns and remaining cherry tomatoes. Cook for a minute or so until the prawns are hot (and have turned pink), then stir in the gnocchi. Season with salt, pepper and shredded basil.
6. Divide between 4 bowls and spoon over the reserved sauce.
Arroz verde: green rice with garlic, parsley & mussels
Serves 4-5
I love these Spanish paella-type dishes. There’s a similar, but slightly more complicated and expensive, version of this recipe in my book Long Weekends. I remember filming it at a restaurant on the beach in Cadiz. I chose the arroz verde, but the crew went for seafood paella coloured with the extremely bright yellow of fake saffron. The camera pulled away from my demure green and white bowl to reveal everybody else wearing sunglasses while eating.
60ml olive oil
60g shallots, finely chopped
12 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 litre chicken stock
100g flat-leaf parsley, leaves chopped
1½ tsp salt
400g short-grain paella rice
500g raw mussels, scrubbed
Juice of ½ lemon
To serve
Aioli
1. Heat the olive oil in a shallow flameproof casserole dish over a medium heat. Add the shallots and garlic, then fry gently for 5 minutes until soft. Stir in the stock, parsley and salt and bring to the boil.
2. Sprinkle in the rice, stir once, then leave to simmer vigorously over a medium-high heat for 6 minutes. Put the mussels on top and shake the pan briefly so that they sink into the rice slightly. Lower the heat and leave to simmer gently for another 12 minutes.
3. At the end of this time, almost all the liquid should be absorbed, the mussels opened and the rice will be pitted with small holes. Squeeze over the lemon juice and serve with aioli.
Edited extract from Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers, by Rick Stein. Published by BBC Books. Photography by James Murphy. RRP $65.
