Salmon

Salmon is an excellent source of Omega-3 fatty acids* and protein. The British Dietetic Association recommend that if you have had a heart attack you should aim to have 2-4 portions of oily fish a week. Everyone else should aim to have one portion of oily fish a week.

Fresh salmon can be quite pricey.  I, like everyone, look out for bargains and often it's cheaper to but with the skin on.

My tip for today is to buy big. If you've got a friendly fishmonger and a huge freezer buy a whole salmon and ask them to skin, bone, and cut into fillets. Or you can buy a half side, I bought one yesterday for £8 which I cut into 6 pieces (£1.33 per portion):

Now, you can just wrap them up and freeze them. However, to save time on cooking I make foil parcels with 2 fillets in ready to bake. If you live alone it would be better to wrap them individually.

Unfortunately my husband isn't keen on salmon, so I usually try and mask the taste with something such as sweet chilli sauce, horseradish sauce, mustard or pesto. Our current favourite is pesto so before wrapping I spread some over the tops of the fillets. I then wrapped the foil into parcels ready for the oven:

In order to prevent smells in the freezer I put them in a zip-up bag:

There you have 6 portions of salmon and pesto ready to cook straight from the freezer. I would bake them in my gas oven for about 25 minutes at 200 degrees celsius. These do have the skin, it's very easy to remove when they're cooked, just use a spatula or fish slice to ease the salmon away from the skin. I usually accompany mine with some steamed vegetables (broccoli goes very well) and pasta or potatoes.

If anyone else has any tips I'd love to hear them - just leave a comment.

*Omega-3 is a polyunsaturated fat found in oily fish which appears to have benefits in heart health. Go to http://www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/Eating4HealthyHeart.pdf to find out more about eating for a healthy heart.

Posh party on a budget

Parties, they're great aren't they! But they can get pretty expensive. It's tricky to get a decent bottle of wine under £5 these days and where do you stop with combinations of spirits and mixers? So when my husband suggested having a party a few weeks ago for around 30 people I got my thinking hat on.

I started trawling the web for hot punch ideas. We had been given some whiskey for Christmas (which neither of us usually drink) so I thought it would be a thrifty idea to use that. (If you have different spirits lying around it would be worth searching for other recipes.)

I found 2 brilliant recipes - 1 for hot whiskey punch and one for hot cranberry and ginger punch (links below). They were easy to make and made the house smell delicious! When the whiskey punch ran out, we added sweet sherry to the cranberry punch which was even nicer! With all the antioxidants from the fruit they were full of antioxidants and Vitamin C.

I didn't work out how much it cost exactly but I don't think I spent more than £15 which is much more economical than 3 bottles of wine. I made them in the morning of the party which meant that I could just heat them up 10 minutes before everyone arrived.

My next quandry was food. I didn't want just crisps and nuts as they always end up being trampled into the rugs. Plus they're not something you can use as a tool for mingling. So I thought I'd make canapes. Well, the internet failed me, I couldn't find anything that inspired me. So I set about making something up.

I got some ready-made puff pastry and a selection of toppings, including: tapanade; basil; sundried tomato paste, pesto and mozzarella. I rolled out the pastry very thinly and cut it into squares (about 1 inch squared but that's up to you). I pricked the squares with a fork and then mixed and matched the toppings. We found that you had to be quite generous to get a good flavour. My favourite was the tapanade with mozarella. I set the oven to about 200 degrees C and they only took about 10 minutes. You had to keep an eye out that they didn't burn. I had to do them in batches because my oven is quite small. It was quite time consuming.

As an alternative I also made tomato and oregano "straws" where I rolled out a rectangle of pastry, spread a layer of tomato paste on it and sprinkled it with dried oregano. I then folded it in half longways, cut into strips, twisted and brushed with milk. Again, they were baked in about 10 minutes.

We made the nibbles earlier in the day but found that we had to heat them up in the oven when guests arrived as they had gone soft under the foil. All the ingredients for the nibbles cost about £15

So, for a grand total of about £30 we threw a lovely and quite sophisticated party. Our guests loved the punches and the nibbles and nothing was left at the end. Good job we invited everyone to bring a bottle!

http://www.drinksmixer.com/drink8458.html
http://www.sunset.com/food-wine/kitchen-assistant/warm-drinks-00418000073450/page9.html