Ilse's Kitchen - culinary adventures of a girl who loves to eat

I couldn’t believe it: two milestones coincide today. This post is both the 100th recipe on this blog, and at the same time, the 60th recipe in the 60 days/60 recipes lockdown sequence I started March 16th. I’m a little humbled, and incredibly grateful. This project has taught me so much - I’m getting better at flavour combinations, starting to understand herbs and learning to cook with ingredients I never even thought I liked before. I can now poach an egg cook a salmon steak to perfection. I have been eating better than ever.  All these are very reasons to continue this experiment a little while longer. So I’ve set the next mark at 90/90 - 90 days/90 recipes. But first, today. And today, of course, calls for an amazing recipe. This salmon steak, perfectly tender in a beautiful creamy sauce, was absolutely irresistible. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  Ingredients: 2 salmon filets, skin removed 1 shallot, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, finely sliced ...

One-pot meals are a great way to save time and stress. The happiness of taking them out of the oven, knowing you have nothing left to do... aaahhh. And obviously, the better the dish, the greater the pleasure. Grateful to Martha Stewart for this one :) Ingredients (serves 2): 2 whole trout, scaled, gutted and cleaned 300g waxy potatoes 320g cherry tomatoes 1 tablespoon fresh oregano 1 clove garlic, smashed 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus 1 extra teaspoon 1 teaspoon course salt 1 lemon Instructions: Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. 1. Toss together the potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, oregano, olive oil, and half a teaspoon salt. Season with black pepper. Arrange in a 20x30cm baking dish - first layer the potatoes, overlapping them slightly if needed, then toss the tomatoes on top (you don’t see the layering on my picture because I cooked for one and made half the recipe. The baking dish was large enough not to have to layer). 2. Roast about 20 minutes until the po...

This one was a bit of an experiment for me (ok to be honest, when aren’t they though). I’d been looking up rainbow trout recipes for over two days waiting to find something that appealed, and somehow nothing was exactly doing it for me. Until I found this recipe from Passion Spoon. It was just quirky enough, just unusual enough, to be really really tempting. Surf and turf, in the lightest, most refreshing way possible. Ingredients (serves 2): For the trout: 2 rainbow trout 120g bacon cubes 1 1/2 orange, sliced (you’ll need 6-7 slices for each trout, 3-4 to lie it on top of, and 3 to top). For the orange salsa: handful fresh basil handful fresh parsley bit of mint 1 clove garlic, chopped (optional - leave it out if you don’t like garlic) 2 oranges, juice and zest 1/3 red onion, chopped 2-3 tbsp olive oil  salt and pepper (*I actually didn’t have any basil, so I used a bit more mint and then added a tablespoon of basil pesto, which I did have. That inadverte...

My go-to easy meals are almost always pastas - I can think of few feel-good meals that are easier and less time consuming to make. What I love most is that you can add just about anything you like. It doesn’t matter if you stray from the traditional, just combine the flavours that make your heart sing.  Here’s a lovely smoked salmon and cherry tomato penne.  Ingredients (serves 2): 120g penne (use 50-60g per person for dried pasta, or 90g per person if you use fresh pasta) 100g smoked salmon 250g cherry tomatoes, halved 1 small red onion 1 clove garlic 250 mL cream Dash of white wine 1 tbsp Olive oil Salt, pepper and parmesan to taste Instructions: 1. Chop the onion and sauté for 3-4 minutes. 2. Press the garlic over the onion mixture and add the cherry tomatoes. Sauté for another 2-3 minutes, then add a dash of white wine. 3. Sauté for a 2-3 minutes more, then add the cream. Heat, stir and add almost all the salmon (reserve a tiny bit for the en...

Cod is a great white fish. It falls to pieces when you cook it and is soft and with butter, lovely and rich. I love it just the way it is, but this time, I wanted something different. For some reason, I was fixating on fish fingers in mind - the kind I had as a kid, frozen from a box with a captain on it. I'm not even sure why, other than the nostalgia of the idea. I hadn't really loved them, but after two or so decades and a palette renewed many times over (every seven years, they say), I was a little curious. The result proved it once again: things just taste better when they don't come in a box (or from the frozen food section). I should have called these Melt in your Mouth fishcakes. Seriously. No Captain Igloo will ever compare. Ingredients (makes 8): 300g potatoes (weight after peeling) 180g cod fish zest of 1/2 lemon 1 tbsp lemon juice 1 small onion, finely chopped 15 mint leaves, finely chopped 50ml white wine 50ml milk 150ml water 1/2 fish ...