Eating the weekend away

Puff pastry is high up on my food Love list. Yes, I'm sure it's all related to the enormous butter content, but if you wrap anything in pastry I'm happy to scoff it down. This works well in my favour in my ongoing quest to attempt to cook with more fish and seafood.

On top of this, we've just had Melbourne Cup today and I snuck in a day-off on Monday to make it four days of blissful holidays. It's been fantastic being able to enjoy the gorgeous weather - the boy and I have had an incredibly nasty bout of the flu, which well and truly kicked the life out of us for 2 weeks. Now I can put all the misery in the past and finally be able to taste my food - in the midst of being ill, I managed to make the saltiest chicken soup ever and was still not able to taste it!

The boy even had a Cup day punt and managed to pick the winner, so it's been an awesome weekend of eating, bludging and figuring out what shoes I'm going to buy with our little cash influx!

• Individual Fish Pies (from www.exclusivelyfood.com.au)

Butter is melted into the pan and the leeks are cooked gently.

Flour is added and cooked briefly, this will help thicken the sauce later on.


White wine, lemon juice and cream are added and simmered until thickened. This is seasoned with salt and pepper.


Adding the fish pieces, parmesan cheese and parsley then stirring gently until just combined. Most of the cooking occurs later in the ramekins.


Divided into the ramekins:




The rim of the ramekin is moistened with water, then thin strips of puff pastry curled over the edges to help form a good seal later on. A pastry lid is then placed over and pressed down with a fork.

Quite a short baking time, so you won't have to wait too long for the delicious results - 25 minutes. In fact, after you've gotten the chopping out of the way, it really is a simple and flavour-packed meal. The fish pieces are quite filling, so I could only fit in one pie but the boy moved on to a second one - which works out perfectly, leaving another 3 for dinner tomorrow.

The delicate leek scent wafts through all the fish pieces, removing all traces of 'fishiness' which is a huge plus. The sauce looks thick when you're spooning it into the ramekins, but you don't need to worry with the juices that the fillets will release - it becomes a nice coating consistency after cooking.


With the extra time I've had this weekend, I made Nigella's Cherry Cheesecake from Nigella Express which we've been slowly attacking over the 4 days. There was just enough tonight left tonight to finish for dessert - I bought some fresh cherries to eat alongside. I think this is the perfect way to have this - having a fresh-fruit element contrasts so nicely with the heavier elements of the cake so I'd highly recommend having both rather than one or the other as the cake topping.