Rick Stein's
Simple Suppers
Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers is a joyful collection of stylish, easy recipes for midweek, weekends and every eventuality in between, paired with stories that celebrate the simple things in life.
For Rick ‘simple’ means that no recipe should take more than an hour to prepare (the Fast Suppers chapter is dedicated to recipes that take 30 minutes or less), the list of ingredients should be as short as possible and should (with very few exceptions) be readily available in any supermarket. Rick even has suggestions for some shortcut ingredients that he keeps in his pantry.
Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers is a cookbook full of personality with brilliant recipes accompanied by essays on everything from Rick’s love of salt to the inspiration behind a recipe to what he thinks is the perfect late- night snack. In this book, Rick has distilled a lifetime of knowledge and expertise to create truly simple recipes to cook again and again at home. Whether with his wife Sarah, with friends or his children, Simple Suppers is Rick at his most relaxed.
Extracted from Rick Stein’s Simple Suppers (BBC Books, £28). Photography by James Murphy.
Green rice with garlic, parsley & mussels Arroz verde
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 Cádiz. 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.
SERVES 4–5
60ml olive oil
60g shallots, finely chopped
12 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 litre chicken stock
100g flatleaf parsley, leaves chopped 11⁄2 tsp salt
400g short-grain paella rice
500g raw mussels, scrubbed
Juice of 1⁄2 lemon
TO SERVE
Aioli (I like the Chovi brand available in supermarkets)
Heat the olive oil in a shallow flame proof 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.
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.
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.
Smoked haddock rarebit with spinach
I may be guilty of having too many smoked fish recipes in this book, but I do think we smoke fish particularly well in the UK. I came up with this recipe when thinking of the sort of dishes that me and my old chums delight in at my pub, The Cornish Arms. It’s simply poached smoked haddock (you could also cook the fish very easily in a microwave), with a rarebit sauce like you would put on bread: cheese, beer, mustard and egg – all served on top of spinach. Lovely. Do go for undyed smoked haddock; the dyed stuff always tastes – well, dyed!
SERVES 2
2 x 120g pieces of undyed smoked haddock fillet 300g spinach, washed
Knob of butter
Salt and black pepper
RAREBIT TOPPING
80g strong Cheddar cheese, grated 1 tbsp beer
1 tbsp beaten egg
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Black pepper
Put the smoked haddock fillets, skin-side down, in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil, allow the water to bubble momentarily, then turn off the heat and leave the fish in the water to cook for 3–4 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a baking sheet.
In a small bowl, mix the rarebit ingredients together and smooth the mixture over the haddock fillets. Grill them under a medium-high setting for a few minutes until they’re golden and bubbling.
While the haddock is under the grill, wilt the spinach in a pan, stir in the butter and season with salt and pepper.
Divide the spinach between 2 plates and top with a piece of haddock. If you want some carbs, serve on top of slices of buttered sourdough toast or with new potatoes.