Bad bad bad (and good good good)

Am very bad person. Blog has taken a back seat to more glamorous projects (new book!) though the cooking has continued. So time to play catch up with the results.

First up - oooh, let's go for Smoked Trout Pate (Nigella Express)

I was asked to provide a starter for 17 for a festive meal. The instructions were "not soup, you're coming late so not something that needs a lot of heating". Helpful eh?

I was thinking canapes - trays of glam bites that would wow everyone in sight. But on a practical level (not least in terms of reheating/assembly/transportation/gradual soggification) that plan ended up in the bin.

So taking a gamble that no one had anything against fish I went for two simple options. One: tiny squares of pumpernickel topped with cream cheese and smoked salmon (a winner). And two: the aforementioned pate.

Simple is an understatement: shove cheese, olive oil, fish, lemon juice and cayenne pepper into a processor. Whizz it around for a bit and hey presto. Delicious in the extreme and plaudits all round.

As appears to be my wont, I omitted one ingredient. Didn't put in any horseradish because I figured the rest of the jar would rot at the back of the fridge and in my new, improved, waste-not regime that's a no no. But it was mighty fine even without and indeed the baby and I made it again yesterday, she sampling each ingredient first (bar the cayenne pepper - she may be too young to call Child Line but I figured it might be classed as cruelty nonetheless).

"Oooh salmon" she said enthusiastically. "yum yum bubblegum"

I did start to explain the difference between salmon and trout but a) figured at 20 months it's not up there on her need-to-know list and b) ran out of things to say after "one's a bit bigger than the other".