Picky Bits from The Moody Foodie - Week 1
HNY and warmest wishes for 2025: first edition featuring a deluxe fish pie and a vibrant soup
Happy Sunday evening, and a very Happy New Year from a drizzly London strewn with the ghosts of Christmas trees past.
We’ve had some disagreement this week as to when the tree should actually be taken down – N thinks it should be a goner once family Christmasses are done and we’re all back at our laptops; I’m a stickler for keeping its increasingly dry branches lit up and sparkling until the last hours of Twelfth Night. Looking now at the prawn nigiri ornament inching ever closer to the carpet on its wilting perch, I suspect I’m winning.
And the branches aren’t the only things going dry this January. After a month (year??) of treating decadence like an extreme sport, it’s strictly ginger beers, blackcurrant sodas and running-out-of-social-battery-at-9pm for me this month.
So now I’m ramping up this newsletter again, with many exciting plans for the year ahead. We’re hibernating Market Stars - which were fun to write and create but came with the demands of (1) never leaving the house; (2) spending extortionate amounts at London markets; and (3) eating more than a kilo of [insert slightly farty root vegetable here] – in favour of snappier and more regular insights into the life of a 30 year-old girl with lobster taste on a fishcake budget.
My current plan is a relaxed Sunday evening “Picky Bits”, a diary of sorts featuring a recipe (or two) and a recommendation (or not) from the past week. Once a month, I’ll send out a Moody Foodie’s Mood of the Month as a longer read grouping a theme – no spoilers for January’s, but recently I (Du)massively enjoyed un film au cinema avec mes amis…
And so onto this week, which straddled the burping tail-end of Twixmas, the fizz-soaked arrival of a brand-new year, and the first weekend of January’s frugal fightback.
We hosted both a New Year’s Eve dinner (civilised, fancy crockery, 5am finish) and a New Year’s Day lunch (civilised, fancy crockery, 3am finish), which may go some way to explaining the current desire for greens and hydration.
New Year’s Eve kicked off with N’s rendition of “machos” from Anna Mae’s Mac N Cheese – a completely filthy mac n cheese-topped nachos dish from a completely filthy and wonderful book. À table, we sat down to enormous tiger prawns from Brixton Village – I call them “Stripey Boys” – with garlic, parsley and lemon.
I followed this up with A Pretty Premium Fish Pie with buttered samphire, the recipe for which can be found below this post.
No dessert after all that, but our friends brought some excellent cheeses and a delightful Muscatel to while away the first hours of 2025 playing perudo.
I always love to host on New Year’s Day, after years of indulging my Italian-student side by cooking pork and lentils. It’s traditional at an Italian Capodanno to eat lentils, which symbolise the little coins making up all the money we’ll have this year (ha). And usually you would have them with a huge simmered cotechino, but pork itself is a bringer of good luck – so I just did pork fillets and sausages.
No time to make a mostarda this year, so I roasted plums and grapes with honey, star anise and mustard seeds for a jammy side.
The vegetarians got Ricotta Gnudi – little pillowy Italian dumplings of joy – in a slowly-made tomato and basil sauce. That recipe will appear in next week’s edition.
The second recipe this week comes from feeling pretty atrocious on 2nd January. It’s a Green January Soup with all the greens we had left over from the New Year celebrations, with plenty of turmeric, ginger, lime and fresh herbs. I’m not saying it’s a fast-track way to feeling healed from the weeks of delightful cheesy excess, but it’s soothing and vibrant and nutritious.
And on the lines of soothing, vibrant and nutritious, I’d like to register a vote in favour of The Pepper Tree, a bright Thai restaurant next to Clapham Common. After an afternoon freezing our toes off watching Dulwich Hamlets lose to Bognor Regis, we found ourselves stuck in a mild snowstorm in Clapham and after a 9pm meal. It’s giving Wagamamas vibes with its long benches and shared tables and offers a varied menu, chatty staff, actually-hot chilli oil and noughties bangers on the speakers. I warmed myself from the inside with a gargantuan bowl of fragrant tom yum noodle soup with king prawns and pork balls for a mere £14 (that’s starter money in Clapham).
That’s all from me today – wishing you a very happy week ahead and a wonderful 2025. And as this newsletter develops, I’d like to know your thoughts! What do you want to see? What is missing from your foodie reading? Suggestions for a better name for Nick than N?? Let me know in the comments.
Love,
Susannah xxxx
A Pretty Premium Fish Pie
Makes 4 individual dishes.
600ml shellfish stock
2 peeled shallots (one finely chopped, one cut into wedges)
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 bay leaves
A few peppercorns
A glass of dry white wine (large of course)
A handful of parsley, finely chopped
100g butter
Zest of 1 lemon
5 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
50g grated cheddar
A pinch of saffron
100ml double cream
50g plain flour
1 monkfish tail, deboned
300g king prawns, shelled
2 fillets of cod
2 fillets of salmon
For the mash:
1. Boil the potato chunks until fork tender.
2. Melt 50g butter gently with the pinch of saffron.
3. Mash the potatoes or pass them through the ricer.
4. Stir in the saffron butter and 50ml double cream.
5. Spoon into a piping bag.
For the filling
1. Place the stock, the wine, the bay leaves, the peppercorns and the shallot wedges into a wide and deep pan with a lid and bring to a boil.
2. When boiling, turn the pan off the heat. Drop the fish and prawns into the liquid (you may have to do this in batches) and cover with a lid. Poach for 5 minutes, or until almost cooked (but not quite).
3. Remove the fish and prawns and peel off the skins. Flake the fish. Set aside.
4. Bring the poaching liquid to a boil and reduce it until you have about 400ml.
5. In a separate saucepan, melt the remaining 50g butter and soften the remaining shallot and cloves of garlic.
6. Sprinkle over the flour and cook, stirring, over a medium heat for about 3 minutes to form a roux.
7. Turn the heat to low and gradually add the reduced liquid, mixing well until you have a fragrant white sauce.
8. Season the sauce and turn off the heat.
9. Stir in the finely chopped parsley and lemon zest.
To assemble:
1. Heat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
2. Place the fish into 4 individual ovenproof dishes, making sure everyone gets some of everything!
3. Pour over the sauce and gently stir it – don’t worry too much if it doesn’t coat everything.
4. Pipe the saffron mash over the tops of the pies and sprinkle with cheddar. Add a good grind of black pepper.
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden.
January Green Soup
Serves 2
500ml vegetable or chicken stock
1 tbsp olive oil
thumb of ginger, peeled and sliced
1 large shallot, peeled and sliced
1/2 a fresh turmeric root, peeled and sliced
small handful coriander, small handful parsley
300g greens (I used broccoli, green beans, peas and a little leftover samphire)
100g spinach
50g rocket
2 limes
1 tsp crushed chillis
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
2 large dollops of sour cream and 2 sprigs of coriander, to serve
1. Soften the garlic, shallot, ginger, turmeric and chillis in the olive oil.
2. Add the greens and cook for a few minutes until softening.
3. Add the stock and simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Add the lime juice and the spinach, cover and simmer until the spinach has wilted.
5. Turn off the heat. Add the parsley, coriander and lime zest (saving a little for serving).
6. Blend until smooth.
7. Season to taste.
8. Serve with sour cream, lime zest and the coriander sprigs.