Day 34: Thai steamed fish

“Desperate. The worst I’ve ever experienced!”. I was going to say luckily he was referring to the efforts of the Irish football team tonight but I wish he had been referring to my dish instead. I thought when I predicted a 3-0 defeat to Spain yesterday that I was just being realistic if not slightly pessimistic but never did I think it would end up 4-0. We had such high hopes of this year’s Euros. I’m convinced that our proud Donegal man Shay Given is actually still injured but they decided to play him rather than give the opposition teams the psychological edge. Well, only time will tell.

On another note, remember the lamb burger competition I was telling you about on the Ray D’Arcy Show? Well, the girl whose recipe I mentioned is called Sinead Drew and she won! Lucky her! She gets (amongst other things), an individual cooking lesson with Neven Maguire up at McNean House. She really did deserve to win though. Her recipe sounded amazing!

Anyway, back to the Challenge and tonight it was Thai steamed fish. Being a Thursday evening, it had to be a quick recipe and quick it was.

First of all, I made the sauce which consisted of freshly chopped coriander, crushed garlic, nam pla, grated root ginger and lemon juice. I don’t have a steamer sauce pan and wasn’t about to start searching for my plug-in one so I used Rachel’s tip which is something I honestly think is great. You see, you get a large sieve, line it with kitchen foil or parchment paper and then put in the ingredients and wrap them up. Then place over a saucepan of boiling water to steam. So, into the foil went the salmon fillets, pak choi and the sauce. I wrapped them up and steamed them. The recipe said to steam them for 7-8 minutes but I think I steamed them for 17-18 minutes as I didn’t have the hob hot enough.

The verdict…

Dear Husband’s words were exactly “It looked like something I’ve seen on Bear Grylls (!) but it tasted like something from a 4* hotel (!)”. From that, I took that as a compliment. I really thought I was going to get a low-ish score tonight but he scored the dish 8 marks out of 10 – yay! Therefore, it’s made the list. Dear Son had something else earlier on in the evening so I didn’t chance it with him. I just knew that with one look what his verdict was going to be.

So, there you go. A surprise and a good one. If only tonight’s match had ended as well. The level of play left a lot to be desired Ireland but at least you can pride yourselves in having the best fans. Drobanoc…