Zesty Smoked Salmon and Broccoli Tartlets

On a recent trip to Scotland in which she raided a well-stocked farm shop, my Mum picked up a packet of smoked salmon trimmings. I’ve heard of them of course and just assumed they were cheaper because they were scraps, which is true but holy moley, they’re also as smoky as anything! As the outer parts of smoked salmon, trimmings are exposed to the full whack of smouldering woodchips in the smokehouse. I actually needed to soak ours in milk for an hour to reduce the pungency but after that they were good to go! The default recipe for trimmings seems to be paté; which has never appealed to me. Equally sacrilegious when it comes to smoked salmon is the prospect of a quiche; if you buy it smoked, you don’t cook it! Come on, people don’t buy whiskey to flambé, or stir caviar into a risotto, do they? However, with my trimmings so unbelievably strong I had to make an exception to my rule, labelling them “tartlets” in the hope of getting away with it. Plus, the salmon was actually on the turn and cooking it seemed to be the best option. I’m sorry most of my recipes deal with semi-rotten foodstuffs from the back of our fridge; that’s what cooking’s all about, isn’t it?

In praise of the Baked Apple

Without fail around late autumn our neighbours give us a bucket of Bramley apples harvested from a tree in their garden. I was always jealous of this tree as a child and sometimes vaulted the fence to nick an apple or two; in our garden we had (and still possess) a gnarled, glorified stump of a pear tree that supports a tree house. No fruit has ever fallen from this tree apart from one year when it was clearly trying to die, dropping onto the vegetable patch all of four small, stumpy pears which were promptly scoffed by crows and the dog. Once a year with my bucket of cookers I’d set out to try a range of new, exciting, crumble, chutney or pie recipes I’d been hoarding since the summer but the baked apple only featured once in my repertoire. This was because the few I made were cooked in the microwave and were understandably disgusting. I mean look at them, they’re like the Elephant Man of desserts.