I Sugges this Recipes

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Cod poached in Merrydown Cider

Enjoy a Great Summer Celebration with Fresh Recipe Ideas from Merrydown

Merrydown cider, the premium cider made from juicy eating apples, has just launched its new Great Summer Celebrations recipes featuring nine delicious seasonal dishes.

The easy-to-make recipes are designed to help us all make the most of summer entertaining as the dishes combine classic British recipes with the quintessential English drink, cider.

Each recipe uses Merrydown as a key ingredient to add zesty flavour and make the dishes unforgettable.

Suggestions include pork, apple & cheddar burgers with spiced cider and apple salsa or cider-glazed kebabs, which would be perfect on the barbeque.

A delicious al fresco lunch idea is the spinach roulade with creamy cheese, apple and cider filling, best served with a glass of chilled Merrydown cider.

When the sun doesn’t shine, the toad in the hole with cider red onion gravy is a great choice, whilst the delicious crispy cod with cider batter recipe is sure to impress any discerning diner.

I received a couple of bottles of Merrydown Cider as part of the Great Summer Celebration and decided to combine the cider with some of the lovely cod I received as part of the Fish is the Dish, Healthy Happy Hearts challenge to eat fish twice a week to increase Omega 3. There are lots of recipes for poaching fish in cider online and in the Great Summer Celebration there is a recipe for "Devonshire Cod with mushrooms". The new recipes and many more favourites are available to download online now at www.greatsummercelebrations.co.uk in a handy recipe book.

Although there are many delicious recipes on the Merrydown website, I made a simple recipe of my own, using the ingredients I had in the house. I simply sauted a sliced onion in some olive oil and a little butter, added two sliced green peppers and cooked until they started to soften, then added 250ml of Merrydown Medium Cider seasoned and cooked for 5 minutes. I then added the cod fillets and cooked it gently until opaque, it only took another five minutes even though the the fillets were quite thick. A few stalks of roughly chopped parsley topped off the dish.

I served it with some sauted potatoes mde with left over boiled potatoes roasted in the oven with some Herbes de Provence.

The cider added a delicate sweet flavour to the fish dish and didnt overwhelm it. The Merrydown brand is one that Im very familiar with as it has been around for as long as I can remember, but when buying cider recently I have tended towards the newer single variety designer ciders. However, having tasted Merrydown Cider again, I would say that it is just as good, with as many complex flavours. It really was a very pleasant surprise for me.

Merrydown Cider’s unique flavour is down to over 60 years of cider making and with all this knowledge there isn’t much that the makers of Merrydown don’t know about cider. The combination of juice from lovely crunchy eating apples rather than bitter cider apples and the deliciously light sparkle have made Merrydown a much-loved cider since 1946. Merrydown can be found in all major supermarkets and is available in 750ml bottles or handy 440ml cans. See: www.merrydown.co.uk for more information.

I received two bottles of cider from Merrydown, I was not paid for my review and all opnions are my own.

Birthday Cake

I had all kinds of grand plans for my Mums birthday cake, but in the end it was a combination of simple icing and some papercrafting skills to make the bouquet of flowers. The cake is a Half Pound cake from the Good Housekeeping Baking book, half a pound of butter, half a pound of sugar etc etc. I used to make it to take away on holiday when we were self catering as it is nice and moist and cuts well. As my mum and her friends are all excellent bakers it was a relief when it was cut and the fruit was nicely distributed not sunk to the bottom!