I don’t know about you but I’m a bit obsessed with recipe books. I particularly enjoy looking at them when I’m ravenous and I’m then bitterly disappointed not to have any of the necessary ingredients to hand and tend to comfort-stuff-my-face with some sort of pasta to compensate. Anyway, I decided to organise myself and choose and buy ingredients for a recipe each week. My book of choice was Ottolenghi’s (I love the man) ‘Plenty’ and I cooked loads of his dishes and they were all amazing, so if I were to recommend one cook book to anyone it would be this.
Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi
Anyhow I ramble… the point of this post is that cooking Ottolenghi’s recipes kind of inspired me to stop being so boring and try out a few recipes of my own. Yotam (erm, may I call you by your first name?) is a lover of globe artichokes and uses ‘frozen ones from his local Lebanese mini-supermarket’, but I live in Cheltenham, which doesn’t indulge such whimsies and preparing them from fresh is the sort if thing you only ever do when you’re bored on a Mediterranean holiday…so I don’t often use them. Well imagine my delight when the Asian supermarket down the lower end starting stocking them! So I created this recipe and it was delish!

smoked haddock and artichoke bake

A piece of smoked haddock
A handful of prepared globe artichoke hearts
2 potatoes
Some strong cheese (I used a couple of slices of Pont L’Eveque
500ml home made white sauce with tspn mustard
Salt & pepper
Bread crumbs
Parmesan

(Oven on 200 degrees)
Slice and parcook the potatoes then place in an ovenproof dish with slosh of olive oil
Cook for 10 mins to brown a bit
Place sliced artichoke hearts on top of the potatoes
The smoked haddock goes on top of this
Then pour a mustardy white sauce over the top with the slices of cheese
Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and grated parmasan
Bake til brown

I served it with a rocket and tomato dressed salad

Sorry I’m not a fancy-pants food photographer