BBC - BBC Radio 2 Programmes - Chris Evans, 06/08/2009

Just Like That…

It’s said that when a man is tired Tommy Cooper he’s tired of life. So we dedicated some Radio 2 air time to the high priest of puns and, in turn, a society dedicated to him. It’s was just like that for Jonathan Jones of The Tommy Cooper Society.

The Tommy Cooper Society

Hake with Salsa Verde

Hake with Salsa Verde
by Nieves at Fino Restaurant, from ‘Modern Spanish Cooking’ by Sam & Eddie Hart

Ingredients

Serves 6

Prep time 15 mins
Cooking time 10 mins

6 hake medallions (5-6cm thick each)
Olive oil for cooking

For the salsa verde
150ml extra virgin olive oil
40g baby spinach leaves
30g flat leaf parsley, stalks removed
10g mint sprigs, stalks removed
1 oregano sprig, leaves stripped
20g capers, drained
2 tsp Dijon mustard
Juice of ½ lemon
Sea salt & freshly ground pepper

Hake With Salsa Verde - Method

First make the salsa verde.
1. Pour the extra virgin olive oil into a blender & start to blitz, gradually adding the spinach, parsley, mint & oregano leaves through the feeder funnel.
2. Add the capers & mustard & blend to a fine purée.
3. Finally add the lemon juice & season with salt & pepper to taste. Set aside.

4. To cook the hake, carefully pat the steaks dry with kitchen paper.
5. Heat a thin film of olive oil in a large, heavy-based frying pan over a high heat until it just starts to smoke.
6. Carefully place the hake steaks in the pan & reduce the heat to medium.
7. Fry for 4-5 mins on each side, seasoning lightly with salt.
8. Try to maintain an even temperature in the pan – the oil should be sizzling, but not burning.
9. Equally if the pan is not sizzling happily & smoking just a little, then the temperature will be too low the fish is liable to stick.
10. Remove the hake from the pan & place on a warm platter.
11. Leave to rest in a warm place for 2 mins before serving, with salsa verde.

Nigel Recipe Archive

Fox The Fox

Thursday 6 August - Question

What is the average amount of money kept in a cashpoint? How much is taken out every day in the UK and which machine has the most taken out (busiest) and which the least (quietest)? Katy and Stuart, Coventry

Thursday 6 August - Answer

I've had to get the answers to these from various different places. Someone who fills ATMs every week has posted something on the internet saying a four-cassette machine will hold anything from £5,000 to £120,000. Link, which runs 99.9 per cent of the ATMs in the UK, has told me that every year we take out about £400 million from holes-in-the-wall - so that averages out at just over a million pounds a day. And although Link didn't want to tell me which cash machine was the busiest - for security reasons - Barclays has released figures for last year saying it was Liverpool Whitechapel - with 790,000 transactions that year. And Link say that the quietest machines will be in places that close down during the winter months, such as theme parks, though they couldn't be more specific than that.

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