Tripe with chickpeas (menudo gaditano)

Mention tripe in the UK and you're bound to get a chorus of disparaging remarks and expressions of outright disgust. The conventional explanation is that it came to be seen as poverty food during World War Two, but I don't think that is the whole story. There is obviously something a bit deeper behind the move away from offal in the British diet, and the same trend can be seen in Spain, although not to the same extreme.



I suspect a number of factors have come together to push tripe and other offal off our menus.

• Increased wealth means that high prestige meats (steak, lean mince, chicken etc.) are now widely accessible and relatively cheap, so there is less incentive to eat the cheaper cuts.
• This, in turn, means that these high prestige cuts become the norm, and set the standard of what meat should be like.
• On top of this, increasing health consciousness puts people off consuming fattier meats or any meat (such as tripe) which looks as if it might be fatty.
• More generally, there has been a move away from gelatinous textures, to the point where just about the only gelatinous foods eaten with any regularity in the UK are jelly itself and creme caramel. Meat can be tender, crisp or firm, but never gelatinous.
  

In Spain, tripe is far more widely eaten in the UK, but it is definitely still a little old-fashioned, the kind of thing generally eaten by people in their 50s upwards and a few younger men who think that 'nose to tail' eating is cool. (I guess that includes me.) I often eat it in bars, but have never made it at home, partly because nobody else in my family eats it.

However, I decided it was time to break it out of the ghetto, hoping that even if the tripe itself went uneaten, the chickpeas would be a success. I also took the liberty of adding some green beans and a red pepper to make it a bit more interesting, although this is definitely not part of the traditional recipe.

Ingredients
olive oil
500g mixed tripe (plus a bit of trotter)
500g dry chickpeas (soaked overnight)
plain flour
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
3 bay leaves
1 red pepper
chicken stock
3 tsps salt
3 tsps paprika
1 tsp tabasco
white wine
green beans

Method

1. Wash the tripe in cold water (it should already have been prepared by the butcher), and cut into small pieces.
2. Peel and chop the onion, peel and crush the garlic, cut the red pepper into small chunks, and top and tail the beans and cut them into pieces.
3. Put plenty of olive oil in a pressure cooker, add the onion and garlic and fry for a couple of minutes
4. Meanwhile, dust the tripe in flour, then add it to the onion and garlic and fry for a few minutes until browned.
5. Add the chickpeas, red pepper, paprika, a splash of white wine, salt, tabasco and enough chicken stock to barely cover the ingredients, bring to a boil, put the lid on the pressure cooker, bring up to full pressure, reduce heat to minimum and cook for 50 minutes.
6. Turn off heat, allow pot to cool fully, open, add the green beans, cover the pot, bring back to pressure and cook for a further 5 minutes.
7. Like all stews, this benefits from sitting for a day.

Tweaking
When I made this, I more or less followed a traditional recipe. However, the result was a little watery and bland for my liking. It was partly my fault, for not using hot enough paprika, so I rectified it with some tabasco. I also made a little roux with some olive oil and flour and gradually ladled some of the liquid into it to create a thicker, silkier sauce - obviously the sensible point at which to add the flour is at the beginning.

A load of tripe (menudo menudo)
When I was buying my tripe, I made the mistake of being too vague with my ordering. I asked for a little bit of tripe (un poquito de menudo) but what I got was 2 kg of assorted cow's stomach, with a trotter thrown in for good measure. Next time I shall be more specific, but in the meantime I have a couple of bags of tripe waiting in my freezer.

Wild rabbit with Spanish olives

All of a sudden, it's hunting season in Andalucia. It's a bit of a pain if you go into the country, as the place is teeming with guys in camouflage and guns taking potshots at anything that moves, but on the upside stalls all over the market are suddenly offering rabbit, hare, partridge, venison and pigeon, which makes a welcome change from beef and pork.



When I went along to my butcher's the other day, a whole section of his counter was packed full of cute-looking furry bunnies, nestling in among the pots of manteca colorada, so I thought I would try a wild version of my rabbit stew with olives. It seemed only right to honour the wild rabbit with some of Matias' fat verdial olives instead of the tinned black ones I had used the previous time.

Ingredients
1 rabbit, cut into joints
plain flour
olive oil
6 sticks of celery
1/2 onion
2 carrots
3 cloves of garlic
250 g of marinated Spanish olives, together with their marinating liquid
4 ripe tomatoes
a splash of white wine
1/2 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons of dried rosemary

Method

1. Peel and finely chop the onion, slice the celery, peel and slice the carrots, peel and roughly crush the garlic.
2. Heat plenty of olive oil in your pressure cooker (with the lid off, obviously!), dust the rabbit pieces in plenty of flour, and brown them on both sides in the hot oil. Remove the browned pieces to a plate.
3. Gently fry the onion, celery, carrot and garlic in the oil.
   
4. Return the browned rabbit pieces to the pot, add the tomato, olives (including any marinade liquid), rosemary, salt and a splash of wine, and put the lid on. Bring up to pressure, reduce heat to minimum and cook for 20 minutes.

Rabbit stew, hunter's style (coniglio alla cacciatore)

I posted a recipe for some rather dry lentils the other day, and was happy to receive a comment from a reader about the right proportions of liquid. I've since corrected my lentil post (lentils with chorizo and dried wild mushrooms) and updated the photo, but in the meantime I also took a wander over to my reader's site, which is dedicated exclusively to the art of the pressure pot and goes by the name of hip pressure cooking. This recipe is inspired by a version I found there, and I think the combination of a bit of non-pressure cooking (sauteeing, browning etc.) and then pressure stewing is perfect. Incidentally, I was a bit scared of tipping in the brine from my tin of olives, but I did, and the result was great. (For this reason, no salt is listed in the recipe.)


Ingredients
1 rabbit, cut into joints

marinade
150 g white wine vinegar
150 g white wine
150 g water
6 bay leaves

stew
plain flour
olive oil
3 sticks of celery
1/2 onion
2 carrots
3 cloves of garlic
350 g tin of black olives
1 tin of tomatoes
250 ml of red wine
1 teaspoon of dried rosemary (or a large sprig of fresh)

Method

1. Put the jointed rabbit in a large bowl with the bay leaves, cover with the vinegar, wine and water, and leave to marinade in the fridge overnight.
2. Remove the rabbit pieces from the marinade, and discard the liquid. Peel and finely chop the onion, slice the celery, peel and slice the carrots, peel and roughly crush the garlic.
3. Heat plenty of olive oil in your pressure cooker (with the lid off, obviously!), dust the rabbit pieces in plenty of flour, and brown them on both sides in the hot oil. You will probably need to do them in three batches. Remove the browned pieces to a plate.
4. Gently fry the onion, celery, carrot and garlic in the oil. After a few minutes, remove to a bowl, together with any oil.
5. Deglaze the pan with a good splash of wine, scraping the pan with a wooden spoon, then add the rest of the wine, bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes to boil off the alcohol.
6. Return the browned rabbit pieces and fried vegetables to the pot, add the tomato, olives (including the brine) and rosemary, and put the lid on. Bring up to pressure, reduce hit to minimum and cook for 20 minutes.

Banana bread

Nine months ago I started making a batch of focaccia in my kitchen, and today I finished! Okay, it didn't take me nine months to make the bread, but that is how long it took us to get the oven fixed. (It's a long story, and there were mitigating circumstances.) Anyway, I felt the oven needed to be shown who was boss, so I made a point of taking up where it had so rudely interrupted me back in January, and produced a tray of focaccia.

Next up for the great oven celebration was some banana bread. I got a recipe from the BBC Food Website, and tweaked it a little. Apart from being really easy, and quite delicious, it's a great way of using up those guilt-inducing overripe bananas which everyone seems to have in their fruit bowls.


Ingredients
140 g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
60 g butter
110 g caster sugar
1 egg
2 ripe bananas, mashed
35 ml milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon juice

Method

1. Set the oven to 180oC, and line a loaf tin (20 cm x 10 cm)
2. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt and cinnamon.
3. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
4. Add the bananas, milk, eggs and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar mixture, and mix well.
5. Fold the flour into the resulting batter, mix well and add the lemon juice.
6. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes until golden.
7. Allow the bread to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack.

Salt cod mayonnaise

I made this with the leftover pil-pil sauce and cooking oil the last time I made bacalao al pil pil (which is salt cod in a warm mayonnaise). The original recipe has 500 ml of olive oil, of which only half is used in the pil pil sauce. So you already have 250 ml of cod-flavoured olive oil going spare. On top of that, there will probably be some leftover pil pil sauce. When I saw that I had getting on for 350 ml of top quality olive oil about to go to waste, I suggested to Gemma that I make it into mayonnaise. She looked at me as if I was a bit mad, but I made it anyway.


Ingredients
leftover olive oil and pil pil sauce from bacalao al pil pil

Method
Put the olive oil and leftover sauce in a bowl, and whisk gently until it liaises to form a light mayonnaise.

This made a really good mayonnaise, which was quite light and had a delicate flavour of cod. I knew that nobody else in my family would knowingly eat it, but I tricked them by using it to dress some spaghetti with salt cod, chick peas and green peppers, which they all ate happily. (I had an extra serving of mayonnaise on top of mine.) They will only realise they ate the mayonnaise too if they read this blog entry!

Googlewhack!
As I was writing this entry, I thought I would have a quick search to see if anyone else makes salt cod mayonnaise. I came across a reference to a restaurant in Dublin called Pichet which sometimes has it on their menu, but no actual recipes, so I think this counts as a culinary googlewhack.

Lentils with chorizo and wild mushrooms

I picked up some good chorizos the other day at a birdspotting fair in Tarifa (!!) and decided to cook them with lentils. I also chucked in a pack of wild mushrooms I had brought back from Scotland. (The last packet of wild mushrooms I brought back from my travels - in Italy - ended up as food for moth larvae, so I was keen to use these ones before they met the same fate.)


This is a dish that is perfect for pressure cookers, although make sure you add plenty of liquid, as the lentils soak up a surprising amount. Ideally, they should be almost soupy at the end.

Ingredients
olive oil
2 medium sized onions, peeled and chopped
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
500g brown lentils
2 litres of stock
5 fresh chorizos
50 g dried wild mushrooms, soaked in a little hot water
500 g carrots, peeled and roughly sliced
4 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of smoked paprika
1 teaspoon of cumin powder

Method

1. In a pressure cooker, gently fry the onion, adding the garlic just before the onion is done.
2. Add all the other ingredients, including the soaking water from the mushrooms, stir will, cover and close the pressure cooker and bring to a boil.
3. When the pressure has reached the correct level, turn the heat to minimum and cook for 20 minutes.
4. Turn off heat, allow to cool for a little and serve. If you like, you can season with a little vinegar at this point. (Spaniards usually add this individually at the table.)

Pasta with chick peas, tuna and lemon

This is a really quick 'store cupboard' meal. I'm a bit wary of putting things like this on the blog, but have decided to record the ones that come out well to help jog my memory and get me out of my 'tomato sauce' rut. Pasta with pulses seems like an odd combination to British (and Spanish) palates, but is actually quite common in Italy.


Ingredients
1 packet of pasta
1 large jar of cooked chickpeas
2 small tins of tuna
1 lemon
1 teaspoon of oregano leaves
1 teaspoon of salt
olive oil

Method

1. Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling water. When it is nearly done, add the strained chickpeas.
2. Once the pasta is cooked, strain the pasta and chickpeas into a colander, drain and return to the saucepan. Slosh a bit of olive oil over them, add the drained tuna, the juice of 1 lemon, the oregano leaves and salt. Mix well and serve.

Carrillada (pig's cheek stew)

Carrillada or pig's cheek is a great cut for stews. It has plenty of flavour and a lovely moist texture too. The term 'pig's cheek' puts a lot of people off, but actually it is really the jaw muscle. I don't see why eating this should be any less appealing than eating a pig's leg or back muscles. Because it has plenty of connective tissue, it needs long cooking but develops a great texture and does not dry out.


The recipe below is deliberately 'rustic', with only a bare minimum of chopping or anything else, and is therefore perfect for children to make. And it's also good because it provides a basic stew recipe which kids can than improvise around, changing the ingredients and flavours as they wish, with only the bare minimum of adult interference.

Ingredients
olive oil
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons of smoked paprika
1 kg of carrilada (pig's cheek) - if you can't get it, substitute with any stewing cut
500g of carrots
2 large tomatoes
200 ml of chicken stock (more if not using a pressure cooker)
1 teaspoon of salt
4 bay leaves

Method

1. Peel and roughly chop the onions. Peel and smash the garlic. If using carrillada, it comes in small 'steaks' and can be cooked whole. Peel the carrots but leave whole. Top and tail the tomatoes and cut into quarters.
2. Put plenty of olive oil in a pressure cooker or large saucepan. Add the onions to the oil and fry gently. When they are nearly done, add the garlic and continue frying for a minute or so.
3. Then add the paprika, stir and fry for a few seconds, add the meat, stir to mix, and fry for a few minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients.
4. If using a pressure cooker, put the lid on, heat until the cooker whistles, turn to minimum and cook for 20 minutes. If using a conventional pan, cover and bring to a boil, turn to minimum and simmer for about 2 hours, check the liquid level occasionally.
5. Like all stews, this is improved by being left for a day.

Pressure cooker
Like a lot of British people, I used to have a bit of a prejudice against pressure cookers. (Although oddly enough I remember a flatmate of mine at university having one - not sure that he ever used it, however.) In Spain, they are very popular, and are ideally suited to cooking pulses and wet stews.

They also have another great benefit, which I only realised when we started making this, and that is that they are perfect for use by kids. Sammy actually made this stew from scratch - my only intervention was to peel the carrots (every kid likes having his or her own personal kitchen porter), to do a bit of light supervision and to remember to turn the stew off at the end. You can make the whole dish in one pot, and don't need to worry about heat or liquid levels while cooking, or even to monitor it.

Cuttlefish and potato stew (papas con choco)

Cuttlefish stewed with potato is one of the staples of gaditano cooking. Cuttlefish isn't eaten at all in the UK (unless you're a budgerigar) but it's actually very good. It tastes quite similar to squid, with the same mild slightly sweet flavour, although the texture is different. It is more tender than squid but because the flesh is much thicker, it has a slightly meatier consistency. This dish belongs to the category of peasant and working-class food which involves stretching a little bit of meat (or in this case seafood) with vegetables, pulses or grains. I guess the nearest equivalent in the British isles would be Irish stew.


Ingredients
olive oil
150g onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
50g green peppers, roughly chopped
500g of cuttlefish, cleaned and cut into chunks
250g of ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
750g potatoes, peeled and chopped into chunks
200ml white wine
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of sweet paprika
2 bay leaves

Method

1. Put the onions in a large saucepan with plenty of olive oil and fry gently. Once they start to soften, add the garlic and green pepper and fry for another few minutes.
2. Then add the cuttlefish, tomatoes, salt, pepper, paprika and bay leaves, stir well and fry for 5 minutes.
3. Add the potatoes and white wine, bring to the boil, cover, turn heat to minimum and simmer gently until the potatoes are tender. (About 20 to 30 minutes.)

Protein vs. carbs
Perhaps inevitably, as we become richer and our diets have become more protein-heavy the tendency is to up the meat content in such dishes, and I have to admit that my version has slightly less potato than the original recipe I was working from (in Pescados y Mariscos Gaditanos by Carlos Spinola and Manuel Fernández-Trujillo).

Curried baked beans

I first had curried baked beans at a barbecue in Stirling in the 1970s. At the time, it seemed incredibly exotic, partly because it tasted of curry powder, but also because it was the kind of thing my mum would never have made. I remember eating a lot of it and I think I can probably trace my tendency to splash chilli sauce on things back to that day.


Ingredients
1 tin of baked beans
1/2 teaspoon of curry powder

Method
Open the tin of beans, pour a little of the excess sauce away, put the beans and the curry powder in a small saucepan and heat gently.

Scotland in the 70s
Apart from making curried baked beans, my barbecue hostess and her husband were "fond of a drink" as the saying goes, and it may be that the addition of curry powder to boring old beans was an alcohol-inspired act of culinary genius. My other memory of her was that she happened to come for lunch the day my mum went into labour with my sister, Clara. As a result, my brother Mark (13) and me (11) were left in her care for the rest of the afternoon. She kindly shared her cigarettes with us to help calm all of our nerves.

Barbecue sauce chicken kebabs

A quick chicken kebab recipe.


Ingredients
500g chicken breast
3 tablespoons tomato ketchup
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon chilli paste
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sunflower oil

Method

1. Skin the chicken breast and cut it into chunks. In a large bowl, mix the marinade ingredients. Add the chicken to the bowl, mix well with your hands ensuring that all the pieces are basted in the marinade, cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight (or for as long as possible if you are making this on the day of the barbecue).
2. Shortly before you are ready to start cooking, thread the pieces onto skewers - 4 or 5 pieces on each skewer at most. Grill over a nice hot barbecue.

Seekh kebabs with coriander

I've been a bit lazy with my barbecues this summer, as a result of which we have all eaten a LOT of sausages. Anyway, we decided to say goodbye to Edinburgh for the summer with a proper barbecue, so in addition to a couple of different types of chicken kebab, some plain mince kebabs, some veggie dishes and a bit of home baking, I made some spicy little seekh kebabs with fresh coriander.


Ingredients
250g minced lamb
250g minced pork
2 teaspoons garam masala
1/2 teaspoon chilli
1/2 teaspoon salt
small bunch of finely chopped coriander


Method

1. Put the mince in a large bowl, sprinkle all the other ingredients over it and mix very well with your hands. If you have time, leave to stand for an hour or so.
2. Take a small handful of the kebab mixture and shape into a sausage around a skewer. Repeat until you have used up all the mixture. (500g of meat should yield around eight kebabs, depending on the size.)
3. Grill over a nice hot charcoal barbecue and serve with pitta bread and a chunky vegetable salad (lovingly prepared by your other half).

Courgette with tomato and coriander

I always have mixed feelings about vegetarians at barbecues. On the one hand, it's great for there to be extra meat for the carnivores. On the other hand, vegetarians are often a little stringy and frankly flavourless. It is therefore a good idea to feed them up first with something suitable.



Ingredients 1 kg of courgettes
1 kg of chopped tomatoes
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
bunch of fresh coriander

Method

1. Roughly chop the onions and fry gently in plenty of olive oil. When nearly done, add the peeled, chopped garlic, fry for another 30 seconds or so, then add the chopped tomatoes, thickly sliced courgettes and salt.
2. Stew gently for 30 minutes or so. A few minutes before serving, add the chopped fresh coriander.

Chinese takeaway
As a purist, I think that everything eaten at a barbecue should pass at least briefly across the grill (with the exception, obviously, of salad). Unfortunately, stews have a nasty habit of trickly through the grid straight onto the charcoal, so I prefer to put them in a metal container and ceremonially reheat them on the grill before serving.

Dutch Jewish ginger buns (gember bolus)

I came across these ginger buns (gember bolus) in the cafe of the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam. I googled "ginger bolus", but all I came up with were reports of people choking to death in Thailand. Eventually, I found something which appeared to be related on a blog called Bake My Day! So I contacted the author of the blog where I had found that recipe and she very kindly got back to me with a version of what I was looking for. Needless to say, I then fooled around with the recipe a bit (well, quite a lot) and this is what I came up with.

Ingredients
dough
500g plain flour
7g active yeast
320g milk
30g water
20g brown sugar
20g margarine or butter

syrup
200g brown sugar
200g water

filling
250g ginger crush in syrup

for sprinkling
more brown sugar

Method

1. Put the syrup ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, cover and remove from the heat.
2. Combine all of the dough ingredients. If you have a food processor with a dough hook, then knead for a couple of minutes on the slowest settng. Alternatively, mix the ingredients thoroughly with a spoon, then stretch and fold in the bowl until you have a smooth dough. Cover the dough and leave to rise for about 1 hour.
3. Oil 16 muffin cases and put them on 2 muffin trays. Set the oven to 200oC.
4. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and divide  into 16 equal pieces. Very lightly turn each of the pieces in the flour, then press out to form a rough circle. Put a teaspoon of the filling mixture in the centre of each circle, and form the circle into a ball, crimping it closed with your fingers. Place each of the balls into one of your prepared muffin cases, and when the tray is full cover it with clingfilm and leave to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.
5. Remove the clingfilm from the trays, glaze each ball with 1 dessertspoon of syrup, sprinkle about 1/4 teaspoon of brown sugar over each of them , transfer trays to oven and bake for 15-20 minutes.
6. Remove the trays from the oven, transfer the buns from their cases to a cooling rack. Pour a little more syrup over the buns before serving.

Carrot soup

The other day my kids bought a big bag of beautiful carrots, complete with their green leafy bits, all contained in a lovely bag with a picture of the very farmer who had grown them and a little eulogy to the wonders of the English countryside and to the virtues of the large supermarket chain supplying us with these goodies. A week later, the carrots were still sitting in the bottom of the fridge looking almost as lovely as the day they had been bought, and I was beginning to feel guilty as I read about Farmer Roberts for the third time and imagined just how disappointed he would be with me if his carrots ended up in the bin. So I made this soup.


Ingredients
1 head of celery
2 cloves of garlic
olive oil
750g carrots
500g potatoes
2 tsps cumin
2 tsps smoked paprika
1 tsp salt
1 glass white wine
2 tbsps tomato puree
1 litre of vegetable stock

Method

1. Wash the celery, separate into stalks and cut into thinnish slices. Peel and chop the garlic. Top and tail the carrots, peel if necessary, and cut into chunks. Peel the potatoes and cut into chunks.
2. In a large saucepan, gently fry the celery. When it is nearly done, add the garlic, fry for another minute, then add the cumin and paprika, and fry for 10 seconds or so.
3. Add the carrots, potatoes, salt, wine, puree and stock, bring to a boil, turn heat to minimum, cover and simmer gently for 40 minutes, until the carrot and potato pieces are nice and tender.
4. Allow soup to cool, then liquidise with a stick blender.

Honey and soy salad dressing

Carmela likes to put honey in her salad dressing, so I thought I should actually note down the ingredients rather than doing it on a trial and error basis each time. The combination of honey, soy sauce and sesame oil give it an oriental, almost sweet and sour feel.


Ingredients
1 teaspoon of honey
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of sesame oil
1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar

Method
Put your honey inb a small bowl and, unless it is very runny, heat for a few seconds in a microwave. Add the other ingredients, and whisk well with a fork. Pour over the salad just before serving and toss to mix. (I tend not to put salt into my dressings, but instead to add them direct to the salad before dressing.)

Arbroath smokies

I was at the Foodies Festival in Edinburgh and was lucky enough to see Iain Spink smoking his haddock on site. The process itself is pretty simple: the fish have their heads removed and are gutted and cleaned, before being tied in pairs and hung over a stick.


Next, the stick itself is placed over a half barrel, with a fire of beech and oak burning inside it.


Then the barrel is covered with a few layers of damp hessian.


After half an hour or so, the Arbroath smokies are ready.


Arbroath smokies keep for a while, and perhaps the most famous dish in which they feature is Cullen skink. They are also good in a potato salado. However, the best way to serve them is definitely hot from the barrel.

Roasted vegetables

I've got out of the habit of roasting vegetables (or anything, for that matter) due to having had a broken oven for the first six months of this year. I now have access to a working oven again and, in between my obsessive search for the perfect sourdough, I found time to roast some vegetables. I think the key to this is moderation - the vegetables should not be so small that they burn, but not so big that they will take hours to cook and won't absorb flavours, and there should be enough vegetables in the tray for them to mingle, without there being so many that they don't cook properly. I used carrots, potatoes and pumpkin because that was what I had. This would also work well with parsnips or turnips.


Ingredients
carrots
potatoes
pumpkin
olive oil
thyme
balsamic vinegar
salt
black pepper

Method
Peel the vegetables and cut into chunks. Place in a large baking tray, and dress with plenty of olive oil, some balsamic vinegar, thyme, salt and black pepper. Bake at 200oC for about 1 hour.

Cinnamon knot buns (zeeuwse bolus)

I don't usually just lift other people's recipes, but I have to start this post by admitting that I have copied this more or less directly from a wonderful blog I came across called Bake My Day! This is stage one of my plan for reproducing the delicious little buns filled with candied ginger which I ate in Amsterdam. I thought I would start with the dough, and as this recipe is for a Dutch sweetened bread of Jewish origin, it seemed a good place to start. (We bought the matrushka oilcloth in the background of the photo below at the street market in Albert Cuypstraat.)


Ingredients
500 g plain flour
7 g salt
7 g fast action yeast
320 g milk
75 g butter or margarine
zest of one lemon
250 gr soft brown sugar
2 tbs cinnamon

Method

1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, fast action yeast, milk, butter or margarine and lemon zest. Start by mixing it thoroughly with a spoon, then when it comes together mix by hand and knead until you have a nice light dough. Put the bowl inside a plastic bag, leave in a warm place (if you have one) for 45 minutes (a little longer if you don't have a warm spot in your kitchen). In a separate bowl, mix the brown sugar and cinnamon and set aside.
2. Weigh the dough and divide into 16 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball, place on a tray, cover with plastic and leave to relax for 20 minutes or so. After 20 minutes, take each ball and roll it gently out into a rope, about 20 cm long - see photo below. (You should be able to do this between your hands, but feel free to roll it on a flat surface if needs be.)
3. Now sprinkle plenty of the sugar and cinnamon mixture over a clear work surface, and one by one roll the dough ropes in it until they at least 30 cm long, making sure they get thoroughly coated with the sugar.
4. Finally, form the ropes into knots, as per the photo below. (This is very easy - just find the mid-point, wrap one end of the rope around your finger, remove the finger from the resulting hole and poke the end of the rope through. Then repeat for the other side.) Place the coils on an oiled baking sheet, cover with plastic and leave to rise for about 60 minutes until they have more or less doubled in size. You will probably have to use two baking sheets and bake in two batches. (Because my sugar wasn't quite sticky enough, I cheated and sprayed the finished knots with a little water and sprinkled them with some extra sugar just before baking.) Turn the oven on to 250oC.
5. Bake the knots for 8 minutes. They should be brown and even a little crisp on the outside, but still very soft on the inside.

'raw' ropes

rolling the rope in sugar, and forming the knots

risen knots

Mince and green bean curry

This was inspired by a visit to the Edinburgh Mela, a multicultural festival (predominantly Pakistani and Indian) held in Edinburgh each August. Multiculturalism has taken a bit of a knocking recently (much of it, I suspect, from people who are delighted to have found an acceptable way of being unpleasant towards Muslims), but I'm unclear as to what the alternatives are. Zero immigration? Forced assimilation? Ghettoisation? None of them sound very attractive to me.

halal haggis burgers

curry on Leith Links

eye candy

In the kids' activity tent at the Mela there was a spice mixing workshop, where children could choose their own whole spices, and pound and mix them in a mortar to make curry powder. For this curry, we used Sammy's meat curry powder which contained turmeric, bay leaves, cumin seeds, coriander, peppercorns, black cardamom, cinnamon and fennel.


Ingredients
2 small red onions
vegetable oil
2 cloves of garlic
1-inch chunk of fresh ginger
3 teaspoons of good quality curry powder
500g minced lamb
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 tin chopped tomatoes
250g green beans

Method

1. Peel and finely chop the red onions, and peel and mince the garlic and ginger. In a high-sided frying pan or saucepan, gently heat the onion in some vegetable oil. When it is nearly done, add the minced garlic and ginger, and fry for another minute. Add the curry powder, stir well, and fry for 10 seconds.
2. Add the mince and fry, stirring well to break up any lumps, until all the meat is browned. Add the tomatoes and the salt, bring to a boil, then turn down to minimum, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the green beans and continue to cook until they are just done.

Celeriac and beetroot soup

I really like celeriac, but I'm never quite sure what to do with it, apart from mixing it with potato in a celeriac mash. Soup is one option, and as part of my campaign for more (naturally) pink foods, I chucked some beetroot in too. The result was really good - a nice balance of slightly bitter celeriac, sweet beetroot and acidic lemon juice. And it even matched Carmela's clothes.



Ingredients
1 head of celeriac
1 large onion
2 large potatoes
olive oil
beetroot (pre-cooked)
1 glass of dry white wine
1 litre of vegetable stock
juice of 1 lemon
salt
pepper

Method

1. Peel the celeriac, onion and potatoes. Chop the onion roughly and chop the celeriac, potato and beetroot into chunks.
2. Put the onion in a large pan with some olive oil and fry gently until softened. Add the celeriac, potato, beetroot, white wine and stock, bring to a boil, cover, turn heat to minimum and simmer until the potato and celeriac are cooked.
3. Allow to cool a bit, then puree with a stick blender or food processor. Add the lemon juice, check for seasoning and add salt and pepper.

Scallops stir-fried with ginger, garlic and spring onion

I was in Islay last week, visiting my friend Angus, and just before I left he gave me a big tub of really fresh scallops.


Ingredients
12 large scallops
small piece of ginger
1 clove of garlic
4 spring onions
butter or olive oil

Method

1. Remove the orange corals from the scallops. Peel and mince the ginger and garlic. Slice the spring onion.
2. Fry the ginger, garlic and spring onion in the butter or olive oil for 30 seconds, add the scallops and fry for another 2 minutes or so.

Chinese stewed aubergine with garlic, ginger and chilli

When I go to the Wing Sing in Edinburgh, I always order the yu hung aubergine - stewed, spicy aubergine with a bit of pork mince. Usually we order far too much and end up bringing home the aubergine in a container for the next day. The last time we did this, we reheated it on the barbecue and had it in mini pitta breads, and it was great, so I thought it was time I found out how to make it for myself.


After a bit of hunting around on the web I found this recipe for eggplant in garlic sauce at about.com. The technique involves quickly boiling the aubergine before stir-frying and then stewing it. I've left the pork out (because I didn't have any in the fridge) but will post a meaty version shortly. There is a frightening amount of soy sauce in this, but be brave - it's right! The end result should be almost 'jammy'. (Thanks to Alan for pointing that out - the first time I made it, I forgot to put the cornflour in, so it was a bit too liquid.)

Ingredients
750g aubergine
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 teaspoons minced chilli (I use the prepared version, alternatively use very finely chopped fresh chilli)
4 spring onions, white and green parts, finely chopped
2 teaspoons of cornflour
2 tablespoons of water
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

Sauce ingredients
50 ml dark soy sauce
50 ml light soy sauce
35 ml balsamic vinegar
35 ml Chinese rice wine or dry sherry or dry white wine
1 teaspoon sugar
150 ml chicken stock

Method

1. Boil a large saucepan of water. In the meantime, top and tail the aubergine, cut into three or four segments crosswise, then cut each segment vertically into nine wedges.
2. Put the aubergine in the saucepan of boiling water, bring back to the boil, and cook for 1 minute (timed from when the water returns to the boil). Drain the aubergine pieces, then spread out to dry a little on kitchen paper.
3. Mince the garlic and ginger and chop the spring onion. In a bowl, combine the sauce ingredients (the dark and light soy sauce, vinegar, rice wine or dry sherry, sugar and chicken stock).
4. Heat the wok with the vegetable oil until it is hot. Add the garlic, ginger, spring onion and chilli. Stir-fry for 10 seconds. Add the aubergine and the sauce ingredients, mix well, bring to a simmer, and continue cooking on a medium heat for about 10 minutes until the aubergine is tender.
5. Mix the cornflour and the water together thoroughly, and add to the wok, stirring well as you do so. Heat gently for another minute or so until the sauce thickens.

Courgette and roasted garlic soup

I have lifted this almost directly from the Painted Garden Cookbook, just adjusting the amount of garlic downwards a little and adding a good splash of white wine.

Ingredients
1 kg of small courgettes
300 g of onions
1 head of roasted garlic
olive oil
1/2 glass of white wine
1 litre of vegetable stock
salt

Method

1. Peel and chop the onion, top and tail the courgettes and chop into small chunks. Put in a large saucepan with plenty of olive oil and gently sautee until done (about 15 minutes).
2. Add the white wine, roasted garlic and stock, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 15 minutes. Allow to cool a little, whizz with a stick blender, check for salt and add more if necessary.

Warm Arbroath smokie, potato and bacon salad

When I got back from Amsterdam I was in the mood for more herring, and I nipped along to my fishmonger (Something Fishy, on Broughton Street in Edinburgh) expecting to find some nice fat herrings waiting for me. Unfortunately they had all gone, so I bought some Arbroath smokies instead. Smokies are hot-smoked, salted haddock which are a north-east of Scotland speciality, and bear no resemblance to herring, but I thought they would still go well in the warm potato and bacon salad I had planned for the herring. If you can't get hold of smokies then you could substitute them with fresh herring fillets, very lightly fried, or just about any other fish you fancy - mackerel, trout etc.


Ingredients
2 Arbroath smokies
750g new potatoes
6 rashers of smoked back bacon
3 pickled dill cucumbers, thickly sliced
dill
white wine vinegar
Dijon mustard
olive oil
Salt
Black pepper

Method

1. Place the smokies in a large saucepan (cut them in half crosswise if they won't fit), cover with boiling water, add a few sprigs of dill and about 50 ml of white wine vinegar, bring to the boil, turn off heat, cover and leave for 5 minutes. Transfer smokies from pan to a bowl, allow to cool and remove the flesh from the smokies with your fingers.
2. Steam the new potatoes in their skins, allow to cool and then cut into halves or quarters depending on size. Grill or fry the bacon until it is just done, remove from pan, allow to cool, and cut into strips.
3. Combine the fish, potatoes, bacon and pickled cucumbers in a serving bowl, sprinkle plenty of chopped dill over it.
4. Prepare a dressing with the olive oil, some wine vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper, and pour over the salad and mix gently.

Memory lapse
I often forget things when I am cooking, and when I was putting this together the pickled cucumbers slipped my mind, which is why you won't find them in the photo, however hard you search.

Jerusalem artichoke and apple soup

I only realised after I had started making this soup that my blender was on the blink, so I ended up having to use a potato ricer, hence the slightly lumpy appearance of the soup in this photo.

Ingredients
4 small leeks (or 2 large ones)
olive oil or butter
750g Jerusalem artichokes
500g potatoes
2 tart apples
1 litre of vegetable stock
1 teaspoon of dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Slice the leeks and simmer gently in a large pan in some olive oil or butter.
2. Peel and dice the artichokes and potatoes, and add to the pan. Add the hot vegetable stock.
3. Peel, core and dice the apples and add to the pan. Cook for 30 minutes or so, until the artichoke and potato is done.
4. Allow to cool a bit, then blend until smooth. Add the thyme, and salt and pepper to taste.

Kitchen safety
One of the reasons why most kids' cookbooks are so bad is because you aren't allowed to let kids chop things or handle anything hot. As a result, cookbooks for children are stuffed full of recipes for cakes and biscuits (with mum or dad dealing with the oven), and the odd bit of exotic sandwich making and pizza decoration tacked on at the end. All so that in 10 years' time we can complain that our kids are obese and don't know how to cook. Far better to hand your kids a razor sharp knife and a boiling hot kettle and let them get on with it ...

Sweet and sour sauce

My first experience of Chinese food was eating at the Loon Fung in Edinburgh in the mid-1970s. Actually, it's a fairly bog-standard British high street Chinese restaurant but at the time it seemed exciting and exotic (helped no doubt by the fact that I was only 8 years old). I like to think that my palate has become more sophisticated since then, but I have to admit that I still love sweet and sour sauce. This recipe is fairly close to a restaurant "sweet and sour" sauce. If you prefer it sweeter you can always add more sugar or reduce the vinegar a little.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
125 ml pineapple juice
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon cornflour
250 ml chicken stock

Method

1. Put all of the ingredients apart from the cornflour and the chicken stock in a small saucepan and heat gently.
2. Dissolve the cornflour thoroughly in half the chicken stock, and add to the saucepan.
3. Whisk thoroughly, and gradually add the rest of the chicken stock. Simmer gently for another 10 minutes until the cornflour is thoroughly cooked.

Image free
I didn't have a photo for this, and thought I would find something cute and fun on the internet by searching for "sauce monster". Let's just say that I was shocked and stunned and not a little amazed at what I found. So, no pics today.

Oriental pork and squid meatballs

This had its origins in a fairly disastrous attempt to follow a Rick Stein recipe for steamed, stuffed squid. I got everything ready, but then realised that I didn't have anything large enough to steam my squid in, so I decided to stew them instead. And then I discovered that I didn't have any toothpicks to sew the squid together with, but ploughed on anyway. Inevitably, the stuffing spilled out, and that gave me the idea of just cooking the stuffing as meatballs. The result was really good, and had me wondering why there aren't more mixed meat and fish dishes.



After my trial version, I started from scratch the next day, with a fresh squid. I got a bit of a surprise when I cleaned the squid, as the poor thing had obviously not even had time to digest its last meal before being hoiked out of the sea.




Ingredients
800g minced pork/beef
100g prepared squid
2 inch chunk of fresh ginger
3 cloves of garlic
4 spring onions
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon chilli powder
4 tablespoons of breadcrumbs

1. Prepare the squid by cutting off the tentacles, removing the purple skin, and removing its insides (together with any undigested fish still inside!). Chop finely.
2. Place the squid and all the other ingredients EXCEPT the meat and breadcrumbs into a food processor and whizz until you have a paste.
3. Put the meat in a large bowl, add the paste and breadcrumbs and mix well.
4. Fry in plenty of oil until nicely browned.
5. Serve with sweet and sour sauce and coconut rice.

Gefilte squid
I felt reassured to reflect that the genesis of this dish was exactly the same process as gefilte fish has gone through. This started out as stuffed, boned carp, but now people generally dispense with the whole fish and just serve the 'stuffing' as little poached patties. I thought that "gefilte squid" would probably be a unique term on google, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that gefilte squid is the national animal of the nation of Bnai Brith, and frolics freely in that nation's many lush forests. The things you learn.

Bacalao, chick peas, chorizo and green beans

I had some leftover cooked bacalao from my bacalao al pil pil, so I decided to combine it with a jar of chick peas, a fresh chorizo that was lurking in my fridge and some green beans. A combination of typically Spanish ingredients if ever there was one. You could make it with fresh cod or other white fish, although the cooking times will be a bit shorter. I accompanied this with some warm boiled potatoes dressed with the leftover pil pil sauce from the night before.



Ingredients
olive oil
1 onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 fresh chorizo, skinned and sliced
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
500g of green beans, topped and tailed and cut into 2-inch sections
250g of desalted bacalao (desalting instructions)
400g of cooked chickpeas
a little stock or water

Method

1. Chop the onion and add it to a large pan with plenty of olive oil and fry gently. Once the onions are nearly done, add the garlic and the chorizo and fry for a couple of minutes.
2. Add the green beans, add a little stock or water and simmer gently until the beans are almost tender. Add the bacalao and chickpeas, and simmer until the fish is cooked. (About 8 minutes.)

Bacalao al pil pil (salt cod with pil pil sauce)

This is the classic bacalao recipe. In it, the cod is slowly stewed in olive oil which has been flavoured with garlic and chilli, and the oil is then stirred until it emulsifies as a result of the gelatine released by the cod skin. If you want to, you can add a little parsley or even saffron to the sauce, give it a garnish or whatever.



I have to admit that I was a little scared of trying this at first, as the internet is full of complicated advice and people who claim they have never successfully made pil pil. In fact, it is very easy. The keys to it are:

• making sure that the oil is never too hot (think of it as very gentle stewing in oil, rather than frying) - an earthenware cazuela is good for this, but a heavy-bottomed pan and a low heat should be fine
• using a tea strainer to emulsify the sauce (the traditional method involves from 15 to 30 minutes of circular shaking of your pan, but with a tea strainer you can achieve the same result in 5 minutes, with minimum effort).

Ingredients
750g desalted bacalao
500ml extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
2 dried chillies, soaked for 20 minutes in boiling water

Method

1. Cut the bacalao into large chunks (I would suggest 2-inch wide strips, cut in half crosswise, so they are about 3 inches long).
2. Use a large, heavy bottomed frying pan (or, even better, a large earthenware cazuela, as in the photo). Pour the oil into it, add the garlic and whole chillies, and heat gently. After a few minutes, and before the garlic has begun to brown, remove the garlic and chillies from the oil with a slotted spoon and set aside.
3. Make sure the oil is not too hot (it doesn't matter if it is a little on the cold side at this stage), and add the cod pieces skin side down. Cook very gently for about 10 minutes, then carefully turn over and cook for another 2 minutes or so. With a fish slice, remove the cod pieces to a plate, pour the oil into a heatproof bowl and allow to cool until it is tepid.
   
4. Once the oil is tepid, use a ladle to return about half of it to the pan. Put it on a very low heat, and stir it in a circular motion with a tea strainer until it emulsifies. (About 5 minutes.) It should be the consistency of a light homemade mayonnaise. If the sauce is very thick, then just add a little more oil from the bowl and keep stirring. If it starts to congeal a bit, then just give it another whisk with the strainer.
   
5. Transfer the fish to individual plates and pour some sauce over it. (If you want to serve the fish hot, then heat it through in the pan with the sauce before serving.)
   

Cazuela with oil, garlic and chillies



Bacalao 'stewing' slowly in oil over a low heat



Oil cooling down