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Hedgehog and fox

2012-02-10T15:57:00.002+01:00

This is not a British bush tucker recipe for dealing with some of our local mammalian fauna. Nor is it a recipe for one of those traditional dishes, such as "toad in the hole" or "pigs in blankets" whose name belies the ingredients.

I am afraid today I have decided to wax philosophical. In his essay about Tolstoy, Isaaiah Berlin used the Greek proverb "the fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog knows only one but he does it well" as a starting point for his analysis of the theory of history presented in War and Peace.

My blog, in its eclecticism, strives for a certain foxy quality. Recent posts have included marmalade, Bengali fish curry, parsnip and ginger soup, and pickled pears. And yet in the kitchen I am as much hedgehog as fox. Along with all the jams, soups, stews, snacks, pickles and curries, there is the daily ritual of breadmaking using natural yeast. I have almost given up writing about this (at least for the time being); not because there is nothing to say but rather because I find it so hard to explain this trick to those who do not already know it themselves.

I can write a recipe for a curry, a soup or even a pickle, and I know that a vaguely competent cook will be able to follow it and produce something similar and quite probably better. But however carefully I explain the technique of working with wet dough, how to tell when it has proved, how to shape the loaves and assess whether they are ready to bake, how to slash them and transfer them to the oven, I know from experience that the only person who has any hope of following this to produce a good loaf of bread is somebody who is already an accomplished baker. I guess it just involves too much implicit knowledge, and too much skill which is not part of everyday kitchen activity to be something you can communicate in writing.

This difference is also reflected in my attitude to books. I love cookbooks and generally have at least two newish ones on the go in my kitchen, from which I draw inspiration. However, I have only ever bought one bread book (Peter Bertinett's marvelous Crust) and although I have learnt a great deal from it, I have only every cooked one of the breads from it. And so the many fine bread books out there - English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David, The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard, etc., etc. - hold no appeal for me whatsoever.Why? Because my own breadmaking is about perfecting one type of bread. I use a wettish dough, made primarily with white flour (with admixtures of about 10% wholemeal flour, malted flour, rye flour or oat flakes or combinations of them), leavened with a natural yeast starter, generally with a slow first proving and a faster second rising, and baked in a very hot oven.

I improvise and experiment a little around this formula and occasionally branch out into other things like pizza or focaccia, but I have absolutely no desire to make a different kind of bread for each day of the week.Indeed, the very idea goes against the grain of the deliberately repetitive process of perfecting one type of bread which, for me, is the essence of breadmaking.

Anyway, I shall stop writing now. My inner hedgehog is telling me that it is time to slash my sourdough batards and put them in the oven. And my inner fox is reminding me that I have to nip out and buy some wonton wrappers (for chinese dumplings), fresh coriander (for Bengali chicken wraps) and margarine (for flapjacks).

Carrot and lentil soup

2012-02-04T23:12:00.001+01:00

Carrots and lentils are a great combination, but I often find that carrot and lentil soup is either a little bland or suffers from unsubtle spicing (usually due to a heavy hand with the cumin). I made this soup with great care and was really happy with the outcome - the celery gave it a little spiciness, the peppers added sweetness and depth, while the smoky paprika and the dried mushroom stock provided an earthy kick. Unfortunately I didn't measure anything so the quantities are somewhat approximate.

Ingredients
olive oil
half a head of celery
1 red pepper
2 tsps smoked paprika
4 large carrots
handful of dried mushrooms
1 vegetable stock cube
1 litre of boiled water
2 handfuls of lentils
1 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper

Method

Soak the dried mushrooms in the boiled water, and add the vegetable stock cube.
Finely chop the celery and red pepper and fry gently in plenty of olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the peeled chopped carrots, continue to fry for a few more minutes before adding the paprika.
Strain the stock into the pot, add the lentils, bring to the boil and simmer gently until lentils and carrots are cooked, then add the salt.
Allow the soup to cool a little, liquidise with a stick blender, check the salt and season with some freshly ground black pepper.

Parsnip, apple and ginger fritters

2012-02-03T23:57:00.000+01:00

We have been slightly inundated with parsnips recently, as during the winter months they have become a permanent fixture in our veggie box. I like them roasted and was also quite happy with a parsnip and ginger soup, but feeling in need of further inspiration I turned to a book I bought a while back, The Painted Garden Cookbook. It's a lovely book, illustrated with watercolours by the author, but somehow I haven't used it as much as I expected I would. These were really nice - the parsnip and ginger combination (again) proved a winner, and the texture was great.

Ingredients
750g parsnips
3 apples, preferably something tart like Cox or Braeburn
1 tsp minced ginger
50g plain flour
1 egg
salt
freshly ground black pepper
olive oil

Method

Set the oven to 200oC and oil a non-stick baking tray. Heat about an inch of water in a pot.
Top and tail and peel the parsnips, quarter them and put them in the boiling water, cover and boil for 3 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Peel and core the apples.
Chop the parsnips and the apples very finely (or dice them in a food processor). Put them in a bowl, and add the flour, egg, salt and pepper.
Shape the mixture into burgers, and place on the baking tray. Drizzle plenty of olive oil over the top of them, and bake for 30 minutes, turning after 15.

Bengali fish and potato curry

2012-02-03T11:16:00.000+01:00

Next stop on my journey along the Great Trunk Road is a bengali fish and potato curry. Having promised myself to keep my tweaking to a minimum, I promptly broke my word on this one. The original recipe in Food of the Great Trunk Road was for kofee aloo jhol which means, I think, fish with potatoes and cauliflower. However, my kids aren't great cauliflower fans and I didn't think this seemed like the recipe to convert anyone, so I left out the cauliflower. I also replaced the recommended fish (bass) with a whole hake which I bought from my local fishmonger, and I replaced the water in the recipe with some stock. I was really pleased with the end result, and also enjoyed the fact that I had inadvertently created a Bengali version of a Spanish standby, hake with potatoes. (I thought I had already blogged this, but apparently I haven't.)

This is now the third recipe I have cooked from Food of the Great Trunk Road, and I'm very happy with my slightly obsessive decision to cook my way through it cover to cover (skipping any recipes I'm not in the mood for). The book itself is organised geographically, and following it like this means that I am already acquiring a feel for the signature Bengali ingredients of mustard oil and onion seeds, neither of which I had really appreciated before.

Ingredients
1 whole hake (about 1kg) - or use steaks or fillets of any reasonably firm-fleshed fish
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp turmeric
1 kg potatoes
5 cm piece of ginger
1 tsp cumin seeds
4 tsps water
100 ml mustard oil
2 bay leaves
3 green cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
3 cloves
1 tsp onion seeds
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp salt (less if your stock is salty)
400 ml stock (fish if you have it, otherwise vegetable or chicken)
juice of 1 lemon

Method

Remove the head and tail of the hake, reserving to make stock with. Cut the rest of the hake into thick steaks. Mix together the chilli powder and turmeric, rub half of it on the fish steaks and set aside.
Peel the potatoes and slice them crosswise into 0.5 cm thick slices. Rub the remaining chilli and turmeric on them and set aside.
Peel and chop the fresh ginger, and whizz it to a fine paste with the cumin seeds and 4 tsps of water. (If you don't have a spice mill, then just grate it finely or use minced ginger, and crush the cumin in a pestle and mortar.)
Heat the oil in a large pan, and fry the potato slices in batches until they are cooked and golden but still firm. Remove to a bowl.
In the same oil, fry the fish steaks for a couple of minutes, then remove.
Now, gently fry the bay leaves, cardamom pods, cinnamon and cloves for a minute or two, then add the onion seeds and fry for 30 seconds or so until they pop. Now add the ginger and cumin paste and stir fry for 2 minutes.
Add the salt (if needed) and ground corinader, stir fry for a few seconds, then add the stock and bring to a boil.
Add all the potatoes, then place the fish steaks on top, cover the pan and cook gently for about 10 minutes until the fish is just cooked.
Squeeze over the lemon juice and serve.

Bengali lamb and chickpea curry

2012-01-27T22:16:00.000+01:00

I haven't been buying a lot of cookbooks recently, because I was a bit worried about becoming one of those 101 cookbooks types: the sort of person who owns shelf after shelf of cookbook and makes one dish (at most) from each. However, I made an exception just before Christmas for Anirudh Arora and Hardeep Singh Kohli's Food of the Grand Trunk Road.

I have decided to take this one at face value and actually cook my way through the book from cover to cover (skipping, of course, any recipes which don't appeal or which I think the rest of the family won't enjoy). My idea is to take a culinary road trip journey along the GTR, from Bengal to the Punjab, without moving from the comfort of my own kitchen.

We started out last week with an egg curry with potatoes (aloo dimer jhol) which I liked but would have to say was not as good as either my standard egg curry or my patended egg vindaloo cold recipe. This week, me and Sammy tried our hand at this lamb and chickpea curry (mangsho ghugni) and the result was really good, even getting a thumbs-up from Carmela.

The basic technique and spices were all familiar to me, but the mustard oil (a signature Bengali ingredient) made it subtly different from any curry I had ever cooked before. I usually tweak any recipe I cook, but this time I have decided to stay as close to the book as is possible. Although the list of ingredients is quite long, almost all of them (apart from the mustard oil) should be in the cupboard of anyone who cooks Indian food with any regularity.

Ingredients
400g dried chickpeas
50ml mustard oil
2 bay leaves
3 cardamom pods
3 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspooon cumin seeds
1 large onion, finely chopped
1kg boneless lamb (from the leg) cut into 2.5cm chunks
2 tsps minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tsp garam masala
2 tbsps chopped fresh coriander

Method

Soak the chickpeas in water overnight. The next day, change the water, bring to a boil, skim off any scum from the surface, and simmer covered for 1.5 hours. Drain, and reserve the cooking liquid for later.
Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the bay leaves, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon, fry gently for 30 seconds or so, add the cumin seeds. When the pop, add the onion and fry gently until golden.
Add the lamb pieces, turn heat back up to maximum and brown.
Add the garlic and the ginger, cook for 3 minutes, then add the turmeric, ground coriander, chilli powder, ground cumin and salt. Fry for another 30 seconds or so, stirring well, then add the chopped tomatoes and enough of the reserved cooking liquid from the chickpeas so that the lamb is covered by about 1 cm of water.
Bring to a simmer, cover and cook on minimum for 1 hour, unitl the lamb is tender.
Add the cooked chickpeas and more liquid if required to cover them, and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.
Serve, sprinkling each bowl with a little garam masala and chopped coriander.

Peanut and oatmeal dog treats

2012-01-26T10:55:00.001+01:00

We have just acquired a dog. She is a little black labrador puppy called Ronia (named after a character in Astrid Lindgren's wonderful story Ronia the Robber's Daughter) and we are all besotted with her. She gets lots of cuddles and praise but the best way to a labrador's heart is through her stomach.

With the aid of plenty of puppy treats she has already learned to come when called and (more or less) to stop chewing fingers, socks and other forbidden items. However, as the top-rated brand of puppy treats weighs in at over £5 for a small tub, I thought I would try my hand at making my own. I actually found this recipe on a brilliant website of Filipino food, although I tweaked the ingredients a bit and adjusted the baking method to make sure the treats were nice and hard.

Ingredients

50g coarse peanut butter (salt and sugar free)

1 tsp olive oil

185g low-salt ham or chicken stock

100g porridge oats

100g wholemeal flour

1oog plain white flour

Method

Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl, mix together well and knead until you have a stiff dough. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes to cool.
Set the oven to 200oC and line two baking trays with baking paper.
Divide the dough into two balls. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out until it is about 1 cm thick, cut into small biscuits, and transfer to one of the baking trays. (I used a small 3cm flower-shaped cutter to make little ridged biscuits which are just the right size for stuffing a Kong toy.)
Snip the offcuts into smaller pieces for use as training treats, and spread across the second baking tray.
Put the tray of biscuits into the oven. After 5 minutes, put the tray of training treats in as well. Bake for a further 12 minutes (so 17 in total for the biscuits).
Turn off the oven, open the door and leave the trays in the oven while it cools so that the biscuits and treats dry out completely. Once the biscuits and treats have cooled completely, transfer to airtight containers.

Cooking for the Queen

I have to admit I was actually quite nervous about these. Cooking for a loved one for the very first time is always a challenge because there is so much more than just a good meal at stake. While it is true that in our short time with us Ronia has not shown any signs of being a fussy eater, in some ways that only intensified the pressure. I think I can cope with the idea that my cooking may not be up to the standards of the man from the Michelin guide, but how would I feel if my biscuits were rejected by a diner who only the day before had been happily licking fresh bird poo off the garden wall? Needless to say, my fears were unfounded and Ronia wolfed them down, even becoming gratifyingly distressed when one of them disappeared between a gap in our floorboards.

Now where did that damn biscuit go?

Pastry chef

Carmela did most of the rolling and cutting, and even sampled one of the cooked biscuits at the end. A bit bland, we both agreed, but with a good aftertaste. Carmela also noted that the peanut butter reminded her of the sandwiches that her Canadian friend, Daniela, used to bring to school back in the days before we started home educating - a smell memory that has stuck with her for over 3 years. I don't know how a dog's memory works, but I imagine it must be composed largely of smells rather than sights or sounds.

Chanukah Christmas doughnuts

2011-12-27T16:35:00.002+01:00

This year Chanukah and Christmas have overlapped, so we have had our menorah and our advent candle burning at the same time. But why stop there? In the spirit of cultural fusion, I decided to fill some of my traditional Chanukah doughnuts with mincemeat to make a deep-fried Jewish alternative to mince pies. You could, of course, use jam or even just pop a square of dark chocolate into the middle.

Ingredients

for the dough

7g instant yeast

300ml warm milk

20g sugar

2 eggs

15g vegetable oil

500g plain flour

for the filling

mincemeat or jam or half a square of dark chocolate

Method

Mix the dough ingredients thoroughly with a spoon, leave to sit for 10 minutes, then work for 10 minutes on a non-porous surface until you have a nice smooth dough. (The dough will be quite wet at the start, so is best worked with the "stretch, swing and fold" technique shown here.)
Transfer the dough to a bowl, cover with plastic and leave to prove for about 2 hours.
Transfer the dough to a well-floured and work it gently for a couple of minutes. Roll out to a thickness of about 0.5cm and cut into 5cm circles.
To fill, place a teaspoon of mincemeat in the centre of half of the circles, brush the outside of the circle with a little water, place another round on top and crimp the edges together to seal. Transfer to a well-floured tray and leave to rise for about 30 minutes.
Heat plenty of oil in a deep fat fryer or large saucepan until it is medium hot (about 170oC), and fry the doughnuts in batches for 3 minutes, before turning them over and frying for a further minute. Drain, sprinkle with icing sugar and serve with brandy butter.

Kosher dilemma

My original plan had been to make jam doughnuts and mince pies, before I realised that the lard I use in my mince pie pastry with is made from pig fat and therefore not eligible for being served to my grandma. I did briefly consider going on a hunt for a kosher alternative before I hit upon the idea of combining the two in a sweet festive smorgasbord of Judeo-Christian cultural mestizaje. Needless to say, my grandma would have nothing to do with my carefully concocted mncemeat donuts, and insisted on jam.

Parsnip and ginger soup

2011-12-27T16:27:00.000+01:00

Santa brought me the new River Cottage Veg every day! cookbook. I haven't seen the TV programmes yet, but the book looks great and I'm hoping it will inspire me to find new ways of turning my veggie box into delicious meals.

The first thing I cooked from it was this delicious parsnip and ginger soup. I've toned it down a bit as the version in the book was a little zingy, and left out the milk because the soup already seemed thick enough at that stage.

Ingredients

olive oil

1 onion

2 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon of finely chopped fresh ginger

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp chilli powder

500g parsnips

800ml vegetable stock

salt

pepper

2 tablespoons of flaked almonds

Method

Finely chop the onion, and gently sautee in plenty of olive oil. When it is just about done, add the finely chopped garlic and ginger and fry for another minute or so.
Add the cardamom, cumin and chilli, fry for 30 seconds, then add the parsnips.
Fry for a few seconds more, add the stock, bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to minimum and simmer for 20 minutes until the parsnips are cooked.
Allow to cool, then liquidise with a stick blender. Test for seasoning and add salt if necessary.
Reheat, and serve with a sprinkling of the toasted almond flakes and some freshly ground black pepper.

Spanish beef stew with rosemary and olives

2011-12-26T17:16:00.000+01:00

We've had roast goose for the last couple of Christmases but this year, as the date approached, none of us were really attracted by the stress of trying to coordinate timing the cooking of a large bird with the process of marshalling ten people to the dining table to eat it. So I decided to make a stew instead. I wanted something with plenty of flavour, with a nice thick sauce and with some hints of Spain. This was what I came up with. (The anchovies don't give a fishy flavour, but just help to intensify everything else.)

Ingredients
3 kg beef
1 bottle of red wine
50g fresh rosemary stalks
plain flour
1 head of celery
2 large onions
6 cloves of garlic
2 red peppers
3 tsps paprika
100g tomato puree
6 salted anchovy fillets
250g of olives, drained and rinsed

Method

Cut the beef into chunks, and place in a large bowl. Add the rosemary, olives and wine, mix well and leave to marinade in the fridge overnight.
The next day, drain the meat in a colander, reserving the marinading liquid, rosemary stalks and olives. Leave the meat to dry for a few hours if possible.
Brown the meat in batches in hot olive oil (about 0.5 kg at a time, depending on the size of your pan). Dredge the last two batches (about 1 kg of the meat) in flour before frying. (This will help to thicken the sauce of the casserole.) Transfer the cooked meat to a bowl.
Meanwhile, transfer the marinading liquid, rosemary and olives to a saucepan, bring to a boil and simmer until reduced by about 1/3. Remove the olives and rosemary. Set aside the olives to serve with the meat if you wnt to.
Finely chop the celery, onions, garlic and red peppers, and sweat throroughly in plenty of olive oil in a large saucepan or flameproof casserole dish. When the vegetables are cooked, add the paprika and tomato puree, mix well, and add the reduced marinating liquid, the browned meat (together with any juices), and the finely chopped anchovy fillets.
If cooking on the stove top, add 250 ml of water, bring to a very gentle simmer, cover and cook at a very low heat for about 3 hours, until the meat is tender. You will need to be careful that the flour does not burn, so you will need to keep a close eye on the stew, making sure you stir it from time to time, and adding a little extra water if necessary..
If cooking in a casserole, preheat the oven to 150oC, cover the casserole dish and cook for about 3 hours, until the meat is tender.

Victorian mulled wine

2011-12-24T13:51:00.001+01:00

It annoys me when something old and traditional is repackaged and sold as if it is new and exotic, especially if the new version is inferior to the old one. Every year I go through Halloween trauma, when the shops are filled with garish orange pumpkins and plastic vampire teeth, and my suffering is only slightly relieved by being able to buttonhole the occasional American and lecture them on the Scottish origins of the festival and the joys of turnip carving. Last year I was lucky to have a resident American in the form of Kaya's dad Jordon to play this part, and this year the role has been filled by our new friends Beth and Josh. I apologies to all of you for making you the recipients of my curmudgeonly rantings.

With Halloween barely over it is German Christmas Market time in Edinburgh and just about everywhere else in the UK (or Weihnachtsmarkt as they call it in Frankfurt). I'm partial to the odd bratwurst myself and am quite happy to browse stalls loaded with little wooden Christmas ornaments, but I draw the line at their gluhwein. The problem starts with inferior wine, and is then compounded by excessive sugar, heavy-handed spicing, and stewing the wine. The result is a mug of expensive cough medicine.

So I decided to make some traditional Victorian mulled wine. The sugar, spices and citrus should be identifiable without being overpowering or sickly, and preparing a syrup which is then strained and added to the wine, which is in turn gently heated, has a number of advantages. You don't get any of the nasty bitterness from leaving the spices and citrus sitting around in the wine, you are not at risk of choking on the whole cloves floating around in your drink and, last but not least, you don't reduce the alcohol content of the wine by cooking it off.

Ingredients

250ml water

175g brown sugar

6 cinnamon sticks

2-inch chunk of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced

1 teaspoon of cloves

zest of 1 orange

3 bottles of red wine (I used a Chilean merlot)

Method

Combine the water, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and orange zest in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook until you have a thick syrup.
Pour the wine into a large saucepan, strain the syrup into it, and heat well but take care not to boil or to allow it to simmer. Serve immediately or turn off the heat and cover the pan.

Photo credits
Together with my mulled wine, this photo features Gemma's handmade Scandinavian wooden advent calendar.

Marmalade

2011-12-19T18:41:00.006+01:00

A glut of oranges appeared in our fruit bowl the other day. They had been acquired to make Christmas decorations out of (stuck with cloves and suspended around the house from festive ribbons) but there were plenty left over, so I made some marmalade. The recipe comes from Lynda Brown's Preserving Book.

Ingredients
(makes 4 small jars)
1 kg oranges
2 lemons
1.2 litres water
1 kg granulated sugar
2 tablespoons of whisky

Method

Halve and juice the oranges and lemons, set aside the juice, and tie the pith and pips from the juicer in a muslin square.
Put the orange and lemon shells into a large pan, add the water and the muslin bundle, bring to the boil, and simmer with the lid ajar for 1 hour.
Discard the muslin bundle, and strain the shells through a colander over a bowl to collect the liquor.
Allow to cool, remove any mushy pith from inside the shells with a spoon and discard, then cut each shell into three segments, and slice each crosswise very thinly.
Meanwhile, sterilise at least four 450g jars, together with their lids and any other equipment, and place a few saucers in the freezer to use for testing the set.
Return the sliced peel to the pan, together with the reserved liquor. Add the fruit juice and the sugar, and heat gently until all the sugar has dissolved.
Bring to a fast boil and cook for between 5 and 20 minutes until you have achieved a set. (To do this, drip a few drops of the marmalade 'juice' onto the cold plate. Leave to cool for a few seconds. If it is ready, then the surface will wrinkle when you push the drop with your fingernail. Or you can just stick your finger in it and see if it has a slightly sticky, jammy consistency rather than a syrupy one. It may take a good 20 minutes of boiling to reach the setting point; keep testing at regular intervals and make sure you don't overcook it.)
Once you have a set, turn off the heat, skim any scum from the surface, and allow the marmalade to sit for about 15 minutes. Add the whisky, stir well to make sure the peel (and the whisky) are evenly distributed, and transfer to your sterilised jars.

Sri Lankan lamb curry

2011-12-09T18:52:00.005+01:00

When we moved back to Edinburgh from Cadiz in July, I thought I would be cooking lots of Indian food and I also hoped I would be teaming up with Sammy and Carmela in the kitchen. It hasn't really worked out that way, as I've found myself getting to grips with the changing contents of our weekly veg box, discovering the joys of jam and chutney, rediscovering pickles, and continuing to perfect my sourdough. Sammy and Carmela, quite wisely, have preferred the charms of Harry Potter, the Wii and Phineas and Ferb to the dubious appeal of playing a walk-on part in my one-man kitchen drama.

(Head chef all cooked out and back watching some Phineas and Ferb on the internet!)

Today I finally managed to tempt them back into the kitchen, and we had a bit of a cookathon. Carmela made mincemeant for the first mince pies of the Christmas season and also helped me to make some great fish and beef won ton, and Sammy cooked up a Sri Lankan lamb curry, with me playing the role of sous chef. The recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey's "100 Essential Curries", and I uncharacteristically planned and shopped before we made it.

Ingredients

whole spices

4 teaspoons of whole black mustard seeds

1 teaspoon of whole peppercorns

6 teaspoons of whole coriander seeds

4 cloves

spice paste

1 small onion

2-inch chunk of ginger

6 cloves of garlic

small bunch of fresh coriander

1 red chilli

1 tsp ground turmeric

juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp salt

50 ml water

1 cinnamon stick

4 cardamom pods

20 curry leaves

1 kg diced lamb

1 can of coconut cream

Method

Use a spice mill or pestle and mortar to grind the whole spices.
Peel and chop the onion, ginger and garlic. Put into a measuring jug with the roughly chopped coriander, deseeded chilli, turmeric, lemon juice, salt and 50 ml of water, and whizz with a hand blender until you have a smooth paste.
Heat a good glug of vegetable oil in a large pot. When hot, add the cinnamon, cardamom and curry leaves, fry for a few seconds and add the lamb. Fry for a few minutes until the meat is browned, then add the ground spice mixture and fry for another 30 seconds or so before adding the paste.
Cook for 5 minutes, then add just enough water to ensure that the meat is covered. Bring to the boil, cover and reduce heat to minimum and simmer for about 1.5 hours until the lamb is tender.
Add the coconut cream and cook for another 5 minutes.

Gadgets

As the sous chef it was my job to grind the spices with the pestle and mortar. It was surprisingly quick, but that didn't stop me from going onto amazon and ordering an electric spice mill post haste.

Crumpets

2011-11-19T11:57:00.006+01:00

It's always reassuring to find there are other people out there with bigger problems than your own. Personally, if I felt a need to constrain my fried eggs with these 'egg rings' I would run screaming from my kitchen in search of the nearest therapist.

Using them to make your own crumpets, of course, is perfectly okay.

Ingredients
275ml milk
50ml water
7g instant yeast (1 sachet)
1tsp sugar
225g strong white flour

Method

Mix the milk, water and sugar in a jug. Heat until it is warm but not too hot. (It should feel pleasantly warm when you hold your finger in it - 1 minute or so on the medium setting in a microwave should do the trick.)
Add the yeast, mix well, and leave to stand for 15 minutes until it has formed a good foamy head.
Measure the flour into a mixing bowl, add the liquid and whisk together to make a smooth batter.
Place the bowl inside a plastic bag, and leave to stand for 45 minutes.
If you are using egg rings, oil them lightly. Oil a heavy-bottomed frying pan, heat gently, and spoon about 1.5 tablespoons of batter into each ring. (It's best to have a glass of water next to the stove, and dip your spoon into it before spooning out the batter.)
Cook on a low heat for about 4 minutes. Lift the rings off the crumpets (if they stick, just gently separate them from the sides with a knife). Flip over and cook for a further minute.

Homemade vs. shop bought
I 'borrowed' this recipe from Delia Smith. She starts by saying "Although you can buy quite good crumpets, I do think they're fun to make." They're definitely fun to make (and very easy), but I can't say that I agree with her verdict on shop-bought crumpets. They are generally rubbery, and not a patch on the homemade version. My kids agree - they have always refused to eat the commercial version, but these ones disappeared immediately.

Tomato juice

2011-11-17T10:20:00.003+01:00

A glass of tomato juice with a dash of Worcestershire sauce and a sprinkle of black pepper. It is 1975, I am 8 years old, wearing a denim suit from C&A, and running up a bar tab at the Holiday Inn in Belsize Park, London. Sophistication, as they say, doesn't come much more sophisticated than this.

Pickled pears

2011-11-07T12:33:00.004+01:00

I made these a couple of months ago, when we had a few more pears than we were able to eat. The result was really good, but I was slightly reluctant to post because I hadn't worked out what they would go with.

The other day, Gemma and the kids came back from Mellis cheese shop and I found the answer: cheese! Doing my best Wallace and Grommit impression, I ordered the kids to bring out the crackers and tried slices of pickled pear with durrus, taleggio and some blue stilton.

Ingredients
1 lemon
10 cloves
1 tsps black peppercorns
1 tsp allspice berries
2 cinnamon sticks
500g white wine vinegar
250g caster sugar
1 kg small pears

Method

Sterilize four 500g jars.
Zest the lemon, and combine the lemon zest, cloves, pepercorns, allspice berries and cinnamon in a saucepan with the vinegar and sugar.
Peel, and quarter the pears and remove the fibrous cores.
Bring the liquid to a boil, simmer gently and stir well until all of the sugar has dissolved, then add the pears and continue to simmer for another 15 minutes.
Remove the pears from the liquid with a slotted spoon, and transfer to the sterilized jars.
Continue to simmer the liquid uncovered for another 15 minutes or so, then pour over the pears and seal.

Baked rice with egg and vegetables

2011-10-29T11:14:00.004+02:00

Over the years, the contents of any individual cook's repertoire shift and change. Along with newly acquired knowledge and influences, individual dishes come and go. And tracking these changes in my own cooking was one of the reasons for my starting this blog in the first place.

Ingredients
2 cups of white basmati rice
2 courgettes
1 bulb of fennel (or use onion or leek)
6 rashers of streaky bacon
6 eggs
plenty of salt and pepper

Method

Cook the rice according to your preferred method. I microwaved it this time, which worked well.
Finely chop the courgettes and fennel, and fry gently in plenty of olive oil.
Fry the bacon. When it is done, cut into little strips.
In a large bowl, mix the cooked rice, vegetables and bacon.
Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.
Season with plenty of salt and pepper, stir well, and transfer to a large ovenproof dish.
Cover with foil and cook for about 20 minutes, until the egg has set but is not too dry.

Caledonia's everything I've ever had
This is a dish I made frequently during the not entirely happy year that me and Gemma spent living in London (1997). She was finishing off her Political Science degree through Spain's equivalent of the Open University, and I was managing a publishing programme for a pair of incurable optimists at an outfit called the Open Learning Foundation. It was the year of the Labour Party's first election victory under Blair, the year of Lady Di's death, and the year when Chick Charnley (the white Pele) briefly set the Scottish Premier League alight.

It was also the year of commuting daily on a pre-refurbishment Northern Line, the year of working alone in a large Victorian building from which my colleagues were permanently away on business trips, and the year of a shabby rented flat in Archway where the living room was permeated by the smell of goat curry from the West Indian domino club camped out in the empty hairdresser's salon below. Comfort food was needed, and this was one of the forms it took.

Fortunately, by the end of the year we had managed to work out a route back to Edinburgh. I even had a little Caledonia moment of my own at King's Cross, with a dialogue which went as follows:

Me: A single to Edinburgh please.
Clerk: You might as well get a return. It's only 50 pence more than the single.
Me: I'm not coming back.

Microwave basmati rice

2011-10-27T21:18:00.005+02:00

Like most microwave owners, I use mine almost exclusively for reheating cold coffee and for warming up leftovers. Tonight, though, I decided to branch out and see if I could cook rice in it. I googled around for a bit and, after looking at a couple of recipes, realised they were replicating my usual method of cooking rice by the absorption method in a tightly-covered pan. And indeed it seemed to make sense to do the same thing in a microwave, which should have more even heat distribution than a saucepan.

Ingredients
16 fl oz basmati rice
24 fl oz water
a glug of oil
1/4 tsp of salt

Method

Combine all the ingredients in a large pyrex bowl, cover with a plate, and cook at full power for 10 minutes. The water should now be more or less at boiling point. Remove bowl from microwave (being careful not to burn yourself with the steam) and stir the rice gently with a fork.
Return covered bowl to microwave and cook for a further 15 minutes on medium-low. Remove from microwave, check to see if rice is done, and stir.

Pop shot
I was perversely pleased with the awfulness of the photo below. Bad enough to be included in a microwave manual, eagerly extolling the virtues of "cooking from the centre out". Just remember not to use it to dry off your chihuahua after a walk in the rain.

Caramelised onion chutney

2011-10-20T19:52:00.008+02:00

I'm too tired to write a proper intro for this recipe. Why? Today I have been on a canal trip with our home educating friends, spent the afternoon in a couple of chilly playgrounds (thank the Lord for long johns!), followed by a lengthy game of football in the park. On arriving home, I had to carry two flatpack beds up two flights of stairs, help to assemble them both, then make supper. And somewhere in the middle of all that I made some onion chutney too.

Ingredients (makes 2 or 3 jars)
1.25kg onions
olive oil
4 tsps minced ginger
2-4 tsps minced red chilli (depending how spicy you want it)
4 tbsps tomato puree
100 ml red wine
2 cinnamon sticks
pinch of salt
200 ml balsamic vinegar
200g dark brown sugar

Method

Peel and roughly chop the onions. In a large pan, gently fry the onions in plenty of olive oil. When they have softened, add the ginger, chilli and tomato puree, and continue to fry until the onions are well done.
Add the wine, cinnamon, salt, vinegar and sugar, bring to a boil, reduce to minimum and cook for an hour or so, stirring frequently, until the onions begin to get a jammy consistency.
Transfer to sterilised jars and store for at least 4 weeks (if you can wait).

Banana and apple cake

2011-10-19T16:00:00.006+02:00

Autumn is definitely here, and yesterday we went for a lovely long walk around Roslin Chapel, where we collected lots of sticks for wands, together with a selection of leaves and nuts. It's seven years since I have been in Scotland at this time of year, and I had forgotten how beautiful it can be. (We've been lucky, with reasonably mild temperatures and a lot of dry days.)

I usually make this with bananas only, but today is Wednesday, which means it's time to finish off any leftover fruit and veg before our new veggie box arrives. In addition to two very ripe bananas, there were also some delicious little russet apples, so I added them to the mix.

Ingredients
275 g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
110 g margarine
225 g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 tart apples, peeled, cored and diced
75 ml milk
1.5 tsps lemon juice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
50 g raisins

Method

Set the oven to 180oC and grease a loaf tin. (Mine is stuck in the cellar at the moment, hence the round cake tin in the photo above.)
Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt.
In a separate bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar. Add the bananas, milk, eggs, lemon juice, vanilla extract, cinnamon and raisins to the margarine and sugar mixture, and mix well. Fold the flour into the resulting batter.
Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake in the preheated oven for 60 minutes until golden.

Orange polenta cake (improved version)

2011-10-17T16:29:00.005+02:00

I first made this cake a few years ago, and have baked it intermittently ever since (whenever my children allow me to make something other than chocolate cake). There have been a few tweaks and adjustments along the way, and I felt it was time to commit these to the blog.

The opportunity was provided by the book group I have just joined (at Blackwell's on South Bridge, in Edinburgh). My cake was finished off almost instantly, which is more than can be said for this month's book - the diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, in which the wife of Lev Tolstoy spends 40 years complaining about her husband.

Ingredients
for the cake batter
2 large oranges
1 cup of strong green tea
6 green cardamom pods
6 eggs
150 g quick-cook polenta
150 g ground almonds
250 g golden caster sugar

for the syrup
1 orange
50 g caster sugar
50 ml water

Method

Place two of the oranges in plenty of water, bring to the boil and simmer for one hour. Drain the oranges, cut into quarters and allow to cool.
Make a cup of strong green tea, and add the cracked cardamom pods to it.
Preheat the oven to 180°C, and line and grease a springform cake tin.
Peel the orange quarters, remove the pithy centre and any pips, and puree in a food processor.
Transfer the orange puree to a mixing bowl, add the polenta and 50g of cardamom-infused green tea, stir well and leave to sit for 5 minutes or so.
Add the eggs, almonds and caster sugar and beat well. Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake for about 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, zest the remaining orange. Make a syrup by heating the caster sugar, zest and water until the sugar is dissolved. Strain through a tea strainer to remove the zest.
Allow the cake to cool before removing from the tin. Prick it all over with a toothpick, and pour the syrup over it.

Roasted tomato and pumpkin

2011-10-12T18:09:00.003+02:00

My soups are still a little hit and miss with my kids, so I thought I'd try roasting my veggie box tomatoes and a butternut squash before making soup with them. For the second entry in a row, no recipe, just a photo of some red and orange roasted veg.

C&W
In the background, I can hear "Ruby, don't take your love to town" playing on Gemma's computer. For anyone who doesn't know it, this is a song about an impotent, disabled veteran of the Vietnam War, who stays at home nursing murderous sentiments towards his wife, who has painted herself up and gone out on the town in search of some action.

Grilled vegetables

2011-10-12T17:37:00.003+02:00

With two self-employed adults and two home educated kids in the house, we get through a lot of food at home. If boredom, poverty or obesity are not to set in then we need to find some quick, cheap and healthy ways of providing three meals plus numerous snacks every day. As a result, I've been making a lot of soup, and have also rediscovered the joy of grilled vegetables. The trick, I think, is to cut them reasonably thick and to resist the temptation to overcook them, as they need to be able to withstand a day or two (or more) quietly marinating in olive oil. This time, I discovered some fresh basil in the fridge, and also added a couple of drops of raspberry vinegar.

Apple and pear chutney

2011-10-08T12:48:00.008+02:00

"Not impedimenta, sweetie. Expulso is the best!" Gemma is sitting on the sofa with her laptop, helping Sammy get to the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the Wii, Carmela is measuring herself against the doorpost to check whether she has grown in the last 3 days, and I am in the kitchen making chutney and listening to Fabrizio Andre singing Bocca di Rosa. (Si sa che la gente da buoni consigli se non piu puo dare cattivo esempio. People only give good advice when they can no longer set a bad example.)

Ingredients (makes slightly over 1 kg, enough to fill three 1 lb jars)
350ml cider vinegar
350g brown sugar
250g sultanas
4 tsps minced ginger
1kg cooking apples
400g pears
1 large onion
good pinch of salt
8 cloves
1 stick of cinnamon
20 coriander seeds
20 allspice berries

Method

Put the cloves, cinnamon, coriander seeds and allspice berries in a muslin bag.
Combine the vinegar, sugar, sultanas, ginger and salt into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, and add the spices in their bag.
Peel and roughly chop the onion, and add to the saucepan.
Core and peel the apples and pears, chop roughly, add to the saucepan and mix well.
Bring to boil, reduce heat to minimum and simmer for 1 to 2 hours, stirring frequently. When the chutney can be parted with a wooden spoon to reveal the bottom of the saucepan, it is ready.
Transfer to sterilised jars, seal and store for at least 2 weeks (longer if possible).

Apple source
The apples for this recipe came from Bernie and Bruce, the parents of Sammy and Carmela's friend, Callum. They were knobbly little things (the apples, not Bernie and Bruce) but taste great.

Taiwanese beef noodle soup

2011-09-22T14:38:00.007+02:00

I was in the butcher's today and saw what was described as "runner beef". I'm not quite sure what cut it is (should have asked) but it was cheap and looked as if it would add plenty of flavour to a soup.

When I got home, I did a bit of googling, and came up with a recipe for Taiwanese spicy beef noodle soup or niu rou mian, which I adjusted a little bit both to reflect the contents of my cupboards and in an attempt to please the delicate palates of my children.

Ingredients
vegetable oil
1 kg runner beef (or another cheap cut)
1 large leek, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp red chile bean sauce
4 tbsps rice wine
1/2 tsp five spice powder
1 tsp allspice berries
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsps light soy sauce
2 litres of water
plus
500g of broccoli, cut into bite-size pieces
250g of thick egg noodles noodles

Method

Heat a few tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large pot and brown the beef thoroughly.
Add all the remaining ingredients (except for the broccoli and noodles), bring to boil, cover and turn to minimum, and simmer gently for 2-3 hours until the meat is completely tender.
Set lid ajar and allow to cool, then strain the broth into a large bowl. Take out the beef and set aside. Discard the other contents of the strainer (spices, leeks, garlic, ginger etc.).
Return broth to pan, bring to boil, add broccoli and noodles and cook until tender.
Meanwhile, remove beef from bone, trimming off fat if required, and cut into thinnish slices.
Ladle the broth with noodles and broccoli into soup bowls, add beef slices and serve.

Three cheers for Taiwan
Apparently this is the national dish of Taiwan, and damn good it is too!

Raspberry jam

2011-09-04T13:42:00.003+02:00

We had a second trip to Craigie's Farm to pick some more strawberries, together with some raspberries (which were not yet ready on our first visit). I was really enjoying picking the raspberries at a very leisurely pace, but made the mistake of bringing four over-enthusiastic helpers with me. While I was strolling up and down between the raspberry canes, picking only the very best fruit at a rate of about one berry per minute, they were galloping through the strawberry tunnel and came back with 5 kilos of the things, no less! They then applied the same treatment to the raspberries and within half an hour we had another 5 kilos of them. "You've got to take advantage while they're in season!" they chorused. I said nothing but groaned inwardly, thinking of the little red hen and her farmyard friends. At least they hadn't actually loaded her down with industrial quantities of wheat.

Sure enough, when we got back home my 'helpers' melted away, leaving me alone in the kitchen with an unfeasible amount of soft fruit. I churned out a couple of batches of strawberry jam, and also did a large (2kg) batch of raspberry, before reluctantly freezing the remaining rasps. And the next day, trying to get at least a token contribution to the whole process, I was flatly informed that writing labels was "boring". Well, I shall label them myself: "Tim's Solo Raspberry Jam".

Ingredients
1kg fresh raspberries
1kg sugar

Method

Put a dinner plate in the freezer. Sterilise your equipment: 4 x 1 lb jars and lids or 8 x 1/2 lb ones, a ladle and a jam funnel. I sterilise the jars by washing them then placing them upside down on the oven rack, setting the oven to 140oC and keeping them there for 30 minutes or so.
Measure the sugar in to a heatproof bowl, and heat for 5 minutes or so in the oven.
Put the raspberries in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat until the juices begin to run, then add the warmed sugar.
Bring to a boil, skim, and boil for 5 minutes or so, until setting point has been reached. To test for set, drip a couple of drops of the jam onto the cold plate. Leave to cool for a few seconds. If it is ready, then the surface will wrinkle when you push the drop with your fingernail. (Or you can just stick your finger in it and see if it has a slightly sticky, jammy consistency rather than a syrupy one.)
Remove pan from heat and leave to sit for 10 minutes before ladling the jam into the sterilised jars and sealing.

Damson, greengage and apple chutney

2011-09-02T16:40:00.002+02:00

As part of my ongoing battle against the fruit mountain which has been threatening to overwhelm us, I made some chutney yesterday. The main ingredients were just what I reckoned was least likely to be eaten if I didn't cook them.

Ingredients (makes 1 kg)
500g granny smiths
250g greengages
250g damsons
8 spring onions
125g sultanas
175g brown sugar
200ml cider vinegar
good pinch of salt
4 cloves
1 stick of cinnamon
10 coriander seeds
10 allspice berries
2 slices of fresh ginger

Method

Put the spices in a muslin bag. Core and peel the apples and dice. Cut the damsons in half, removing stones if possible. (If not, remove after cooking). Cut greengages into four, removing stones. Top and tail the spring onions, and cut into 1 cm segments.
Put all the prepared fruit, the spice bag, the sugar, vinegar and salt into a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Bring to boil, reduce heat to minimum and simmer for 1 to 2 hours, stirring frequently. When the chutney can be parted with a wooden spoon to reveal the bottom of the saucepan, it is ready. Transfer to sterilised jars, seal and store for at least 2 weeks (longer if possible).

Pineapple salsa

2011-09-01T20:28:00.007+02:00

We are caught in the middle of a fruit glut at the moment. Yesterday we went to a pick your own farm and returned with 5 kg of strawberries and another 5 kg of raspberries. When we got back, our veggie box was waiting on our doorstep, brimming with apples, bananas, pears, damson and greengages, together with the usual vegetables. And when I opened the fridge to try to clear some space for them, I was confronted by a pineapple staring aggressively back at me.

I thought about making a batch of pineapple picalilli, but as I was already planning to make some chutney with the damsons and greengages, pickle the pears, and produce industrial quantities of strawberry and raspberry jam, I decided to go for something a little less labour-intensive. A bit of googling and some improvisation on my part produced this pineapple salsa.

Ingredients
1 pineapple
4 tsps of minced red chilli
4 finely chopped spring onions
3 tsps of salt
juice of 2 limes
half a large bunch of coriander (or a couple of miserly supermarket packs)

Method

Remove the skin from the pineapple, cut into quarters, remove the fibrous core, and chops the flesh into small chunks.
Combine in a large bowl with the rest of the ingredients, stir well to mix, and leave to rest for 30 minutes to allow the flavours to develop.

Okra with tomatoes and coriander

2011-08-01T23:10:00.002+02:00

Okra, bhindi, ladies' fingers - we haven't quite settled on a name, but these are one of my very favourite vegetable. In my opinion, the trick is not to overcook them, so that they have a good fresh taste, and a bit of crunch.

Ingredients
500g fresh okra
500g tomatoes
1 onion
3 tbsps vegetable oil
2 tsps minced ginger
2 tsps minced green chilli
1/2 tsps salt
half a large bunch of coriander (or 2 of those miserly packs they sell in supermarkets)

Method

Wash the okra, then top and tail them and cut them into 2-cm long segments. Slice the onion into strips. Cut the tomatoes lengthwise into 8 segments.
In a wok or large frying pan, heat the oil, and fry the onion until it starts to brown. Add the ginger and chilli, fry for a few seconds more, then add the okra, and stir-fry for 5 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and chopped coriander leaves, and fry for another 5 minutes.

Rice with peas

2011-08-01T23:01:00.002+02:00

I've been a bit lazy with my rice recently, but I thought that my mackerel tikka masala deserved a little extra effort.

Ingredients
15 fl oz of basmati rice
23 fl oz of boiled water
2 tbsps of sunflower oil
4 cloves
4 green cardamom pods
salt
generous handful of frozen peas

Method

Wash the rice in plenty of water to remove the starch, strain and transfer to a heavy-bottomed saucepan with the oil, cloves, cardamom pods, salt and boiling water.
Stir gently, cover and bring to the boil. Add the peas, put the lid back on the pan (line it with tinfoil unless it is a very tight fit), reduce heat to absolute minimum and cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

Mackerel tikka masala

2011-08-01T20:25:00.009+02:00

I cycled out to Cramond the other day, and Gemma came to meet me with the kids. For anyone who doesn't know it, Cramond is a village on the Forth estuary, just outside Edinburgh. There is a small island just off the coast, connected to it by a causeway which is only passable at low tide. As the tide was going out when we arrived, we decided to wander across. Looking down into the water by the causeway, we spotted several large mackerel which appeared to have been cut off by the retreating tide - on one side was the concrete causeway, and on the other mud flats with no obvious channel through them. Sammy and Carmela, who were already out on the mudflats, came over and guddled a couple of beautiful mackerel - each of which weighed in at exactly 12.5 oz (350 g) after gutting.

the one that didn't get away

The kids were amazed to see how the fish changed from light green when still alive to a deep purple after death, returning back to an almost turquoise hue an hour or so later. They were also intrigued by the way in which the fish gradually 'stiffened' as we made our way back along the causeway.

rigor mortis

I don't know if this is a regular occurrence or not - the only local we spotted taking part in the free feast was a grey heron, which glided in and greedily gulped down a medium-sized fish. We were a little more discreet, bringing ours home and putting them in a simple 'tikka massala' marinade before cooking them in tinfoil parcels.

Ingredients
2 large or 4 smallish mackerel - the fresher, the better!
1 pot of yoghurt
4 tablespoons of readymade tikka massala paste (or use your own mix of aromatic spices, chopped ginger, garlic and chilli)
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Method

Mix the yoghurt, tikka masala paste and oil in a bowl.
Make several slits in the sides of the gutted, cleaned mackerel, cover the mackerel with the marinade mixture and leave in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
Preheat your oven to 190oC.
Wrap each of the mackerel in tinfoil to make a baggy parcel, containing plenty of the marinade mixture. Bake for 20 minutes if your fish are large, 15 minutes if they are smaller.

marinading mackerel

plated up (if a little blurry)

down to the bones

Cramond island from the shore

Carrot, lentil and red pepper soup

2011-08-01T15:10:00.007+02:00

Since our weekly veggie box started arriving, I have been inspired to start making more soup. I've always loved soup and as a kid, I often had a tin of Baxter's soup for breakfast or lunch. Below, you can see me posing with two of my childhood favourites - cock-a-leekie and oxtail - in the Baxter's shop at the Ocean Terminal centre, in Edinburgh.

Anyway, back to the recipe. Looking into the fridge, I realised I still had 500g of carrots waiting to be used, together with a slightly wrinkly red pepper, so this is what I came up with.

Ingredients
1 large onion
1 red pepper
1 clove of garlic
olive oil
2 tsps cumin powder
500g carrots, peeled and sliced
100g red split lentils
1 litre stock
1/2 tsp of chilli sauce
salt to taste

Method

Chop the onion, red pepper and garlic, and fry gently in plenty of olive oil until the onion has softened.
Add the cumin powder and fry for a few seconds.
Add the carrots, lentils, stock and chilli sauce, bring to a boil, cover and simmer gently for 45 minutes.
Allow the soup to cool a little, blend with a stick blender, check for seasoning and add more salt if necessary. Serve with plenty of crusty bread.

Underage drinking
When I was growing up in Stirling, I would sometimes make a big pot of tomato and potato soup for me and my friends to eat when we had got back from the pub after a spot of underage drinking. There was a more or less recognised hierarchy of places where you could drink: you started off in the Allan Park, whose downstairs bar would serve 15 year olds at a pinch, while the upstairs bar was curiously a policemen's local, then graduated onto another place at 16 (whose name I have forgotten), before being ready for the trendy Barnton Bar & Bistro at 17.

Veggie box

2011-07-31T14:01:00.003+02:00

I had a brief spell of having a veggie box delivered a long time ago, but gave up bcause the quality wasn't up to scratch. The final straw, I think, were some carrots with an inedible, fibrous 'core'. However, back in Edinburgh I decided to give East Coast Organics a go. We've only had a couple of boxes, but I'm already impressed by the quality and variety. I particularly like getting small quantities of various different types of vegetable, so that I don't find myself suddenly swamped with 2 kg of celeriac, or more fennel than I know what to do with.

So far, I've been rediscovering the joys of sliced mushrooms in my salad, have perked up some saag aloo with a little fennel, and made some really good turnip and potato soup, which got a nice peppery kick and a beautiful green shade from the addition of turnip greens and a bit of chard.

Perfect popcorn

2011-07-31T12:34:00.003+02:00

I still remember the big saucepan with yellow handles that my mum used to make popcorn in, and the excitement of listening to the ears of corn exploding inside the pan. My own kids have been brought up on the microwave version, to accompany a film on the TV, to take to the beach as a snack or even to go with the latest chapter of Harry Potter.

However, Carmela came back from sleepovers with her Danish-American friend Kaya with tales of 'real' popcorn, and Kaya's dad, Jordon, holding down the lid while it cooked to prevent it from escaping, so the other day when I was stocking up on lentils and spices I also got a bag of popcorn kernels. I cooked the first batch in a lightly oiled pan, but the result was not a success - a mixture of burnt and unexploded kernels - so I did a quick google search and came up with the following method (originally posted by Elise, on Simply Recipes). It works by using 3 or 4 'test' kernels to check that the temperature is right, then a short resting period so that all the kernels are at the same temperature before you start cooking them. The result is perfectly cooked popcorn, with no burnt or unexploded kernels.

Ingredients
1/3 cup of popcorn
3 tbsps of vegetable oil (use one with a high smoke point)
salt to taste

Method

In a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan, heat the oil. When it is quite hot, put 3 or 4 popcorn kernels in, cover the pan, and wait for them to pop. Once they have popped, add the rest of the popcorn in an even layer, remove pan from heat and count 30 seconds.
Return pan to heat, with lid very slightly ajar to allow any steam to escape, shoogle gently to distribute the corn, and cook until the interval between pops slows to a few seconds (sniper fire, rather than automatic). Serve.

Pickled cucumbers with dill, garlic and horseradish

2011-07-29T20:35:00.004+02:00

The two large jars of cucumbers I pickled last week were so good that they have already disappeared, so it was back to my local Polish deli for more supplies. Along with a couple of kilos of pickling cucumbers, I got a bundle consisting of some dried, stalks of bolted dill, a head of garlic, and a length of dried horseradish.

Ingredients
2 kg of pickling cucumbers
4 cloves of garlic
dried bolted dill stalks
6-inch piece of horseradish root
1500 ml of boiling water
3 tbsps of salt
3 tbsps of sugar
12 tbsps of cider vinegar

Method

Sterilise 4 good-sized pickling jars, with their lids.
Allow to cool a little, then pack the cucumbers into them.
Into each jar, place 1 peeled garlic clove, a 1-inch piece of horseradish root, and 3 or 4 lengths of dill stalk.
Dissolve the salt and sugar in the boiling water, and add the vinegar.
Pour the pickling liquid over the cucumbers, seal the jars and store for 2 days at room temperature and at least 1 week in the fridge.

Passing
I don't know why, but I felt rather pleased when the shop assistant in the deli addressed me in Polish, even though I think she was just asking me to get out of the way so she could get back to the till.

Strawberry jam

2011-07-29T18:49:00.007+02:00

I've been wanting to make jam for ages - it seems the natural accompaniment to my bread baking and pickling exploits - so we all headed off to Craigie's "pick your own" farm out by South Queensferry. Before going, I'd checked my recipe books, and trusty Darina Allen of the Ballymaloe Cookery School had assured me that raspberry jam was the best for beginners, as strawberry jam could be a bit tricky. But when we arrived at the farm, there was barely a raspberry in sight. I was doubly disappointed: not only was I not going to be able to make my "beginners' jam", I was also going to have to bend for strawberries (raspberries grow on canes, so you can pick them standing, whereas strawberries are found underneath very low bushes).

We headed off to the strawberry fields, and I was soon cheered up by the realisation that I could actually pick the strawberries while lying down, popping the odd one into my mouth as I went. This is my kind of farming! After about an hour, of hard, supine labour, we had almost 3 kilos of little, ripeish strawberries. (For jam, it's important that your fruit is not overripe or bruised.)

Back in the kitchen, I checked my recipes again, but Darina Allen was prescribing redcurrant juice and more lemons than I had, so it was time to google. After a bit of searching, I finally hit upon Sophie Grigson on the BBC. I had all the ingredients, the recipe seemed nice and easy to follow, and best of all I had to leave the strawberries soaking in sugar overnight, which got me off the hook of actually making the jam that evening.

Ingredients
1 kg of unblemished, ripe(ish) strawberries [weight after preparation]
1 kg of caster sugar
juice of 1 lemon
small knob of butter

Method

Remove the stalks from your strawberries. Cut larger fruit into halves or quarters; leave very smal ones whole. Put the fruit into a large bowl, add 500g of sugar, cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight.
The next day, put a plate in your freezer (you will need this to test the setting point) and sterilise your jars and any other equipment as follows: wash well, rinse, place upside down on a rack in your oven, heat the oven to 140oC, and once it has reached temperature, keep there for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, put the strawberry and sugar mixture into a very large saucepan (or a jam pan, if you have one), add the remaining 500g of sugar and the lemon juice and stir very well, over a low heat until all the sugar is dissolved.
Turn the heat up and bring to a boil. If you have a cooking thermomenter, once the temperature reaches 105 oC, you can start testing for the setting point, as follows: drip a couple of drops of the jam 'juice' onto the cold plate. Leave to cool for a few seconds. If it is ready, then the surface will wrinkle when you push the drop with your fingernail. (Or you can just stick your finger in it and see if it has a slightly sticky, jammy consistency rather than a syrupy one.) It may take a good 20 minutes of boiling to reach the setting point; keep testing at regular intervals and make sure you don't overcook it.
When your jam has reached setting point, turn off the heat, stir in a small piece of butter, skim off any scum on the top, and allow to sit for 10 minutes.
Ladle the jam into the sterilised jars (using a jam funnel if you have one), cover with a wax lid, and put a lid on the jar while still hot.

sterilising

soaking strawbs

Pick your own: strawberries and fresh camomile tea

2011-07-29T14:34:00.004+02:00

We went strawberry picking the other day, to Craigie's Farm, near South Queensferry (just a few miles outside of Edinburgh). I have fond memories of occasional fruit picking as a child (I suspect I only did it once or twice), and have been meaning to take the kids for ages. We almost didn't go, as there was a family meltdown around lunchtime, but when we finally got there (at about 4 o'clock) everyone agreed that it had been worth the effort. The raspberries canes were pretty scarcely populated, but the strawberries were a bit thicker on the ground - although we still needed to do a fair bit of searching. It was fun, though, lying around on the straw rooting around between the strawberry plants and handpicking the small but perfect fruit. Although my main aim was to make some jam, after we had sorted through the fruit, we had plenty left over for good old strawberries and cream.

Carmela dressed up in her school uniform to eat hers. (This is what home educated children do when their lives don't seem quite grey enough or when they're just tired of the stress of having to choose their own clothes!)

And we had also found some camomile growing around the strawberry fields, so we picked some of that and made some fresh camomile tea, which to my mind was much better and less 'grassy' tasting than the dried version.

Polish-style pickled cucumbers

2011-07-27T21:41:00.005+02:00

When I left Edinburgh, the Polish influx was just getting started. Six years later, the Polish community is well and truly established, and is served both by a number of specialist Polish delis and by little Polish sections in most supermarkets and convenience stores. The other day, I was heading for the Chinese supermarket when I stopped into my nearest Polish shop. My eyes were instantly drawn to a couple of big baskets of very fresh looking pickling cucumbers, and I supplemented some of these with a bag of fresh dill.

Ingredients
12 pickling cucmbers (between 8 and 15 cm in length)
500 ml of boiling water
1 tbsps of salt
1 tbsp of sugar
4 tbsps of good quality cider or white wine vinegar
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
8 sprigs of fresh dill

Method

Put the water, salt and sugar in a pan. Bring gently to a boil, stirring so that the salt and sugar are dissolved, turn off, add the vinegar and allow to cool a little.
Clean the cucmbers and distribute them between 2 large or 3 medium-sized sterilized jars. Add the garlic and fresh dill, pour the pickling solution over the cucumbers so that they are completely covered, and seal the jars.
Keep at room temperature for 2 days, then store in the fridge for 1 week. The cucumbers are now ready to eat - they should taste fresh and cruncy.

In a pickle
I have a long-standing if rather intermittent love affair with pickling. I first pickled things when I was at university - peppers, cucumbers, onions, eggs (lots of eggs!) and even an octopus. I have particularly fond memories of the octopus. It was truly delicious - simmered in vinegar with plenty of herbs and some delicate spices, then preserved in oil and left to mature for 6 weeks. Shortly before making it I had been out flyposting for a CND rally (summer of 1985) and me and my friend Angus were spotted and threatened by the local criminals who, unknown to us, controlled the flyposting business in south Manchester. When I got home feeling a little shaken, I remembered the octopus in my fridge and decided to do some therapeutic cephalopod preservation.

White sourdough with oatflakes and rye

2011-07-18T01:30:00.003+02:00

I finally have a loaf of which I am truly proud. Plenty of oven bounce, beautifully opened slashes, a good crust, and a nice light feel to it.

The secret? A year's worth of hard work perfecting my technique, a few vital bits of kit, a lovingly nurtured sourdough starter, and a decent oven.

Dehydrating sourdough starter (2): Cadiz to Edinburgh

2011-06-25T11:37:00.006+02:00

Having said that perdices en escabeche would be my past gaditano blogpost before heading for Scotland, I realised that I still had to dry my sourdough starter: another year, another big bag of white powder in my suitcase. Last year, I followed the instructions in Bertinet's book, Crust, but a year of intensive sourdough baking later, I feel confident enough to push out on my own. The result is dryer, and easier to process.

Ingredients
1 part sourdough starter (60% hydration)
1 part strong white flour

Method

Weigh out however much starter you want to preserve. Add the same quantity of flour, mix well, and transfer the whole mixture to a food processor. Whizz until the starter has the texture of fine breadcrumbs. (If your original starter is wetter than 60% hydration, you will need to add correspondingly more flour.)
Spread the mixture out on a large baking tray, lined with ovenproof paper. If your oven is sensitive, then set it to minimum (no more than 50oC) and 'bake' your starter for a couple of hours, until it is completely dry. If you don't trust your oven not to kill your starter, then heat it to minimum, then turn it off and leave the door ajar before putting the mixture into it.

Rehydration

To reydrate, weigh your dehydrated starter, then add 25% of the total weight in water. (So, if you have 400g of starter then add 100g of water.) Mix well, place bag inside a plastic bag and leave at room temperature for 2 days, by which time it should be smell a bit yoghurty and show plenty of signs of life. If there is a layer of liquid on top, pour this away.
Double the mixture by feeding with 3 parts water to 5 parts flour. (So if your total mixture before feeding weighs 520g, you will need to add 195g of water and 325g of flour. If you're struggling with the maths, divide your total weight of starter by 8. Then multiply the result by 3 for the amount of water to add, and multiply by 5 for the amount of flour.) Mix very well - it's easiest if you add the water first, leave to sit for 30 minutes, stir well with a fork, then add the flour and mix in thoroughly with a spoon. Return the bowl to the bag, leave at room temperature for another day. The starter should now be ready to use.

Levante
I didn't actually use the oven-drying method for this, as our last week in Cadiz has coincided with a sustained spell of levante. For anyone who is not up on gaditano wind terminology, the levante is the hot, dry wind which blows from the east. Its opposite number, is the wetter, cooller poniente, which blows in off the Atlantic. These two winds, blowing backwards and forwards along the Strait of Gibraltar, are the defining feature of Cadiz's weather system. At its worst, the levante is a bit like being followed around by an invisible stalker with a hairdryer, although it has its uses. It's good for drying clothes, for a start, and it helps us to appreciate an Edinburgh "summer". And it's also perfect for dehydrating sourdough starter.

Partridges stewed in oil and vinegar

2011-06-24T13:15:00.004+02:00

The other day Gemma came back from the market with a little bag containing three frozen partridges which our butcher had persuaded her to buy. We were already in pre-removals stage, the house was full of boxes and the store cupboards were running bare, but fortunately we still had the basic ingredients for a Spanish classic: perdices en escabeche.

Ingredients
4 partridges
2 large onions
4 cloves of garlic
6 bay leaves
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
250 ml olive oil
150 ml balsamic vinegar
200 ml water
1 tsp salt

Method

Cut the partridges in half lengthwise, remove any stubborn feathers that may remain on the legs or wings, and clean thoroughly. In a large pan, brown the partridge halves well on both sides, and remove.
Slice the onions crosswise into rings, and slice the garlic. Pour the oil into a large saucepan, fry the onion and garlic gently, then add the browned partridges together with any juices which have accumulated, and add the herbs, vinegar, oil and salt.
Cover the pan, bring to a simmer, reduce to minimum and cook for 1.5 hours.
The partridges can be served hot, but I think they are actually best eaten cold a couple of days later - perfect for a posh picnic.

Happily ever after
This seemed like the perfect dish on which to end the Cadiz stage of my blog. Spanish fairytales end "y fueron felices y comieron perdices", which translates literally as "and they were happy and ate partridges". We are now heading back to Scotland for the foreseeable future, so this isn't so much the end of one story as the start of a new one, but I think the sentiment still applies.

Orange and cinnamon scones

2011-06-17T11:00:00.004+02:00

My daughter, Carmela, is a very independent 7-year-old, and this week she has exercised her autonomy by making pancakes with chocolate on a daily basis. This is great, but has had a devastating effect on our chocolate supplies. As a result, when I set out to make chocolate scones yesterday, I realised that we were all out of the brown stuff. My usual alternative is raisins, but there were none of them either, and the third option - plain - was ruled out by my son, Sammy. So I scratched my head, opened the fridge and saw a big bag of oranges staring back at me, and thought "Why not?"

Ingredients (makes 8 scones)
300g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
85 g caster sugar
75 g margarine
160g milk
zest of 1 orange

Method

Preheat the oven to 180oC and line a large oven tray with baking paper.
Measure the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar into a large bowl, mix well, add the margarine and rub together lightly between your fingertips until it has the texture of breadcrumbs.
Add the milk and orange zest, mix well until it comes together, tip onto a well-floured surface and divide into 8 pieces. Roughly shape each piece into a ball, place on the baking tray and bake for 12 minutes.

Feedjits and tubes

2011-06-08T11:06:00.000+02:00

I sometimes wonder if there is a little Scottish gremlin buried away in the heart of the worldwide web. YouTube may be a video sharing site, but in my childhood a tube was an idiot. And talking of idiots, I have now added Feedjit to my blog. (Somewhere on the right, near the bottom.) Whenever I see the name, I can't help thinking of the word eejit, the colloquial Scottish pronunciation of idiot.

Anyway, it's reassuring to see confirmation that people other than myself and close friends actually visit my sight. And intriguing to see that my recipe for saag aloo seems to be my most popular page. (Yes, I know I could get proper site stats for this, but this is much more fun.) There are over 200 recipes on my blog at the moment, but whenever I have looked at feedjit recently, at least one of the last 5 visitors has been checking out my ways with spinach and potato.

It's also a little daunting at times. This morning, together with the saag aloo crowd, there was one visitor from Taiwan and another from Malaysia both ogling my recipe for sweet and sour pigs' trotters (one of my very first entries).

Sometimes I get a little paranoid at the thought that there may be people sniggering at my efforts on the other side of the globe, but I also get a kick out of the possibility that somebody in Japan might be following my recipe to make chocolate scones for their kids, or that a sexy French lady might be seducing her lover with some juicy Scotch pancakes instead of their oh-so-flat Gallic counterparts.

Baguettes

2011-06-06T20:56:00.001+02:00

This recipe and method comes more or less straight from Bread cetera, whose author Steve derived it in turn from a recipe on another blog called Au Levain, whose author was in turn describing a method used by another baker ... This is what happens to great recipes. They get passed around, adapted and tweaked a little to reflect preferences, improvements, personal laziness, local conditions or whatever. Anyway, here is my version of it.

Ingredients

dough
500g strong white flour
325g warm water
10g salt
1/4 tsp instant yeast

2nd hydration
50g warm water

Measure 325g of water into a large bowl, add the salt and mix well. Add the flour and the instant yeast, and mix thoroughly until all the flour is incorporated. Place the bowl inside a large plastic bag and leave to stand for 30 minutes.
Transfer the dough onto a non-porous surface, and work by hand for 15 minutes using the stretch and slap technique.
Return dough to the bowl and add the remaining 50g of water. Do 8 stretch-and-folds at 15 minutes for 1 hour, placing the bowl inside a large plastic bag between stretch-and-folds. At the end of this period, all the water should be incorporated and the dough should be very loose.
Transfer the bowl (still inside its bag) to the fridge and leave overnight.
The next day, remove the dough from the fridge and allow to warm to room temperature for 1 hour. Prepare two long proving baskets by lining them with well-floured cloths. Turn the oven on to 240oC.
Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two pieces. Form each piece into a shortish batard (To do this, I form it into a boule, then flatten a little to form a rough rectangle, fold the ends in towards the middle, then repeat with the sides, before folding the whole thing in on itself. It all sounds a little complicated but is really quite simple. I have a video of it here.) Leave to rest for 5 minutes, refold the long edges of the batard into the centre, pinch the seams, then roll until it is the length of your proving basket.
Put the proving baskets inside a large plastic bag, and allow to prove at room temperature for 1 hour. Transfer the proved dough to a peel, score, and transfer to oven . Bake for 20 minutes.

Loaf of the day: white sourdough with polenta and spelt

2011-06-06T20:54:00.002+02:00

I am having a lot of fun just adding extra ingredients to my basic white sourdough. Today I tried polenta. First off, I just tipped some coarse polenta into the mix, but as I was working the dough it dawned on me that this was a bad idea and would produce a loaf with lots of gritty bits of uncooked maize grain in it. So I reluctantly ditched my batch of dough (ouch - over 1 kg of flour!) and started again, cooking the polenta first. The polenta soaked up a lot of water (4 times its own weight) so I had to adjust as I went along, because I wasn't sure what how much of the water from the polenta would be released back out into the dough. A fair bit, I reckon, so I ended up adding more flour to counter it.

Ingredients
for the polenta
100g polenta
400g boiling water

for the dough
620g warm water
300g sourdough starter (60% hydration)
100g spelt flour
860g strong white flour
25g salt

Method

Mix the polenta and boiling water in a large non-metallic bowl, then cook by microwaving for 4 minutes, stir, and microwave for a further 4 minutes. Spread the polenta on a plate and allow to cool.
Dissolve the starter in a large bowl of warm water, add the spelt and white flour and the coolled polenta and mix very well. Leave to stand for 30 minutes under plastic.
Transfer to a non-porous surface, work for 5 minutes, add salt and work for 10 more minutes.
Return to bowl, cover and leave for 2 hours.
Transfer to a well-floured surface, work briefly to degass, shape into two largeish boules or batards, and leave to rise in proving basket until almost doubled. 1 hour before baking, preheat the oven to 240oC.
Score the loaves, transfer to a preheated tray in the hot oven and spray. After 5 minutes, turn tray through 180 degrees, spray again, reduce heat to 220oC and bake for a further 20 minutes.
Cool on a wire rack.

Polenta workout
This loaf requires some effort - to work it, you will be hefting nearly 2.5 kg of moist dough. But think of how much you will save in gym fees. Just look at what it did for me:

Hot cross buns

2011-06-06T19:37:00.000+02:00

One way of celebrating Easter is to dress up in a Ku Klux Klan costume and march around the street in the middle of the night carrying a giant statue of the Virgin Mary to the accompaniment of a discordant brass band:

Or you can just make some Hot Cross Buns:

Ingredients

Dough
400g warm milk
2 tbsps brown sugar
1 tsp of salt
2 tsps mixed spice (or make your own mixture: I use 1 teaspoon of ginger, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and some crushed cloves)
150g large raisins
zest of 1 lemon
3 tbsps sunflower oil
1 egg
600g white flour
1.5 teaspoons of instant yeast

For the glaze 100g light brown sugar
100g water

Method

Measure the milk into a large bowl. Add the sugar, salt, mixed spice, raisins, lemon zest, sunflower oil and 1 egg, and whisk to mix.
Add the flour and yeast, mix well with a spoon so that all the flour is incorporated, put the bowl inside a plastic bag and leave to stand for 30 minutes.
Transfer the dough to a non-porous surface, and work by hand for 10 minutes. Return the dough to the bowl, place and leave to stand for 2 hours at room temperature.
Transfer the dough to a wel-floured, non-porous surface, give it a couple of stretch and folds to degas it, then divide into 12 portions. Form each portion into a small boule, and place on a greased baking sheet. Place the sheet inside a large plastic bag, making sure that the plastic is not in contact with the dough.
Set the oven to 190°C.
To make the glaze, mix the brown sugar and water, and heat gently until all the sugar has dissolved to form a very runny syrup.
After the buns have been rising for about 45 minutes, remove them from the bag and glaze with plenty of the syrup.
Place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Apply another coat of glaze, turn the tray through 180 degrees, and continue baking for 10 more minutes until the buns are golden brown.
Remove the buns from the oven, apply a third coat of glaze and eat hot or leave to cool on a wire rack.

Update
I first made these a couple of years ago, back in the days when I was still making the transition from bread machine to working my dough by hand, and when I had yet to discover the joys of higher hydration doughs.The old version tasted great, but these are much lighter and the dough is definitely better.

Scotch pancakes

2011-06-03T11:10:00.003+02:00

After many years of staunchly preferring thin English pancakes or French-style crepes, my kids have suddenly flipped over and been converted to the juicy wonders of Scotch pancakes (or fat pancakes, as they call them). This is the recipe they use.

Ingredients
200g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
300g milk
2 eggs
1 tsp vegetable oil

Method

Sift the flour into a large bowl. Add the baking powder and salt, mix well, add the milk, eggs and vegetable oil and whisk until you have a smooth, thick batter. Leave to stand for 5 minutes, until the surface is covered with little bubbles.
Heat a lightly oiled, non-stick frying pan. When it is hot, pour half a ladle of pancake batter into it and cook for between 30 seconds and 1 minute. Flip over, and cook for another 30 seconds or so.
Serve with the topping of your choice (melted chocolate, honey or just some butter).

Fried forest oysters

2011-05-30T10:20:00.003+02:00

I love the big oyster or similar mushrooms (sold as 'setas' in Spain) but I'm never quite sure what to do with them, other than grilling or frying them with garlic. Recently, however, as part of our family's River Cottage addiction, I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall breading and frying some wild mushrooms, and thought I would give it a try. The result was great - there was a really good contrast between the juicy mushroom and the crispy coating, and none of the bitterness you sometimes get with mushrooms - all of which just confirms the value of the motto: "when in doubt, fry it".

Dragon balls and lion's heads
I also like the fact that these look exactly like the pollo empanado or breaded chicken fillets, so beloved by Spaniards. And so, in the best spirit of Chinese restaurant menus everywhere, I have dubbed them fried forest oysters. (Thanks to Madalen for helping me working out what they were - see comments below. I am a complete mushroom ignoramus, so anything beyond a button mushroom has me stumped!)

Ingredients
0.25 kg oyster mushrooms
4 eggs
plenty of dried breadcrumbs
salt
olive oil for frying

Method
Wipe the mushrooms clean, remove any woody bits of stalk and trim the ends if the mushrooms are not in tip-top condition, then cut each mushroom lengthewise into 2 or 3 wide strips. Dip the mushrooms in egg, then breadrcrumbs and fry in plenty of olive oil until golden and crispy on both sides. Remove to a plate, sprinkle with plenty of salt, and serve.

Portion control
The oyster mushrooms are light and soak up a lot of egg (in their gills) and breadcrumbs, so 1/4 kg goes quite a long way and would be a reasonable main course for two hungry adults or a starter for four.

A taste of Serbia
I sometimes have a quick google to see if something I have come up with is already out there. I've been gratified so far to find that my rabbit dhansak and snail pakora are unique creations, but it's also nice when the opposite happens. Apparently breaded oyster mushrooms are popular in Serbia, where they go by the name of Pohovane bukovače. Not a lot of people know that!

Meatloaf and unschooling

2011-05-25T20:48:00.000+02:00

Although one of the things I love about cooking is the way it connects up with everything else in life, on my blog I've tried to keep my main focus on food. However, sometimes other things shoulder their way in and demand my attention.

For those of you who don't know, apart from cooking and working as a freelance translator, I also (together with my partner Gemma) home educate my kids. But 'home educate' is not really the right phrase. We don't do lessons, or curriculum planning or any of that kind of stuff. What we do is generally referred to as 'unschooling', and the core belief is that if you treat kids with respect, give them freedom, respond to their natural curiosity, and share your own curiosity and enthusiasms with them, then they will learn and be happy. No need for school, lessons, textbooks, curriculums, exams or any of the rest of it. This doesn't just apply to the educational side of things. (How absurd, anyway, to suggest that education and learning should or even can be separated off from the rest of life!) It also means giving your children as much freedom as you possibly can to decide what they do and when they do it. (And, yes, that does extend to allowing them to decide when they go to bed.)

One of the many things that strikes me as so wrong about school is that learning is packaged up into units or courses or years and that you can't follow your interests or curiosity. A small example. Carmela's best friend is Kaya, who is Danish-American. The fact of her being half-Danish sparked an interest in Vikings (expressed through dressing up as Vikings and asking what Viking houses were like). If Carmela had been at school, she would just have to have hoped that her interest in Vikings coincided with Vikings being on the menu that term (or rather, that week). And that the teacher or syllabus designer had decided to include the things that she was actually interested in. And then allowed her to stop when she didn't want to do any more.

Another problem with organized, formal learning is that you can't pursue tangents (or at least not very far). Well, this recipe came at the end of a long tangent that started with "Bat out of hell" and ended (a few days later) with me and Sammy cooking meatloaf in the kitchen. The original recipe can be found here, although we did a bit of kitchen improvization and also jazzed it up a little. (Rather mysteriously, the version on the BBC Good Food blog prescriptively requires "a 500g pack of minced pork". Does the pork have to be in a pack? And can you use half of a 1kg pack or 2 x 250g packs?)

Ingredients (enough for two meatloafs)
1 kg minced pork
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
large handful of parsley
2 teaspoons of dried oregano
2 eggs
200g fresh white breadcrumbs (remove the crusts from the bread and whizz in a food processor)
1 tsp salt
streaky bacon (enough to line two loaf tins, plus 4 extra rashers)
spices (see step 4 below)

Method

Set your oven to 180oC.
Peel, finely chop and fry the onion and garlic.
Put the pork, herbs, egg, breadcrumbs and salt in a large bowl, together with the fried onion and garlic, and 4 rashers of finely chopped streaky bacon. (As I'm in Spain at the moment, I substituted chicharrones especiales for the bacon, which is a bit like a Spanish version of finely sliced pancetta.)
At this point I divided the mixture into two. I put 2 teaspoons of paprika into one of the portions, and Sammy put 1 tsp of garam masala and 1 tsp of chilli powder into the other one.
Line two loaf tins with the bacon, and fill each with the mixture.
Place the loaf tins in a large, high-sided baking tray, fill with boiling water until it comes about halfway up the tins, and bake for 50 minutes.
Remove tray from oven and allow the loaves to cool in the tin for 10 minutes or so. Pour off any excess liquid and turn out onto a plate.

A final thought
Whenever I hear the phrase, "you took the words right out of my mouth", I can't help thinking of the next line in the Meatloaf song: "it must have been while you were kissing me". And this in turn always sparks the rather unappetising question: was Meatloaf actually eating some meatloaf at the time? I guess not, because otherwise the song would be "you took the mince right out of my mouth". No half-chewed mince visible here, thankfully.

Loaf of the day: Islay white sourdough with oat flakes and spelt

2011-04-11T13:10:00.001+02:00

It's quite hard to transmit my passion for bread into words. The ingredients, proportions etc. don't vary that much from one loaf to another, and although there are a range of techniques, I make most of my bread in the same way. On top of that, there's the problem of describing the technique for working the dough which lies at the centre of all my bread recipes. I can write about it as much as I like, but it feels a bit like writing instructions for how to ride a bicycle. The only way to do it is to get on, fall off, and keep getting back on until you can do it. Sometimes, though, there's a little story behind the ingredients, and that was the case here.

I was talking to a friend of mine about restaurants on Islay, and this started me thinking about what bread would go well with hearty soups and would somehow reflect an Islay setting, and so I decided to chuck some oatflakes into my basic white sourdough. Then, the other day, I thought I'd add some spelt flour too and the result was really good: a beautiful light, soft loaf which was also tasty and had a good texture.

Spelt
Spelt flour is always described as "being used by the Romans", but archaeological work on lake dwellings or crannogs from Iron Age Scotland shows that spelt was actually being cultivated there long before the Romans arrived, so it felt right to add it to my Islay bread, especially as every loch on the place seems to have a little crannog island on it.

Ingredients
620g warm water
300g white sourdough starter (60%)
100g oat flakes
100g white spelt flour
700g white wheat flour
20g (4 tsps) salt

Method

Mix all the ingredients except the salt, place bowl inside a bag and leave to stand for 30 minutes.
Work the dough by hand for 5 minutes, add the salt, and continue working for a further 10 minutes.
Return dough to a bowl, place inside bag and leave to stand for 1 hour at room temp. Remove dough from bowl, do 8 stretch and folds, return to bowl and leave to stand for a further hour.
Divide dough into portions depending on the size of loaf required (I have been dividing it into 4 and making small batards), shape and leave to prove in a well-floured basket until doubled. Preheat the oven to 240oC.
Score the loaf, transfer to a hot baking tray, spray the surface lightly with water.
After 5 minutes, turn the loaf through 180 degrees, spray again, reduce oven to 220oC and continue baking for a further 10 to 15 minutes depending on the size of the loaf.
Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Homemade baked beans

2011-04-09T23:08:00.004+02:00

I got back from a great day at the beach and, although Gemma had supper in hand, my creative juices were flowing so I decided to have a bash at making my own baked beans. (I can buy the Heinz variety here, but they are fiendishly expensive and my gastronome kids refuse to eat them anyway.)

Kitchen impro
I wanted something that was sweet, salty and a little spicy, and this was what I came up with. I was pretty pleased, as it was exactly what I had been aiming for. Like all my best kitchen improvisations, I started with a clear idea of what I wanted the final dish to be like, then paused for a few minutes and thought about how to get there. A lot of perfectly competent cooks rarely improvise, and I think part of the reason why is because they get stuck between two extremes: carefully following a time-honoured recipe, or more or less randomly throwing together whatever ingredients they happen to find in their fridge and cupboard. Of course, if you take the second approach then nine times out of ten what you produce will barely be worth eating and you will slink chastened back to your cookbooks, but the solution is just to gather your thoughts before you get going and to think about how the ingredients you use will combine together.

Ingredients
olive oil
2 small onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
4 tsps paprika
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp hot chilli sauce
1 tsp salt
2 tbsps dark soy sauce
2 tbsps honey
3-4 tins of cannellini beans (1200g drained weight)

Method

Chop the onion very finely and fry gently in plenty of olive oil. When the onion is done, add the peeled, finely chopped garlic cloves and continue to fry until the onions are just starting to brown.
Add the chopped tomatoes, paprika, ginger, chilli sauce and salt, bring to a boil, turn to minimum, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
Add the soy sauce, honey and drained beans, cover and cook at minimum for another 10 minutes or so.

To complete my 'homemade' feeling, I decanted my beans into jars.

English pancakes

2011-04-09T22:59:00.001+02:00

I've given up trying to convince the rest of my family of the superiority of Scottish over English pancakes (which, needless to say, are really French anyway). These are the ones Carmela makes for breakfast, although once the first pancake has been plated up she disappears to the living room (at the other end of the house) and leaves me in the kitchen tending to the frying pan.

Ingredients
2 cups of milk
1 cup of plain flour
2 eggs
vegetable oil for frying

Method

Pour the milk into a large bowl. Sift the flour on top and mix well with a whisk. Add the egg, and whisk again until you have a smooth batter. (Don't whisk for too long, though, or your pancakes will become rubbery.)
Heat a large, non-stick frying pan. When it is hot, add a couple of spoons of vegetable oil, swirl it around to coat the pan, and pour off the excess oil into a cup.
Pour a ladle of the pancake batter into the pan, swirl around so it is evenly distributed, and cook over a high heat for a minute or so until it is golden.
Flip over, cook for another 30 seconds or so, and serve with the topping of your choice - lemon and honey, melted chocolate, or just plain sugar.

Perfect pizza

2011-04-04T19:45:00.000+02:00

There is a lot of mystique around pizza - wood-fired ovens, special blends of Italian flour and so on - and while all of these things no doubt help, the key to a good pizza is a well-made dough.

It should be light, so the hydration or proportion of water to flour needs to be reasonably high. And the dough needs time to develop so that the characteristic blisters will form while baking. Finally, while wood is not essential, you do need a hot oven. You can achieve this with any domestic oven so long as it is completely hot, you have a reasonably heavy duty oven tray, and you don't try to cook more than one pizza at a time. Though I say it myself, this pizza was better than anything I have ever bought in Cadiz, and that includes two Italian-owned establishments which pride themselves on authenticity, and a third locally-run effort which boasts a wood-fired oven but whose dough was so lifeless that I suspected it had spent a few nights in the morgue.

Ingredients (makes 4 large pizzas)

480g warm water
750g strong white flour
2 tsps instant yeast
3 tsps salt (15g)
15g olive oil
toppings of your choice - sieved tomato, olive oil, artichokes etc.

Method

Measure the water into a large bowl. Add the flour, yeast, salt and olive oil and mix very thoroughly so that all the flour is fully incorporated.
Place the bowl inside a large plastic bag and leave to stand for at least 30 minutes at room temperature.
Transfer the dough onto a clean, non-porous surface and work by hand using the stretch and slap method for 15 minutes, until your dough is smooth and silky. Do not add any flour.
Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled tupperware, close and leave overnight in fridge.
1 hour before you want to bake, turn your oven on to 250oC, and put a solid metal baking tray in the oven, near the top. Remove the dough from the fridge.
After 1 hour, turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface, divide into four portions, and four each portion into a small boule.
Gradually roll the boule into a flat disc, giving it a quarter turn or flipping it as necessary to ensure it doesn't stick and is a reasonably even circle. Flour your hands, the rolling pin and the surface as you go if necessary, but take care not to add more than you really need.
Transfer the pizza base to a peel or cookie sheet sprinkled with flour. (I have to admit I use a SuperPeel for this.)
Quickly put the topping on the base Resist the temptation to overdo the tomato or mozarella. Two to three tablespoons of tomato is plenty for a 14-inch pizza.)
Open the oven, sprinkle a little fine polenta on the hot baking tray, transfer the pizza onto the tray and close the oven door. Bake for 5 minutes and serve.

Carmela's BBQ chicken kebabs

2011-04-04T18:58:00.000+02:00

As Sammy has his own kebab recipe, I thought it only fair that Carmela should have one too, so this is what we came up with. We took these camping with us and we didn't get any shots of the food, but I did catch Carmela loosing off an arrow.

Ingredients
1 kg skinless chicken breast
4 tbsps tomato sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp sesame oil

Method

Cut the chicken into chunks.
Mix the tomato sauce, soy sauce, honey and sesame oil together.
Pour over the chicken pieces, mix well and leave to marinade (anything from 30 minutes to overnight).
Preheat the oven to 220oC, and line an oven tray with lightly greased foil.
Thread the chicken pieces onto skewers, and cook in the hot oven for 12 minutes.

Thrice-tweaked scones

2011-03-26T18:47:00.001+01:00

I've been making scones with Sammy for a while and over time he has gradually taken over more and more of the process, and also introduced a few little improvements of his own. Here is the (for now) definitive version.

Ingredients
300g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
50g caster sugar
75g margarine
160ml milk
100g very dark chocolate

Method

Heat the oven to 200 C.
Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a large bowl. Add the sugar and stir in with a spoon.
Cut the margarine into pieces, and add to the flour and sugar mixture, rubbing it in until it is the texture of breadcrumbs.
Bash the chocolate bar with a rolling pin until thoroughly broken.
Add the milk and the chocolate pieces to the flour, sugar and margarine, mixing in with a spoon and then with your (well-floured!) hands until it comes together to form a ball.
Transfer the dough to a well-floured surface and cut into 8 pieces.
Form each piece into a fat, rough disk. Don't try to make it too perfect - cracks and folds will help add texture to the finished scone.
Place the rounds on a lightly greased tray.
Bake for 12 minutes, until golden brown.
Serve warm or allow to cool on a rack.

Sammy's chicken kebabs

2011-03-25T17:35:00.000+01:00

Sammy and Carmela are gradually doing more and more cooking, and right now this is Sammy's favourite thing to do with chicken.

Ingredients
1 kg skinless chicken breast
juice of 1/2 lemon
6 tbsps of natural yoghurt
2 tbsps of chickpea flour
1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt

Method

Cut the chicken into chunks, put in a bowl and mix well with the lemon juice.
Mix the yoghurt and the chickpea flour, then add the ginger, garlic, spices and salt, and mix well. Pour over the chicken pieces, mix well and leave to marinade (anything from 30 minutes to overnight).
Preheat the oven to 220oC, and line an oven tray with lightly greased foil.
Thread the chicken pieces onto skewers, and cook in the hot oven for 12 minutes.

Chicken curry with cardamom

2011-03-25T17:23:00.001+01:00

This year I finally bit the bullet and brought back a whole suitcase of spices from Edinburgh to Cadiz: garam masala, ground coriander, curry powder, chilli powder, black mustard seeds, cardamom, fenugreek ... Appropriately enough, they are kept in a medicine cabinet in our kitchen.

This recipe comes from a little Madhur Jaffrey book that I bought over Christmas and which has been part of my "one curry a week" drive. I made it with Sammy last Saturday morning, together with a vast quantity of rice, which turned out to be fortuitous as about 30 minutes later our friends James and Monica phoned and I felt happy to invite them round for lunch, knowing that I had a big pot of curry and rice on the go.

Ingredients
stage 1: marinade
1 whole chicken, skinned and jointed
1 onion
2-inch piece of ginger
2 garlic cloves
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp black pepper

stage 2: curry
vegetable oil
1 onion
2 cinnamon sticks
16 cardamom pods
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
100g natural yoghurt
2 tomatoes, finely chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garam masala
juice of 1 lemon
150ml water

Method

Marinade: Peel and roughly chop the onion, and chop finely in a food processor with the garlic, ginger, chilli powder and black pepper. In a large bowl, mix the chicken pieces and the onion and spice mixture, cover and leave for anything from 30 minutes to overnight.
Curry: Peel and finely slice the second onion, fry gently in a large saucepan until they start to brown. Add the whole spices and cook for a further 30 seconds or so, reduce heat to minimum and add the yoghurt a spoonful at a time, stirring well to make sure it is incorporated.
Now add the tomato, chicken pieces, marinade, salt and lemon juice and water. Turn heat up, bring to a simmer, cover and cook at minimum for an hour.

Loaf of the day: white sourdough with rye

2011-03-25T17:03:00.000+01:00

This is currently my standard sourdough recipe. I've changed a few things and worked out a baking routine which involves spraying the loaf before and during cooking instead of using an oven stone or complex steaming techniques, but still gives reasonable bounce. I needed to do this, because when I do bread workshops most particpants don't have a stone, and I don't want to scare them with a whole lot of stuff about oven stones, steam injection, trays of ice cubes and the like.

Ingredients
620g warm water
300g sourdough starter (60% hydration)
100g semi-wholegrain rye flour (or mix 50/50 white and wholegrain rye flour)
800g strong white flour
20g salt

Method

Mix the water and starter until the starter is completely dissolved. Add the rye and white flour, mix well with a dough whisk or a spoon, making sure all the flour is hydrated. Place bowl inside a plastic bag and leave to autolyse for 30 minutes at room temperature.
Turn the dough onto a clean, non-porous surface and work for 5 minutes. Add the salt and work for a further 10 minutes.
Return to the bowl, place inside plastic bag and leave at room temperature. After 1 hour, do 4 stretch and folds inside bowl, return to bag and leave at room temperature for 1 more hour.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two pieces. Form each piece into a boule or batard, leave to sit for 5 minutes, then reshape.
Transfer each piece to a proving basket, lined with a well-floured cloth, place inside a large plastic bag and leave to rise until doubled.
Preheat your oven to 240oC. Transfer the proved loaf to a preheated baking sheet, slash, and spray thoroughly.
After 5 minutes, spray the oven again, turn the loaf through 180o and reduce oven temperature to 220oC.
After 10 more minutes, turn the loaf through 180o again, and bake for a further 5 minutes. (20 minutes in total.)

Pork ribs with chilli and ginger (pressure cooker version)

2011-03-18T22:13:00.000+01:00

I got market inspiration the other day, and after clam and potato stew, and rabbit dhansak I thought I would try to pressure cook some spare ribs. I wanted this to be really simple and quick, with just a couple of clear, strong flavours.

Ingredients
1 kg pork ribs (cut into small pieces, if possible)
2 tsps chilli powder
2 tsps ginger powder
1 tsp salt
100 ml chicken stock
100 ml red wine
vegetable oil

Method

Mix the chilli, ginger and salt together, rub into the ribs and leave to sit in the fridge for anything between 1 hour and 1 day.
Heat a little vegetable oil in an open pressure cooker, add the ribs and fry for a couple of minutes until browned.
Add the stock and the wine, bring to a boil and simmer for a couple of minutes uncovered to release the alcohol.
Put the lid on the pressure cooker, bring to full pressure, turn heat to minimum and cook for 20 minutes. Turn off heat and allow to cool slowly.
You can serve the ribs straight from the pot, or if you want that 'sticky ribs' effect you can bake them in an oven dish.

Hip pot
I'm not a great recipe follower, but even without following someone else's instructions word for word, I still draw heavily on other people's expertise and inspiration. There is a brilliant site I have mentioned before called hip pressure cooking, which, in addition to being a wonderful source of information about all things pressure pot related, is a constant reminder that cooking is all about finding new combinations and new ways of performing old tricks. I couldn't find a spare rib recipe on the site, so I dedicate this to Laura at hip pressure cooking.

Rabbit dhansak

2011-03-18T17:39:00.000+01:00

I have mixed feelings about market shopping: it's time-consuming and can be both physically and mentally exhausting, as you struggle to make sure the stallholders don't palm off shoddy produce on you and have to adapt your cooking to what's available. But when I'm in the right mood, I find it really stimulating. I often have great recipe ideas while looking at what's on display, sometimes directly inspired by whatever is laid out in front of me, and sometimes taking advantage of a bit of daydream time while I wait to be served.

When I got back to Spain from Italy the other day, the first thing I did (after frantically feeding the washing machine and hanging up wet clothes) was to pop down to the market. In the fish section, I bought a kilo of clams, which I stewed with potatoes. And at the butcher's I picked up a beautiful free-range chicken, which I intend to do al ajillo but with the added twist of a pickled lemon, and I also got some pork ribs, which I plan to pressure cook with chilli and ginger. My final purchase was a free-range rabbit, but instead of doing my usual coniglio alla cacciatore I thought I would do a bit of fusion cooking, so I came up with this rabbit and brown lentil curry. I don't know if this really qualifies as a dhansak or not (usually, I think, a meat curry where the sauce is thickened with red lentils) and I don't care either.

Ingredients
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
2-inch piece of fresh ginger
6 tablespoons of vegetable oil
4 teaspoons of mild curry powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 free-range rabbit, jointed
250g brown lentils
800 ml of chicken stock
juice of 1/2 lemon
small bunch of fresh coriander

Method

Peel and finely chop the onion, garlic and ginger, and puree in a food processor with the vegetable oil.
Gently fry the puree in an open pressure cooker, being careful not to burn.
When the onion is turning golden, add the curry powder and salt, fry for another 30 seconds, then add the rabbit pieces and fry for a minute or so, turning them so that they become well coated with the onion and spice mixture.
Add the lentils, chicken stock and lemon juice, close the pressure cooker and bring up to full pressure (2 rings). Cook for 15 minutes, then cool the cooker under runninng cold water.
Open, check for seasoning, add chopped coriander and serve.

Googlecooked!
Googlewhacking is the sport of trying to find an elusive query (two words - no quote marks) with a single, solitary result. Googlecooking is the art of producing a recipe (two-word title - yes quote marks) for which there are no other hits. I give you "rabbit dhansak"!

Clam and potato stew

2011-03-17T22:55:00.001+01:00

I'm always intrigued by how certain combinations of food become fixed. It's more obvious in Spain, where there is both a more extensive repertoire of traditional dishes and a more conservative approach to cooking (facts which I guess are related).

I was in the market today shopping for fish and, as usual, not quite sure what to buy when I spotted some nice-looking clams at 6 euros a kilo. I usually just cook clams a la marinera, with paprika and sherry, but I wanted something that would turn them into a one-pot meal. At first, I thought about doing them with rice, but then it struck me that they would be good in a potato stew. In Cadiz, the usual thing to combine with potatoes like this is cuttlefish (papas con choco) but it worked very well with the clams and I will definitely be repeating this one. I think I might also try to work out a curried version with coconut milk and turmeric at some point.

Ingredients

1 head of celery
2 cloves of garlic
olive oil
2 teaspoons of smoked paprika
1 teaspoon of cumin
2 kg of potatoes
1/2 kg of green beans
4 ripe tomatoes
1 teaspoon of salt
1 glass of white wine
1 glass of chicken stock (or replace with fish stock or water)
2 bay leaves
1 kg of clams

Method

Clean and chop the celery and garlic, and fry gently in plenty of olive oil.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into large chunks. Cut the green beans into 2-inch segments. Cut the tomatoes into large chunks. Wash the clams thorough in plenty of cold water.
Once the celery begins to soften, add the paprika and cumin and fry for 30 seconds or so before adding the potatoes, beans, tomatoes, wine, stock, bay leaves and salt.
Bring to a boil, turn heat to low, cover and simmer gently until the potatoes are just done.
Add the clams, stir well, cover and continue cooking for a few minutes until all of the clams have opened.

High hydration scones

2011-03-08T10:51:00.001+01:00

Most scone recipes seem to be pretty standard in their proportion of milk to flour, but the other day when Sammy was making scones we accidentally added a bit of extra milk. The dough was very sticky but could still be handled, and the resultant scones were the best ever - incredibly light. I've been making a lot of bread recently, and have been working with 'high hydration' doughs (ones with a high proprtion of water in them), and it seems that the same priniple applies to scones. So here is me and Sammy's recipe for high hydration chocolate scones.

Ingredients
300g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
50g caster sugar
75g margarine
170ml milk
75g very dark chocolate

Method

Heat the oven to 200oC.
Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a large bowl. Add the sugar and stir in with a spoon.
Cut the margarine into pieces, and add to the flour and sugar mixture, rubbing it in until it is the texture of breadcrumbs.
Put the chocolate in a bag and bash with a rolling pin until thoroughly broken.
Add the milk, mixing in with a spoon and then with your (well-floured!) hands until it comes together to form a ball, then add the chocolate pieces.
Transfer the dough to a well-floured surface and cut into 8 pieces.
Form each piece into a fat, rough disk. Don't try to make it too perfect - cracks and folds will help add texture to the finished scone.
Place the rounds on a lightly greased tray.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until golden brown.
Cool for a few minutes on a rack, and serve while still warm.

Green curry with meatballs

2011-03-05T20:59:00.001+01:00

I'm always a little nervous when people introduce me as a foodie. It's true that I love food and love cooking, but I would hesitate to describe myself as a good cook. I'm well aware of my shortcomings - gaps in my knowledge and my technique, and the more than occasional mediocre dish that I produce.

However, every now and then I cook something that makes me think that maybe I do deserve to be described as a good cook. It's usually when I bring together some slightly unusual ingredients in an inspired combination that I have not knowingly copied from anywhere else, and this was the case with this meatball curry that I cooked up this evening, having spent the day out drinking beer on the first Saturday of Carnival. The ingredient which lifts it up onto another level is the inclusion of some cuttlefish in the meatball mixture. If you can't get it, then substitute with squid, prawns or a bit of haddock.

Ingredients
meatballs
100g cuttlefish, cut into small pieces
1 leek
2 cloves of garlic
1-inch piece of fresh ginger
500g minced pork
2 tbsps light soy sauce
1 tbsp white wine
2 tbsps green chilli chutney (substitute with 1 tbsps of minced green chilli and 1 tbsps lemon juice)
4 tbsps breadcrumbs

sauce
vegetable oil
1 onion

2 cloves of garlic

1-inch piece of fresh ginger
4 kaffir lime leaves
1 stalk of lemongrass
1/2 tin of coconut milk
1 tbsp fish sauce

2 tbsps green chilli chutney (substitute with 1 tbsps of minced green chilli and 1 tbsps lemon juice)

Method
meatballs

Peel and chop the garlic and ginger, and wash and chop the leek. Put the cuttlefish, leek, garlic and ginger into a food processor, and chop finely. Transfer to a large bowl, add the pork, soy sauce, wine, chilli chutney and breadcrumbs, mix well, return to the food processor and whizz briefly.
Form the mixture into walnut-sized chunks and fry in vegetable oil until browned. (You will probably need to do 2 or 3 batches.) Remove to a plate.

sauce

Peel and chop the onion, garlic and ginger, transfer to food processor and chop finely.
In a medium saucepan, fry the onion mixture gently in vegetable oil. Once the onion has softened, add the coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, fish sauce and green chilli chutney, and stir well.
Bring to a simmer, then add the meatballs, cover the pan and cook for 10 minutes. Serve with rice.

Focaccia

2011-03-04T17:40:00.004+01:00

Seems like I still have my breadhead on! For my next bread workshop I am swithering between rerunning the sourdough (with a few tweaks) and doing a very high hydration focaccia (75%). Just now, I'm leaning toward the focaccia. I want to be able to introduce a few new techniques - the use of a poolish, stretch and fold, and double-hydration.

Ingredients
Poolish
290g warm water
275g white flour
1/4 tsp. instant yeast

Dough
120g warm water
340g white flour
3 tsps salt (15g)
1.5 tsps instant yeast
85g olive oil

2nd hydration
50g warm water

Topping suggestions
fresh rosemary, olive oil, coarse sea salt
potatoes, boiled or steamed in their skins, peeled once cool, then thinly sliced, rosemary, olive oil, salt
cherry tomatoes, olive oil, salt

Method

Poolish: Measure the water, flour and yeast for the poolish into a large bowl, and whisk until you have a smooth batter. Place bowl inside a plastic bag and to ferment overnight. (If your kitchen is warm, then store it in the fridge.)
Dough: The next morning, add 85g of olive oil and 120g of warm water to the poolish, whisk to mix well, then add the yeast, flour and salt and mix very thoroughly with a spoon.
Put the bowl back inside the plastic bag and leave to stand for 30 minutes. (This process is called 'autolyse'.)
Tip the wet dough onto a clean, non-porous work surface, scrape the bowl very thoroughly to ensure there are no bits of flour left in it, and work the dough by hand using the stretch and slap technique for 15 minutes until it is smooth but sticky.
2nd hydration: Return the dough to the bowl, add the remaining 50g of warm water, do eight stretch-and-folds on the dough while in the bowl, then put the bowl into the bag and leave to rest at room temperature.
After 20 minutes have passed, remove the bowl from the bag, do eight more stretch-and-folds on the dough while in the bowl, then put the bowl back into the bag. Repeat the cycle of "20-minute rest; 8 stretch-and-folds" three more times, at the end of which most of the water should be incorporated and your dough should be very wet. This stage takes about 1.5 hours in total. (4 x 20-minute rests, plus a bit of time for the stretching and folding.)
After the final stretch-and-fold in the bowl, divide the dough in half and transfer each portion to an oiled non-stick baking sheet. (500g of dough should fit into a 1000 sq cm tray with plenty of room at the edges - that is, one measuring 25 x 40 cm. This recipe produces just under 1200g of dough, so should be plenty for two trays. The thinner the dough, the crispier the focaccia; the thicker, the more 'bready' it will be.)
Shaping: Gently stretch the dough out into a rectangle, trying to keep it as even as possible in thickness. If it springs back towards the centre, allow it to rest for 5 minutes before continuing to stretch it.
Put the tray inside a large plastic bag, making sure the plastic is not in contact with the dough, and leave to rise for 1.5 hours. (I put the oven tray on a larger, high-sided tray, then put the whole assembly into a bag.) 1 hour before you are ready to bake, set the oven to 230oC.
Just before the focaccia goes into the oven, get your fingers nice and wet, quickly dimple the surface of the dough with your fingertips, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with fresh rosemary and coarse sea salt.
Baking: Bake at 230oC for about 12 minutes, turning the pan halfway through so that it bakes evenly. Transfer the focaccia to a wire rack and allow to cool.

Fresh produce
Gemma brought me some rosemary back from the market to sprinkle over the focaccia, and when I took a closer look I spotted a hitchhiker. I sometimes complain that much of what is palmed off in the market as local produce is actually the same factory-farmed stuff you get everywhere, but there's no arguing with this little guy.

To bread bloggers everywhere
This recipe is adapted from one on Steve's brilliant Bread etcetera blog, which has been a major source of information, advice and insipration over the last year. I can't recommend it too highly. Steve's approach to baking is a little more technical than my own, but it's great to have someone else's ultra-precise method to then play around with. I have also been helped by an exhaustive Italian blog: viva la focaccia. Although my focaccia dough is much wetter than Vittorio's, his instructions on measurement and shaping were invaluable.

Loaf of the day: semi-wholemeal with sunflower seeds

2011-03-04T09:05:00.000+01:00

I developed this for my Panadero en la Huerta workshop. The idea was to produce a fairly quick wholemeal bread which would be light and tasty, not too difficult to make, but would make use of techniques for working with high hydration dough (68%).

Ingredients
500g white flour
400g wholemeal flour
600g warm water
100g sunflower seeds
1.5 teaspoon instant yeast
1.5 teaspoons salt

Method
Makes 2 loaves.

Mix all ingredients except for sunflower seeds in a large bowl and leave to stand (autolyse) for 30 minutes.
Work by hand for 15 minutes. Incorporate sunflower seeds.
First rise at room temperature under plastic for 2 hours.
Shape as per batard (first shaping, rest, final shaping), flour and rise seam side down in a lightly-oiled tin under plastic at room temperature for 2 hours.
Slash the loaf lengthwise, spray and bake in preheated oven at 180oC for 35 minutes.

Alternative: Shape as per small boule (first shaping, rest, final shaping), rise in a basket, lined with cotton or linen and floured with plenty of wholemeal flour under plastic at room temperature for 2 hours. Transfer to preheated baking tray, slash a cross on the top, spray and bake in preheated oven with stone at 220oC for 25 minutes.

Chocolate scones

2011-02-03T18:54:00.005+01:00

Sometimes small changes to a recipe or method make a big difference. After months of rolling my scones with a rolling pin and cutting them with a glass (because I didn't have any scone cutters) I decided to try hand-shaping them instead. Not only was it much quicker (no laborious rolling and rerolling the leftover scraps) but they tasted a million times better.

Ingredients
300g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
75g margarine
50g caster sugar
150ml milk
75g very dark chocolate

Method

Heat the oven to 200oC.
Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a large bowl, cut the margarine into pieces, and add to the flour mixture, rubbing it in until it is the texture of breadcrumbs.
Add the sugar and stir in with a spoon.
Put the chocolate in a bag and bash with a rolling pin until thoroughly broken.
Add the milk, mixing in with a spoon and then with your (well-floured!) hands until it comes together to form a ball, then add the chocolate pieces.
Put the dough on a well-floured surface and cut into 8 pieces.
Form each piece into a fat, rough disk. Don't try to make it too perfect - cracks and folds will help add texture to the finished scone.
Place the rounds on a lightly greased tray.
Bake for about 12 minutes, until golden brown.
Cool for a few minutes on a rack, and serve while still warm.

Taller

2011-02-01T22:59:00.009+01:00

Todo el contenido relacionado con los talleres de pan se encuentra en mi nuevo blog: EL PANADERO EN LA HUERTA. Está escrito en castellano y está dedicado exclusivamente al pan hecho en casa. Aparte de recetas, también incluye vídeos de técnicas para trabajar y formar la masa, y enlaces a otros blogs de panaderos. Si te gusta, date de alta como "seguidor".

Sourdough clock

2011-01-26T17:08:00.005+01:00

As the date for my sourdough workshop draws closer, I have been in a frenzy of experimentation. I'm quite happy bumping along making bread in an intuitive and somewhat inconsistent manner, tolerating the odd failure, the occasional underproved or overproved loaf and so on, but I've realised that if I am to teach others how to make sourdough then I need to make the whole process a little more precise. I've tried out a couple of different proving routines, but have come to the conclusion that the most important issue is making sure that the shaped loaves are proved neither for too long nor for too little.

Most recipes tell you to prove dough "until it has doubled in size", which sounds find in theory, but in practice is almost totally useless. Without measuring, it is impossible to judge whether the loaf you are looking at now is double the size of the one you looked at 6 hours ago. (In fact, I have now extended my proving a little, so that the growth factor is around 2.5.)

Other recipes try to get round this by telling you how long to allow the dough to prove for. This sounds fine, except that we are talking sourdough time. In other words, the length of time your sourdough needs to prove for varies according to temperature: 4 hours proving at 21oC is not the same as 4 hours at 19oC or at 23oC. This is not so much of a problem in temperate countries with centrally heated housing, where the indoor temperature is fairly constant all year round, and you can set the proving times accordingly. However, I don't have either central heating or air conditioning in my kitchen in Cadiz, with the result that daytime kitchen temperatures go from about 15oC during a cold spell in the winter (as I write) up to the mid-20s in June or September. (I'm never here in July or August, but the temperatures must push up into the high-20s or beyond.)

So I decided that, to measure sourdough time, I needed a sourdough clock. The principle is simple:

Get a narrow, straight sided, transparent container - a small plastic water bottle works fine.
Just before shaping your dough, remove 100g of it, roll it a little to make it into a ball, place it in the bottom of the 'clock' and tamp it down a little with the handle of a wooden spoon.
Attach a ruler to the side of the clock with two elastic bands, putting one elastic band level with the top of the dough.
Using the ruler as a scale, put the other elastic band at the height above the first one which corresponds to your growth factor. The second line marks the point at which your dough will be ready to bake. (I am currently proving white sourdough by a factor of 2.5, so if my initial lump of dough comes up to 3 cm, then the second line would be set at 7.5 cm.)
Cover the top of the sourdough clock with cellophane and keep next to your proving loaves. A little before the dough has reached its mark, you should turn the oven on to heat up.

I designed this as a useful aid for the novice baker, but have realised that it's also very helpful for more experienced bakers when trying out new bread recipes, making changes to existing ones, adjusting proving routines, or keeping a track on how seasonal changes in kitchen temperatures affect proving times.

Chicken with preserved lemons and olives

2011-01-24T16:41:00.005+01:00

Although I have plenty of cookery books, I'm not a big recipe follower. However, I have a big soft spot for Claudia Roden, and my feelings grew even fonder this afternoon when I came across this recipe. We have some friends coming round for supper, and I was planning on making pollo al ajillo. Then I spotted my preserved lemons and thought I would see if Claudia had a recipe for them. Not only that, but her recipe also included olives, and I couldn't resist the opportunity of cooking my chicken with some of my home-preserved lemons and my olives, instantly transforming me into some kind of Moroccan domestic god.

Ingredients
1 whole chicken, jointed
2 teaspoons of fresh ginger
1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder
1 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of saffron-coloured powder (or some drops of yellow food colouring)
1/2 preserved lemon
100g green olives
chicken stock or water

Method

Rinse the lemon and cut into large pieces. If your olives are salty (mine, of course, are not!) then rinse them.
Put all the ingredients into the pot. Add just enough chicken stock or water to cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat to a minimum, cover and cook for about an hour until the chicken is nice and tender.

I love the simplicity of this - just bung it all into the pot and cook it until it's done. My poor reading skills made it even more simple, as I inadvertently omitted garlic, onion and fresh herbs!

Freezing and defrosting sourdough starter

2011-01-11T12:29:00.002+01:00

I didn't have time to dry out my sourdough starter before heading off to Scotland for Christmas, so I just whacked it in the freezer to see if that would work. It took a day to defrost, I then fed it as per usual and left it at room temperature for a couple of days in a bowl inside a plastic bag, and it was back to its best.

Malted granary and oatmeal loaf

2011-01-10T16:32:00.002+01:00

In Edinburgh over Christmas I had great fun playing around with the different temperatures in the house. In the end, I used the unheated cupboard under the stairs to do long overnight proving, then shifted my bread to a warmer spot in our bedroom for final proving. As the temperatures went up and down during our stay (from minus 12 to plus 5) it was interesting for me to observe how changes in temperature extremes available in the house affected the bread, and I came out with a much better understanding of the whole proving confidence, and more confidence as to what fully proved bread really looks and feels like. (Basically, more proved than you would think.)

Ingredients
300g sourdough starter (60% hydration)
720g malted granary flour (or strong wholemeal)
150g rolled oats
635g warm water
20g salt

Method
The method here is the same as the one for my white sourdough with rye and spelt, although the proving times with this wholemeal version are less sensitive as the lower gluten content means it is less susceptible to blowout and to the formation of mouseholes in the crumb.

White sourdough with rye and spelt

2011-01-10T16:23:00.006+01:00

This is my 'standard' sourdough recipe at the moment. The hydration is 66% and the total quantity of dough is 1.8 kg - enough for two largeish loaves, or four small ones. It's often good to do a couple of small ones so that at least one can be eaten warm.

Ingredients
300g sourdough starter (60% hydration)
700g strong white flour
100g whole rye flour
100g spelt flour
600g warm water
20g salt

Method

Mix the starter with the flours and break into small pieces. Add water and mix well, before turning out onto a non-porous surface.
Work using the 'stretch, slap and fold' technique for 10 minutes.
Add salt and work for a further 10 minutes.
Transfer dough to a bowl, place inside a bag and leave for half an hour.
In the bowl, do 10 'stretch and folds', return bowl to bag and leave for a further half hour.
Transfer dough to a lightly floured non-porous surface, divide into 2, 3 or 4 pieces depending on the size of loaf you wish to make.
Form each piece into a rough rectangle, fold in from the ends, then from the sides, then roll in to form a tight loaf, pincing the seams together. and leave to rest for 5 minutes.
Repeat the shaping process on the rested loaf, then transfer seam side up to a well-floured, proving basket lined with linen or hessian. Leave until well-proved. (Anything from about 4 hours at a warm temperature to 15 or more at colder temperatures.)
Heat the oven with the stone in to 240oC for 1 hour.
Put your baking sheet in the oven and heat for 5 minutes. Remove from oven, sprinkle with fine polenta, and turn your proved loaf out onto it. Slash the surface, and transfer to the oven. After 5 minutes, turn the heat down to 220oC and bake for a further 20 minutes.
Remove loaf from oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Words or pictures?

2011-01-10T15:34:00.002+01:00

Over the last couple of months I've been doing a lot of cooking and had a lot of ideas for things to put on my blog but have found myself held up by the fact that I didn't have the right photo, or didn't have time to transfer it from my camera or phone, process it and then upload it. It felt like the tail was wagging the dog and when that happens there's only one thing to do: cut off the tail! So this year I will be keeping the pictures to a minimum, and won't be letting them hold up my blogging.

Mince pies with real meat

2010-12-26T12:58:00.002+01:00

This is my first picture-less post for my newlook blog. I've been meaning to do 'real mince pies' for a while, but never got round to it. I resisted the temptation to feed any to my vegetarian niece (but I told you it was a mince pie!). The general verdict was that they were good. They didn't taste particularly 'meaty', and were a little less fruity and spicey than the normal version. I may try making them with a higher quantity of meat, or using something more gamey next time round.

The recipe and method are exact the same as for traditional mince pies: a two-stage process involving making the mincemeat and then doing the pastry and baking. The only change is to add some lean minced beef (or your meat of choice) to the traditional mincemeat mixture before filling the pies. I used a proportion of one part real meat to three parts mincemeat, but I think I could have upped this to 1:2 or even to 1:1.

Of course, when mince pies were first developed they contained meat, combined with spices and dried fruit. Over time, meat became classified as 'savoury' and was dropped from this dish, so this is really just a return to tradition.

Flamenco, Flamenco

2010-11-27T23:10:00.005+01:00

I had a cookathon today, producing bread, chicken stock, bolognaise sauce, tomato sauce, tripe with chickpeas, rabbit with olives and some oriental meatballs all in one session. However, it nearly came to a very unpleasant end, as I was sitting in the cinema this evening watching Flamenco, Flamenco, when I suddenly remembered that I had left the bolognaise sauce on. The film was nearly finished and the cinema is only five minutes from home, so I nervily stuck it out to the end, then rushed home expecting the worst. Fortunately, the sauce was on minimum and had barely even begun to stick, its flavours just intensifying nicely after three hours of slow simmering.

Tripe with chickpeas (menudo gaditano)

2010-11-27T17:34:00.009+01:00

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

Wash the tripe in cold water (it should already have been prepared by the butcher), and cut into small pieces.
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.
Put plenty of olive oil in a pressure cooker, add the onion and garlic and fry for a couple of minutes
Meanwhile, dust the tripe in flour, then add it to the onion and garlic and fry for a few minutes until browned.
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.
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.
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

2010-11-27T17:04:00.004+01:00

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

Peel and finely chop the onion, slice the celery, peel and slice the carrots, peel and roughly crush the garlic.
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.
Gently fry the onion, celery, carrot and garlic in the oil.
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.

Marinating olives: part 3

2010-11-22T19:49:00.004+01:00

Having left my olives in to soak for another 5 days (making 12 in total) I reckoned it was safe to marinate. Part 1 of my olive marinating post describes what has to be done to prepare them, while part 2 provides a cautionary tale about the dangers of getting caught shopping around.

Me and Sammy made these this afternoon, after a rather frustrating morning in which it felt that nothing had really been achieved. So it was good to suddenly have 3 kg of home-marinated olives sitting in our kitchen and went some way to getting rid of our feeling of futility, and Sammy topped it off by taking a few photos for the blog.

We kind of made this up as we went along, ignoring the olive salesman's advice about only adding salt when the olives were ready to serve (bearing in mind that we will be away when these are ready to eat, so they have to last a little longer). I shall report back on the results in January.

Ingredients
3 kg of olives which have been soaked in water, changed daily, for 10 days (see earlier post)
250 ml of sherry or white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons of fine salt
250 ml of boiling water
plenty of cold water
2 bitter oranges
12 cloves of garlic
2 large wild fennel stalks
plenty of wild thyme

Equipment
2 large jars

Method

Drain the soaked olives
Dissolve the salt in the boiling water, stirring well until it is completely dissolved. Add the vinegar.
Chop the oranges into segments, squash the whole, unpeeled garlic cloves, and cut the fennel stalks and sprigs of thyme into short pieces.
Divide the olives between the two jars, adding the the orange segments, garlic, fennel and thyme as you go.
Pour plenty of cold water into each of the jars, until they are about three-quarters full.
Pour half of the vinegar/saltwater mixture into each jar, then top up with more cold water until the olives are completely covered. Shake gently to dislodge any air bubbles.
Pour a couple of tablespoons of olive into each jar, so it sits on top of the water, sealing it.
Close the jars and leave in a cool, dark place for at least two weeks before opening.

Marinating olives: cheating on Matias

2010-11-16T20:19:00.006+01:00

Having soaked my olives and changed the water every other day for 6 days, as instructed by the man on the olive stall, I went back to the market today to get my ingredients for stage 2. He gave me a bag containing plenty of wild oregano, some wild thyme, some wild fennel stalks, a couple of heads of garlic and, to my surprise, two bitter oranges.

I wonder if these are the same bitter oranges which grow on the trees in Seville and Cadiz. They're not generally used in Spanish cooking, and as far as I know were treated as ornamental both by the Arabs who presumably brought them here, and also by modern Spaniards. In Cadiz, they drop to the ground and the few which escape the city's street cleaners are left to rot. These, of course, are the oranges which are used to make British marmalade and even quite recently in Seville, a British company had a contract by which they were harvested and then sent to the UK, although there is certainly no local tradition of using them for marmalade or anything else that I am aware of. But apparently they can be used to flavour olives.

I then got some very vague instructions about how to marinade the olives, which seemed to involve adding whatever marinade ingredients I fancied (whole sprigs of herbs, chunks of fennel stalk, squashed whole garlic cloves and chunks of orange) covering them in more water and then adding a small amount of vinegar (not much, half a wine glass) and no salt, which should be added when serving, to which a guy standing next to me nodded vigorous agreement.

My next job was to get hold of a couple of large containers to do the marinating in. I asked at a couple of stalls that specialise in market paraphernalia - bags, paper towels and the like - but had no luck, and realised that my best option was to buy them from my usual supplier of marinated olives, Matías. It felt a bit like cheating. Actually, it felt a lot like cheating, and on my first pass by his stall I was put off by the fact that standing there was the same guy who had been nodding away at the first stall I had bought my marinading ingredients from, so I wandered off to buy some fruit and veg. Ten minutes later I was back, and found myself unwittingly eavesdropping on the following conversation:

Lady customer: These olives are good. Nearly as good as you, Matías! If I had you in my bedroom you'd be in no hurry to leave!
Matías: If you had me in your bedroom you'd be too busy to talk.
Lady customer: Ah, but we're both married.
Matías: All the more fun. (Más morbo todavía)
Lady customer: I don't cheat on anyone.
Matías: Who's talking about cheating?

After Matías' horny customer had left, it was my turn, and I thought I should order plenty of olives to soften him up for my impending betrayal. I'd just asked for half a kilo of verdiales, when who should turn up but the guy from the other stall, who seemed to be trying to assemble a motorbike part for Matías with reference to an English-language manual which neither of them understood. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I played dumb on the linguistic front, ordered another quarter of olives, and then pushed out the boat and bought some mojama (salted, dried tuna) too, before Mister Motorbike Parts finally left. And then I sheepishly bought a couple of 2-litre containers from Matías and headed home to get marinating.

I strained the olives, set out my marinating ingredients but thought I should actually taste the olives before I got started. The man on the olive stall said they should be 'sweet' at this stage, by which I assumed he meant they just shouldn't be overpoweringly bitter. I tasted one and it was fine, but the next one I tried was still completely inedible, so I decided to give the olives another few days of marinating, changing the water daily, and testing the greener of the olives for bitterness.

Banana bread with crystallized ginger

2010-11-11T15:31:00.005+01:00

About a month ago I made a couple of jars of crystallized ginger, with the aim of making some ginger buns. I haven't got round to making the buns yet, because I am still in the grip of a sourdough obsession, but I have chucked the ginger into a couple of other things (including some sweet-and-sour spare ribs which are sitting in my fridge as I write) and my banana bread.

Ingredients
275 g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
110 g margarine
150 g demerara sugar
2 eggs
4 ripe bananas, mashed
75 ml milk
150 g crystallized ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

Set the oven to 180oC and grease a loaf tin (20 cm x 10 cm)
Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt.
In a separate bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar.
Add the bananas, milk, eggs, ginger and cinnamon to the margarine and sugar mixture, and mix well.
Fold the flour into the resulting batter.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, making sure there is a centimetre of space at the top, and bake in the preheated oven for 50 minutes until golden.
Allow the bread to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack.

Marinating olives: part 1

2010-11-10T13:39:00.003+01:00

I am a creature of habit, and because I have always lived near one end of my local market in Cadiz, I have tended to concentrate my shopping in that area, too: my regular fruit and veg stall and butcher are both near the main entrance, and while I am more eclectic in my fish shopping, that still leaves a whole bit of the market that I never really wander into.

When I went to the market with my man trolley a couple of days ago, I decided to make a conscious effort to branch out a little (helped by the fact that it was a Tuesday, which is always much quieter than the pandemonium of Friday and Saturday mornings). At the very far end of the market, way beyond my usual territory, I came across a stall with the sign "Productos de la Sierra de Cádiz" (products from the hilly interior of Cadiz province) with a range of stuff including partridges, rabbits, wild herbs, snails and raw olives, and thought it would be fun to try marinating some olives at home.

I had a chat with the stallholder about what needed to be done, and he showed me how to gently crush the olives, then leave them in water for 6 days (changing the water every 2 days) before actually doing the marinating. So I went off with a 3 kg bag of beautiful green and black olives for just 5 euros, and a promise to come back next week to stock up with marinade ingredients.

Stage 1: crushing and washing

Ingredients
3 kg of raw olives
water

Method

Put plenty of cold water in a large container.
Put the olives on a table or board, and gently crush them by hitting them firmly but not too hard with a mallet or something similar. (We actually used some very sturdy Ikea drinking glasses.)
As you crush the olives, transfer them to the container. Top up with more water if necessary.
Stir the olives around well with your hands, strain off the water and then cover the olives with fresh water.
After 2 days, strain off the water, rinse the olives well, and cover with fresh water.
Repeat again after 2 days.
And again after 2 days. Your olives are now ready for you to start marinating.

Wholemeal sourdough with cereals and seeds

2010-10-28T10:18:00.014+02:00

I started out with the idea of making one of those dense, seed-filled 'German' loaves, but somehow things changed along the way. First off, I came back with a bag of mixed cereal flakes from my local wholefood store (oats, wheat, barley, rye, malted corn) and some sunflower seeds, together with a bag of 'semi-wholemeal flour' (whatever that means). Then I opened the fridge and found my wonderful starter staring at me reproachfully, so I ditched the idea of using instant yeast and went back to sourdough. And finally I cast around on the net for recipes but didn't find anythng I liked, so decided to adapt my own. Surprisingly enough, it came out quite close to my original intention: dense and moist without being heavy, and packed with flavour.

Makes 2 medium-sized loaves

Ingredients

cereal
100g mixed cereal flakes (see above)
200g warm water

dough
200g sourdough starter (50% hydration)
200g wholemeal flour
200g white flour
300g warm water
10g salt

50g sunflower seeds

Method

Weigh the cereal flakes into a bowl, cover with 200g of warm water and set aside.
Measure the flours into a large bowl. Cover the sourdough starter with plenty of flour and tear or cut it into small pieces. (I usually tear it into 2 or 3 pieces, flatten each into a disc, then stretch and tear.)
Add 300g of warm water to the flour and starter, mix very well with a spoon until it comes together as a dough, then turn out onto a clean surface (NOT floured).
Work the dough for 10 minutes using the 'stretch and slap' method. (I'm hoping to post a video of this soon. It's difficult to describe, but quite easy once you've seen it done, and is an excellent way of working with wetter doughs.)
Wash your hands, then strain the cereal flakes in a colander, and push them down to squeeze out any excess water.
Sprinkle the salt all over the dough, and continue to work for another five minutes or so.
Now flatten out the dough a bit, spread a couple of tablespoons of the cereal over it and a tablespoon of the sunflower seeds, fold the dough back in and do a couple of 'stretch and slaps'. Repeat until you have incorporated all the cereal and seeds. Your dough should be a little bit wetter because of the water in the cereal, but that's fine. (See photo below.)
Flip the dough onto a well-floured bit of your worksurface. (I have a floured area ready to the side, from the start,) Stretch and fold the dough a few times, form into a ball, return to the bowl, put the bowl inside a plastic bag and leave to rest for an hour.
After the hour, turn the dough out of the bowl onto a floured worksurface, stretch and fold it a few times, form into a ball, return to the bowl, put the bowl inside a plastic bag and leave to rest for an hour.
Oil two medium-sized loaf tins very thoroughly. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide in half. Flatten each piece out into a rough rectangle, then form into a loaf by stretching and folding into the centre. Once you have a nice loaf shape, transfer to the tin. (See photo.) Repeat with the other piece, then place the tins inside a large plastic bag and leave to prove for 4 hours, until doubled in size. (See photo.) An hour before your loaves are due to finish proving, set the oven to 240oC.
Remove the loaf tins from the bag, slash them lengthwise with a sharp knife or lame, open the oven and spray it with plenty of water, transfer the loaf tins to the oven and close the door. (If you use a baking stone, put the tins directly on top of it.)
After 5 minutes, reduce the heat to 220oC, and bake for a further 25 minutes until the loves are nice and brown.
Remove loaves from oven, turn out of tins and leave to cool on a wire rack. (See photo.)

dough with cereal incorporated

shaped loaves in tin

risen loaves ready for oven

baked loaves

Satisfaction
I really enjoyed making these. I've spent a good few months mastering my sourdough and learning how to work with wetter dough (high hydration, for us bread techies), and it was very satisfying to be able to apply what I've learned by coming up with something quite different. The underlying dough is the same, but I changed the type of flour, added cereals and seeds, had to come up with a pre-soaking technique and baked in tins to create a denser loaf. I was worried it would all end in disaster, but the end result, though I say it myself, was a triumph! Hurrah. (And now back to that translation whose deadline just crept a bit closer while I was skiving off in the kitchen.)

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

2010-10-24T18:01:00.003+02:00

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

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.
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.
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.
Gently fry the onion, celery, carrot and garlic in the oil. After a few minutes, remove to a bowl, together with any oil.
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.
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.

Rehydrating sourdough starter

2010-10-13T20:38:00.007+02:00

After a summer of making sourdough bread, I dried out my sourdough starter and brought it to Spain with me. The oven has been fixed and I have got my hands on a baking stone, so it seemed like time to bring my starter back to life.

Ingredients
200g of dehydrated sourdough starter
300g of warm water
300g of strong white flour (use 250g of white and 50g of rye, if you like)

Method

Put the dehydrated sourdough starter and 200g of warm water into a bowl. Mix well, place the bowl inside a plastic bag, and leave in a warm place for 2 days. The starter should now show a few signs of life (bubbles, a slightly alcoholic smell etc.).
Add 300g of flour and the remaining 100g of water to the starter, mix well, put back into the bag and leave in a warm place for 1 day. The starter is now ready to use.

Baking stone
Having spent the last few years intermittently moaning about the light-fingeredness of the Gaditanos, I have to admit that I have joined the ranks of the local kleptomaniacs. This nice slab of marble had been sitting behind the front door to our building for a while, and with true Gaditano logic I reasoned that if it had been left there then the owner couldn't really want it.

Caramelized ginger jam

2010-10-12T14:51:00.009+02:00

Over the summer, while in Scotland, I made some delicious little Dutch Jewish ginger buns which I had come across in Amsterdam. I got back to Cadiz for the autumn determined to get our oven fixed and do some northern European sweet baking. The ginger buns require a sort of soft candied ginger for the filling, and I had managed to pick up a reasonable subsitute in my local wholefood shop in Edinburgh but there was nothing similar available in Cadiz, so I decided to make some caramelized ginger jam from scratch, by adapting recipes for homemade candied ginger. It's easy but takes a while, as ginger is pretty fibrous stuff. However, you don't have to do it all in one go, as you can boil the ginger for a couple of hours, then leave it till the next day and so on until it is cooked.

Ingredients
1.25 kg of fresh ginger
1 kg of caster sugar
1 litre of water

Method

Chop any knobbly bits off the ginger, then peel.
Finely slice the ginger, then add to a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan with the sugar and water.
Bring to a boil, cover, and turn to a minimum.
Cook slowly for about 6 hours, until the ginger is done, checking liquid levels from time to time, and stirring regularly, particularly during the last 2 hours.
When the ginger has softened and the sugar and water have reduced to a thick, dark syrup, allow to cool for half an hour or so and then chop roughly in a food processor. Transfer to sterilized jars for storage.

Smellorama
One of the frustrations of writing about food is that there is no way of communicating taste or smell. When I started boiling the ginger, it actually smelled rather unpleasant, and I was bracing myself for the possibility that I might have to chuck it all away. But as the cooking went on, the chemical notes disappeared and the kitchen was filled with a delicious aroma of caramelised ginger. It was very hard for me to resist the temptation simply to dip my spoon into the pot.

Banana bread

2010-10-12T14:34:00.006+02:00

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
275 g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
110 g margarine
225 g caster sugar
2 eggs
4 ripe bananas, mashed
75 ml milk
1.5 tsps lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon
50 g raisins

Method

Set the oven to 180oC and grease a loaf tin (20 cm x 10 cm)
Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt.
In a separate bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar.
Add the bananas, milk, eggs, lemon juice, vanilla extract, cinnamon and raisins to the margarine and sugar mixture, and mix well.
Fold the flour into the resulting batter.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, making sure there is a centimetre of space at the top, and bake in the preheated oven for 50 minutes until golden.
Allow the bread to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack.

Spaghetti with salt cod, chick peas and green pepper

2010-10-06T17:33:00.004+02:00

Salt cod is easy enough to cook, but it's not cheap and takes a fair bit of preparation (4 days of desalting, including regular water changes, in this case) and I am therefore reluctant to just bin any leftovers. I had already made salt cod mayonnaise out of the leftover pil pil sauce and cooking oil, and I decided to double up by bulking out the small amount of leftover cod with some chick peas and half a green pepper, and combining it with pasta.

Ingredients
1/2 a packet of pasta
leftover salt cod (about 200g)
1/2 a jar of chickpeas
1/2 a large green pepper
olive oil
salt cod mayonnaise

Method

Cook the pasta in a large pan of boiling water. (I cooked the whole packet so I could make spaghetti fritters with the leftovers.)
In the meantime, finely chop and fry the green pepper until it is done. Add the strained chickpeas to the pan, cook for a minute or two, then remove from the heat.
Break the cod into flakes, removing any bones, and add to the chick peas and pepper.
Strain the pasta, transfer to a large bowl, season with salt and add a little to prevent it from sticking. Pour the cod, chick peas and peppers over it, then dress with plenty of salt cod mayonnaise.

Salt cod mayonnaise

2010-10-06T17:02:00.007+02:00

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.

Spanish omelette with leftover chips

2010-10-04T21:05:00.006+02:00

Yes! Today the repairman came and fixed our gas rings. No longer will I feel as if I have been trapped in a slow motion replay every time I cook. (Unfortunately he wasn't able to fix the oven - but he did at least depart with the broken element in his hand, promising to return in a couple of days with a new one.) To celebrate, I followed Gemma's suggestion and made a Spanish omelette with leftover chips from lunchtime.

Ingredients
a large plate of leftover chips
4 eggs (approximately)
1 onion
olive oil
salt

Method

Peel and roughly chop the onion, and fry it in plenty of oil in a non-stick pan until it's done. If there still is a lot of oil in the pan, pour a little of it away.
Meanwhile, chop the chips roughly, put in a bowl and add 4 beaten eggs. Add the fried onion to the potato and egg mixture (leaving the oil in the pan), and season with about 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
Gently heat the oil in the pan, but don't allow it to get too hot. Pour the potato, egg and onion mixture into the pan and cook on a medium heat.
After a couple of minutes or so, once the underside of the omelette has cooked, slide it out of the pan onto a plate. Using an oven glove, place the frying pan upside down over the plate, then quickly flip it over so that the omelette falls raw side down back into the pan.
Now cook for another couple of minutes or so until done. It should still be very slightly runny in the middle.

This is a great way to use up leftover chips. In fact, I think it would work well with chip shop chips too, which are fat and halfway between being fried and boiled. I will try to remember this next time I have a fish supper. (That's Scottish for "fish and chips", my English chums.)

Making a smallish tortilla like this also helps to remind one that a tortilla is indeed an 'omelette'. Non-Spaniards have a tendency to overcook their tortillas and turn them into solid, dry, egg-and-potato pies, inspired no doubt by the consistency of tortillas eaten in bars and restaurants. That's how you make them if you are really worried about undercooked egg, but a true Spanish home-cooked tortilla is always a bit runny.

And, in the spirit of John Gummer, I demonstrated my faith by feeding some to my daughter. Unlike the unfortunate Cordelia (yes, that was her name), Carmela gave my tortilla an enthusiastic reception.

Spaghetti fritters

2010-10-02T21:48:00.004+02:00

A couple of years ago I was given a copy of Jamie's Italy, and one of the recipes that really appealed to me was spaghetti fritters. However, it called for a decent quantity of cooked spaghetti and I never seemed to have leftovers (or when I did, they already had tomato sauce applied). In the meantime, the book and me ended up in separate countries, so when I finally managed to engineer some sauce-free leftover spaghetti, the book was in Scotland and I was in Spain. As far as I remembered, though, it was just a mix of spaghetti, eggs and a few things to add a bit of flavour, so this was what I came up with.

Ingredients
600g spaghetti (cooked weight - about half a packet of dry spaghetti)
3 eggs
1 leek
2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons oregano
1 teaspoon chilli sauce

fritter mixture

frying fritters

Method

Finely chop and sautee the leek and garlic.
In a large bowl, snip the spaghetti into short pieces (about 5 cm or so), add the well beaten eggs, the sauteed leek and garlic, and the salt, oregano and chilli sauce.
In a large frying pan, heat a little oil. When it is hot, add large spoonfuls of the fritter mixture, making sure you leave enough space to turn them.
Fry for 2 to 3 minutes, until they are crispy and golden, then flip over and fry for another 2 minutes on the other side.

Toot, toot!
This is post number 68 of the year, taking me storming past my previous highest total of 66 (in 2009). And we're only just beginning October. All this despite a very quiet first half of the year due to a mixture of emotional upheaval and oven problems. Como dice el gran Eliades Ochoa, ¡estoy como nunca!

Cuttlefish and potato stew (papas con choco): pressure pot version

2010-09-30T18:13:00.003+02:00

I have finally converted to using a pressure cooker recently, so this is the pressure cooker version of a gaditano staple I made in an ordinary saucepan a couple of weeks ago. I've tweaked the recipe a little, and been a bit less anal with the measurements. After all, this is a peasanty stew so the quantities are necessarily vague.

Ingredients
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
olive oil
1/2 green pepper
1 large tomato
2 carrots
500g cuttlefish (substitute with squid if not available)
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon of saffron
1 teaspoon of mild paprika
1 teaspoon of salt
1 glass of white wine
4 potatoes

Method

Peel and chop the onion and garlic. In a pressure cooker, fry it gently in plenty of olive oil.
Roughly chop the pepper and tomato. Peel the carrots and cut them into slices. Cut the cuttlefish into chunks. Peel and cut the potato into chunks.
In a small bowl or a pestal and mortar, crush the saffron well and mix with a little hot water.
Once the onion is cooked, add all the other ingredients to the pot, stir thoroughly, put the lid on the pressure cooker and bring to the boil.
Cook at 2 rings for 10 minutes.

Cutting potatoes
As I was making this I was chatting to a Spanish friend, Pilar. When she saw me chopping the potatoes on a board with my razor-sharp German knife she told me she had been given a tip by a gaditana that the best way to cut the potatoes was actually to hold them in your hands, use a blunt knife, and break off the pieces as you go. That way your potatoes have rough edges, releasing lots of starch into the stew and helping to give it a good thick texture.

Lentils with chorizo and wild mushrooms

2010-09-28T18:33:00.004+02:00

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

In a pressure cooker, gently fry the onion, adding the garlic just before the onion is done.
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.
When the pressure has reached the correct level, turn the heat to minimum and cook for 20 minutes.
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.)

Morcón ibérico

2010-09-25T13:06:00.003+02:00

Continuing with my trawl through the further reaches of Spanish charcuterie, today's featured sausage is morcón. It's pretty similar to chorizo, but with two differences. Firstly, it is made by stuffing the large rather than the small intestine, giving it its characteristic 'bulgy' shape. And secondly, it is made with leaner meat. (Because the morcón is larger than a chorizo, it is less prone to drying out and thus needs less fat to keep it moist.)

Chicharrones

2010-09-25T12:10:00.007+02:00

Chicharrones are little crusty, salty bits of belly pork and are great for snacking. Every butcher's stall in the Cadiz market has a tray of them on the top of the counter, and you can buy a little paper cone full of them to take home with you.

Chicharrones are also popular in Latin America, and the great Eliades Ochoa has even dedicated a whole song to discussing what they are made of:

El chicharrón es pellejo
Tú te equivocaste, muchacho, cuando creiste,
que el chicharrón era de carne,
Siempre anda diciendo que que tu eres el rey de los carniceros
Y yo estoy seguro que de carne no sabe nada
Yo puedo creer que tu seas chicharronero
Lo que no creo es que tu de la carne hagas chicharrón
Claro que no!

(You were wrong, my lad, when you thought,
That chicharrón is made from meat,
You always go around saying you're the king of the butchers
But I'm sure you know nothing about meat
I might accept that you're a bootlicker
But there's no way you make chicharrón with meat
No way!)

Followed by a rousing chorus:

Nada más que pellejo, pellejo, el chicharrón es pellejo

(It's just the skin, the skin, the chicharrón is just skin!)

In Cuba, chicharrón, in addition to being a delicious meaty snack, is also an obsequious compliment, so the target of this song is being lambasted both for his ignorance of pork butchery and for his smarminess. Touché! (In Spain, however, chicharrón is not just made from the skin but from belly pork, which contains plenty of meat. No wonder I got strange looks when I sang this to an overfamiliar butcher the other day.)

Postscript
I had a slightly worried moment when someone commented that surely this was just a poncey Spanish name for pork scratchings. (It's never pleasant to be hit by the realisation that one has been openly bullshitting!) So I went off to the kitchen and sliced into some chicharrones just to check. The proof is below - as you can see, under the fat, they are quite meaty!

Refined tomato sauce

2010-09-25T11:37:00.002+02:00

I've always been really reluctant to peel and deseed tomatoes, inspired, among other things, by a great article by Julian Barnes about a recipe which involved seeding 2.5 kilos of cherry tomatoes. He calculated that this equated to 300 tomatoes, and the piece contained the inspiring words "All together now: NO, WE' RE NOT GOING TO DO THAT." (The article is contained in his collection The Pedant in the Kitchen and you can also view it online here.)

However, the last batch of tomato sauce I made, although really tasty, was distinctly fibrous. There were lots of seeds (no big problem, as I'm happy to swallow them), some rather tough bits of skin (extra roughage, I guess) and some simply inedible yellow fibrous bits, which even I drew the line at. Recipe books are full of helpful instructions about putting tomatoes in boiling water for a couple of minutes, after which the skins "will slip off easily", but this doesn't work with the big tough specimens hanging out in the Cadiz market at the moment, so I got out my sharpest knife and got to work. With a nice sharp knife, the peeling was pretty easy - it took me about 5 minutes to get through 2 kg (I took a slice off the top and bottom to speed things up a little, and tried not to be too miserly with the flesh). Next I cut them in half and removed all the seeds with my fingers, an operation which also made me realise just how leathery the tomatoes were. Finally, I found what had been responsible for the yellow fibres in my previous sauce - a tough core at the top of the tomato where it had been attached to the stalk - so I cut this out. I then put all the remaining tomoto flesh in the food processor and whizzed it for a couple of minutes. The whole operation had taken about 15 minutes, and I'm not sure if I will incorporate it into my regular sauce-making routine or just resort to tins and packets, but the upside was a smooth tasty sauce that only required about half an hour of cooking.

Ingredients
1 kg of tomatoes, peeled, deseeded and cored (see above)
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
olive oil
1 tsp salt
4 bay leaves

Method

Peel, deseed and core the tomato flesh (see above), then chop well in a liquidiser.
Gently fry the onion in plenty of olive oil, adding the garlic once the onion is nearly done.
Add the chopped tomato, salt and bay leaves, bring to a boil and simmer gently for 30 minutes.
Remove the bay leaves, and blend using a stick blender.

Chicharrones especiales

2010-09-21T16:28:00.004+02:00

Everyone is familiar with jamón serrano, chorizo and even salchichón (Spanish salami) but there are lots of other examples of Spanish charcuterie which are not exported. One of my favourites are the chicharrónes especiales, a speciality of nearby Chiclana. They are whole pieces of uncured streaky bacon which are cooked then served cold, thinly sliced and dressed with salt and lemon juice.

Pasta with chick peas, tuna and lemon

2010-09-18T16:47:00.005+02:00

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

Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling water. When it is nearly done, add the strained chickpeas.
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)

2010-09-18T16:07:00.004+02:00

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

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Manteca colorada con zurrapa

2010-09-18T15:28:00.005+02:00

As an antidote to my healthy desayuno andaluz, I bought some manteca colorada. The literal translation of this is 'red lard' which is a pretty accurate description, as it is pig fat, flavoured with paprika. You can buy it with 'zurrapa', which is pork loin which has been fried in the lard and is then shredded, and you can also buy it plain (manteca colorada), without paprika (manteca blanca) or with whole pieces of pork loin in it (manteca con lomo).

'Colorado' is Spanish for 'red' (as in the Colorado River, whose muddy waters are a reddish brown). Apparently, it is not used in the north of Spain, and a friend of ours, upon being told this, replied in shock, "But how do they say "manteca colorá" then!?" Indeed.

Mediterranean diet
I'm always amused when people talk about the wonders of the Mediterranean diet. Manteca colorada, after all, is the culinary equivalent of asking a heart surgeon to open you up and spread a little cholesterol on your veins. And another popular Spanish breakfast, churros con chocolate, involves frying strips of batter before dipping them in chocolate. We may deep-fry Mars Bars in Scotland, but at least we have the decency to put the batter on the outside.

Iced mint tea

2010-09-18T15:10:00.003+02:00

It's still rather hot and sticky in Cadiz, so a pot of iced mint tea seemed like a good idea. You have to make the tea very strong, as it is then diluted by the ice. We make ours without sugar. If you want it sweet,then it's probably best to add a lot of sugar directly to the teapot.

Ingredients
8 teaspoons of good quality green tea
1 smallish handful of fresh mint leaves
ice

Method
Put the green tea and mint in a teapot, and fill with boiling water. (I have a pot with a removable filter, which is good, because once it comes to the right strength you can remove it.)
Fill a large jug with ice cubes, pour the tea over it and wait for a few minutes until most of the ice has melted. Serve.

Cuttlefish and potato stew (papas con choco)

2010-09-14T16:40:00.003+02:00

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

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.
Then add the cuttlefish, tomatoes, salt, pepper, paprika and bay leaves, stir well and fry for 5 minutes.
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).