Hummus

The key to a light hummus is... water.

Ingredients

400g tin of chickpeas, drained

60 g tahini
60 ml water
30 ml olive oil

juice of 1 lemon
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt

Method

Combine all of the ingredients in a food processor and blend very thoroughly for a couple of minutes.

You can use this basic recipe for any bean-based dip; swap out the chickpeas for another pulse (butter beans, broad beans, kidney beans); replace the tahini with peanut-butter, cashew nuts or walnuts; throw in some other spices (cumin, coriander); heat it up with some chilli sauce; swap the lemon for a lime.

Falafel

Since I last posted, one of the members of my family has turned vegetarian. As a result, I've been on the lookout for vegetarian options, so falafel (little fried balls of ground chickpeas and spices) seemed like a good idea. I got this recipe from Tori Avey's Jewish food blog, with a couple of minor adaptations.

Ingredients
250g of dried chickpeas
30g water
1 onion, chopped
a bunch of parsley
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsps plain flour (or use chickpea flour)
2 tsps of salt
2 tsps of ground cumin

1.5 tsps of ground coriander
1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper
freshly ground black pepper
the seeds from 2 cardamon pods

1 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp of water
oil for frying

Method

1. Leave the chickpeas to soak in plenty of water overnight.
2. The next day, drain the chickpeas, and combine with all of the remaining ingredients apart from the baking powder. Chop in a food processor until you have a grainy paste. (Too grainy and it will fall to bits when you fry, too pasty and it will taste ... pasty.)
3. Cover and leave to sit in the fridge for 2 hours.
4. Mix the baking powder with the water, add to the mixture and stir well with a fork.
5. Heat about 3 cm of oil to a medium heat.
6. Shape the mixture into balls, slip them carefully into the oil, and fry for a couple of minutes until golden underneath, then flip them over and finish cooking on the other side.

Carrot and lentil soup

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

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in the boiled water, and add the vegetable stock cube.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Allow the soup to cool a little, liquidise with a stick blender, check the salt and season with some freshly ground black pepper.

Homemade baked beans

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

1. 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.
2. Add the chopped tomatoes, paprika, ginger, chilli sauce and salt, bring to a boil, turn to minimum, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
3. 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.

Rabbit dhansak

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. 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

1. Peel and finely chop the onion, garlic and ginger, and puree in a food processor with the vegetable oil.
2. Gently fry the puree in an open pressure cooker, being careful not to burn.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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"!

Tripe with chickpeas (menudo gaditano)

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



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

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

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

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

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

Method

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

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

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

Lentils with chorizo and wild mushrooms

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


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

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

Method

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

Pasta with chick peas, tuna and lemon

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


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

Method

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

Curried baked beans

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


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

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

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

Tuna and cannellini beans with lemon and bay leaves

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have just bought a copy of Rick Stein's Seafood Odyssey, and am aiming to up my fish cookery as a result. I like Rick Stein's cooking, although I find his on-screen persona a little stiff at times (and if I ever see that awful woman he had on his Naples programme again I may have to shoot myself). Anyway, his personality works much better in writing, and some of the things which feel a bit forced on the TV are fine on the page. This recipe comes from one in his book, although I was in a rush this morning so had to make it with tinned tuna and a jar of beans, instead of using fresh fish and dried beans. The plus side was that it only took about 10 minutes from start to finish and still tasted great. I may make the proper version at some point, but I suspect that I have already classified this under "fast food" in my head.



Ingredients
150g tinned tuna
400g tin of cannellini beans
plenty of olive oil (about 5 fl oz)
6 bay leaves
1/4 lemon
salt
2 leeks
4 cloves of garlic

Method

1. Peel and thinly slice the leeks and garlic, then add to a large heavy-based pan with the olive oil.
2. Once the leeks have softened, add the bay leaves, fry for 30 seconds or so, add the drained beans and the salt. Squeeze the lemon juice over the beans, and add the squeezed lemon quarter to the pot, stir well, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Add the tuna, stir to mix, heat through for a minute or two and serve.

Tinned delights
Our attitudes to tinned food are a bit mixed. When tins first appeared, they often contained luxury items (quail in aspic, and that kind of thing!). Now we tend to be a bit suspicious of them. They are deemed okay for some things - tomatoes, baked beans, chick peas - but dodgy for others. Perhaps inevitably, these attitudes vary quite a lot between the UK and Spain. In Spain, chick peas, and pulses generally, usually come in glass jars, while fresh tomatoes are always preferred to tinned.

Tuna is a case in point. I was brought up to view tinned tuna as scarcely better than cat food, but I have come to appreciate its convenience. (I am still not keen on it when it is added to tomato sauces and cooked, at which point it turns rather dry and loses all its appeal.) A couple of years ago my in-laws gave my parents some very good tinned bonito (a large member of the mackerel family). As far as I know it is still lurking at the bottom of their cupboard. I must dig it out next time I visit and see if I convince them of its virtues.

Bean and vegetable stew

One of the best things about Spanish food are the big, robust, peasanty stews. This one is mainly flavoured by the morcilla (Spanish black pudding), but if you want a vegetarian version then just omit it and add some extra paprika and some cumin. If you can't get hold of decent morcilla, then use some good quality coarse cut sausages instead, and add them at the same time as the vegetables.



Ingredients
1kg dried haricot beans
olive oil
1 large onion
4 cloves of garlic
3 well-cured morcillas
3 teaspoons of paprika
6 bay leaves
500g carrots
500g pumpkin
500g courgettes
250g green beans
2 large tomatoes
salt

Method

1. Put the beans in a large put, cover with plenty of water, bring to a boil, simmer for 2 minutes, then turn the heat off and leave, covered, for 1.5 hours. Drain, reserving the cooking liquid for use later.
2. Peel the carrots and chop into large chunks, and cut the pumpkin, courgettes, beans and tomatoes into large pieces, too.
3. Chop the onion finely, fry gently in plenty of olive oil, and add finely chopped
4. garlic once the onion is nearly done.
5. Add the beans, together with enough of the cooking liquid to cover (keep any remaining liquid in case you need it). Bring to a boil, reduce to minimum, add the morcilla, paprika, bay leaves and a couple of teaspoons of salt, and cover.
6. Cook for 30 minutes, then add all the vegetables, and add enough extra water to cover.
7. Continue to cook until the beans are completely cooked. (They should be tender, not powdery.)
8. Serve with plenty of crusty bread.

Pasta with beans and Calabrian sausage

Here is a recipe for pasta with beans and spicy Calabrian sausages. (I brought back a couple of kilos in my luggage, but they can be replaced with any Italian sausages, or indeed any good quality coarse British sausages.) The end result should be a stew served with pasta, rather than pasta served with a sauce. (The picture at the top shows the stew before the pasta has been added.)



Ingredients
500 g of haricot beans
olive oil
1 head of celery
500 g of carrots
6 cloves of garlic
1 kg of spicy Calabrian sausages
salt

Method

1. Soak the haricot beans overnight. The next day, chop the celery, and fry gently in a large saucepan for a few minutes until it starts to soften. Add the whole, unpeeled garlic cloves, fry for another minute or so, then add the strained beans and enough stock or water to cover. Bring to a boil, skim off any scum which floats to the surface, reduce the heat to minimum and simmer until the beans are almost done but still have a little bite. (Probably about an hour.)
2. While the beans are cooking, peel and chop the carrots, and slice the sausages into thick slices. Add the carrots and the sausage to the cooked beans, add a little stock if necessary, and some salt. Simmer until the sausage is cooked. (About 20 minutes.)
3. Cook your pasta, drain, toss with a little olive oil, and add it to the stew.

Calabrian food is characterised by the generous use of chilli. It’s used both fresh and dry, and in lots of preparations. Two of my favourites are a salty sauce made with fresh chillies and salted anchovies, and ‘nduja’, a type of soft very spicy sausage which you can spread on bread or melt into a pasta sauce.

Swiss chard with tomatoes and chick peas

I adapted this recipe from one on the back of a spice packet. However, the combination of greens with chick peas is obviously well-established, as acelgas con garbanzos (Swiss chard with chick peas) and garbanzos con espinacas (chick peas with spinach) are both Spanish standards, while Claudia Roden gives a recipe for spinach with chickpeas in her Book of Jewish Food. If you can’t get hold of Swiss chard, use curly kale, winter greens or savoy cabbage instead.



Ingredients
olive oil
500 g of Swiss chard
1 teaspoon of paprika
1 teaspoon of cumin
1 teaspoon of mixed spice
½ teaspoon of chilli powder
1 teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon of black pepper
500 g  tomatoes
juice of 1 lemon
1 tin of chickpeas

Method

1. Remove and discard the ends of the chard stalks. Separate the stalks from the leaves, and slice the stalks and the leaves thinly. Wash the stalks and the leaves separately. Chop the tomatoes into large chunks (4 pieces if using medium-sized tomatoes, 6 or 8 pieces if using larger ones).
2. In a large saucepan pan, add the chard stalks to the olive oil and fry gently until they have softened. Once the stalks are reasonably soft, add the spices, together with the salt and pepper, and fry for 30 seconds.
3. Add the tomatoes, and stir to mix, then place the chard leaves on top, then the cooked chickpeas, pour the lemon juice over it and cover. (The flavours and textures of the different ingredients should still be clearly distinguishable at the end, so don’t stir the ingredients at this stage, and don’t be tempted to make tomato sauce!) The dish is ready to serve once the chard leaves have softened (about 5 minutes or so).

Lentil stew with black pudding (lentejas con morcilla)

This is a great winter stew, and really easy to make. You can replace the morcilla with British black pudding in a link, or with good quality sausages. Don’t use orange lentils for it, though, as they will just turn into soup. In Spain, lentils are served in a shallow bowl, with a little bit of vinegar.



Ingredients

olive oil
1 medium-sized onion
4 whole garlic cloves
2 teaspoons of sweet paprika
350g brown lentils
2 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
2 large carrots, peeled
1 litre of stock (or water)
salt
250g of morcilla

Method

1. Chop the onion roughly, heat in a large saucepan until nearly done, then add the whole unpeeled garlic cloves. Once the onion is translucent, add the paprika, lentils, the quartered potatoes and the carrots. Add the stock, and season with salt.
2. Bring to the boil, reduce heat to minimum and simmer for 15 minutes. Add the morcilla and cook for another 45 minutes, until the lentils are tender.