Bacalao, chick peas, chorizo and green beans

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



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

Method

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

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

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



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

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

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

Method

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

Cazuela with oil, garlic and chillies



Bacalao 'stewing' slowly in oil over a low heat



Oil cooling down

Stir-fried cuttlefish with chorizo and potatoes

This is another Rick Stein recipe. Fresh chorizo is one of those ingredients which is very strongly associated with Spanish cooking in the UK, but which is not actually that widely used in Spain itself. I'd be curious to know by what process this happened. When I went shopping for this, I wasn't really in the mood for cleaning and preparing squid and anyway the squid in the market was quite expensive, so I went for cuttlefish instead (which comes ready cleaned and is much cheaper). Cuttlefish never seems to be eaten in the UK, although we do feed its 'bones' to budgerigars. I was a little worried that I would be in rubber band territory with my cuttlefish substitution, as it is sometimes a little tougher than squid, but I wasn't. It was very tender and tasty, and I allowed myself a smug "domestic scientist" moment.



Ingredients
500g prepared cuttlefish, cut into strips (or squid, cleaned and cut into rings)
plenty of good olive oil
1 fresh red pepper, seeded and cut into chunks
2 cloves of garlic
1 red chilli
750g new potatoes
1 fresh tomato, chopped into chunks
salt and pepper

Method

1. Steam or boil the potatoes whole, in their skins. Once they have cooled a little, peel and slice them.
2. Heat the oil in a large pan, add the cuttlefish and fry for a couple of minutes.
3. Remove the cuttlefish to a bowl, add the red pepper, garlic, chilli and chorizo to the frying pan and fry for a couple more minutes.
4. Add the tomato to the pan, and cook for another minute or so.
5. Return the cuttlefish to the pan, and cook for another minute.
6. Add the peeled, sliced potatoes and cook until heated through, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

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.

Roast potatoes

There is a lot of debate about how to produce the "perfect" roast potato, much of it spurious. This is my method - cut your potatoes smallish, parboil them, roast them for a long time in plenty of hot oil (goose fat is great, otherwise I use olive oil). The potato variety is important too. Arran Victory 1918 are great, but not exactly widely available. In general, you want floury rather than waxy. I also like to chuck in a few cloves and some sprigs of rosemary.



Ingredients
2 kg of floury potatoes
salt
pepper
8 garlic cloves
4 sprigs of rosemary
olive oil

Method

1. Peel the potatoes and cut them into quarters (or smaller if the potatoes are large).
2. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, parboil the potatoes for ten minutes, strain off the water and shake the potatoes in the pan a little to bash them around a bit. (But don't go over the top!)
3. Heat the oven to 180oC, put a large roasting tray or two in the oven, with plenty of oil in them.
4. When the oil is hot, add the potatoes, sprinkle plenty of salt and pepper over them, add the unpeeled garlic cloves and rosemary sprigs, and roast for 1.5 hours, turning halfway through and checking from time to time to make sure they are not burning.

Hot pepper rouille

This red pepper sauce comes from Saha: A chef's journey through Lebanon and Syria, . I'm not sure if the original rouille is a French borrowing from the Levant, or a Levantine borrowing from France, but either way it goes well not just with fish stews but with just about anything else.



Ingredients
2 red peppers
250 g potatoes
300 ml water
5 cloves garlic
2 hot red chillies
juice of 1 lemon
150 ml olive oil
salt
pepper

Method

1. If you can get peeled peppers, just remove any seeds and chop them. Otherwise, put the whole peppers in an oven dish and roast gently for at least half an hour at about 160oC. Then pop them into a plastic bag, seal, and leave to cool for 15 minutes or so before peeling them. Remove the seeds, chop the flesh and proceed.
2. Peel and quarter the potatoes, peel and chop the garlic, seed and chop the chillies. Put in a saucepan with the water, bring to the boil, cover, reduce heat to minimum and cook until the potatoes are soft. (About half an hour.) If necessary, add more water, but by the end the pan should be almost dry.
3. Strain the potatoes, garlic and chillies of any liquid, then put into a liquidiser with the lemon juice and the peppers, and whiz to a puree.
4. With the liquidiser still running, dribble in the oil until it has all been incorporated.
5. Season with salt and pepper.

Roast goose

This is the second time I've made roast goose for Christmas. It's a really easy meat to cook. The fat on the outside stops it from drying out, and the meat is tasty and tender, and quite lean. The recipe I've used both times is from Gordon Ramsey, and involves zesting lemons and limes, rubbing the zest onto the skin, then stuffing the cavity with the fruit and with some fresh herbs. However, I'm beginning to suspect that the purpose of this is just to fool the diners into thinking that the cook bears more responsibility for the end result than he really does. I don't think the fruit and herbs make much difference at all to the flavour, so next time round I will just be seasoning the skin with salt and pepper before roasting the bird.



Ingredients
5 kg goose
salt
pepper

Method

1. Heat the oven to 240oC (220oC fan).
2. Remove the giblets and any loose pads of fat from the bird, dry the outside and inside, and score the skin lightly in a criss-cross pattern. Season generously with salt and pepper.
3. Place the goose on a trivet or wire rack, over a large baking tray.
4. Cook for 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 190oC (170oC fan), and cook for a further 140 minutes. Baste the bird with some of the fatfrom the baking tray every 30 minutes, and strain the excess fat off into a heatproof bowl. (You will get about 1 litre of fat from your goose. Strain it and keep it for roasting potatoes in.)
5. After the goose has been in the oven for 90 minutes, cover with tinfoil to stop it from getting too brown.
6. Once the cooking time is complete, remove the goose from the oven, and leave to rest for 20 minutes before carving.

Cooking times
Allow 30 minutes per kg of goose (including the 10 minutes of 'hot oven' time in your total).