Okra with tomatoes and coriander

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 tsp salt
half a large bunch of coriander (or 2 of those miserly packs they sell in supermarkets)

Method

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Add the tomatoes and chopped coriander leaves, and fry for another 5 minutes.

Carrot, lentil and red pepper soup

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

1. Chop the onion, red pepper and garlic, and fry gently in plenty of olive oil until the onion has softened.
2. Add the cumin powder and fry for a few seconds.
3. Add the carrots, lentils, stock and chilli sauce, bring to a boil, cover and simmer gently for 45 minutes.
4. 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.

Pickled cucumbers with dill, garlic and horseradish

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

1. Sterilise 4 good-sized pickling jars, with their lids.
2. Allow to cool a little, then pack the cucumbers into them.
3. Into each jar, place 1 peeled garlic clove, a 1-inch piece of horseradish root, and 3 or 4 lengths of dill stalk.
4. Dissolve the salt and sugar in the boiling water, and add the vinegar.
5. 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

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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

Polish-style pickled cucumbers

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Partridges stewed in oil and vinegar

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Cover the pan, bring to a simmer, reduce to minimum and cook for 1.5 hours.
4. 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.

Hot cross buns

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 

For the dough
375g warm milk
15 g of fresh yeast (or 7 g of dried active yeast)
30g brown sugar
2 tsps mixed spice
150g large raisins
zest of 1 lemon
3 tbsps sunflower oil
1 egg
650g strong white flour
5g salt

For the glaze
100g light brown sugar
100g water

For the pastry cross
75g plain flour
75g water

Method

1. Measure the milk into a large bowl. Add the yeast, whisk well so that it is dissolved. Add the sugar, mixed spice, raisins, lemon zest, sunflower oil and 1 egg, and whisk to mix. Add the flour and salt, and mix well.
2. Work the dough in the bowl or on a worktop until it is smooth. Return the dough to the bowl, cover, and leave to stand for an hour.
3. Transfer the dough to a well-floured surface, bring it together into a ball, then divide it into 12 portions. Form each portion into a small round boule or bun, and place the buns, evenly spaced, onto a lightly oiled, floured baking sheet. Put the sheet inside a large plastic bag, making sure that the plastic is not in contact with the dough. Leave the buns to rise for 1 hour.
4. When the buns have been rising for 30 minutes, set the oven to 190°C. 
5. 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. 
6. Mix the plain flour and water together to make a stiff batter, then pipe it slowly onto the buns to make crosses. (If you don't have a piping bag, just use a freezer bag with the corner snipped off.)
7. Glaze the buns with plenty of the syrup.
8. Put the tray of glazed buns in the oven and bake for 20 minutes until they are golden brown. 
9. Remove the buns from the oven, apply a second coat of glaze and eat hot or leave to cool on a wire rack.