Arbroath smokies

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


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


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


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


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

Roasted vegetables

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


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

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

Cinnamon knot buns (zeeuwse bolus)

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


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

Method

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

'raw' ropes

rolling the rope in sugar, and forming the knots

risen knots

Mince and green bean curry

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

halal haggis burgers

curry on Leith Links

eye candy

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


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

Method

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

Celeriac and beetroot soup

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



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

Method

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

Scallops stir-fried with ginger, garlic and spring onion

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


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

Method

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

Chinese stewed aubergine with garlic, ginger and chilli

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


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

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

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

Method

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