Courgette and roasted garlic soup

I have lifted this almost directly from the Painted Garden Cookbook, just adjusting the amount of garlic downwards a little and adding a good splash of white wine.

Ingredients
1 kg of small courgettes
300 g of onions
1 head of roasted garlic
olive oil
1/2 glass of white wine
1 litre of vegetable stock
salt

Method

1. Peel and chop the onion, top and tail the courgettes and chop into small chunks. Put in a large saucepan with plenty of olive oil and gently sautee until done (about 15 minutes).
2. Add the white wine, roasted garlic and stock, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 15 minutes. Allow to cool a little, whizz with a stick blender, check for salt and add more if necessary.

Warm Arbroath smokie, potato and bacon salad

When I got back from Amsterdam I was in the mood for more herring, and I nipped along to my fishmonger (Something Fishy, on Broughton Street in Edinburgh) expecting to find some nice fat herrings waiting for me. Unfortunately they had all gone, so I bought some Arbroath smokies instead. Smokies are hot-smoked, salted haddock which are a north-east of Scotland speciality, and bear no resemblance to herring, but I thought they would still go well in the warm potato and bacon salad I had planned for the herring. If you can't get hold of smokies then you could substitute them with fresh herring fillets, very lightly fried, or just about any other fish you fancy - mackerel, trout etc.


Ingredients
2 Arbroath smokies
750g new potatoes
6 rashers of smoked back bacon
3 pickled dill cucumbers, thickly sliced
dill
white wine vinegar
Dijon mustard
olive oil
Salt
Black pepper

Method

1. Place the smokies in a large saucepan (cut them in half crosswise if they won't fit), cover with boiling water, add a few sprigs of dill and about 50 ml of white wine vinegar, bring to the boil, turn off heat, cover and leave for 5 minutes. Transfer smokies from pan to a bowl, allow to cool and remove the flesh from the smokies with your fingers.
2. Steam the new potatoes in their skins, allow to cool and then cut into halves or quarters depending on size. Grill or fry the bacon until it is just done, remove from pan, allow to cool, and cut into strips.
3. Combine the fish, potatoes, bacon and pickled cucumbers in a serving bowl, sprinkle plenty of chopped dill over it.
4. Prepare a dressing with the olive oil, some wine vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper, and pour over the salad and mix gently.

Memory lapse
I often forget things when I am cooking, and when I was putting this together the pickled cucumbers slipped my mind, which is why you won't find them in the photo, however hard you search.

Jerusalem artichoke and apple soup

I only realised after I had started making this soup that my blender was on the blink, so I ended up having to use a potato ricer, hence the slightly lumpy appearance of the soup in this photo.

Ingredients
4 small leeks (or 2 large ones)
olive oil or butter
750g Jerusalem artichokes
500g potatoes
2 tart apples
1 litre of vegetable stock
1 teaspoon of dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Slice the leeks and simmer gently in a large pan in some olive oil or butter.
2. Peel and dice the artichokes and potatoes, and add to the pan. Add the hot vegetable stock.
3. Peel, core and dice the apples and add to the pan. Cook for 30 minutes or so, until the artichoke and potato is done.
4. Allow to cool a bit, then blend until smooth. Add the thyme, and salt and pepper to taste.

Kitchen safety
One of the reasons why most kids' cookbooks are so bad is because you aren't allowed to let kids chop things or handle anything hot. As a result, cookbooks for children are stuffed full of recipes for cakes and biscuits (with mum or dad dealing with the oven), and the odd bit of exotic sandwich making and pizza decoration tacked on at the end. All so that in 10 years' time we can complain that our kids are obese and don't know how to cook. Far better to hand your kids a razor sharp knife and a boiling hot kettle and let them get on with it ...

Sweet and sour sauce

My first experience of Chinese food was eating at the Loon Fung in Edinburgh in the mid-1970s. Actually, it's a fairly bog-standard British high street Chinese restaurant but at the time it seemed exciting and exotic (helped no doubt by the fact that I was only 8 years old). I like to think that my palate has become more sophisticated since then, but I have to admit that I still love sweet and sour sauce. This recipe is fairly close to a restaurant "sweet and sour" sauce. If you prefer it sweeter you can always add more sugar or reduce the vinegar a little.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
125 ml pineapple juice
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon cornflour
250 ml chicken stock

Method

1. Put all of the ingredients apart from the cornflour and the chicken stock in a small saucepan and heat gently.
2. Dissolve the cornflour thoroughly in half the chicken stock, and add to the saucepan.
3. Whisk thoroughly, and gradually add the rest of the chicken stock. Simmer gently for another 10 minutes until the cornflour is thoroughly cooked.

Image free
I didn't have a photo for this, and thought I would find something cute and fun on the internet by searching for "sauce monster". Let's just say that I was shocked and stunned and not a little amazed at what I found. So, no pics today.

Oriental pork and squid meatballs

This had its origins in a fairly disastrous attempt to follow a Rick Stein recipe for steamed, stuffed squid. I got everything ready, but then realised that I didn't have anything large enough to steam my squid in, so I decided to stew them instead. And then I discovered that I didn't have any toothpicks to sew the squid together with, but ploughed on anyway. Inevitably, the stuffing spilled out, and that gave me the idea of just cooking the stuffing as meatballs. The result was really good, and had me wondering why there aren't more mixed meat and fish dishes.



After my trial version, I started from scratch the next day, with a fresh squid. I got a bit of a surprise when I cleaned the squid, as the poor thing had obviously not even had time to digest its last meal before being hoiked out of the sea.




Ingredients
800g minced pork/beef
100g prepared squid
2 inch chunk of fresh ginger
3 cloves of garlic
4 spring onions
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon chilli powder
4 tablespoons of breadcrumbs

1. Prepare the squid by cutting off the tentacles, removing the purple skin, and removing its insides (together with any undigested fish still inside!). Chop finely.
2. Place the squid and all the other ingredients EXCEPT the meat and breadcrumbs into a food processor and whizz until you have a paste.
3. Put the meat in a large bowl, add the paste and breadcrumbs and mix well.
4. Fry in plenty of oil until nicely browned.
5. Serve with sweet and sour sauce and coconut rice.

Gefilte squid
I felt reassured to reflect that the genesis of this dish was exactly the same process as gefilte fish has gone through. This started out as stuffed, boned carp, but now people generally dispense with the whole fish and just serve the 'stuffing' as little poached patties. I thought that "gefilte squid" would probably be a unique term on google, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that gefilte squid is the national animal of the nation of Bnai Brith, and frolics freely in that nation's many lush forests. The things you learn.

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