Torta di Castagne

Chestnuts are in season! Actually, you can make this chestnut cake anytime, as I used frozen chestnuts and I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference. They are much easier to use as they come already peeled. But, regardeless of the availability of chestnuts, only in autumn can one truly enjoy this cake. It's a traditional pastry from the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, at least according to the book we got the recipe from: Le Ricette Regionali Italiane, which we mentioned in this post. Try it, it's got a very delicate flavour, very elegant, and it looks like that as well:



The ingredients are:

• 400 g of frozen, peeled chestnuts, boiled in water with a bit of salt and passed through a food mill
  
• 100 g of almonds ground in a food processor to a coarse flour
• 200 g of sugar
• 100 g of unsalted butter at room temperature
  
• 4 eggs
• 1 lemon
• 1tbs of flour

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until creamy. Add the butter and the zest of the lemon. Blend well. Next, fold in the chestnut puree and the almond flour. Beat the eggwhites to a peak and fold into the chestnut mixture. Butter a pie dish, mine was 25 cm in diameter and about 4 cm deep, flour it, and add the mixture. Bake in the middle rack of an 180C oven for about 35 minutes.

Sourdough Variations

I can't stop baking bread using the no-knead technique and sourdough as the leavening agent. The basic recipe is described here, but I've already tried a few variations. The last one was quite sucessful: instead of 4 ounces of whole wheat flour, add 2 ounces of whole rye flour and 2 ounces of rolled oats. Add also a tablespoon of rosemary, and instead of using cornmeal to prevent the dough from sticking to the tea towel during the last proofing stage, I use rolled oats also. It's funny how the rolled oats disappear during the fermentation process, as you cannot see them in the finished loaf. I regret the lack of pictures, and a way of communicating the lovely rosemary smell that baking one of these breads produces...

Edit: Another variation and pictures. Add 1 cup of raisins instead of the one tablespoon of rosemary. Outstanding is the word:




Edit: Or add 3 1/2 tsp of quinoa, 3 1/2 tsp of millet and the same amount of flax seeds. Use flax seeds to prevent the dough from sticking to the tea towel.

Aubergine Lasagna

For me, there are always two (related) issues to consider when baking lasagna: how much sauce to make, and how large a baking dish to use. That's why, when preparing this one, I took careful notes of all the process. This recipe serves 4 people, with plenty of leftovers. Here it goes.

For the tomato sauce:

• four 800g (net weight) tins of whole tomatoes, packed in juice
  
• 2 large onions, diced
  
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 dried thai chillies, minced
  
• 2 bay leaves
• salt and olive oil

This takes awhile to cook, and can be prepared in advance, so start early. In a large pot, heat some olive oil. When it's hot, add the bay leafs, garlic and chillies. When the garilc is golden, add the onions and fry slowly until golden. Then, start addind the tomatoes and the packing juice. Add the tomatoes one by one, crushing them with your hands and making sure you discard any hard bits. Bring the sauce to a boil, add some salt and perhaps a bit more olive oil. Bring the heat to its lowest setting and let the sauce simmer for as long as you can. Say, an hour. Stir the sauce frequently to prevent burning.


The aubergine:

Get 2 kilos of aubergine - perhaps 5 medium ones - wash them, dry them, and cut the tops. Slice them lenghtwise into 1cm thick slices. Frying them is a mess. They soak a lot of oil and then you need to let them drain overnight. And the resulting lasagna is always too oily. Here's a better solution: arrange the aubergine slices on a silicone mat and drizzle a bit of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Put the silicone mat in a 180C oven, middle rack, heat from top and bottom, fan on. Once the upper side begins to gain some colour, turn the slices, season with salt and pepper, and drizzle a bit more olive oil. When they are soft and cooked through, move them to a bowl that you then cover with a plate so that the aubergine sweats and softens a bit more. You will have to do this in several batches as the slices cannot overlap.

Assembling the lasagna and baking it.

You will need

• 500g of lasagna sheets - the pre-cooked kind works really well
• 2 mozzarella balls, thinly sliced
  
• 2 cups of grated parmesan, the best quality you can afford
• one 13x9x2 inch Pyrex baking dish

Start by spreading a thin layer of sauce on the baking dish. Then, a layer of lasagna sheets, making sure they overlap a bit. More sauce, a layer of aubergine slices, followed by the mozzarella. Sauce, lasagna sheets, sauce, more aubergine, sauce, lasagna sheets and finish with a layer of sauce. Sprinkle the parmesan on top and on to the middle rack of the oven it goes. Set it at 180C, firstly with the heat coming only from below, and then after 20 minutes or so switch to top and bottom heat. The lasagna should be ready in 30-35 minutes. Let it rest for 15 minutes or so before serving: it's really hot and the flavours need to meld.

The mozzarella is clearly optional. You may or may not enjoy its presence. You can also sprinkle parmigiano between some of the layers, but for that you need quite a bit more cheese.

Sourdough (No-Knead) Bread

If you read the It has arrived! post, you know that I have received some dry sourdough starter in the mail. I couldn't wait to bake some bread with it. I did, and here's how it looked like:


Bread making is a complicated business, and sourdough bread making is probably even more so, because of the issue of keeping a sourdough culture alive, feeding it, preparing a portion for baking etc. Then there's the no-knead technique, which apparently started with the NY Times publishing a recipe for bread that required no kneading and produced a perfect loaf of bread. Since then, and it wasn't long ago, there are many no-knead enthusiasts, and plenty of variations around that theme.

I am going to produce here an account as accurate as possible of how I managed to bake the loaf of bread pictured above, so that I can refer to it whenever I want to bake more. It takes planning ahead because of the long fermentation times.

The actual recipe I used came from the site Breadtopia.com, which you can get here, with video instructions and all; plenty of advice on how to handle sourdough starter was collected on the Carl Griffith Sourdough Page. I will be assuming that you have an active sourdough culture in your fridge, which may not be in a very good shape.

Day 1 - Producing one cup of active starter

Put one tsp of your sourdough culture in a clear glass jar. Add one tbs of warm water and one tbs of flour. Mix with a wooden chopstick, put the lid on loosely and let rest in a warm place. When that develops some bubbles, add 1/4 cup of warm water and 1/4 cup of flour. You want a thick batter. Mix well and set aside until it bubbles up. Then add 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water. Once this ferments, we have one cup of active sourdough stater to use in the recipe. We only use 1/2 cup, I added the other 1/2 cup to the culture I have in the fridge, throwing away an equivalent amount before adding this starter.

I used mineral water because my tap water has plenty of chlorine in it and that is particularly bad for developing an active culture. Avoiding metal utensils seems to be a good idea also. The time between the feedings will depend on many factors. I think it's safe to start one day in the morning to obtain the full cup of active starter the next morning.

Day 2 - Making the dough

I assembled the dough at 7pm and let it ferment until the next morning. Over-proofing seems to be a factor, so if one cannot bake the next morning it may be a good idea to let the dough ferment in the fridge. Mine took about 14 hours to fully rise. Had I not been able to continue the process at the end of the 14 hours, it is possible that I would not have obtained good results, again according to what I have read.

To form the dough, mix together

• 4 oz (115g) of whole wheat flour
  
• 12 oz (340g) of all-purpose white flour (bread flour is better)
  
• 1 1/2 tsp salt

in a glass or porcelain bowl. Then dissolve 1/2 cup of active starter in 1 1/2 cup of mineral water. Pour that into the flour mixture and mix with a wooden spoon. My understanding is that the dough should be wet, but one may need to add a bit more flour to get to the right consistency. I had to. You should be able to knead it a couple of times, but not be able to knead it like you would a normal bread dough. I tried to achieve the consistency of the batter you can see in the video.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise overnight. The recipe calls for 18 hours; mine at the end of 14 hours was very much risen and ready for the next step.

Day 3 - Baking the bread

The dough is going to look very bubbly, and it will be very wet and difficult to handle. Dust the countertop with flour, and dump the dough on it. Dust your fingers also and the top of the dough. Spread it with your fingers until you are able to fold it in thirds and then in half. Check the video. Cover it with plastic and let it rest for 15 minutes or so.

After that time, one must grab the dough and shape it into a rough ball. This again is not easy because the dough is wet and sticky. Dust your hands with flour, and the dough also. Put this on top of a tea towel sprinkled with cornmeal and cover it with another tea towel. Let it rise for about 2 hours. If you lightly stick your finger in the dough, it should not spring back immediately.

Heat the oven to 240C with a Le Creuset cast iron pot, lid on, inside. Mine is size 26, holding 5 1/2 US qt, and worked well for this recipe. I'd like to see what happens with a smaller one, though. When the oven is hot, gently put the dough inside the pot, put the lid on, and let it bake for 20-25 minutes. The heat should come from top and bottom, but do not have the fan on.

After the 25 minutes period, open the oven and remove the lid from the pot. Turn the heat down to 220 C, and bake for 10 minutes more. These times may need adjustments depending on how wet the dough is and, of course, on your oven.

Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool on a rack before slicing.

The Kitchen Diaries

Everytime I make a recipe from one of the cookbooks we own, and we enjoy the result, I mark the corresponding page with an index Post-it marker. Some books end up having a lot more markers than others, but the winner is clearly The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater.

The idea behind the book is very clever, and I suppose it was this precise book that prompted us to start our own food diary. Nigel is a brilliant food writer, it is amazing how he can write about food in a such simple yet utterly cativating way. And the recipes work, one after the other. He clearly writes as a home cook to home cooks, and not as chef to amateur cooks.

This time it was "A frosted marmelade cake" and "Pork ribs with honey and anise". Here's a (not particulary flattering) picture of the ribs:

Busy III

Well, this is bound to keep us busy for a few years to come...

It has arrived!

My sourdough starter, that is. I've been reading up on sourdough bread, how does it differ from conventional bread, how to make it, etc, and inevitably I tried to create a starter. After about a week of feeding it, I gave up. It just wasn't working, I suppose. If you read webpages written by people who actually work with sourdough, they always at some point recommend that one gets hold of good known starter, rather than trying to make one's own. Once you start going down that route, it's hard to resist to the romantic idea of Carl's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter. I sent them a self-addressed envelope a few weeks ago, and it arrived today with a few grams of dry starter inside. To be continued...

Falafel and pita bread

It's rarely the case that I cook something and do not find on it a myriad of defects. I guess that's normal: perfection comes with practise and at home one never cooks the same dish three or four times in a row to be able to improve on it. Today was a bit of an exception. It was by no means perfect, but it exceeded my expectations. To put it bluntly, I never ate neither falafel nor pita bread that were as tasty as the ones I made today.

As I don't have any cookbooks that cover middle-eastern food, I resorted to probably what's at the same time the most powerful and the most dangerous source: the web. I saw plenty of recipes, some clearly lacking in coherence, and then selected one for each, and a few more for backup, so that I ended up not following any in particular. Here's what I did:

Falafel

• 1 cup chickpeas, soaked for 18 hours, water changed 2 times
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp chili pepper flakes
  
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 1 large handful of parsley and coriander, chopped
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 tbsp flour (more or less)

Drain the chickpeas, discard any that look bad. Put them, along with all the other ingredients, except baking powder and flour, inside a bowl, if using a blender, or inside a food processor. In case it's not clear, the chickpeas are not cooked at this point, they are raw. Blend until it forms a fine-grain paste - were're not looking for a puree. Check for salt, although at this point it's a bit hard to tell whether there's enough. Add the baking powder, and one tablespoon of flour at the time until it all comes together in a cement-like paste. Refrigerate for an hour or so. I shaped the falafel as quenelles using two spoons and deep-fried them until golden.

Pita bread

• 500 g flour + a few tbsp more
  
• 1 sachet of easy bake yeast (7g)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp olive oil + a bit more to coat
• 300 ml warm water

Put the flour in a bowl along with all the other dry ingredients. Mix well. Make a well in the middle, and add the water and olive oil. Mix with a spoon until it all comes together. Tip the dough onto a lightly-floured surface and knead it until it gets elastic. This amount of water was perfect this time, I imagine it may need adjustments depending on many factors. Coat another bowl with olive oil and put the dough inside. Move the dough around to make sure it's all coated in oil. Cover it with a tea towel and let it rest for 2 hours or so, until it doubles in size.

After that period, tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead it for a minute or so. Form 12 equal-sized balls and let them rest. In the meawhile, heat the oven to 200C with a cookie sheet inside close to the heat source.

Roll each ball into a disk using a rolling pin. Thin disks, how thin it's hard to say, less than 1/2 cm perhaps. Almost all the pita puffed, but a few did not. I wonder if it was the thickness of the disks...

When the oven is hot, drop the disks on the cookie sheet, a few at the time. After a few minutes, they will start puffing. Turn them over and wait until they brown a bit. Mine were a bit pale, but I guess that if you let them cook too long they will just dry up. The ones that came out nice turned out to be perfect pockets that you could slice open and fill with the falafel. Next time I may put them under the broiler to see what happens.

Dressing
This was a bit improvised, simple, but turned out really good: whisk two yoghurts until smooth and add 1/2 cup of chopped cucumber (remove the skin, say 1/2 cm cubes). Season with salt and one tsp of cumin. Chill.

Take a look at the result. Pretty, eh? We couldn't stop eating it...


Edit: you successfully freeze the falafel after they are shaped. What I did was to stick them in the freezer on a tray until they are frozen, and then put them in a ziplock bag. Fry them frozen, no need to thaw in advance.

Roghan Josh

This is, to date, the meat-based Indian dish that we enjoy the most cooking at home. Add basmati rice and a tomato and cucumber raita, and this will satisfy our cravings for spicy food. Not just any roghan josh, but this particular recipe that came with a Wine Spectator email. I always go back to their webpage for the recipe, and I follow it to the letter simply because it works. Now, imagine that they remove the recipe from their website? What willl we do? To prevent such a catastrophe, I'll cut and paste it here --- just in case. Before that, here's a picture of the resulting meal last time we cooked it:

Roghan Josh
A hearty, exotic lamb dish that works well with Malbec
From Wine Spectator magazine

The following recipe is an adaptation from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking (Barron).

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 pounds lamb shoulder or other lamb stew meat, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 8 cloves garlic
• 2 1-inch pieces fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 11/2 to 2 cups water
• 10 whole cardamom pods
• 10 peppercorns
• 6 whole cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 1-inch cinnamon stick
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 4 teaspoons sweet, or mild, paprika mixed with 1/4 to 1 teaspoon cayenne
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• Salt to taste
• 6 tablespoons plain yogurt
• 1/4 teaspoon garam masala
• Freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven, or similar heavy-bottomed pot, set over medium-high heat. Brown the meat, working in batches to avoid crowding the pan. Transfer the cooked meat to a plate.

2. Meanwhile, puree the garlic and ginger with 1/4 cup water in a blender or food processor until smooth. Reserve.

3. Add the cardamom, peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves and cinnamon stick to the pot used to cook the meat. Cook, stirring, just until the bay leaf turns color and the cloves swell, about 1 minute. Transfer the spices to a small bowl.

4. Add the onions to the pot, and cook until golden and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the ginger-garlic paste, and stir, 30 seconds. Add the paprika mixture, cumin and coriander. Season with salt. Cook, stirring, 30 seconds. Return the meat and its juices to the pot. Cook, stirring, 30 seconds. Add 3 tablespoons of the yogurt, stirring until combined. Repeat with the remaining 3 tablespoons yogurt. Let mixture cook 3 to 4 minutes more.

5. Add 1 1/4 cups water, and bring the mixture to a boil, scraping any bits from the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Reduce heat to low. Wrap and tie the reserved spices up in cheesecloth, and add to the pot. Cover the pot, and simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally, until the meat is tender, about 1 hour. (Alternatively, bake in a 350° F oven the same length of time.)

6. When the meat is tender, uncover the pot, and cook until the sauce has thickened slightly. Skim off any fat from the top. Add the garam masala, and season with salt and pepper.

Serves 4.

Cancer pagurus

Cancer pagurus is the scientific name of one these fellows:

Well, to be honest, that's how they look like once they have been cooked, and this is how you should go about it: grab a large pot and fill it halfway with water, adding enough salt so that it tastes like sea water. This means a lot of salt. The pot should be large enough to hold the crabs, and I do not recommend cooking more that two medium-sized crabs at a time. Bring the water to a boil with an onion studded with a few cloves, and add also a glass of white wine. Once it's boiling, put the live crabs inside. There's no other way, sorry. As soon as the water comes back to a boil, time 20 minutes. Skim the water now and then. After the 20 minutes, turn off the heat and remove the crabs from the pot, run them under cold water, and let them cool. Once they are cold enough, put them in the fridge for half an hour or so. That's when you start disassembling them: remove that belly bit that is missing in this picture:

After that, remove the legs with a swift circular motion. This is what you want to obtain:

Then, you must separate the carapace from what's left of the crab. It's not easy to explain how to do this, fiddle around a bit and you'll get it. Once you've done it, there are a few things you should throw away, others you must keep. The juices are precious, do all this above a plate that catches the juices. Anything that looks edible is edible, that's my best explanation. In particular, the innards are the best part. Collect all these bits in a bowl, breaking them into bite-sized morsels. Add the collected juices, one finely chopped hard-boiled egg, some mustard, a splash of whiskey, maybe some mayo. You want to create a yummy paste that you'll spread over crusty bread. Some people like to put this paste back into the carapace, once it's scrubbed and clean. I prefer to serve in a bowl. Chill everything, and serve the legs and the paste with a dry white wine. It may not look perfect, but I can assure you it tasted divinely!

Summer holidays

If we had to illustrate our summer holidays in Madrid through food, this would be our choice:


(Ensalada de pimientos-melva, Taberna Almendro 13, La Latina, Madrid.)

Quinoa

This is our new discovery, a pseudo-cereal that goes by the name of quinoa. The Incas referred to it as 'the mother of all grains', and it was a very important source of nourishment for many centuries. For some reason, pleople have rediscovered it recently, and its nutricional qualities have been touted especially by vegetarians.

Gastronomically speaking, its flavour is delicate yet nutty. The texture is very particular - perhaps a bit chewy. It does fill you up, but you do not feel bloated. I guess it's hard to describe, we can only say it's totally worth to try it at least once.

The web is full of "quinoa and black bean salad" recipes, so what we did for our first meal featuring quinoa was to read a few of those for inspiration. What we have actually done:

- 1 cup of quinoa, thoroughly washed in cold water and rinsed
- 2 cups of water
- 1 small onion, diced
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 cup each of canned black beans and corn, washed and rinsed
- 1 tsp of ground cumin
- 1 tsp of cayene pepper
- 3 tbsp of chopped coriander
- juice of one lime
- olive oil and salt

Sautee the onion and garlic in a sauce pan that has a tight fitting lid with a splash of olive oil. When the onion is soft, add the cumin and pepper. Fry for a few seconds, until fragant. Add the quinoa, mix well. Add the water, season with salt, and bring to a boil. Close the lid, turn the heat to low, and cook for 15 minutes. The liquid should all be absorbed by then. Turn off the heat. Stir in the beans and corn, and wait a few minutes until they are heated through.

In a large bowl, mix a few tbsp of olive oil with the lime juice to make a sort of vinagrette. Mix in the quinoa mixture, stir in the coriander, and check for salt and olive oil. We had it warm with wilted spinash that was briefly sauteed in garlicky olive oil, but it's supposedly very good chilled.

Here's a nice picture of the final result:

The beauty of simplicity...

or the simplicity of beauty?

Coq au Vin

It's hardly the appropriate time of the year, but on a whim I decided to cook a pot of coq au vin. I have used this recipe a few times with sucess. It came out on Saveur # 108 and it is attributed to Anne Willan and her book The Country Cooking of France. I don't have access to pearl onions, I don't use butter to cook the mushrooms as I think olive oil does a better job here, and I rarely touch celery. Otherwise, I follow the recipe closely: it works. Serve it with egg noodles and an assertive red wine, full of spices and with a touch of oak.

New toy

The "it was on sale" excuse is simply a pathetic attempt at justifying spending a ridiculous amount of money on a food mill...

Grilling vegetables (and fruits)

This would probably turn out better on a proper charcoal grill, but we like the results we obtain using an enameled cast iron gill pan - think Le Creuset - on a gas stove.

This is simply wonderful this time of the year and quite easy to do. Here's how we do it: start by washing all the vegetables, wiping them dry and trimming them. Then,

- slice aubergines in half lengthwise, then with a cut parallel to the previous one, slice each half in half again, keeping the two pieces attached. Next, cut the two halves in three or four pieces with cuts perpendicular to the first ones, creating sort of long and fat matchsticks.
- cut courgettes in quarters lenghtwise if they are small. Actually, and this applies to the aubergines also, the smaller are the courgettes, the better.
- cut red bell peppers in half and clean the seeds and ribs. Slice them lenghtwise into 2 cm strips.
- remove the stalks from the mushrooms. Chestnut mushrooms work well here, but preferably you want tastier varieties...
- trust us, this is surprisingly very good: cut peaches in half and remove the pit. They are wonderfull grilled...
- cheery tomatoes are also delicious...
- we must experiment more with this idea... Apples come to mind, red onions also, any other suggestions?

Put all the cut vegetables in a large stainless steel bowl. Sprinkle with coarse salt, season with vegetable oil, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. Mix well.

Using a silicone brush, oil the grill pan very lightly. Put it on the stove, and when it is hot start adding the vegetables. From here on, follow your intuition. Some guidelines:

- you don't want the pan to be too hot or simply warm. You have to constantly adjust the heat to be able to accomplish this. You want to grill the vegetables, not burn them...
- baste the pan and vegetables with a bit of oil now and then. Sprinkle some salt also, but avoid salting the vegetables too much;
- it's nice to create visible grill marks on the vegetables, so when you put them on the grill leave them undisturbed for a few minutes before turning them over;
- it's not easy to give guidelines regarding how long should you cook each vegetable. It's largely a matter of taste how well you want them done. Avoid overcooking, as always. If the vegetables are tender, as soon as they are heated through they should be done...

Serve with crusty bread and a chilled rosé sparkling wine, champagne if you can afford it, but definitely on the dry side.

Mackerel

Many fish go by the name of mackerel in English. Do a search on an internet search engine and you will see. The one I am talking about apparently goes by the scientific name of Trachurus trachurus, and in English is better referred to as (Atlantic) horse mackerel.

It does not seem to be a highly regarded fish anywhere in the world, and in some countries it is even only used as bait. However, in Japan, where it is called aji, it is used in sushi, although I would guess that nowhere else you will be able to find horse mackerel on sushi plate.

Here, it is highly consumed, although no-one will tell you that it is a fish reserved for special occasions only. On the good side, it is cheap, and it does not seem to be an endangered species. It is usually grilled if it is on the larger side, and dipped in flour and fried if it is smallish. I like it in any circumstance.

Can one do something more elaborate with it? Apparently one can: some sort of tartare that involves ginger, marinated with lemony flavours - but it is no foie gras, mind you.

We decided to buy a kilo and to do something with it:

Busy II

Here's a visual update of how things are moving along:

Friends

We had a couple of Spanish friends visiting us. Actually, the purpose (or rather, the excuse) of the trip was work, but we could squeeze in a bit of fun here and there, and one always has to eat, doesn't one?

Contrary to what usually happens when foreign friends visit us, they were the ones doing the cooking: tortilla de patatas in one day, paella in the other. Both dishes were truly outstanding, but the paella won the first place of the podium. Take a look for yourself:

Mussels

If you have acess to fresh mussels, hurry up and go buy at least a kilo: this recipe is so easy and so tasty that it's almost unfair. We are talking about mussels Valencia style. If you visit Valencia and taste these mussels, you are most likely to eat clotxinas, a smallish version of the regular mussel that lives in the Mediterranean sea. In any event, the recipes you get if you google "mejillones a la Valenciana" seem a bit off to us. Please don't add any salt, and fry the garlic in a bit of olive oil before adding the mussels and the lemon.

Proceed as follows: scrub the mussels clean with the help of a knife and get rid of the beard: just pull it out in a swift movement. Leave them inside the fridge for a couple of hours in bowl with clean water and about a tablespoon of salt . The idea is to help the mussels get rid of any sand they have inside the shells, but nowadays this is not as important as it was in the past because of the depuration process all shellfish has to undergo. When you're ready to start cooking, get a heavy pan, we recommend a 26 cm Le Creuset, and cover its bottom with a slug of olive oil. Fry 3 cloves of coarsely chopped garlic until golden. Then add a quartered lemon and the mussels. Turn the heat to medium high and cover the pan. Shake the pot now and then to help the shellfish move around. Once all the mussels have opened, turn of the heat. It's very important not to overcook as most of the pleasure comes from the texture of the mussels, and that is gone if they are overcooked and dried out.

Add coarsely chopped parley, squeeze the lemon quarters a bit, and serve with a lemony crisp white wine and slices of crusty bread. Use the shells to scoop out the sauce, it's devine.

We were so eager to eat it that we forgot to take a picture. These are the leftovers. Ah, the wine was a txakoli, a simple fresh white wine from the basque country...

Sophisticated food

As long as it's piled up on a large white plate, it's sprinkled with freshly ground pepper, decorated with a few Pollock-influenced lines of sauce, and perhaps some fleur de sel, it's bound to look sophisticated and "creative." We have fallen into that trap:

Boiled potatoes, blanched snow peas, white asparagus straight out of a can, two anchovies and a poached egg. It actually came out very tasty, and it does look quite nice...

Busy

This is what has been keeping our minds busy:



Yes, we have bought a flat and are renovating it... Can you guess this is going to be our kitchen?

Codfish cakes

The actual name is pastéis de bacalhau, but codfish cakes will have to do as an appropriate translation. It is also hard, if not impossible, to give a very precise recipe for these beauties: you have to look for a certain type of consistency of the batter, and adjust the quantities depending on the size of the eggs and on the quality of the potatoes.

You need to start by soaking around 200 g of cured (salted and dried) codfish. Two days in advance, skin side up, inside the fridge, changing the water twice. Then, bring a pot of water to a boil. Once it's boiling, turn off the heat, add the cod, cover the pot, and wait around 20 minutes. Remove the cod but reserve the water, you will use it to boil the potatoes. If they are new potatoes, do not remove their skins. Add a slug of olive oil and perhaps a clove of galic, and cook until fork tender. I'd say 3 medium potatoes.

Once the cod is cold enough to handle, remove the skin and the bones. Using your hands, shred the meat trying not to break the fibers of the fish. Reserve.

Peel the potatoes and pass them through a food mill. Add the shredded fish, a finely diced small onion, and finely chopped parsley.

Begin by adding two whole eggs. Then start mashing all this with your hand. Season with salt and white pepper. Be careful not to over-salt. The parsley is important, there should be enough for you to feel its presence when tasting the batter.

Then you will have to judge whether to add another egg, or even two more. You want a thick batter, but not a heavy one.

The next step is to form the cakes and to fry them. You can fry a couple and see if they are coming out light and fluffy, if the salt and other seasonings are ok, and only then proceed with the whole batch.

To form the cakes, use two soup spoons. Dunk them in the hot oil and form a shape that is known as quenelle in French. Fry these quenelles in hot oil until golden.

This is the final result. They should be crisp on the outside, moist and fluffy on the inside, the fiber of the fish holding everything together.

New books

We had two friends visiting us for a couple of days. One was coming from London, the other from Rome. As usual, I asked them to bring me something: from London, it was stem ginger in sugar syrup, golden syrup, and some Tiptree jams which I cannot buy where I live (victoria plum and black cherry). Alas, these were confiscated at Heathrow. Given the restrictions on carry-on luggage, of course the security did not allow these things on board.

I was more lucky with the parmigiano reggiano from Rome, although I am not sure what would have happened had my friend been searched.

Most importantly, I asked for cookbooks, and these arrived safely: "The French Laundry Cookbook", by Thomas Keller, and "Le Ricette Regionalle Italiane", by Anna Gosetti della Salda.

Some people may say that I own too many cookbooks, as if that was possible...

The perfect hangover food

It's easy to cook, it's easy to digest, it's spicy and a bit greasy also. It's very comforting. What else do you need in those mornings? Spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncini, perhaps the first foreign food I learnt how to cook.

Take 200 g per person of good quality spaghetti. Of the supermarket brands, the best is De Cecco. Barilla is okay. Bring a big pot of water to the boil and add the pasta without breaking it: one of the major sins you can commit while cooking pasta is to break spaghetti; the other is to overcook it. Add plenty of salt.

Finely chop 2 or 3 cloves of garlic per person. Cover the bottom of a sautee pan with olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the garlic and dried red chiles to taste. It's your call here. Be careful not to burn the garlic, remove the pan from the heat if needed. When the garlic is fried, add a glass of white wine (the quantity of wine obviously depends on the amount of oil: use your judgement...) and bring the mixture back to the boil. Move the pan in circles to emulsify the fat and form an homogeneous sauce. Finely chop some parlsey.

Once the pasta is cooked, mix it with the garlicky oil and perfume with the parlsey. If you have parmigiano reggiano, grate as much as you want over the pasta. Enjoy! And next time, try to be a reasonable chap and drink more sensibly. The best solution is prevention! (Right...)

Fritto Misto

Ever since our last trip to Rome we have been craving this food and meaning to try to replicate it as best as we could. We had this at Andrea's birthday party, cooked live by a couple of locals in a large pot full of oil and served in paper cones. It was utter bliss.

There are many versions of fritto misto in Italy, each consisting in a different combination of fried foods: fritto misto alla romana, alla napoletana, alla milanese... you get the point.

We simply had fried aubergine, courgette, red bell pepper and some parsley. Look at this picture to see how we prepped the vegetables:


The next step is to prepare the batter. We used a recipe from an italian recipe book we have: Il talismano della felicita' by Ada Boni. Flour (125 g), one tablespoon of oil, one egg yolk, two egg whites, a glass of warm water and a pinch of salt. We read in other places that the water should be cold and that the batter should be prepared just before being used. This book asked for warm water and suggested to rest the batter for at least an hour before using... Everybody seems to agree that one should take care not to overwork the batter, just mix everything together until you get a nice smooth mixture. The glass of water is just a guideline, follow your instinct. The egg whites should beaten to a soft peak and folded into the batter at the last minute.

Shake the pieces of vegetables to get rid of the salt, pat dry, and plunge in the batter. Get rid of any excess and drop into hot oil (180 degrees, use a thermometer). This is how our looked like, and it was very good... although not quite as good as the real one...

Beans and chipotles

Remember these beans? We had a large batch in the freezer that we needed to use to free up some space, so we made some soup. The batch was really big, and we were left wondering what else we could do with these beauties.

The inspiration came from a glass of leftover chipotles in adobo sauce that was (and still is) in our fridge. Chipotles are jalapeno peppers that have been dried and smoked. These chillies are preserved in small tins with adobo sauce, which is a concoction of tomato, vinegar, garlic etc. Both the sauce and the chillies are quite used in mexican cooking. What is really unusual about this ingredient is the smokiness paired with the acidity of the vinegar and the spiciness of the peppers. Very inspiring!

Our creation: fry some finely chopped onion in olive oil until golden, and then add good quality tinned tomatoes. Cook on low heat until the sauce comes together. Then add a couple of the smoked jalapenos finely diced, and a few tablespoons of the adobo sauce. Check for salt and keep simmering on very low heat. Then you need to cook the beans. The best is to use a pressure cooker: the beans, a bit of olive oil, add enough water to barely cover, close the pot and cook for 8 minutes after the pot starts whistling. Now add the strained cooked beans to the sauce along with a few tablespoons of the cooking liquid and simmer on low heat until the flavours meld, adding more liquid as needed. Serve with sauteed turnip greens and crusty bread.

Codcheeks

A word of warning: codcheeks packed in brine should be soaked for as long as regular cod should, never less! We cooked (not fried) ours in olive oil, and used the oil to mount the sauce, so none of the excessive salt had a chance to escape. It wasn't inedible, but it was a bit far from perfection.

Codcheeks are amazing! This was the first time I ate - or cooked - these things, but many more will certainly follow. My guess is you should soak them in the fridge for 1.5 days, changing the water three times. Maybe two days, I have to experiment. We soaked ours for 24 hours and that was not enough.

Codcheeks are used a lot in Basque cuisine, where they are called kokotxas. I had been curious for a while about experimenting with the pil pil technique: essentially emulsifying the cod's gelatin in olive oil until it forms a thick sauce. Hence, saturday dinner was set.



The wine was also one which I had my eye set on for a while: 2005 Vinha Formal, a 100% Bical wine that is fermented in barrel and aged for 12 months in new oak barrels with a 650 l capacity. It's supposed to be an unusal white wine, very particular. Our bottle showed a very complex nose, but I was expecting a more exhuberant mouth. In particular, I was expecting a more unctuous wine. A very nice wine, but I am not sure I would buy another bottle, especially given the pricetag.

To serve with the kokotxas al pil pil: double-fried french fries and turnip greens that were parboiled and then sauteed in garlic-scented olive oil.

For the kokotxas al pil pil: fry 3 sliced cloves of garlic and a small dried chile until golden in a lot of hot olive oil - 1/2 a cup of oil should do it: you need enough to barely cover the codcheeks. Remove the solids to a plate, let the oil cool a bit, and then add the codcheeks that were patted dry (we used 500 g and that was enough for 3 people and there were no leftovers). The idea is to cook them in oil, not to fry them, so the temperature should not be too high. You will see white bubbles forming: this is the beginning of the pil pil. The cod cooks fairly quickly: 5 minutes or even less. Do NOT overcook! Remove the cod and let the oil cool down to about 60 C. Then start wisking the oil with a small colander. I saw this technique in this youtube video, and it really works! The oil will thicken to form a very interesting sauce. Check the video for more detailed instructions - if you understand Spanish.

Put the cod back into the saute pan, heat and serve sprinkled with parsley and guarnished with some of the fried slices of garlic.

A night in India

An impromtu dinner with friends resulted in an incursion into Indian gastronomy. This was the line-up: roghan josh, recipe courtesy of the Wine Spectator, and spinash bhaji, recipe courtesy of Saveur number 103, June 2007. Basmati rice, which was subpar, store-bought chapati. To start, mango chutney, an improvised minty yoghurt and a lime pickle with a few papadums. The wines were too delicated for the boldness of the food: Vina Sol 2006, Penedes, and Quinta de Saes 2006, Dao Doc. All in all, a very agreable dinner in very good company.

Who wants to do the washing-up?

A dinner party

We've had a couple of friends over for a saturday night dinner. The menu was put together taking into account the fact that one of the guests was quite fussy about food:

- starter: puff pastry stuffed with brie and tapenade; rucola and apple salad.



- main: short ribs slowly braised in red wine; mash made out of sweet potatoe, carrots, turnip, regular potatoes and finished with leeks thinly sliced and sauteed in olive oil. There was a very interesting contrast between the sweetness of the mash and the saltiness of the sauce of the meat.

- dessert: pear poached in red wine and spices. The sauce was reduced and served warm; the pears were served at room temperature. Vanilla ice cream rounded off a very interesting dessert.



All in all, a very nice dinner. The dessert was very good, the starter was not that interesting.

Wines: Morgado de Santa Catherina Reserva 2006 with the starter - full bodied white wine made out of the Arinto grape. The nose was reminescent of peaches, a touch of white flowers; the mouth was very round but very well-balanced by a crisp acidity. Very nice oak, never imposing.
Ma Partilha 2001 with the main - smooth Merlot, already with some signs of aging. Perhaps too elegant for the boldness of the dish, but a stellar wine that drinks beautifully.
No dessert wine, just because.