Olives

We harvested a few pounds of olives with the purpose of trying our hand at curing them. When you start reading about how to cure olives, you quickly realize that there are many methods to do that and many conflicting sets of instructions. An interesting fact that I had never thought about is that olives are actually a fermented food, they become palatable through fermentation. Olives used to be a very important source of nutrition; curing them was also a way of preserving them and making them available year round.

The olives we picked are of a variety called galega, which is Portuguese for Galician. It's a Portuguese variety which is quite small and naturally high in acidity, making it ideal for the curing process that we are going to attempt: the brining. They weren't quite ripe yet, most were half back-half green: 

We sorted them, picking the leaves and stalks and discarding any that were short of perfect, ie, any that were bruised or had rotten spots. We then put them in a 3-liter  glass Kilner jar, which became full up to the shoulder. Perfect amount, just out of luck. Of course, our harvest was larger, but we gave some away to family so that they could have a go at this as well. We washed the olives carefully inside the jar, avoiding bruising the fruit, and then added a 6% salt solution - ie, 6 grams of coarse sea salt per 100 ml of filtered water. We needed 1.2 liters of brine to cover the olives completely. To make the solution, we put the salt inside a large plastic bottle, added the water, and then vigorous shook the bottle until the salt was completely dissolved. To prevent the olives from coming in contact with oxygen, we put a piece of cling film on top of the brine and made sure that it was fully submerging the olives. The glass lid went on top of the jar, but without the rubber and metallic fastener. The slow fermentation will produce carbon dioxide and alcohol, so it is not a good idea to fully seal the jar unless you release the trapped gas once in a while. The jar is now in our pantry, away from direct light, and we'll wait patiently and monitor how it develops. Anything we do to the olives will be registered here.

Edit 1: as the olives ferment, the cling film will rise with the gases produced. We have to/should press down on the cling film to free that trapped gas and prevent the olives to come in contact with oxygen.

Edit 2: at some point, the jar starts smelling like olives (which is a sign things are working) and the water will become cloudy. We decided at day 20 to strain the olives, clean then with some filtered water in a colander, wash the jar with some dishwasher liquid, and add a fresh 1.2 liter 6% salt solution to the jar with the olives.

Feijoada portuguese style

This is a very heavy meal, ideal for a Sunday lunch with friends and family. It does not make sense to make a proper feijoada for just a few people - unless you want to freeze the leftovers!

I start this on a Friday night if I want to serve it for Sunday lunch.

Ingredients for about 8 people:

• 700 g pinto beans or similar
• 1 pig's trotter and the meatier portion above the trotter (~1.5 kg in total). Ask the butcher to slice it half lengthwise, and then to cut it in ~5 cm long portions crosswise. You won't be able to do this at home.
• 1 pig's ear
• 1.5 kg pork spare ribs, also cut in small portions (as if for stewing)
•  500 g pork belly, a thick slice of about 7 cm cut in two portions
• 1 chouriço -- this is a Portuguese smoked pork meat sausage (~275g)
• 1 morcela -- this is a Portuguese blood sausage (~300 g)
• 1 farinheira -- this is a Portuguese smoked sausage that is made out of flour and pork fat (it tastes way better than it sounds) (~150g)
• 4 bay leaves
• one 800 g tin of whole tomatoes
• 3 large onions
• 4 garlic cloves
• 3 carrots, peeled and sliced into 0.5 cm rounds
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Olive oil.

On Friday night, pick the beans of stones and other impurities; place them in a large bowl and wash them thoroughly in cold water. Fill the bowl with cold water and let the beans soak overnight. Wash all the pork meat (not the sausages) in cold running water and place them in a large tray. Make sure there are no hairs in the meat. If there are, burn them with a lighter and scrape the skin with a sharp knife. Salt the pork belly and pig's trotters quite heavily, and more sparingly the ribs and the ear. Cover the tray with cling film, and put it in the fridge overnight.

On Saturday morning, remove the water from the beans, cover the bowl with cling film and put it in the fridge until you are ready to boil the beans. Wash the meats to remove all the salt and put them also back in the fridge.  I typically boil the beans at night. 

You should need two large pots to boil the beans. Divide the beans between the two pots and try to divide the different types of meat also. Cut the chouriço in half, peel and cut one onion in half, and place each of the halves in each pot. The morcela will have to go to one the pots because you should not cut it in half. Cover the contents of the pots with cold water, add a slug of olive oil and a bay leave, and bring to the boil. Scum the foam, and let it simmer until the beans are cooked. This should take about an hour, but it depends on many factors, and you may need to add more water. Notice that no salt is added, as the sausages and the other meats will have plenty of salt; notice also that the farinheira does not go into the pot at this point. Monitor the beans and meat closely: if you notice that the ribs are cooked before the beans, remove them from the pots and keep simmering.

Once everything is properly cooked, remove the meats and sausages from the pots, and let them cool. When they are cold enough to handle, cut them into bite sizes, making sure that you keep the different types separated. This will make it easier to divide the meats between the two pots when we cook the feijoada. Slice the chouriço in ~1cm rounds and reserve. Do not cut the morcela in rounds. Put all the meat back into a large clean tray, and place it in the fridge. Keep the beans in the cooking liquid. If it's warm outside, place the beans in the fridge until you're ready to cook.

Come Sunday morning, we cook the feijoada. In each of the two pots, put a generous slug of olive oil, one diced onion, 2 minced garlic cloves and one bay leave. Cook on medium heat until the onion starts to colour. Next, add half the tomato tin, crushing the tomatoes with your hand and removing any hard bits. Lightly season with salt and pepper. Let this cook until a nice tomato sauce forms. You can add some of the cooking liquid along the way and also more olive oil if needed. Meanwhile, pierce the farinheira in several places with a toothpick, and gently boil it for 15 minutes in a small pot with some of the cooking liquid. Reserve this cooking liquid.

Once the sauce is cooked, add the meats and the carrots, the beans and some cooking liquid, enough to almost cover the content of the pots - you should use preferably the cooking liquid used to boil the farinheira, but it will typically not be enough. Carefully mix everything with a large spoon. The pots have then to simmer until all the flavors meld, about 1/2 an hour. Check for salt and pepper, and be ready to add more of the cooking liquid along the way.

When you are ready to serve, warm the farinheira and the morcela in some of the cooking liquid. Slice these sausages into ~1 cm rounds and put them on a plate to serve alongside the feijoada. It is typically served with a simple lettuce salad and some white rice. 

It's not a very pretty dish to look at - hence no photos - but it sure is delicious!

Homemade Yogurt

This is how we make yogurt at home. It's really simple and the yogurt we get is creamy and very tasty. You need a small jar of plain yogurt to start the process. The best quality possible, of course. From that initial culture of bacteria, we could in theory produce as much yogurt as needed simply by using a small portion of each batch to inoculate the next one. In practice, it seems that this does not work if you start with a commercial yogurt, only if you use a heirloom yogurt starter culture. With commercial yogurt you get away with 5 or 6 batches of yogurt before you need to restart the process with store bought yogurt. We can't attest to this theory as we never did so many uninterrupted batches.

Here's what we need:

- 1 liter of full fat milk
- 1 plain yogurt
- 1 one liter kilner jar
- thermometer

and how you do it:

- this is an overnight process, so it's best to start it the night before you need the yogurt. Put the milk in a pan and slowly heat it to 85 degrees centigrade. Use a whisker to stir the milk so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan. Let the milk cool to 43 degrees centigrade either naturally or by placing the pan inside a bowl of cold water. Whisk the milk to speed up the process. Once it reaches that temperature, vigorously whisk in a couple of tablespoons of plain yogurt. Transfer the milk to the kilner jar. It may be a good idea to put some hot water in the jar beforehand to warm it up, and then throw it way before adding the milk. The idea is that you don't want the milk's temperature to considerably drop below the 43 degrees centigrade mark once it comes in contact with the jar. Close the lid and tightly wrap an old thick sweater around the jar. Place the jar inside a cabinet or some other place where it will not be disturbed. The next morning, it should look like the picture below. Put it in the fridge and enjoy it plain or mixed with honey or homemade jams!

Pizza party

Here's how we go about cooking some damn tasty pizza. It's far from perfect -- for perfection you need a much hotter oven -- but it's quite fun to do it and the result is good enough.

We make the dough with the help of a bread machine. It's not a big deal to make it by hand, but this way not only we keep the machine from gathering too much dust but it's also much cleaner to do it this way.

For the dough for two pizze (the plural of pizza), we need

• 300 g of flour
• 1/2 tsp of yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tbsp of olive oil
• 1 tsp of salt
• 200 ml of water

and it takes 45 minutes to make this amount of dough in the machine, so we must plan ahead. At the end of the cycle, remove the dough from the machine and tip it onto a lightly floured surface, kneed it to remove the air bubbles, and let it rest, covered with a tea towel, for about 20 minutes.

When it comes to the toppings, here's what we did this last time:

• mozzarella, one 200 g ball per pizza, minced
• 1 small tin of peeled whole tomatoes (400 g) (enough for 3-4 pizze)
• cherry tomatoes, washed, dried and cut in half
• rucola, washed and dried
• mushrooms, stems removed and sliced very thinly  (say, chestnut mushrooms)
• good quality prosciutto, thinly sliced
• cooked ham, thinly sliced (for the kids)

but in the past we have also used tuna fish (with oregano and olives), blue cheese, anchovies etc. The key is to go light on the toppings, otherwise the pizza will become soggy.

The tomato sauce is made by blending the tinned tomato with a stick blender, seasoning it with salt, pepper and olive oil. Make sure to use only the tomato and not any of the liquid. You want the tomato sauce to have very little water. Have all the topping prepped before you move on the to next step.

Heat the oven to the highest temperature possible, and do this well in advance. We do this by setting the heat to come from both the top and the bottom of the oven, and by turning on the convection.

Next, with the help of a rolling pin, your hands, extra flour and plenty of patience, roll out the pizza disks. It does not harm to let the disks rest for  a few minutes. Lightly oil the pizza pan and place the disc on it. We use a pizza pan very similar to the one bellow, and it works out ok.

With the help of a spoon, spread a thin layer of tomato sauce over the disk, then sprinkle on the mozzarella evenly. Add anything else except for the ham, prosciutto, cherry tomatoes and rucola. Those toppings should be added to the pizza immediately as it comes out of the oven.

Before putting the pizza in the oven, you can add a sprinkle of coarse salt, a slug of olive oil, which can be massaged in the outer crust of the pizza for a better golden look, and pepper.

Put the pizza in the oven and monitor it closely. It takes about 7 minutes for it to cook. The outer crust should be a light golden brown and the cheese should be bubbly.

The fact that the oven is never as hot as it should be results in a pizza crust that is a bit soggy. That's one of the reasons why we should go easy on the amount of toppings we put on the pizza; mushrooms, for instance, are mostly water...

Rice and Beans

Quick, tasty, healthful, and cheap! Quite simple as well, although one could imagine a few variations. This serves two, with plenty of leftovers:

- 1 cup of pinto beans, soaked overnight in cold water
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, smashed with the back of a knife
- 1 bay leaf
- 1400 g can of whole tomatoes
- salt and pepper to taste

Start by cooking the beans: drain the beans, put them in a pressure cooker, cover with cold water, add a pinch of salt and a slug of olive oil. Close the pressure cooker and place it over medium-high heat. Once the cooker reaches pressure, lower the heat to low and let it cook for 15 minutes. Reserve the cooking liquid.

Meanwhile, sweat the onion, garlic and bay leave in olive oil in a large saute pan. Once soft, add the tomatoes, crushing them with your hands. Slowly cook the tomatoes until a nice sauce forms. Season with salt and pepper. You may add a bit of the cooking liquid if it becomes too dry.

Add the drained beans along with some cooking liquid. Bring to a boil and them reduce to low. Let it cook slowly, being careful not to burn or to let it become dry. Once all the flavors have melt, serve at once with a green salad and white rice. Hot sauce goes quite well with this. Alternatively, add a teaspoon or so o chilli flakes when frying the onion and garlic.

Potato freaks

All shapes, but no heart shape.

Palak chana dal

This one is a keeper. The recipe was gleaned from various sources, and the amount of spices is pretty much guessed, but it sort of works.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cup chana dal, picked over, rinsed, soaked for ~ 2 hours, and pressure-cooked with 1/2 tsp of turmeric and a pinch of salt for 6 minutes, cooking liquid reserved;
•  1 bunch of spinach;
•  1 small tin (400 g)  of whole tomatoes;
•  1 small onion, chopped;
•  1 1-inch chunk of ginger, peeled and finely minced;
•  3 cloves of garlic, minced;
•  1 green chile, roughly chopped;
•  1/2 tsp turmeric;
• 1 tsp garam masala;
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper;
• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds;
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds;
• 1 cup basmati rice, rinsed and soaked for 1/2 hour in 2 cups of cold water.

How to cook the rice: bring to the boil 2 cups of salted water, slug of oil, two cardamom pods. Then, add the rice and carefully separate the grains with a fork.
Bring to the boil again and then simmer on low, partially covered, until all the water is absorbed. Cover the pan tightly and put it on the lowest flame possible, ideally with a flame tamer, for 10 minutes, to steam.

How to cook the dal: 

Pick and wash the bunch of spinach. Meatier varieties of spinach are best for this dish.

Heat oil in a pan. Fry the cumin and mustard seeds until the mustard start to pop. Add the onions, fry until soft; add garlic and chiles, fry for a minute or two. Add the spices, the garam masala and the ginger, and fry until fragrant. In go the tomatoes and its juices, crushing the tomatoes with your hand. Let it simmer until a nice tomato sauce forms. Then, add spinach leaves, mix well, cover tightly and let it steam, stirring now and then with a wooden spoon. Once the spinach leaves have wilted, add the chana dal and mix well. You may need to add some of the cooking liquid to achieve the right consistency. Check for salt. Let it simmer gently until all the flavors have melt, stirring frequently to avoid burning the bottom of the pan.

Add a bit more of garam masala just before serving with the rice and a cucumber/tomato raita.

EDIT on 28/10/2016: This recipe is spot on, but now I'd double the amount of spices. Frozen spinach works surprisingly well.