Pataniscas

Pataniscas are cod cakes. Very economical and quick to prepare, these were traditionally a way of transforming leftover boiled cod into a meal.

The ingredients:

• 1/2 cup all purpose wheat flour
• 1/2 cup milk, preferably room temperature, or the same volume of the cooking liquid of boiling the cod
• 2 whole eggs
• salt, freshly ground white pepper to taste
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup loosely packed of finely chopped parsley 
• 1 portion of boiled cod, around 200 g, skin and bones removed, flaked, about two cups loosely packed

In a large bowl, start by making a batter: slowly incorporate the milk into the flour, baking powder and baking soda mix, using a whisk or  a fork, being careful to not create any lumps. Next, add the eggs, mixing to create a batter. Then, add the onion and parsley, season with salt and white pepper. The cod may be salty, so be careful with the salt. Do not over mix. Incorporate the cod. Then we have to evaluate the consistency in order to decide whether we need to add flour or milk in order to get to the consistency of cake batter. It should be pourable but not liquid.

Frying the cakes is tricky and the secret to a light and fluffy result. Cover the bottom of a frying pan with 1/4 inch of oil and let it get hot. Dump a spoonful onto the oil and let it fry. Turn to the other side with a spatula as soon as this side is lightly golden, and fry it. Lower the heat to allow the fritter to cook through. One may need to turn the fritters a few times to ensure that it is cooked through. Remove onto a paper lined tray and let them drain the excess oil. During the frying process, one may need to lower the heat ti avoid burning the fritters. Anytime the frying pan is empty, or anytime the volume of oil seems to low, add a bit more oil. In the end, they should look like this:

Sardines

Eating sardines in Portugal is a national endeavour. It starts when the fishermen are finally given permission to catch sardines and it ends when the fish disappears from our shores. Sadly, at the end of the season, when they are most flavourful, most people are already a bit tired of eating them.

Sardines are almost always eaten grilled on charcoal. Which means that you eat them at the restaurant or you have some place outside where you can grill them. If you live in an urban area, you most likely will annoy your neighbours, but no-one seems to care.

It's very hard to see beautiful sardines at the fishmonger but not being able to grill them. The recipe I found solves that conundrum. Apparently this is a modern take on a old technique: people used to sprinkle flour on roof tiles, the old kind that are basically shaped like a half cylinder, place the gutted and clean sardines on top, sprinkle more flour and bake them in a wood oven after having baked bread. This is essentially the same thing, but using a household oven:

• gut and carefully clean the sardines;
• generously sprinkle them with coarse sea salt and let them absorb it for half hour or so;
• line an oven tray with baking paper, which you liberally sprinkle with a layer of flour -- I used wheat flour but some people recommend corn flour;
• coat each sardine with flour and place them on the tray, making sure they do not overlap; alternating the orientation of each sardine helps;
• sprinkle with olive oil and bake at 200C for about 15-20 minutes - the sardines should gain a nice golden color but be careful not to overcook them.

It is amazing how satisfying these turned out. If you remove the skin, the actual flesh tastes very much like charcoal grilled sardines!

Melanzane sott'olio

A number of years ago, I used to buy an Italian eggplant preserve, but hadn't thought about it in a while. In Italian, it's called "melanzane sott'olio", literally eggplant submerged in oil. Suddenly, it came to my mind how good this is: the texture, the vinegary aftertaste, the concentrated eggplant flavour, etc. It's wonderful on a piece of toasted bread. I could probably find it for sale if I looked hard enough, but I decided to try my hand at making it.

The usual drill: internet searches, look up recipes in books, come up with a plan based on a all the--- sometimes incompatible--- information gleaned.

All the recipes start by peeling and slicing the eggplants, most proceed by cutting the slices into strips. Most, but not all, salt the eggplant and press it with a heavy weight to extract the water and, arguably, the "bitterness" from the vegetable --- or should I say fruit? This procedure ranges from a few hours, to overnight, to a full 24 hours, depending on who you ask. There is always a vinegar solution involved, and some seasoning --- garlic, oregano, chile peppers --- but some recipes request that you boil the eggplant in the solution for different amounts of time, and others that you simply soak it in the solution.

Another difference is the concern for botulism: the acidic environment, the boiling and the salt should take care of that, but some people suggest that one should also boil the seasonings --- the garlic, peppers and any herbs --- in the vinegar solution, and some add these components raw to the eggplant.

Then, the type of oil used: vegetable oil, mostly corn oil, or extra virgin olive oil?--- which is also a vegetable oil but with rather different characteristics. One could expect extra virgin olive oil to be the norm, but some argue that it is too imposing, especially if one wants to keep the preserve for a long time. Also, if one does not consume the jar in one sitting, it has to go to the fridge and the olive oil will coagulate and the corn oil won't.

Finally: once the jars are filled, is it necessary to process them in a hot water bath, and for how long? One might think this is related with the botulism concern mentioned above, but the spores that cause botulism won't kill those, one really needs to pressure can the jars.

Some people worry about the discolouration of the eggplant so they submerge it immediately after cutting in a vinegar solution. I did not explore that option, perhaps next time.

With all these possibilities, there is a large number of different preserving procedures! Does it make a difference? Probably not that much, so let's use common sense here!

A note about the eggplants: of course, the less seeds, the better. It's hard to figure that out before cutting into them, but there is folk wisdom about that: choose fruits that at the round end have a dot rather than a slit; prefer eggplants that are slightly soft over the ones that are very hard. These are not foolproof rules, and it's hard to assess if they work at all.

My recipe:

- 3kg of eggplant
- coarse sea salt
- 750 ml of vinegar
- 1500 ml of water
- about 10 cloves of garlic
- 2 or 3 chile peppers, fresh or dry
- 750 ml bottle of corn oil, but you will not use it all

Start by peeling the eggplants with a peeler, slice them lengthwise about 2cm thick, then stack them and cut 1.5 cm with strips. If the eggplants are large, you may want to cut the long trips into more manageable sizes. As you cut the strips, layer them on a large bowl and apply salt. Not too much, enough to help draw water out of the eggplant. Apply pressure. Let the eggplant sit for a couple of hours and them place them on a colander with large wholes, put a plate on top of it and on top of the plate put a heavy weight, like a 5 litre bottle of water. The purpose is to draw as much liquid as possible out of the eggplant, as moisture is one of the enemies of preserving food. Leave it overnight or even 24 hours to drain, removing any accumulating liquid if it's touching the strips.

The eggplant the day after

The next day, peel the garlic and cut it into slices, do the same with the peppers (not the pealing, only the slicing!) and collect these slices inside a broth bag. Put the water and the vinegar and the water in a large pot and bring it to a boil. Working in batches, place the eggplant in the pot, bring again to the boil and remove to a colander to drain. Do the same with the bag containing garlic and peppers. I pressed it again overnight, using the same process.

Have the jars boiled for about 20 minutes and dry ready to pack. Don't use large jars, mostly 200 ml jars. In a large bowl, mix together the eggplant strips, garlic and peppers. Add a bit of oil just to aid in the mixing process. Fill the jars with this mixture and press to remove air pockets. Add oil as you fill the jars. Use a spoon or a chopstick to help the oil permeate to the bottom of the jar, leaving no air pockets. Wait a few hours, perhaps even overnight before advancing to the next step. In the meanwhile, do not close the jars.

The mixture ready to be packed into the jars

When ready, make sure all the eggplant is submerged in oil and close the jars. Have a large pot with water and a tea towel at the bottom. Ease the jars into the pot and boil for 10 minutes. Remove the jars from the pot and let them reach room temperature without touching them. I used old jam jars with old lids and all the jars formed a vacuum. Label and store the jars in a dark and dry place. People say to wait at least two weeks before consuming.


I did not process in the hot water bath one of the jars and, despite the fact that I kept it in the fridge, it was clear that it was fermenting because, when I opened it, there was a pop sound and the actual eggplant was sort of fizzy. When I opened one of the other jars, that did not happen.

All in all, I am quite happy with the end result. The eggplant is firm, not mushy at all. I would perhaps add more garlic and hot peppers, or a herb like oregano, but as it is the eggplant really shines through. The salt level is not high at all, and this is one thing that we need to keep in mind when salting the eggplant at the beginning. When consuming, one can always correct the salt and add more herbs.

When opening a jar, keep it in the fridge and top it with more oil to keep the eggplant submerged.

Vegan mayo and aquafaba

Aquafaba is a recent discovery in an area where one might think there is nothing fundamentally new to discover. Aquafaba is the name given to what is essentially the leftover cooking liquid when one boils chickpeas, and what has been recently discovered  is that it can replace egg whites in a variety of culinary preparations, but sweet and savory. This post is about its use in preparing mayonnaise.

Let me tell you: before you try it, you will be very skeptical; when you actually make it and taste the final product, you will feel as if you had performed a magic trick. Not only the mayo does not have the faintest taste of chickpeas but it may taste better than the egg-based alternative. Let me take that back: it does not necessary taste better, it's just different. But if you were given the mayo to eat you would never guess how it was made. You'd probably say it's an incredibly light spread, much easier to digest, with virtually the same creaminess and mouthfeel that we associate with mayo. Additionally, you don't have to worry about than potential dangers associated with using raw eggs and the mayo keeps for a much longer time. It's also much easier on your cholesterol!

I've always used the cooking liquid that comes with canned chickpeas not from legumes I've cooked myself. I try to look for cans that in the list of ingredients only have chickpeas, salt and water, ie, no additives. Some brands use kombu seaweed to cook the legumes, and that aquafaba probably results in an interesting mayo, although I haven't tried it.

My experience is that you can use essentially the same technique for preparing mayo with eggs, just replacing the eggs with roughly the same volume of aquafaba. There are two basically different approaches: by hand and using a blender/food processor, and they both work with this egg substitute.

By far, the most foolproof method I know is the immersion blender technique:

- 1/4 cup of aquafaba
- splash of vinegar or lemon
- 1/2 tsp of of yellow mustard
- 1/4 tsp of salt
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 cup of light tasting vegetable oil, eg sunflower

Make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature. Use the cup that comes with the stick blender, or something similar, ie, tall and roughly with the same diameter as the blender. Add all ingredients to the cup, then the oil. Let the oil rise to the top and carefully insert the blender until it touches the base of the cup. Then, start pulsing: short intermittent pulses. Once you notice that the mixture is thickening, start slowly pulling the blender up as you pulse. At some point, you can push and pull the blender to fully emulsify the ingredients. Once you reach your preferred texture, adjust the seasoning. Only when the mayo is chilled you can really tell if it's properly seasoned, so don't overdo it. Sometimes, the mayo is too thick and one can dilute it with a few drops of water.

Tofu

Lord, was I craving tofu. Tofu, of all things!

• 500g package of firm tofu
• garlic scapes
• two small bok choy, about 1 kg
• garlic and ginger, minced
• sesame seeds
• sesame oil
• soy sauce
• steamed rice

I pulled this one together without following any recipes, and it tasted quite well. 

Wrap the tofu block in paper towels and place it on a plate. Put another plate on top and a heavy can on top. This is to squeeze as much water as possible from the tofu.

Trim the ends of the garlic scapes and chop them into 5 cm lengths. Later (as I was munching on these!), I realized that these things are like asparagus in that there is a point at which they will become fibrous and tough. Next time, I'll use the same method as I use for asparagus: see where they naturally snap and assume that from there on the vegetable is too tough to stir fry.

Cut the ends on the bok choy, separate and wash the leaves and cut them in half lengthwise. Quickly blanch them in boiling salted water, drain and reserve. Heat the wok, add garlic and ginger, fry until golden. Add the blanched bok choy and stir fry. Season with soy sauce to taste and remove from heat. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and coat with a tablespoon of sesame oil. Ready.

Cut the block of tofu in half transversely, then into 5cm lengths crosswise and in half lengthwise. 

Wipe the wok clean. Heat it, add oil. Place the tofu chunks in the wok to fry undisturbed until it forms a crust. Flip to the other side and repeat. Once the tofu is golden, reserve. Add a bit more oil if necessary, fry some garlic and ginger until fragrant and then add the garlic scapes. Stir fry. Put the lid on and allow the vegetables to steam. Once the scapes are cooked - slightly wilted but still crunchy - return the tofu to the wok and incorporate. Season with soy sauce to taste and place on a serving platter.

Eat with steamed rice and jasmine green tea.

Harvest (Moon)

Pesto

This worked:

• 85 g of basil leaves
• 30 g pine nuts
• 1 garlic clove
• 60 g grated Parmigiano Reggiano
• 150 ml olive oil
• (coarse) salt to taste

I've used a granite mortar and pestle that was too small for this quantity of pesto, but things worked out in the end. Start by grinding the garlic clove with a bit of salt into a smooth paste. Then add the basil leaves a handful at a time and grind them into a paste as well. Do not pound, use the sides of the mortar. I had to add the basil leaves in two stages. There is a bit of a discussion about how you dry the leaves once you wash them. This was not a issue in my case, as the basil came from a plant I have in my balcony. Then, add the pine nuts and grind them into the paste. The cheese should be half pecorino half parmigiano, but this is what I had on hand. Incorporate that into the paste. Lastly, the olive oil. This quantity of oil may be reduced, 100 ml should be enough. Add salt to taste and mix well.

What strikes me in this preparation is the balance. None of the components stands out. And this is a good thing.

PS: Most recipes will call for much more garlic. I have a problem with raw garlic and only used one.

Fermented hot sauce

Food fermentation is an utterly fascinating topic; the book by Sandor Katz ---The Art of Fermentation---, and the author himself are a reflection of that fact.

If you like spicy stuff, you haven't got a single excuse not to try this. Find some hot peppers, preferably organic, cut them open, get rid of the stems and of most of the seeds, pack them inside a glass jar along with a few skinless garlic cloves which you have previously crushed. Cover with slightly salted water - preferably seat salt - and make sure all solids are completely submerged in the brine. Cover the jar but keep in mind that some gas will be released as a consequence of the natural fermentation process: if the seal is airtight, the jar might explode.

I let the peppers ferment between September 15 and September 29. Then, I've separated the solids from the brine, reserved the brine, and used an immersion blended to patiently obtain a puree. I've added some of the brine to ease the process. Then, I've sieved the puree, using a silicone spatula to separated the sauce from the skins and seeds, which were discarded.

The jar with the sauce has been sitting in the fridge and I've used its contents whenever possible. The color is absolutely beautiful, almost unnatural. The sauce is spicy, but no unbearably so. Commercial hot sauces have this vinegary aspect which is tiresome. This sauce has some acidity --- again, a byproduct of fermentation --- but not overwhelming. 

All and all, a very enjoyable hot sauce, brighter than anything I've tasted. The peppers I have used are probably malagueta chilies, but it's never easy to identify these things if they are not grown from certified seeds. There where a couple mature Poblano peppers thrown in as well. The brine is still in a glass jar inside the fridge, and I am sure that I'll come up with a few ways of using its contents....

Caldeirada

Caldeirada is a Portuguese fish stew. Every coastal area, at least in the western world, will probably have a version of this dish. Even in Portugal there are many declinations. Fishermen would cook this stew on board of the ship with whatever fish was plentiful.

This is the way I do it at the peak of the summer, when tomatoes are ripe and full of flavour. If that's not the case, good quality tinned tomatoes are a much better solution than bland and tasteless supermarket "tomatoes". I choose not to put bell pepper in my caldeirada. This will be considered an heresy by most. I find that the bell pepper overpowers everything else, and surely masks the flavour of the most important ingredient, the fish, which should - and is - the centre of this masterpiece. The recipe is very simple, it's basically a set of guidelines. The freshest and highest quality ingredients and patience are key to achieving the best results. And then, no matter what, the result is always very satisfying.

For 4 people:

- 1 kg of caldeirada mix. This will vary with the season, daily and depending where you are in Portugal. It will often consist of monkfish, skate, pata roxa (a variety of shark - no kidding), moray, conger, sometimes tuna - which I find not to be appropriate -, and whatever is plentiful on that day.

- 1.5 kg of potatoes, peeled and sliced 1 cm thick

- 1 kg of tomatoes, preferably peeled, or a 400g tin of good quality tomatoes, sliced

- 4 or 5 garlic cloves, sliced

- 2 onions, cut in half and then thinly sliced

- parsley, a bunch

- olive oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper

-  a glass of white wine, beer or even water.

Find a pot which will fit all the ingredients tightly, almost to the top. If you have the time, sprinkle the fish with coarse salt and let it stand for half an hour or so. Then, start layering the ingredients, starting  with onion, potatoes and tomatoes, and season each layer with olive oil, salt and pepper. Add also parsley and the slices of garlic. Then the fish. The last layer should be of tomatoes, potatoes and onion. A glass of whatever liquid goes in. Put the pot on the stove, medium-low heat. Put the lid on and let it very slowly cook. Quite a bit of liquid will form. Open the lid as few times as humanely possible and under no circumstance should you try to stir the pot with a spoon. The most you can do is gently shake the pot. Once the potatoes are done, i.e., once you can pierce them with the tip of a knife, turn off the heat. Wait for 10 minutes and dig in. You will need an off-dry white wine, good quality bread and a simple salad of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber (if in season).

Rice vermicelli

No matter what others on the interwebs may say, this is the way to obtain rice vermicelli (the 0.5 mm thick ones)  that are nice and cooked but not soggy:

• boil enough water to completely submerge the noodles;
• put the noodles in a large pot;
• wait a couple of minutes (because we don't want really boiling water) and add the water to the noodles;
• use chopsticks to move around the noodles and loosen them;
• once the noodles are flexible but retain some bite, they are cooked -  3 to 4 minutes;
• drain the noodles using a sieve and thoroughly (and I mean thoroughly!) rinse them under cold running water in the sink;
• put the noodles in your salad spinner and get to work: spin and throw the water away - do that until no water (or almost no water) gets spun;
• put a saucer upside down in a bowl so that if any water collects at the bottom, it won't touch the  noodles;
• add the noddles to the bowl and let them air dry a bit;
• voilà!

I  used them for bun cha and for fresh spring rolls, but there are many other possible uses for this canvas.

Vietnamese adventures

This is still a work in progress but I will keep at it because it is ideal for a dinner party with friends: Vietnamese grilled pork with rice vermicelli and herbs/vegetables (Bun Cha), and Vietnamese fresh spring rolls (Goi Cuon). I've never been to Vietnam and have only been two or three times to a Vietnamese restaurant, so this is just me reading, watching videos, and trying to make something that tastes good - not claiming any sort of authenticity.

My source for the Bun Cha is a Saveur recipe which I have made a few times already: Grilled Pork with Rice Vermicelli. I followed that recipe to the letter, except that I use pork tenderloin, which I thinly slice and then grill on a cast iron grill pan, and, when it comes to the herbs, I don't have access to Vietnamese herbs or even mint that I think can be included in this dish. I also cook a larger quantity of rice vermicelli - about one pound for two people - and note that we also need cooked noodles for the spring rolls.

For the fresh spring rolls I followed this recipe: Goi cuon and accompanying youtube video. [Incidentally, this youtube channel (Helen's Recipes) seems to be an excelent resource for Vietnamese food.] Again, I followed this recipe almost to the letter, except that I boiled the shrimp in a vegetable both and then peeled it. I used the smaller rice paper (16cm), but I can see how the 22 cm can be a better choice. Assembling the rolls is a bit tricky, and the ratio of vegetables/herbs to shrimp/pork belly is something that is fun to play with.

All in all, fun to make and fun to eat - to revisit in the near future.

Tomato jam

This jam may seem odd to many people, but it's quite common in Portugal and I grew up eating the homemade version of it. To Italians, tomato jam is simply an aberration; Americans are used to a version that, at least to me, is laden with vinegar and too many spices, so that in the end it tastes nothing like tomato...

I've made this jam many, many times, and for the past 4 or 5 years I've cooked it in the heat of the summer in the Algarve using fruit I've bought from the same vendor at a particular farmer's market we frequent. Making this jam is a way of preserving the bright colors, the intense heat, the beach, the sun, all of those wonderful things inside a jar.

My tomato jam has two particularities: I like to keep the seeds in, and I like to keep the fruit as whole as possible. I think it makes the jam prettier and tastier, meatier in a way. The jam basically consists of thick petals of tomato swimming in a glistering jelly that has a few freckles here and there - the seeds.

Here's the drill. You will need:

• 3 kg of roma tomatoes or any other variety that has a lot of meat and minimal juice and seeds. The tomatoes should be ripe but neither soft nor mushy. If you're going through all this work, go ahead and buy the best tomatoes you can find;
• sugar - with ripe and sweet tomatoes I go with 60% of the weight of the prepared pulp;
• one lemon - again, the most aromatic you can find, preferably organic;
• one cinnamon stick.

The first thing you must do is prepare the tomatoes. For this you need several bowls, a sharp knife, water and ice. 

Start by washing the fruit in cold running water. Using the sharp knife, make a small cross at the end of the tomato opposite to the one that attaches to the peduncle. Try to make this incision as shallow as possible, piercing only the skin of the fruit. Fill a large bowl with the cut tomatoes and pour boiling water over them, making sure that you cover all the fruit. Wait for a a couple of minutes and test one tomato: if the skin comes right off without much effort, they are ready. Transfer the tomatoes to another bowl that has cold water and ice. This is meant to stop the cooking and is not really essential here. Transfer to another bowl once the tomatoes are cold enough to handle, that way you can reuse this bowl of cold water for the next batch. Peel the tomatoes and place them in a bowl. Repeat as many times as needed to have all the 3 kg of tomatoes peeled. In my case, it was only two times.

The next step consists in trimming the tomatoes, discarding all the unripe bits. I do this by cutting  the tomatoes in half lengthwise, trimming the hard and/or green parts, and then cutting each half in half again lengthwise. Do this over a bowl so that you collect the juice and seeds.

Weigh the fruit. I did this twice this summer and strangely got both times exactly 2 kg of prepared fruit  from roughly 3 kg of tomatoes. 

As I already said, I usually go for 60% of the weight in sugar. Add this sugar to the tomatoes in a large pot, slowly bring to a boil, and then reduce to a slow simmer. In this first stage, you want to slowly stew the fruit until it is cooked. By adding the sugar at the beginning we are making it harder for the fruit to brake down, hence making sure it keeps its shape.

Once you see that the fruit is stewed, add a long strip of lemon peel - the best way of obtaining this is using a peeler, that way you minimize the amount of white pith attached to the peel -, the juice from half that lemon and one cinnamon stick.

Bring the heat to high and stirring often let the jam boil until it reaches the setting point. You check for that by pouring one spoon of jam on a dish that you have kept in the fridge. Return it back to the fridge and if the jam forms a skin after it cools down it means that it has reached the setting point. What I try to do is cook the jam as little as possible in order to keep the flavor of the fruit and its bright color.

The next step is to jar the jam. From this amount of fruit I typically get 5 180 ml jars plus a bit for eating at the time.

I have jarred tomato jam, and other jams, using mason jars with new lids, but I have also reused jam jars. In both instances, I have in some cases processed the jars in a water bath for about 5 minutes and in some other cases I have skipped that step. Spoilage, or at least the appearance of some mold, has occurred regardless of the approach. In the case of the mason jars, head space seems to be a really critical variable. Besides that, using clean utensils and pouring hot jam into hot jars seems to do the trick. But that should be the subject of another post.

Miso Soup - sort of...

Here is a quick fix for when we are craving a noodle soup with an Asian twist:

Ingredients (serves 2 for a meal):

- miso paste (at least 4 Tbsp, whichever kind you prefer)
- 4 kombu pieces (15-20 cm long each)
- 1 medium carrot
- 1 small zucchini
- 1 small leek - white part only
- two handfuls of spinach leaves
- 1 thumb-size piece of ginger
- chinese egg noodles (2/3 of a 250g is a tad too much)
- 8 cups of water

Put the 8 cups of water in a pan and add the kombu. Let it soak for 1/2 hour. Heat the pan slowly and let it simmer for 10 minutes or so. Do not boil. Remove the kombu and reserve. Reserve the broth - this is what's called the dashi, and this is simplest kind of dashi there is!

Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables: peel the carrot, cut it lengthwise in half and each half in half again. Cut each of the four sticks into 2 cm  pieces crosswise. Do the same with the zucchini (but don't peel it). Cut the leek diagonally into 1cm rounds. Peel and mince the ginger. Slice two of the pieces of kombu after washing them thoroughly to remove the slime.

Coat the bottom of another pot with a tablespoon or so of oil. Turn on the heat and when the oil is hot add the ginger and the leek. Let it slowly fry until the ginger releases its fragrance. Add the rest of the vegetables (but not the kombu) and fry for 5 minutes on low heat.

Add the reserved stock to the fried vegetables. Bring it to a slow boil. Let it cook until the vegetables are mostly cooked but retain a lot of bite. Turn off the heat and add the noodles, the spinach and the sliced kombu. Cover the pot after you've made sure that the noodles are untangled. Let the noodles become soft.

Put a few ladlefuls of hot stock in a bowl and add the miso paste. Start with 4 tablespoons. Mix the miso paste into the hot broth. With the help of a sieve, return the dissolved miso paste to the pot and mix well. Taste. If needed, add more paste. I also add a few drops of sesame oil. Serve hot, but after adding the miso paste never bring the broth to the boil again. Serve in deep bowls, eat using chopsticks and a a spoon. Loud slurping is a must!

Simple and very satisfying. The variations are endless, these are just guidelines…

Edits:

• This may need salt, depending on the amount of miso you add, and also the kind you miso you use. Dark soy sauce or fish sauce are possibilities for adjusting the salt.
• Soaked dry shiitake mushrooms are an excellent addition here, so are green onions and cubed tofu.
• Another possible variation is the type of noodles you add; we've used glass noodles and it was fun.

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.