lobstersquad

Drop in and decorate

2009-11-26T12:04:00.003+01:00

Just a little reminder to go and check out Lydia´s great job making cookies for donation. And if you don´t know the blog, then you´re in for a treat of browsing all the back archives.
I´m off to Santander for a book launch, hoping to eat some amazing fish. Back tomorrow.

Ugly, thrifty, wonderful fish soup

2009-11-20T11:27:00.005+01:00

If you call something or someone "morralla", you are doubtless referring to "scum" or "bilge". It´s an insult. But actually what morralla means is the heap of fish and shellfish left at the bottom of the net, too small or too damaged to sell, and often used by fishermen in soups and broths. And that´s not so bad, surely?

I´d never had access to it because Madrid is far from the sea, and the fish that arrives, while plentiful, tends to be of the good-looking, important type. But yesterday I scored a handful of morralla, a beautiful, slightly scary looking lot of tiny sea monsters.

With the economy so bad and everything so glum, it´s great to know that you can feed four people with this hearty soup, and not feel deprived at all. It´s reasonably sophisticated, and tastes great. Which of course it might, since it´s served with Gruyere and rouille toasts, and frankly, what doesn´t taste amazing with that? Mind you, it starts out so ugly that you might think I´ve gone crazy, but trust me, this works.

It´s a very simple soup that starts, as so many good things, with a sofrito (and to be truly Provençal you should use fennel, and orange peel and saffron. But I don´t like fennel and had no oranges on hand, so I used leeks, and oregano and lemon peel, and vermouth instead of Pernod).
Then the whole fish and water to cover are added, and left to simmer for 40 minutes, until everything is falling apart.
Now comes the weird part: you puree it, bones and all. If it was ugly before, now it looks like an untidy sludge you wouldn´t feed your cat, but, patience. Strain it through a chinois and you´re left with a creamy thick soup.
I add a slug of sherry because I can´t help thinking it brightens up every soup.
Serve with grated cheese, toast and rouille.

If you can´t find morralla (and today already there was none at the market) then just do it with whole fish, cut in big chunks. Or buy a couple of whole fish and ask for them to be boned and filleted, and simply make a broth with the bones from your fish and any others the fishmonger may give you, and do this less alarming version.

Delicooks

2009-11-17T21:49:00.003+01:00

Delicooks is a new food website in Spanish, and it´s beautiful, stylish, fun and helpful.
Also, there is an interview with yours truly, not in English so you´ll have to take my word for it that it´s perfectly fascinating.

Oven baked breaded fish

2009-11-12T22:23:00.003+01:00

I love crispy crusty breaded fish, but since I don´t fry, I´d assumed it was something I´d never eat at home and that was that.
This is done in the oven, and is falling off a log easy, takes just a few minutes and comes out just great. There is no greasy fug around the house, and even though it pains me to point this out, it is a much lighter and healthier way of cooking.

Tamasin´s Kitchen Bible, the book it´s from, is rather bossy in its insistence on fresh produce and seasonal stuff and what not. I agree in principle, but I hate to be told what to buy by cookbook authours, and it makes me hopping mad when they write "feel free to change an ingredient". Well,of course I feel free. It´s a cookbook, not Stalinist Russia. Are these people totally nuts or what?

All this is just to say that the fish I´ve used is some doubtless highly reprehensible frozen white fillet, and it was still delicious.

The recipe: preheat the oven to 180ªC, dredge the white fish in flour, then dip it in beaten egg, then in breadcrumbs mixed with parsley and lemon zest. It´s much better with home made, coarsely grated breadcrumbs.
Lay the fish on an oiled tray or baking dish and bake until golden, about ten minutes, but do check. It´s usually ten minutes per inch of thickness, but ovens vary, etc. That´s it. Easy easy, and plenty of time while it bakes to dress a salad and doll up some bottled mayonaise with lemon juice and olive oil.

Julie & Julia

2009-11-08T22:42:00.003+01:00

Can you beleive it´s taken all these months for Julie&Julia to finally be released here? I haven´t waited so breathlessly for a movie since Return of the Jedi.
I loved it, of course, but I feel I must warn all viewers in Spain to watch it in English, because the voice over is a bit of a massacre. And also to watch a video of the real Julia Child (totally unknown in Spain before the movie), or they will come away thinking that Meryl Streep was on something stronger than butter.
And the bonus? This is the video I watched, and I tried the method tonight and got it perfect straight away. Magic omelette. Viva Julia.

Polenta in the rice cooker

2009-11-03T21:32:00.005+01:00

The one thing I hadn´t tried in that Gourmet article about rice cookers I go on and on about was the polenta. It seemed too good to be true, but I needen´t have been so mistrusting. It works a treat. You put the cornmeal and the water and a bit of salt and in a short while there is a creamy mush inside, beckoning with its promise of bland comfort.

I don´t adore polenta, so I wouldn´t be making vast batchces of these, except that I´ve discovered that my baby loves it. This is great because I can plug the thing when we get back from our evening walk and it´s ready by the time P comes out of the bath, hungry.

But even more wonderful, she is just as happy to be fed it the next day. Now, if I am to eat old polenta, it has to be grilled to a crisp and dusted with Parmesan, but P, bless her, knows no better, and is perfectly happy to it wolf down, barely warmed in the microwave. She finds it very easy to spear with a fork and eat it on her own, so it´s all win-win.

Therefore, even at the risk of being a complete bore, I will rework my mantra and say it this way : "parents of toddlers, get yourselves a rice cooker, NOW!"

Seriously. I have always enjoyed the idea of food that cooks itself, but when there is a young varmint in the house who has just learnt the trick of climbing onto chairs and diving off them, it becomes a necessity.

15 minute emergency brownies

2009-10-27T09:28:00.003+01:00

I don´t want to start with a tiresome cliché about how brownies are the little black dress of chocolate puddings, so I won´t. I will say, though, that they´re an endlessly useful recipe, because everyone seems to love brownies, and they go with everything, and they can be served just as is for a picnic or dolled up with hot fudge and ice cream for your best dinner party.

Or so I think, anyway.

They can also be frozen, so that when you make a big batch and have leftovers you can remove temptation, a little. Once they´re frozen they don´t even have to be thawed; just slice them thinly and you won´t miss any Swiss bonbon.

If they have one shortcoming it´s the impromptu chocolate binge. From start to finish, including baking time and cooling time, it´s at least an hour before you can be biting into your brownie. Not bad, but sometimes not quick enough.

For these moments we have the wonder brownie, also known as the brownie-cookie (no, I won´t say brookie).

This is simply a scaled down recipe, made with just one egg, and baked in dollops, cookiewise, for just five or six minutes.

The result are about fifteen wodgy disks, chewy at the rim, fudgy in the middle, perfect for scoffing right out of the oven, or to serve any way you would a brownie, in case of a brownie emergency.

I made them on Sunday and it took me eighteen minutes from start to finish, but that included doing the sums, never my forte. Since you have it done already, count on fifteen minutes, tops.

Preheat oven to 180ºC.

Melt 65 grams of chopped chocolate and 65 of butter in a bowl in the mircowave, on medium, for a minute. Once out, stir thoroughly with a wooden spoon so it mixes really well. Add one egg, beat, add 65 grams of sugar, and 40 of flour. Pinch of salt, stir well and spoon onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Bake for six or seven minutes.

In this time you can lick the bowl and spoon, wash them for real, make coffee and prepare a pretty tray.

A palette knife might be good to take the things out, as they´ll be still sticky in the middle.

Serve and astound friends and family. You´re gonna love me for these, I bet.

Oh, and if you want to make a proper tray, the recipe I use is Nigella Lawson´s from How to be a domestic goddess, minus 100 gr. of sugar. It´s here.

Bread, II.

2009-10-18T10:53:00.002+02:00

I´m on a bread kick. It happens to me every year, but I would lie if I said it led to my making all the bread I eat. Usually after a few weeks my interest peters out.
But maybe this time it won´t. My last two loaves were so stellar, they may just have hooked me.
I made two, by the old hit and run method I wrote about, except that in one I used more water and it whooshed into an airy, domed creation. I also forgot to add the yeast to it, and bunged it in later, and mixed it without much hope. But it still turned out fine, so I´m beginning to think that it´s really no big deal.

One of the loaves, the normal one, smelled very yeasty on coming out of the oven, but didn´t taste so strongly of it. Not that I mind bread tasting of yeast. If it tasted of fish, or old socks, then I would worry, but yeast? Hardly.
However, I just bought the latest River Cottage book, and since I had the baby off my hands for the whole morning yesterday, I decided to try out the sponge method.

It bubbled away merrily all day yesterday, and the kneaded dough has risen admirably overnight, and now I´m waiting for it to prove. It seems to be a slow process but there´s no hurry. I´m curious to know if the flavour is really all so much better, because, frankly, that basic elemental bread turned out beautiful, delicious, and lasted all week.

So, while I find out about the supposedly fabulous bubbling sponge , here´s the variations on the basic recipe from the other post.

I used 350 gr. white flour, 150 gr. wholemeal, about a half cup of wheat germ, 40 gr. of gluten, a tablespoonful of dried yeast and one envelope of cultured buttermilk. This last is a very exotic ingredient that I´m almost running out of, but it´s just a question of using 1 cup of milk instead of all water.
The difference in this loaf was that I used almost 400 ml of water, which made the dough impossible to handle after it came out of the machine. But so much water means so much steam, and airy bubbles inside.
A sprinkling of cornmeal on the bottom of the loaf pan makes for a very good addition to a crackly crust.

Master mojito recipe from "Taste of Cuba"

2009-10-11T09:27:00.003+02:00

Ah, Cuba... still as shabby and as gorgeous as ever. It was great to be back, even though the tropical summre heat knocked me flat.
Being deeply in love with Mad Men I was in a swoon over all the beautiful modernist architecture. We also went to Trinidad, a beautiful town that has managed to retain its XVIII century character without looking fake and over polished (unlike some bits of old Havana).
And the food? Well, Cuba has the sort of hearty Creole cuisine that I love, and staying at the house of a wonderful cook I was lucky enough to taste the best of it, which isn´t always easy for a tourist (or a Cuban citizen).
I could give you a recipe for beans and rice, or those fritters, or the amazing Key Lime Pie we had . Instead, I think I´ll do you a favour and pass on this great mojito, because that´s the best way to win friends and influence people, and if you´d been at the book launch, that´s what you´d have had, so here goes.

The beauty of it is that it´s a mojito base that you can make and keep in the fridge for any impromptu mojito madness. It will also make serving a lot of them the work of a moment, which, you won´t need me to point out, is great for a party.

Mix well, really well, like, shake the hell out of: 1 cup sugar, 1 cup fresh lime juice, a bunch of mint (stalks and all) and 1 75 cl bottle of 3 year old rum.
It keeps in the fridge for at least a month, as the rum in the mix keeps everything fresh..

When you want to make the mojito, just quarter fill a tall glass with the mixture, add ice cubes, sparkling water and a sprig of mint. Maraca noises optional.

Off to Cuba

2009-09-28T10:27:00.002+02:00

There´s an exhibition of drawings from the book "A taste of Cuba" at the Biblioteca Nacional in Havana. If you care to browse a bit of the book, here´s a link. I´ll be back in a week, and report faithfully.

The bread post

2009-09-24T11:54:00.001+02:00

So, here´s what I think is the problem with bread:

If you want to buy bread, you are lost between either industrial, cheap, pre-frozen or plastic stuff on the one hand, and artisanal, wonderful, insanely expensive things on the other.

If you want to make bread you find things that look easy but are only edible to earth-mother types who live mainly on sprouts and peanut butter. Or else you have to wade through weighty tomes written by people who all seem to have biochemistry degrees from the MIT.

I tried making Laurie Colwin´s bread, and Nigella Lawson´s simple white loaf. And they were fine, and they of course produce that magic buzz you always get when you take bread out of the oven. Sometimes they were better than others, and I didn´t know why. Now I think I do, and here´s what I´ve learnt:

They will tell you about yeast being a living organism, and fragile, and precious, a being to be treated with all the respect due to your firstborn. Well, I take my darling one-year-old to the park in mismatched socks, and give her ice cream in public, and sometimes salt her food, and sure I get dirty looks, but she´s survived so far. So, accomodate the dough to your schedule. Leave it to rise overnight, or up the yeast a little to make it quicker. Don´t suffer. But if you don´t have time to let it rise, don´t go the yeast way, make biscuit dough instead.

Strong bread flour really makes a difference. I can´t always find an obliging baker to sell me some, but Guru stepped in to the rescue and told me to buy gluten from a health store. A spoonful of powder and voila, you have strong flour (I calculate around 10% of the four weight, a bit less, maybe, nothing to get hung up on).

The oven really really has to be hot. I mean HOT. So wait for it. But don´t bother with quarry tiles or trays of boiling water or anything that might put your life in peril. Do want a Bocuse d´Or or a loaf of bread?

That "will sound hollow when it´s done" is true, but it will also sound hollow when it´s slightly underdone, so watch out. And whatever you do, wait for the bread to be cold to slice it. I know it smells good, I know you want a piece. Believe me, I know. But wait.

Dough can stay around for a week in your fridge. This means you can pull out a ball and cook just what you need each day. And it´s where the flatbread thing really comes in handy. For feeding lots of people the oven is still best, but for one or two quick naans or pizzas, go the stovetop way.

My bread recipe

One day, maybe, I will try all those sponge methods that involve stirring a dough a hundred times in the same direction, and I will knead by hand, and I will locate caraway seeds. But for now, this is how I do it, in my trusty old Thermomix.

Put 500 grams of all-purpose flour, a teaspoonful of salt, a heaping tablespoonful of gluten and a teaspoonful of dry yeast in the bowl. Give it a whirr so they mix well.

Now add 300 grams/ml of water. Mix on 6 until it clumps into a ball. See if you think it needs more water or more flour. Irritating sort of instruction, I know, but you just have to eyeball things sometimes.

Now put it on kneading position for two and a half minutes.

Turn it out into a bowl and either dust it with flour all around or give it a coating of oil. Leave it to rise, covered with a tea towel or plastic wrap. I usually make this around midday, when I remember, and leave it to rise over a few hours.

When it´s doubled in size, punch it down (that´s fun) and knead a little. Shape it and leave it to proof if you can. That just means you leave it to puff up a bit again, and then bake it as you will.

For pizza or focaccia I add a good glug of olive oil to the dough. For naans I substitute some of the water for yogurt (125 ml, since that´s the size of yogurt pots in Spain). Sometimes I make half wholewehat half white, and others I add wheat germ, and of course you can go the way of the seeds and nuts. It´s all fairly loose.

That amount makes four pizzas the size of a dinner plate, or eight naans. It can be kept in the fridge and pulled out as need be, so it´s as well to make the full amount, but the recipe can be halved easily.

The illustration if for Abe´s Penny.

Spanish mangoes

2009-09-21T21:28:00.002+02:00

They´re in season! Whole boxes of them, fresh from Almuñécar, cheap and beautiful. I gloat.

Free from flatbread fear

2009-09-19T23:10:00.005+02:00

One of the few cookbooks that has survived my cull is Flatbreads and Flavors. I´ve had it for a year, and I´ve picked it up and put it down many times, but I´ve never cooked from it. For one thing, it is almost off-puttingly cool. I´m not always in the mood for the off the cuff "we got this recipefrom a Tajik woman milking a goat outside her yurt when we were cycling in the Chinese Pamirs". If it catches you on one of those "Am I measuring my life out in coffee spoons?" days, it might tip you over to the suicidal.
On more settled, serene days, however, you can acknowledge with grace the fact that if you´ve never cycled in Guadarrama you´re unlikely to do it in the Chinese, or any other, Pamirs, and that that´s ok. But when you think of making the flatbread you quail. It looks complicated, there are quarry tiles invovled, and a process where you have to open and shut the oven door seventeen times, not to mention tackling something called a sponge. With a weary sigh you think that there´s as much chance of making injera as of climbing some Hymalayan gorge, and open a bag of flour tortillas instead.

The book is chock full of other things besides bread, though, so you can have a field day with curries and condiments. So all is not lost.

Unless, that is, you suddenly perfect a great method for making flatbreads. One that will win no smiles from Neapolitan grandmothers, and would make a Pakistani mother in law faint. But do you care? You can have a beautiful, golden hot slab of holy glory on the table in a few minutes, and who cares if it´s called pita or naan or fougasse or what? It´s there and it´s delicious, that´s all that matters.

It´s from The Kitchn, and it´s brilliant. Once you have your dough (and you can buy it, you know, so don´t complain) all you do is heat a covered skillet and cook a pizza or a naan or whatever inside. It works just as they say, except that you should definitely turn down the gas once you turn the thing. Brown spots are lovely, charred, blackened crust, no.

Also, I find that best results come from a heavy non-stick skillet, topped with a cast iron lid. This heats up in no time, and you don´t have to waste a lot of time and energy, and make your kitchen a living hell in summer. I think of this as the easy-bake tandoor, and it´s brilliant.

As for doughs, I have found out a heap of things in my experiments this week, and will Tell All in the next post.

Quinoa in a rice cooker

2009-09-13T12:35:00.002+02:00

In the two years since I discovered the gizmo, I´ve become a recognized rice cooker bore. I love my rice cooker so much, you see, I just can´t shut up about it. And since it´s so cheap, I´ve embarked on a near-reaching campaign to spread the gospel, and have given away several to deserving friends and relatives.
Not everyone is with me on this, and on receiving a largish box, they say, oh, but it´s so big, and where will I put it? It only makes rice...

Now, this is plain silly. I´ve never heard anyone complain that their favourite brain surgeon can´t play the violin or score winning goals. And I´ve met plenty of coffe makers that take up lots of counter space and only make indifferent coffee.

But anyway, that don´t matter, because when I read this piece in Gourmet, I found out something I´d long suspected but never tried: you can make quinoa in a rice cooker. Isn´t that great? Those little seeds can be a right bore to get just right, just like rice. And as the mother of an enterprising toddler who is apt to climb tables to get to the (thank God) butter knife, I appreciate hands off cooking.

So anyway, quinoa, andean gold, the perfect side dish, and so distressingly healthful, too, is there for you at the push of a button. Now go and get a rice cooker, will you?

Brick-fried chicken

2009-09-07T09:58:00.002+02:00

Roast chicken is great in almost every way, but it has two drawbacks. One, that the oven must be turned on, which in Madrid in the second hottest summer ever is a no-go. The other is that if you´re on your own, it makes for a lot of leftovers: J is away, and baby P can pack away a less than impressive amount.

However, there is a way to crisp skin and tender meat. This recipe, Sally Schneider´s brick-fried chicken, but made with chicken parts rather than a whole chicken. Drumsticks, or thighs, or whatever. You need only buy as much chicken as you can bear to live with , fit it snugly in your skillet, and then enjoy the fun DIY aspect of playing around with weights, since I doubt you keep bricks in the kitchen.

Just one note: turn off the smoke detector at first, and watch the time. Single bits will take less than the whole chicken in the original recipe.

2009-09-05T10:54:00.002+02:00

One must assume that the man was talking about literature and not food, because for all the love you may choose to throw at cake, it won´t come out unless you stick to your recipe. Still, I like the sentiment.

Ramen in Madrid

2009-08-24T08:52:00.002+02:00

Those afflicted by xenophilia (oh yes and and we´re linked to Gourmet magazine, how cool is that) and living in Madrid will be happy to know that at long last we have a ramen bar. It´s right behind Callao and you can amble in, take a peek at the giant bubbling stockpot, place your order, nibble a couple of rolls from the little train of sushi rolling by, and before you know it, have a giant bowl of soup placed before you.

This is truly good news. A place for really fast, really nourishing and good food, right in the middle of the most hectic shopping district, just where you might begin to feel faint from all the noise and the confusion.

Oishii, c/ Miguel Moya, 6 91 522 75 74 Metro Callao

Hard choices

2009-08-06T09:15:00.001+02:00

My baby turned one yesterday. This means that she can now smear bits of her own birthday cake everywhere, and that she crawls with the speed of lightning. So we´d either have to watch her like hawks, or else take away most of the stuff in danger of toppling off onto her head.

Everything not strictly useful has been boarded up and carted away, and that includes my embarrassingly large cookbook collection. At first I was puritanical and fierce, and tought I´d only keep Nigella´s How to... books and my own notebooks.

Then I decided The improvisational cook could stay, too. And I´d probably need an all-purpose reference, so out came The Ballymaloe Cookery school book. By then my will had snapped, and I started to make little piles of survivors.

My rule: only stuff I really cook from. No fascinating but intimidating ethnic foods, no pretty but vague stuff, nothing too new, nothing too big.

Lindsey Bareham´s paperbacks, Nigel Slater´s Real fast food, Nina Simmond´s Noodles. For times when I want an exotic change of pace, Flatbreads and flavours. And Claudia Roden, of course. Imagine putting her in a box! No American baking books because of the meassurements, but the Barefoot Contessa stays because she´s just so friendly. Likewise The breakfast book, and The Joy of Cooking, which I would have packed up, but it turned out to have been propping up a lame chair and I only found it after the move, so it´s been allowed to stay.

My kitchen is still more full of books than most, but I feel virtous and monastic, and I´m looking at this select few with a new, loving eye, that promises happy hours spent with them.

We leave today for the beach and will be back around the 20th, so posting will probably be slacker than usual.

Smashed eggs

2009-08-02T11:19:00.002+02:00

I live right in the centre of Madrid, on a reasonably picturesque street with a pretty mix of old brick buildings and trendy tatto parlours, independent bookshops, italian restaurants and ultra cool hairdressers. We also, this being Madrid, have a few bars, and a fair amount of night time traffic, but less than most surrounding streets.

This means that on weekends there are people walking around drunk and loud until more or less three or four. And that´s fine by me, until the high spirits become out and out vandalism. Walk along singing off tune and you´ll find I merely turn over and fall back asleep, but smash bottles under my window, or use thrash cans for a batucada, and you wake the dragon.

I go to the balcony and if they´re near enough, smash a couple of eggs into the offending group. This is all in the great Madrid tradition of "huevos estrellados", or smashed eggs: fried potatoes with fried eggs gently broken over them, so that the yellow yolk gets everywhere and you can have a proper cholesterol fest. Apparently the secret to making this, according to Lucio, the famous master of the smashed egg, is to make the egg over easy, not in masses of boiling oil.

So there you are: urban violence and popular culture, all in the Sunday morning´s work. I just wish I could remember to buy cheap eggs for this, because it breaks my heart to waste good organic stuff.

Socca

2009-07-26T11:58:00.005+02:00

I wish Madrid had the kind of weather that allowed one to amble down to the market to buy beautiful summer fruit and veg and then come home and cook up a storm. Sadly, you can shop or you can cook, but you can´t do both. It´s too hot to spend energy on more than one thing, and so, I laze around the kitchen, making sandwiches or maybe, if I´m feeling very active, salads (all that spinning, what a drag).

I did try this recipe of Sally Schneider´s for socca. It´s good, a crunchy, quick pancake that makes a good appetizer, and reminds me of the fried chickpeas in rebujina. Only worth making if locating chickpea flour isn´t a great hassle, though.

Portugal again

2009-07-11T10:50:00.004+02:00

We´re spending a long weekend ambling around the beaches of the costa alentejana, where we were last spring. This time around it´s sunnier and hotter (though as cool as Estonia in August, easily) and we can swim in the cold waves.

We also eat the wonderful food, and that would be a good thing, except that I´ve decided that the Portuguese are either crazy or superheroes. The portions are so huge that we leave the table staggering and dazed. And I´m usually one who can pack away enough to keep a grown man on his feet on a Polar trek.

Ask for grilled fish and you will be brought a slice carved from Moby Dick, with a whole other dish of vegetables on the side, and salad. And all this after you´ve nibbled your way through bread and butter and cheese and olives as you wait (they´re generous, but they sure ain´t fast, you see).

So all I´m saying is: if you have any intention of having enough room to have coffee and a queijada or one of those little cream cakes, which you should, be sure to work up an appetite.

More drawings here

Takeout fusion

2009-06-30T08:19:00.004+02:00

Takeout fusion of the highest order. They used to serve this as an appetizer in No-Do, which was a very happenning restaurant in the mid-90´s.

Prawn crackers, the big, white, crunchy, very artificial looking Chinese snack, with salmorejo for a dip.

It´s as easy as blending some tomatoes and bread with olive oil and vinegar, and either frying up some crackers yourself or, much better, ordering them from a convenient restaurant that delivers. We are very happy to have a new one in the neighbourhood that´s so close and so efficient that food arrives piping hot and crunchy.

People go nuts for this, I warn you.

(And yes, again, the drawing has nothing much to do with it, but I like it, and it is sort of pink, like salmorejo)

Turning Japanese

2009-06-19T17:16:00.001+02:00

How much Japanese cooking can a person do, who vows never to stuff, roll, or fry? Quite a lot, actually. Whenever I say I love to make Japanese food, people eagerly say, "oh, you do sushi and tempura?". I fix them with a stony glare, or a pitying glance, or maybe just brush an infinitesimal speck of dust from my sleeve and say "there´s a lot more to Japanese food than tempura and sushi, you know. And no, I couldn´t do either of those to save my life".

I am broadminded in my definition of Japanese, and anything that has soy sauce and mirin and wasabi and sesame oil is Japanese enough for me. A scattering of sesame seeds over some white rice, eaten with chopsticks, and I´m there.

One of our favourite lazy dinners is a bowl of white rice topped with cut up omelette (made with a dash of sugar), slices of avocado, sesame seeds and a bit of nori. Dip the egg or avocado in soy sauce and there you are. A quick, beautiful, really quite Japanese looking dinner.

I might also marinate some defrosted salmon to go along with that, or throw in some smoked salmon, which always goes so well with avocadoes.

What I had never made is real sushi rice. I found the instructions intimidating. What with the kombu, and the soaking the special wooden instruments, and the soaking then resting the rice, and all that palaver of "gently fold the vinegar into the rice with one hand while you fan it with the other"...I mean to say, what? I need two hands to fold vinegar into rice if it´s not all to end up on the floor, thankyouverymuch. Fanning, indeed. No sir, I thought.

But yesterday the crushing heat of Madrid summer brought the solution. I have an electric fan in the kitchen, and what could be easier than mixing the vinegar-sugar-salt into the rice, inside a normal baking tray, while the electric fan did its sushi job and also made me not faint from the steam?

So there you go. Ignore the punctiliousness and the ritualistic stories and don´t let that Japanese aura of perfection put you off. After all, they invented those little junky packets of ramen, so shortcuts must be quite common in Japan. Just get yourself some mirin and soy and sesame oil and sake and start playing.

Leek and potato salad

2009-06-17T12:46:00.002+02:00

Potatoes and leeks go together like Simon and Garfunkel, and it´s just a shame to limit their summer partnership to vichyssoise.
My favourite new thing is to add leeks vinaigrette to potato salad. Isn´t that somewhat brilliant? Raw onions are very popular in Spanish potato salads, but I hate to be reminded of my lunch all day long. Leeks, though, leeks are elegant and unobtrusive, and upgrade your humble potato salad.

So here it is:

Boil your potatoes as you would, and in another pan boil whole leek whites until tender but still with a bite.
Cut the warm leeks in shorter segments, mix them with the warm potatoes and add vinaigrette thinned down with a little water. Chopped boiled eggs and parsley can never go amiss.

Closed for the week

2009-06-08T11:25:00.004+02:00

This is a post intended solely to turn everyone green with envy.
I am packing my brushes, pens, watercolour box, bottles, jars, papers and easel and setting off. I will be in La Granja, a beautiful place in the mountains. I am officially going to be working on a book about the gardens, but it will feel more like a picnic holiday.