An everlasting meal

My favourite cookbooks are those that can be read from cover to cover; that have no photos of the recipes, and certainly no photos of the author gazing soulfully at an artichoke. That have a warm, likeable, distinct voice. And that have recipes that I actually will cook.
I also enjoy the others, and am not immune to a glossy picture or the lure of restaurant kitchens and exotic cuisines. But my favourites a the first bunch, which is to say, Tamar Adler's "An everlasting meal" is so much up my street that it might as well say Mile-end avenue on the cover.

The tone of the book is very relaxed. What's with all this quest for perfection, she asks? How is it that people who never cook suddenly decide that they have  to make a lasagna to rival a Bolognese grandmother's? What happened to learning to walk before wanting to fly? Why don't you just put a pot of water to boil and leave the yard long ingredient lists and the must have equipment for later? You can make a lovely dinner just by boiling some vegetables and pasta and drizzling the whole thing with olive oil and dusting with parmesan. Forget about perfection and complication, just eat. Isn't boiled broccoli wonderful?

Each chapter deals with a main ingredient, like eggs, meat, beans or bread. The level of complication escalates somewhat, but not much. The triumph of the book, to me, is that it is full of very basic things that novices will find eye opening, but will also give experienced cooks gentle nudges into things they might have forgotten, and new projects to try out, and scores of things they didn´t know. And both will benefit from the tone, the spirit of the thing, which is about simple enjoyment of good things we can make ourselves without much fuss.

It can be a little precious at times, and there is, of course, a tad of unavoidable farmer's market smugness, but much less than in any of this epidemic of seasonal-local cookbooks. There are no lists of ingredients or equipment, the recipes are mostly from a basic Italian-French canon, and they are not quirky or new. There is none of this "my salsa verde" nonsense. There is just a description of how salsa verde will make everything around it so good that you simply must make a batch, right this instant, and before you know it you are hunting in the back of the fridge for that jar of capers.

I could go on and on. The section called how to stride ahead has revolutionized my kitchen these past two weeks. There are so many ideas tossed about dealing with leftovers that I feel I must read the whole thing again. There is much eloquent writing about bean broth that I must investigate. Et cetera.
Just have a look at the website, read the excerpts and see if we don't agree.

I want to write a long post, or two, about cookbooks, but I can´t, just yet. There is a list of deadlines to be met, one after the other; laundry baskets stare me in the face; and my children have taken to impromptu wrestling matches.

So I will just say: "An everlasting meal". It´s a really great book; beautiful, a good read and chock-full of stuff you´ll actually cook over and over.

 You can see for yourselves by downloading part of the first chapter to your e-reader or iPad.

A full review later in the week, promise. In the meantime, watch the videos on the site.

Secret ingredients

A month is a long time to be away from home. We´re picking up the routine right where we left it off, and it´s all good. The kids are off to nursery, their father to the office, and I´m left at home to field rapid deadlines and long dragging books. 

And back in my very own kitchen. It´s lovely to sit down to a meal you´ve had nothing to do with, day after day, and so comfortable., but any lingering lazy sighs are quickly stifled at the pleasure of finding all my favourite pots and pans and wooden spoons, ready to be played with.

Still it is dead of winter, and days are short and so cold, and one can become a tad weary of a diet of parsnips and broccoli. So I brought over a secret ingredient from Spain: ham bones.

Why not actual ham, you say? Well, indulgent fatty products are not very January, are they? After a month of non-stop pigging out it´s time for the whole grain and the green vegetable. Spare, stripped down food, thrifty and healthy.

And a ham bone, even a pedigree ibérico de bellota ham bone, is still a bone, and you can´t get more austere than that. It can only be used for broths and bean soups, but is guaranteed to lift them and give them a luxurious, velvety depth.

Here´s an old  post about chicken soup, and here´s one about bean soups you can use them in. 

That, with some bread and a few tangerines, is all that´s needed to get you through the beak midwinter.

Buen Gusto

 It´s been a wonderful long month, and we´ve managed to dodge the shortest, nastiest dark days of the polar winter, but at last we must leave.
My farewell meal was not cocido, or boquerones, or bocata de calamares. Instead, we went to my favorite Chinese restaurant, Buen Gusto.
Ever been irritated by a blogger who snaps pictures of the food as it cools? Try having dinner with me…I draw very fast, and don´t have to worry about lighting, or a flash, but still.

Madrid

I´m in Madrid. That should explain everything. I come back home and it´s all a non-stop whirl of seeing friends and family, hopping in and out of bars and museums and little shops, and more bars and a few galleries. And also cramming in a few meetings with clients, and taking the kids to the circus and the merry-go-round. A bit of sleep, now and then, when I can. No blogging. And now we´re off to Lisbon.

So I thought that instead of a recipe, I´ll post a few addresses of favourite places.

Above is a drawing of some of the pinchos served in Cuenllas, a very good (and expensive) bar in c/Ferraz where my father takes me for champagne and canapés. Go for the bone marrow, the anchovies and the butifarra.

In c/Ponzano, Fide and El Doble, for the best cañas and seafood. Ask for the shrimp in Fide and the mojama in El Doble.

For coffee with a view, the coffee shop in El Corté Inglés at Callao.

Don´t miss the exhibition at the Juan March right now, Alexandr Deineka.

Great churros are to be had in the morning in c/Santa Engracia, cafetería Lafuente.

Gin&Tonics that will floor a grenadier in c/Apodaca, the bar just opposite nº6.

More to follow when we´re back from Portugal.

Red cabbage with sausages

I wrote this post last year, braised sweet and sour red cabbage.

For some unfathomable reason, I only eat red cabbage on special occasions. This must be remedied inmediately, because it´s very easy and really great.

Especially since I have discovered a great variation: braised red cabbage and sausages. Braised together, that is. How can that not be great?

The recipe is simplicity itself. While slicing the cabbage and onion and apple you let the sausages brown in the pressure cooker. I´m usually too lazy to brown, but in this instance it´s pretty painless. By the time everything is prepped, the bangers are golden and smelling a treat.

Proceed with the recipe and in ten minutes or so (because, unlike some sneaky pressure cooker doyennes, I count the time it takes for the pot to come up to pressure) you have a warming, wonderful dish.

If you´re a pressure cooker geek, then you can use your other one to make smashed potatoes. Serve with sweet mustard, rye bread, and beer and thank heavens it´s so cold.

Brightened up bubble and squeak

Tell anyone in Spain that you live in Scotland and you will instantly hear two things: "lucky you, all that scenery" and "poor you, that horrible food".

Wrong , and wrong.

Mountains don´t really do it for me, and lakes and moors are only useful for a picnic, which, since it´s usually wet and windy, they aren´t.

British food, on the other hand, is lovely, and is just what you need for British weather, which is, well, awful, really. Tact is all very well but what can you say?

So anyway, they have this thing called bubble and squeak, which is a hash of the cabbage and potatoes left over from a Sunday lunch, usually livened up by a fried egg. It is awesome.

But, through one of those fridge foraging flukes, I have come up with a version that is just as good, but feels lighter, newer, and is very pretty on the plate: sweet potatoes and broccoli. Gurgle and squeal? Screechy and foam?

Never mind. Here´s how it goes.

You will need some cooked sweet potatoes. This is an irritating start to a recipe, I know, but there you are. I usually roast them in peeled wedges, but they can be microwaved in four or five minutes.

Once you have those, you make some pan steamed broccoli (again, yes, I know. This is a core lobstersquad recipe). A few cumin seeds and perhaps some mustard seeds will go very well, and chilieas, if that is your thing. When the broccoli is almost done, add a bit more oil and the cooked sweet potatoes, and, after swirling it around the pan, leave it alone: the idea is to let it catch a little, caramelize and get a crust.

The broccoli will probably cook a little more than is fashionable, but this is not a problem in this dish.

It is colourful and very good with almost anything.

Peanut butter and caramel popcorn

I read this recipe inThe Kitchn, and it scared me by the copious amounts of peanut butter and sugar and honey. But the idea of peanut butter popcorn danced in my head all day until there was nothing to do but get into the kitchen and adapt.

In the interests of research I have popped many bowls of popcorn, and remain unconvinced about the best microwave method. So far a big paper bag with plastic clips, or a bowl topped with clingfilm have worked best, but stovetop remains supreme.

My children are very small, though, so microwave it is. Likewise, I make the sauce on my own, well away from little critters who might jump up and down excitedly and burn themselves with caramel.

I leave them to pop the corn and feel proud of themselves.

Once you have the sauce you simply pop the corn whichever way you like, and pour the sauce over. This is more than enough for two 1/4 cup kernel batches of popcorn, but that´s because I like to taste the popcorn more than the sauce, which to me is a bonus treat more than an overall cover.

You choose how you like it best.

To make the pb caramel:

Put 1/3 cup of sugar in a pan with a couple of spoonfuls of water. I use brown sugar but caster is fine.

Stir it over a medium fire until you have caramel, which is when it bubbles like a witch´s brew and smells like heaven.

Add 1/3 cup of peanut butter (smooth, without sugar) and stir until it´s dissolved.

If the sauce looks too thick add some water until it´s how you like it.

The good news is that it keeps in a jar just so, and that it´s just as wonderful over ice cream, or fruit, or pancakes, or, you get the picture. I dare say this isn´t even very good news.

Also, it´s vegan, so go ahead and pour it over banana ice cream when you entertain people of that persuasion.

Gather your parsnips while ye may

Autum hits you fully in the face when the clocks go forward.

It´s a nasty, cruel joke, and if you´re as close to the North Pole as we are then it´s no joke at all.

Scottish winter has very little to recommend it, but, just to show what a bright little ray of Southern sunshine I am, I will focus on one (small) consolation: parsnips.

This lowly root vegetable was happily looked over once the potato came to stay, centuries ago, and in Spain we fell for spuds so hard that parsnips are only given to horses. A big pity, because they are very good. You can make Jane Grigson´s famous curried parsnip soup, or you can use some in your mashed potato, but to me where they shine is in the roasting pan.

Because of their shape, they are perfect for roasting. If you cut a parsnip in four lengthwise you end up with three textures. Coated in a very little oil, dusted with salt and roasted for about half an hour in a very hot oven, the thin tip almost chars, the middle bit is chewy, and the thick base fluffy. This is the best of all worlds.

The great thing is that you can also roast potato or sweet potato wedges, carrots or pumpkin. And nobody says you should keep chicken parts or sausages out of the oven.

And you´ll have heated up the kitchen so beautifully that you won´t even notice, behind misted up windows, that it´s been dark for hours.

(The drawing has nothing to do with anything, but I feel there aren´t enough images of Soviet space dogs in our every day life).

Pressure cooked kale

Kale, that strange vegetable; spinach on steroids, chewy chard, bitter cabbage…healthy, virtuous, austere, dark. A hard sell, paired as it often is with mentions of brown rice and winter soups.

Not that I knew, because we don´t have kale in Spain, as far as I can tell. I can sometimes find it in supermarkets in Aberdeen, and when I do, I bring home whole armfuls.

I usually gave it the pan-steam treatment, and it worked well, but because it´s a sturdy old thing and needs longer cooking than other greens, now I use the pressure cooker.

Method A is the ultra-organized, grown-up thing which I use for cooking my supermarket sweep in one go. I can fit three 400 gr. bunches in my 6 litre cooker. Cut out the rib, rip the leaves, wash them, throw them into the pressure cooker with a cup of water and give it five minutes under high pressure.

Let them cool and then freeze part, put part away in the fridge, and perhaps have the rest right away.

Method B is for a single bunch, and works just as well with any green, but you will have to adjust the cooking time.

Heat oil, add a crushed garlic clove and some cumin seeds, and as soon as the garlic dances, throw in a can of chickpeas or beans of your choice, liquid and all. Add the cleaned kale, salt, and give it five minutes under pressure.

Open the cooker and tweak it for salt. A lump of butter and a squeeze of lemon will be very welcome. Serve with bread and a bottle of hot, olive oil, a bowl of yogurt or ricotta, and mind you soak up the pot likker.

Needless to say, bacon, sausage, chorizo, etc, will all go very well indeed with this, so go ahead and add them at the beginning.

If you want it more soupy then simply add more water or broth.

Once you have your steamed metod A kale done, you can simply add it to anything you like, on the spur of the moment. It can be sauteed with a bit of garlic, pine nuts and raisins added at the end, perhaps a dash of pimentón. This is great on polenta, with a poached egg on top, but it´s pretty great in pasta, on pizzas and inside pies, in soups, or bean dishes, etc etc.

If imagination fails, you can always go for the brown rice, of course.