lobstersquad

Lazy borscht

2012-02-01T13:18:00.004+01:00

It´s business as usual here in the north of Scotland, but for you poor folks frozen in fear at the Siberian winds, here´s a warming soup.
I learnt to make borscht from a Ukrainian. She had been eating it since infancy and making it since childhood and was full of knowledge on the subject, obviously. But also prejudice, because that is how things go. She had things to say on the borscht served in Poland and Russia that would make you readers blush.

Therefore I offer this recipe for lazy borscht safe in the knowledge that there is no such thing as the ur-borscht, unless it be the one made by your mother. My Ukrainian friend´s version, make with pork ribs and thick with several vegetables, is probably very controversial somewhere between Kiev and Vladivostok.

I, on the other hand, come from Spain, where the jury is still out on wether beets are an actual food, or simply the main ingredient in Coca-Cola; I can do what I want, and offend no ancestors.

Which is just to say: pressure cook (or boil) ox tails and whole beets, well salted, with an onion and a carrot and a stick of celery and a bay leaf. 50 minutes under pressure will do the trick.

Let the pressure come down naturally and strain the broth. Throw away the onion, carrot and celery.

Chop the beets into small pieces. Shred the meat, set aside and discard the bones.

Now season the broth, which will probably need more salt, Sherry vinegar and a glug of Sherry.

Then decide:

You can do a cocido madrileño game plan and serve the broth first, followed by the meat and beets, with bread and butter and dill pickles.

Or you can boil potatoes and cabbage in the broth, and mix it all in a big bumper bowl of vegetable goodness. Sour cream and chives welcomed.

You can also set aside some or all of the meat and veg and use them to fill some piroshki, little turnovers that you fry or bake (I bake).

Or you can serve the all together mix first, and then strain the leftovers. Have the consommé as is, with perhaps a little lemon juice, more Sherry and lots of black pepper, or, if it´s summer, serve it as fuchsia jelly. And toss the meat and beets and cabbage with boiled potatoes, dill pickles and parsley or chives for a gorgeous potato salad.

A win-win soup.

An everlasting meal

2012-01-24T16:10:00.000+01:00

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.

2012-01-23T09:57:00.002+01:00

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

2012-01-16T16:08:00.000+01:00

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

2012-01-09T12:14:00.001+01:00

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

2011-12-20T09:27:00.001+01:00

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

2011-12-04T11:05:00.004+01:00

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

2011-11-24T13:14:00.003+01:00

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

2011-11-17T17:34:00.003+01:00

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

2011-11-11T21:49:00.002+01:00

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

2011-11-04T12:48:00.002+01:00

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.

Even easier home made yogurt

2011-10-31T21:32:00.002+01:00

Since moving to Scotland, I have two new habits. One is Yeo Valley Organic plain yogurt. The other is the charity shop down the road. The yogurt at least is shared by my children, but I am alone when it comes to buying every dogeared cookbook and enamel bowl in sight.

A few weeks ago I paid the princely sum of GBP 2 for an old fashioned Thermos, the kind with glass inside and a cork stopper. It is gorgeous, huge and impractical, and I love it.

I had assumed it would just sit grandly in my cupboard, useless and remote, but actually, it´s the perfect tool to make yogurt.

Before, I used a glass jar inside a pot of hot water inside a jumper that spent the night next to a heater. Which means that I didn´t really use that method much, and certainly not when I fell into the clutches of the Yeo Valley stuff.

But now? I simply heat milk, dip my finger in it, count, and if I can hold it for ten seconds but no more, then I pour it into the thermos. Adding half a cup of yogurt is all that remains to be done. You can add some powdered milk, they say, to make it set even better, but frankly, that´s a step too far.

Leave it inside the thermos for eight hours or so, and there you have it: yogurt.

The only problem? It´s so fresh that it tastes almost too real, cheesy and wild. My children refuse it point blank, so I´m alone in this addiction too.

The Boy Scout´s dinner.

2011-10-24T21:42:00.002+02:00

I have the reputation of squirrelling away food, and I guess it´s true. There´s nothing I like better than knowing that my bases are covered in case of almost any culinary emergency. This leads to groaning pantry shelves and a freezer that is sometimes hard to negotiate. Also, I have been known to hold on to things for so long that by the time we eat them the expiry dates are archaeological.

But anyway, it really is so worth it when, for example, you are returning from a weekend away, and need a warm, homely, comforting meal but you don´t really want to cook.

Here´s what we had yesterday, after two days of dragging two little children around Edinburgh:

Tomato soup, from the freezer.

Toasted cheese sandwiches, with onion jam from the fridge.

Salad with this vinaigrette, also in the fridge.

Be Prepared, is all I´m saying.

Pasta with broccoli, anchovies and pine nuts.

2011-10-16T15:46:00.003+02:00

I made this pasta when I was in Spain last. We´d had a long meeting, were hungry and, as Monday is not a good day for bars and restaurants, decided to go to my friend P´s house. "We can have pasta", she said, "although there´s nothing in the cupboard". Aglio olio, I thought, happily, for I love me a good aglio olio.

Turns out that P´s "nothing" is a broad, sweeping comment. There was oil and garlic, of course, but also broccoli. And a further rummage around netted anchovies, almonds and raisins.

Almost all the ingredients of one of the first dishes I ever learnt how to make, from a Sardinian flatmate in my university days.

Happily for my slapdash blogging methods, it is a sister recipe to this one of a few weeks back for pan steamed broccoli, so kindly read that over first if you need to.

While the pasta (long, ideally, but anything goes) boils, you cook the broccoli, with crushed garlic and a tin of anchovies, and add the raisins towards the end. The original calls for capers but I hardly every remember them.

If you can be bothered, toast pine nuts, or almonds, as it was what we had, in a separate pan. Get someone else to lay the table, not forgetting a bottle of oil, a pepper mill and some parmesan and the grater.

When the pasta is al dente, grab it with tongs or strain it, but make sure there´s some water, which will help to make a sauce. Put it in the frying pan with the broccoli, toss it well, then put it in a bowl.

My secret touch is a lump of butter tossed at the end, when the pasta and broccoli meet. It is not essential but helps it out no end.

Scatter the pine nuts or almonds over and eat away.

This is as popular with starving students as with startup app developers.

Saveur´s great and global

2011-10-01T22:09:00.004+02:00

I´m deep in holiday mode, which is to say, checking my email only now and then, ignoring the Web and Twitter, and catching up with friends and family and tapas bars.
But I did check Twitter for a second yesterday, and found out from dear Lydia about this Saveur article: 55 Great Global Food Blogs. Lobstersquad is one of them, the only one from Spain, no less.
Very exciting, very cool, I´m so happy.
No time to post recipes, but may I remind you of one from long ago, slow roast tomatoes? If you´re in a place, like Madrid, where it is possible to come back from the market with arms groaning under the weight of ripe beautiful tomatoes bought for a few coins, you have to make it.

Fast focaccia

2011-09-28T19:55:00.003+02:00

Flatbreads are great to cook, easy and fast. You don´t have to wait for the oven to heat up, so it´s very convenient to take a couple of balls of dough that you have in the fridge, let them rest and then cook them on a hot frying pan.

The only problem is that you have to do them one by one, and that is not always an option. As for waiting for the oven to come up to 250ºC, only for fifteen minutes? In Scotland, maybe, but anywhere that´s hot that´s suicidal.

Yesterday I was in a hurry, and tried making a focaccia under the grill/broiler. Bread recipes are annoyingly uptight and controlling, but over time I´ve come to rely on instinct more and more. Particulary with flatbreads, because, come on; they are the staple food nomads, and many other people who don´t have the sophisticated ecquipment we´re used to. I bet improvisation has been ok many times.

It worked perfectly fine. I stretched the oiled dough out a little thinner than usual, just one centimetre, and I had it about 10 cm from the flame. Once one side was golden, I flipped it and waited for it to do the same, and there it was: focaccia, crusty and crisp and in every way delectable.

You can see my bread recipe here, and a post about flatbreads here.

2011-09-22T15:56:00.001+02:00

Untitled #122, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Thinking of making chocolate mousse. I think Twitter is cramping my literary style...

Cheese and apple toast

2011-09-15T14:05:00.003+02:00

I think often think back to when my kids ate everything, and I was pleased. Their father was ecstatic. So much so that he gloated, and was heard boasting that Pía preferred broccoli to French toast. And so of course, smugness brought us down. I warned him, but to no avail. Now they eat nothing.

That is, they eat pasta and toast, and fish fingers, and eggs, and bananas and sometimes tinned peaches. And blueberries and mango (expensive little critters). Nutella and ice cream, need I mention. Pizza, sometimes. Chicken, in some incarnations.

At nursery they eat a whole lot of other stuff, but at home, that´s it.

So I´m very happy to have found that they like this cheese and apple on toast, which I like to call (forgive me) Newton´s rabbit, it being like Welsh rabbit but having apples, and so, you know.
I took the idea from The River Cottage Baby and Toddler book, an infuriating volume chock full of dishes my children would run a mile from.

However, this they like, and it´s easy and actually delicious, which makes it an excellent bet for sudden adult hunger pangs on a near empty fridge, or for bulking up a meagre bowl of soup.

Just grate an apple, some cheese of the Cheddar or Manchego type, cover a slice of toast, grill/broil it until brown and crunchy and that´s it.

The ultimate chorizo sandwich

2011-09-13T15:01:00.004+02:00

A chorizo sandwich, as sold in every bar and corner shop across Spain, is nothing more than chorizo slices, sandwiched between bread. The quality of the chorizo and the bread, and the generosity of the perpetrator are the only factors that change.

So it´s not a very good sandwich, really. One dimensional, at best. Inedible, at worst.

Unless you take a little bit of care, and then it is pretty darn tasty.

You need a baguette, a ciabatta or a small loaf of good bread.

You need some proper ibérico chorizo, sliced thin. And it has to be eating chorizo, not cooking chorizo.

Then, taking inspiration from the Majorcan way with sobrasada, you need hot mango sauce, or, failing that, apricot jam mixed with chili sauce.

Heat the oven to 180ºC. Spread the cut baguette with the sauce, layer a fair amount of chorizo slices (be generous. think about your arteries some other day). Close it, wrap it in foil, squash it a little and put it in the oven.

Take it out when the outside is very crunchy, 15 or 20minues. The orange fat will have oozed from the sausage, mingled with the hot, sweet sauce, and soaked the bread.

So far, so heavenly.

But to take it up a notch, serve alongside "ensalada de matanza". This means "pig-killing salad" and is a Spanish slaw, served in Escolástica´s village at matanza time.

Slice some cabbage as thin as you can, and dress very simply with olive oil, salt, Sherry vinegar, a dash of powdered cumin and crushed raw garlic. Not too much of any.

This will provide crunch and freshness, and make the chorizo sandwich into a balanced meal. Or almost.

Ying Yang

2011-09-06T13:26:00.003+02:00

Hello everyone. This is one of those here and there, "just to say hi" posts.

First, please notice that discreet but effective little button that says "follow me on Twitter". Nice, innit?

Then, are you totally bowled away by the beauty of the image above? Thought so. I am going to make a batch of screenprints with it tomorrow, so if anyone wants to have it for themselves, stay tuned.

Also, just discovered this blog I´m loving already, A cookbook a month. Just the thing for cookbook obsessives like me.

Over the next week I plan to post a few good recipes I´ve been making a lot lately: Newton´s rabbit, matanza salad, the ultimate chorizo sandwich and something else I´m forgetting. Tall order, let´s see if I can make it.

Kid´s apps, kitchen apps?

2011-09-01T13:42:00.005+02:00

Now, this is a shameless plug, of course, but I hope you´ll forgive me. It´s all true.

When you´re in a hurry to get a meal on the table, you need all the help you can get. That can come from an actual human being who will offer to chop and slice, or empty the dishwasher. Or it can come in the shape of an enthusiastic three year old whose idea of help is to open every jar and sprinkle their contents madly. Or maybe it will be a toddler, going for the cupboards with a glad glint in his eye.

In such cases, what´s more useful, an app by Jamie Oliver, or one that will keep the young varmints quiet for a few minutes while you grill their fish fingers?
Thought so.

Myself, I´m very proud of these apps, created by Terrier Digital, with illustrations by yours truly. We have many more colours coming, and also versions for the iPad. For now, I say, iPhone users with kids, get yourself Animal Colours, take a breather, and, later, enjoy how they pronounce "malayan tapir".

Pan steamed broccoli

2011-08-23T16:46:00.001+02:00

I just had some beautiful broccoli for lunch, pan steamed, with a hint of garlic and nothing else. It was soft, melting, but retained a little bite. savory, punchy, and yet it had nothing but sea salt added.
All this happened because I happened to cook it just right. I don´t always get it so perfect, but today I did. I know it was that, because the broccoli itself wasn´t much; your basic supermarket head, somewhat rubbery and beginning to yellow from having been in my fridge a little bit too long.

I just say this to remind everyone not to be too hung up upon the Myth of the Marvelous Ingredient. Sure, the fresher the better, and yes, starting out with marvelous ingredients helps, but...you still have to cook. It´s annoying and patronizing and plain stupid to convince people that unless the produce was harvested within a mile of them by vestal virgins they needen´t even bother to start.
Can you imagine an article on decoration beginning with "unless your bedroom is in a XV century palazzo overlooking the Canal Grande, there´s no point in painting a wall this shade of blue"? Or someone saying "don´t bother to learn to drive if you´re not prepared to get a Ferrari".
Get real.
Cook, even if the vegetables are wilted.

Pan-steamed broccoli
This works with all vegetables, but the time they take to cook will vary. It is a very easy way to cook, and has more flavor than usual, as no nutrients are lost on the way. You also need less fat than with the usual steam-then-sautee method.

Put a non-stick pan that has a lid on the hob, with a bit of oil or butter or both. A very little will do. Put a smashed garlic clove or two in there, let it cook while you prepare the broccoli.
Cut the florets, peel the stalk and dice it. Add to the garlicky fat, swirl, and pour a half cup of water in the pan. Cover, and let steam.
You might need to add water if it dries up, or uncover and turn up the fire if it´s almost cooked and there is a lot still. Either way, keep an eye on it. Five minutes is usually enough.

You can add spices, or anchovies, to the oil with the garlic for a change of flavor.

Soup dips (not what you´re thinking) and chicken fingers

2011-08-17T18:30:00.006+02:00

The red lentil soup used to be a huge hit. Bowls and bowls were consumed by toddler and baby, and I took to making big batches and freezing them in single portions. It was so popular that at one point Pía demmanded it every night.
Now, you risk mutiny if it shows up. Pepe hates it too. What happened?

I still tried to serve the last portion last week. It was refused, forcibly. O well. The fish fingers were well received, so all was not lost. But what to do with that small bowl of soup? Reheating again was too sad, eating it cold a tragedy, and yet, to throw food away…no.

I added a squirt of lemon, another of ketchup and another of hot sauce, put it in a pretty bowl, with a bigger one full of tortilla chips beside it, called it a dip, and it was great.

Happy reincarnation story.

The list of foods they eat is short, so any time a novelty is accepted I am over the moon. These chicken fingers of Melissa Clark´s were gobbled up enthusiastically yesterday. Or rather, a hastily improvised version, with pork, no more spice than cumin and garlic, and I cooked them under the broiler instead of heating up the oven. This means it´s a golden recipe; if you can improvise so much and it´s still delicious it´s a weeknight winner.

The drawing is from the website of Au Pair Rescue, an agency just set up by two good friends of mine. Nothing like an extra pair of helping hands for dealing with kids at mealtimes. I´m not saying the chicken fingers aren´t great, but they can never be as great as that.

The 40 second egg

2011-08-12T11:47:00.002+02:00

We came back from Spain on Wednesday; a twelve hour trip, all told, with a three year old and a one year old. Luckily they slept on the plane and were quiet in the car, but it never pays to take chances with dinner and so I chose the easiest, fastest option: eggs.

In Scotland you can buy free range eggs at gas stations, which is very handy in these situations. In Spain anyone clueless enough to need stocking up at gas stations is reckoned to be so slack that they´ll to put up with battery farm eggs, so that was lucky.

Pía likes a soft boiled egg with her face painted on, but Pepe takes his scrambled, and for him I use the express microwave method. Adults can wait the full three minutes it takes to scramble a couple of eggs, but one year olds must be appeased FAST.

So: take a microwave safe mug. Crack an egg into it, grate some cheese and beat it. Give it 30 seconds, take it out, beat it again and give it another 10. Voilà, scrambled eggs. Not the creamiest, of course, but more than ok for the little banshee banging his fists on the highchair.

Away

2011-08-02T22:56:00.002+02:00

Away, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

We're going home tomorrow, to the land of tapas and sunny beaches. No wifi, so no email, no tweets and no blogging.
Had one of those strange fridge clearing dinners: toast with avocado and sardines, home made jelly and custard. A tiffin box is packed with breakfast burritos for tomorrow. There are bananas and biscuits for the children. All this sounds so organized that clearly I must be forgetting something crucial.
Have a good week, dear readers. Back all to soon, sadly.

Anchovy pizza

2011-07-31T10:30:00.001+02:00

Summer=hot=kitchen off limits. Or something to that effect, no? I seem to remember having lived like that, once, before moving to the northernmost reaches of human habitation.

Ordering pizza in summer makes sense, not just because you don´t want to go into the kitchen but also because you have a higher chance of it arriving still hot.

Just be smart and order the margherita, then trick it out yourself. Our favorite lately is this simple and this good:

Crush a garlic clove, mix it with the olive oil from a tin of anchovies, add chopped parsley and cracked pepper (no salt). Drizzle this over the pizza, lay the anchovies on it.

Now, for the most important step: put the pizza on a wooden tray, or board. Give everyone tea towels if you don´t have cloth napkins. Serve with ice cold beer or good wine, and you´ll be laughing.

Chickpea and stuffed pasta salad

2011-07-24T18:58:00.005+02:00

A great salad, easily made from ingredients from the pantry, and long lasting fridge goodies. You can see my own (far from perfect, of course) pantry in Lydia´s blog, which features a section called "Other people´s pantries".

This has become my get out of jail free card. Whenever I have to make a meal for the four of us in five minutes, counting from putting my key in the door to sitting down at the table, this is it.

I know purists scoff at supermarket fresh pasta, and yes, I know it´s nowhere nearly as good as home made fresh pasta, and lacks the toothy character of good dried pasta. But that doesn´t matter here; what matters is speed. Provided you boil the water in an electric kettle, the dish is done in three minutes flat. You have time to lay the table, but only just.

The only non-negotiable ingredients are a packet of stuffed fresh pasta, whatever you like, and a tin of chickpeas. One packet is too mean, but two means waiting a long time for the water to come to the boil, and anyway the mixture of grain and bean is a winner.

While the pasta boils, open the tin, drain it, put it in a big bowl and begin the dressing. By far the easiest and tastiest is pesto, which you should always try to have on hand, as it´s a lifesaver. If you don´t, mix garlic, oil and whatever herb you have. Cooked broccoli or spinach, or jarred sun dried tomatoes, artichokes, olives...all these things would not be out of place, but be restrained. People tend to let their imaginations run away with them in pasta salads, and anyway you only have literally two minutes to do this.

Drain the pasta, toss, serve with more olive oil and a hunk of parmesan to grate at table.

I works well with beans, too, can be made ahead and doesn´t suffer much in transport, which screams "picnic".

Broccoli cheese sauce

2011-07-20T13:46:00.003+02:00

My mother, of course, knows best. And she told me, loud and clear, "don´t have children". But I did.

And now I have to feed them, which I never thought would be too hard. Ha.

I know the first rule is "don´t take it personally", and I try not to. And they look pretty robust, so I´m not worried. It´s just annoying that they refuse meatballs and pizza, with scorn I used to reserve for liver or limp cabbage.

But anyway, this sauce passed muster yesterday, so I´m sticking with it for a while. My ennervating kids don´t mind the taste of broccoli, but at some point a colour bar was raised, and they look on anything green with straight out loathing. Luckily, broccoli stalks are white, and so, here goes:

Sneaky broccoli cheese sauce for toddlers

Steam a couple of head of broccoli; the florets like that, the stalks peeled and diced roughly.

Once tender, blend the stalks with some cheese until you have a cheesy, whiteish, surprisingly tasty sauce.

Pour over pasta, hope for the best.

Spanish Rice, pressure cooked

2011-07-18T12:43:00.003+02:00

Mystery solved. Laura of Hip pressure cooking asked me for a recipe for Spanish rice, and I was flummoxed. There´s no such thing as Spanish rice in Spain, I said, and gave her a recipe for arroz caldoso, which is Spanish, and rice, and very good.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I started to cook a rice that I call Emma´s rice, and then I understood. Emma is from Ecuador, so to me this is a recipe from far, far away, but in the USA Ecuador and Spain are just as Spanish. So we have a winner; a simple, winsome rice-and-chicken dish, easy to make and, in the pressure cooker, lightning quick.

And very much by the way, I have finally succumbed and opened a Twitter account, since two children, a job, a husband and two blogs weren´t enough of a drain on my time. You can find me as @Marujapolar.

Spanish rice

Chop onion, red pepper, garlic small and sautee them until the onion is transparent.
Next, turn some chicken pieces, the size of a walnut, in this mix. You can brown them if you like but I don´t bother. Pour a glug of Sherry or white wine and let it bubble away.
When this is ready, add two cups of washed and drained long grain rice and let it soak up this goodness.
Now you can put in a few saffron threads and some turmeric, or nothing at all if you don´t want a yellow colour.
Add two cups of broth, close the lid.
Give it three minutes under pressure and let it come down for seven more.
Open the lid, fluff the rice, throw in some frozen peas that you´ve microwaved for a minute, and voilá, Spanish rice.

Serve with hot sauce and plantain chips, or plain corn chips and salsa.

French toast

2011-07-15T11:41:00.002+02:00

French toast is so easy to make that probably nobody needs a recipe, but then again, somebody makes French toast for the first time some day, and you won´t want it to catch you at a bad time, like Dustin Hoffmann in Kramer vs Kramer.

My children love this, so I make it for dinner rather than breakfast. It goes just as well with cheese and broccoli as it does with maple syrup and bacon.

Take one egg per person, add the same volume of milk, more or less, beat it well and dunk sliced bread. It has to soak up the liquid but not turn soggy, so it´s best to use old bread, from a good loaf (the guys from the bag above make the best in Aberdeen).

Toast in a pan you´ve brushed with oil or butter and that´s it. Easy.

And, as a little Friday bonus, a link to a beautiful short film by Maira Kalman.Guaranteed to put a smile on your face, and tighten your heart, all at the same time.

Guests

2011-07-13T09:50:00.001+02:00

Guests, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Having friends over for a few days means not just company and good times; it´s also a prime opportunity for pigging out, and feeling like a gracious hostess rather than a pig.

I give my visitors things they won´t find in Spain. Prime British pork sausages, elderflower lemonade, smoked mackerel and trout, granary malted bread and punnet after punnet of Scottish raspberries, with thick yogurt or with meringues and cream. Good stuff.

Now that they´ve gone, we go back to normal. Lunch today will be steamed broccoli and poached eggs, with the last of the raspberries. No crumbles, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, mountains of chips or jugs of Pimm´s turning up after meals.

Until we go back to Spain in a few weeks, and become guests ourselves, that is.

Poached eggs

2011-07-07T13:50:00.003+02:00

I was listening to a KCRW Good Food podcast. Russ Parsons came on, started talking about eggs, and said that he considered poaching a fuss. That he admired people who poached but that it was a step too far for weekday cooking.
I shook my head in incomprehension.
And then next time I made poached eggs it came to mind, and I wondered afresh, how someone as great as Russ can possibly find poaching eggs too much.
Hubris led me to crack an egg too quickly, and drop it from too high, and it broke.
But apart from that, poaching eggs is a cinch, and I will write down the method below, and entreat you all to poach away. It´s simple, really.

Put a pan on the fire with an inch of water and bring it to the boil. No vinegar, no nothin´. It can be a frying pan, which makes it easier to take the eggs out, but anything is fine.

When it´s boiling, crack an egg into the water. No swirling, no putting the egg in a bowl, no nothin´. Fresh eggs poach more neatly, as the whites spread out less, but who cares?

Add all the eggs you want, but no more than four at a time for a 20 cm wide pan. Be sensible.

Turn the fire down, cover the pot and leave for a minute or so, until the white is cooked.

Now take the eggs out with a strainer, drain on a kitchen towel and serve. If you are very much into presentation, trim any straggly white bigs so it looks round and concise.

Or, and this is my favourite thing about poached eggs, put them in a bowl of cold water. They will keep there for days, in the fridge, if need be. Makes brunch preparations all the easier, but is also handy if you are given some very fresh wonderful farm fresh eggs. Cook them at once and enjoy them over the next few days.

Seriously, it´s that simple.

The Perfect Pantry

2011-07-05T21:57:00.004+02:00

Lydia, Prueba, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Another blog that has recently had a spruce up is Lydia's The Perfect Pantry, an old time favourite. This is a blog that has all the warm and open tone we like to read, cemented on a rock solid foundation of information and great recipes. If you don't know it yet, go and have a look.
Lydia was kind enough to ask me to do an illustration for the header. I wish all jobs were as fun.
The drawing is one of the preliminaries I did at the beginning of the process.

My pantry, though far from perfect, is bulging with good things, which come in very useful now that I don't have access to my dear Barceló market and all the little shops around it. Brit supermarkets are well stocked but I hate having to drive to them.

Tonight we've had empanada gallega, an impressive looking dish made all from pantry ingredients. This one was filled with onions, from and Eazy can, three tins of sardines, some oregano and a handful of raisins.

At last, change!

2011-07-04T11:11:00.005+02:00

As ever with these things, I´d been dreading it and putting it off, and lo and behold, it was very easy and now I wish I´d done it earlier. Here you have it, with bells on: clean, fresh tags, all the followers there looking beautiful, and most important, the share buttons so you can tweet and like to your heart´s content.
Here´s to five years (and a few months) of blogging, a Lobstersquad iPad app in the works, and all the rest.

Extremely crunchy chicken wings

2011-07-01T11:01:00.001+02:00

I made these wings yesterday, inspired by a recipe from Mad Hungry. Since I had no breadcrumbs I substituted oatmeal and polenta and oh, wow. Serious crunch, serious flavour. I´m sold, particullary as the type of breadcrumbs found here look like day-glo orange fish food.

I also roasted a head of cauliflower alongside, and made some hummus. It was a very simple meal, all finger food, great with cold beer, easy to serve outside. The perfect menu for watching a Wimbledon semifinal?

heat the oven to 225ºC

Take one kg of chicken wings (that´s about ten, with the tips off).
Salt them, then mix in a bowl a heaping spoonful of flour, half a cup of oatmeal and a quarter cup of polenta and a quarter cup of sesame seeds. You can add crushed garlic and cayenne pepper to this, if you like.

Now beat one egg in another bowl and put the wings in there, making sure they´re all coated in egg. You may need two but then will surely have egg left over and that´s annoying.

Coat the wings in the floury mixture, put them on a greased baking sheet and into the oven for 45 minutes or so, until golden and oh, shatteringly crunchy.

Serve with something to dip them in. My favorite is Thai sweet chili sauce mixed with Dijon mustard.

Feeds two as a main dish, more as an appetizer, though there will be fights for the last piece.

Take time for lunch

2011-06-28T13:52:00.005+02:00

J always comes home for lunch, since it´s his job to pick up the kids from nursery.
It´s a proper meal. I lay the table and we sit down, even if we only have twenty minutes to eat it. And even though I often cook it in fifteen, it´s still good stuff.
The good old pressure cooker is a big help, as is the freezer, and yesterday´s leftovers.
What can I say? I come from a culture of big lunches and small dinners, and it feels more civilized to sit down to black bean soup, at a table, than to snatch a sandwich at your desk.
So there. I wish you all a very good lunch.

Quick squid: chipiron plancha

2011-06-27T14:46:00.002+02:00

I´ve read many times the rule about squid: cook it fast for a minute, or slow for an hour, unless you want to eat rubber rings.
I usually go for the slow, since it seems easier to control; you let the thing simmer and can try and see if it´s ok. The flash method seemed a bit scary.

However, once you try it you see it really is the easiest thing, and so good. We had a couple of small squid and a bunch of samphire, a salty, crunchy seaweed, with very cold beer before dinner and it was just the thing.

Ingredients

Squid, as much as you like but at least one per person
salt, pepper, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil

Marinade the cleaned squid with the salt, pepper, parsley, juice and oil.

Heat a non-stick pan as high as you can and when it´s hot throw the squid on it. It will curl and contract quickly. The second it´s opaque, take it out. It´s almost impossible to undercook.
Your kitchen probably won´t have the power to turn it crunchy golden like the planchas of tapas bars, but it´s still going to be very good. If you´re doing a lot then do it in batches, so you can control the thing.

I just want to say

2011-06-23T21:50:00.001+02:00

Fish Finger Sandwich, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

the Fish Finger Sandwich. Awsome.

Boiling octopus

2011-06-21T18:37:00.004+02:00

I´ve written about pulpo a feira before, and octopus salad. Always, I began with the instruction "buy some boiled octopus".

But then I moved to the northernmost reaches of civilization, to a place where octopii are rare, and when found, small and raw. If you´re lucky, they will be clean. If you´re not, you´re in for an interesting ten minutes gouging yucky stuff from the insides of the head. You´ll never believe how much stuff can fit in there.

So anyway, here are instructions for boiling an octopus. Once it´s done, you only have to proceed to the other recipes.

It´s very easy, as long as you follow two rules:

I have only done this with the small octopii (?) I find here in the North Sea, but in Spain you´d bring home a great whaking beast, so it´s best to make this for a party.

First, freeze the octopus. Ask the fishmonger if it has been frozen before, and if it has then you´re free to go. Freezing breaks up the whatever technical term it is so that it is tender.

Put it in the fridge to defrost overnight (or, you know, waive all health and safety advice and leave it on the counter for a shorter while. it´s what I do)

Bring a big pan of water to the boil (no need to salt). Add a bay leaf and a a few peppercorns.

When it´s boiling, drive a hook through the octopus´s head and plunge it into the boiling water. Count to three, and take it out.

Wait for the water to come back to the boil and repeat the process three times.

This ensures that the skin won´t break up and it will look prettier.

Put it back in the water, cover and leave to simmer for about 90 minutes, by which time it should be tender.

Or, if you are using a pressure cooker, leave for 30 minutes and let the pressure come down on its own.

Fusion baby food: miso mashed potatoes

2011-06-12T09:41:00.004+02:00

Miso is one of the things that´s always sitting in my fridge. Usually to be used as a soup base when I´m making Japanese-y noodle soups, and as a quick marinade for fish, but also to kick up a panful of mushrooms, or anything that tastes a bit wan.

Yesterday I had a leftover boiled potato, and a toddler in a high chair looking hungry but discerning. The lone potato would not cut it, but if I started fiddling around defrosting stuff, he´d howl. Answer; miso mashed potatoes, a David Chang conceit, but fine for all ages.

I heated the potato in the microwave, and then put a bit of butter and a bit of miso, mashed it with a fork, and that was that, a very popular instant hit.

You can also do that with sweet potatoes, and if it´s for you, don´t be shy with the miso. Your pork chop or chicken thighs will be very happy next to this.

The Food of Spain, by Claudia Roden

2011-06-10T09:57:00.003+02:00

It´s finally out. I can´t wait to get my hands on it, and much fruitless time is spent debating wether to buy the US edition already, and risk the American measurements, or wait like a good girl for it to come out here.

Meanwhile, you can read a review here, a New Yorker profile of the author here, and, best of all, an excerpt here.

I can´t say for sure, but I think this is it, the definitive book on Spanish cooking, yes!

Pressure cooked white rice

2011-06-04T10:02:00.003+02:00

Brown rice is usually the star of the pressure cooker, because it takes forever to cook in a normal pot. White rice cooks fairly quickly, but sometimes even ten minutes shaved off cooking time makes a difference, and it´s a good trick to have up your sleeve.

My pressure cooking guru, Lorna Sass, says you can cook long grain rice in a pressure cooker., but it will be stickier than it would be in a normal pan. Lorna insists that she´s used to it now and would not have it otherwise.

I tried it and it was ok, but definitely on the gummy side. Perfect for fried rice the day after, but nothing great.

However, I tried it again yesterday, because I was in a hurry and wanted to test a theory. Lorna will have you put 1 cup of rice and 1 and 3/4 of water in the cooker.

I did it with just 1 of rice to 1 of water and you know what? It was awesome. Yes, a little stickier than usual but definitely not gummy, definitely delicious and very quick. So here it is:

Long grain rice in the pressure cooker

Put a bit of oil into the cooker and while it heats measure out two cups of rice and wash and rinse them.

Now turn them in the oil a little until they begin to look a bit transparent (or not. this is optional)

Add salt and two cups of water.

Cover, lock, bring up to pressure and count three minutes. Turn the heat off and let the pressure come down for seven minutes.

Open, fluff the rice with a fork and there you go. For decadence, add a bit of butter.

Also, this method is perfect for pilafs, so stay tuned for my cheat´s pilaf, a thing of beauty and speed.

To make the kitchen smell good

2011-05-26T18:50:00.003+02:00

Back again, never mind the Icelandic volcano that nearly grounded us.

I came back to a house inhabited only by J for ten days. There was a weird smell, which sometimes happen when you leave a guy alone. It didn´t come from stacked takeout boxes, however (the house was eerily tidy, actually). After some sniffing around I located a glass I´d left on the counter with a bunch of fresh cut parsley. Two weeks later, it was a stagnant pond with lots of fuzzy slimy stuff.

This was quite lucky, as last time it took me a couple of days to locate the offending substance; chorizo wrapped up and left to molder in a cupboard.

I quickly threw that out, but to make sure all lingering nastiness went away, I did the Yolanda-Frying-Fish-Night-Trick. It makes your kitchen smell lovely, and seems to subdue any competing nastiness, so it´s a good one when you´re cooking pungent stuff.

Simply, boil some water with a bit of sugar, some lemon, and a stick of cinammon.

Let it bubble away on a back burner unattended, but do keep an eye on it. Once it´s boiled down you can even use it to drizzle on fruit salad if you like.

Oh and by the way, a recipe for arroz caldoso, by way of Hip Pressure Cooking, where Laura asked me to do a guest post. Thank you!

Tamasin Day Lewis in Madrid

2011-05-20T17:24:00.001+02:00

Untitled #94, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

this is a sketch I made during the press event held before the masterclasses at Alambique cookery school last Monday.
It was a lot of fun, the food was amazing.
more Madrid food tales soon, if I can stop eating and drinking long enough to post about it.

Ballymaloe brown yeast bread

2011-05-07T18:01:00.004+02:00

Clearly nobody needs to make bread at home, and anyone who does does so because they like it, not because they find it easy or convenient. So saying a recipe for bread is easy and convenient isn´t saying all that much.

However, this bread is a good way of either getting into the bread habit, or of slipping back into it. It´s the easiest bread I´ve ever made, no question. It makes the famous NYT no-knead bread fussy by comparison.

It makes an honest to goodness wholemeal loaf, crunchy outside, springy inside, a bit chewy, with lots of flavour.

When you read the recipe you´ll think, like I did, "no way". Wishful thinking, you´ll say. It can´t be true. Mix flour and water and molasses and yeast in a bowl with a spoon, pour the battery dough just like that into a greased tin, leave it to rise there just once and bake straight away?

I fully expected to get a well-meaning but inedible brick, and if it had been a recipe from anyone but Ballymaloe´s Darina Allen, I wouldn´t have even bothered.

So try it. I think we´ll be having home made bread every day again. It´s the easiest thing in the world to mix three batches, bake them, all in an afternoon, freeze two loaves and have enough for the whole week.

The full recipe, together with a few more, is in this Guardian article. They come from the book "Forgotten skills of cooking" which is a great book, although not the most practical, because, frankly, keeping chickens and growing cabbages ain´t in my line. I´ve borrowed it from the library, but I´m copying down a lot of recipes, so it´d definitely recommended.

However, just so you know, here are a few notes. The dough took one hour, not 20 minutes to rise. The rest is just as Darina Allen writes.

If you´re in Spain and can´t find strong brown flour for a reasonable price, buy gluten and add a heaping spoonful to your flour.

If you´re using powdered yeast, mix all the dry ingredients and then the treacle and water.

Cacharros

2011-05-02T21:45:00.001+02:00

Cacharros, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

winding down, waiting for Pia to fall asleep, browsing Darina Allen's latest book and debating wether to make Eve's pudding or Irish apple cake tomorroe.

Royal weddings app, out in English, and chocolate sauce

2011-04-25T10:20:00.004+02:00

Hello dear readers. As promised, our royal weddings app is now out in English. As the world gears up for royal wedding madness, get ready with some brushing up on frivolous historical tidbits.

Also, a chocolate sauce to enhance your celebrations.

Chocolate sauce is one of those things you just have to know how to make. It´s part of being a civilized member of this planet. Life is simply much better when you know you can pour some hot sauce over ice cream .

The simplest is, of course, ganache. Cream and good chopped chocolate, there you go. The little black dress of sweet sauces, dark, elegant, restrained, classic, it goes with everything and gives it a touch of class.

Sure. However, it depends on your having cream in the house. I don´t have cream in the house. In Spain, yes, I always have those little cartons of UHT cream, but here in the UK cream is fresh, so I only buy it with specific dishes in mind. Or else. You know how it is with cream, specially when it´s as criminally good as British cream.

Enter the storecupboard solution.

Chocolate sauce needs only cocoa, fat and sugar. So to make a very very simple and very very quick one, you can skip several steps and use Nutella, which, however well it cloaks itself in wholesome nuttiness is basically oil and sugar.

Put a whopping big spoonful of Nutella in a coffee mug with a half teaspoonful of cocoa and a glug of milk, and give it thirty seconds in the microwave.

Beat it well with a spoon and watch the messy melted spread turn glossy, dark, wicked and even more irresistible.

It is the perfect sauce, at once grown-up and intense, yet fudgy and sweet, with a praline undertone. It is the goods, I´m telling you. Ice cream sundae has never been so perilously easy.

Pour that over vanilla ice cream as you watch the royal wedding, and if you´re a true fan, add Rich Tea biscuits, which the groom seems to favour.

Bodas Reales- Royal weddings app, by Terrier Digital

2011-04-19T09:34:00.002+02:00

At last, at last, the fruit of all the labours of this winter and chunk of spring .

Ladies and gentlemen, followers, readers, lurkers, browsers, casual visitors…do you have an iPad?

If you do, then you must please rush to the AppStore to download our little brainchild, the Bodas Reales app.

Right now we only have the Spanish version, but the English one will be up as soon as those lovely folks in California give it the green light.

It´s the first app in the portfolio of Terrier Digital, our brand new e-publishing house. You can see all about us in the website, and check out upcoming apps.

Lobstersquad is going to get a beautiful iPad version, aren´t we lucky?

This first one is about royal weddings, so it´s all princesses and dresses and what not, a lot of fun, of course, but there´s also food, fear not. I wrote a piece about royal wedding menus, which, as you can imagine, are heavy on the lobster.

If you have no iPad yet, you can see a few screenshots in our Facebook page.

I´ll be back soon to remind you when the English version is up.

Pressure cooker flan

2011-04-13T11:32:00.004+02:00

Dear 399 followers of Lobstersquad,
I´ve never told you, because I am a very slapdash blogger, but I´m sure you can guess; I love you, and I don´t say it enough. Likewise, dear readers. I´d love to give you all a great big hug.
I would also love to get down to tidying up this old blog, and use the new Blogger templates that allow the followers to show, and all those new bells and whistles. I promise you, it´s been on my list for long, and I hope to be able to do it soon, and make a proper links sidebar, and organize the tags. All those things.
There will also be a Lobstersquad surprise soon (and no, it´s not another baby). Three friends and I have teamed up to start up a little editorial project that we´re very excited about. The drawing above is part of it.
But for now, here´s a recipe I mentioned earlier, suitable for hectic lifestyles, and for celebrating eggy easter.

Pressure Cooker Flan

Take 3 eggs and 500 ml milk, 5 tbs sugar, and mix well, in a blender if you can.
Do the caramel trick with two tablespoonfuls of sugar in a soufflé dish that fits inside your pressure cooker, while you boil two cups of water in it (this is just to save time).

Cool the caramel a little by swirling it around, and pour the egg and milk mix in. Cover with aluminum foil and put in the steamer basket of the cooker. Bring up to pressure and count 15 minutes. Let the pressure drop naturally for about five.
Let cool and unmold. Eat chilled.

This is it. The silky, smooth, elegant flan of dreams. It helps to use the oh-so-excellent Scottish milk I find here, but normal milk works well. If you´re feeling decadent, use half milk half cream. I like puddings to be not very sweet, so you might want to add sugar.
Serve on its own or with strawberries (or strawberries and cream).

Tabasco

2011-04-11T15:34:00.002+02:00

Tabasco, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

All through my childhood there was a bottle of Tabasco in the pantry. The same bottle, for years and years, like an old friend with a yellowing label.
I don't consider myself a hot sauce fiend, of course, but somehow we've got through a bottle in the ten months we've been in Aberdeen.
Mysteries of the frozen north.

Lemon Muffin

2011-04-07T16:55:00.002+02:00

Last weekend in Spain I saw my two friends called Paula. Both complained about recipes in this blog, which , as every blogger knows, is thrilling, since it means that your friends read your blog.

So, to start, I´ll try to address Paula F´s complaint first. The lemon muffins-cupcakes-madalenas, call them what you will.

It has been my arduous duty to make these winsome little cakes several times over the past few days, in different ovens, even, and all I can say is, I have no idea what can have gone wrong in Paula´s kitchen. These babies practically make themselves.
Maybe it was all due to The Fear. Cakes, like dogs, can smell it, and will bite given the chance, so here is some cake advice:

1- be confident but
2- be obedient. this is not where you splash merrily around and substitute ingredients and quantities to suit your prophetic soul.
3- this means, be attentive to measurements. I posted the recipe using volume measures, and they can be notoriously wayward, so here is one in grams, all nice and tidy. However, if you have no scales (though you should) and want to use cup measures, note that I use a set of cups that is marked 1 cup 250 ml, 1/2 cup 125 ml, etc.
4- do not overbeat. Be gentle. An unhurried few strokes, just enough to make the flour dissappear, even if there are lumps, will be enough.
5- if you have a muffin tin, then don´t bother with the paper. a little butter and flour will mean you don´t lose the crunchy outside.

These are the measurements in weight, which is more consistent and easier, if you have a scale.

Lemon Cupcakes

The measures are in cups, but for Spanish eyes, half a cup is 125 ml, or the size of a normal yogurt.

180 grams of flour
100 brown sugar
100 caster sugar
125 ml natural yogurt
1/2 teaspoonful baking powder
pinch of salt
zest and juice of one big lemon
2 eggs
75 gr. butter, melted or really really soft

Preheat oven to 180ºC and put muffin cases in tin (12)

Measure out the flour, salt, baking powder and sugar in one bowl.
In a bigger one, mix the butter, eggs, yogurt and lemon.
Tip the dry stuff into the big bowl and mix, with a very light hand. Better have lumps than overbeat.

Spoon the mixture into the cups, and good luck to you if you think you can do it without spilling stuff between the paper and the tin. Don´t go above two thirds, although you won´t, if you´re dividing evenly.

Bake for 20 or so until golden and puffed up. They don´t rise an awful lot, and the texture is grainy and not feather light, but they are pretty awsome.

I usually sprinkle some icing sugar on top, but that is very much optional.

Bacon

2011-04-02T11:51:00.001+02:00

Idea, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

We had banana pancakes this morning, with warm maple syrup and bacon. In the interests of health and saftey, since Pia was perched on a stool beside me at the stove, I microwaved the bacon.
It goes on a plate between paper towels and is blasted on high for two minutes then one minute then half minute bursts until crispy, depending on how much you're doing. This is by far the best method when you only need a couple of rashers for a sandwich.

Burnt Onions

2011-03-31T11:44:00.003+02:00

Untitled #69, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Leave husband and one child alone for six days and you can be sure that the soups and vegetables you left, neatly labeled for their consumption, will be untouched. Yes, they have survived happily on pancakes with Nutella and scrambled eggs on bagels.
Obviously my first lunch on getting back was lentils and barley. Duh. Livened up with burnt onions, beautiful stuff. I´ll leave you with the post that sent me down that road, and dash. My life is very crazy and soon you´ll know why.

Madrid

2011-03-27T21:52:00.003+02:00

Weekend in Madrid, friends and more friends. You walk into a bar at five in the afternoon to say hi and go straight home because you´re all fluey and ill, and leave at one in the morning, so happy to have sat there talking that you feel well after all.
Barcelona tomorrow.

Pressure cooked spareribs

2011-03-21T11:29:00.002+01:00

I feel spring springing. The trees are still bare and stark against the sky, but there are tiny buds everywhere, and today, the sun is shining. Our garden is a mess of broken bits, torn bushes and ragged grass. A gardener would look at it and see the promise of flowers. I think of grills and barbecues.

However, this is Scotland, and I suspect snow is just around the corner, so here´s the preferred method for grilled meat right now. It also works for summer, though, since the two step method allows you to get ahead of the game and reduce the grilling time.

So. Get your spare ribs and marinate them. This is entirely up to you. I have my Southwestern moments and I have my Chinese moments, and they are both brilliant.
Put the ribs, cut into twos and threes, in a big freezer bag inside a bowl. Now add soy sauce, sherry, garlic, ginger, hoi sin sauce and a few red pepper flakes. Or, soy sauce, sherry, garlic, oregano and barbecue sauce and red pepper flakes.
Leave them in the fridge overnight, or for a couple of hours outside.

Now cut a corner in the bag and as much of the marinade as you can into a measuring jug. Add water or stock or beer or what you want so that you have 250 ml liquid.
Put that and the ribs inside the pressure cooker, bring the pressure up and give the meat 25 minutes.
This is step one. You can smear them with a bit more hoi sin sauce or barbecue sauce and put them under the grill until blistered and dark and sticky. Or you can do that the day after. This is very convenient.

As for the liquid in the pot, you´ll have just over a cup of the most insanely flavorful jelly.
I like to add water, boil it, add dried wakame, cooked noodles, whatever leftover scraps of ribs there are (there never are any, but you can try hiding a few before serving) and some mint or cilantro and spring onions.

This is good stuff, light and bright, and yet comforting while it´s still cold.

Genius crusty potato dumplings

2011-03-15T18:40:00.003+01:00

I already did an in depth review of Kitchen, by Nigella Lawson, when it came out, but here´s another recipe from it. Not a recipe, really, just a stroke of genius. The sort of thing that is so brilliant in its simplicity that you almost think you came up with the idea yourself.

Pan fry shop bought gnocchi.

That´s it. No, it´s not rocket science, but you have to admit that it´s pretty darn clever. Those little doughy balls in the supermarket chill cabinet are 96% cooked potato. They just need to be tossed into a pan covered with a thin film of oil and left to crisp up, then tossed again and toasted on the other side.
Nigella says they are like mini rösti, which may be so. I think they are the perfect solution, since they can stay in the fridge for weeks until needed to bolster that bit of leftover stew, the not quite enough smoked fish, the lone grilled pork chop. Good stuff, try it.

Strawberry Syrup

2011-03-10T22:13:00.002+01:00

Strawberry Syrup, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

you know perfectly well that it's too early for strawberries, even if they look pretty. So wait.
But if you fell into the trap, and came home with a lovely bunch of berries that turned out to be unyielding and tasteless, here's what you do.
Wash and hull them, then put them in a pan with some sugar, a splash of water and a slosh of balsamic vinegar. If you have one, squeeze an orange in there too.
Cook it over a medium flame until it's syrupy, glossy, and has turned a dark ruby red.
Wait for it to cool a little and eat with vanilla ice cream.
this is so good that you won't mind the hit and miss quality of so many strawberries

Caramel in the microwave

2011-03-03T17:10:00.005+01:00

I make a lot of flan these days. Flan, and natillas/custard. A friend of J´s keeps hens, and every other week or so J turns up with a carton of muddy, enormous, gorgeous eggs.
If these eggs arrive when I´ve just bought some perfectly all right but otherwise unremarkable eggs from the shops, there are suddenly too many. So I just have to make a pudding with them, and keep the excellent eggs for poaching.

I make the flan in the pressure cooker, and will post the recipe, but for now, the discovery I´m happiest with. Caramel. That tricky, dangerous thing that I´ve always avoided. It can be made in the microwave, straight in the bowl you´ll use for the flan. isn´t that handy?

I use a soufflé bowl that holds about a litre. So put a couple of tablespoons of sugar in it, and a spoonful of water, and put it in the microwave. Give it twenty second bursts until it´s bubbling malevolenty, looks golden and smells delicious, a minute or so total.

That´s it.

Chicken with additives

2011-02-27T19:51:00.004+01:00

I recently read an article about Spanish food, and once again I had to do the eye roll when I heard that old chestnut about "the very best ingredients, simply prepared".
There´s some truth in that, but it ignores skill. Skill, experience, a good hand, call it what you will; that´s the quality that´s going to make the food sing. Give an organic chicken to an inept cook and you may very well get a stringy, tasteless dishcloth in gravy. Give one of those Spanish grannies a battery horror and watch as she magics it into croquetas that will make you sing. Rest assured, she will have used factory eggs and shop bought crumbs for that crispy coating, and I am quite happy to bet a substantial sum that she won´t have used extra virgin olive oil to fry them.
The process, the cooking, the things that you add and the care that you take, they matter as much as the ingredients. I hate to think that there are people out there being discouraged when they hear that patter about organic birds and heirloom tomatoes, who think they might as well reach for the frozen pizza because they don´t have time to make a sourdough starter.

So anyway, here´s a recipe for chicken thighs. If I can find organic chicken thighs I buy them, but often I can only find free range, and most of the time not even that; my local supermarket carries something they say is guaranteed by some humane sounding association and only fed vegetables, but I doubt we´re talking about prize poultry here. Not that it matters, they really are delicious:

First, salt them well. Then put them in a freezer bag with a glug of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, some Sherry, a couple of smashed garlic cloves, a spoonful of sugar and some herbs; dried, to add insult to injury. I like oregano.
All these things are, of course, additives, but they are good things that you add yourself, and have no numbers or unpronounceable names. Their purpose, however, is the same; to amplify the flavor of your chicken.
Leave it in the fridge overnight, or just an hour out of it.

Roast in a 200ºC oven until crisp and golden, about 45 minutes, but do check, because ovens vary.
You can bake these on a bed of parboiled or boiled potatoes and they will be out of this world, having soaked up all that wonderful chicken fat.

Blues Away Salad

2011-02-23T22:40:00.001+01:00

Blues Away Salad, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

it doesn't have to be stews and soups all the time, you know. this salad is guaranteed to lift your spirits and fill you up with good things and zingy energy.
The greens can be anything you like. I toss a bag of spinach, watercress and rocket with another one of something called Italian salad.
To this add orange, peeled and diced, avocado, ditto, and smoked mackerel (if you're in Spain, bacalao en aceite).
dress with a vinaigrette heady with sherry vinegar and if you want crunch, scatter a few seeds over it.
Good stuff, guaranteed.

A brilliant shortcut for lentil soup

2011-02-18T18:45:00.003+01:00

I suppose the last person (possibly the first, too) to be excited by a pot of lentils was Esau. So I won´t say that this is exciting news, but, well it´s certainly changed the way I cook lentils, and that´s something.
It´s a trick I read about in the River Family Cookbook, and it couldn´t be simpler; add red lentils to your pot of brown lentil soup. Genius. Why?
Because the red lentils dissintegrate during cooking, which thickens the soup without your having to bring out the blender.
This works with any lentil soup recipe you might use. My usual method is to heat some oil in the pressure cooker and while it heats to chop a stick of celery, an onion, a clove of garlic and a carrot in the food processor. When this has softened slightly I add a cup of brown lentils and a cup of red lentils, a peeled potato, water to cover by about an inch, and a small bay leaf. I cover, bring up to pressure and leave it for ten minutes (some sources say less time but I hate a crunchy lentil).
You can start with bacon before the vegatables go in, or add chorizo or any sausage, but I like my lentils plain.
Once they´re cooked, add salt or stock powder, a dash of sherry, a knob of butter and a squeeze of lemon. Wonderful stuff.

Chocolate pudding

2011-02-13T19:04:00.006+01:00

Forgive the cliché, but...what´s not to like in chocolate pudding? In Spain we call it natillas de chocolate, and I´d never consider it in a romantic dinner. This is strictly children´s food, the sort that the adults love to find at the back of the fridge, or steal from unsuspecting toddler´s plates.

I make it in the Thermomix, because it´s just very very convenient. You dump, the machine stirs, and when it´s over you pour it and let it cool. If you top it with whipped cream it becomes the ur version of the Copa Danone, beloved of Spanish children.
The hardest part is hiding it from children (and husband) until it´s properly cool. I dare say it´s very easy to make by hand, but I´m not sure I´m up for the careful stirring for minutes on end. I´d make chocolate mousse instead.
For a more adult and punchy flavour, try this malted version of Sally Schneider´s.

This makes four or five portions.

Put 50 gr of chocolate in the bowl and chop it with a few pulses of the turbo button.
Now add 30 gr. of cornstarch, 500 ml. of full fat milk, 50 gr. sugar and a pinch of salt. Program 8 minutes, 90 degrees, speed 3.
Now add a few drops of vanilla extract and give it a further two minutes with no heat, so it cools down a little.
Pour into a big bowl or ramekins, and if you hate the skin that will form, cover it with clingfilm.

The actual pudding is best enjoyed cold, but nobody said you had to wait to lick the bowl.

Soup, soup, all the time.

2011-02-10T12:33:00.003+01:00

Perhaps I write too much about soup? I eat a lot of it, that´s for sure, but why wouldn´t I, when it´s just so good? It also happens to be a dish all the family can share. That makes life a lot easier, you´ll agree. Even if someone skirts around the peas and someone else has to have the meat shredded to smithereens, it´s still one pot feeds all. Magic.
Mostly I do the same soups over and over, but they´re never the same, since soup takes so well to improvising. Yesterday we had the lentil and tomato soup with barley thrown in. Instead of pureeing it with the stick blender I gave it a few swirls with the potato masher and it became a chunky mess, but wonderful.

Morning glory

2011-02-07T18:30:00.004+01:00

I love porridge always, but here in the north of Scotland the thing takes on its own mystique. It makes such good sense, like melons in Spain in August, or pipas during a football match.

Here I´ve discovered pinhead oatmeal, the Rolls Royce of oats, but I´m happy with the garden variety porridge version, too.

The rice cooker is great for this. I know it´s not hard to do it in a normal pan, but I appreciate anything hands off, specially in the dark of a winter morning.

Just measure your oatmeal, then add two and a half times that in water, press cook, and let it be.

For the pinhead oatmeal it´s best if you stir it once or twice, which is not hard to juggle with making tea and feeding a toddler her Cola-Cao and a baby his milk. Both will later be glad of the porridge, even if the two year old refers to it as "rice pudding".

For a special burst of energy, a spoonful of chunky peanut butter stirred in does wonder. And as a special treat, maple syrup elevates it to giddy heights.

Scottish epiphany

2011-01-26T18:34:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was Burns night, but instead of taking drunken stabs at sheep´s entrails I had two oranges for dinner. So that wasn´t it. My breaktrhough came after lunch, as I was rummaging around for some dark chocolate in the cupboard. My eye fell on some oatcakes, crumpled in a packet next to a jar of Nutella. And I thought, now, how can that not be great?

Well, it is great. A sort of instant oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, if you will. Beatiful, crunchy, soft, sweet and salty...addictive.

Of course here they are on every shelf, and thereis lies the beauty of this convenient snack. However, if you´re curious and want to make the things, here´s a recipe.

Te Azul

2011-01-22T18:24:00.001+01:00

Te Azul, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

My new teapot.

a short stop

2011-01-19T13:46:00.003+01:00

A little afternoon pick-me-up, short rest, fuel stop. Even though the coffee I make is terrible it´s always welcome. The cookies are the ones I call Captain Scott cookies, because I first made them to take as a snack on my way to see the R.S.S.Discovery. The recipe is from The Kitch. They are the best thing ever; oats, cheese, apples and raisins, all inside the same cookie? genius. Hearty enough for Polar exploration, even.

Pressure cooking

2011-01-17T19:50:00.003+01:00

2010 might go down in my personal history as the year I finally tried parsnips, purple sprouting broccoli and smoked mackerel. Or it may not. But there´s no doubt that the groundbreaking change in my cooking has come about not from ingredients, but from ecquipment: the pressure cooker.

I first tried it in spring last year and that was it, I´ve been using it so much that my sister refers to the gleaming WMF Perfect as my third child.

I can´t understand why I´d never used it before, and I certainly can´t understand why there´s not one (at least) pressure cooker in every kitchen. I know people with ice cream makers, pasta rollers, juicers, asparagus steamers, yogurt makers and breadmakers who don´t have a pressure cooker. It´s only mentioned in passing in most cookbooks. Mystery

I don´t know if the recipes in the Pressure cooker tag here can convince you that buying one right now will be the best thing you´ll do, but I can direct you to someone who might. Go to Hip Pressure Cooking. Starting tomorrow there´s a series of tutorials that will demistify the process and lure you into this brave new world.

It also has the clearest time tables and all sorts of great info.

Bye now. I have to go and attend to some beans for tomorrow´s lunch. They´ll be ready before I run the bath for the kids. Isn´t that great?

The illustration is from Pille´s book, which I´ve received today. It´s beautiful. If you read Estonian get a copy now, you´re in for a treat.

My favourite cookbooks bought last year

2011-01-16T19:41:00.003+01:00

I guess by now we´re all tired out by best of 2010 lists, but never mind.

Here are the favourite cookbooks I bought last year. I´ve gone a little crazy with the whole Amazon free super saver shipping and ordered more stuff than makes sense, but these are good books (by the way most links are not to Amazon but to reviews or interviews):

Kitchenella- chock full of good recipes, thoughtful texts and sound advice. A touch stern, maybe even a bit chippy, but never mind. It´s a great book to start cooking from, though I suspect that being long on text and short on (stunning) photos, it will appeal to the converted.

Momofuku- a cheffy book, yes, but fun to read, and full of dishes you might try.

River cottage everyday- very British, but helpful now that I live in Scotland. Otherwise I wouldn´t know what to do with all these parsnips and turnips and barley and such.

Mad Hungry- feeding men and boys. With a son born in Febuary, I couldn´t resist, but it´s a great book for everyone. Sensible, delicious food, and no namby pamby portions, or unrealistic stuff like quails.

Cooking under pressure- A great starting point for a pressure cooker neophite. Later you come to adjust things to your taste, but it´s way more reliable than the strangely transtlated booklet that came with my WMF Perfect.

I don´t really include Nigella Lawson´s latest because I don´t think it her best, but of course I´ve read it from cover to cover.

Now for books that I have read but not cooked from, yet:

In the kitchen with a good appetite- My first Kindle cookbook, and likely the last. The format is no good for a cookery book, even one without photos. I like something I can splash sauce onto. Still, the text is good and there´s a lot I want to try.

Food from plenty- lovely photos, format, friendly headnotes, the works. It´s full of little post it stickers, and I don´t know why I haven´t taken it into the kitchen yet. But I will, surely.

I found a second hand copy of The French menu cookbook, touted as the best of all time by the Observer. It´s pure fantasy, of course, but lovely to read about exquisite menus I will never, ever, for a nanosecond, consider cooking.

The last is not a cookbook proper, but is the most fun of the whole list. The flavour Thesaurus is the perfect book to keep on the nightstand. Chock full of information, delivered in a way that makes you think you´d always known that. Brilliant one-liners, too, perfect for trotting out on the unsuspecting.

And now we´re back

2011-01-15T10:39:00.003+01:00

I have seen the future, and it looks like Luton airport...A glaringly lit corridor of shops, junk food restaurants and slot machines, patrolled by men with machine guns and decorated with coloured screens relaying the message "realax and shop".
We had a six hour wait there between planes, so my view may be a little jaundiced, but still. If it hadn´t been for the two oranges I grabbed as we were leaving my mother´s house, I would have been in a much worse temper. As it is, they brought me, and Pía, back from the brink.
Here´s a good thoughtful post for eating well right now.

New year

2011-01-10T10:31:00.003+01:00

Hello dear readers. I´ve been away all this time, driving around southern Spain staying with friends and relatives. There´s nothing better and more fun, and having no wi-i for days means you appreciate an internet connection so much when you get back.

The trouble is, I have to sort out our mountains of luggage and cram everything I didn´t do in Madrid into two days, so I can´t do a good, thoughtful post.

I will just say that along with everybody else, I´m brimming with good resolutions, and one of them is to give this old blog a good dust and brush up. Also to post a few good comforting recipes for horrid winter days. A list of my favourite cookbooks of 2010, of great posts found elsewhere, etc.

But not now. Now I have to cram a ton of clothes and a tribe of toys into two suitcases. Argh.

Braised red cabbage in a pressure cooker

2010-12-23T21:54:00.002+01:00

Christmas dinner preparations continue full tilt. Two capons are already deboned, stuffed and sown up for this killer once-a-year triumph of a recipe. Jars and jars of onions and cabbage and apple sauce and chestnuts glisten on the countertop. A huge tray of pommes dauphinois promises to send everyone into a creamy stupor. Tomorrow we roast the birds and we´re all set.

Here´s the recipe for the red cabbage. It´s a very easy braise, and looks beautiful, and in a pressure cooker takes just a few minutes.

Shred a head of red cabbage, and throw it into the pressure cooker. Add a couple of handfuls of raisins, two big apples (we use reinetas because that´s the universal cooking apple in Spain, but any will do, really), a chopped onion, two spoonfuls of Sherry vinegar and salt and pepper. Now do a leap of faith and close the lid of the pressure cooker. The cabbage will provide all the liquid needed, trust me.

Once the pressure´s up, count 6 minutes and voilá you´re done.

I make this all winter and fall long, to go with sausages or baked potatoes. If you´re feeling very Nordic and have access to them, a few caraway seeds will not go amiss.

Sweet Pearl Onions

2010-12-21T19:06:00.002+01:00

We´re 22 for Christmas this year, so it´s best to organize and make as much as possible ahead. First on the list, the red cabbage with apples and the sweet onions. We make them and seal them into jars, so they can be kept in a cupboard and not take up room in our bulging freezer.
The sweet onions are great any time of the year, of course, and they go well with everything, so it´s a recipe worth keeping in mind.

You´ll need 600 gr. of frozen pearl onions (or normal sliced onions, or small onions or shallots that you peel yourself).
Melt 70 gr. butter and 30 gr. oil in the Thermomix for a couple of minutes in Varoma, then add the frozen onions and program 30 minutes more, in Varoma. Once they´re done, add a stock cube and 70 gr. caramel, and leave them for 10 minutes at 100ºC. Check for salt, add pepper and there you have it, an elegant little side dish.

If you make them in a normal pot, just sautee the onions until soft in butter and oil, add caramel and the stock cube, etc. It´s pretty straightforward, but you´ll have to use your judgement because the size of the pan changes everything.

And if you want to keep them around for a bit, just put them in a jar, cover it well and leave it in a bain marie for half an hour or so, until there´s no air inside and the lid doesn´t yield.

Spanish colours

2010-12-20T12:43:00.003+01:00

I bet John Lennon´s "Starting over" is a favourite song of all parents of young children. It has to be.
We followed the sage advice of the song and took off alone, took a trip somewhere which, while not actually far far away, feels like it; Guadalajara. Wonderful place, with many unspoilt villages, rocky canyons full of birds, and plenty of hilltops for picnicking. The thermometer may say it´s very cold, but you can sit in the sun for hours, sketching, drinking and eating, or dozing off. Thank God for amiable grandparents and sisters who stay with the babies.
And the food? I feel it has to match the landscape, not only in spirit but in colour, so I recommend a trip to the market beforehand, where it´s easy to stock up on breadsticks, cheese, salchichón, olives, grapes, apples and, of course wine.

Risotto

2010-12-08T22:16:00.001+01:00

Risotto, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

I've discovered that the best proportiion for making risotto in a pressure cooker is one-two. Double the liquid to rice is perfect, and easy to remember. Five minutes is all it needs under pressure. I make two cups of rive for three, and it's just enough. Leftovers are always well received by two-year-old Pía.

Fairy

2010-12-06T22:08:00.001+01:00

Fairy, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

It's not just cooking that has to be done...

Pizza

2010-11-30T22:41:00.001+01:00

Pizza, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Homemade pizza, icy beer. The oven heats up the kitchen, perfect with the snow all around.

Tomato and egg Soup

2010-11-28T22:05:00.002+01:00

Tom&egg Soup, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Fridge raiding night; jamón, omelette and artichokes for J, salmon bits for Pía, an egg poached in tomato soup for me.

Like a strange marriage between a can of Campbell's and sopa castellana.

Pantry

2010-11-26T18:21:00.001+01:00

Pantry, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

in response to Sang, here's a bit of my pantry. I have so many things it's ridiculous, but I really do use most of the ingredients, although some impulse buys tend to linger. Melon seeds from an African spice shop? Really?
One thing I stongly recommend is putting everything possible in glass jars. Any empty jam, mayo, peanut butter or honey jar will do. it feels so much better to take your raisins or pine nuts or pimentón out of a glass jar than out of a crinkly packet that spills everything it has failed to keep fresh.

Congee

2010-11-25T16:47:00.003+01:00

Congee, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Friendly,warming food. And in the pressure cooker, relatively quick. For the babies, with egg stirred in, and a splash of soy sauce for the toddler, too. For the adults, sesame oil, soy sauce, hot sauce, fish sauce, peanuts, spring onions and stirfried mushrooms. Everybody wins.

Miso soup

2010-11-24T13:24:00.002+01:00

Untitled #85, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Might very possibly save your life on a snowy day.

Life is too crazy to keep posting in the usual way, so I´ve decided that at least until the holidays are over, I´m going to change things a little around here. Instead of a weekly, if that, post with a recipe, I´ll post more often, just drawings done on the iPad and uploaded via Flickr. That way I still get to have fun, and don´t feel I´m neglecting any of you dear readers. I hope you enjoy these little digital doodles. Here´s my inspiration.

jelly

2010-11-23T22:19:00.001+01:00

Untitled #81, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Lots of it these days. All it takes is a sachet of powdered gelatin and good fresh juice from a carton. With custard or thick yogurt it becomes ridiculously comforting and luxurious.

Cookbook love, and five minute roast potatoes (really!)

2010-11-09T18:01:00.005+01:00

Illustrating cookbooks is one of my favourite types of work. As is working for friends. When a friend writes a cookbook it´s a wonderful double whammy that makes it the best possible job.

This is "Nami-Nami kokaraamat", or The Nami-nami cookbook, written by Pille, blogger extraordinaire, dear friend and embassador of all things to do with Estonian food.

I haven´t checked out the recipes because the text is in Estonian, so all I can vouch for is one of them, which you can find here.

The recipe I´m sharing to day comes from this video , where Jamie Oliver mentions, in passing, a method for roasting new potatoes in the microwave for four minutes before grilling them for another couple of minutes with olive oil and herbs.

I tried it this morning, heating the grill (broiler over the Atlantic) while the potatoes were in the microwave.

People, this is a keeper. They were great, crunchy crispy outise, soft inside and truly quick. Wonderful. I can´t wait to try it with other vegetables.

Momofuku eggs

2010-11-02T18:23:00.001+01:00

You know how it is with restaurant cookbooks; they are irritating, they use the editorial we like it was the royal we, and patronize you right left and centre, insisting it´s no use to do anything unless you have the exact impossible ingredient.
However, they can be fun to read, and of course there are a few that actually work as cookbooks, like Moro, or The Zuni Café Cookbook.

Momofuku reads more like a tall tale from your brother´s stoner college roommate. It doesn´t set out to be very useful, and makes no apologies for being restaurant food, but somehow it´s full of good ideas, like these eggs.
They´re just poached eggs, cooked in not very hot water for a very long time, which might not seem like a big deal, or even very user friendly, but the fact that you can prepare as many as you want, all at once, and keep them to hand until you need them (within reason, of course) makes it very special. It´s perfect when you have a crazy week and you want to prepare as much ahead as possible. Or for a dinner or a brunch, or any time when you need a lot of poached eggs all at once.
You´d better check out this post for the full instructions.

Virginia´s Cafe

2010-10-26T19:22:00.003+02:00

My favourite place in Aberdeen is an Italian café very near us. It´s a tiny place, on a corner in Rosemount Avenue, our main street, and is always warm and bustling. Go in on a cold and windy standard issue Aberdeen day, and you´ll be instantly transported somewhere far far away.
Virginia´s is like something out of a sitcom, and everybody inside straight out of central casting. It´s run by an Italian family who look just like you would expect, glossy and dark and beautiful and fast-talking and funny. Customers run in and out, take away tempting looking sandwiches, all wrapped up, or sit and chat, almost always in bubbly Italian.
It´s like a Madrid bar, except that there´s no cigarette smoke and the tv isn´t blaring (you really can´t have everything ).
The menu begins with a nod to the Scottish breakfast, but soon goes for the serious stuff; paninis, antipasti, pasta.
My favourite, so far, is the "delizioso", a small ciabatta, warm from the press, filled with dolcelatte blue cheese, walnuts, ruccola and speck.
Ideally this should be followed by a cup of coffee and a portion of tiramisù, home made and very very good. Sadly I can never have more than a spoonful, because by the time I´ve swallowed the first, Pía has hoovered up the rest.

Virginia´s 231 Rosemount Place 01224 644432

Make your own ricotta

2010-10-21T11:22:00.003+02:00

On Monday morning I spotted a bottle of goat´s milk in the discounted section of my supermarket.
I know what you´re thinking: "call child protection services before this crazy woman poisons her family".
But consider. This was very good organic goat´s milk, at 35 pence the litre, on the day before the sell by date, and if I didn´t take it home it would be trown away, which is wrong for so many reasons.
I would to use it to make ricotta, which is a way of preserving milk, see? It makes perfect sense, really, because it´s the most delicate, creamy requesón you´ll ever have, and you just can´t buy it, not where I live, anyway.

I won´t write down the recipe because it´s dead simple. Follow the rules as laid down by the great Russ Parsons.

My observations:

If youl use goat´s milk instead of cow´s, the curds will be finer, and look like they haven´t sepparated. Just strain them very carefully and prepare to be amazed.

If you´re thinking of using semi skimmed milk, don´t. I found a bottle of Yeo Valley Organic semi skimmed yesterday, also discounted, and it was ok but nowhere nearly as good as a full milk version would have been.

From now on, I´ll be on the prowl for cheap milk, because ricotta takes five seconds to make and is a very versatile ingredient, altough I mostly smear it on toast and top with honey, it´s so good simply like that.

Pressure cooker poached chicken

2010-10-19T21:51:00.004+02:00

I´ve written before about poached chicken, and I stand by my earlier post. Yes, poached chicken sounds bland and boring, and well, nobody´s saying that it´s a hot ticket or an exotic wild thing. It´s a blank slate of sorts, and nobody will object to having some around the house. And although the method in the other post is perfectly fine, poaching a whole chicken in a pressure cooker makes much more sense.

You know all those tempting dishes they suggest you make with leftover chicken, but you can never make because you only have enough for a stingy sandwich? Well, the answer to that is cook a whole bird to treat as leftovers. A 1.5 kg standard bird stretches very far indeed when portioned out like this, and is a great return on investment.

So, take your pressure cooker and your bird. Salt it well, put it in the pot, cover it with water, and add whatever aromatics you´re in the mood for. I usually use onion, celery carrot and ginger, although bay leaves are more the thing. Whatever. Now lock it , bring it up to pressure and give it 15 minutes.
Open it, take the chicken out and put it to rest in a bowl (it´s a brothy mess).
Now you have to pick the meat, and it´s hot, so either wait or brave it out.
Once the meat is all in a nice bowl, put the bones back in the pot and give them 15 minutes more. This is of course not strictly necessary but will give you much better stock.

And there you are. A whole lot of chicken meat, a lot of broth, and the possibility to look at all those recipes for pies and sandwiches and pasties and noodles and salads and soups.

Buying locally

2010-10-13T11:53:00.003+02:00

And by that I mean my local supermarket, not the green fields of the apple-cheeked farmer.

Every two or three weeks I go to a big Sainsbury´s and fill a cart to teetering point with everything from nappies to canned tomatoes to barley cous cous and white miso and tubs of ice cream.

But I have a fridge the size of a Kelly bag, and can´t stock up on a lot of fresh produce, so every other day sees me trudging up to the Co-op for milk, or eggs, or salad or bread.

The Co-op is small and more expensive, but it´s right here.

And that´s how I´ve devised the new market-driven cuisine for the suburban north pole housewife. You can´t do that thing of "choose what looks good", because everything looks the same. The bright lights and the plastic in a supermarket make it almost impossible to tell. Instead, I buy almost everything that has a "reduced to clear" sticker.

This may seem extreme, but isn´t, really.

I find that fruit becomes edible about three or four days after its sell by date. Salad may be a little wonky and so I might avoid it, but root vegetables, cabbage, broccoli and tomatoes,? Perfectly fine, thank you.

My haul yesterday: a bag of watercress, two boxes of huge mushrooms, a bag of "british stew vegetables", two basil plants, a packet of courgettes and a bag of apples.

The basil was quickly whizzed into a pesto and frozen in little cubes. Half the watercress was put into some dumplings that disintegrated into a pot of chicken soup but were still delicious. The apples became applesauce for Pepe. The stew vegetables I guess will go into a stew at some point, but they´ll keep for a few days. The mushrooms I will bake with garlic butter, and the courgettes will probably end up in a pisto of some sort.

That´s not a bad lot. Complemented with the freezer and the store cupboard, I could feed us all through the week without leaving the house.

Except that I´m running out of milk already.

Skink, or beef shin, or osso bucco, in the pressure cooker

2010-10-11T19:51:00.002+02:00

Skink is what they call beef shin here. It´s the cheapest cut at my local butcher´s, and a very good one, too, beefy and strong and just the thing for a stew with a lot of sauce. Even better, you get to scoop out the marrow from the bones, and better still, I brook no argument; in this house, the marrow is for me, la mamma.

Most recipes will tell you to brown then braise for a long time, and of course you should do that in the best of all possible worlds. But life is too short to brown beef, and a pressure cooker will ensure you can have the meat on the table in not very long. Leave the other stuff to the overachievers and the proffesionals.

I suggest you follow the method for your favourite beef stew, or this recipe, only do it in the pressure cooker and give it 35 minutes under pressure, then let it come down naturally before you unlock the lid.

Two pieces of about half a kilo each should serve four, provided you serve this on top of some starchy stuff that mops up the wonderful sauce. Just remember to cut the sides so the meat doesn´t curl up.

If you have any left over, here are some ideas.

A longer review of Nigella Lawson´s "Kitchen"

2010-10-05T17:46:00.002+02:00

In a world where food is more than just food, and people watch cooking shows before ordering takeout, the kitchen is the scene for the new moral battle, and food writers more often than not come across as a little preachy. There´s the fire and brimstone brigade, who see hell in a grain of wheat, eternity in a goji berry. Or the new Puritans, who will have you Grow Your Own, lest the carbon footprint turn the food to ashes in your mouth.

Wether the concern is ecological or medical, there´s a whole lot of tut tutting going on, and in all this Nigella preetends to be the seductive temptress, but don't be fooled; she's not the Venus in Tannhäuser, but the whole singing and dancing chorus of nuns from "The sound of music". With her, it's all about Love. The hills are alive, the supermarkets chock full of delectable ingredients, all year round, and if your eggs are organic so much the better, but don't knock the marshmallows or the green food colouring. Just cook the food, enjoy it, move on.Bless her.

I´ve tried two recipes from the new book already. At first I wasn´t very convinced. It seemed to me that she´d done a sort of How to Eat for dummies, but now I´m won over. Yes, a lot of the recipes are versions of older ones in other of her books, but that makes a lot of sense. People change, lifestyles change, you don´t do things the same way all the time. And if you may find it hard to beleive that the 1999 Nigella, working at a newspaper and with two small children, found time to make stock from scratch, while the 2010 celebrity, surrounded by assistants, insists on ready made, well, who cares? The important thing is that the recipes are pared down and easier, but still real food, and still delicious.

Here are the duck legs I made yesterday. They were crisp and tender and flavourful, but the star were the potatoes. Brimming with duck fat and shatteringly crunchy, they are by far the best roast potatoes anybody´s ever had. If you´ve had better, I envy you. Or rather, I don´t, because you can´t have long to live. But hey, the obesity epidemic owes little to duck legs, so go ahead and try them.

Roast duck legs and potatoes

Preheat the oven to 200ºC

Salt and put the duck legs, skin side down, on a roasting tin or a skillet that can go in the oven, and that will fit them and a couple of cut up potatoes.

Let them brown slowly. This is so the duck begins to release fat, which is important for the potatoes. Don´t skip this step.

While this happens, cut up two biggish potatoes into chunks, but don´t peel.

Now take the duck legs out of the pan/tray and chuck the potatoes in. Turn them so they´re slicked in the fat, but don´t worry too much as there´s plenty more where that came from. Salt.

Nigella adds thyme but I didn´t have any.

Now put the duck on top, put the tray in the oven and leave it there for two hours.

If you remember, shake it a bit from time to time.

Its´done when the duck is crunchy and brown and the potatoes are crisp and deep burnished bronze.

I served it with salad, but of course peas, and apple sauce would be very very good here.

Miso mushrooms

2010-09-30T11:05:00.003+02:00

Dear readers,
Please don´t think that when I don´t go into detail over recipes I´m being purposely obscure or irritating. I just don´t want to be boring overexplaining things, but I can see that sometimes I cross the line.
So here is the miso trick for button mushrooms, as Pille asks. Pille is something of a mushroom guru for me, therefore her wish is my command.

Of course wild mushrooms are the Ferraris of mushroom world, and truffles the Rolls Royce, and in a perfect world we´d all gather them in sweet little baskets while our children cavorted adorably in matching gingham. However, for basic elemental meals, the button mushroom, the humble champiñón that obligingly grows on demmand is a beautiful thing. They´re easy to find, pretty quick to clean, specially if you buy the kind with the muddy bit of the stem already cut off, and they are a joy to slice.

The few minutes it takes to slice a bowl of white mushrooms are happy happy minutes for me, truly.

Mushrooms are naturally high in umami, that savoury kick of flavour, but you can up the ante by adding dried wild mushrooms that you have previously soaked. Or, for a less luxurious but still impressive addition, a good spoonful of miso.

So anyway, just put a biggish saute pan, nonstick for choice, over the fire and coat it with olive oil. Now smash a couple of garlic cloves or chop them finely and put them in the oil. Meanwhile, chop the mushrooms. By the time the garlic starts dancing in the pan you´ll have a few already chopped, so put them in and go on chopping. If you´re using the dried porcini add them now.
The pan will be very crowded when you have them all in, but just shake it a bit, salt the mushrooms and see how they go. I´m usually doing something else while this happens; boiling pasta, or putting the rice cooker on, or watching Pía warily as she plays with the iPad while finding something for Pepe to break his teeth on (he likes silicone spatulas).
They´ll release a lot of water, but just shake the pan a bit every now and then. Now is when you add a splash of sherry and a good spoonful of miso. Break it up as well as you can. It helps that there´s liquid around, so you can dissolve it well.

When they´re drying up you want to watch them; they´ll turn golden, so wait for that and shake the pan so they´re all crusty and wonderful. Just watch it so they don´t burn.

Grind black pepper over them and if you have it, and chopped parsley always looks good.
There, that´s it. I could have just said "add a tablespoonful of miso when you sautee mushrooms" but this leaves no room for doubt, I hope.

Chanterelles

2010-09-28T21:55:00.004+02:00

Well, at last. I don´t know what´s worse, packing or unpacking. But things seem to be more or less back to normal, and since it´s full blown autum here in Scotland, on Monday I was lucky to be given some more chanterelles, so here´s the answer to a reader who asked what I did with them (sorry to do it so late).
With wild mushrooms all I do is wipe them and sautee them in a thin film of olive oil over fierce heat.
I always hear that you should not wash them, and that you should on no account crowd the pan. But you know what? I find that mushrooms are pretty forgiving. Sure, when you put too many in the pan they steam, and give off a lot of water, but if you keep them in there and turn them from time to time that water evaporates and leaves you with crusty golden mushrooms, so you´re ok, really.
Once they´re I have them on toast, or over a salad, or with a poached egg, or with all of the above. That´s perfect, I think.

With the more usually despised button mushrooms I do exactly the same, except that I give them a little help in the way of dried porcini (soaked)or a spoonful of miso, some garlic and parsley and pepper, a dash of sherry, and if they still seem to be a little wan, a good dollop of butter or cream.

These are great with pretty much anything, from pasta to quesadillas to polenta to buttery long grain rice to scrambled eggs, and they keep very well in the fridge for a couple of days, so you can make a big batch and them pull them out as needed.

On holiday

2010-09-18T10:18:00.004+02:00

Dear readers,

I´m still in Spain, enjoying the tail end of the gazpacho season, being spoilt with jabugo breakfasts and catching up with friends and family while my babies are off my hands. So it´s kind of busy, and I can´t really do a proper post. But let me say, before I forget, again, that changing the look of my blog so it shows the followers has been on my list of to do things for ages, and that I will do it one day, hopefully. For now, all I can say is a great "thank you", and I wish I could give you all a big hug, and I will someday get it together and brave the "change template" button.

Cleaning out the fridge

2010-09-09T15:29:00.001+02:00

Jueves,antes De Volar, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

We're going home tomorrow, and before you can see those red tail lights heading for Spain, the fridge needs to be emptied. which means indulgence; blueberries with custard, risotto with lots of leeks and chicken, s frittata tonight with all the scraps of cheese and spring onions. and those beautiful chanterelles a friend has just given me.
And a picnic for tomorrow, to sustain us through the long hours of travelling with two babies.
but for now, all is calm; they're both asleep and I can enjoy my mint tea and the Times' Thursday food supplement.

Storing potatoes

2010-09-07T11:05:00.003+02:00

Now, I don´t know if this is going to sound like I´m the biggest idiot, but anyway.

I never got why potatoes were always referred to as a "store cupboard ingredient", because my potatoes always seemed to sprout within seconds of my bringing them home. So I´d only ever buy a few, and then only with some specific dish in mind.

But now I know better. I found out reading this book "Just like mother used to make", and it´s not that great, really, a sort of poor man´s "The Prawn Cocktail Years", which is fantastic, but still, it opened my eyes. The chapter on potatoes begins by saying that supermarkets sell potatoes washed and bagged in plastic, and store them under bright lights, and that potatoes are only happy when covered in mud and in the dark.

And then I banged my head on the wall. I mean, really, of course! What an idiot! Those winter storage things you hear about, and basements, and everything! Duh. I must have read this a million times and it hasn´t percolated my thick head, or else I haven´t, which would be strange.

So I took the opportunity of buying a great big 5 kg sack of potatoes for next to nothing at the very enticing and friendly farm shop called The Store, and putting them away in a cardboard box on the stairs leading down to our garden.

Now I´m not only happy in the knowledge that my potato needs are being met, but also dangerously vindicated in my impulsive purchase of books I don´t need even remotely, but can´t resist, because, really, how can I, when they cost the same as a capuccino and a croissant at the Coffee House?

I could forgo the croissant, of course, but who am I kidding?

Let me remind you of a fantastic way to cook potatoes, and let me add that you can also slip a few frozen fish fingers in there, which make for a very good sandwich with some tricked out mayo and a few salad leaves or pickles.

Kitchen

2010-09-02T16:37:00.000+02:00

It´s out! Another big whopping fat book from Nigella Lawson. Mind you, though it looks as fat as How to Eat it ain´t, because there´s a full spread picture for every recipe, plus the inevitable shots of Nigella looking buxom and ever so slightly demented. But that´s ok. I don´t mind. I love Nigella, she´s my favourite writer, and I know I´m going to have the best time reading again about risotto and bread pudding and soup. There´s probably not much new in there, but that´s just as it should be; it´s wonderful home food, what she does best.

Pressure cooker tag, and a potato and mussel stew

2010-09-01T11:21:00.005+02:00

A reader reminded me to put a sidebar with pressure cooker recipes on the side, so I have.

Also, to recommend a pressure cooker. I can only do that with the one I have, which is the only one I´ve ever used. It´s not a very informed opinion, but for what it´s worth, I think the WMF Perfect is the bee´s knees. I have the 6,5 litre model and pine for a 3 litre one too. I can´t quite justify that, as it´s an expensive piece of crockery, but it´s so useful and so great that I might someday. The big model is great for soups and stocks and beans, since you can´t fill it up to the brim, but for rice, or a flan, it might me more comfortable to use a pot that´s not so heavy.

So there.

As for a recipe, here´s one for a simple mussel and potato stew. It takes about fifteen minutes total time to put together, which is pretty impressive for something so satisfying. The beauty of it is that the rythms are perfectly synched. One thing leads to another so there´s no waiting around, just some mindless chopping and debearding and then a beautiful dinner.

Dice an onion and sautee it in the pressure cooker, with a smashed garlic clove. Meanwhile, peel and break a few potatoes into rough chunks. Add as spoonful of tomato puree and a splash of white wine (have a glass, do, and if you don´t have wine, do it with beer, or cider), and then the potatoes. Now add water to just cover, salt sparingly, lock it, bring it up to pressure and when it´s up, count five minutes.

In this time, about seven minutes, you can clean a kilo of mussels. When the five minutes are up, bring the pressure down with cold water and throw the mussels into the pot. Cover but don´t lock and give it a couple of minutes, until the mussels are open.

You can scatter some parsley on top, or better still, coriander for a Portuguese touch. I don´t know why but this dish looks Portuguese to me.

Omelette Elizabeth Bennet

2010-08-28T17:38:00.004+02:00

This is just a silly way to justify making the drawing above. There´s the famous omelette Arnold Bennet, a grand thing involving bechamel and hollandaise sauce, and smoked fish that must be poached. And then there´s a pared-down version in the book Cupobard Love, which the author calls Omelette Gordon Bennet .

And then there´s the even lazier way, which is really more of a frittata but none the worse for that; an omelette of smoked fish, dotted with cream and sprinkled with parmesan, then briefly grilled. It emerges puffed and pretty, and is just the thing for a quick lunch, with buttered brown bread and some salad.

I used smoked mackerel because it´s my new favourite thing, but salmon or trout would do just as well, and look even more girly and sweetly pink.

Entertaining

2010-08-24T11:00:00.002+02:00

We´ve had lots of visitors, which accounts for not having done any of the serious things, like work, or changing the curtains, or learning how to use the power drill. Not even the frivolous, like blogging, could compete with trips to the sand dunes, complete with seals, and all the fish and chips.

One thing we´ve learnt is that taking a toddler and a baby out for lunch means that by the time dessert should roll around, they need to move on. So we leave before, take them home, put them away in their cradles, and try to snatch some sleep ourselves. And only after all that do we go for the sweets. Ice cream, out of a freezer bulging with the local delicacy, tubs of Mackie´s Chocolate, Honeycomb, Raspberry Swirl, Mint Chocolate Chip and Cream of Scotland. There are ten other flavours to try, so we have to be dilligent and get through that stash before I can fill up the freezer again.

Kid friendly recipes

2010-08-17T12:57:00.003+02:00

In case the previous post sounded a bit breezy and off-the-cuff, let me direct you to the side bar. If you click on the recipe labels you´ll be taken to a selection of recipes. Soups and Comfort food are good places for kid´s food, although I don´t think the gazpachos would be much of a hit. Sweet things, of course, and Spanish food, too, will be full of good things.

You´ll find pancakes, banana bread, tomato soup, melted cheese sandwiches, beef stew and melting roast pork, pizzas and flatbreads, marmitako and macarrones con chorizo, chickpeas with spinach and all sorts of good stuff. Have a browse.