First summer outing

Summer´s here. Dammit.
Granted, it´s taken long enough, so there´s no real reason to complain. But still, I do hate it very much. I see a thermometer marking 39ºC and begin to feel very wretched.
I´m going to spend the weekend in Antequera, down south. That may not seem like a smart move, going to a place even hotter than Madrid. But I think if I move very slowly, and then only from the deck chair in the shade to the pool, I may survive.
To keep you company over the weekend, I´ll leave you with this illustration of the sanfermines, because, you know, why not? and with two recipes from last year. One, the very cooling agua de jamaica , which I´ve been drinking copious amounts of in the past couple of days. Two, porra
, the classic dish of Antequera, and a very good thing to do now that tomatoes are everywhere and so good.
Back on Tuesday. Have fun.

Sausages in a balsamic glaze

My so-flattering mention yesterday in Elise´s Simply Recipes blog spotlight had me in a whirl. I almost expected to have to start signing autographs. It´s also provided the push I needed to organize the blog a little. It´s still not very tidy, but at least now you can see on your right a little list of the recipe labels. Clicking on them will at least get you straight to the recipe posts. I hadn´t realised I´d done so many posts that were just plain and simple jabbering.
And now for the real stuff.
A few months ago I wrote with some indignation on the subject of balsamic vinegar .
It´s still something that can make me go off on one. I still foam at the mouth when confronted with plates that have been dribbled on with some vague idea of being artistic or dashing, or of marking up the price of some ensaladilla rusa.However,
I´ve since been given a recipe that has changed the status of the bottle of balsamic in my cupboard. From dusty embarrassement it has gone straight to the must-haves.
My aunt Begoña gave me this recipe, and if I didn´t love her already, just for this she´d have my undying devotion. It falls under the category of high impact-low effort cooking, and is just so so good.

It takes just two ingredients, fresh butcher´s sausages, and some balsamic vinegar. The basic elemental stuff that´s mostly caramel and who-knows-wat-else.
First, boil the whole sausages briskly for ten or twelve minutes, until they´re cooked trough. They´ll emerge pale and quite gosh-awful looking. This is ok, never fear.(they can be made ahead up to this point, yet another bonus of this marvelous dish)
Take non-stick frying pan that will fit the sausages snugly, and tip some balsamic into it, enough to just cover the bottom. Put your sausages in over a medium heat. The vinegar will start to bubble and reduce, coating the sausages in a sticky glaze. When one side is brown, turn them over.
In a couple of minutes, you´ll have a panful of sausages that will be a dark, glossy brown. They will be sweet and savoury, but the acid of the vinegar will have evaporated. As the sausages are cooked already, all they do is take on the colour and the flavour as the vinegar reduces. It´s very quick.
You´ll be spared the grease, the smokey fug, and the uncertainty of wether the insides are really cooked under the burnt exterior. There is no burnt exterior here, just some fingerlicking marvelous jammy outside.
They can be served with some rice (duh) or salad, but they´re so good, it´s hard to keep them from being eaten on the way to the table.
So, ok, I don´t take back what I said about balsamic glaze as doodled on plates, but I´ll admit that as an actual glaze, and as a sweet-sour complement to something that usually benefits from that treatment, pork, it most definitely has its points.

Bonito con tomate (albacore in tomato sauce)

My mother insists that I say, loud and clear, that J is in every respect a perfect husband, and that he sent a big bouquet of blood-red roses yesterday, just so you know ( and yes, she does mean to imply that I am a shrew and don´t deserve him).
And since today isn´t my aniversary any more, I have no reason to fume. I have the house to myself, which means I have the whole sofa, undisputed control of the remote, and freedom of choice in viewing matter.
I have rented a stack of DVDs that J would hate, mainly The Sopranos, which I´d never got round to watching, and so I´m very happy, really.
I went to the market for fruit and cucumbers, but couldn´t resist buying some bonito. This white tuna is one of my favourite things, and it´s right in season now, which means it costs almost nothing (well, al-most).
So I´ve decided to cook it in a way that will make it very suitable for watching the Sopranos, bonito con tomate.

This is a very simple dish that I really love. It´s just bonito del norte, in a tomato sauce. All you have to do is make a tomato sauce in whichever way you usually do (mine has quite a bit of onion, some garlic and lots of sugar, with a pinch of chili and sometimes some oregano).
You then put the fish in this sauce and let it poach gently, until it´s juicy and white, and breaks into big delicate flakes. Five minutes at most, and let it finish cooking inside the hot sauce.
Of course, as you can imagine, the standard orthodox bona fide recipe calls for frying the fish first, so it browns. But I find that it only makes the dish more greasy, the fish more likely to dry out, and you don´t see the nice brown colour with the whole thing smothered in red sauce.

So there you go. Serve with white rice (this is not the influence of my rice-cooker craziness, but actual tradition).
Leftovers are heavenly with a change of nationality, reincarnated as a pasta sauce.

Alone in the kitchen with a courgette

Today is my third wedding aniversary. Leather. Which sounds a bit dodgy, but never mind. So, am I chilling the champagne? Getting ready for the ritual sacrifice of fat losbters? Lighting the romantic candle? No way. The fact is, my lawful wedded has chosen today of all days to go off on one of his little field trips to see if he can singlehandedly save the planet. I´m telling you, if Spain is a desert in fifty years, it certainly won´t be J´s fault. Mine, maybe, because when he does things like this, I feel like I´ll be dammed if I ever sepparate the trash again. Or worse.

Anyway. Today´s dinner falls into the "alone in the kitchen with an eggplant" category. And since Monday isn´t market day, and I am very dutiful when it comes to dealing with leftovers, I will be having some stirfried courgette, with maybe a little fried rice, and the possibility of an egg. That´s all there is, and it´s not a bad dinner, all told.
I´m not one for weird mixes when I´m alone, and I quite like cooking for myself, but that´s usually for lunch. If I´m alone for dinner, I usually have some crackers, the dry kind, with maybe a little cream cheese, and a couple of carrots. But I did that yesterday, so now it´s down to the courgette and the egg, until I roll out the little red shopping trolley tomorrow.

Rice cooker, yes, again, I know

I have been the proud and happy propietor of a rice cooker for a week now. Even though there hasn´t been a peep about rice on the blog, beleive me, there has been plenty of rice in the kitchen. J is beginning to complain. Even though he comes back for second and third bowls every time, I´ve noticed.
I´ve tried several types of rice. Long grain and short grain, which I make with the 1r=1&1/3w. I wash the short grain well, the long grain just-so.
After making them plain to begin with, and trying them fried once they were cold, I started to branch out.
There was a Hoppin´ John/Congrí-esque thing on Saturday, made with drained tinned black beans and ham in coca-cola stock, to go with the roast pork. Rave reviews.
Sunday was the day of saffron rice.
Tuesday was the classic Spanish combo, plain white rice with pisto and a fried egg, chez maman. I´ve made my mother buy a rice cooker too. She´s very happy with it so far. Dinner at home was Singapore chicken rice, with Thai jasmine, using 1r=1w. Lipsmacking to the utmost degree.
Wednesday I had friends coming over for a working lunch, so I went with a tried and tested fave from days before the wondertool. Steamed salmon rice, as seen here, but sauteeing the mushrooms first.
Thursday I tried brown basmati, 1r=2w. Once cooled, it went in a salad with mint, parsley, diced deseeded cucumber, olive oil, mirin and soy sauce, a Nigella inspired combo that I loved. Light yet filling.
You´ll see that I haven´t moved from the far east, but I´m thinking of coming west by easy stages, with biryanis and pilafs. Ending, who knows, in our very own near-eastern rice, the paella that fills me with such dread?

Slow roast pork for a crowd

I used to be very scared of my oven. It seemed to me that roasting things belonged to a higher order of cooking than the one I did. Making a curry sauce for a chicken seemed so much less daunting than locking it away in a baking hot box.
The day I found out that this is not so, but far otherwise, was a very happy one for me. An epiphany. Stout Cortez was innexpresively blasé in comparison.
Which is why one of my favourite things to serve up when I have a crowd coming is a slow roast hunk of pork. The thing has to stay in the oven for at least four hours, but half an hour up or down makes no difference. It´s better with 24 hours of previous marinating, but it´s also impressively delicious without. The marinade, or the rub, can be anything you like, and so the dish can be taken in any geographical direction. And there´s something festive in a big meaty centerpiece, a soupçon of the fatted calf old-style hospitality.
It is excellent cold, and so can be left on a table for people to carve as they will, and stuff into sandwiches, or eat with potato salad, or some quickly put together beans in vinaigrette. And rice, too, of-course. (Get a rice cooker inmediately!!!!)
As long as you don´t break the cardinal rule taught to me by my mother: have twice as much booze as you think you´ll need, and under pain of death don´t run out of ice, this makes for easy-peasy entertaining. And you won´t have to worry about smoke, or cleaning the grill.

Slow roast pork

The cut I use is aguja, which I think is pork shoulder, but just to be clear, I´ll make a nice little diagram of where in the pig it is.
It´s a cut that is pretty much self-basting, and to my mind, much more juicy and flavourful than any other. It doesn´t dry out, and it costs a fraction of the price of loin, or the little tenderloins. It´s also tear-inducingly good the next day, in sandwiches, tacos, noodles, or empanadas. So it would be very silly of you not to cook as big a piece as you can find.
My butcher usually has a joint weighing about 3 kilos, bone in. This is tastier, but more tricky to carve, so by all means have him cut it out, but don´t forget to put it in the roasting tin.
In Spain they never leave the skin on the meat, so there is no chance of crackling. But I suspect after so long, the skin would be quite tough, so I´m not sure that I´d leave it in if I could.
When not making a Chinese version, or a USA style barbecue sauce, this is my favourite. I think I took it from a NYT article about taco fillings:

Orange juice
Garlic
coriander seeds,
cumin seeds
olive oil,
peppercorns,
oregano

Quantities can vary, I think you really have to use your eyes and make it to your liking. Blitz it in a processor, put it in a freezer bag, and leave as long as you can, 24 hours max. Then strain it. You will be left with a paste in the strainer, which you will rub on the meat. The liquid, an oily and spicy orange juice, you will use to baste the piece every now and then, as and if you remember to.

Make little cuts in the meat and slide in slivers of garlic.

Then put it in the hottest oven you can for half an hour. After, turn it down very low, and leave it for four hours at least. It can stay longer, and won´t dry out, as long as we´re talking about a seriously low oven, 110ºC or so. Mine has no switches, so I don´t know exactly what goes on in there, except that it smells heavenly. Once done, you´re left with a deep brown, crusty outside, and a tender, juicy white inside.
Make sure you´re doing the carving, and can snaffle as many bits of charred outside as you can, all the while looking bountiful as you hand out every third slice.

Two steps to make pie as easy as it´s supposed to be

I´ve learnt a two valuable lessons in pastry making this weekend. I´m now going to share them, because I think this is in the nature of public service, and will help all of the teeming dozens who read this blog.

I took these tips from the column of Xanthe Clay . Anyone with an X as their initial has my instant sympathy, but I also love her columns.

The article I´ve linked to has all the information, and recipes. What follows assumes that you have made short crust pastry many times before, and had occasion to gnash your teeth. I highlight here the valuable lessons I put to good use on Saturday.

1- Blind baking. You know, all that thing about the pie weights, and the beans, or the chain, or the marbles? The lining the shell with paper, putting the beans in , waiting for then minutes, then burning yourself when all those lovely now very hot beans spill all over the place? Forget it. The thing to do here is to take some loosely scrunched tin foil, and lay it inside, making sure it presses against the sides. It´s more than enough to keep the pie walls from caving.

2- Soggy crust. No more. As soon as you have done the step two, taking the foil out, letting the shell become golden, you inmediately give it a quick brush with egg white. The heat from the pastry will insure that the thing cooks inmediately, sealing it and effectively making it waterproof.

The pie I made was a pecan pie, and very delicious it was. A cup of pecans, 3 eggs, a 1/4 of cream, 1/2 of maple syrup and a dash of salt turned into a lovely filling for a shortbready sweet short crust shell. Wonderful.

An uncanny resemblance

I don´t know about you, but for me, the cultural event of this year will be Brad Bird´s Ratatouille.
If The Incredibles is one of my all-time top-ten films, and the next baby of its creator is about cooking, you can imagine I´ve been in a seventh heaven of impatience for months.
The review in today´s New York Times is very good, and only makes me salivate all the more. But one thought, and click on the links to see if you don´t agree with me; isn´t Linguini, the young apprentice, the spitting image of Adam, a.k.a. the Amateur Gourmet?
Can Brad Bird be a fan of food blogs, and if so, can anybody in the world be more perfect?

Rice cooker instructions. Instrucciones para olla de arroz

I keep a list of things that I want to blog about. There are several. Like my upcoming summer holiday in Estonia. My introduction and subsequent deep love for Old Bay seasoning spice. A recipe for sausages I´ve just learnt to make. The issue of entertaining anxiety. My new stack of cookbooks.
Many things.
But this rice cooker has kind of got in the way of things, big time. Over the course of my geeky life I´ve fallen in love with several machines, from my first Mac, back in the early 90´s, to the Thermomix, by way of a couple of typewriters, a bycicle and a Smeg fridge I´ve had a light flirtation with this spring.
But this rice cooker, I think if it leaves me I´m going to have to jump under a train, or drink poison. This is a grand passion. I am like Young Werther, Juliet Capulet and rolled into one, with a touch of the crazy chef in Disney´s The little mermaid.
So far, I´ve only tried it with normal white rice, short grain and basmati, and here is my advice to other folk, who, like me, are stumped by the lack of proper literature inside the box.
The first batch I did was prett awful, but I think I must have had it on what a kind reader says is the congee setting. I still haven´t figured out what the knobs are for. If anyone reads Chinese and would be willing to translate for me, that woudl be swell, but so far, the second and third tries were beautiful, so here is what I´ve learnt so far:

For short grain rice, (I use SOS) put
1 volume of rice to 1 and a half volumes of water. Add a little bit of salt, shut the lid, wait at least 10 minutes after the cooking stops.

For basmati, use 1 volume of rice to 1 of water, and do the same.

I made the SOS in the morning, left it to cool, and had it fried for dinner, with sweetcorn and ham and egg. It was perfect! perfect, I tell you, this is pure magic, and all for forty euros.

Tomorrow I hope to take the plunge and begin to mix more ingredients in. What fun.
The drawing appeared in Marie Claire last year. It´s still meant to convey giddy heights of joy, not flowered rice or anything.

My new toy

Ok, I´ve done it. After years of holding back, I´v finally bought a rice cooker.
Look, I know I´m not Asian, hence don´t eat rice twice every day. I don´t have to feed a family of ten. I don´t have a lot of counter space. I-don´t-care! I´ve decided to cut potential sources of worry out of my life, and rice was one. Even though I consider myself to have mastered the trick of perfect white rice , it´s still something that has to be anxiously watched over and timed.

So this morning, after a brief consultation with Lydia( I firmly beleive Lydia knows everyting) I trotted off to the Chinese shops around the neighbourhood. The third produced the desired rice cooker with a hinged lid. The instructions were in Chinese, but the sales lady was very sweet, and patiently explained to me how it works, and a few recipes, even.

So I´m in a small bubble of global-village contentment today. Globalization means Starbucks is evil and wants to take over the world, sure, but it also means that I can email a friend in Rhode Island, have my advice back in five minutes, and spend a happy half hour unravelling detailed explanations in broken Spanish for Chinese food. I loved it.

So far I´ve made one batch of rice I hated. Then I realised I hadn´t pressed one of the buttons, whatever it is. Second batch was perfectly marvelous, and now I´m trying out some basmati. And all this while I finish two books, scan drawings for a wedding seating plan and answer emails!

I really don´t see why I´ve made myself wait so long to have a rice cooker, I swear I don´t.
The drawing, by the way, is not laziness but an attempt at expressing my fuzzyheaded happiness.