Lobstersquad made it to a Forbes list (and a pressure cooker risotto)

Here are two things I never expected to happen: one, the most amazing, is to find my name on a Forbes list. Not the one headed by Oprah, but deeply exciting all the same; I can now paraphrase all those Oscar winners and say how honoured I am to be named alongside such talent, etc, etc.

The second thing is that yesterday´s pressure cooker rice was excellent. Call it risotto or call it arroz caldoso, it was just unbeleivable, as in, hard to beleive: creamy, perfectly cooked rice, full of flavour, in less than fifteen minutes from the minute I turned on the hob to sitting down? I was deeply sceptical, but figured it worth a try, and so it was. Risotto, long banished from my kitchen except as an occasional treat, comes back as a weeknight dinner staple.

The rice cooker reigns supreme for white rice and for truly hands off restful cooking, but for quick and incredibly delicious results, this is the one. Here is what I did yesterday with what I had, but of course onions can take the place of leeks, chorizo for bacon if you´re so inclined, any other vetetable for the peas, and aromatics can vary: saffron, herbs, etc.

Pressure cooker arroz caldoso, or risotto
adapted from Lorna Sass

Sautee two chopped leeks and bacon until the bacon releases its fat and the leeks begin to look floppy. Deglaze with some white wine, let it bubble up and add 1 1/2 cups short grain rice. Stir, add 3 1/2 cups of stock and cover the pressure cooker. Let it come uo to high pressure and count five minutes (five!!! seriously, aren´t you in love already?).
Now release the pressure and have a look. You might want a bit more broth, or you might want to let some of it evaporate. I thought it was just fine with those meassures. Add butter and parmesan and there you are, risotto for three hungry people or four staid ones.

Feeling the pressure

I´m a gadget-driven cook. It´s all very well to extoll the virtues of unplugged cooking, and wax lyrical about pesto lovingly made in a pestle and mortar, but for day to day food-on-the-table purposes, I´d be lost without a Thermomix, a rice cooker, a blender and a radio.

I thought a slow cooker might be a good thing, since my favourite stews are off the radar. The idea of leaving an oven on for hours in the vicinity of a danger-seeking toddler makes me pale. Plus, with two children in the world I´m beginning to feel guilty about our fuel consumption.

But slow cookers are hard to come by in Spain, and I have had a pressure cooker sitting in a cupboard since I got married almost six years ago, so yesterday I had my pressure baptism. Chickpeas in minutes convinced me in seconds, and I´ve been playing with it ever since.

My first solo flight was based on this ragù. I did´t lock the pressure valve properly, and scorched the bottom, but all the same, I had a really tasty chunky sauce that´s made a great filling for empanada. So far, so good.

The chicken stock is what has me lost in wonder. I was convinced it would come out cloudy, but tried it anyway, thinking Pía wouldn´t mind. But amazingly, in 45 minutes I had a pot of golden, beautiful, clear broth. I did skim it before locking the lid, mind you, but it didn´t take so long. So now, instead of making a giant 5 litre batch of stock every month or so, I´ll make a amaller 2 litre batch all the time. It´s magic!

I have a chunk of pork shoulder marinating even as we speak, waiting to be turned into melt-in-the-mouth shreds of aromatic meat for tomorrow´s lunch.

I´ve only been using the pressure cooking for 24 hours, so maybe it´s just a coup de foudre and I´ll drop it in a week. But I don´t think so. I think I´ll be making a lot more beans and curries and stews, and can´t wait for Lorna Sass´ book to arrive. In the meantime, it´s risotto tonigth with this morning´s chicken stock. And if that works, well, then I can see myself becoming the official pressure cooker bore, as well as the official rice cooker bore.

Not your basic elemental Pepito

After months of bot being allowed to eat rare red meat, I´m craving a burger bigtime. But I think burgers are best left to professionals, and are best had in greasy, smoky places, and I´m not about to take my precious new baby there, yet, lest he come back smeared with ketchup. A good home alternative? A Pepito.

Ask for a pepito anywhere in Spain and you will be given a steak sandwich.
If you´re lucky, it will be a thin, juicy paillard type thing, and the oil and meat juices will soak into good, crunchy bread. If you´re not , which is more often the case, you will receive a slab of grey cardboard hunkering between two slabs of nothing bread.
This is sad. This is not the sort of sandwich one wants as the namesake for a son and heir. It is a sad testament to the terrible lack of imagination most of Spain gives it sandwiches.
To my mind, a proper pepito should have something sharp, like mustard or horseradish. Something crunchy, like cornichons. Greens, like ruccola. Butter, if J isn´t looking. And some slippery onions, either just made, or in the lovely form of onion jam.
As for the meat, I favour a thick steak, salted, then marinated overnight in whatever´s around. This time it was olive oil, two smashed cloves of garlic, a sprinkling of thyme, a splash of sherry and some fish sauce, but anything goes.
Sear it so it´s black outside and pink within, let it rest while you assemble the sandwiches on a good fresh baguette, and open a couple of beers. Slice the meat thin, and sneak a few slices as you put it inside the bread.
You´ll have to agree that this is a beautiful thing, and I for one would be more than glad to share a name with it.

Distractions

Here´s a very good reason to stop the rather infrequent postings on this blog: Pepe, two weeks old today. He was born three weeks early and so overset all my plans to stock my freezer, get a haircut and write a few posts to have as backup.
It´s a pretty blissful life; sure I don´t sleep much at night, but thanks to J and my family I´m allowed to take naps at odd times, eat all sorts of delicious things practically nonstop and enjoy my beautiful babies.

One-pan chicken

My chicken guy at the market is a very sweet fellow who doesn´t mind selling me only half a chicken. Free range chickens are so big that even half is over a kilo, and that´s a lot of chicken for me. Not that I dislike chicken, but I do find it hard to be fascinated by it. However, stomach flu being what it is, and my baby being now in the grip of it, chicken breast must be gently poached.
So my half of a big chicken gives me one big breast half, skin off, that the butcher cuts out. The thigh and the drumstick. A wing. A piece of backbone, and the neck.
Wing, neck and bone go into the freezer for the making of stock whenever my storage runs low. The other two pieces I roasted today following the method called by la Lawson "one-pan chicken". It results in roast chicken that is quite ok, but that I am happy to leave for a sandwich or pot pie some other day. The star of the show for me are the vegetables; potatoes, onions and carrots that soak up the chicken juices and the fat, char and burn and turn crispy or melting and are just the best thing ever.
This time, I spooned yogurt over them and it was quite a revelation.

The simple things

I´ve been down a couple of days with the stomach flu that´s going around.
Whenever I´ve had stomach trouble, always the get-better food has been the same. The first day one is allowed nothing but lemon water, with sugar and maybe a little salt. Then plain white rice, perhaps some dry toast, tea, if you´re looking good, and a little boiled chicken. Next day you might progress to boiled ham, and chicken broth, or yogurt with a little stwed apple.
You know that you´re definitely getting better when you´re allowed boiled potatoes, in their skins. These come with a thin trickle of olive oil and some crunchy salt, and they are the most delicious thing in the world. Not just because you know that you will soon be back to normal, but because after some days of eating really dull stuff your palate is clean, your senses are sharp and you are reminded of just how great very simple things can taste.
Luckily for me, it´s come just in time to feel pleasantly detoxed and mammothly hungry for my mother´s birthday today.

Oriental soups

This is going to be a lazy post, by which I mean, I am not going to write up a recipe. The reason? Ethnic. I don´t feel I can speak with any authority or knowledge about Asian soups. I was born and have always lived in a country that used to have no immigrants, where all Chinese restaurants were called "La gran muralla" . They served fried rice and gloopy lemon chicken and if anybody ever asked for a soup there I´ve never met them.

Now things have improved, and it´s possible to have pretty good stuff, at least in Madrid. Most importantly, it´s possible to buy lots of ingredients that allow you to replicate many of the lovely things found in books and around the internet. And that´s what the beauty of my lack of Asian food education comes in; my standards are so low that I just looove what I make.

The fun bit with all these things is stocking up the pantry. A trip to the Mostenses market and its adjacent shops will have you coming back with bulging bags for very little money. I buy noodles, won ton wrappers, dried shiitakes, fish sauce, chili garlic sauce, Hoisin sauce, big bottles of soy sauce, sesame oil, bean sprouts, good cheap chicken, massive ginger roots, even chinese chives and bok choi and pak choy.

It´s a lot of fun. You can even brave the underworld and try to eat at the subterranean restaurant in the Plaza de España parking lot, which is always packed and so rather difficult. I hear it´s great, and hope some day to put it to the test.

Meanwhile, I´ll be trying to make won tons, and making lots and lots of soup. What kind? Well, on lazy days it might be instant miso soup. On more energetic ones good chicken stock with fish sauce, a hint of chili and some mint or chives. And for true soul warming stuff, filling yet light, the full on chicken noodle treatment, or a version thereof with scraps of leftover roast meat.

It´s a very accomodating patron, the noodle soup, and one that always hits the spot, so have a go.

Meringues to die for

Here´s Gasparini, a blog I´ve been meaning to link to for ages. It has the most drop dead gourgeous meringues, and shares the recipes, which is lovely of course. Not that I could ever make anything so pretty, ever, at any time, but isn´t it lovely to see it? I have contributed to the all around prettiness, I like to think, in the blog header and the logos, so go have a look.

Chicken soup in a relative hurry

Ideally the freezer should never be out of some chicken stock, neatly parcelled and labelled, the sort that has simmered for hours and is full of jellied goodness. But we all know that is not always possible, and so, here´s a way to make chicken soup that will give you a steaming bowlful in thirty minutes or so.

Buy some chicken, preferably on the bone.Chop leeks and carrots, onion perhaps, celery if you like (I do), potato if you don´t want pasta later. Chop them small. This might seem counter productive if you´re in a hurry, but the smaller you chop the quicker they cook. Sweat them in a bit of oil, then add water and some good bouillon powder. I have some Marigold I brought over from the UK, but plain old Knorr is quite ok, really. And yes, I know it´s just flavoured salt, but what do you think is in those nice looking cartons of broth? Stock cubes and water, my friends, marked up to make us all look like idiots.

So, stock cube, water. Now the chicken bits. If it´s breast, then you don´t want to give it much time, but thighs or drumsticks can take twenty minutes´ slow simmer very well, by which time the vegetables will have cooked to an agreeably soft texture. At the end, throw in a handful of tiny pasta and take out the chicken. Let it rest a little and tear the meat, put it back in the pot, and taste. You´ll probably need salt, possibly some lemon juice to perk it up, definitely a dash of sherry to enliven it, a small cube of butter because it´s always a good idea, and a sprinkling of parsley to make it look good.

A bowl of this won´t keep you on your feet for a day´s skiing, but it´s just the thing for a blustery January evening.

Soup month

The problem with January is that you´re supposed to be all virtuous all of a sudden, even though you are still wrapped in a million layers of clothing, and it´s so cold that the mere thought of a salad can make tears freeze in your eyes.
There´s precious little point in even pretending that a big turnaround is going to happen. You might as well be realistic and eat something good and filling, because if you don´t, you´ll just walk intoLe pain quotidien and demolish some overpriced croissants and hot chocolate, and what´s the good of that?

Also, there´s a lot to be said for making food that keeps the kitchen hot and steams the windows. You can then wipe a bit off to watch the snow, which is always fun.
The best thing to have on hand is soup, of course, which can be all things to all people; filling, nourishing and light, all at the same time. I will be doing a few soup posts, because Pía and I are living on soup at the moment (oh, and pie, too, and cake, but that´s another just recreational).

One such is Scotch broth, which, in Laurie Colwin´s version is a beauty. Not physically,really, but in a general comforting bowlful way. I have given this soup to extremely picky eaters and to lamb haters and they ate it up and had seconds.

It´s very easy, too, as long as you do it over two days. If you don´t, you won´t be able to skim the fat properly, and it won´t be so good.
Just boil some bony cheap cut of lamb, like neck, with a few parsley stalks and the green tops of some leeks, and celery and onion if you have them on hand. Do skim well in the first twenty minutes because the broth can look rather grey and disgusting. Leave it for a couple of hours, until the meat falls off the bone. Pick the meat from the bones, and put it, with the broth, in a container. Next day, defat this well.
Chop leeks and carrots, as small as you can or feel like, and sweat them briefly. Then add the broth and the meat, and either throw in some pearl barley or, if you are like me and grudge the grain drinking up all the broth, boil it separately the day you make the stock, until it´s just al dente. Then add it to the soup until it´s as you like it.

I think no clear soup is complete without a dash of sherry, and a grind of black pepper, perhaps.