Ginger scallion sauce

Untitled #2, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Here´s the link for the original article.
You should absolutely make this sauce, because it´s:
a- a great way to deal with ageing ginger and scallions.
b- you can keep it in the fridge for days, so you only have to pull out the processor and do the heat the oil thing once. Not that it´s hard, but I hear you.
c- it´s amazing how a tiny spoonful of this elixir transforms anything into utter bliss. White rice, scrambled eggs, steamed fish, miso soup, plain boiled vegetables. Anything.
Which is great, because sometimes, after the seventeenth consecutive reading of The tiger who came to tea, you´re not really in the mood to make anything complicated, and yet you need a lot of punch.

Green tea

Untitled #2, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

My first iPad drawing, the jug and cup in which I take my favourite mix of green and mint teas after lunch.
This is too much fun.

Rice cooker flan

Since I am, oficially, and until the match is over, trembling like a jelly, or shaking like a flan, here is one, to follow with the wholesome easy pudding theme.
Mind you, when I say a flan, I mean a shortcut flan, of course, not your blissful platonic ideal of a flan, of the sort that quivers gently in a bain marie for an hour after being infused for half. No, my flan is whizzed cold, goes into little ramekins that are covered any old how and put, unceremoniously, in the steamer basket of a rice cooker, which makes it fit neatly into many a midweek dinner preparation.

The recipe:

Take a meassuring jug, pour 333 ml. of milk, add two eggs, a few drops of vanilla extract and two spoonfuls of sugar. Blend it briefly, or just beat it with a fork until it´s all well mixed.
Now you can make caramel and coat four ramekins, which is easy but might be more fiddly than you want. It will still be great without it.
Pour the milk and egg mixture. This quantity makes four stingily filled ramekins, or three full ones. Put them in the steamer basket and cover them with one large piece of foil or clingfilm, tucked under them, or individually, whatever you´re in the mood for.
Put the rice and water in the big bowl, set the steamer rack on top, plug the thing and when you hear the clack sound that indicates the rice is going into "warm" mode, take a look at the custards. If they look like they´re not totally set, leave them a few minutes, but they´re probably done.
Put them in cold water to cool, which they´ll have done by the time you´ve finished your meal.
We had these yesterday with some Scottish strawberries and they were awsome.

(You can also make this in a normal steamer, in which case you can up the quantities to 3 eggs and 500 ml milk, and stack the ramekins. My rice cooker only fits four.)

Psychic Octopus, a feira

It has to be octopus, right? I´ve never cooked a real whole octopus in my life, and I´m not suggesting that you do. If you´re in Spain, or Greece, or somewhere civilized like that, then you can just amble down to the market and buy a couple of tentacles, boiled by your fishmonger. You can then slice at home, to be laid on slices of plain boiled potatoes, sprinkled with pimentón and coarse salt, and drizzled with olive oil. That´s it. Pulpo a la gallega, couldn´t be simpler.If you don´t, and I for one would have to look high and low to find some pulpo right now, then you can boil the potatoes and put some slices of ham on top, before doing the paprika/salt/oil thing.I´m sure Paul would prefer that version.

The easiest home made ice cream.

Now, I don´t know about you, but if there´s one thing guaranteed to cheer me up, it´s the prospect of a home made pudding to end a meal. Normally I have a bowl of yogurt with brown sugar or honey, and very nice it is. But sometimes a little more is called for.
However, with a toddler and a baby (and their father), there´s not always time for the truly exciting stuff that are tarte tatins, cobblers, crumbles, floating islands, chocolate mousse and pies. Also, they are apt to leave a dangerous trail of leftovers.
Plus, I have a sort of puritanical feeling that weekday postres must be wholesome, not wall-to-wall sugar and butter fests. That´s why I make jellies, arroz con leche, flan, or banana ice cream.
The basic method you can see here. It´s perfectly amazing, and very well suited to my life, in which I more often than not I find myself clutching pieces of half eaten banana, courtesy of young Pía. The half bananas, or the about-to-die bananas, go, sliced, into a bag in the freezer, and when they have mounted up I toss them into the Thermomix or the small chopper and whiz.
That´s all it takes: frozen bananas and nothing else. After a few seconds the rubbly looking mess turns into a creamy beautiful ice cream, and that´s when you can customize it.
A spoonful of honey, maple syrup, chopped nuts, chopped chocolate, raspberries, they´re all good. But the best, the unbeleivable best, is Nutella. Add a heaping spoonful for every two bananas or so and pulse it again. The result looks and tastes like chocolate ice cream, with a faint undercurrent of banana, and is so delicious you want to eat bowls and bowls of it. Which, considering that it´s mainly fruit, you should.

World Cup Finals

Who would have thought that I´d live to see Spain in a World Cup Final? And not be there to celebrate!
Anyway, it´s all good, and exciting. Likewise being one of Blogger´s Blogs of note. Hi to all new readers. I promise a well thought out post for tomorrow, with a recipe.

Red lentil and tomato soup

This is one of my favourite soups. I know it doesn´t fit in with the whole summer thing, but what do you know? July in Aberdeen is very much like the most blustery October Madrid can throw at one.
It´s very simple, thick and creamy, a properly bolstering soup that will fill and warm you up without being heavy. And, need I say, in a pressure cooker it takes very little time to cook. So put this one away for autum, and thank me later.

Quantities can vary without spoiling the result, but this is the usual:

Chop an onion and a clove of garlic, add some cumin seeds and leave them to soften while you peel a couple of carrots. Throw them in, coarsely chopped, followed by a half kilo tin of whole plum tomatoes with their juice. Fill the empty can with water, add that, and a cup of red lentils. You might want to throw in a stock cube.
Leave it to simmer until the lentils are cooked, about half an hour, or ten minutes in a pressure cooker.
Puree with a blender and taste. It will probably need salt, a dash of butter, some sherry and certainly the juice of half a lemon. Garam masala is a very good adition, if you have some around.

20 minute 2 hour tomato sauce.

Here´s a speedy version of this tomato sauce. A good, honest, solid, serviceable, auxiliary sauce. Not a "you´ll think you´ve died and gone to heaven in Sicily" sauce. Just a sauce, like the one you wish could be found jarred. It takes about half an hour to make but tastes like it simmered for far longer.
So here it is: Put two kilo tins or four half kilo tins of peeled whole plum tomatoes, with their juice, in a pressure cooker. Add a peeled onion cut in untidy chunks, one or two cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, sugar, and if you have parmesan rind, that, too. A generous glug of olive oil, 1/3 of a cup or so, and that´s it.
Lock the lid, bring it up to pressure and leave it for 2o minutes, or 30 if you like.
Once done, you´ll think "oh, this isn´t working" because you´ll see tomatoes floating in a lot of liquid. But here´s what you do:
Take the liquid and put it in a sepparate container. You´ll get about three cups. This is a strong tomatoey broth that´s perfect for soups (just add a can of chickpeas, some uncooked pasta and frozen spinach and cook until the pasta is done).
The tomatoes and onion and garlic you puree in a blender. They´ll turn a bit orange, but who cares?
You now have about four cups of an excellent sauce to spread on pizza bases, add to chickpeas with spinach, or to Godfather part III sauce.
And please don´t boast about your luscious juicy fresh tomatoes everywhere around now it´s summer. Just don´t, ok?

Changes

So here we are in our new home in the very northern city of Aberdeen. Once we install some blackout blinds it will be snug as anything.
At first we lived on sandwiches and scrambled eggs, but we soon graduated to roast chicken, and once the smell of stock drifted to every corner of the house (which I normally hate) it felt much more like home.
I´m still struggling with the shopping, as is only natural, because we´ve just arrived. Everything is very different from what I´m used to. Where before I had no pantry to speak of, and a very good market at my doorstep, now I have huge cupboards shops an uphill 15 minute walk away.
There is a fishmonger who sells mostly very unfamiliar hot- smoked fish (cool), a butcher who looks like he is about to referee the Wimbledon final but who has everything already cut up, so I don´t recognize anything, and nowhere to buy vegetables but a supermarket.
This is confusing, but I love to shop for food so I´ll figure it out. And even though we have a cavernous dishwasher, doing the dishes with that lovely view of our overgrown garden is quite a pleasure.

Sauce Foriana

The cupboards, though a shadow of their former selves, still yield up treasures. A tin of sardines, half a head of garlic, ok then, let´s see what´s left in the pasta drawer: nothing. Only, no, wait, there´s a package of japanese soba noodles. I wonder, will the buckwheat go well with the sardines? Probably. I go to the freezer to get some ice for a glass of water while I cook, and that´s when I see the little packets of nuts. What to do? A sauce foriana of sorts, with less garlic and pumpkin seeds as well as pinenuts, because that´s what I have. Except that my blender is in a box somewhere, so instead of a paste, I make a chopped up mix of nuts and garlic, and very delicious it is, too. Perfect with the robust sardines, and a great match for the noodles. Next time I´ll probably choose normal pasta, or perhaps whole wheat, but for tonight I couldn´t be happier with my meal.

You can find the recipe for sauce foriana here. It´s one of those oh-oh-oh why haven´t I been making this every week of my life things. It´s supposed to be tossed with pasta, but have a jar in the fridge and you´ll find yourself putting it iinto all sorts of things, like steamed broccoli, focaccia or creamy soups.