Brownies vs. Lemon bars

There´s a dinner party tonight at my parent´s house. Nothing to do with Thanksgiving, just a plain old dinner party. Odd in that my mother doesn´t approve of dinner parties. Lunch, yes. She´ll have hordes to lunch every day very happily, but she likes her beauty sleep.
But sometimes these things happen. And I have been roped in to make the puddings.
We´ve had very long discussions. My views on the subject can be summed up in one sentence: why have anything else when you can have chocolate?. My mother, on the other hand, is adamant. Fruit says it best, and among all fruit puddings, lemon bars are the ticket to paradise.
Both positions having been defended with strenght, in the end we´ll have both. I don´t mind baking two things, as long as I have help with the clearing up and a signed agreement that there will be some leftover when I go to lunch tomorrow.
So I´m not going to post the recipe for the prune compote yet. It was great, yes, but compared to the wonder of brownies and lemon bars everything pales.

Disaster

I deeply regret this, but feel it is my duty to inform you that the soup was inedible.
The leeks became a greenish slime, the barley a mess of waterlogged burst white forms. The meat was grey, and not all that tender. It didn´t smell remotely appetizing, and the taste was sweet and bland, even after a good dose of salt.

What did I do wrong? Who knows.
Next time I make leek and barley soup I´ll do it like I always have, boiling the grains separately, and sauteeing the vegetables first, and using stock.

Meanwhile, J was beginning to demmand his dinner much in the manner of his infant daughter. So, in the end he went out to get a couple of pizzas, and we ended the working week very happily negotiating strands of melted, gooey cheese and slices of spicy salami.

Friday evening

Here is what´s cooking in the Lobstersquad kitchen right now. Will it be good? I´m sure it will. Laurie Colwin and Smitten Kitchen can´t both fail me at the same time.
I´m also poaching some prunes, following a Nigella Lawson recipe from How to Eat, but substituting Pedro Ximénez for Marsala. If it´s any good I´ll report back. I don´t see how it can be anything but good, though. PX, star anise, orange peel, cinammon, clove and sugar in a tea syrup as a poaching liquid; what´s not to like?
The drawing is nothing to do with anyghing, except that it concerns Don Quixote, which, like PX wine, and myself, includes an x in the name. More pics about it here.

Beans, local food and fuel waste

(This drawing has nothing to do with the subject, but I rather like it, and there´s no chance I´m ever going to post a recipe for yemas de santa teresa, so there you go. And on another off-subject note, here´s a blog I´m totally loving at the moment).

Eat local, seasonal. Buy from people who look like they have spent the past few decades buried in loam. Make a point of choosing the specimens that look more dubious, for they will be the most flavoursome and un-supermarkety.
Ha.
City dwellers fall for it every time. We´re such suckers.
Take me. I was in La Granja last May. La Granja is beautiful, a small town in the mountains, built around an XVIII century royal palace, with the most gorgeous forests and gardens.
Now, you´d think it would have been enough to walk around and take in the beauty of the flowering chestnuts, but I was heavily pregnant at the time, and so rather lazier than usual. So we walked around the town, and browsed the one shop that was open, a little grocery store.
I love that kind of shop. Time seems to have stopped in many of them, and you find all sorts of fascinating packages of stuff you´d have sworn had stopped production before Franco´s death.
The one famous specialty of La Granja are beans, called judiones, which might be translated as mammoth-beans. So I bought a packet, even though I think cooking your own beans is a waste of fuel. This was all in the "support the yokel" patronizing townie thing. And in the way of such exchanges, I was made to pay through the nose. I staggered out of that shop clutching my wallet, and the beans sat on my counter for a while.
And now, finally, when I´m cooking them, I realize that ye olde merchantman has evidently sold me some very ancient, Franco-era beans. They are still rocky after a couple of hours on the hob, and a good overnight soak.
I don´t know if they´ll ever get to any reasonable softness, but in the meantime, I am bored, and more than ever confirmed in my rule: buy beans in jars, and only ever cook lentils.
And don´t knock supermarkets, they´re not all that evil.

Onion jam, redux

I can´t resist a shortcut, and I can´t resist raiding my mother´s pantry.
So when I saw a half-empty bottle of good Rioja that had been lingering for a few days, and spotted a couple of tins of Hida fried onions, I inmediately snaffled them for a trial at cheat´s onion jam.
Now, I´m not saying this is necessarily going to be my method for ever, but it works. The stuff still has to simmer for ages, but it does so unattended, and you save all the onion cutting time, plus your tears.
A jar of onion jam in invaluable at all times, for stirring into scrambled eggs, for sandwiches, cheese bruschetta, pizza, hamburgers, tacos , goat´s cheese salad or pasta, so keep it in mind.
The quantities, adjusted slightly:

Two tins of Hida fried onions
300 ml. red wine
a splash of Cassis
10 tablespoons of Sherry vinegar
140 gr. sugar

Simmer on Varoma, with the butterfly on, for 50 minutes ( I might use less wine next time, and only give it 40 minutes, just so you know. This is work in progress)

If you´re using a normal pan, you´ll have to stick around and stir it from time to time when it´s reduced.

Oh, and by the way, Foodbuzz is officially launched now, and I keep forgetting to post about it. Check it out!

Cheat´s Pilaf

So, here we are. Posting! Wow. Something that reminds me of my former life, before Groundhog Baby Day hit me in the back on the neck.
Actually, to tell you the absolute truth, my life isn´t all that incredibly changed in the tiny details. The Big Picture, yes. But the details? Not so much. I wasn´t glamorous, or thin, or constantly hopping on planes. I didn´t go in for dodgy stuff like contact sports, designer drugs, or investment banking. Mostly I used to be home, drawing or reading or cooking or hanging out with like-minded friends or family. And now I have a baby? I read, and draw and cook and hang out, only I do it at odd intervals, punctuated by attending to said baby.

Not that I´m adventurous in my cooking. It´s back to basics at the old home kitchen. Stuff I could do in my sleep. I might be reading, and busily flagging, recipes for Afghan Snowshoe Bread, Three-layered walnut torte with whipped cream, and Truck-stop cinnamon rolls, but what I´m doing is very simple stuff. And most of it seems to be rice.

What follows is a recipe I´m very proud of. I call it Pilaf Fullero, or Cheat´s Pilaf, and it´s very very good and totally easy, provided you have a rice cooker, and a bag of those nifty fried onions to be found in Ikea.
Now, don´t let me hear groans of "do you really need a rice cooker?", because yes, you really do. I daresay in a broader, cosmic sense you don´t, just like you don´t need a remote for the Tv. But life being as it is, I don´t understand why anyone voluntarily chooses to suffer rice anxiety, when it can be avoided for 40€.

Pilaf Fullero
being a very good-looking spicy, nutty, herby, elegant rice that can be served to the snootiest guests with pride.

First, take a skillet or big frying pan and drizzle some olive oil into it. When it´s hot, add a teaspoonful of cumin seeds (non-negotiable) and whatever else you like; allspice berries, a cinammon stick, mustard seeds, fresh ginger or garlic even.
When they´re fragrant, add 500 gr. long-grain rice. I don´t soak it, but be my guest.
Toss it until it soaks all the oil. Put it in the rice cooker with 610 ml. water and a pinch of salt. Turn it on.
Now, usually when I do this I´m in the kitchen doing something else, like chickpeas and spinach, so I´m on hand when it goes into "warm" mode.
This is the time to open the thing, fluff up the rice, and add a half cup of raisins. But if you´re not around, just leave it and remember to soak the raisins beforehand. Close, and let steam until you´re ready to serve the rice. This, as happy owners of rice cookers know and love, can be a few hours.
When you´re ready, add a good handful of chopped parsely, about half a cup, a generous cupful of the fried onions, and a golf ball of butter, cut in slivers.
Toss until the butter melts.
If you´re in lily-guilding mode, scatter toasted flaked almonds or pinenuts over the thing, and wait for the compliments.

Quick cake with plums

I´ve always had a bit of a cookbook habit, but of late it´s spiralled out of control. I´ve realised it´s the perfect reading when you have a new baby cornering the market for attention.

Cookbooks are cut down into very manageable chunks, so that even if you have the concentration span of a mosquito, you can generally get to the end of a recipe. There are no sub-plots, barring the occasional suggestion to serve with mashed potatoes. And always, always, there´s a happy ending: serves 4-6.

But this is strictly for entertainment. Now I only cook things that I know by heart, that are very simple, and can either be done ahead of time or in a very short flash. The soups, sandwich fillings, roast tomatoes or rice I might do while Pía lounges in her buggy and looks on with very mild interest. The quick stuff I reserve for just before dinner, when J can look after her and I am left alone. At the risk of sounding like an evil mother, I´ll say it´s a very relaxing break. I focus on the food, and the food only, and come back to my baby much refreshed. And I get to eat dinner, too.

The shopping is somewhat more erratic than it used to be, and I find myself with surplus stuff that needs to be used, fast. This is what I did yesterday with a bowl of plums that needed to be eaten. I´m very pleased with the result: a dead-easy, delicious cake that can be done on the spur of a moment (no need to remember to leave butter to soften), isn´t guilt-inducingly decadent, cooks fast and keeps very well for a day. I know that for a fact, because that´s how long it´s lasted, but for all I know, it might keep for longer.

All you do is use the batter for these little lemon cupcakes, sans lemon, and put it in a square pan of 21x21 cm. Then cut 8 plums in half, and arrange them in the batter so that you can later cut sixteen squares.

Bake as you would a normal cake. Sorry to be so imprecise, but my oven has no buttons. It took somewhere around 40 minutes in a mid to lowish one, with the heat coming only from below.
The result is a dense, slightly coarse sponge that surrounds quivering sweet fruit. Can´t wait to try it with pears.

Another blog header

I´d meant to post this picture ages ago, before the little mite was born, in fact. It´s the blog header for Lego y Pulgón, a favourite blog. Go check it out. It´s not all food, but it´s lovely. Just don´t blame me if you begin to feel very dejected at not being in the Canary Islands under flowering fruit trees.

With one hand

First off, a big thank you to every one of your very sweet messages. I´ve loved them all, and would have loved to answer each and every one, except that typing with one hand free and a baby in the other isn´t my forte, yet (I´m getting better).

This morning I managed a pretty impressive one-armed feat, and prepared toast with tomatoes and olive oil and salt. Slicing tomatoes, now, that´s not easy, beleive you me.
The baby ensded up covered in crumbs, which made me feel I´m not cut out to be anyone´s self-sacrificing mother. But hey, if I don´t have a good breakfast, I can´t keep up my status as a dairy queen, right?

Blog abandonment explained

Dear readers, this is the post where I Explain All. The abandonement of the blog, the not answering the comments and other faults in etiquette. It´s not because it´s too hot, or because I´ve left and gone to eat my weight in wild rasperries on a Baltic beach.
The reason, and you´ll have to agree that as reasons go, there´s none better, is that exactly two weeks ago I had a little baby girl. And it´s not that I don´t have time for anything else, exactly, because I´m staying at my parents´, and there´s always someone more than willing to hold the baby. In fact, there´s usually a group of bessotted adults standing round the crib.
But it´s proving kind of hard to not drool a lot, myself, so it seems to be all I do. And as for food, well, mostly I´m concentrating on producing milk, right now.
So it´s safe to assume that I´ll neglect the blogs a little, but I hope to bounce back at some point, and not stare at Pía´s toes for more than three hours on end.