Hay Hay It’s Donna Day #4

Now I won´t deny that I´m quite fascinated by the Donna Hay look. And by all the very talented people out there, who not only do the stuff but actually photograph it , and make it look just as good. Amazing.
I have a fair few of Donna´s books, and I love looking at them, but more in the spirit in which I read Vogue. I wouldn´t take Vogue into a changing room, and I don´t normally cook from Donna´s books.
It´s the gorgeousness, see. All that pristine whiteness, with the perfectly balanced colours, with just a tiny splash of sauce on the rim, to show the humanity.
But I do love them, and if there was a way to buy the magazine in this country, I´d have a stack.
Since the theme for the  Hay Hay it´s Donna Day #4, hosted by Bron Marshall, is bruschetta, and not some glorious baked good, beautifully iced and spiced, I´ve decided to give it a go.

Here in Spain the bruschetta, as toasted bread with a savoury topping, was always referred to as a tostada. Then at some point in the 80´s it acquired the more pretentious monicker "tosta", which slightly annoys me. Now places that want to sound honest-to-goodness call them "panes". Tostada is only breakfast toast now.

I don´t often make a whole baguette and serve it to a multitude. My bruschetta antics are more of the dinner for two or three variety, served with a salad and a bowl of soup.

My favourite ingredient for a tosta or bruschetta is  onion jam. Smeared on the bread,it will transform and elevate the lowliest leftover piece of beef, lonely roast tomato, or dried up bit of cheese.

The perfect quick lunch is a goat´s cheese and onion jam bruschetta.
You toast a slice bread, of a country loaf type, drizzle some olive oil, and spread some of the jam.
Two slices of goat´s cheese go on top, and are sprinkled with black pepper.
A quick flash under the grill and you have something crusty, golden, sweet-sour and totally marvelous whatever the season.

The other, Tosta de Piquillos y Ventresca, is a store cupboard standby.
This time the bread is rubbed with garlic, drizzled with a very little oil, and then piled with slippery smoky almost sweet piquillo peppers from a jar. On top go a few slivers of ventresca, that tuna conserve made from the fatty underbelly. The merest splash of balsamic vinegar, and you´re in business.
You can use any normal good canned tuna, of course, but ventresca is le dernier cri for this sort of mixture right now.

My latest crush

I never thought I could turn my back on my first love, the one singled out to be the love of my life. But it seems I can. I´m in the middle of a love-affair. It could be just a fling, but I don´t think so. Maybe I can juggle both loves?

See, I adore Nigella. She was the first, and the best. I bought "How to eat" when my cookbook collection numbered five or six volumes. The skies opened, angel voices floated down , I saw shining lights everywhere, and walked in a daze to the market to buy cartloads of chicken bones.

But now, well, I´ve got this huge crush on Lindsey Bareham. I can´t help it. I love N, but by now I know her books off by heart, and I need a little novelty. And Linsdey is not unlike Nigella, in that she´s British, and chatty. Her books are full of good old stodgy stuff like shepherd´s pie, but won´t let you down if you´re in the market for cous cous and tom yam soup. And they´re very well written, and entertaining, so you can read them for their own sakes, never cooking from them.

The first Lindsey book I bought was A celebration of soup . It´s one of those Penguin paperbacks that have no photos, and can be carried around in a pocket. There are recipes for every kind of soup you can think of, and many stews, and every sort of stock. That´s to be expected, but she ups the ante and also gives every sort of complement and addition. Dumplings, herb pastes, little pies and breads, there´s so much in there, you could cook for a whole year and not be bored.

I loved it straight away, but was a bit intimidated by the stern instructions on using aything other than home-made broth. However, I did one of the four or five mushroom soups listed using a cube, and it was totally perfectly delicious.

That book could have kept me occupied for ages, but you know how it is. One day you´ve worked very hard and are pretty bored, but still at the computer, waiting for an email. You click into Amazon because, well, why not? And then you run amok. Of course.

I bought three other of her books. This is where you can see I´m in the throes of a violent crush. You don´t need four books by the same author. Nobody can write that much without repeating things. But if you´re in love, you won´t mind hearing the same old story over and over. Maybe.

Of the three I bought, I thoroughly recommend The Fish Store.

It´s the book of a real home cook, rather than a cookbook author, with recipes that could suit every occasion. But here you get the feeling that the occasions are mostly friends and family tucking in after a long day out on the rocky beach.
And you feel that things are there because they´ve been done a million times for real people. Not in a test kitchen, and nothing included to round the thing off with the trendy ingredient du jour.

You can read more about it  here, and check out a couple of recipes.

There are plenty of shortcuts, and yes, cubes. Lindsey owns up to being a stock snob at the time of writing A celebration of soup, but to have mended her ways. That made me feel much easier.

Yesterday we had "Cheat´s pissaladiére".
It´s a tart, which is bad in this scorching weather. But it´s just as good cold as hot, so you can make it in the morning when you´re energetic and it´s not too hot, and then enjoy the fruits of your labour for lunch or dinner. And my oven was on, because of the brownies, so I figured, why not?
It´s as simple as this: pre-heat the oven to 200ºC. Roll out 350 grams of puff pastry to fit a baking tray. Prick with a fork so it won´t rise.
Spread over the 400gr can of fried onions ( this is what I found in my market, and it´s excellent).Cut the anchovies from a 50 gr. tin lengthways, so you have about 12/14 pieces. Distribute along the pastry, in x shapes if you can be bothered. Dot with about 20 black olives.
Leave in the oven for 20 minutes or so, until the pastry is puffed and golden.

It´s seriously good. Next time, I´ll try it with a proper home made pizza dough base.

Another burger

Long time readers of this blog may think they´re having a case of déjà vu.
True, this post is almost identical to  this one.
Well, bear with me. I don´t do these drawings because I have any lofty artistic aim. I do it to keep myself from going crazy while they take their time bringing the food. At Alfredo´s they don´t hold with the fast food thing, and they play 80´s music videos, non stop. Clearly, I need some occupational therapy while I wait. I´m bitchy when I´m hungry, and this is the result.
My BLT was as good as ever. Edu had the Bacon y queso. José went exotic with the Kofta burguer.
Very nice.
After, we walked to el Corte Inglés, where I bought Lindt 70% cocoa cooking chocolate. I need it for a brownie I´ll be making for  Le Blog´s terrace shindig tomorrow. Aren´t I a good friend, baking in this heat?

Berenjenas China Crown

China Crown used to be my favourite Chinese restaurant in Madrid. It´s good, unfussy, unexpensive, and did my favourite dish of aubergines in the whole world. I can´t remember what they were called, but they were hot and spicy and I loved them.
When they took them off the menu I stopped going. It´s a lovely restaurant, and I recommend it, but it´s way uptown, and what´s the point, without these aubergines?(Dim sum, actually. I really miss their dim sum. Will go soon)

I looked everywhere for a recipe, but couldn´t find anything that sounded exactly like it.
One day, last book fair, I bought a stack of cookbooks for the doubtful reason that they cost three euros.They didn´t look so good, and actually they really weren´t anything special. But. There was a recipe for Sechuan aubergine that looked quite similar. After some tweaking, I turned it into a very close approximation. You can imagine my happiness.

I´d always been a bit nervous of aubergines, having had a few disasters with them. But this recipe is foolproof, and entirely delicious.
The aubergines are chopped into chunky bite sized pices, and simmered with a sauce made of stock and a few condiments.
After twenty minutes, they turn smooth and silky, dark, slippery, so smooth they´re almost gooey, and dissappear in your mouth. Serve on a mound of the plainest steamed white rice, and enjoy the mix of the bland and the explosive.

The aubergines in the picture are some oriental ones I bought at the Mostenses market last week, but usually I do it with our
normal baloon shaped ones.

China Crown Aubergines

500gr. aubergines, cut in chunks
2 tbs. oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tbs. julienned ginger
4 spring onions, sliced
1 red chili, chopped
250 gr. minced pork

And for the sauce (which you mix first of all)
3 teaspoons garlic and black bean paste (original recipe calls for garlic chili paste but I´m a chili wimp)
2 tbs. sherry
2 tbs. soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons vinegar ( I use sherry vinegar)
250 ml. stock (half a cube and water)
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil.

Heat a wok or a deep saucepan with a lid. Add the oil, and sautee the ginger,garlic, chili and spring onions. After a minute, add the meat, break up the chunks and let it lose the pink colour.
Add the aubergines, stirfry for a couple of minutes. Add the sauce, bring to the boil and then reduce the heat , cover, and leave to simmer for 20 or so.
When the aubergines are soft, you´re done.
I usually add a little cornstarch at the end to thicken the sauce.
Be careful with the salt, leave it for the end, because the stock and the black bean paste are very salty.

Postcard event

I´ve never taken part in a blog event before. I have so many deadlines to meet that I feel that would just about do me in.
But then I read about this one on  Ivonne´s blog, and knew it was the blog event for me. Blogger Postcards from the World , organized by Meeta at  What´s for Lunch Honey .
It promises to flood the world with food blogger postcards zooming all over the place.
I love it when people leave comments on the box, but the idea of an actual tangible postcard, well, that is in another league altogether, almost up there with Christmas morning.
Be quick to sign up, because the final list has to be ready by July 28th.

Amsterdam panini

I´ve struggled against having a sandwich press for a long time. My kitchen is big and airy, but doesn´t have a lot of cupboard space, and what there is is very cluttered. There´s really no room for anything else, and it doesn´t help that I buy so many little gadgets and jars and tins of exotic ingredients.

But one day I gave in. There was a spare little press at my mother´s house, just begging to find a new home.It´s not the fancy kind with removable plates for easy cleaning, and it´s small, only for a single loaf-bread sandwich.

But already I love it.

There´s no end to the combinations. My golden rule was anything goes, as long there´s a lot of cheese to melt and go stringy. But even that can be ignored, as in these excellent  olive paste and tuna panini by the Wednesday Chef.

However, the house favourite is still what we call the Amsterdam Sandwich, which is as un-Dutch as you can go.
Last summer we spent a long weekend in Amsterdam, where we fell in love with a little hole in the wall italian sandwich bar. It was on a broad street in the museum quarter, and had a couple of benches where you could munch your food and watch the leisurely bicycle traffic roll by.
You made your sandwich to order, and of course J doesn´t know the meaning of restraint, so his usual was a delicious hotch potch of ingredients.
This is the approximation I make here, and a pretty good ersatz panino it is.

White loaf bread
serrano ham (doesn´t have to be the all-out amazing stuff), sliced very thin
fresh mozzarella (ditto about amazingness)
 roast tomatoes
 black olives
pesto

It´s quite a mess, but because this kind of machine presses the edges, nothing is allowed to escape from the sandwich. When you take it to the plate, you can´t tell what´s inside until you slice it, and the mozzarella oozes all over, and the basil and tomatoes aroma wafts up.
A winner.

The drawing is a sketch from a trip to Amsterdam in 1998.

A quick dinner for five

It´s not only I who am stressed and at my wit´s end with the heat of summer and the pressure of all the workload that has to be handed in before August.
My friends are all like that, too, or so it seems. We exchange a lot of emails that usually end with a hopeless "we really should get together sometime".
And then yesterday, magically, we decided to finally go ahead,and have dinner at my house. The decision was taken at 8, so there was just enough time to go to the market before they closed. I rushed out to buy ice , tonic and lemons, which would be needed no matter what, and ran over menu possibilities on the way there.
I´d have loved to try something new or spectacular, but there was really no time, so I opted for trusted warhorses ; focaccia, green beans in vinaigrette, and a pasta salad.
It´s a menu that can be done a few hours in advance. This time I didn´t have hours, but I did want half an hour´s quiet before they arrived, enough for a shower at least.
The first thing was to make the focaccia dough, and leave at least half an hour´s rising time. With the Thermomix that´s just a matter of pressing a few buttons.
While it rested, I boiled the beans, mixed the vinaigrette with some bottled mayo, sliced the tomatoes, and chopped the chalottes.
As the pasta boiled, I also found time to grate cucumbers and chop mint for a raita-ish dip with a bit of cumin and sesame thrown in.
Once all this was done, I put the focaccia in the oven and went off to breathe a little.
The dough didn´t rise as it should have. Maybe I didn´t leave it long enough, or maybe it was too hot in the kitchen. Probably the yeast was a bit old, having been in my freezer four months. So it was crusty and brittle, but tasted very good.
It was good to see everyone before we all disperse for the summer.
Btw, that drawing is nothing like us , of course, but the kitchen is very vaguely inspired on mine, which has red walls too.

Pasta salad
adapted from the Ballymaloe cookery course

250 gr. pasta in a smallish shape
2 big jars of beans, preferably dark, and if possible, two different kinds, for a prettier effect
200 gr. tuna in olive oil
Chopped parsley, and some other herbs if you like (chives are good)
Vinaigrette , as much as you like

Ideally, you should mix the vinaigrette some hours before, and leave the beans soaking in it. They will drink it up, and be very flavourful and very cold. When you add the hot pasta and toss them together, they both achieve the perfect temperature. Then all you do is throw in the chopped herbs and the tuna.
This can sit around for quite a while, but be sure to check for seasoning before you serve it. It seems to soak up vast amounts.

Bonito encebollado : white tuna in dark onion sauce

Lately my life is one of being tied to my desk all day. When I do leave the house in the daytime, it´s to run short errands. But I can never resist going into the market, just to see what´s there.
The other day I wandered in, aimlessly, just because I´d been to the bank and I had a vague idea of buying some fruit.
And then I saw the freshest, most beautiful looking bonito (white tuna, albacore). I had to have it.
Rashly, without thinking, I asked the fishmonger to cut it into chunks, as for marmitako.
Once home, I was sorry, because it would have been heavenly as a big slice,marinated in soy sauce and mirin, and then lightly grilled. But it was too late for that.
I was put off the marmitako, in a fit of pique with myself, so I had to think of another way to do it.
Bonito encebollado came to mind. It´s one of those brilliant ideas, a very simple dish that only requires a bit of patience to do, and pays back a thousand times.
It´s also pretty good for doing ahead. You can make the onion sauce in the morning when it´s still cool, and only do the fish when you want to eat.

You chop a ridiculous amount of onions. For 500 grams of fish, I´d say about 4 or 5 big ones. Peel and slice thinly, or chop. Heat a big skillet or sautee pan with enough olive oil to cover the bottom. Add the onions, and let them cook slowly. When they´ve been there for 15 minutes, I like to add a heaped spoonful of brown sugar.
After 30 minutes or so, they should be caramelized and dark. Add 200 ml of oloroso sherry, or some other generous wine that´s not very sweet. If it is, then don´t add sugar before.

Leave to boil away, and when it´s a dark syrupy mess, add the salted tuna chunks, and grind black pepper over. When they´re white on one side, that´s in seconds, turn them over, leave for a minute, and then cover and turn the fire off. The residual heat will cook the fish, and it will be perfect in five minutes. It´s important not to leave it dry.

Serve with plain white rice.

Quantities for two hearty eaters (aka outright pigs) or three normal people.

Icy drinks the size of a house

Can you beleive that only last year Starbuck´s was a relatively new and unimportant phenomenon in this town? You wouldn´t think so to see it now. There are like five of them in the Gran Vía alone. It´s kind of weird, and makes that bit in the Austen Powers movie about their taking over the world quite plausible.
When they opened, I thought , who will pay 5.70€ for a bucket of frozen milk? Well, who knew.
My sister Gadea says they´re so full because they´re the only places in Spain where it´s possible to sit sipping coffee without someone else very close eating garlicky chorizo and smoking cheap cigars. She has a point.
For me , these days their most alluring bait is the air conditining, by far.
I´m quite taken with their iced lattes. When I feel the urge for an ice cream but want to be mildly virtuous, I get myself an iced latte with skimmed milk.
The only thing I really hate is the whole palaver. You have to be so firm, otherwise you end up with lots of things you don´t want, like vanilla syrup, or extra shots , or the super gigantic size or who knows what.
The thing that´s quite fun is using my fake name of Maria Luisa. It´s so much quicker than going into a whole lengthy explanation of why I write Ximena with an x.

Let´s Do It

"In Spain the best
upper sets
do It

Lithuanians and Latts
do It
let´s do It
let´s fall in love..."

It takes a genius the size of Cole Porter to come up with a lyric that jumps all the way from Spain to Latvia in a sentence, don´t you think?

We´ve had a stroke of genius too, and for our holiday this year, we´re going to Estonia and Latvia.

After much mulling over, we came to the conclusion that it was the only place for us.
It´s different, even mildly exotic.It won´t break our bank. There´s plenty of coastline, but most of it is wild and empty-ish. The landscape is beautiful, but there are no hills, so I don´t have to throw hissy fits and refuse to climb. There´s plenty of history, and lots of old cities and castles, but none of the kind of museums that demmand setting up camp inside for a day, and make J groan.
I´m sure the food is great. My German blood is pretty submerged most of the time, but whenever I´m around rye bread or anything smoked, it bubbles up inmediately. I´ll be in heaven.

Yesterday, after shopping for mosquito repellent and road maps, we had a beer at  La ardosa . There, they serve a tapa that would do Cole Porter proud, in mixing the Mediterranean and the Baltic. A big pickled cucumber, sliced and filled with a bit of red pepper and an anchovy. They also have pickled herrings. The rest of the menu is fully Spanish, and very good.
It´s one of the oldest bars in Madrid, and very beautiful. One day I´ll have to go and draw it slowly, but for now, you can have a look at the tapa.