Hot sauce for ice cream

Here are two useful recipes for Christmas. One is the stuffed chicken we do every year. Provided you have a good butcher who will debone the bird, it´s not difficult at all. It feeds a crowd and makes the house smell wonderful during the long baking time.It´s an essential part of our family Christmas, together with the film "Donavan´s Reef", which we always watch as the chicken cooks, after a siesta.

For more impromptu entertaining, the best thing to have always on hand is a block of basic elemental own-brand vanilla ice cream. If you have chocolate biscuits, make ice cream sandwiches. If not, a hot sauce tastes great and looks like you went to a lot of effort.

I always eyeball the hot sauce, so can´t help very much with quantities, but it´s something like this:

1 heaped spoonful of Nutella
50 gr. dark chocolate, chopped
a generous glug of cream

melt this in a saucepan, pour into a jug. If you have any, toast nuts briefly in a frying pan to scatter over.
If you have no Nutella, peanut butter can do. If you have no cream, a bit of butter and a splash of milk will do beautifully. And if you have any bonbons or chocolate bars around, chop them and throw them in at the end, so they melt but not all the way.

The ultimate lemon bar

First off, a new discovery: I have a food writer cousin in Palm Beach! She does great stuff, so go check it out. This is not one of those Spanish stretches of the word cousin, either, but an actual relative. We are both descended from same the great-grandmother who made American style biscuits for tea in Bilbao.

Simon Hopkinson says that good cooking is one third talent, one third skill, and one third good taste.
I think that´s probably true for high-end creative chefs. But for the rest of lowly mortals, it´s one third skill and two thirds repetition.
Take these lemon bars. They are without question the most wonderful morsels of tangy-sweet deliciousness known to mankind, but they didn´t start out this way. I tried several versions, all of which were good, but not quite as good as I hoped. Finally, after tweaking and trying and making them several times, I am now convinced that I have the ultimate lemon bar.

The biscuit base is from Belinda Jeffrey´s "Mix and bake". The lemon curd is from Donna Hay´s "Modern Classics 2". Both have been tampered with by yours truly, and adapted for that versatile and trusty old machine, the Thermomix 31*.

The ultimate lemon bar

Preheat the oven to 180º, and make the base

225 gr. flour
180 gr. butter
80 gr. sugar
zest of one lemon
pinch of salt

Put them in that order in the Th, program 15 seconds, speed 6. Turn out and let rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. It´s so buttery that it can be hard to work, so I just squish it into a 30x23 cm. tin, lined with greaseproof paper, and hope for the best.
Bake until pale golden, about 25'.

Meanwhile, make the custardy lemon filling.
Put 6 eggs,
1 and 1/2 tablespoonfuls of cornstarch
1 cup sugar**
1 cup lemon juice
zest of the lemons used for the juice
200 ml. cream

in the bowl. Program 5 minutes, speed 4, 80ºC.

This makes more than you´ll need for the size of tin. You can either do the complicated sums needed to cut down the recipe to four eggs, or have a bit of a lick-the-bowl fest, and still have some left for a couple of sweet little ramekins.

Let it cool a little, and spread it over the pastry base. Put in the oven for five minutes to set a bit more, then take it out and leave to cool.

To serve, dust with icing sugar and cut into squares. If you make the squares very small, nobody will even consider doing that annoying polite "oh, no I couldn´t" thing. They´ll come back for more and more.

*If you´re making them without machinery the best way to go will be to make the base as you would shortbread, and the filling as you would custard.

**I like my lemon desserts tart and not overly sweet, so just for your information, I will point out that the original filling in Belinda´s book called for two cups of sugar, and Donna for only 3/4 cup lemon juice.

Prunes in Pedro Ximenez syrup

Prunes have a bad rep. I don´t know why this should be so, but it is. Maybe it´s better if you think of them as dried plums? After all, plums are popular, beautiful, exciting little things with a short season and a winning nature. Prunes are their unglamorous spinster aunt, maybe, but still and all, they´re the spinster aunt of an exciting family, and I love them.

This is my adaptation of a Nigella Lawson recipe. She makes it with Marsala, but of course I use Pedro Ximénez, and so should you. It´s a wine made with rasins, so it goes particulary well with prunes. The result is a strong, dark Rembrandt-brown shiny compote. The fruit is chewy on the outside and smooth inside, and the syrup is beautiful and spicy, and you´ll have plenty to drizzle over yogurt and cereal once the fruit is finished.

Prunes in Pedro Ximenez syrup

Make 500 ml of tea (Earl Grey preferred but any black one will do).
Put it in a saucepan with a strip of orange peel, a star anise, a clove and a stick of cinammon. Add 80 gr. of brown sugar and 100 ml of Pedro Ximenez.
Bring to the boil and put in the plums (prunes, I mean). Simmer for 20 minutes.

Leave it to cool and wait at least 24 hours. It gets better and better, all winey and dark and sticky. N says to serve it with custard, but that´s overkill. Fridge cold yogurt cuts the richness perfectly.

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.