Ramen in Madrid

Those afflicted by xenophilia (oh yes and and we´re linked to Gourmet magazine, how cool is that) and living in Madrid will be happy to know that at long last we have a ramen bar. It´s right behind Callao and you can amble in, take a peek at the giant bubbling stockpot, place your order, nibble a couple of rolls from the little train of sushi rolling by, and before you know it, have a giant bowl of soup placed before you.

This is truly good news. A place for really fast, really nourishing and good food, right in the middle of the most hectic shopping district, just where you might begin to feel faint from all the noise and the confusion.

Oishii, c/ Miguel Moya, 6 91 522 75 74 Metro Callao

Hard choices

My baby turned one yesterday. This means that she can now smear bits of her own birthday cake everywhere, and that she crawls with the speed of lightning. So we´d either have to watch her like hawks, or else take away most of the stuff in danger of toppling off onto her head.

Everything not strictly useful has been boarded up and carted away, and that includes my embarrassingly large cookbook collection. At first I was puritanical and fierce, and tought I´d only keep Nigella´s How to... books and my own notebooks.

Then I decided The improvisational cook could stay, too. And I´d probably need an all-purpose reference, so out came The Ballymaloe Cookery school book. By then my will had snapped, and I started to make little piles of survivors.

My rule: only stuff I really cook from. No fascinating but intimidating ethnic foods, no pretty but vague stuff, nothing too new, nothing too big.

Lindsey Bareham´s paperbacks, Nigel Slater´s Real fast food, Nina Simmond´s Noodles. For times when I want an exotic change of pace, Flatbreads and flavours. And Claudia Roden, of course. Imagine putting her in a box! No American baking books because of the meassurements, but the Barefoot Contessa stays because she´s just so friendly. Likewise The breakfast book, and The Joy of Cooking, which I would have packed up, but it turned out to have been propping up a lame chair and I only found it after the move, so it´s been allowed to stay.

My kitchen is still more full of books than most, but I feel virtous and monastic, and I´m looking at this select few with a new, loving eye, that promises happy hours spent with them.

We leave today for the beach and will be back around the 20th, so posting will probably be slacker than usual.

Smashed eggs

I live right in the centre of Madrid, on a reasonably picturesque street with a pretty mix of old brick buildings and trendy tatto parlours, independent bookshops, italian restaurants and ultra cool hairdressers. We also, this being Madrid, have a few bars, and a fair amount of night time traffic, but less than most surrounding streets.

This means that on weekends there are people walking around drunk and loud until more or less three or four. And that´s fine by me, until the high spirits become out and out vandalism. Walk along singing off tune and you´ll find I merely turn over and fall back asleep, but smash bottles under my window, or use thrash cans for a batucada, and you wake the dragon.

I go to the balcony and if they´re near enough, smash a couple of eggs into the offending group. This is all in the great Madrid tradition of "huevos estrellados", or smashed eggs: fried potatoes with fried eggs gently broken over them, so that the yellow yolk gets everywhere and you can have a proper cholesterol fest. Apparently the secret to making this, according to Lucio, the famous master of the smashed egg, is to make the egg over easy, not in masses of boiling oil. 

So there you are: urban violence and popular culture, all in the Sunday morning´s work. I just wish I could remember to buy cheap eggs for this, because it breaks my heart to waste good organic stuff.

Socca

I wish Madrid had the kind of weather that allowed one to amble down to the market to buy beautiful summer fruit and veg and then come home and cook up a storm. Sadly, you can shop or you can cook, but you can´t do both. It´s too hot to spend energy on more than one thing, and so, I laze around the kitchen, making sandwiches or maybe, if I´m feeling very active, salads (all that spinning, what a drag).

I did try this recipe of Sally Schneider´s for socca. It´s good, a crunchy, quick pancake that makes a good appetizer, and reminds me of the fried chickpeas in rebujina. Only worth making if locating chickpea flour isn´t a great hassle, though.

Portugal again

We´re spending a long weekend ambling around the beaches of the costa alentejana, where we were last spring. This time around it´s sunnier and hotter (though as cool as Estonia in August, easily) and we can swim in the cold waves.

We also eat the wonderful food, and that would be a good thing, except that I´ve decided that the Portuguese are either crazy or superheroes. The portions are so huge that we leave the table staggering and dazed. And I´m usually one who can pack away enough to keep a grown man on his feet on a Polar trek.

Ask for grilled fish and you will be brought a slice carved from Moby Dick, with a whole other dish of vegetables on the side, and salad. And all this after you´ve nibbled your way through bread and butter and cheese and olives as you wait (they´re generous, but they sure ain´t fast, you see).

So all I´m saying is: if you have any intention of having enough room to have coffee and a queijada or one of those little cream cakes, which you should, be sure to work up an appetite. 

More drawings here

Takeout fusion

Takeout fusion of the highest order. They used to serve this as an appetizer in No-Do, which was a very happenning restaurant in the mid-90´s.

Prawn crackers, the big, white, crunchy, very artificial looking Chinese snack, with salmorejo for a dip.

It´s as easy as blending some tomatoes and bread with olive oil and vinegar, and either frying up some crackers yourself or, much better, ordering them from a convenient restaurant that delivers. We are very happy to have a new one in the neighbourhood that´s so close and so efficient that food arrives piping hot and crunchy.

People go nuts for this, I warn you.

(And yes, again, the drawing has nothing much to do with it, but I like it, and it is sort of pink, like salmorejo)

Turning Japanese

How much Japanese cooking can a person do, who vows never to stuff, roll, or fry? Quite a lot, actually. Whenever I say I love to make  Japanese food, people eagerly say, "oh, you do sushi and tempura?". I fix them with a stony glare, or a pitying glance, or maybe just brush an infinitesimal speck of dust from my sleeve and say "there´s a lot more to Japanese food than tempura and sushi, you know. And no, I couldn´t do either of those to save my life".

I am broadminded in my definition of Japanese, and anything that has soy sauce and mirin and wasabi and sesame oil is Japanese enough for me. A scattering of sesame seeds over some white rice, eaten with chopsticks, and I´m there.

One of our favourite lazy dinners is a bowl of white rice topped with cut up omelette (made with a dash of sugar), slices of avocado, sesame seeds and a bit of nori. Dip the egg or avocado in soy sauce and there you are. A quick, beautiful, really quite Japanese looking dinner.

I might also marinate some defrosted salmon to go along with that, or throw in some smoked salmon, which always goes so well with avocadoes.

What I had never made is real sushi rice. I found the instructions intimidating. What with the kombu, and the soaking the special wooden instruments, and the soaking then resting the rice, and all that palaver of "gently fold the vinegar into the rice with one hand while you fan it with the other"...I mean to say, what? I need two hands to fold vinegar into rice if it´s not all to end up on the floor, thankyouverymuch. Fanning, indeed. No sir, I thought.

But yesterday the crushing heat of Madrid summer brought the solution. I have an electric fan in the kitchen, and what could be easier than mixing the vinegar-sugar-salt into the rice, inside a normal baking tray, while the electric fan did its sushi job and also made me not faint from the steam?

So there you go. Ignore the punctiliousness and the ritualistic stories and don´t let that Japanese aura of perfection put you off. After all, they invented those little junky packets of ramen, so shortcuts must be quite common in Japan. Just get yourself some mirin and soy and sesame oil and sake and start playing.

Leek and potato salad

Potatoes and leeks go together like Simon and Garfunkel, and it´s just a shame to limit their summer partnership to vichyssoise.
My favourite new thing is to add leeks vinaigrette to potato salad. Isn´t that somewhat brilliant? Raw onions are very popular in Spanish potato salads, but I hate to be reminded of my lunch all day long. Leeks, though, leeks are elegant and unobtrusive, and upgrade your humble potato salad.

So here it is:

Boil your potatoes as you would, and in another pan boil whole leek whites until tender but still with a bite.
Cut the warm leeks in shorter segments, mix them with the warm potatoes and add vinaigrette thinned down with a little water. Chopped boiled eggs and parsley can never go amiss.

Closed for the week

This is a post intended solely to turn everyone green with envy.
I am packing my brushes, pens, watercolour box, bottles, jars, papers and easel and setting off. I will be in La Granja, a beautiful place in the mountains. I am officially going to be working on a book about the gardens, but it will feel more like a picnic holiday.

The exhibition last month

For those kind souls who asked how it went, here are pictures of the opening, thronged, as you can see. The subject was culinary, as you might expect, and the portraits of famous brand names of the pantry bottled in gallon jars sold like churros. It was all perfectly loverly.