Burnt Onions

Untitled #69, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

Leave husband and one child alone for six days and you can be sure that the soups and vegetables you left, neatly labeled for their consumption, will be untouched. Yes, they have survived happily on pancakes with Nutella and scrambled eggs on bagels.
Obviously my first lunch on getting back was lentils and barley. Duh. Livened up with burnt onions, beautiful stuff. I´ll leave you with the post that sent me down that road, and dash. My life is very crazy and soon you´ll know why.

Madrid

Weekend in Madrid, friends and more friends. You walk into a bar at five in the afternoon to say hi and go straight home because you´re all fluey and ill, and leave at one in the morning, so happy to have sat there talking that you feel well after all.
Barcelona tomorrow.

Pressure cooked spareribs

I feel spring springing. The trees are still bare and stark against the sky, but there are tiny buds everywhere, and today, the sun is shining. Our garden is a mess of broken bits, torn bushes and ragged grass. A gardener would look at it and see the promise of flowers. I think of grills and barbecues.

However, this is Scotland, and I suspect snow is just around the corner, so here´s the preferred method for grilled meat right now. It also works for summer, though, since the two step method allows you to get ahead of the game and reduce the grilling time.

So. Get your spare ribs and marinate them. This is entirely up to you. I have my Southwestern moments and I have my Chinese moments, and they are both brilliant.
Put the ribs, cut into twos and threes, in a big freezer bag inside a bowl. Now add soy sauce, sherry, garlic, ginger, hoi sin sauce and a few red pepper flakes. Or, soy sauce, sherry, garlic, oregano and barbecue sauce and red pepper flakes.
Leave them in the fridge overnight, or for a couple of hours outside.

Now cut a corner in the bag and as much of the marinade as you can into a measuring jug. Add water or stock or beer or what you want so that you have 250 ml liquid.
Put that and the ribs inside the pressure cooker, bring the pressure up and give the meat 25 minutes.
This is step one. You can smear them with a bit more hoi sin sauce or barbecue sauce and put them under the grill until blistered and dark and sticky. Or you can do that the day after. This is very convenient.

As for the liquid in the pot, you´ll have just over a cup of the most insanely flavorful jelly.
I like to add water, boil it, add dried wakame, cooked noodles, whatever leftover scraps of ribs there are (there never are any, but you can try hiding a few before serving) and some mint or cilantro and spring onions.

This is good stuff, light and bright, and yet comforting while it´s still cold.

Genius crusty potato dumplings

I already did an in depth review of Kitchen, by Nigella Lawson, when it came out, but here´s another recipe from it. Not a recipe, really, just a stroke of genius. The sort of thing that is so brilliant in its simplicity that you almost think you came up with the idea yourself.

Pan fry shop bought gnocchi.

That´s it. No, it´s not rocket science, but you have to admit that it´s pretty darn clever. Those little doughy balls in the supermarket chill cabinet are 96% cooked potato. They just need to be tossed into a pan covered with a thin film of oil and left to crisp up, then tossed again and toasted on the other side.
Nigella says they are like mini rösti, which may be so. I think they are the perfect solution, since they can stay in the fridge for weeks until needed to bolster that bit of leftover stew, the not quite enough smoked fish, the lone grilled pork chop. Good stuff, try it.

Strawberry Syrup

Strawberry Syrup, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

you know perfectly well that it's too early for strawberries, even if they look pretty. So wait.
But if you fell into the trap, and came home with a lovely bunch of berries that turned out to be unyielding and tasteless, here's what you do.
Wash and hull them, then put them in a pan with some sugar, a splash of water and a slosh of balsamic vinegar. If you have one, squeeze an orange in there too.
Cook it over a medium flame until it's syrupy, glossy, and has turned a dark ruby red.
Wait for it to cool a little and eat with vanilla ice cream.
this is so good that you won't mind the hit and miss quality of so many strawberries

Caramel in the microwave

I make a lot of flan these days. Flan, and natillas/custard. A friend of J´s keeps hens, and every other week or so J turns up with a carton of muddy, enormous, gorgeous eggs.
If these eggs arrive when I´ve just bought some perfectly all right but otherwise unremarkable eggs from the shops, there are suddenly too many. So I just have to make a pudding with them, and keep the excellent eggs for poaching.

I make the flan in the pressure cooker, and will post the recipe, but for now, the discovery I´m happiest with. Caramel. That tricky, dangerous thing that I´ve always avoided. It can be made in the microwave, straight in the bowl you´ll use for the flan. isn´t that handy?

I use a soufflé bowl that holds about a litre. So put a couple of tablespoons of sugar in it, and a spoonful of water, and put it in the microwave. Give it twenty second bursts until it´s bubbling malevolenty, looks golden and smells delicious, a minute or so total.

That´s it.

Chicken with additives

I recently read an article about Spanish food, and once again I had to do the eye roll when I heard that old chestnut about "the very best ingredients, simply prepared".
There´s some truth in that, but it ignores skill. Skill, experience, a good hand, call it what you will; that´s the quality that´s going to make the food sing. Give an organic chicken to an inept cook and you may very well get a stringy, tasteless dishcloth in gravy. Give one of those Spanish grannies a battery horror and watch as she magics it into croquetas that will make you sing. Rest assured, she will have used factory eggs and shop bought crumbs for that crispy coating, and I am quite happy to bet a substantial sum that she won´t have used extra virgin olive oil to fry them.
The process, the cooking, the things that you add and the care that you take, they matter as much as the ingredients. I hate to think that there are people out there being discouraged when they hear that patter about organic birds and heirloom tomatoes, who think they might as well reach for the frozen pizza because they don´t have time to make a sourdough starter.

So anyway, here´s a recipe for chicken thighs. If I can find organic chicken thighs I buy them, but often I can only find free range, and most of the time not even that; my local supermarket carries something they say is guaranteed by some humane sounding association and only fed vegetables, but I doubt we´re talking about prize poultry here. Not that it matters, they really are delicious:

First, salt them well. Then put them in a freezer bag with a glug of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, some Sherry, a couple of smashed garlic cloves, a spoonful of sugar and some herbs; dried, to add insult to injury. I like oregano.
All these things are, of course, additives, but they are good things that you add yourself, and have no numbers or unpronounceable names. Their purpose, however, is the same; to amplify the flavor of your chicken.
Leave it in the fridge overnight, or just an hour out of it.

Roast in a 200ºC oven until crisp and golden, about 45 minutes, but do check, because ovens vary.
You can bake these on a bed of parboiled or boiled potatoes and they will be out of this world, having soaked up all that wonderful chicken fat.

Blues Away Salad

Blues Away Salad, originally uploaded by Lobstersquad.

it doesn't have to be stews and soups all the time, you know. this salad is guaranteed to lift your spirits and fill you up with good things and zingy energy.
The greens can be anything you like. I toss a bag of spinach, watercress and rocket with another one of something called Italian salad.
To this add orange, peeled and diced, avocado, ditto, and smoked mackerel (if you're in Spain, bacalao en aceite).
dress with a vinaigrette heady with sherry vinegar and if you want crunch, scatter a few seeds over it.
Good stuff, guaranteed.

A brilliant shortcut for lentil soup

I suppose the last person (possibly the first, too) to be excited by a pot of lentils was Esau. So I won´t say that this is exciting news, but, well it´s certainly changed the way I cook lentils, and that´s something.
It´s a trick I read about in the River Family Cookbook, and it couldn´t be simpler; add red lentils to your pot of brown lentil soup. Genius. Why?
Because the red lentils dissintegrate during cooking, which thickens the soup without your having to bring out the blender.
This works with any lentil soup recipe you might use. My usual method is to heat some oil in the pressure cooker and while it heats to chop a stick of celery, an onion, a clove of garlic and a carrot in the food processor. When this has softened slightly I add a cup of brown lentils and a cup of red lentils, a peeled potato, water to cover by about an inch, and a small bay leaf. I cover, bring up to pressure and leave it for ten minutes (some sources say less time but I hate a crunchy lentil).
You can start with bacon before the vegatables go in, or add chorizo or any sausage, but I like my lentils plain.
Once they´re cooked, add salt or stock powder, a dash of sherry, a knob of butter and a squeeze of lemon. Wonderful stuff.

Chocolate pudding

Forgive the cliché, but...what´s not to like in chocolate pudding? In Spain we call it natillas de chocolate, and I´d never consider it in a romantic dinner. This is strictly children´s food, the sort that the adults love to find at the back of the fridge, or steal from unsuspecting toddler´s plates.

I make it in the Thermomix, because it´s just very very convenient. You dump, the machine stirs, and when it´s over you pour it and let it cool. If you top it with whipped cream it becomes the ur version of the Copa Danone, beloved of Spanish children.
The hardest part is hiding it from children (and husband) until it´s properly cool. I dare say it´s very easy to make by hand, but I´m not sure I´m up for the careful stirring for minutes on end. I´d make chocolate mousse instead.
For a more adult and punchy flavour, try this malted version of Sally Schneider´s.

This makes four or five portions.

Put 50 gr of chocolate in the bowl and chop it with a few pulses of the turbo button.
Now add 30 gr. of cornstarch, 500 ml. of full fat milk, 50 gr. sugar and a pinch of salt. Program 8 minutes, 90 degrees, speed 3.
Now add a few drops of vanilla extract and give it a further two minutes with no heat, so it cools down a little.
Pour into a big bowl or ramekins, and if you hate the skin that will form, cover it with clingfilm.

The actual pudding is best enjoyed cold, but nobody said you had to wait to lick the bowl.