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Leaving Ibiza

2011-07-25T16:13:00.007+02:00

Corn Dogging

I am not sure what that expession means but I have heard it in films. Corn dogging? Don’t sound so nice. I have also heard of corn holing and whilst not compleately certain as to its exact meaning either, I have a fairly good idea of what it might refer to. It is not really the subject for a polite food blog but it does lead me into mentioning that my brother Saul refuses to eat sweet corn on account of its effects in the latrine the next morning. He never misses a chance to advise me to ‘chew well’ when eating sweet corn.

So, corn, yes. Tricky subject. Potenially unpleasant. Funny given how it sustains a good proportion of the world’s population.

Sweetcorn is heaven if it is good. The English boil it, cover it with butter then hopefully eat it, though who knows with the internet these days. The Spanish grill it and spinkle it with sugar. They too then eat it. Both ways are delicious but I would always go with the English way if I were to have to choose. It would be difficult to prove that it was more than just familiarity and longing that makes me feel this way but I am convinced it is nicer. But then butter is just so uttely wonderful.

God knows what the Greeks do with it. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Clam chowder with sweetcorn is pure and unadulterated heaven. Without question it is one of His recipes. Made with Ibiza potatoes and Carril clams the dish becomes a gateway to Nirvana. But don’t forget to chew.

What is not heaven though and has no credibility whatsoever is tinned sweetcorn. Not on pizzas, not in soups, not in salads and absolutely, definitely not as an accompaniament to one of the finest shellfish available to man – the Ibiza Red Prawn. I have gone on about these little mothers at length elsewhere so lets just leave it that they are good. They are also expensive. Very expensive. €120 a kilo in the restaurant we were eating them at the other day. €34 for 4 prawns. Now that’s a lot, but so it should be, as they are heavenly and these were particlularly big mothers. Sadly mine were a little under cooked, the flesh where the tail meets the head was just too translucent and flaccid. But I can forgive this; it is better than them being overcooked. But what I cannot, will not forgive is serving these kingly things with a salad finished with tinned sweetcorn. Putting low grade processed foodstuffs on the same plate with such quality, freshness and excellence is an abomination. The chef should have his fingers cut off and be put in the stocks for the rest of the season. The public should be allowed to throw the unopened tins of corn at him. That might make him think twice.

Why would you do such a thing? It simpy beggars belief.

Its a bit like leaving Ibiza

thrashing pop

2011-07-14T23:06:00.003+02:00

Note Number Three

I have been thrashing pop for 100 Catalans. The event was a to celebrate the continuing life of a very old salty sea dog that had been pulled into the depths of cancer hell by a humongous octopus. He had lopped off the tentacles though and had prevailed against this appallingly common disease. A year later he is as fit as a fiddle and wanted to mark the occasion with family and friends by consuming the fear that had embodied itself in the form of an octopus.

Pop is the Catalan name for octopus. It is a nice name but perhaps not so descriptive as its English counterpart. The dish he wanted to eat was similar to the Catalan dish pop amb patatas but there was no way on earth I was going to let on to any of the diners that it had anything to do with a native dish. I had to describe it as a dish from the outer Hebrides that had certain similarities with their version. Had I let on that it was anything to do with the Catatalan version I would have had a fairly unpleasant time of it. If there is one thing that Catalans cannot or will not agree on, it is how to cook any dish, let alone if some jumped up foreign git ie me, was doing it on their turf. No, I had to dissimulate.

The pop had been ordered form a local fisherman a few days previously and when my accomplice went to pick it up, it turned out the fisherman had sold it to others. This meant that we could only get half the required amount from him the next day. The fisherman had obligations to his restaurants. Never mind his obligation to el meu amic. This in turn meant that there was more potato than pop so whilst I was cooking it I had to explain to the sceptical onlookers that the Outer Hebrideans were potato fanatics and the octopus in their version was more of a flavouring than anything else, that the star of the show was the potato. The potato that sucked up and absorbed the stock and tomato sofrito. To confuse my audience still further I explained that the potatoes had flown with me that day from Ibiza. They were agog with admiration. That I had travelled with 10 kilos of Ibiza potatoes as hand luggage earned their respect and they left me in peace a little after that. A little. Fortunately in the glow of there approval I did not relent and tell them I was making pop amb patatas. That would have been fatal.

A word to the wise – if ever you are cooking a paella and there is anyone with a thimble of spanish blood in their veins in the vicinity tell them you are cooking rice. Do not, for God’s sake call it a paella. It will ruin your day.

Leaving Ibiza

2011-07-09T10:50:00.002+02:00

Note number two:

The grill restaurants will be difficult to leave behind too. Such easy going, no frills quality. My favourites are Cas Pages and Can Pilot. I love Can Pilot. The chuleton, their speciality, varies from ok to really good. You order it for a minimum of two; they slice it off the bone into thick ribbons, season it heavily with rock salt and bring it to the table raw. At the same time a mini bbq is placed in the middle of the table. The charcoal is at exactly the right stage for grilling – glowing red embers beneath a coating of white ash. The waiter tells you to be careful in the same way a he might tell you a plate is hot. The difference is this is so hot you could brand yourself on it. British health and safety inspectors would have a fit.

So there you are, sitting at a table with your own bbq, smoke billowing up into the hesion draped ceiling and then out of the windows filling the village with its wafts of meaty fumes. It is an enjoyable way of eating and because it is potentially dangerous it is a great place to take children.

DIY BBQ is not the only option - the chugletas are excellent; and the baby rabbit, gazapo(?) is unbeatable, its tiny kidney a particular treat; the fried potatoes are superb; I believe they even do fish (quite why I couldn’t tell you). And if the meat is particularly good then you could just forgoe the bbq and eat it raw. I don’t do it much but I do do it often - there is something pleasantly primal about it.

Leaving Sa Nansa

2011-07-04T23:50:00.003+02:00

Come in Number 9. Your time is up.

Shit. We have been here for 10 years and it is time to get along. The years have been good. Really good, but we only meant to stay for 2. Now we are leaving so I gotta take note.

Note Number One

This might be the thing I find most difficult of all to leave behind - long, lazy, late sunday lunches.

Going out for lunch in Ibiza at 3 oclock is hard to beat and will be impossible to replicate in UK. The only places that will be open at that time will be all you can eat student/tourist troughs - grey, cold and drizzly affairs to mirror the weather. Gone the espardenyas, gone the gamba roja, gone the rice, the whole baked Zeus Faber, the patatas a lo pobre. Shit.

Rabbit and snail paella

2010-12-16T11:24:00.005+01:00

This is another fully hardcore dish. They say it is the original paella, devised by field hands in the province of Valencia making use of ingredients that were readily available – snails and rabbits. Who knows and frankly, who cares? It is a nice story and that is really all that counts.

Because there is something so full on about these two ingredients being placed together in the same dish I wanted to up the ante and make it really strong. Firstly I chopped loads of garlic and dried chilli and fried them in a nice pool of olive oil till crisp and the garlic golden. The oil was then drained* and used as the base for the sofrito into which I added……..yes, you got it……….loads more chilli and garlic. As soon as it began to sizzle I added masses of rosemary and pimenton, stirred it and added some chopped onion and very small diced carrot. I never add these two ingredients to paellas but I wanted to see what would happen today, more of which later. When all this was good and sweated, I added a tin of tomatoes (another ingredient I rarely add to the paella, generally favouring grated fresh tomato) and cooked it down until reduced to a wet paste consistency.

I now put the paella pan on the ring and heated yet more olive oil. Into this I tipped the seasoned rabbit and fried that segregated mother till golden. When it was good and brown I added the snail, masses more rosemary and a few bay leaves.

Whilst this was going on I asked Lucrezia and Fanny to whip me up an allioli. I allowed them to use my pestle and working together they mounted this thick yellow sauce with great ease.

I added the rice and toasted that until vaguely translucent, then poured in the sofrito. When this was all good and mixed up, I added the stock and 2 dessert spoons of allioli and mixed it up some more. I checked the seasoning, shook it around a bit and cooked it on medium till the liquid had all but evaporated. I now turned up the heat (to 11) and and cooked out the rest of the liquid waiting for that crisp frying sound that indicates 2 things: the rice is ready and the socarrat has been acheived. The socarrat is the slightly blackened, crisp ricey bit stuck to the pan; one of God’s greatest gifts to man.

The result was good. Very good. But very very strong, particularly if eaten with copious allioli. The infused oil added a powerful undertone of heat and potency to the rice but the snails and rabbit themselves were sweet and smokey due to the pimenton. The onion however was a mistake. The rice was too soft and this was due to the excess liquid that the onion brings the party. No good. No more onion. The carrot, strangely, worked really well and I will repeat it at some point. Maybe.

On the whole this dish just added further proof to my iron clad belief that paella is on of the greatest dishes available to mankind. One day it will rise out of the mire of being nothing but a tourist attraction.

*If you have them to hand, toast some almonds in a pan with a bit of olive oil and salt and once cooled add discarded crispy bits. You will be glad you did.

Biscuits from Heaven

2010-11-18T18:45:00.003+01:00

Each day of the week the boys have to take a midmorning snack to school. Monday yoghurt; Tuesday sandwich, Wednesday fruit; Thursday biscuit; Friday dowhatchalike. At a quarter past eight this morning I realised that it was biscuit day and the biscuit tin was empty. I have been promising myself that I would get into the habit of making biscuits and stop giving them the shit that is generally available. One of the primary reasons being I just don’t trust big food corporations to do right by us.

I have also been promising them that we will find a biscuit recipe we like and make them together, become expert at them, be able to make them blind folded. They liked this idea and I have failed to produce the goods for weeks, months probably. But today was different. Today I said NO! Enough! The buck (biscuit) stops here! As I say it was 8.15 and we had to leave at 8.47 at the latest. I grabbed a recipe I know is good and started. 32 minutes later I placed a tray of cooling biscuits in the back of my car. Not just any biscuits either. No. These are biscuits you would not be ashamed to serve to God.

We ate some in the car on the way to school. The cooling biscuits held the still liquid chocolate suspended within it. The outside rim was crunchy and the centre chewy. They were sweet but with that essential undertone of salt. All this in 35 minutes. Boy, was I popular with them kids.

90g brown sugar

45g white sugar

125g butter

125g of chocolate chopped up

1 egg

125g flour

½ tspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ tspoon salt

Get your oven warmed up. 180ºC with fan. Warm that butter and cream it with the sugars. Stir in the chocolate and beat in the egg (we didn’t have an egg so used water). Stir in the flour, salt and bicarb. Bring all together.

Spoon out walnut sized blobs onto baking sheets and bake for 12mins. No matter what you do or what your oven says they will not all cook regularly so just go with it. They are ready when golden on the outside. Remove them and hang around the kitchenette until they have cooled. Then eat them

Sunday Morning Coming Down

2010-11-13T08:36:00.002+01:00

Kids love anchovies. Despite all evidence to the contrary - retching, tears, escape – kids really do love anchovies. They just don’t know it yet.

When I refer to anchovies I don’t mean those hairy slithers of brown salt paste baked on to the top of pizzas nor do I mean bog standard supermarket anchovies. No, I mean the real thing. Spanish anchovies from Cantabria or by preference Anchoas de Escala form the Catalan coast. These last ones really are the king of anchovies. You can get them already cleaned, filleted and packed in olive oil or you can buy them whole and packed in salt. Obviously it is far less fiddly to buy the fillets and I am not sure whether the taste and texture benefits outweigh the ease. UNLESS OF COURSE IT IS SUNDAY MORNING. If that is the case then you need:

1 jar of Anchoas de Escala packed in salt

1 packet of salted crisps (not kettle – too crunchy)

Olive oil

Flour

Dark vermouth (In order of preference – “vermut” bought from a one eyed hunchback in Barcelona; Punt e Mes; Martini Rosso)

Soda water

Ice

Lemon

A version of Sunday Morning Coming Down by Kris Kristofferson (KK)

A version of Sunday Morning Coming Down by Johnny Cash (JC)

A version of Sunday Morning Coming Down by Willie Nelson (WN)

Begin recipe on Saturday night by drinking enough to achieve an appalling hangover. On Sunday start by putting on the KK version of Sunday Morning Coming Down then put ice, lemon and a generous double double measure of Vermouth in a tall glass and top up with soda water. Gulp it down and make another.

Next find a sunny corner and begin the anchovies. Sipping all the while, take them out one by one. Squeeze off head and discard (or give to cat?). Now gently squeeze along the body and separate flesh into 2 fillets leaving the spine in tact. (The spine will make a fantastically other tapa to go along side). Do this to all of them. Put on JC version of SMCD. Wash the fillets under cold water to remove salt, scales and any bones that present themselves to you. Dry on paper towel and lay those mothers out. On a plate. Pour over some very good quality olive oil and leave for a bit.

Meanwhile flour and then fry the anchovy spines in olive oil. Remove and drain on paper towel.

Pour yourself another vermouth and go back to your sunny spot with the anchovies, crisps and spines. Delight in God’s bounty whilst Willie Nelson croons.

Chinese water torture

2010-11-11T21:30:00.003+01:00

Encouraged by the UK government’s business trip to China and in the spirit of free enterprise I have decided to find out which rice is most appropriate for an ancient method of torture much favoured in bygone times. It is simplicity itself and very cheap to boot. The victim is force fed uncooked rice and then force fed water to expand it.

I am experimenting with 3 types of rice – basmati, white short grain and brown rice. I poured the rices into separate glasses and covered with water. I started at 10am. By 10pm there seemed to be little change but the rice has softened and is like biting little bits of chalk.

I was thinking of cooking it at 38ºC to see what happened but then figured the body temperature might well be at 40ºC or so due to fever so am going to try it at that first.

Kidz Fude - Raons

2010-11-08T23:20:00.005+01:00

I am assured by the mongers of the new market that raons are peculiar to the Pitiusas’ waters but I am assured of a lot of things by a lot of people much of which I don’t believe. Whatever the truth it matters little. These superlative little fishes are divine. So beautiful, their wide flat bodies are the colours of the rainbow - they positively glisten.

I had bought them (at €69 a kilo) because a food writer doing a piece on the Mediterranean was coming to meet and eat with me that afternoon and I wanted to show her something nice (Miss McMichael). I bought four of them so we could each have two. In the end we only had one each because I felt bad depriving Lucrecia and the boys of this little luxury.

The meet and eat went well (yanks do meet and greet, I do meet and eat) and there were still two left. Not wanting them to languish unsavoured I asked Primo if he would like one. This was just before bed. He looked at the fish, stuck his finger in his mouth, gave the matter some thought and said “Yes. For breakfast.” With that he about turned and disappeared out the kitchen.

At breakfast the next morning I salted and then fried those little mothers in a nice pool of very hot olive oil giving them about 45 seconds on each side. Because the minuscule scales are not scraped off and are edible the skin crisps up beautifully and beneath this delicious golden coat lies the sweetest flesh of any fish I have eaten. Primo and Slim shared half each then fought for the tail whilst Lucrecia regally ate hers with a look quiet but intense pleasure. I looked back at Primo - he was busy carefully removing the tiny cheek oyster. A treasure indeed.

Kidz Fude - Snax

2010-11-06T18:31:00.005+01:00

kidz snax

“Hmmm….what I like about it is that it is soft on the top and crisp underneath and the cheese is really creamy but then a bit bitter too.” Primo is talking about a little something we just had to keep the lobo at the gate. The crackers are long, thin, uneven tongues of crisp water biscuit. “Il Panaté” by Mario Fongo – Le Lingue di Suocera. Each one is about a palm wide and a foot long, or would be were it ever to stay whole. Its undulating surface is pinpricked through here and there, golden in the troughs and sandy in the mounds. Snapping it makes me feel like I am in an advert – slow motion, bursts of sunlight, blonde women with white teeth. It gives me wood.

The cheese is Taleggio. I discovered this delectable come hither cheese several years ago melted alongside some Gorgonzola bubbling on top of a tomato and polenta gratin. Hooked. Right there, right then. The Italians get Taleggio. We get Dairylea. Typical.

Just cut and cold it is good but melted it is as close to heaven that melted cheese is able to get. Anyway, cut thin slices of cheese, place on top of the cracker and blow torch until the cheese bubbles and melts.

Kidz Fude

2010-10-24T02:06:00.003+02:00

I had a breif spell as a chef for the household staff of an oil magnate a couple of years ago. The crisis hit, Shakey lost a couple of billion and decided to save money by firing me. This was a shame for two reasons, firstly I lost the very welcome winter income and secondly and more importantly I lost the guinea pigs I had to feed and with it the funding to do as I pleased foodwise. Previous to this, winters had been fairly barren creatively with no clientele and 2 v small children who I couldn’t really try out too much stuff on.

All the above remains the same except that les enfants have grown and so has their interest in food. So now I’m going to cook just whatever I feel like and see their reaction.

Day 1 Carpaccio of Kobi Beef with parmesan and black pepper

My butcher gave me 5 frozen, pre-sliced, vacpacked, 80 gram portions of Kobi carpaccio. He said it had too much marbling to be able to sell it but I think he was trying to give me a gift cos I spent so much goddam money in his shop this summer. Anyway I took the stuff home, defrosted it, plated it up and seasoned it. Les enfants devoured it. I didn’t mention the perceived marbling problem and they didn’t either. They loved it.

I found it to be grey and wet and a little too pungent, a little too musty. Jolly edible and all that but what is the point? Kobi beef is supposed to be the culimation of bovine excellence so why would you want it 1. Vacpacked and 2. Frozen? I understand that we wouldn’t be able to have it if it wasn’t like that but surely that’s the point – don’t have it unless it is at its best.

Artichokes

2010-02-11T12:26:00.004+01:00

Artichokes are weird. The word is weird, they look weird and they taste weird. And if that wasn’t enough two vegetables share this name and they are about as alike as asparagus and carrots. Today we are dealing with globe artichokes. There is a sweetness about them that is enticing.

There is something alien about the globe artichoke. Perhaps it is something to do with their similarity to the Triffids. They are also great big thistly things with nice spikey leaves and they are generally uninviting until you get to know them.

My favourite way of eating the artichoke has the added attraction of being the easiest to prepare – cut off the stalk, hold it in your hand and bang the opening against the work surface. Through the opening sprinkle salt, pepper and olive oil in that order and then bake upright at 200 with fan (220 without) for one hour. (Put in some baked potatoes too, they take the same amount of time).You will have a blackened crispy thing that looks hopeless but become intensly delicious as you work your way in, nibbling off the base of each leaf. To, my mind, it knocks spots off boiled artichokes.

They go well in stews and are good braised too. Below is the recipe for Italian Artichokes a la Romana.

Artichokes a la Romana

8 artichokes

1 small bunch of parsley

1 small bunch of mint

3 cloves of garlic

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Lemon

Cut the stalk off about 5 cm from the base and peel them. Pull of the outer leaves of each artichoke until you get to the paler, softer leaves. Cut off the top part of the leaves about 5cm above the base. Stick a teaspoon into the heart and scoop out the choke.

Chop the herbs and garlic together and mix with salt and pepper. Spoon some of the mixture into the centre and rub some more in between the leaves.

In a pan that will hold them all fairly compactly, heat some olive oil and then fry the artichokes upside down on a medium high heat until beginning to brown. Pour in some water until the bottom is just covered. Put a lid on, turn to low and simmer until they are soft, about 15 mins. Serve them with a squeeze of lemon.

Bread? Yes, but……..

2010-01-18T11:09:00.006+01:00

……..not bread of heaven. And the result I am after is very much bread of heaven so this is a failed attempt. The bread itself was ok, but no more. Its crust was like rice paper, the dough too tight and flavour wasn’t all there. (The 15 grammes of salt was by no means too much).

The dough did finally rise, not the foretold 45 minutes but the actual 4.5 hours

I don’t understand the point of having a starter with hardly any yeast in it when you then go ahead and put the normal amount in the actual bread mix. No comprendo. Why not just forget the starter stage? The timings also were all wrong to my mind. Not enough kneading time nor proving time.

As directed in the recipe and as shown above, I pulled out the dough and kneaded for another measley 5 minutes then shaped the loaf, cling filmed it and let it rise again

I am sure the flour is not up to the job. Next time I’m going to use 00 pizza flour and see how that comes out. I would use unbleached white flour if only I could find it. The recipe called for a pinch of rye flour and, due to store cupboard lack, I put a sprinkle of integral spelt flour instead. I wonder what they use in Bread and Wine. I bet it its unbleached bread flour from Shipton Mill. The unbleached colour only adds to its attraction.

I was supposed to spray the loaf with water 10 minutes into its baking time but the spraygun was full of some sort of detergent so I flicked it with water. This did not work well at all.

So……

Better flour
Longer kneading
Longer proving
Water spray

Bread – day 2

2010-01-16T18:38:00.005+01:00

Yesterdays starter looked like this. Not massively impressive.

I have just finished the next stage which is :

500g starter

200ml blood temperature water

3g yeast

250 strong flour

15g salt

Pinch of rye flour

Bring all the ingredients together bar the salt. Just as mix comes together add the 15g salt. Place dough on floured surface and need for 5 minutes. Cover and rest in a warm place for 45 mins.

He talks of kneading the dough without fighting with it which is lovely. He has good expressions. One of the recipes calls for a gesture of salt. That’s up there with the squeezing of a lemon.

On the subject of salt note that this recipe calls for 15, that is FIFTEEN grammes of salt. No wonder his bread tastes so good. There are certain guidelines about quantities of salt in food production. I am unaware of them but appreciate they must exist. I love salt and all my food gets a generous allowance of it, but 15 grammes for this dough seems a lot. The more the merrier if you ask me.

The starter seemed dense to me but then it did have the tiniest amount of yeast. I followed the instructions and by the end had an ok dough but were I not following this recipe I would have given it more of a knead. I find it a little lumpy still. I also thought bread needed more, ahem, kneading do get the glutens stretching.

Also the 45 mins seems to be a short proving time.

As I said yesterday I think to be a baker is the profession. I wonder what my Chinese doppelganger would consider it to be.

One of the things I love about making bread is the kneading process. It is so contemplative. I doubt whether a masseuse would get the same satisfaction even if it is a similar movement. I really like any activity that makes answering the phone impossible and kneading is one of those things. I have a lovely marble surface to work the dough on and I look out of my kitchen window at this:

so the more i knead the happier I am.

An hour and a half has gone by and well, there doesn’t seem to be a huge difference. I am going to leave it until something happens. However long that may take.

Bread

2010-01-15T15:11:00.004+01:00

Bread. There can be no more earthy, primeaval, important profession that to be a baker. Jesus was a carpenter and I know that’s right up there too but to me he should have been a baker. Man cannot live on bread alone but it would be fatal to try and live without it. Imagine no toast.

The bread at the restaurant Bread and Wine, Commercial St, EC Something, is the best I know. It has every thing - it is airy but hefty, it is beautifully elastic, its crust is a joy to behold and the sourdough flavour is better than any I have had anywhere. They serve it with butter and salt and there can be no greater beginning to a meal.

I have tried and failed with sour dough lots of times. I can get it to rise and start smelling pretty bad but I always kill it one way or another. I have tried with grapes, I have even tried with strawberries but they always die on me. I was just looking through Nose To Tail Eating, a block rocking cookbook by Fergus Henderson and saw that it has a bread recipe at the back. Now Fergus Henderson is owner of Bread and Wine SO could this be it. Cook books rarely give the real deal but its got to be worth trying. If I can achieve anything close to that bread’s excellence I will die a happy man.

So here goes; the bread recipe from Nose To Tail Eating:

1 kilo of strong bread flour (I am going to use Harina de Mallorca brand, it comes in a nice packet and besides, Shipton Mill is a long way away from Ibiza)

500ml of water at blood temperature

A pinch of natural yeast

Mix them together, cover and put in the fridge till tomorrow.

So I did this. Literally drew them together, covered and refridgerated

Tomorrow I make bread with the starter. This is TOTALLY different to my previous attempted methods. If I can get close to UberLoaf............

Very excited.

Heston Services

2010-01-13T00:34:00.006+01:00

Heston B was named after the motorway services near Heathrow so perhaps he felt he owed it to service cafes in general to begin lifting them out of the mire of horror in which they has resided ever since their birth. I have heard there are good ones but then you hear all sorts of stuff and frankly, seeing is believing.

The telly is a powerful thing and when the Popham Little Chef reopened after HB waved his wand it was full from 7 in the morning till ten at night sometimes with a 2 hour wait. But of course the initial telly-generated interest couldn’t last so time would tell if the experiment worked.

We were driving sort of that way on Sunday, towing a boat to Portsmouth, so we made the detour to see what was going on. I love Heston Blumenthal. He is the Willy Wonka of our age, constantly testing us and leaving us agog. I remember when he took over from Rowley Leigh at the Guardian on Saturday. His stuff was immediately jarringly different and the complaints came flooding in. “Who is this guy?” “How can he think we can do these things at home?” “Its impossible.” Blahblahblah. His response? A recipe for carrot chips that finished with the line “….and leave them in your oven at the lowest temperature for 2 days”. You gotta love him.

As you arrive at the Chef Petit it is immediately different. The sign says so and the fat little logo that we know and despise from childhood has had a designer unleashed upon it. As you enter the restaurant (and finally this word can be used in the same sentence as the Little Chef) you know something is up. It looks great. It has bright red tables and loads of booth seating next to big windows. In the middle is a communal table . The walls are done with bevelled edged rectangular white tiles and grouted in red. You look up and the ceiling is a cheering yet slightly eerie photograph of a blue sky with birds flitting across it. The chefs and waiters are sprightly and interested and the whole thing makes you want to sit down and eat instead of emigrate instantly.

The menu is gastro pub fare – pork belly, lamb shank, steak, sticky toffee pudding, with some 70's throwback stuff like prawn cocktail and black forest gateau etc. We had the prawn cocktail to start that was straight out of my childhood and mussels that were straight out of a iron pot shaped a bit like a mussel and probably costing more that our meal would come to. Staub I believe the make was. The finger bowl that came with dehydrated hand cloths was also by Staub. In a Little Chef!!!!!!! The mussels were little ones in a beautiful liquor but they definitely had that precooked almost crumbly texture. Shame.

On to the mains. Hake in beer batter that was a bit greasy. The big chips were so much better that the usual fat ones but not anywhere near as nice as the French fries served with the burger. The burger itself was good and I was happy to feed it to my son (usually I fear for his longevity if a low grade burger is demanded) but I found it a little on the small side. The bun it was served in was lovely coming dusted in semolina flour, a touch I adore. My other kid’s Tag Bol was very child friendly, to the point where I wondered if it hadn't had sugar added to it. Having said that, a star system on the menu actively encourages kids to order healthy stuff. Order three things with a star (Innocent smoothie carries one, Coke doesn’t, for example) and the child gets a badge.

Everything so far had been pretty good and way, way above the norm of Little Chef but my Braised Ox Cheeks in red wine blew me away. I didn’t really even feel like eating stew but could not pass up ordering beef cheeks in a Little Chef. You just gotta love that man. He is so naughty.

I think it was amongst the best beef stews I have ever had. The cheeks were melted away in the mouth without the vaguest hint of dryness or toughness and the sauce was sticky and rich. I have never hade stewed meat like it. The mash that came with it was dry but suited the dish perfectly and was all the better for it.

I asked one of the chefs (who I had spied from a photo at the opening) who made what and where it came from. He told me that they only really finished things off, the majority being produced off site. The menu has obvioulsy been designed that way - provide things that can be produced in large quantities off site yet still maintain a high quality when it reaches the table ie instead of mass producing crap, mass producing quality. Nice. The chefs were visibly happy to be part of it.

The thought behind everything and desire to please and be different was noticeable throughout. The toilets were fascinating – the walls have food facts all over the place and on the speaker system I heard the sound of veg chopping, chefs shouting, that ghastly gastronaut Roahl Dahl reading extracts of his his food obsessed books and weird bits of music. Uncanny canned music.

You gotta love him.

Beef Gravy

2010-01-07T17:31:00.004+01:00

This supreme forerib joint weighed 10 kilos and had been aged for 32 days. It was for 12 people, 3 of whom were under 10 years old. Approximately 1 kilo per person. That’s a lot of beef. An awful lot of beef.

The sides were trimmed as they were getting slightly high and then the thing was weighed and the timing calculation was made*. It was then was rubbed with salt and in it went.

I always roast joints over a pool of water. This serves two purposes, one; it keeps air in the oven moist and two; as the juices drip out of the joint they don’t burn onto the roasting pan and can therefore be used for the gravy. You do of course get some even if you didn’t put water in the pan but this way you get them ALL.

When the joint came out I set the meat to rest in a warm place covered with tin foil and loads of dish cloths to keep the warmth in. I poured all the juices from the pan into a high sided vessel and waited for the fat to rise. After a couple of minutes I ladled off the fat and set it aside to make dripping. (In The Little House On The Prairie books they make candles out of beef fat). I then added ½ a bottle of decent red and boiled it for a few minutes. When the meat was rested (1 hour) and the potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and cabbage were ready I poured the further juices that had accumulated under the beef into the gravy as well and brought it to boil.

This gravy was absolutely delectable. Pure, thin, strong. Try it.

*40 mins in a hot oven (220ºC) then 20 mins per kilo in medium oven (180ºC)THEN 1 hour resting. Achtung!!!!!!!! Resting essential.

Maximus Porcus Pius

2009-12-06T12:14:00.010+01:00

A few weeks ago I was going on about the satisfaction that making terrines gives and that making pork pies produces a similar feeling of wellbeing. 3 years ago I got into making pork pies and loved it. Soooo satisfying. Last week the opportunity to sell some pies arose so I got myself together to make some. As I got to try and make money out of it, this requires doing larger than domestic quantities so requires more money and more consideration. Also I gotta get the time taken/quantity produced equation right or my family will die of starvation.

I went through my files and found no record of “how to make 10 pork pies before Doomsday” so had to poke around in my memory. It took me two days before I could remember. Lots was easy to remember but there were vagaries - the pins and the baking parchment? Where the hell do they come into the process?

The measurements I give are for 2 pork pies the size of the ones in the photos. There are lots of stages which can be done over a couple of days or all together but they are all simple and very satisfying.

I put a couple of split pigs trotters into a good chicken stock and set it to simmer for a few hours. The trotters will have completed their job only when they fall to pieces when you try to pick them up. When it is at this point, strain it and allow it to cool.

The hot water pastry is lovely to make. It is quick, easy and forgiving and you end up with a lovely warm dough that would make a nice bed. If only you were a pixie. Heat 200ml water and 200g lard until lard melts. Pour it into 550g flour with a good pinch of salt and break an egg into it. Work it till it comes together into a dough. Split the pastry into 2 pieces. One 2/3 size and one 1/3 size. Squash them flat and cover with film. Leave them to cool a bit.

Next you make the meat mix. Pork is well suited cos of its high fat content and ability to stand up to long cooking – the hot water crust takes a while to cook. Game pies are good but tend to be dry I find. So I got 500g pork shoulder cut into small cubes, 250g belly minced fine and 125g of good bacon. I added ground juniper, thyme, nutmeg, pepper, a little ground clove and a lot of salt and I mixed it. If you got some sort of Kenwood or other mixer, use it. Not only does make the mixing easier but I think it does something good to the finished texture. Same with sausages.

Take a bit out, fry it and try it to test for seasoning. Adjust as necessary.

Now roll out the bigger piece to normal pastry thickness and then lay it over a mould. This can be an upturned glass, pan, flowerpot or something. It has to have high sides. You are going to mould the pie case by hand to a shape and size that will fit all the meat in. You start off this process with your upturned receptacle that is about the right size. Think about the finished product and what you want to achieve – you want something that looks like a pork pie, not an apple pie nor a stovepi(p)e hat.

Once you have laid the pastry over the mould, press the pastry against the side and flatten any overlap with your fingers. Squish the sides to the right height and ease it from the mould onto a floured surface. You should have a piece of pastry casing the shape of a cup that looks a bit like it might melt. Don’t worry, it will hold its form.

Quickly roll out the lid piece to just bigger than the rim of the casing. Make a little hole in the top. It is through this hole that the stock will be poured later on. Put the meat into the casing and push it down and into the corners. It should go out to the sides and rise up to the rim. Then wet the rims of both pastry pieces with water and put the lid on. Crimp the edges together between your two first fingers and thumb making sure it is sealed all the way round. Pin a baking parchment collar around it to help it stay upright whilst it cooks.

Put it in the oven at 180ºC without fan (140 with) and cook for 40 minutes. Remove the collar, glaze it with a brush of milk and cook for a further 20. When the meat juices bubble through the aperture in the lid, it will be done. If you want to make sure, poke a skewer into its middle and test against your lip. Be careful. It will be hot. If it aint, cook it some more.

Let it cool and contract, a good hour or so, and then pour in the stock. Let it cool properly so the stock becomes lubberly jelly and then eat it. It will last for a couple of weeks like this but if you can manage to get the cooking, contracting and jelling bit done in one day, you will eat a pork pie unlike any you have had before.

This really is a product you can hold in your hand and contemplate as a thing of beauty. When I was making them before loved them so much I would carry one around with me in a cool bag, as well as a small chopping board and long switch blade so whenever I came across a likely taker I could cut them a slice.

I reckon pork pies must have come into existence for two reasons. The first that it is a self contained piece of delicious sustenance and the second that it has good longevity, an important consideration pre-refrigerators. The jelly in the finished pie stops the air, and thus bacteria, getting to the meat. This increases its shelf life considerably.

A good pork piece is a piece of perfection.

200Water
200 lard
550 flour
1 egg
500g pork shoulder cut into small cubes
250g belly minced fine
1/2 tspoon ground juniper
1 tspoon thyme
1/4 tspoon nutmeg
ground black pepper
1/4 tspoon ground clove
a good tspoon of salt

chilli and clam fideua

2009-12-01T16:55:00.000+01:00

find yourself a beach and make this.

I got my eye on you

2009-11-20T19:45:00.000+01:00

I walked into the Notso Eroski supermarket and saw the above fish looking at me from the ice slab. I had to buy it. I had never seen one before and if clearness of eye is a sign of freshness, then this brother was still alive.

It is very similar to Rotxa (aka rascasse, scorpion fish) but is easily distinguised by two simple differences – its head is elongated and it costs half the price. And that it is called capracho also helps I suppose.

I cooked it exactly as rotxa but the flesh turned out not to have the meatiness of its snubnosed counterpart so it took half the time. Whilst it was perfectly fine, it just didn’t have the fullness that rotxa has. I guess it is the same with many fish – they command the price and reputation they do because they deserve it. These are the real VIPs (Very Important Pescados) unlike the scum that washes to the top of Ibiza’s bip lists.

I left the UK before the eating of pollack over cod became an issue. Again, whilst I am sure pollack is perfectly nice (I have yet to try it) I am certain it has nothing on cod. Its all in the flesh I guess. Slip sole aint got nothing on dover sole, pollock aint got nothing on cod (I bet) and capracho aint got nothing on rotxa.

They're all the same

2009-11-19T22:16:00.001+01:00

Scrambled eggs

2009-11-15T12:50:00.007+01:00

The secret to scrambled eggs is butter and then more butter. Just when you think you have put in rather too much butter, put in a little more. If you want to live a reasonably long life don not eat scrambled eggs too often or it will kill you. Some people add milk – VERBOTEN. Totally and utterly verboten. Do that and no one will love you, you will be cast out. Cream is admissable, just, but nothing really does the job like butter.

Start by cutting nobs of butter into the egg mix and then whisk it with a fork. Melt yet more butter, and some thyme if you feel like it, into a pan. Pour in the mix and turn up the heat to medium. Now you have to keep stirring and stirring as the butter melts. After a minute or two the eggs will start to cook and stick to the spoon. The butter will melt into the mixture and help give the eggs the correct creamy texture as they cook.

Draw the spoon across the bottom of and sides of the pan folding ribbons of cooked egg back into the mix. Keep cooking and stirring and scraping until you get the texture you like – which should be soft. . If you don’t like soft eggs, you should. In the same way that if you dont like your steak rare, you should. If you don’t, you must teach yourself to like it. You will be happier for it.

An interesting aside – scrambled eggs were invented during the Battle of Britain. Michael Caine is making eggs in the mess hall. He is about to make an Ipcress Omelette when the order to scramble come down the lines. He realises he must hurry now and quickly ‘scrambles’ his eggs.

Rossejat de Fideus

2009-11-11T22:34:00.007+01:00

It is 11 november and I went swimming today. I jumped into a crystal clear sea that was more like a lake than a sea so flat it was. But I didn’t go to the beach to swim, that was a by-product. I went to the beach cos I had discovered a b.log that I liked. I liked a lot. Discovering a good b.log doesn’t generally mean that I have to rush to the sea but in this case the weather was so good, the recipe looked perfect and I had all the ingredients, so off to the beach I went to make Rossejat de Fideus – a catalan toasted noodle dish. A dish I have heard about, read about, but never eaten.

To my delight I discover that the blog is catalan based, the photography is good and most imortantly – the recipe I first came across is Allioli EXACTLY as I make it. So it had to be good. That sounds big headed cos it is, but I can be forgiven cos the stuff that I see being passed off as allioli is so shit that it beggars belief.

My first experience of allioli in Ibiza was through the ‘chef’ at Sol d’en Serra years ago when I first arrived. That place is now as far removed from what it was then as the allioli she showed me how to make is from real allioli. If someone was to have asked me what I thought was in the pot she put on the table in front of me I would have said without hesitation – Dulux White Emulsion. “Mais madame, qu’est que c’est this shit you put in front of me?” I asked her how on earth she made it and she took me into the kitchen. She put two cloves of peeled garlic, a pinch of salt and ¼ a litre of milk. (YES MILK!!!!!!!!!!!! GODDAMIT MILK), into a whizzer jug and then started pouring VEGETABLE OIL, I SWEAR, VEGETABLE OIL in to make the emulsion. The result? Dulux.

I have almost certainly written about this fiasco before but it pisses me off so much that every time I think about it I start flipping out. Going to a restaurant with yours truly on this island is a depressing thing cos I am invariably in a foul mood before I have even ordered – “ah look, here come some paying customers. Lets piss them of by serving them this travesty.” I go on and on about is cos it is fundamental.

Enough. Sorry. But I mean really….ok ok.

Anyway this b.log does it right. I start to look at other recipes and come across this Arrosejat and think “aha, so that’s how you make it.” I gather the ingredients and the photographer and take off for my favourite beach.

The beach is deserted. We get butt nekkid, set up and start cooking.

300g No2 Fideus – El Gallo brand, this is spanish pasta like broken spaghetti
800 ml fish stock (this is double the volume of the fideus)
4 cloves of garlic peeled and chopped
2 medium tomatoes chopped
1 chilli
a nice amount of chopped parsley
A goodly amount of olive oil
Salt

Firstly and weirdly, toast the fideus in plenty of olive oil. They will become translucent and go reddish brown. Add the garlic, tomato and parsley and fry till the tomato softens. I say weirdly before cos I would ordinarily make the sofrito first then add the fideus. Add the boiling stock and cook as quickly as possible. Once the liquid has been absorbed keep on cooking it until the pan is making the most enticing crackling sound and you are convinced that if you leave it one second longer it will burn. What you are trying to achieve is soccarat. Soccarat again? What is this goddam soccarat? Hmmm. Socarrat like a little bit of crispy heaven. Yeah.

Take it off the heat and let it rest for five minutes whilst you make the allioli. Properly.

This was good but I gonna try it different next time. Next time gonna make the sofrito primero.

San Martin continued…….blackout

2009-11-10T21:48:00.006+01:00

I am appalled to say that all the rest of the day is a bit of a blur. What I can remember is a lot of sausage making.

Sausage making is odd. The sausage machine is like an enormous syringe. The meat goes into a long cylinder and is then pushed into a long nozzle. The intestine’s length has been rolled onto the nozzle and as the meat is pushed through the nozzle it goes directly into the sausage skin. So far all well and good BUT getting the skin onto the nozzle is like putting on an very lengthy condom. That is still fairly ok but when the plunger forces the meat through the nozzle and into the skin you have to help feed it with your hand and THAT feels like you are helping someone take a crap into a 12ft condom.

In Ibiza 12 inch lengths of intestine are cut and fed onto the nozzle and each one is filled and then tied individually. To my mind it is an excruciatingly painstaking method. If they were to sit down and ponder the most time consuming method of sausage stuffing, then this is what they would have come up with. But that is my northern European hurry-hurry-hurrry-lets-have-sandwiches-for-lunch-instead-of-sitting-down-and-breaking-bread-with-our-companions-and-drinking-some-wine-whilst-we-are-at-it mentality and I realise as I think of how it could be done quicker that it aint about doing it quicker. Its about sharing time together, doing something together.

As I think of this I take yet another long messy gurgle from the porron and pass out on the floor.

I am awoken later to find the job complete – 20 kilos of black pudding and 160 foot long sobrasadas and everyone sitting down to eat the Arroz de Matanzas. It is now dark, especially inside my head.

San Martin continued.…Blowing and Shaving with the Russian Mafia

2009-11-09T18:42:00.004+01:00

So here is this dead pig. What next? One of the guys ambles up with a butane bottle and a blow torch. Another comes up with two very old rusty knives. I go get mine and they tell me no, it cant be a sharp blade or it with cut through the skin. The guy lights the blow torch and starts to scorch the hair off the pig. This is frightful. The skin bubbles and bursts and the smell aint pleasant. We get to work scraping all the hair off the pig. The hair seems to only be part of a top layer and left underneath is the skin we are all familiar with. The skin that becomes crackling. This preliminary scraping gets rid of most of the hair but a more thorough cleansing is necessary. A hose is turned on and we are all handed pumice stones with which we scour the skin. It takes off any final hairs and leaves our departed friend smooth.

One of the guys is in charge of the ears and the hoofs. The ears are doused with water and fairly liquid and then wiped and brushed clean. The hoofs are more gruesome. The big black cloven hoof is yanked off revealing a second pinkish hoof beneath. The removed black outer hoofs look like some kind of weird discarded lids lying in the mud. There is something scary about this bit.

The pig is now ready for butchering. We lift the pig onto another table (the third – I am not sure why we keep changing tables) and carry it into the shed where she will be cut up; her bones, flesh, fat and innards all being consigned to one use or another. The first process is the removal of its trotters. I cant help but think of the Russian mafia. Bizarrely this is followed by another their trademark calling cards – the removal of the face. The legs are tucked under its body and it is pushed into an upright prone position a la sphinx. Jesus then cuts the creatures face away in one piece. Very, very full on.

We now set about cutting away its back fat. This is done by sending a knife down to its spine and then along the entire length of its backbone finishing on either side of its tail. The pig, well known for having a lot of fat, does not dispel the notion. Including the skin, the fat is 3 inches deep. When removed we have two pieces about 4 foot long and 1 foot wide.

Next the legs and shoulders are loosened and pushed flat against the table. So far this is going completely opposite to how I expected it to go. The animals intestines are still inside and it is lying down on all fours. I expected it to be hanging and the intestines the first thing to be removed. I also expected boning knives to be used. Not one is present. Jesus comes forward with his tools – a mallet and a hatchet. He places the hatchet on the rib furthest down its back and with one deft blow, chops through it. He does this all up one side and then repeats it with the other side. This now leaves the entire spine separate from the carcasse except for its tail. He very carefully cuts between the anus and the tail and the spine comes away. It is removed and salted to be later served as boiled bones with cabbage. This is what will happen with all the bones.

Jesus carries on with the butchery. It appears to be all him. I am told that the matador, ie the killer, ie Jesus, is in charge of the kill, the butchery, the seasoning of the sobrasada and black pudding and the cooking of lunch and dinner. He is most veritably The Man.

The ribs are pulled open revealing the liver and a hell of a lot of fat. The liver is removed and placed on the table where all the innards will go. The innards and anything that has blood or has come into contact with blood, will all go into black pudding or either of the 2 meals that will be cooked that day – the Frito de Matanzas and the Arroz de Matanza. The Frito is a fry up with potatoes and the Arroz is a stew with rice.

Jesus is a very skilled man and he knows his way around the inside of a pig. He pinpoints exactly the various pieces to be removed, all invisible under a mass of still warm and wobbling fat. He makes a little nick in what looks to me like nothing but blubber and out pops a kidney. He does this again and again.

Eventually everything has been removed except for the bowels and intestines. This he removes, deftly again and gives them to me in a bowl. “Where?” I look. “To the women” he replies. With a smile.

I go out of the shed and walk over to the 3 old women who are washing intestines from another pig (the ibicencos make SO MUCH sobrasada that more that one pig’s miles of intestines is required). There is a blackened, steaming cauldron for cooking the black pudding (morcilla) near them and they are all elbow deep in intestines. Macbeth, I think. I give them the bucket and retreat.

San Martin continued…..The Knife

2009-11-07T23:52:00.005+01:00

8 am and it is already warm. It shouldnt really be so warm but today is the day and that is that. We will just have to work quickly. I arrive and am greeted warmly by some and with open mistrust by others. “What the hell is he doing here? And why the hell has he got a camera?” They got a point but hey….

The shed has been cleared and the preparation tables set out. I was wrong about the chocolate and bunuelos coming as the blood drained. They are first. Nobody does nothing till they full of chocolate and aniseed doughnuts. There is wine circulating but to my surprise it is taken up only moderately. There is a subdued feel to everything perhaps because of what is about to take place. Perhaps, but I doubt it.

We finish our stuff and go out. Jesus, the main man, has got his crook/garrotte to put over the pigs head so he can be pulled. The thing is a stainless steel tube with a handle at one end and a heavy wire snare at the other. Another of the guys takes a grapple. They go round to the pen accompanied by the farmer and his wife. Next thing I know they are coming back round the corner pushing and dragging an enormous and screaming pig. “Quick, hide” says Toni, my friend who invited me and son of the farmer. Everybody retreats into the shed. “It makes him nervous if he sees lots of people.” So everyone is in the shed but we’re all peering round the corner to get a glimpse. I don’t reckon that 14 people stealing glimses calms the pig down in any way. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if it made it worse. You could hear the other one flipping out in the pen round the corner. It too knew exactly what was going on. Both are fully aware that San Martin is in the house. Toni reads my thoughts and says that the pig that is left alive is so traumatised that it wont eat for days. I cant help thinking that perhaps it might have been nicer to send Survivor Pig on a little holiday that day.

Anyway. I can confirm that pigs scream loudly as they are about to die. I don’t think they sound in anyway human but maybe it was just me that made that bit up anyway.

Animal husbandry by its nature has its brutal moments and seeing the pig dragged to its slaughter table is one of them. The guy with the grapple stepped forward and shoved the hook through the pig’s nose increasing its discomfort and distress. He then started pulling with all his might.

Now there was all commotion with the men getting the pig first alongside its death bed and then onto it. To do this the table is lifted up sideways, the pig brought alongside then pushed and pulled onto the table. The table is then righted again. The pig is then tied down, screaming all the while. It is loud and not madly pleasant.

Jesus offers me the knife to kill it but not knowing really how to do it effectively nor wanting to step on anyones tows, I decline. He smiles. If it was right, I would do it. I am a believer in ‘if you gonna eat it, you gotta be able to kill it.’

Jesus slaps the pig’s neck a few times to be sure of his mark and inserts the knife into its neck. He does not slice, cut nor go from ear to ear. He simply sticks the knife into its jugular at a 45º angle and then removes it leaving a neat 3 inch wound. The blood starts to gush forth into the wide plastic washing tubs the women are sticking under the crimson spurt. Crimson? No, burgundy more like. The women immediately start stirring and squeezing the blood in the bucket. There appears to be some sort of fibrous stuff in their hands. I ask what this is and am told it is the nerves within the blood. I had no idea that one could squeeze blood and get fibres out of it. Maybe I just misheard.

The pig is now dead, its huge head hanging off the edge of the table, its huge tongue hanging out of its mouth. These days I can go for weeks, months without anything happening but now as I am stand looking at the dead pig I am in no doubt that something has just happened. Something I have been the benefactor of many times but never witnessed.

Smoking Dutch

2009-11-06T18:46:00.001+01:00

Edam is the perfect smoking cheese because it is so bland that it takes on the smoke completely.

My father used to smoke edam when I was young. I have very fond memories of it and now I have smoked some myself. It took me straight back to the hotel where I grew up: The Kings Head, circa 1977 - punk, jubilee, the Yorkishire Ripper.

Todos Los Cerdos Tienen Su San Martin

2009-11-05T19:33:00.007+01:00

Transliterated it means all pigs have their San Martin. Translated it means that your misdeeds will be revisited on you and it refers to pig slaughter.

In Spain San Martin is traditionally the day the family pig is slaughtered, butchered and turned into hams and other forms of charcuterie. Falling on 11 November it marks the coming of winter and the need to hoard. An Ibicenco told me that when he was growing up (Franco era), it was also the only day of the year when you KNEW you were gonna get enough to eat.

In 2 days time I am going to a Matanza – a Pig Killing. I made a preliminary visit to the farmer this week and there was a lot of winking and nudging going on. He was getting visibly excited at the prospect of a day’s sausage making and more importantly, I get the impression, drinking and eating. He introduced me to the pig. Man, that pig is big. 180 kilos.

The actual killing is to take place at 8am on Saturday morning followed by chocolate and buñuelos (aniseed doughnuts) whilst the blood drains. Then it is a day of butchery and sausage making with unending porrones* of local wine and culminating in a massive Arroz de Matanzas – huge rice dish using some of the best cuts from the departed beast.

A friend of mine used to have nightmares cos of all the screaming of pigs she would hear at this time of year. Apparently their screams are chilling. Once again the comparison between pigs and humans is drawn. Lindsey Anderson got it so right

So anyway, 8am sharp Saturday. With camara and knife.

*A porron is that mad glass jug with a pointy spout that the spanish drink out of. They take great pride pulling it further and further away from their lips without spilling a drop. I am useless at this so will enjoy being the laughing stock again.

I’ve started smoking again

2009-11-02T12:21:00.000+01:00

And what a joy it is, though it has been trickier than before. Having only used Sabina (very hardwood coniferous, something to do with Juniper) up to this point I have had no problems with keeping the sawdust alight as it has such high oil content. But I have kind of given up on trying to find sabina dust as the wood yards keeps telling me they never have a pure supply, that it is always cut with pine or other unsuitable woods. Annoying, when they had sold me stuff before, but there you go.

So I had to find a supply of hardwood chipping/sawdust unmixed with any resinous woods. A carpinter friend of mine (not Jesus) made a deal with me. If he supplied me with the right stuff I would supply him with my finished product. Wicked. I go round to his workshop and there are 6 big black bin bags bulging bonza bonus beech. Nice.

I take the bags home and excitedly drag the smoker out of the bushes and set it up. I get some 400g salmon trout fillets and salt them for 45 mins by rubbing rock salt into them. Then I wash them and dry them. I pour the beech shavings into my paella smoke pan and light it. Goddam it if it don’t just flare up and burn. Entirely hopeless. I soak the salmon fillets an hour, fry them and eat them.

I tell the carpinter. The carpinter tells me he got some oak sawdust so I go over and pick it up. I try again, this time without any fillets or anything, just to see what will happen with the sawdust. I torch it and it smoulders. Excellent. Then it goes out. Crap.

Both the beech and the oak have low oil content so cannot keep themselves alight without help. I know now that if I am gonna have any luck then I am going to have to get some sort of heat under the chippings and this will have to be in a separate chamber to the item to be smoked or it will cook said item. Annoying cos before I just lit the sabina, stuck it in the bottom of the smoker and that was that

I got a 25 litre paint tin, cut a hole in the top and shoved a pipe in the hole feeding it then into the smoker several feet away. The tin fitted exactly over the paella pan. I put a gas ring under the pan and lit it. A minute or two later the the dust began to smoulder. Dig it. I put in a piece of Edam cheese. Smoked Edam c’est bon.

It worked well except it melted the pipe. Next move - chimney flue pipe. I found it easily enough but they only had stuff that was twice the diametre. What the fuck. It’ll be fine. This time I bought 7 pieces of Edam (the first was excellent). I fuelled up and lit it and then, as is my wont on experiements, left the house to do something else. I came back a while later to find a yellow red gooey mess where the cheese had once been. The dust had caught fire the same as the shaving because of the increased air flow.

By this point I was getting irritated but managed to remain cool and not break my tow by kicking the oil drum smoker. I crimped the end of the flue and tried again. This time with one piece of cheese and by remaining close by to see what happened. I smoked it for 2 hours and it worked tip top. Now I just gotta figure out how to slow it down even more so I can smoke overnight leaving it unmanned

Paella?

2009-10-30T10:38:00.002+01:00

Shit, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why the Spanish call paellas just “rice” sometimes cos it is so impossible to define what it is. One thing Paella does not mean though is “for her” (para ella). Anyone that tells you it does should be mistrusted. Paella refers to the pan it is cooked in, and the variations are INFINITE, no two cooks ever doing it the same way.

They say the first paellas were of snails and rabbit and cooked on olive tree cuttings. I have yet to do this but one day I will and it will make me happy. It will be a good day.

Paellas are supreme if done right. Unfortunately it is difficult to find good ones. I went to a food show here in Ibiza when I first arrived and thought “aha, now I can ask a chef if they use saffron in paellas here” Until that point I had been unable to detect either saffron or quality in any of the ones I had tried. You know what the fucker replied? He said “No. People don’t like saffron.” What a bastard. No, people have now gotten used to food colouring and artifical flavourings thanks to you, you fat lazy bastard. Jesus.

Not all paellas take saffron by any means but none should have this enhancer so many use. It is sort of like the stuff in the sachets in those really high quality chinese noodle packets. Like all good flavour enhancers you actually think it tastes good. It is only after you realise that everything you eat tastes the same that their novelty wears off. The lowest common demoninator shouldn’t ever really be embraced in a kitchen and particularly when in it involves ones national dish.

Anyway, all that is rather by the by. For lunch today I made a discovery. Nothing major but sure was a nice change for using up leftover stew. I had made a jolly nice chicken, chorizo and roast pepper stew a couple of days before. Everyone had eaten their fill a few times and it was now time to use up the last of it. I put it into a paella pan with some extra water and a couple of handfuls of la bomba rice (about 3 times the liquid to rice volume). I cooked it fast until the liquid evaporated and man oh man, did I have me a nice lunch. 12 minutes start to finish + 4 for resting. The socarrat was amazing. Socarrat? Socarrat? What the hell is socarrat? Well, socarrat is the defining factor of a perfect paella. Of which more another time.

Dream Terrine

2009-10-10T18:44:00.010+02:00

One of the great things about terrines has got to be their seeming impossibility to the non initiated. This is useful cos when lay folk start to think that you are not only a good cook but some sort of magician then it can only really work in your favour. People start to fear you. Then they start to do your will. Think of the advantages.

Another really groovy thing about making terrines is it is awful satisfying. There is something good, something right, about being able to hold in your hands the fruit of your labours. Making soups is great. Grilling steak is great. But this goes further. Perhaps it is the feeling of having made something artesian that it gives you. Bread is the same. So are pork pies.

You can put all sorts of things in terrines just so long as there is enough fat in the general mix to hold it all together. Forget Fear is the Key - Fat is the key.

When I first arrived in Ibiza I went to Clodenis in San Rafael. I didn’t know anything about Ibiza and was completely blown away by this restaurant. The restaurant was the owners home, inside in the winter and in the garden in the summer. Outdoors and under the stars, it was truly magical. The food was superb – roast duck, suckling pig, the trademark lentil salad, everything everything. But above all was a rabbit terrine that I will remember till my dying day.
The terrine was multi-layered and had not been pressed hard so was more crumbly than expected. It was wrapped in smoked bacon and served with its jelly. And what jelly. Oh my god. So clear, so clean, so concentrated. The rabbit gave the impression it had been confited so flaky AND moist was it. I find rabbit difficult to discern if it is mixed with other things but this was clearly rabbit even when spread on toast along with way too much butter and some sharp cornichons.

Tis a goddam shame that Denis, the owner and consummate restaurateur, died. I still have yet to have a meal as good on Ibiza.

Rabbit Terrine

1 rabbit, boned – get your butcher to do this or DIY if you enjoy the knife work
250g minced pork belly
250g diced pork shoulder
250g poultry liver (plus the liver, heart, kidneys from rabbit) blitzed to a puree
250g rindless smoked steaky bacon

4 cloves of crushed garlic
zest from ½ orange zest
6 juniper berries
1/8 nutmeg grated fine
4 cloves
2 tsp of fresh thyme leaves
1 glass of wine
1 nice glug of brandy or port or both
salt
pepper

Cut the rabbit into strips. This will be layered throughout the terrine. Chop up any bits that wont come under the strip definition. Set aside the strips and add the bits to a big mixing bowl that will hold all the ingredients. Add the porks and blitzed livers.

Whizz the juniper, nutmeg and cloves together and add to the big bowl along with the garlic, zest, thyme, alcohol, salt and pepper. The most important thing here is the salt. You could leave out all the rest and still end up with a reasonably good terrine. Under season it and you might as well take it out the oven and throw it straight in the bin. Fry a bit in a pan and try it. The cooking will dampen down the spice and salt effect so make sure they have good presence in your palate. If under seasoned add more, if over, don’t worry about it.

Now comes the getting together -

Get some baking parchment and fold it in two. Place a couple of bits of bacon between the sheets (thank you Homer) and roll out with a rolling pin. The bacon will flatten out to about half its length and width again. Perhaps more.

Place a bay leaf in the middle of the chosen receptacle i.e. terrine (this could be a bread tin, terracotta dish – anything that will hold the ingredients and is able to be baked) and then start laying out the bacon strips from one side fo the dish to the other. Repeat this until the terrine is lined. Add the mix, layering the rabbit strips throughout and then pull bacon over the top until you have what looks like a bacon parcel. If this is a bit messy then don’t worry as the finished terrine will be turned out upside down anyway showing off the bayleaf.

Wrap it in baking parchment, cover it with tin foil and put it in a pan with hot water. Do not overfill the pan, halfway up will do. Bake it in the oven at 180ºC + fan (210ºC without) for 2 hours. Remove and test with a skewer. If juices run clear then it is ready. Chuck out liquid (or do something with it if you like) and place terrine, still wrapped, in the fridge with something on top to weigh it down. Let it cool overnight.

Next day, remove, unwrap, slice, marvel.

One Man’s Meat

2009-08-27T23:16:00.002+02:00

I had a really good ‘living here is wicked’ moment the other day. I was shopping for a dinner I was having in order to get two people who make wine here on the island to meet each other. I wanted lamb shoulder cos I was too tired to do anything but stick something in the oven and let time and low heat do the work.

All the shops were closed cos it was the afternoon. Siesta time. Jesus dies every afternoon round about 3.30. The only shops open are the appalling Eroski (what a name – love, winter sports and supermarket hell all in one word) and the ever excellent Spar. The meat counter in Notso Eroski is generally full of prepacked cuts of nearly off meat. The Spar has a proper butcher counter so I went there. When all the shops are open Jesus boasts five butchery outlets and 2 more with meat counters. That is a lot meat for a town no longer than 250 metres from start to finish.

Anyway I went up to the counter in the spar and asked for a shoulder of lamb. The ladybutcher pointed at a leg. All we got, she says. She’s lying. I know she is. I tell her to open up the meat locker and see if there are any inside. She opens and there hanging is a lovely whole lamb.” Aha,” I say. “So you do have lamb.”” Yes we do but I don’t know how to cut it up.” “Then let me assist you gentle butcherladywoman." She says yes, so round the counter I go and pick out the least blunt knife I can find. I flash my finest smile at her and she, as they always do, weakens at the knee. The lamb is still hanging in the cold room - long, dry and bloodless. I cut in to it around the scapula and then up and then down and then off. Bizarre. Lamb, along with rabbits do not have their shoulders attached to their bodies by ball and socket joints. The are simply attached. Not that unlikely in a rabbit given that all it has to do with its cuddly paws is eat lettuce and be lucky. But a lamb? Man that thing gotta stand on them legs. How do they do it?

So any way, le recipe:

If shoulder is frozen, remove it from freezer, kill someone you don’t like or who is causing you trouble by beating them repeatedly over the head, defrost it, then:

Rub shoulder of lamb with garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil and rosemary. Splash that mother with wine. Lay it in a tray on a pile of sliced potatoes with a finger’s depth of water and bake it at 100ºC without fan for 6 hours.

Little Red Courvette

2009-07-17T08:36:00.006+02:00

It does all seem to be about vegetables these days. Each time I think I am going to write about flesh some vegetable comes along and demands my attention. This time its courgettes. Little yellow courgettes.

Over the last few years the courgettes available here have improved. They are now closer to courgettes than marrows. I have a hatred of marrows. They are entirely worthless unless a necesssity through starvation. I have an image locked in my brain from childhood of some cook in my parents’ hotel endlessly peeling and coring marrows that he could then stuff them with mince and bechamel. Mince and bechamel works, that is understood – lasagne, moussaka. But mince and watery, pulpy marrow? No thanks.

Anyway the courgettes on the island generally seem to be coming down in size rather than increasing which is a good thing. But now the vegetables at Can Riera have come into season and there are perfect courgettes. Small and firm, tasty and crisp. And yellow. Anne from Can Riera specialises in unusual strains of common vegetables and herbs – purple basil, heirloom tomatoes and yellow courgettes being a few. These courgettes can be eaten raw which is nicish but grilling them or frying them is the way to kill with excellence.

I sliced a yellow courgette thin and fried the little discs in a bit olive oil. I tossed them with mint and goats cheese and let them sit. I grilled a slice of white bread from Juanto’s bakery and rubbed that mother with garlic. I oiled the toast with Estornell olive oil and salted it with Maldon. I sliced a big phat heirloom tomato and laid a couple of the slices on the toast. I put a handful of Anne’s baby salad leaves on the toast and oiled them too. Dripped some sherry vinegar over them to sharpen them up. I put the courgette mix on top and I sat down.

Recently I have had the good fortune to go to several ibiza restaurants to review them. These experiences have made me re-evaluate the food available in restaurants here. There is truly good food out there now. Be that as it may this courgette toasty thingy was the best thing I have eaten this year. It completely blew me away. I aint cos I cooked it. Its cos of what I had available to use. Food on Ibiza is on an upward march.

The Ghost of Garcia Lorca

2009-06-22T00:46:00.005+02:00

The day is boiling and Talamanca Bay is like a lake again. Totally flat, not a ripple. I’ve forgotten my sunglasses so am squinting to such a degree that it is giving me a headache. The sun is beginning to descend but hasn’t hit the water yet.

I walk over the rocks and down to the shack.
“Have you got a table?”
“Yes I have.”
“Good, then I’m going for a swim”

I dive in to the crystal clear water and take a moment down there to let the water that has flooded over my body, flood over my senses. It is cool and it is quiet. Up there it is often quiet but rarely cool. Unless you want air conditioning, which I don’t. I come up for air and go straight back under doing somersalts towards the sun with my eyes open whilst blowing the air out through my nose. The sunlight is dazzling underwater but has the quality of being looked at through a telescope backwards.

My 2 minutes of exercise completed, I get out of the water pulling myself out with the steps and boat bars that someone has cemented in place years ago to aid people’s otherwise tricky exit from the water. The useful stainless steel tubes are arch infringers of Costas' 50 metre moratorium and will no doubt be removed. Along with so many excellent chiringuitos along Ibiza’s coastline. Apparently the removal of the chiringuitos is an improvement. Fuck that. Apparently it is Spain's coming of European age. So what? A sanitised Spain is a poor mans Spain. Might as well go to Portugal.

I look up at my favourite joint on the island and know its days are numbered. Men in suits want this place gone. Probably so they can build a bypass to nowhere or an apartment building to hang pretty fluorescent orange for sale signs in.

The Coca-Cola umbrellas are jammed in the places that the awning don’t cover. The table are red and so are the bench seats. The place is humming. It always is. Opens at midday and closes after dark. Always full. But of course it is fucking full. It is right on the waters edge, the food is simple but excellent, there is a feeling of escape. This is Spain. Of course it is full. Some otherwise intelligent person said to me once that the place was unsanitary. Firstly, what the fuck does that mean? How does he reckon the human race survived up to the invention Unilevers cleaning products? And secondly, who gives a fuck? THE PLACE IS EXCELLENT. ALWAYS HAS BEEN. So what if they don’t have running water. Congratufuckinglations is what these people deserve for pulling off such a groovy thing in such difficult circumstances. So what if it does have a toilet? Piss in the sea.

Over at the end there is a family cajoling their two children to eat and then wisely giving up and getting stuck in to their own food and wine. They are sharing a table with a bunch of sextagenarians Deutches who are drunk, loud and have been sitting here since they moved to the sun, the sea, cheap booze and fags 25 years ago. I don’t understand German but I know those blasts of laughter are ignited by humour in its purest form.

On the next table are a bunch of really good looking young Spaniards who have probably not been to bed in 3 days and have an awful lot of sex. The Spanish can really do that party thing. It is as if after Franco’s peaceful death each child was born with a birth rite have a ball. They do it with such panache. I lived near Space for a short horrendous season and marvelled at the difference between my native countrymen and those from my adopted home. The English looked bad at the beginning of the evening anyway but by morning were dribbling, vomiting, trouser wetting shit stains. The Spaniards on the other hand would be smart, still drinking cubatas out the back of their cars, grooving to some noise coming out their car speaker. About to have loads of sex no doubt. Fuckkers.

Next is a table of middle aged spics just enjoying lunch in the way that these people can just enjoy lunch. There is no hurry. There is no agenda. There is just lunch and the sea. The order is taken slowly. The food prepared slowly and then eaten slowly. There is wine throughout. Then coffee and tobacco. Then chupitos and more tobacco. The art of now is being practised.

I'm on the next table and behind me are a couple of really drunk blokes. I think they are Spanish but it is hard to tell they are so drunk. But they are laughing. The are having fun. There is no atmosphere of ‘shit, this could go wrong at any moment.’

A jetski passes by and then starts to do those anything but irritating, must be a right laugh, exhibition circles for our benefit. I catch the owners eye who nods his permission. I open up my brief case and quickly assemble my AK47, take aim and blow his fucking head off. I don’t really. But it’s a nice thought. So, still alive, the squirt fucks off and the waters become calm again. The shack is just over the headland so has constant wave motion, unlike the bay itself but it is still way calm. The waves are more ripples than waves.

Carlos comes over and goes through the list that has not changed in the hundred times I have been here. Seabass, dorade, squid, cuttlefish, tuna, grouper, swordfish, sardines, prawns. Oh yeah and the ever incongruous steak or lamb chops that I have seen people actually order. I order the cuttlefish. It is not the first time and it wont be the last. Hmmmm, but for how long? The cuttlefish will come golden and crisp from the plancha with its, I hesitate to call it, flesh, perfectly cooked and perfectly fresh. They get through so much stuff here, it is always fresh. Everything comes off the plancha. And it always comes perfect. That old woman in there knows her shit. There is something so completely beguiling about white fish flesh glimpsed through the scores made in the now golden skin. The skin of the dorade and lubina is crisp and tasty, almost as good as chicken.

I order a beer which comes with olives, bread and some Dulux with garlic in it. The beer goes down easily of course. And I look out to the bay again. No windsurfers today so of course no kite surfers. No wind. From round the cliffs of Botafoc suddenly emerges the enormous Denia ferry. It ploughs through the tranquil sea with a speed that is breathtaking. It is so big it seems almost impossible that it can go that fast. But it does , its bows cutting a huge wake. Within seconds it has disappeared out of view. I reckon that the boat builders brief was ‘build the biggest Sunseeker you can.” I don’t think the word ferry ever entered their heads so unlike a normal ferry it is.

My sepia arrives crisp and golden as always with its never changing salad. Tomato, onion, lettuce, green pepper and potato. Never varies and is never anything but excellent. You just know that the stuff comes from their cousin or brother or uncle or grandfather and you know it was pulled out the ground about fifteen minutes ago. Round the back there is an old woman peeling potatoes. Continuously. Whenever I walk past there she is, peeling potatoes. The Ibicencos boil them in their skins, the potatoes that is, not the old women, and then peel them. In doing so all the starchy waxiness stays in the potato and is not boiled out into the water. The potato is then dressed in oil and salt and left for us to enjoy. They say simple food is best and they, whoever they may be, are right.

Just as I am about to cut some sepia a huge swell crashes against the rocks. Then another and another. After a few moments the swell that has come out of nowhere dies down and the sea is placid again.

“What the fuck was that?” I said to myself.

One of the really drunk Spaniards sitting over from me says “That, my friend, was the ghost of Garcia Lorca.”

Strawberries. Past Perfect.

2009-06-16T00:21:00.001+02:00

Strawberries are in the shops in full force, the ones from the island sweeter, redder, better than those from the Costa Plastica (an immense tract of land somewhere in the south of Spain covered in enormous greenhouses). I was in the veg shack outside Sta Gertrudis de la Fruitera yesterday and they has huge quantities of these little mothers.

There are so many places you can stick strawberries. Jams, smoothies, cakes, icecreams, sorbets. Mashed up with a yoghurt. You gotta wash ‘em though, before you start sticking them places. They absorb any kind of deterrent sprayed on them so you gots to wash them. Add a banana and some strawberries to your morning juice every day until the season is over. The juice will taste nicer, you will be happier and you will probably live for longer too.

Strawberries now are different from when I was a little girl. I remember them to be much smaller and also remember you could always pull the stalk right out. The green stalk would lead onto a tiny white coned stem that you could remove easily. Now that variety just doesn’t seem to be around. You have to cut out the stalk and any white bit of the fruit that may be there where the stalk meets the stem. Apparently the strawberry itself will taste sweeter if eaten without this white bit. Apparently. I had the most extraordinary strawberry in La Paloma a while back and it was one of the sweetest things I have put in my mouth in some time. It had a stalk that came right out and was tiny and sweet like in days of old and it took me straight back to my childhood summers in Dorset. A bit like the madeleine in Remembrance of Things Past. Except without the words.

A lot of people have started adding savoury stuff such as Balsamic vinegar (not that savoury I guess) and black pepper. I would say I hold no store by this kind of chefwankery but it wouldn’t be true cos I have it as a canape on some of my menus in the form of a granita and it is tres popular and I actually quite like it myself. Up to a point. It still grates with me – the messing around with foodstuffs that just don’t need to be messed with. Best leave it to the boffins such as Heston Blumenthal or Ferran Adria. Those who have the time and resources to do such messing. But I like to have one rule for me and one for everyone

Big Grill?

2009-06-04T00:10:00.009+02:00

No. Big Rip Off. Actually outrageous rip off.

I was completely and utterly dumbfounded when I was cheerfully charged €54 for:
1 plate of disgusting lowest grade possible chorizo that bounced around your mouth like one of those rubber balls that boing uncontrollably all over the place.
1 plate ribs that we still raw at the edges.
1 thimble of the vinegar posing as wine
1 thimble of white wine posing as urine or vice versa
2 of the cheapest waters on the market

Fiftyfuckingfourfuckingeuros for absolute crap.

I said to the owner that really if they were going to rip everyone of so blatantly surely Jose Publico should at least have a menu board to peruse so they can decide whether they want to be fleeced or not. She looked at me as if I was mad and pointed out the 30cm x 60cm menu board standing some 15metres away on the other side of the stall. It is the red thing in the opposite corner of the last picture. If you look there is someone taking a photo of it. No doubt incredulous of the marketeers scorn and and wanting a memento. "Look kids, this is the reason you couldnt have a crepe or a coke later on. Cos these people wanted all our money"

I was thrilled to see that the owners of the 'eatery' were saving themselves on any wastage by using undefrosted frozen meat. This was skillfully cut out of its plastic bag and lumped on the grill with all the other shit that was thawing and grilling at the same time. The bitch who owned it told me that by law they were obliged to only cook frozen meat without prior defrosting.

This was at the Medieval Festival in the old town. Good thing was they all we medieval costumes. Man what I wouldn't give to use that grill as a stocks, stick them in it and beat them round the head with their frozen crap.

Killing Thyme

2009-05-27T22:38:00.002+02:00

I’m sitting on my terrace looking at all the things growing in the pots and flower beds. I have basil, coriander, parsley, mint, sage, rosemary and thyme. Having these things growing is not only great for the kitchen but them is awful pleasing on the eye too. Particularly when they flower and particularly the thyme.

Tiny mauve buds open into white petals with just the vaguest hint of violet. Because it is new growth the leaves are a light green and their texture has not become too dry yet. The stalk is all soft too. At this time (thyme, ha ha, how hilarious) of year I add it to sauces such as salsa verde and mix into salads. As the season goes on I find it dries out too much so aint that nice just raw. It aint bad, don’t get me wrong, its just not so nice.

Women make infusions with it and say it tastes nice. It is distinctly good for you. You could add it to (the) lemonade (you have been conscientiously making since my last entry). You can add it to just about everything you eat at the moment. It has a particular affinity with white fish, chicken, tomatoes. It goes jolly nice with goats cheese salad.

Thyme grows wild here so you if you wanted some for free you could go for a walk and dig some up. Alternatively you could just drive to a garden centre and buy some. Or get someone else to.

Beyond my pots and flower beds the field opposite has now become baked sand colour and will stay that way till September/October next year. Until now it has been a kaleidoscope of colour. It seems to change from week to week from that bright yellow citrusy stuff to the bluey purple of the borage to the blood red of the poppies. There are also white rocket flowers and my favourite of all, the pink garlic flowers - of which more another thyme.

Goats Cheese Salad

- ½ a tomato per person roasted with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Maldon salt, black pepper and thyme (do this slowly so the tomato dehydrates intensifying the flavour and sweetness)

- The nicest leaves you can get hold of (there are some superb mixes of organic leaves at the moment, many of them coming from Farmer Rene ‘s Organic Garden Can Riera)

- Toasted pinenuts

- A vinaigrette made with sherry vinegar, dijon mustard, salt, garlic and olive oil

Toss all these together and add on top

- 1 slice of goats cheese per person grilled till golden and bubblying on
1 slice of Juanitos white bread toasted and rubbed with garlic (not optional)

You great big lemon.

2009-05-06T00:14:00.005+02:00

Citrus fruits are glorious fruits and all of them have their place in the kitchen. But king of the kitchen would have to be the lemon. So versatile, so uplifting, so……yellow. Here in Ibiza, as with almost all of the indigenous produce, the lemons are hard to beat. Big, sweet but sharp and with good thick pith and skin, I have had lemons here that are pure sherbet. The lemon season starts in December but I reckon it is around now that they really come into their own. Nobody who knows anything about lemons agrees with me on this but I reckon that they are a bit like grapes – the longer they stay on the vine/branch, the sweeter they become.

In the kitchen they are a must in so many dishes, particularly the zest. The zest gets into just about every salad I make during the summer leaving me with a fridge full of zested but unsqeezed lemons. They get stored in the fridge once they are zested cos otherwise they deteriorate quickly but the juice always gets used up pronto; into dressings, over fish, over lamb, into sauces, into sorbets and icecreams and most excellently into lemonade. Homemade lemonade. It is enough to make you weep it is so good. Below is a recipe that once tried will be tried again and again.

When you are zesting lemons make sure that you don’t dig into the pith as it gives an acrid aftertaste. The two best ways of removing the zest that I know of is by grating it (see below) or by shaving it with a potato peeler and then cutting off any pith you may have shaved of with the skin.

An aside -There is an unbelievably excellent grater that has come on the market in the last few years and is unsurpassable for fine zesting lemons (and creating snowlike grated parmesan). It is called a Microplane and was invented by a carpenter cum home chef. He was making spaghettis for his kids and couldn’t find the grater so went to his workshop and brought back a wood plane and Voilá – the best addition to Kitchen Paraphernalia in recent years was born. If you don’t got one – get one

Lemonade
Perfect this and you will never be lonely

250g sugar
500 ml lemon juice
1.75l water
(7 good sized lemons make around 500ml)

Zest the lemons (you can forego this is you have a fridge full of zested lemons)
Squeeze the lemons
Add juice, zest and sugar together and dissolve over slow heat
Sieve out zest.

At this point you have cordial and this will keep in your fridge till hell freezes over.

When needed pour ½ of it into a jug and fill with crushed ice, mint and slices of lemon and orange and then pour in around a litre of water. If you wanna really get them going fill with fizzy water.

Nice

patatas a lo pobre - poor man's potatoes

2009-04-20T21:04:00.003+02:00

This is an Andalucian dish, or more like it the Andalucian name for it. It is served all over Spain and here it is the typical accompaniment when you have baked fish. God, what a delight. Fried potatoes that are then baked alongside really big, ugly, firm fleshed rock fish like rotxa or John Dory. Why is it I wonder that the more ugly the fish the tastier it is?

The better fish restaurants take these fish and do almost nothing to them but bake them with a bit of wine and these potatoes. The potatoes are prepared first because despite these big boned mothers being able to handle a some fairly hot baking they can’t stay in the oven long enough to cook a potato from scratch.

You can also eat patatas a lo pobre deliciously next to chicken, rabbit, pork chops etc. Think unctuous potatoes next to golden meat.

To make them you need to heat up some olive oil and put in half a baker’s dozen of unpeeled whole garlic cloves. As they are gently frying, gently sautéing, peel and slice 1/2 kilo of red Ibiza potatoes. DO NOT SETTLE FOR LESS – IBIZA RED POTATOES OR NOTHING (unless of course you cant get them, in which case get the best waxy potatoes you can get and don’t settle for less the next time). Put them into the oil with the garlic. Peel an onion and slice it into fingernail moons and add to the pan. Rip up the pepper discarding the seeds and stalk and add to the pan. Once everything is in, turn the heat up to medium and stir occasionally till it is cooked.

This is one of those dishes that can be prepared as you are cooking it i.e.
whilst the garlic is frying, you are peeling the potatoes, whilst the potatoes are frying you can peel the onion etc. You can also prepare this ahead of time and reheat later.

If you are doing it with a rock fish, get your monger to gut that mother, season it with salt and pepper, splash him with wine, add the cooked potatoes and bake it all in a hot oven (180 with fan, 210 without) until its done (Sorry, timings impossible - when skin breaks and flesh comes away from the bone, it is done. You may have to take it out, look at it and put it back a couple of times. Its head should look like something from a horror film with all the flesh coming away and its eyes popping out)

When deciding how much oil to put in always veer on the side of recklessness and know that with olive oil, more is best.

Ingredients
Olive oil
Salt
1 head of garlic
½ k potatoes
1onion
1 super crisp long Italian green pepper

Method
Fry unpeeled garlic
Fry peeled, sliced potatoes
Season
Fry peeled chopped garlic
Fry sliced onion
Fry deseeded ripped up green peppers

easter bunnies

2009-04-15T22:26:00.002+02:00

I saw a jolly hunter

A poem by Charles Causley

I saw a jolly hunter
with a jolly gun
Walking in the country
In the jolly sun

In the jolly meadow  
sat a jolly hare
 saw the jolly hunter
 took jolly care

Hunter jolly eager
 sight of jolly prey
 forgot gun pointing  
wrong jolly way(!)

Jolly hunter jolly head
 over heels gone
 jolly old safety catch
not jolly on!

Bang! went the jolly gun
 Hunter jolly dead
 Jolly Hare got clean away
 Jolly good I said

Goddam shame I say cos they taste awful good.

Easter is associated with spring lamb and last year I grilled a whole milk fed lamb in my garden which was more difficult than I had imagined it would be. Mind you, putting any kind of meat on a charcoal grill the size of a bed and walking off for 20 minutes is never a good idea. Especially if you are drunk and haven’t never grilled a whole lamb before. It turned out ok which is outrageous cos it should have been beyond compare.

Anyway, this year was different. We had to bypass the easter eggs as they got confiscated at passport control back in febrary. Easter is also associated with Bunnies so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone. We had rabbit with chocolate. This may sound weird and indeed it is. BUT it is good. Rabbits are only really for those who love food as for some reason many people cant bear the idea of eating a cuddlywuddly luverly likkle wabbit. Eat a cow, oh yeah sure, no problem. But not a little bunny. Jesus.

The Ibicencos aren’t so sentimental. They eat rabbits all the time. A popular dish here is rabbit with almonds which is basically what we had but with the addition of chocolate stirred in at the end. I say basically cos it was crossed with a similar but much more spicy dish from Mexico (Lindo) called Mole. (This has nothing to do with short sighted subterranean rodents, it just happens to be the name of the dish. However when I was there it did make me smile every time I saw the billboard signs announcing AQUI HAY MOLE. Something very Monty Python about it.)

The recipe is quite long winded but I have it if you want it.
It entails lots of searing, sweating, toasting and pulverising so you know its gotta be good.

Ibiza Covered

2009-04-07T20:52:00.005+02:00

My first experience of Spanish covered markets was when I was drinking in Barcelona in the 80’s. I lived just across the Ramblas from the incomparably wicked La Boqueria. Very few markets in the world can compare. The covered markets here aint chic Ibiza but they are excellent nonetheless. I think there are only three – Ibiza Town, San An and Sta. Eulalia. Sadly, none of these markets are surviving at full potential. All the markets on the island have empty stalls. Visible reminders that the times they are a changing.

The fish stalls are my favourites. This seems to be the best time of year for fish. There is a wider variety, the fish seem fresher and the price is better. For example John Dory is down from €28 per kilo to twenty. I have no idea where the name John Dory comes from but I do know it is also known as St Peter’s fish, Gallo San Pedro in Spanish, cos when Jesus told Saint Peter he would be a fisher of men they were out boating on the sea of Galilee. On a Sunseeker no doubt, He told Peter to put his hand in the water. Peter did so and pulled out a John Dory leaving his thumbprint on its back which we can still see today. Another really cool thing about this fish’s name is that it is Zeus Faber in Latin. How cool is that? If I ever write me a book, my pen name will be Zeus Faber

I have hardly anything to do with the market in San An. Only been there once in fact. Buying shellfish with a conspiracy theorising tattoo artist who showed me how to cook paella for 120.

Santa Eulalia is the easiest to use and has the best vegetable stand on the island to my mind. Maria she is called and she feels each piece of fruit before selling it. Her husband grows most of the stuff that they sell. Not unusual here. Just up the hall is (another) Maria. I used to buy stuff from her farm directly where a box of peppers would cost what 2 peppers would cost on her stall in the market. She sold everything to me from under what she claims to be the oldest Carob tree on the island. It wouldn’t surprise me. It is enormous and ancient. Many of its branches are held up by makeshift crutches. I am certain that this is where Dali got his idea for all those crutches in his paintings.

These markets are well worth a visit. The best one for the ‘experience’ is Saturday morning in Ibiza New market in town. The place is buzzing with señoras buying stuff for the weekend, the younger marketeers nursing hangovers, the cafes alive with punters ordering beer, wine and cognac for breakfast accompanying them with tapas of tripe, kidneys and tongue. Best of all are the gypsies (not pikeys, gypsies). There is a constant coming and going as they sit at the terrace bars, their gold jewellery bright against their dark skin. Once in a while you see one with blue eyes and you just know that that boy is trouble. You will see the fantastically dapper Juan in his waistcoat, Stetson and cane. He has a moustache that Zapata would have been jealous of. And I definitely am jealous of.

There used to be a covered market in the old town but that, whilst undeniably the nicest architecturally, is now derelict and used only as a lock up for a few stalls selling vegetables opposite the Croissant Show (show what? I ask myself). Incidentally one of these stalls this is where the wonderful organic Sa Fruteria (699348590 they deliver) is located. There is not a single one in the main market and I have a feeling the one in Santa Doolalia has gone out of business. Organic is here but it is struggling. Perhaps when and if it does take hold it will mark a strengthening in the covered markets. I hope so.

All this talk of markets has got me thinking. About supermarkets………

Supermarkets here are SO different than those in uk. There seem to be two sorts – the small family run ones that are just some sort of flexible franchise and the ever appalling SYP (Eroski) style ones.

Most the small ones are fairly regular but the good ones are really good, stocking high quality products alongside unusual products (for example see http://lagrandebouffecatering.blogspot.com/2008/03/have-you-seen-this-can.html

The larger ones on the other hand are something else. These are the pits. The few things they do stock are impossible to find cos they change the layout weekly. When you do find what you are looking for you cant get it cos they are restocking shelves and blocking the ailes. If you finally manage to get the thing you need it takes forever to pay for it cos all the staff are restocking the shelves and blocking the aisles. Try asking them if they wouldn’t mind opening another checkout cos theres a queue of 50 people for the only one open. All of a sudden the shelf stacker turns into sulky teenager, rolls their eyes and slouches of in a huff as if they have been sent to their room. Its hilarious. They really take offense at being asked anything by a customer.

All this said, I love it that supermakets don’t really work here. However infuriating it may be.The autonomon feel of the uk supers is a scary reminder of just how much we are Valued Customers instead of people doing their shopping. Sandwich and supermarket culture in the uk is not to be emulated however convenient and well priced it may be.

Juanito in the 21st Century

2009-04-02T22:32:00.000+02:00

If Jesus had been born in Ibiza , the inn with no crib for a bed would most certainly have been Juanitos. It is an ancient place run forever by the legenday Juanito and famous for its excellent lamb in cooked in what looks the cauldron that Obelix fell into as a baby. It is the penultimate eatery on the San Juan road. This road, know as restaurant road, starts with with the newer expat imports of Bambuddha, Ocho and Aura and ends with with a cluster of prehistoric ultra Ibicenco grill restaurants.

And into this ultra Ibicenco scene steps Matt Jones, founder of London’s organic Flour Power City and brought to the island to give his ever expanding family room to grow. Using an interesting new marketing technique called “Shhhh, Don’t Tell Anyone We’re Open” he reopened Juanito’s this week. The secrecy technique failed however and the restaurant was full, the bar was full and so was the terrace. Juanito himself, unable to keep away, supervised the concotion of his famous ultra authentic Allioli. It remains the same – garlic, olive oil, salt - also as eye watering as ever.

Matt had made only a puy lentil stew/soup that was really just in case anyone happened to turn up. That of course was gone within minutes. Not surprising given how delicious it was and the quality of the bread that was served alongside it, but it left the problem of how to feed the rest of the people who had turned up just to see what was going on. Whilst my back was turned Matt made a chopped Imam Bayaldi (a Turkish spiced aubergine dish that translates as the Priest Fainted, cos he did when his cook first served it to him) that was so fresh, so subtle and so delightful all the women started crying.

This was again served with the bread with which Matt has made his name in London. This is now the best bread on the island. This stuff is killer. There is the white and the 75% rye. Both are big, country style loaves that are what bread are supposed to be – doughy but not dense, heavy without it weighing in your stomach, ever so slightly sour but with a delicious freshness. This is real bread and it makes real toast.

Once all the women had stopped crying they were served oranges in vanilla caramel and an orange sorbet made 8 minutes before it was served, the ingredients which were nothing but orange and icing sugar (the syrup bypassed so as not to water down the flavour). For those who wanted chocolate there was brownie.

Since Matt wasn’t expecting anyone the menu was by no means complete. When it is complete Juanitos in the 21st Century will remain essentially the same, adding just a few new touches – grilled meats accompanied by pepperonata instead of a slice of vaguely grilled pepper. Lemon sorbet made in the kitchen instead of some industrial plant on the outskirts of Barcelona. That sort of thing.

Oh yes, and the bakery. Matt was trying to keep his croissants etc (which are also going to be baked daily) a secret as well, but I broke into the bakery and got hold of the best pain au chocolat I have ever had. All this stuff from the ovens will be available for sale over the counter. I have a feeling that Matt’s secrecy plan is going to fail and once again heaven on earth is going to be present here on Ibiza.

A Little Place I Know.....

2009-03-02T14:19:00.005+01:00

Apparently the objective of just about all people who write about food on the internet is to get noticed so they can then become restaurant reviewers (and spend their lives reviewing places like El Bulli or Gordon Ramsey's latest sales pitch, no doubt).

There is a restaurant reviewer in New York who goes to restaurants in disguise cos she knows that she will be treated differently if she is recognised (Ruth Reichl - Garlic and Sapphires (who the hell came up with that name?) The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise). She has done tests even. Going to the same restaurant as her public persona and as Ethel from Illinois. That sort of thing. She says the two experiences just dont compare. So what is the point of her reviewing restaurants if they are turning on the charm just for certain individuals? Its gonna happen. Of course it is. But it is shit.

I liked her idea. It must be interesting to go out to eat as someone else and get paid for it. Anyway it got me to thinking of other interesting ways of reviewing restaurants. And this is what I have come up with - I review a restaurant and the reader has to guess which restaurant I am writing about. Genius.

So here goes

Garlic and Sardines - the Secret Life of Restaurants in Disguise.

Review No 1

The streets around Ibiza Town get really quiet at lunch time. Proof that Spain's excellent siesta tradition is still going strong. Thank Christ. The last thing I want to see in Spain are really successful sandwich chains garroting the lunchtime restaurant trade. Next thing you know we'll have people smoking outside their office buildings.

Anyway, the streets are sleepy and there arent many people around cos they are all having lunch. The restaurant I am looking for is a workers' restaurant on the first floor of an apartment building somewhere near the New Market. I heard about it years ago when I first arrived and have only just got round to finding its whereabouts. There is an Estrella Damm blackboard outside advertising its 5 Starters, 14 (yes 14) main courses and 5 desserts. The menu is priced at €9.50 and includes bread and wine. Nowadays that is a very good price but if you convert it into pesetas and then it into pounds it is actually laughable. It has increased by 50% in just 7 years.

You go up its narrow and inevitably marbled staircase to find a restaurant much like the India Club on the Strand, not only in its decor but in its oldworldliness. You seem to really be stepping back in time. The furniture is of course brown varnished wood. There is a waiter that can't weigh any less that 16 stone and can't measure any more that 5 foot three. He is sweaty and out of breath. Not surprising given his proportions. The restaurant is only half full suggesting that 'el Crisis' has hit the Spaniards stomach. A good sign really cos in a battle between a Spaniard's stomach and el Crisis I know who my money is on and it aint gonna take that long to decide it.

I order the garlic soup which is no more than yellow water with bread mush in it. Revolting. The Spanish obsession with yellow food colouring is really quite worrying. And bread has never been their strong point. Especially when it has been sitting in lukewarm yellow liquid for a few hours. Then comes the main course. Bingo. Deep fried sardines with homemade chips. The sardines are little ones no bigger than my middle finger. They are gutted and scaled, floured and deep fried. and there are lots of them. They are fresh and their flesh is sweet. The chips are sparcer but that is probably a good thing anyway as one likes to acheive a balance, doesnt one? One doesnt want to overdo the fried food, what?

The only down side of this course is the stray uncooked chip which seems to always come my way. I love it that restaurants cook their own chips. Frozen chips in a hamburger joint is only right and proper but a restaurant should be closed down for serving them. Especially if they are those fat and flat monstrosities that turned up in refectories and other low eateries a couple of decades ago. WHO ACTUALLY LIKES THOSE THINGS? I defy anyone to actually consider this kind of "chip" and come out in favour of it.

Anyway, dessert. God. Some appalling flan (creme caramel) from a packet. The baked apple looked good and I was an idiot not to choose it given that I knew what the flan would be. The Spanish are not fantastic when it comes to most desserts (tarta de santiago and flao, please remain seated) and it is my experience that they skimp in this area. I worked with a bloke who called himself a chef in San Carlos. He told me his secret for making the perfect flan - add 25% more milk to the concoction than the packet recommended. And he was the head chef in a 120 cover restaurant.

I could have chosen the fresh apple that they bring on a plate with a knife. This is one of the many things I love about Spain. An apple is a perfectly legitimate dessert on a menu del dia. You see these people sit and peel the apple at their leisure and then eat it chunk by chunk. There is something correct, organic about this. I dont know why but I have always loved watching diners do this. To an Englishman it is so OTHER.

lunch

2009-02-06T15:08:00.001+01:00

The weather may be crap.........but

This is my lunch. That in my hand is an organic (somehow that word is is beginning to piss me off) avocado with a mayonnaise made from eggs from down the road, ginger, superlative Ibiza lemon juice & it's zest, vegetable oil & a sip of walnut oil.

And right there in the background is Formentera.

Get at them beans

2009-02-05T19:09:00.003+01:00

These have to be one of the best reasons to live on ibiza. Broad beans in season in January and picked before they have turned into those marrowbone monstrosities I remember for childhood. Just look at the little darlings

An experiement

2009-02-05T18:38:00.003+01:00

There is not a great deal of smoking that goes on in Spain and none that I know of in Ibiza (with the exception of myself). This is almost certainly because the climate is to warm. So they stick to salting and curing* . There are only a few months of the year that I am able to smoke as for a lot of the time the ambient temperature is higher that the ideal 28ºC needed for cold smoking.

I discovered a way of smoking with Sabina which is indigenous to the island. Sabina is resinous therefore not suitable for smoking as it leaves and acrid taste. Nonetheless I wanted to use Sabina because it is SO “of the island” and has such a wonderful aroma and I gave myself a gold star for figuring out a way to do it. This has led me on to wondering about other fuels that might be interesting.

I was out fishing on a beach last week as standing on a matt of seaweed that must have been half a metre high. The sea washes it in in the winter and the JCBs take it away in the summer (which is apparently terrible for the enviroment – upsetting the natural order of things blahblahblah). It occurred to me that it would be interesting to try smoking with it. To that end I have 2 salmon trout fillets being salted in preparation for smoking. Gonna cold smoke one and hot smoke the other.

The above was written a bit ago. The cold smoke didnt work cos I havent got a system with a burner set up to keep it alight (sabina and other woods dont need it). I hot smoked the salmon trout and was VERY HAPPY the results. I was so drunk in celebration its taken a while to get this down on iPaper. It really was excellent.

* there is a town in the Alpujarras in the south of Spain where they hang all the hams cos the climate perfect. High. Dry. And with sea breezes blowing up from the Mediterranean. The town is absolutely rammed with hams and you see them hanging EVERYWHERE. I aint gonna say where the town is cos when (not if) this blog goes viral there will be a million japonese and other tourists snapping away the charm.

Recipix - wild asparagus tortilla

2009-02-04T13:35:00.004+01:00

It is the time of year again when in Ibiza it becomes possible to go and and pick your supper from the field next door. Yesterday I went out and got some asparagus and rocket flowers (this year the rocket leaves have gone past eating point and become grass flavoured earlier than usual). The asparagus is thin and spindly and needs a reasonable amount of boiling to get the bitterness out but I think that asparagus must not be cooked al dente anyway. It is a travesty of modernity.

ps make sure you click (or double click or whatever it is that you pc users do) to see the first photo. Its beautiful.

Starlings and Olives

2009-01-22T13:07:00.004+01:00

As a child I grew up learnig to hate starlings as vermin and was given carte blanche to shoot as many of them as I was able with my fathers air rifle. I think over all the years that I shot at starlings on a regular and sustained basis I shot only one and even then I cant be sure I got it.

Some time later, about 2½ - 3 decades more or less, I changed my mind and started loving them. Why? Cos they’re beautiful and cos I have seen them close up and I like what they do. Around autumn time, sometimes early, sometimes late, they arrive in large numbers on their way to Africa or somewhere nice and warm. They stop in Ibiza cos Ibiza got lovely olive trees, innit? We have 4 olive trees in our almost sheer rock garden. God knows how they manage to flourish but they do. Each year the starlings arrive and descend on the trees one after another leaving them completely stripped of olives. I walk out onto the terrace and there is rapid flapping sound like a thousand old spanish señoras flicking open theire fans at Sunday mass and fanning themselves as one. But it aint them señoras, no. Its them starlings, shooting out of the trees, checking whether there really is any danger and alighting again to continue the gourge. Every once in a while you get to see them doing that excellent balling thing like what sardines do. It really is a sight to behold.

Two years ago I had a fight with them over the olives cos I wanted to harvest and press them just to see what I got. Unfortunatety, out of about 40 kilos of olives collected over what seemed like as many hours of tree whacking, and pressed but a man no taller than 4ft 2 and no younger than 90, we got 6 litres of murky oil that tasted like the starlings had pressed them internally if you know what I mean. I reckon that we had the misfortune of turning up at the old man’s farm at the wrong time - couple of weeks since the year’s olive harvest had been pressed and some time before the old man had decided to clean the enormous straw washers that are placed above and below the olives in the gigantic vice that is an olive press. Shame but it really was unpleasant and I had to chuck the lot. The old man charged me €14 for no less than 5 hours of his time and the use of his equipment. He also got me pissed on his very very very strong home made wine. How the Ibicencos love their homemade wine and how it gets one pissed.

I was never really under any illusion that home produced olive oil would be an ongoing thing as it is so reasonalby priced anyway and I get through an AWFUL LOT of it. You can of course go stratospheric with prices (google tells me €200 a litre is the most expensive) but I find the common or garden cold pressed olive oil excellent - Carbonell in the tetrabriks being my favourite general purpose oil. Even though we are always told not to cook with it I use cold pressed extra virgin olive oil for frying. I wouldn’t dream of using any other vegetable oil for frying an egg so therefore why not use it in most intances?

Estornell is probably in the bracket above (see photo). This is the sort of oil you really should use only on salads. It is made in Lerida by by a family who have been blending oils for centuries. using almost exclusively the delicious Arbequina olive that has become so popular lately. Arbequina are the small green olives about the size of Nicioises. The oil is strong in flavour but has no back bite, it is smooth. There is a depth that standard EVOOs don’t have. Estornell is the Catalan for starling (now look at phot again) . Isnt that nice?

Anyway, after all that, now I know why starlings have such shiney coats.

pasta and potato soup

2009-01-12T18:57:00.004+01:00

I have just made the most amazing soup. I am recently arrived in Norfolk for to cooking enormous casserole for Granny’s 90th. I’m giving her beef. Anyway, that’s beside the point. That’s on Saturday. The point is the soup I just made.

Butter, olive oil, thyme, bay leaf, onion, garlic, smoked bacon, celery, stock, water, pasta & potatoes. Simplicity itself but wicked. I sweated the onion and garlic in the fats with the herbs, then I put in the celery and bacon and sweated some more. Then went in the carbs and liquids. Then I stirred and stirred at full boil til everything was cooked good. The constant stirring is the trick. All them starches come flooding out into the liquid leaving you with a beautiful, thick and chunky soup. I ate it with parsley and basil pesto and a bruscetta made of sadly rubbish bread.

Bad Mama Marmalade

2008-12-10T22:54:00.001+01:00

Fuck Bonne Maman, I've made some really hardcore, bitter marmalade. Much like my women, that is how I like my marmalade - bitter and hardcore.

For years I have wanted to make marmalade but have always managed to fail to do so. January would come and go along with the Seville oranges and I would habitually fail to make marmalade. About 15 years have passed like this. This year was different and quite by accident.

I was making orange juice from some oranges given to me by my brother who is house sitting in the north. I cut through one that looked different to all the rest and Voila! there it was - thick skin and pith, hardly any juice and crammed with pips. I licked it to be certain. Yep, it was disgusting. Bingo I had found them. Cos they are slightly smaller and have bobbly exteriors the tree was easy to locate when I went up to the house that afternoon. I picked about 3 kilos and went home tres happy

(I had actually come across them last year but had once again failed to do anything about it. I was at a pig killing and was wandering about the farm during one of the less interesting bits of the jumbobeanosausagemakingfest. I picked an orange off a tree, peeled it and had a good old bite. Then I spat it out. Immediately. I had bitten into a marmalade orange, much to the amusement of all the Ibicencos watching me. To them it is not a Seville orange, it is a pig orange, named thus cos it is so acrid they use it to rub on the intestines of the pig to disinfect them before they fill them with sausage meat. And that is all they use them for. They of course think we are totalmente loco for using them, but hey, what's new?)

Both my mother and Annie's mother make superlative bitter, hardcore marmalades (perhaps that is how they like their men too....but actually, come to think of it.....that is not a thought process I want to continue) so I made a mixture of both their recipes and came out with some damn nasty stuff even if i do say so myself. Bitter and hardcore. Olé.

RECIPE
1k orange
1 lemon
2ltrs water
2k sugar

boil oranges in water till soft and some are deflated
remove the oranges
cut in half and scoop out the seeds and pulp
put the seeds and pulp in muslin and reheat in the water for 30 mins
remove seeds
add heated sugar and chopped peel
stir till fully dissolved
turn up heat and boil till it gels when dripped onto a saucer.
Remove from heat

let them eat....Spinach Spaghettis

2008-12-05T12:11:00.000+01:00

I didnt let them eat this actually as there wasnt enough. It was a byproduct of the spinach I served them with the COQ au vin. I like to pull the stalks off spinach cos otherwise it seems stringy when eating but I do not like chucking the stalks away. So I melted some anchovies in olive oil with some chilli and garlic and the put the stalks in the pan with the mix. I put a lid on it and turned up the volume, lifting the lid off occasionally to stir. When the stalks were cooked (a couple of minutes) I simply poured them out on to my plate and ate them as a starter whilst the staff watched and waited for me to finish before they were allowed to eat their own lunch. Discipline is important in a kitchen.

It worked beautifully on its own and a few days later I did the same thing but added the mix to some spaghetti. The result was equally wicked.

let them eat....Wild Rocket Soup

2008-11-25T22:16:00.000+01:00

Today I cooked them up there a potato based soup finished with wild organic rocket (same as the wild rocket that grows all over the island except that it costs €18 a kilo). The trick with potato soups is to get the potato/liquid ratio right (probably by adding what seems like too much liquid) so you dont end up up with Stretched Potato Soup (AKA SPS). Today I failed and served them SPS

Anyway the recipe is: sweat some onion and garlic in lots of olive oil, add chopped, peeled potatoes, sweat some more, add (slightly more) liquid (than you think), bring to boil, add rocket and blend. Season. It should be a lovely silky vibrant green.

Some funny things are going on with prices these days. €18 is an awful lot for some weeds. I know I sound like a grumpy old Mutfak but it is. Ribeye steak costs €18 a kilo, halibut fillet in the supermarket cost 16 bucks today. I guess its all in the packaging. Have it growing wild in the field next to your house dont look right but have it covered in mud and in a plastic bag such as they have in the veg stalls here and badabing! a desirable object is born.

My favourite has to be the modern marketing/packaging/rebranding of Ibiza salt. If you go the excellent Cash Loto you can pick a kilo of Sal Torres for 36 cents. If you go to the nearest shop selling Sal de Ibiza you can pick up the same salt for up €110 a kilo (yep, 305.5 recurring times more expensive). Now go to your friends houses, and see how many of them have these beautiful, desirable little turquoise pots of God's greatest gift to man besides poontang.

let them eat....Chicken Freakasay

2008-11-19T15:18:00.000+01:00

I was driving up to the house today with Caesar Salad planned cos there was some little gems to use up. I was going to serve it with fried chicken breast - a way of serving this dish that has become popular over the last decade. I am totally against this but not to the point of not doing it if I think no one is looking. I can see where it is coming from but it shouldn't be allowed really.

Anyway the weather was so utterly rubbish that salad as main dish was not really an option so I changed it to chicken fricasee which was ok but not that great. The Ibicenco handyman/henchman really didnt like it. Apart from a few exceptions the spanish dont really seem to dig bechamel/veloute style dishes. Nor do they really like risotto (and before you think it - risotto is in no way similar to paella. It is about as similar as mash potatoes and chips). I think it is because of the butter. The Spanish just dont do butter like the Engleesh. Or Marlon Brando.

Not sure if I mentioned this but have found out recently that the boss came to the villa 3 times this summer. And stayed for 4 days each time. 12 days. 12 days in one year.

Light so crap today couldnt take no photos so just gonna leave a photo of somethingorother.

let them eat....Spanish tortilla

2008-11-06T18:48:00.000+01:00

I dont know what it is about doing recipix of this Spanish classic but I have tried three times over the last year and each time something stops me from being able to complete it; visitors, failure of light and now yesteday's camera running out of batteries. Three times I have tried and three times I have failed.

Shame really cos it was a really good one - soft potatoes with a few bits of golden edge, sweet onion, the centre still moist and perfectly salted.

I have been in Spain now off and on for more than 20 years and the tortilla has been there by my side since day one. I arrived by train in Barcelona’s Paseo de Gracia and emerged from the darkness of the subterranean train station into the brilliant sunshine and swarming Plaza Catalunya. I sat down in Bar Zurich to await god knows what. I ordered a beer and a Spanish tortilla bocadillo (bocadillo meaning little bite, but it is invariably an enormous length of phat Spanish baguette, rubbed with tomatoes, drenched in olive oil and spinkled generously, perhaps overgenerously, with salt). And that was pretty much my diet for the first 9 months of my time there.

I cant remember who showed me how to make tortilla but I wish I could so as I could thank them. The recipes I have been shown since are all inferior and in many ways indicative of why spanish food is in decline in the domestic arena. The recipe is (and one day I will manage to recipix it) as follows:

You will need:
1k potatoes
1 large spanish onion
OLIVE oil
Salt
And a good frying pan that will hold all the ingredients and give you a nice thick tortilla at the end. A thin tortilla is a poor tortilla.
And a mixing bowl big enough to mix everything easily.

- Peel waxy or floury potatoes and slice them to the same thickness more or less as 3 euro coins placed together. You want them all to be roughly the same size so they cook evenly.

- Pour olive oil into a good frying pan, put the potatoes in and put on a medium heat.

- Whilst they are frying peel the onion, cut it in half and slice across the grain slightly thinner than the potatoes.

- Pour the potatoes out of the pan into a large bowl, add the onions and generous salt and mix them together adding a bit more oil if it looks dry.

- Use this method of mixing the potatoes and onions throughout and continue cooking until the potato is soft and slightly golden. If there are uncooked bits but the rest is done then put a lid on for a couple of minutes and this should finish them off.

- Break the eggs into the same mixing bowl and whisk with a fork. Pour in the potato and onion and mix it up good. Taste it for salt. THERE MUST BE ENOUGH. THIS IS A VERY SIMPLE DISH AND WITH VERY SOFT FLAVOUR SO THERE MUST BE ENOUGH SALT. ACHTUNG. ACHTUNG. ACHTUNG!!!!!!! ✪ ☁ ☠ ✖ ✪ ☁ ☠ ✖ ✪ ☁ ☠ ☢ ✖ ✪ ☁ ☠ The mixture must be decidedly wet with the potato and onion sitting in a puddle of egg.

- Put the pan back on the heat and coat with a bit more oil. When it is hot pour in the mixture. Let it cook on a medium heat for a minute or two and then send a palette knife all the way round the edge (paying particular attention to any handle rivets that there may be) to see that it is not sticking. (If it is sticking really badly I suggest you give up and just make a hashy mess).

- Place a large flat plate or saucepan lid over it , flip it over and slide it off back into the pan using the palette knife to tuck in the edges so him look nice at end. (This is reasonably easy BUT make sure you do it over a work surface, not the cooker, so if it slips off you don’t have to spend hours cleaning your cooker AND make sure you have cloths or can handle the heat - having to drop it midway would be annoying).

- Cook another couple of minutes and the flip the tortilla back onto a clean plate.

FIN

NB Don’t over cook the egg as a dry tortilla is not easily enjoyed. Keep him nice and moist

The Last Time I Cooked for Eve

2008-11-04T23:14:00.002+01:00

The last time I cooked for Eve she was lying in my bed. God what a bitch. Beautiful? Yes. Voluptuous? Yes. Misunderstood? No.

She had come to me crying about something or other. I never did find out what it was but whatever it was, she was really upset. Bawling her fucking eyes out, screaming and cursing. Something about not being fair and why the fuck shouldn’t she and I don’t know what.

Anyway. I took her in my arms to try and comfort her but as usual she pushed me away spitting out what a useless fuck I was and how all men were the same – spineless, pussywhipped faggots. Man, I guess she hated men. But I didn’t care. I loved her.

I knew what was going on. I knew she how she despised me but I just didn’t care. So long as she kept coming to my bed she could do whatever the fuck she pleased. Goddam I loved that woman.

Another time she had turned upset and crying and in need of comfort. It took an unusually short time to to calm her down and it was achieved with a lot less insults and vitriolic rejection than usual. I took her in my arms and assured her that, yes all men, all men, were vile and wanted only one thing and she seemed to cheer up almost immediately. She suddenly remembered she had to be somewhere urgently and left. Fuck me if the fucking bitch didn’t steal my fucking wallet. Goddam pigskin wallet, best quality wallet money can buy. I’d have given her the fucking money. But oh no, she had to steal it. She was like that. Did stuff to piss people off cos she thought it was funny or some fucking shit like that.

Have you ever noticed how many bad or unpleasant words begin with or feature the letter V? Vile, vindictive, violent, vice, vicious, villian, vampire, vapid, vomit, vaccuous. And what is the predominant letter in that woman’s name? Some people say she has been misrepresented and blah, blah, blah – bullshit. She was a fucking bitch from start to finish. She knew exactly what she was doing with every little goddam thing she did or word she spoke.

Anyway. The last time I cooked for her she wanted her favourite – tarte aux pommes. She loved that dish. Her favourite apple was the Cherry Pippin. She had a seemingly endless supply of them and my God they were good – bright red, shiny and and heavy in my hand. It felt like it could explode at any minute. Bite into it and it did. Badabing!!!!! Mouth flooded with the clear, crisp, sweet flavour making me think of all things pure – blue skies, mountains, rivers and then……..her.

So anyway I made her this tart as she lay screaming and cursing on the bed. I don’t understand how she had the stamina to keep all that hatred and anger at such a pitch all the time. I guess it was her life blood.

I took three of those apples, peeled, cored and sliced them, tossed them in some vanilla sugar and put them on to steep with a gurgle of sauternes and shaving of lemon zest. Leaving the lid on I cooked them until the were soft enough to puree. Then I cooked them some more until they were slightly, ever so slightly, caramelised. Then I strained the syrup and pureed the apple.

Whislt that and the catawalling in the background were going on I took some butter from the fridge, cubed it and rubbed it into some sugar and OO flour. When it was crumbly I stopped, washed and dried my hands, broke an egg into a cup and whisked it with a fork. I poured 2/3 into the bowl and worked it quickly to a dough adding a tiny bit more of egg. When I had the dough, I flattened it, wrapped it and put it in the fridge. I poured myself a glass of calvados and went to the terrace for a smoke and think about this stuff.

When I had finished I took the pastry back out of the fridge. I dusted the marble and rolled out the pastry to a nice thickness. I rolled it on to the pin and then laid it across the tart case. I pushed the corners in to get a good right angle, passed the pin over the top of the case and flattened the upright edges slightly flush. I then lined it with oven paper, filled it with baking beans and cooked it at 140ºC with the fan on for 20 minutes. I then peeled three more apples, cored them and cut them into segments a la tarte aux pommes. I then dusted them with icing sugar and left them to mascerate. Whilst they macerated, I masturbated. No, not really – I had plans for later on but I washed my hands just in case. What I actually did was poach the segments in the strained syrup and to gently heat some apple and calvados jelly.

The tart case was now cooked so I removed the baking beans and paper and spread the puree over the bottom of the tart. Checking the segments were almost soft through I lifted them gently from the syrup with a slotted spoon and laid them out in the fanning circle you associate with this sort of thing. I brushed it with some of the jelly and put it back in the oven for 10 minutes at 140 without the fan.

Whilst it was cooking I went to the bathroom. She was by now passed out. I showered, dried and dressed and walked back past her without shouting “wake up, bitch and get the fuck out of my house.”

What I did do was to take the tart out tof the oven, cut a slice and take it through to her. The moment the aroma hit her nostrils she sat bolt upright and shouted “Where’s my food, you fuck?” I was standing next to her, arms outstretched, offering her this thing I had made for her in one hand and an ice cold glass of sauternes in the other. “Oh” she said , took them and devoured them. “More” she said and the same was repeated. This happened three more times and then she just laid back down on the bed and said “fuck me.”

God I loved that woman.

recipix - rovellons

2008-11-03T04:51:00.000+01:00

let them eat....Rovellones

2008-10-29T22:34:00.000+01:00

So. Ha ha. I'm back at the villa cooking for the staff again.

Because of this new breakfast cereal, Credit Crunch, that everyone is talking about, there are cut backs up there. Quite what they are is difficult to say. Where last year there was only one, there are now 2 laundry women to take care of the 14 unused rooms and all the laundry that they dont generate. There is an extra gardener (You there! Basil! Double handful. Now!) which is nice. There seem to be another couple of dogs and I am fairly sure there are 3 cars I dont remember from last year.

There are less people to cook for cos a few people are away. The Belgians have gone. (I heard that they were there most of the summer though because not 3 days after they had finished and returned to where they had come from, there was an electrical storm, the house was struck and the lightening totalled EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF EQUIPMENT they had installed. EVERY SINGLE PIECE. Three months it took them to install in the first place. All the MASSIVE plasma screens, all the small plasma screens, ALL the speaker systems in ALL the rooms (not just bedrooms but bathrooms, sauna, turkish bath, gym etc etc), all the remote consoles for running all this stuff. ALL OF IT. FUCKED. God I'd love to have seen the bill they presented to the insurers. Come to that, I'd quite like to have seen the insurers receive that bill, poor little darlings.)

But anyway, they're hungry again and it falls to me, Mutfak, to attempt to appease their insatiable hunger for LUNCH. Damn, those chicas can put it away.

It has been really crappy weather so I thought roast chicken would cheer them. (I got into a fight again with my butcher about the appallingly low quality of the chickens available on the island. This is a ongoing battle but now is not the moment to tediousarize you with it except to say that I will win it eventually). Roast chicken and potatoes cos I know they would like it and rovellones for me cos....well, because. And there's an end on't.

Rovellones are a mushroom. Milk cap to be precise. Lactarius deterrimus to be show offy. I have only come across them in Spain. (Which isn't saying much. I am in no way as well travelled gastronomically as I would like to be). They are beautiful fungi bleeding orange when you slice them. They range from the size of a minidisc to the size of a compact disc. They appear at the end of the summer after the early September rains but since there weren't any neither this nor last year they are scarce but none the less delicious for their scarcity. I cooked them with butter, wild young garlic, fino, and chicken stock and them was awful good. Too good for the chicken but what can you do? Recipix to follow.

PD. The below recipix for Pomegranate Molasses is completely wrong. It is however completely right for Pomegranate Jam. Correct Pomegranate Molasses Recipix to follow when I track down some more SOUR pomegranates. Tit.

PD2 re: the pomegranates below again - if you use an orange squeezer with a rotating head you get the nasty bitter taste. If you use one of those one with the arm that you pull down (like the ones you get on the cooler espresso machines) then you wont get the nastiness but will get the juice.

pomegranate molasses

2008-10-02T15:02:00.000+02:00

Pomegranate molasses came into public consciousness (my consciousness, therefore the public's) about 10 years ago. The first I heard of it was in Moro's first cookbook. Since then the public (me) have been hearing of little else, even the twin towers and the credit crunch being secondary in my (the public's) pysche. Pomegranate molasses this and pomegranate molasses that. Every time you open a cook book you have to reach for the pomegranate molasses. In spite of all this and its obvious importance I have yet to even try it. I dont even know what it looks like, though I have a fair idea.

Anyway, it is pomegranate season in Ibiza and as with many of the fruits here it is all the fruit's structure can do to stop the juice literally gushing out. The benefits of pomegranate juice are being extolled a lot these days. But how to juice it? Ha ha!!! You treat it exactly the same as an orange and cut it in half and squeeze. Simple as that. No irritating procedures. Only thing is is it tastes like crap leaving a horrible, bitter, dry aftertaste in your mouth due to the dry membrane within the fruit that separates the different compartments. The reaction you get in your mouth is not unlike that which you get from biting on banana skin. (An interesting and possibly useful aside given your diet or sexual persuasion - apparently banana skin is good for piles. I leave it to you how you wish to apply it). So anyway I have no idea how to get the juice out.

To continue, all the recipes I could find for PGMs (that's short for pomegrohshutup) listed pomegranate juice as the main ingredient. Given the difficulty in extracting the juice as laid out in the paragraph above I can only assume it comes from a carton. So what's the point? Why not just buy it from a shop? I have the good fortune of living in Ibiza where the fruit trees groan. For me it is easy go out and commune with nature, particularly the sheep. Recently I communed and returned with a pile of that most bizarre fruit the pomegranate. I ate a good deal which I enjoyed enormously. The pips are small and can be eaten which is a breakthrough because until recently I was put off them due to the size and hardness of those pips. I guess by the time they reach the shores of your Sceptered Isle they have come a long way and are a sight older than when picked.

Well anyway, I decided to make pomegranate molasses and above is the recipix. When I do something with it I'll blog it up all over the internet. Until then just know it tastes remarkably like pomegranate jam.

you ever come across these mothers?

2008-08-19T22:51:00.000+02:00

I was recently in an Italian suppliers to get some 00 flour cos the flour I have found so far here is rubbish. I was looking at the artisanal pastas and picked up a pack of paccheri which are, 6 months after I first found them, still rocking my world. This time they were made by another company but still very nice, yeah, yeah, blah blah blah but as I was buying them the guy on the counter said ' eh! you! you eva tried dese tomatoes? Dey da best.' I said no I hadnt tried them tomatoes and he said "cazzo, you gotta try dem." So I said alright and I bought some. JESUS Man, oh man oh man oh man. These tomatoes are way out there.

I have never liked tinned tomatoes unless they have been cooked for a minimum of 3 hours in copious olive oil, garlic and onion. The guy in the shop said "3 minutes." I called him a goddam liar. He laughed and shut the door in my face.

So I went home, I boiled my Paccheri for its 15 minutes and in the meantime I fried a little bit of garlic in some olive oil, heated the tomatoes in this blessed mix and cooked for 3 minutes." Goddammit if that little effer wasn't right. These tomatoes are nothing short of wonderful in the true sense of the word given what other things are sold in guise of tinned tomatoes. Sweet. Rich. Dark. Deep. Soft. Dense. Goddammit these are the real thing.

Apparently they feature in the Godfather which surely must be the greatest endorsement of all.

you wanna know more about them? follow this link http://www.gustiamo.com/cgi-bin/front_end/prodotto?id=37

Il Miracolo di San Gennaro
Find them, try them. You will like them

Escalivada

2008-07-23T00:11:00.000+02:00

Above is one way of wriitng recipes. Below is another.

I wrote the below as part of an aborted, failed and futile attempt to get a show on the telly. It was one of the three recipes I wrote for Grilled Ibiza, the book to accompany the promo. For many and varied reasons the promo was rubbish in the extreme. As if to compound its failure the book Grilled Ibiza dissolved itself off iPhoto leaving only a few pictures and hardly any text. AND NOW VERY BIZARRELY it has turned up again. Literally right now. It has been lost inside this MacBook for over a year and has just resurfaced as i did the above Recipix. Freaky. Anyway here it is.....

Escalivada

This salad is a work of art and like all great art, he said pompously, it utterly transcends its form.
It is also simplicity itself. It is an ancient Catalan recipe and very versitile. I prepare it here as an accompaniment to the beef but it can also be served on its own as a salad course, it is sublime on toast with Escala anchovies as a canape or starter and I have even heard of it served with foie gras which I think sounds frankly bizarre.
There are additions people make to it, garlic, tomato, courgette etc all of which is nice but entirely unnecessary. It does in fact distract one from what is a perfect dish. It needs no adornment nor chefs attempts to raise it. Follow the recipe.
It is said that the Catalan flag, La Senyera came in to being in the 9th Century when Wilfred the Shaggy and his old chum Charles the Bald where having a lovely battle against the Moors. At the point of victory the Hairy One drew his blood drenched fingers across the golden shield of The Bald One creating four red bars on a background of yellow. It is my private belief that escalivada emmulates this flag and I alway bear it in mind when laying out the salad.
As I say, this is a perfect dish. This is not my recipe, it is THE recipe. Do not veer from it.

ingredients

2 large red peppers

2 large aubergines

salt

olive oil

NOTHING ELSE

As you are cooking the beef surround it with the whole untouched aubergines and whole untouched peppers. If there isnt enough room on the grill for this then do it after the beef. Or before it, It doesnt matter.

Char the peppers and aubergines on all sides until the aubergine has inflated and then collapsed and the pepper blackend and collapsed.

For this to work you must not balk at the seeming burntness of the vegetables. The flesh of the peppers not only has to blacken to allow peeling but the flesh must also be cooked. Keep it on the grill until it has completely collapsed and the flesh underneath is soft.

Achtung!☠☁✖
The same goes for the aubergines. An un or undercooked aubergine is a revoiting aubergine and if you are ever presented with one throw it at the chef, host, hostess, whoever. It is not to be tolerated
SO
keep cooking the aubergine until it is completely collapsed and its flesh softened

STRIP AND LAY DOWN
Once the peppers are peeled and deseeded and the aubergines peeled pull them into strips and lay them on the plate in stripes. Season them with salt and finish with olive oil. Now stand back and admire what you have done. The chances are, if you have followed the recipe correctly, you will hear the heavenly choirs announcing to God that LUNCH IS READY

Potato Salad

2008-07-21T11:35:00.000+02:00

When I left England to come and live on Ibiza one of my biggest concerns was potatoes. Surely that tiny rock in the Mediterranean could'nt produce good ones. No way.

Boy oh boy was I wrong. The first meal we had here was on an easter sunday and was slow roast shoulder of lamb with potatoes and we nearly died of delight. The potatoes were from Ibiza and excellent. We bought them from the veg lady called Maria who has the first stall on the right hand side of the staircase entrance of Santa Eulalia market. She has what I consider to be the best vegetable stall on the island (that I have tried anyway).

My next epiphany was Ensalada Payesa in Cas Pages. Nothing short of celestial. Potato, roast red peppers, olive oil and salt. God loves a simple recipe. The key difference is that the potato is boiled in its skin then peeled. This means the already very starchy potato lets out none of its waxiness and it becomes one sticky little mother. Crush it and oil it and it becomes unctuous. And it glistens. Unctuous and glistening? There can be nothing better.

I almost invariably put in Catalunyas excellent Escalivada - roast peppers and aubergines, in my menus so dont really want to have roast peppers twice. So I needed to come up with my own version. The above recipix is that version. Make it. Enjoy it.

I have built me a bar

2008-07-11T21:40:00.000+02:00

Gonna use it for drinking.

Negronis, beers, gin and tonics, mojitos, champagnes, sangrias, that sort of thing

The first time ever I saw your face

2008-06-17T20:51:00.000+02:00

The above recipix is the first one I ever did. I was thrilled. Yeah, you know in that special way. I knew these things would make a great slot in some magazine or other. My first thought was for the Guardian on saturday. Then I thought the Observer Food Monthly. Yeah the OFM. A good and sharp friend of mine suggested we package one of my recipix nicely and aim it directly at the editor of the mag. It got sent on a tuesday. Wednesday morning the editor of the OFM calls me up and says yeah we like it, we like it a lot. I get excited. I hit the roof. Goddam. Yeah.

Then it went awful quiet. Then I called the editor and they said they werent so sure and could I wait two weeks. I'm nice. I do what people ask of me. I waited two weeks. Two weeks expires on Friday. I am waiting. Goddam it I wonder what is gonna happen. I really want to get into that publication.

Anyway.................

Got rid of the wife and got myself a new lover

2008-06-12T22:42:00.000+02:00

She weighs in at 66 kilos. She can take all the shit I can give her and she is made of iron.

You goddam fruit cake

2008-06-05T23:18:00.000+02:00

Man, these big cakes with soft light sponge and heavy sugar paste icing are difficult. But I have found the answer - fruit cake. Who cares that nobody likes it? It is solid. It has a layer of marzipan to give a smooth surface to ice and IT CAN HOLD UP without putting the fear of god into me each time I look at it.

The bottom cake is 30 cm in diameter 10cms high on each side. That means you gotta roll out icing half a fucking metre wide and then lift it on to the cake without it ripping and then you got to mould the pleats in. There is an awful lot of pleats. This is nerve-racking enough without thinking the damn thing is going to collapse under the weight cos him such lovely light sponge. The icing for the bottom cake alone weighs over 2 kilos. The sponge probably weighs less than a kilo.

So, yeah. fruit cake all the way, baby. Fruit cake all the way.

Revelation

2008-06-05T23:13:00.001+02:00

Here is the cake I took for a ride a couple of days ago.
Mounting cakes (not biblically) aint easy and especially if the chocolate is soft. These horrible chocolate cigarettes are fantastic though. They hide all sorts of errors and you can lift the thing easily and MOUNT it. My fear of of wedding cakes is diminishing.

more cake

2008-06-04T17:28:00.000+02:00

Driving wedding cakes around the island is nerve-racking. In fact there is nothing about wedding cakes that isn't nerve-racking.

let them eat...cake

2008-06-01T23:22:00.000+02:00

Been doing mucho trabajo recently and this has been one of the things. Goddam wedding cakes are killer. If you screw someones birthday cake up it aint great but it dont really matter. If you mess up a cake for wake nobody is really gonna care. but if you fuck up someones wedding cake they aint gonna be happy. Or maybe they are, I dont know, but I know I damn sure dont want to find out.

Ruler of my heart

2008-05-15T22:23:00.000+02:00

Goddam I love hamburgers. 100% beef. No funny stuff just beef beef beef. The best quality you can get hold of.

Shape it in your hand, handling it as little as possible, add salt and pepper and then fry it. Toast the (sesame seed) buns, add ketchup to the bottom bun. Whilst the burger is finishing lay on the cheapest, crappist, most manufactured cheese you can get your hands on (Dairly Lee is good) so it melts onto the meat, add crisp smoked bacon (Oscar Mayer is excellent for this. Tastes like bacon did back when we was kids. God knows what additives they use to achieve this), pile on iceberg (no fancy leaves), spread sweet Yankee mustard (or Scandinavian; nicer) on the top half of the bun, mount it, squash it down a bit and then try and shove at least 1/3 in to your mouth in one go.

Double fry homemade chips in groundnut oil to go with it and you will probably get what you (really) want for Christmas.

Did you ever.....

2008-05-06T23:01:00.001+02:00

......see anything quite so beautiful as this little mother?

This is one of the new crop potatoes that make living in Ibiza just that little bit......more. Aint got a goddam clue what they are called and dont care. I call them Ibiza Red Potatoes. You may call the them what ever the eff you like. Except Ibiza Red Potatoes, which I have already claimed.

These mothers are heaven in a tuber. Scrape away their just forming outer skin to reveal its pink membrane. Boil it with a bit 'o' salt, leave it to cool, crush it with a fork, add too much olive oil, further salt, mix it good, lean your head back and pour it in. Man, oh man.

How I generally like to dine

2008-05-04T14:20:00.002+02:00

Recipix - Rhubarb crumble

2008-04-19T12:03:00.001+02:00

Let them eat....Thai Beef Salad

2008-04-19T10:42:00.000+02:00

This is nice.

And it serves four.

25 minutes preparation. 10 minutes cooking

Marinade

400g steak (I use entraña)

3 cloves of garlic

1 bunch of coriander stalks

A goodly amount of ground black pepper

a bit of oil

Salad

1 soft leafed lettuce, washed

200 g cherry tomatoes

1 cucumber

4 Spring onions

The leaves from the coriander bunch

Dressing

2 tbsps fish sauce

2 tbsps lime juice

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tsps chopped red chilli

2 tsps brown sugar

Chop or blend the garlic, black pepper and coriander stalks with the oil. Rub this into the steak. As always rub it in good (ladies) Set aside for 20 minutes minimum, then grill it rare and then let it cool

Wash lettuce and rip into nice sized bits. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half. Peel and chop the cucumber. Chop the white and some of the green of the spring onions. Toss all together with the coriander leaves (reserving a few tomatoes and coriander leaves to make it look fancy at the end).

To assemble

Mix up dressing and dress salad, slice steak and lay prettily on salad and finish with reserved coriander leaves and cherry tomatoes

Ibiza bizarre

2008-04-19T00:02:00.001+02:00

I have just met the fixer of a potential client for the summer. The client has a new girlfriend so he is going to be throwing parties for her. Then this winter he is going on holiday. To space. But not the club. Outer space. The man is going into space on holiday. Can you dig it?

Oh yeah, and here's a picture of me. Not that I'm vain.

Making Bacon

2008-04-12T19:25:00.000+02:00

I dont need to bring home the bacon cos I is MAKING bacon. At home. Yeah.

I have found Iberico pork. You know, the meat that comes from those porkers raised around the town of Jabugo. The ones that roam around freely on a diet of nothing but acorns. The hairy pigs. The stumpy pigs. The beauuuuuuutiful pigs. These are not the serrano ham pigs. These are the PATA NEGRA pigs.

The meat I have found are the surplus bits. The bits that dont get turned into those incredible Iberico hams, chorizos, and general cured cuts called embutidos (embotits in Catalan which has got to make you smile). So the surplus bits are - belly, ribs, chops and chaps. Has a certain ring, dont it?

This is a relief and a big step forward. I have yet to find organic meat either here in Ibiza or on the mainland. There just isnt the availability that there is in England. Even good quality freerange is relatively unavailable here.

If you want chickens you can get either battery of the worst sort or massive corral chickens whose weight in bones far outweighs its flesh. You wouldn't want to pick a fight with one of these chickens. And there is nothing in between. No corn fed, no freerange, no organic. There are 2 sorts - shit chickens or dont fuck with me chickens.

The Iberico pork that I have found is good looking stuff. Darker, more marbled flesh. More fat. A lot more fat. Funny thing is, is that it sits in the supermarket alongside the poor quality pork AND IS CHEAPER. Who the hell thought that up? Anyway, I bought a piece of belly and rubbed it with salt, sugar and spices for a week, then hung it for a week, then smoked it for two days.

The smoking was great. The arch no-no in smoking is using resinous wood chippings. It taints the flavour with a bitter aftertaste. So I smoked it with resinous wood chippings. This was because I wanted to smoke using Sabina. Sabina is juniper and was once all over the island. (Someone figured there was money in them, so now there are hardly any left). It is used in many buildings here and is so very very strong. It also has the most beautiful aroma. I wanted to use this wood.

I had used it once before to smoke some salmon trout and had had to cut away much of the surface cos of its bitterness. But what lay beneath though was heavenly. So to smoke the bacon I decided to wrap it up in a muslin and let that take the bitterness. And lo, it worked. The boy is a goddam wizard. The bacon is goddam beautiful. In every sense.

let them eat....roquefort ad endive salad

2008-04-12T13:36:00.000+02:00

This is one of those celestial mixes along with melon and ham, strawberries and cream, tomato, basil and mozzarell, lamb and rosemary etc. One of those mixes that just cannot be improved upon. There is something so special about the creaminess of the cheese contrasting with the harshness of its blue veins that is then coupled with the bitter yet smooth, soft endive leaf that has a snap as you bite through it. I can't explain it. It just works.

I made the roquefort dressing with yoghurt in a effort to lighten it to please the one who pays me. It is wicked. It really works and loses nothing providing you don't skimp on the cheese. I used Turkish yoghurt (often incorrectly referred to as Greek yoghurt) which I guess helps with the texture and fullness. The salad has endive, peeled pear, walnuts, lemon, tiny bit of garlic, olive oil, walnut oil.

I could have cheerfully killed two of the staff who moaned, groaned and bored me to tears with "Is that all there is?" A shockingly scant lunch of the above salad followed by penne, fresh tomato sauce with knuckleduster meatballs, provided FOC to them. I think one of them cant/wont eat pork

I must say I do like to hear of people's various food fussinesses. Nothing could interest me more than to hear about what people dont like. I dont like this..... I dont like that.....Fascinating.

Fucking canapes

2008-04-09T21:36:00.000+02:00

Jesus H Christ canapes for 150 is a lot of work. 5 Cold, 5 Hot, 2 Desserts over a 4 hour period. 3 staff plus yours truly for 2 full days and then all at it for the set up, service and get out. 100 man hours.

Spanish tortillas with cured duck

Crab leek and ginger tarts

Rolled bresaola with ricott and rocket

Tuna sushi (not my idea)

Foie Gras (not my idea) with onion and cinnamon jam on crostini

Quails leg lollipops

Queens scallops with ginger, chilli and garlic

Falafel with yoghurt and harissa

Bunyols de bacalao with lemongrass, coriander and coconut milf

Grilled entraña with red wine sauce, yorkshire pudding and horseradish

Chocolate and Cointreau Mousse

Valdespino trifle (unfuckingbelievable)

For all the above foul language and woeisme, the gig went Phenom, everybody loved the food and I enjoyed the whole experience.

Let them eat....black beans and muddy dorade

2008-04-02T22:37:00.000+02:00

I cooked the above dish. The beans were delicious and the dorade was horrid. I have had enough of farmed dorade. I might give it one more chance but if it dont be nice next time thats it. It is a goddam shame. Surely the only future for fish for our table is in farming if this free for all supermarket sweep of the oceans doesnt stop tomorrow. Which it wont.

The Beans

200g black beans

Bay leaf

Rosemary

1 onion

Garlic

Chili

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Water (and stock if available)

A nice piece of smoked back bacon. 100g? Optional

Boil them beans with enough water to cover by a couple of fingers. Put in nice swirl of olive oil, bay and rosemay. Bring it to the boil. As it comes to the boil think of Travis Bickle and scrape (wash) all the scum off the top (streets)

As the beans are boiling keep adding more liquid so it always has between one and two fingers. This would be the time to add the stock if you are using. Meanwhile sweat some onions, garlic and crumbled chilli in mucho olive oil until nice and brown and soft. Do this for as long as you can. The more you cook this the sweeter it will become. Add it to the beans and keep cooking. The beans can take anything form 1 - 4 hours to cook if not presoaked. Make sure they are soft. Nobody likes a crunchy bean. A really cool thing to do throughout this recipe is add more and more olive oil. It makes it UNCTUOUS and God loves unctous.

Get at them beans boys, get at them beans.

Recipix - Quick chocolate souffle

2008-03-29T00:16:00.000+01:00

let them eat....chocolate souffle

2008-03-29T00:12:00.000+01:00

We had a very similar quail lunch to the one in february only this time I made the allioli with membrillo. The English call this quince cheese for some obscure reason. It is made of quince, yes and it is eaten with cheese, yes but that does not make it cheese. Jesus.

Anyway. The Catalans love this sort of thing. Fruit with garlic. Wierd. But wonderful. You make an allioli http://lagrandebouffecatering.blogspot.com/2008/02/recipix-allioli.html but before you add the egg you mash up some good quality quince cheese with the garlic. The smoothness of the egg, bite of the garlic and sweetness of the membrillo form a holy trinity. The Catalans also use apples, sometimes pears. Occasionally honey is added. The eggs can be done away with as well and an emulsion is easily formed with the help of the fruit but as much as I may admire this eggless sauce and the skill it takes to make it I far prefer the smoother eggy version.

I also had revelation in the form of a steam oven. A €30,000 steam oven. Gott in himmel, what an oven. It has been sitting there ever since I arrived and I havent used it due to terror of busting it through ignorance. The chef showed me how it worked and now, at the tender age of 53 I suddenly find myself not being able to live without one. Great.

So, they had quails, grilled and then steamed to finish. Leeks, asparagus and wild garlic steamed then grilled. Broad beans just steamed (unbelievable). And oven potatoes (unsteamed). Rocket, mizuna and mache salad. Membrillo allioli. It was all nice but the allioli gives it all coherence.

Then they had chocolate souffle. Recipix to precede.

Let them eat....Broccol with anchovy, chilli and garlic

2008-03-26T15:33:00.000+01:00

This is a goddam match made in heaven. I made it recently with my new lover Bombardino DeCecco. I accidently overcooked the broccoli quite savagely but it was just for my lunch so I pretended I hadnt and continued. The result was an absolute revelation - soft, silken, smooth. I am always cooking this dish this way from now on. Its nice really cos I think this whole "all vegetables have to be cooked al dente" is a crock. Some vegetables are suited, some are not. Some are versitile. Some are not. Someone once served me al dente asparagus. AL DENTE ASPARAGUS?!?!?!? I mean, Jesus Christ, where's it going to end?

Anyway the staff had a version of the Italian classic of anchovy, broccoli, chilli and garlic but instead of it being with pasta I made it into a soup with white beans playing the part of the pasta. Excellent. I also made bread croutons and some polenta croutons tossed in grated parmesan and baked. Really really good.

Method? Like this darling, like this:

Good amount of olive oil

6 teeth garlic

4 dynamite chillis (tiny little killer ones)

1 big Spanish onion

8 anchovies in olive oil

Bay

Rosemary

500g cooked cannelini beans and their licor

Stock

1 good head of broccoli - cut into fleurettes and the stalk peeled and chopped

Put heavy bottomed pan on a low heat and flavour oil with 2 crumbled chillis and 3 garlic cloves half crushed under the flat of a knife. Discard chilli if blackened and mash up the now golden garlic.

Sweat chopped onion in the flavoured oil with lid on. About 20 minutes later put the golden garlic back in with along with the rest of the chopped garlic, the 2 other chillis and the anchovies and their oil. Some bay and rosemary would be nice too. Sweat that mother good. For as long as you are able.

Add cannelini beans and the licor they were cooked in with some extra stock.

Bring to the boil and add the broccoli .

Boil till broccoli is just past al dente. Remove, liquidise and replace one third.

Season, sprinkle with parsley and croutons and then do a faggoty chef swirl of olive oil at the end to make it look nice.

oh yeah....easter

2008-03-25T22:44:00.000+01:00

I also grilled a milk fed baby lamb on the grill in my garden. Screwed it up. Cant really talk about it.

Have some eggs.

Let them eat....risott

2008-03-25T22:05:00.000+01:00

Today I cooked a risotto with artichoke, baby leeks, courgettes and wild garlic. Into the gremolata that I stirred in at the end along with loads of parmesan and way too much butter, I put the stalks of these mothers chopped up. They are great, they are tangy. I put the petals into the salad. They are great, they are lemony - and oh so very bright (and you have shone so very, very brightly).

I put some thyme flowers onto the entraña (thin this time) that went after the risotto. Tomorrow borage and seabass.

let them eat....the chef

2008-03-21T23:51:00.000+01:00

Ibiza. Jesus. It is Mickey Mouse land. In Ibiza, every day is Wednesday, every day is Mickey Mouse day. Get this: I am now cooking for the chef of the villa. He is back and installed but no guests are arriving till June so I have been asked to stay on (I was due to finish in April). So now I am cooking for the staff, the Belgium sound installation guys (still here after 1 1/2 months), the project manager's mother and......the chef. Can you dig it? A chef is hired to cook for the chef. Ibiza. I love it.

Anyway.....

This has been one busy week. I have been cooking up there of course but also had a party for some Pachairtes, a large delivery for a family over for easter and tasting to do for a couple who are getting married in May. Though the tasting was only for two I still had to prepare the whole wedding meal. It was a sort of dry run but i noticed that the fiances werent in their wedding outfits.

I dont want to get in the habit of just writing lists of food but it is all I can muster at the moment.

Monday: Chicken and roast vegetable salad

Tuesday: Grilled swordfish marinated in chilli, lemon zest, garlic and thyme,

lentil salad, basmati rice

Wednesday: Leek and cheese tart

Salt cod brandade on crostini with a shot of fino

Morrel, wild garlic and potato tortilla

Chicken liver pate with onion marmalade

Potato and green bean salad

Peppers piedmontes

Roast aubergines

Roast courgettes

Fried whole ribeye

Seared tuna carpacchio

Tapenade

Sauce gribiche

Cucumber, coriander and ginger salsa

Chocolate fudge cake with raspberry sauce

Thursday: Polenta bolognese

Chicken and trompetes de la mort stew

Shepherd's pie

Cottage pie

Courgette, chilli and cream sauce (for pasta)

Monkfish and grouper suquet

Friday: Grated tomato, garlic salt and olive oil

Spanish tortilla

Grilled chorizo

Meatballs with lemon zest, thyme and garlic in tomato sauce

Venus clams with chilli and beans goddam delicious

Gazpacho

Grilled squid

Grilled seabass

Grilled octopus

Grilled swordfish

Escalivada

Potato and green bean salad

Mango and coriander salsa

Salsa verde

Hazelnut meringues with strawberries, whipped cream and

mascarpone

Tarte aux pommes

Oh yeah and I cut my finger. Badly. I NEVER (until now) cut myself or burn myself cos I take care and have no time for people who dont. They are dangerous, they end up making my life harder and I am supposed for feel sympathy for them. I have two words for them - blow me.

So consequently i've got a bad back as well.

Have you seen this can?

2008-03-16T22:28:00.000+01:00

Above is a picture of the love child of Just Married http://www.justmarried.es and one of a range of the finest tinned product I have ever tried. It knocks spots off most of the rices and pastas served up in most of the restaurants i have eaten in.

I have now tried their Fideua and the above Arros a Banda and they are both sublime. I have yet to try their Sofrito. It comes in a little jar and has been cooked for 5 hours. You have to dig that. That someone else, and a food lover at that, goes to the trouble of sweating onions for five hours for you instead of some motherfucker in a suit telling some boffin in a labcoat to make a powder to taste like onions and give you cancer at the same time, well, its nice isnt it?

The thing about the Arros a Banda is the stock. Its all in the stock. Made from what the Spanish refer to as pescado de roca, rock fish, it is rich. Rock fish are heavy boned, gelatinous fish like monkfish, rascasse, john dory. They take longer than the traditional 20 minutes that most fish stock recipes call for. Simmer it for more like an hour. When cooled it should be jellyfied like a good rich chicken stock.

This line of cannned products cost from €12 - 16 each and feed 2 handsomely. It dont look like much but when is has been simmered, the stock has been absorbed and the finished dish is left for the 5 minutes resting, you are close to heaven. It is sticky. But, you know, in that really good quality stock sticky way. If you click your tongue on the roof of your mouth there is a viscosity there that is hard to beat.

By many people standards it doesnt look that nice. It is brown. I would say that it looks a healthy brown. I find the bright Simpson yellow that all paellas now appear to be is worrying. That the Spanish have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked into actually preferring food colouring/flavouring to saffron is verging on criminal. In fact, is criminal. Heads should roll. I know this must sound pretty rich coming from a foreigner but I am nothing if not a hypocrit.

let them eat....15 feet of pure white snow

2008-03-14T23:27:00.000+01:00

Actually more like 15 cm of thick brown slush.

Am away in the Pyrenees on a skiing holiday but there aint no snow. The above recipe made me think of something related to this. Below is a list of the food on offer every breakfast time at our hotel (HG La Molina - unbelievably good value for money and bang on pistes). The buffet goes from left to right and is about 16 metres long:

Fruit bowl with apples, bananas, tangerines, kiwis

Peeled and sliced fruit (prepared the night before)

Ricotta

Cubed manchego served in cut out manchego (get him) in olive oil and dried herbs like oregano or that stuff they put on pizzas

Straight semi cured manchego

Spanish tortilla

Country pate*

Chorizo*

Fuet*

3 types of offal inside intestine*

Serrano ham*

English style ham (quaintly named Jamon York)

Sliced block cheese - edam?

8 types of bread (all half baked or not great)

A toaster

Grated tomato*

Olive oil*

Tomatoes*

Garlic*

A sign offering cooked breakfast a la Eengleesh Peeg

Ensaimadas - pastry

Croissants

Napolitanas (pain au chocolat but not so nice)

Mini ensaimadas

Mini croissants

Mini napolitanas

Cornflakes

Special (yeah right) K

Cocopops

A massive bowl of Nutella

Yoghurt

Hot water

Coffee

Hot milk

Hot Chocolate

Tea bags

* For Breakfast? You gotta love da spics

The Last Time I Cooked for Lee Marvin

2008-03-12T22:12:00.001+01:00

The last time I cooked for Lee Marvin was a goddam disgrace. The food however was excellent as it would have to be if it were to be cooked for, served to and eaten by one of the greatest men of the 20^th century. Actor, lover, fighter. Man of action. Man of few words. And decidedly a very, very bad man. Every man alive, without exception, secretly wishes he were Lee Marvin. Enough.

Through fantastic good fortune and war my father became friends with him and latterly he became my godfather.

The last time I cooked for Lee Marvin was two months before his untimely and sudden death http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBlLH3tqFJU) We were riding along a ridge in the sierra that ran through his colossal ranch in the southwest of the United States of America.

He was an incomparable horseman. He could do anything on a horse. And then a whole load of stuff more. He taught me to ride and whilst I can handle myself on top of any of those excellent animals I will never come close to his horsemanship.

We had been riding since dawn after a breakfast of beans and coffee prepared by the boy- aka yours truly. We hadn’t stopped all day except for a brief moment when we fell off our horses fully clothed into the cool, clear water pooled in the bend of a creek. It helped wash away the sweat of a couple of days of long riding and a couple of nights of heavy drinking. Under those stars. Jesus, those stars.

We chewed on jerky throughout and smoked Gauloises cigarettes periodically. He had picked up the habit of Gauloises filterless during the war and wouldn’t let it go to please nobody. He got them shipped in specially and kept them in a chest freezer along with any small excess left over from a shooting party.

There was an absolute rule of no booze in daylight. His rule. If I had tried to make that or any other rule he would have punched me full square in the face. He was as I say, a great man.

We had been riding some time and the sun was getting low in the sky. He was riding point and I observed him, slowly, naturally and without apparent effort, lean down out of his saddle, fully extend his arms and fingers and pick up a stone the size of a wolf’s testicle. He seamlessly hoisted himself back up and turned round and threw the stone straight at me. Actually it wasn’t at me. What he was really throwing it at was a snake about five foot long slithering down towards my horse. A diamond back, he told me later. Nasty snake with a bad bite. Anyway.

He hit the snake fully on the head and killed it outright. He drew to a halt and dismounted. He walked over and toed the inert, defunct mother of all sin. As soon as the boot made contact with the snake, it sprang back into action. Not to life, just action. It was writhing madly and convulsing but Lee, Mr Marvin, made no motion to retreat. He simply pinned the snake to the ground just behind its head with his boot. As he stood he slowly withdrew a knife about a foot long out of its sheath hidden within his garments. He crouched down and cut the snake’s head off. He put the head in a leather pouch I had not seen before but guessed it was used for this kind of thing.

He had released the snake from under his boot but it still jumped and writhed. It reminded me of the way chickens run around when decapitated, seemingly trying to escape their inevitable end. He picked it up, put it into a hessian sack, came up to my horse and tied the sack to my saddle

“Sorry kid – you’re cooking.” It was the only thing he said throughout the whole episode. He mounted back up and we continued on our way.

Later on we came down out of the mountains in time to make camp and get ready for what I can only describe as the night. A night with Lee Marvin was never predictable and was often quite hard work. Particularly the next day. Anyway.

We decided to camp next to the river and I went down to the river’s edge and walked into the water. I say we decided. It wasn’t me. It was him. He decided. But Jesus, what can I say – he was Lee Marvin.

I removed the snake from its sack and was fairly appalled to see that it was still moving. Not so vigorously, but slowly writhing nonetheless. I took out my knife and made a small cut in its skin down its length, enough of a cut to peel the skin back. I put the fleshy, bony stump in my mouth and pulled the skin off its body. I put the now skinless but STILL not motionless body back in the bag and washed the skin turning it back right side out. When I had finished I hung it from the limb of a tree that was overhanging the river. I still have this snakeskin. I keep it on the dashboard of my car. Now I took the snake back out and washed it. Finally it became inert. 3 hours after its death. Maybe the cold river water was too much for this spirited reptile.

I walked back up to the fire that had been set in the meantime by Mr Marvin I presume. I say presume because I damn sure didn’t see him do it. As I was carrying the snake to the fire wondering how I was going to grill that mother, he came towards me with a stick. Shit. What now? But all he did was to take the snake from me and lay it and the stick along side each other near the fire. “Wait,” he said and walked off into the woods.

So I waited. It started about five minutes after he disappeared and about a minute before he reappeared, this time carrying a bundle of leafy oak cuttings. “It” was the unaided union of the snake and stick. Right there on the ground by the fire for no reason the snake started to move once again. The snake’s tail curled itself around the bottom of the stick and then rolled with it until it was completely coiled around the stick’s length. “Shit” I said. “Yep” he said and threw the cuttings on to the fire. He then stood with his arm out straight, holding the snakestick in the smoke for a full half hour whilst he went into a monologue at full volume about a night’s drinking with Bob Mitchum and some French whores in a town recently liberated by the two f them at the end of the war.

He talked for half an hour without pausing, without seeming even to draw breath and all the while still holding the snakestick in the smoke. This was a way of smoking meat I had not seen before. He finished up by saying “ OK, cook it” and he tossed it to me while he went to get ready. The sun was going down and it was going to be dark within the hour.

I poked about in the embers until I had them nice and white with a red glow beneath, a bit like a wolf’s eye looking at you from amongst the darkened entrance to a wood you might not return from. I put two rocks about a foot apart in the fire and laid the snake across them turning it every minute or so. The juices periodically dropped on to the embers and hissed. The coals were burning slow and it took about 25 minutes of this slow grilling to cook it. Its flesh was white, sort of like frogs legs but had now turned a beautiful, crisp, grilled multishaded brown. It smelled good.

I pulled the snake into two halves and we sat down to eat, chewing its not massively tender flesh slowly and pondering its flavour. It did not taste of frogs legs. No, it tasted of mackerel. Weird, eh? We were about 400 miles from the sea.

Mr Marvin liked it. He didn’t say as much. In fact he didn’t say anything. I could just tell he was enjoying it. Every now and then he would shake a few drops of his travelling companion, Tabasco, onto his next mouthful and then pick away the flesh from the vertebra with his teeth and chew it slowly. As he was finishing he said “Goddam good, boy. Right, I’m ready.” The sun had gone down.

“Shit” I said. And the drinking began. Like I say, that night was a goddamn disgrace. That man was a BAD MAN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRj7sTZpf7M

Let them eat....Bombardino al puño americano

2008-03-09T21:33:00.000+01:00

I was very happy to be back in the kitchen again for staff lunch last week. I came up with a new meat ball shape that could well turn into a new pasta shape. I’m sure the Eye-ties will be more than happy to let an eengleesh peeg make an addition to their pasta idiom. They will welcome me with open arms I am sure. Yeah course they will.

I mixed lemon zest, chopped garlic, toasted fennel seed, salt and pepper along with some parsley, sage (no rosemary) and thyme into this new source of Iberico pork that I have found. Half minced belly and half mince leg. I gave it a really good mix, fried a taster, adjusted the seasoning and the got on with making them into meatballs. I find all these repetitive jobs; meatballs, falafels, croquettes, etc tedious but this time I really enjoyed it cos I discovered this new shape. Basically it is the shape of the inside of my fist.

I’m gonna call it Pasta al Puño Americano (Pasta a la Knuckleduster) because it is the shape of those primitive knuckledusters that didn’t have the bar over the front of the fist. Just metal bars that you hold in your fist to strengthen the impact. You know, like the one the guy uses who nearly beats Charles Bronson at the end of Streetfighter. Course, Charly Bee beat the crap out of him in the end. Anyway.

You very simply pick out a certain amount of the mix and squish it in your hand leaving a slight curve on one side and reverse scalloped edge on the other. And that’s it. It is much quicker than usual cos it doesn’t require all that rolling around to get it into a nice ball shape.

Brown them gently in largish pan, deglaze with red wine and add it to your 8 hour tomato sauce and cook till the balls are cooked through then mix this into DeCecco Bombardino with a little of the cooking water. Killer.

I don’t have a picture so I leave you with a picture of a wedding cake I made recently.

New Methods

2008-03-07T16:23:00.000+01:00

Been away and now I've come back. Seems like an age since I last cooked anything unless you count a Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodle at 3.30 am last wednesday.

Been doing a course in modern gastronomy a la Heston Blumenthal/Ferran Adria - see photo

Let Ibiza eat....Chicken and roast vegetable salad

2008-03-02T20:31:00.000+01:00

Not very inspiring. Chicken breast bores me. Its really nice and all that but........

The roast vegetables; fennel, red onions, cherry tomatoes, courgette, aubergine and asparagus all tossed together with loads of herbs certainly help lift it out of tedium. A really sharp mustardy/sherry vinegary vinaigrette helped too. Actually it was quite nice. Up to a point.