thrashing pop

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.

Rossejat de Fideus

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.

Recipix - wild asparagus tortilla

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.

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

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

Let them eat....Bombardino al puño americano

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

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

Ibiza - Where the wild things are

Going on a bit now about the wild things that grow but having said there is so much more out there than I know about (at the moment). Wood sorrel, those bright yellow flowers with thin green stalks that grow everywhere are excellent in salad. They have a sharp and lemonlike flavour and are a delight to bite down on. Again, there is something so satisfying about adding wild, free and tasty stuff to your food that you have collected yourself.

Rocket grows really plentifully here and has a very strong flavour. It grows in the fields but also seems to love builders sand and consequently is always all over building sites. Make sure you wash it in a couple of changes of water.

It is much more peppery than normal supermarket rocket. The flavour can sometimes be so strong that it is best added to other leaves in salad to dissipate some of its power. It is superb stirred into soups, risottos or pastas too.

I had the below. It was so nice I'm having it again now

Rocket and anchovy Bombardino

175g DeCecco Bombardino

4 anchovies

2 teeth of garlic

some chilli

a handful of wild rocket

Boil water and cook pasta as instructed on packet. Meanwhile fried chopped garlic and chilli in some of the oil the anchovies came in. When the garlic starts to colour add the anchovies and fry until dissolved. Take off the heat. Drain the pasta reserving some of its starchy liquor. Mix in the anchovy garlic and chilli and give a really good stir adding some of the pasta water till you have an emulsified, silky, unctuous, heavenly sauce and pour into your bowl. Put the wild rocket leaves on top, look at it appreciating its beauty then stir them in and eat it.

Let them eat....Entaña with wild garlic flowers

On the strength of the garlic flowers yesterday I decided to do steak, potatoes, rocket, tarragon oil and wild garlic flowers for lunch. The first time I had steak like this (without the garlic flowers) was at the Eagle in Farringdon some time ago. I was completely blown away by it. Rare steak rested for a minimum of 15 minutes sliced over warm boiled potatoes and rocket and finished with tarragon oil. A sort of poor man's steak frites with Bernaise sauce. Poorer possibly but in no way inferior. The addition of the garlic flowers is unnecessary but not wanton.

Calçots - from la Grande Bouffe Catering Ibiza

Calçots

Where to begin? Calçots, coming form the word calçat meaning shoe, are a Catatlan obsession. You only need to drive round Catalunya at this time of year to see the popularity of these glorified spring onions.There are signs for them everywhere. Everywhere. Glorified? Yes. But with good reason. Them is awful good.

What are they? They are spring onions that are left in the ground past the normal cropping time and as the shoot grows the almost certainly chain smoking farmer covers it with earth so the stem gets whiter and longer. So this goes on until it is closer in size to a leek than a spring onion.

One of the great things about living in Spain is they celebrate life. When it is the Saint’s day of the village they have a week of parties with massive paellas for hundreds of people, appalling live acts, great live acts, local dances and loads of eating, drinking, kids running around and they finish off the week's celebrations with half the local government's budget going up in smoke in hugely over the top fireworks displays.They have pig killings where the whole family and neighbours get together to kill the fatten pig and then turn the whole animal into sausages. When a fish runs through the local waters at a particular time of the year they are to be seen on every menu. Valencia nearly burns itself to the ground every year. Bull running.

Calçot time is no exception. Large numbers of people get together, light fires, make sauces, get their bibs on and gorge. Some places specially built for calçot gourging have troughs in the latrines instead of hand basins cos it is such a messy business. They are so messy because the calçots are actually placed in the fire so the outside becomes burnt and you have to hold on to it to get the inside prize bit out. Once out, you stick it in the Calçot sauce, tip your head back and lower the thing in. So you get your hands filthy handling the calçot and your face and chest filthy with the sauce dropping all down you as you try to get the calçot into your mouth.

When they are burnt enough they are wrapped in newspaper to let the steam finish the cooking and then they are served in roofing tiles. In the words of that black guy who gets shot at the beginning of Warriors – “CAN YOU DIG IT?’ A roofing tile as a plate – now that is style.

The sauce is a version of Romesco and much blood is spilt every year in arguments over who makes the best sauce. Fortunately I’m good with a knife.There is a place in Catalunya that has a competion each year for the best sauce. The funny thing about this competion is you are only allowed to use specific ingredients. There is no room for artistic/culinary interpretation and mixing of ingredients. Good thing probably, given the horrors that are produced when chefs decide to get ‘creative.’

Let them eat....Quails in the Wilderness

Exodus Ch 16 v 13 So it came about at evening that the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 

Yeah yeah, sure but then what?

Exodus Uncut – And then the children of Isreal went out and found sticks and fire wood and laid a fire. God said  unto Moses “Wait until the wood has burnt out its flames and is glowing red and then barbecue the quails on kebabs sticks until crisp on the outside and succulent within. Serve this with Allioli as I have instructed you.”

 

If its good enough for Moses and the Israelites then its good enough for staff lunch.

We had it with Allioli of course but also oven potatoes and leeks that had been steamed then griddled. Superb.

 

 

Keywords: Ibiza Catering Weddings 

Let them eat....Fish soup with rouille

Give yourself enough time to make this excellent soup. It is not complicated it just takes a little longer than a normal soup. The result is worth it though. It has a full body and complex flavour and it makes you look as though you know what you are doing. You can make it with cheap frozen prawns as they will be pureed so it dont matter. You can serve it as a soup or as a stew with fish and shellfish poached in at the end. It is a very special soup as it is but if you make a rouille and crostini to go with it you probably will get to bypass purgatory.

 

 

Rouille is very similar to Aïoli but with added ingredients. The classic Nicoise version is garlic, olive oil, egg yolk, salt, cayenne and saffron and is the sauce served with Bouillabaisse. My version today had those things plus anchovy, lemon juice and zest, ñora pepper and guindilla (tiny little dried chillis). If you are a purist feel free to hunt me down and kill me. You put a large spoonful of it on your crostini and in your soup and you stir and you love it. 

 

Fish Soup: For 6 (Make double as it freezes real good)

 

2 onion chopped

2 carrot chopped

1 leek chopped

3 sticks celery chopped

sprig 'o' thyme

bay leaf

toasted saffron

1 star aniseed

olive oil

bit of butter

Sweat these mothers together with lid on till them awful soft and starting to brown.

 

500 g shell on (ultra important) frozen prawns.

75g tomato puree

Turn up the heat and add these and brown further

 

splash 'o' brandy

splash 'o' Noilly PRAT 

splash 'o' Pastis

On full volume add these, ignite and cook out

 

good drink 'o' white wine

1 tin 'o' chopped toms

Reduce heat to medium. Add these and cook down a bit

 

2 litres liquid preferably fish stock

Add these. Bring to boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 mins. Puree with a handwhizzer (Braun 600 watt with metal stem is excellent as are ALL the attachments) and pour through sieve using handwhizzer to help it through. Be sure to use a high sided container in which to pass the puree through the sieve, as this can be messy. Season and voila.

 

Optional - further fish and shellfish to be poached at the end just before serving. Monkfish and really big nice fresh prawns is good.

 

Above is a photo of Rouille. Make as Allioli (Catalan version of Aïoli, see recipix) but add saffron et al at the beginning with the garlic.

 

Croutons - slice good rustic bread thin and lay on baking tray. Lightly oil (olive of course) them and bake at 125ºC for 20 mins.

Dessert: Orange caramel upside down cake. Think -  the B52s track Cake off Mesopotamia

 

 

 

Keywords: Ibiza catering weddings parties party