Recipix - Rhubarb crumble

Ibiza bizarre

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.

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....Duck, pear and pinenut salad

Last Friday

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 

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