let them eat....Wild Rocket Soup

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

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

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

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

let them eat....Rovellones

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

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?

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

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

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.