Home made Spain

One of the events I look forward to most in my food year is the Mid-Winter Birthdays.  My friends Ali and Lynn have their birthdays close together in July, and we always come up with a food-themed celebration.  This year, because I'm off to Spain later on and Ali had given me Claudia Roden's The Food of Spain for my birthday, we had a Spanish theme. Each of us made three tapas dishes, from various recipe books, and I made a very light dessert as well. Between us we did make rather a lot of food, of course, but that didn't matter - our families were very happy to gobble up the leftovers. And the array of different dishes, almost all of them completely new to us, was splendid (even though we could eat only a little of each one, and the helpings had to get progressively smaller towards the end).

       The way we arranged them worked very well too. We paced ourselves - including some on-the-spot cooking and a break for presents, it took us four hours. Maravillosa!

First we had a big platter of cold tapas, with Ali's home-made bread:

Champiňones marinados - marinated mushrooms

Tortillitas de camarones - prawn and chickpea flour fritters, with lemon wedges

Spanish olives, artichoke hearts, goat's cheese (La Marche Buche Ziekli) and Serrano Montenevado ham aged for 18 months (the cheese and ham came from On Trays, in Petone)

The marinated mushrooms were very easy to make, and different from the usual recipes because you cook them first.  I made them again in the weekend as a dinner starter.

Champiňones marinados
(Claudia Roden)
This needs to be made at least 5 hours before eating.

juice of 1 large lemon
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
5 Tbsps extra virgin olive oil (I used a good Australian one with "robust flavour")
salt and pepper
500g button mushrooms (evenly sized, so they will cut evenly into quarters)

2 Tbsps chopped flat-leaf parsley (But I forgot to add this!)

Make a dressing with the lemon juice, zest, oil and some salt and pepper.
Wipe the mushrooms and rinse them briefly, if necessary (it wasn't). Trim the stems and cut them into quarters (or halves if they're very small).
Cook them over medium heat in a wide, dry, non-stick frypan for 10 minutes, turning them over until they release their juices, which will evaporate. (They will shrink quite a lot.)
Put the hot mushrooms into the lemon dressing in a wide, shallow bowl, mixing them well. Let cool, then cover and refrigerate for 5 hours at least. Take out ahead of time so that they are served at room temperature. Sprinkle the parsley over to serve.

For our second helping, we served two dishes:
Empanada de hojaldre con atún - tuna pie
Habas con jamón - broad beans with garlic, mint and ham (although because we had two other things with ham, Ali left it out for this one)

The pie filling is delicious but really easy to make, and as it uses canned tuna, it isn't expensive. With salad and bread, it would make an excellent lunch or light dinner. Roden's recipe tells you how to make olive oil pastry, but because I was cooking four things in advance I was a bit short of time, so I made her suggested alternative with good butter puff pastry. The edges did get a bit thick and untidy, but I solved that by cutting them off and taking one big neat square for lunch. My son happily ate up all the edges, which had plenty of the tuna filling embedded in them. I'll try the oil pastry later, and report back.

Empanada de hojaldre con atún
(Claudia Roden)

Enough butter puff pastry to line and cover a square or oblong dish about 3 cm deep, preferably with a rim (the shape gives neater slices than a round pie dish)
1 egg, separated (for brushing and sealing later)

Thaw the pastry and set the oven to 200C bake.
Line the bottom and sides of the dish with baking paper.
Set aside enough pastry to cover the pie. Roll out the rest to cover the bottom and sides of the dish on top of the baking paper.
Place the lined dish in the fridge for 30 minutes. Roll out the rest in a shape to fit the top, and place it on bake paper on a flat sheet in the fridge.

For the filling:
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 large red pepper, deseeded and cut into small pieces
2 Tbsps olive oil
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
salt
1 450g tin of tuna in oil, drained and flaked
20 black olives, pitted and cut into pieces
2 large hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped

Fry the onion and pepper in the oil in a large pan over low heat, stirring often, till soft.
Add the tomatoes, sugar and a little salt (the olives add salt too). Cook over a medium heat for about 15 minutes until the sauce is thick and jammy.
Remove from the heat and stir in the tuna, olive pieces and chopped eggs. Set aside to cool.

Take out the lined dish, prick the base of the pastry, brush with the egg white and blind-bake in the oven for 5 minutes. (If the bottom still puffs up, just prick it slightly again to flatten it a bit.)
Beat the yolk with the rest of the white and 1 Tbsp water, and set aside to make an egg wash for the top.
Turn the oven down to 180C. Fill the pie with the tuna mixture, spreading it evenly, and cover with pastry, using some of the egg wash to seal the top on. Brush the top with egg wash.
Bake the pie in the oven for 35-40 minutes, until top is golden brown.
Cool a little before slicing into squares, or set aside and warm it through later before cutting and serving.

Next we had alubias con almejas - clams with haricot beans. The clams came from Moore Wilson, but I couldn't find a tin of haricot beans, so I used cannellini instead and that seemed to work well. It was followed by Lynn's classic tortilla de patates - potato omelette, and Ali's albóndigas en salsa tomate - pork, chicken and ham meatballs in a tomato and sherry sauce, a Rick Stein recipe; then garbanzos con chorizo, chickpeas with chorizo sausage (made by the Eastbourne butcher) and pimientos asados, grilled red peppers with garlic and sherry vinegar.
        But so as not to overdo this post, I'll put up the recipes for the clams and the meatballs next week.  Then I'll do marquesas, the light, lemony little cakes I made for dessert. We had just enough room left to eat one each with our coffee.

Life is not too short to stuff a mushroom

In fact stuffing a mushroom - at least, a large mushroom - takes very little time. For our joint birthday dinner, I wanted to make something I could prepare ahead of time and cook quickly just before it was wanted, so these worked perfectly.
            But I was really pleased I'd done the sensible thing and tried out the new recipe I found in the April NZ House and Garden, because I thought it needed a bit of adapting to work well. To my taste, the original stuffing  had too high a proportion of breadcrumbs, so it was very crumbly, making it hard to keep in place on the mushrooms, and the taste was a bit bland. Here's my version.

Stuffed mushrooms

8 medium portobello mushrooms - choose nice round ones with properly upturned, inward-curving edges, so the filling will stay in place more easily.
Extra virgin olive oil - enough to brush over each mushroom, inside and out
2 Tbsp butter
3 rashers streaky bacon, cut into small pieces, or the equivalent in good quality bacon pieces (I got these at Moore Wilson)
2 spring onions, chopped small
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
1 Tbsp finely chopped parsley
1/2-3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs (dry ciabatta bread is good)
50-75g crumbled feta cheese (more if you want to leave out the bacon)
freshly ground black pepper
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Wipe mushrooms clean with a paper towel and carefully remove the stems, without making a hole in the cap. Finely chop the stems.
Melt butter in a pan and add bacon, letting fat run a little. Add spring onions, garlic and chopped stems. Fry gently until cooked, about 5 minutes.
Stir in thyme, parsley and enough breadcrumbs to give a crumbly texture, but not so much that the bread overwhelms the other ingredients. Add crumbled feta and black pepper and mix well.
Add beaten egg and mix gently to make a moist, crumbly mixture.

You can do all this several hours in advance. Cover the filling, put the mushrooms carefully into a sturdy brown paper bag, and leave both in the fridge (mushrooms in the vege drawer) until half an hour before you want to eat them.

Heat oven to 200C. Brush mushroom caps inside and out with olive oil. Arrange them, gill side up, on a baking tray lined with baking paper.
Using a small spoon, put the filling into each mushroom cap so that it makes a shallow mound. (I did a pepper as well, because one guest didn't like mushrooms.)

Bake for about 10 minutes until cooked. Serve hot.
I didn't take a good photo of the ready-to-eat mushrooms because (a) I'd had a bit to drink by then, (b) it was night time, so the light wasn't great, and (c) I was in a hurry because we wanted to eat them hot, so I only got one quick go. But you get the idea. They make a great first course, delicious and sort of substantial without being too filling. And of course you could leave out the bacon for a vegetarian version.

Ali sent me this comment about last week's post on her rillettes:
"I hope people overcome their fear of the unknown - and for their cholesterol levels - and try it. (I couldn't believe I was actually telling people to ask for more fat!) But it's not nearly as rich as some recipes, which specified large amounts of extra fat and used only the liquid fat to moisten the meat at the end, instead of the meat juices as well. I think with mine you get more of the true pork flavour."

Of the earth, earthy - lentil and mushroom soup

In 2006, straight after I finished my PhD, I took off for France with a friend. Harvey had already decided he wouldn't travel to Europe again, but it was a book he bought that inspired me to go: Stephanie Alexander's magnificent Cooking and Travelling in South-West France.

We stayed at a farm estate five minutes outside Sarlat-le Caneda, about four hours from Bordeaux. Every morning Madame would tell us what her son was cooking that night, so we could decide if we would be in for dinner. Duck was often the centrepiece. Everything was "bio" (organic) - not because it was "green", she told us, but because it just tasted better. Over our seven-night stay we managed to eat there five times, and it was consistently the best food experience I've ever had.

It was early summer, so we didn't have anything like this rich dark soup, but in winter I'm sure something very like it would have appeared. Stephanie Alexander says that although it's her own invention, "I feel sure it would be welcomed by any resident of the south-west".

Lentil and mushroom soup (serves 6-8)

300g Puy lentils (the French grey-green ones)
2 cups chicken stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper

6 large black mushrooms

2 Tbsp rendered duck fat or olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 large potato, peeled and diced

* Rinse lentils under cold water and drain. Put in a large saucepan and add 1.5 litres (6 cups) of water. Simmer gently for 20-30 minutes until tender.

* Make a fricassee: Chop mushrooms (including stems) into small pieces. Heat duck fat or oil in a wide ffrying pan and saute onion for 3-4 minutes. Add garlic, potato and mushrooms, cover, and sweat for a few minutes. Lift lid and stir well. Saute until potato is tender, mushrooms have started to colour, and there is a bit of a sizzle going on.

* When lentils are tender, tip the fricassee into the lentil pot and add the stock. Bring to a simmer and season to taste. Simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool until warm, then blend in a food processor or blender (do not overfill - you may need to do this in batches). Reheat and serve very hot, garnished with a few fresh herbs and/or a little cream.

I found this turned out to be a little too thick, so I thinned it down slightly with a bit more stock and water. I was worried that it might be just too earthy and rich for my dinner guests, but they loved it. And it froze and reheated beautifully for a later lunch.

Offally nice

If you're one of those people who can't cope with the idea of eating any kind of offal, stop reading now. I love liver but Harvey hates it, so I don't eat it often. We're both keen on kidneys, which is good, because they're cheap, healthy (no fat), delicious, and can be very fast and easy to cook. I made up a good quick kidney dish with bacon and mushrooms recently. We had it for dinner, but it's just as good for weekend brunch. The pictures don't quite match because I've increased the quantity of ingredients to serve two normal appetites, instead of one (me) and less than half of one (Harvey).

6 lamb kidneys
3 large or more smaller rashers of happy pig bacon (Henderson's Dry-cured is good)
6 button mushrooms
2-3 shallots or 1 onion
red wine or brandy
salt and black pepper
beef stock powder
cream

Remove silver skin (if any) from kidneys and cut each into about 6 little pieces, removing the inner hard white bit. Remove stalks from mushrooms and slice. Chop onion or shallots. Cut bacon into smallish pieces.

Heat a heavy frypan and turn it down to medium or less. Gently fry the bacon to melt off some fat. Add the onions or shallots and cook gently until soft. Add the kidneys and brown them gently, turning them over often. Add the mushrooms and cook gently until softened.

Add a good slurp of either red wine or brandy and let it bubble up to reduce a little. Add salt and pepper to taste and a sprinkle of beef stock powder if you think the mixture needs it (you may prefer the milder flavour and paler colour without it). Stir in a good splash of cream and serve piping hot.

Moreish mushrooms

We didn't eat a lot of mushrooms when I was a kid - I think they were much harder to buy then than they are now. Of course they're best picked at dawn with the dew still on them in a fresh green field with birds pouring out their full-throated morning chorus etc etc. But fresh green mushroom-studded fields were a bit scarce in Mt Eden.
           If that was the only way to get mushrooms, they'd be permanently off the menu for most of us. I lose patience with those who insist it's hardly worth eating veges that aren't gathered from the wild (ha!), home-grown, or, at the very least, organic. We're much better off being able to buy different kinds of cultivated mushrooms locally than not having them at all.
           I used to think there wasn't all that much food value in these strange fleshy fluted things, but apparently I was wrong. They're about 85 percent water, but they're also high in fibre and rich in potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron and calcium, as well as in vitamins B1, B6, C, H, and folic acid (which is rare in most veges). So there.
           My favourite way to eat the biggest, fattest ones is creamed, on or with buttered toast. You start with a basic white sauce (béchamel sounds better), and as you add the mushrooms they release their juices and turn it a marvellous dark stormcloud colour. It's a very simple dish, perfect for brunch or lunch, but it does need to be carefully made to taste as it should.

Creamed mushrooms with toast
As many big black mushrooms as you need - at least 4 for 2 people, depending on mushroom size

For the sauce (I usually guess now, but these are the correct proportions):
30 grams butter
30 grams plain white flour
About 450 ml (1 and a 1/2 cups) milk (full milk is best, but trim will do)
Seasonings
salt and freshly ground black pepper
nutmeg
splash of brandy (if you're feeling extravagant)

Remove tough ends of stalks and cut the mushrooms into chunks (roughly 2 cm square). Place in ceramic or glass microwave dish, cover and microwave for 1-2 minutes on medium high, just to soften them. (You can skip this step, but I find it helps commercially grown mushrooms cook more easily in the sauce later.) Set aside.

Heat the milk in a large glass jug in the microwave, in 30-second bursts on high, until it's close to boiling (watch it). Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over the lowest possible heat. Take off the heat and rapidly stir in the flour, using a wooden spoon. Return to heat and cook gently, stirring all the time to keep lumps at bay, until (says Julia Child) "the butter and flour froth together for 2 minutes without colouring". Take the pan off the heat and slowly pour in the hot milk, stirring madly as you go. Put pan back on low heat and cook the mixture gently, stirring all the time, until it thickens to a smooth sauce. If it seems to be getting too thick, add more milk, a little at a time (but see note about mushroom juice below).

Add the mushrooms and any juice with them (if they've been microwaved), then add seasonings to taste. A little finely grated nutmeg is essential. The brandy, if you've got any, is very nice too - just a tiny splash. Cook for a few minutes more, until the mushrooms are tender, the sauce is dark and it tastes right. (The thickening of the base sauce as it cooks is diluted by the mushroom juices being released, so it should all end up neither too thick nor too runny.)

Take the pan off the heat while you make the toast with any good bread you like, and butter it (with butter, I hope. Some people prefer crisp toast buttered when it's cold, but I am not among them.)  Heat the plates, gently reheat the mushrooms, and serve with more black pepper handy. If you like (and we often do), you can have crispy bacon on the side, but you'll have to fit in making that too, or have help.

And if there's a bit left over, I add more milk and some mushroom powder (or, dare I say it, a packet of mushroom soup - Julia would kill me, but too bad), blend it and turn it into nice soup for a weekday lunch.