A crab in my tortilla basket!

This is a different salad, not just for its ingredients, but for it the presentation. I found it very original and tasty, and hey! You get to eat the salad bowl! It’s a colourful and healthy appetizer, and you can use any seafood you like, chopped cooked prawns, muscles, even fish. Its a fresh salad, full of flavour and texture, and the lemongrass gives it the exotic taste. When you heat a Mexican tortilla, it becomes malleable, and you can shape it or fill a muffin pan hole with it, so it turns into a edible salad bowl and a wonderful way of presenting a starter. You can prepare the salad ahead and keep it in the fridge, same with the tortillas, but wait till the last moment to fill and serve them, otherwise, the tortillas will get soggy.

Ingredients for the tortillas

12 corn tortillas

Method

Soften the tortillas in the microwave or according to the packet instructions. Gently press each one into a muffin hole to from a cup. Bake for 12 minutes or until they’ll get brown. Reserve.

Ingredients for the salad

250g crab meat

3 cherry tomatoes

3 spring onions

2 lettuce leaves

2 tablespoons chopped fresh coriander

1 stick of lemongrass

Salt and pepper

For the dressing

4 tablespoons mayonnaise

The lime of ½ lime

The zest of ½ lime

2 tablespoon milk

Salt and pepper

Method

Chop all the ingredients of the salad and mix them in a bowl. Mix the ingredients for the dressing and add to the salad. Keep in the fridge for at least an hour for the flavours to mix. Scoop the salad into the tortillas at the moment of serving and garnish with some fresh coriander.

Bloody Tarts!

Relax...it’s just a dessert.

Now that blood oranges are on season, we have to really enjoy this time of the year, and take advantage of this beautiful fruit, not only because of its flavour, but also its amazing and psychedelic colour. Today  was a “tart” day... because there times when one fancies a cake, or biscuits, or even a hot pudding, but today was a tart day, and since its sweet time in my blog, and I had some blood oranges, there is nothing better than an orange curd crowned by a lovely touch of meringue, not very sweet, just about..The recipe comes from AWW (Australian Women’s Weekly) now, you can tell I like these books, can’t you? This is an easy recipe, and the orange curd as filling is absolutely delicious. You can use lemons or limes instead, or simply normal oranges.  These tarts are a lovely and spectacular end of a dinner party. If you like the flavour of citrus fruits, this is for you.

Ingredients for the pastry

250 plain flour

150g softened butter

1 teaspoon salt

A pinch of sugar

1 egg

1 tablespoon cold milk

Method for the pastry

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease a 12 muffin tin or 12 tartalette individual cases. Mix all the ingredients but the milk, when all is combined add the milk and mix until you get a non sticky and uniform mixture, cover with cling film and refrigerate at least for half hour. Then it’s time to cut the pastry in rounds and pinch the surface with a fork, refrigerate again for half hour. After half and hour, cover with ovenproof paper and fill the tins with baking beans (or you can use any beans or ice instead). Bake only for ten minutes, and keep aside whilst you prepare the filling.

For the filling

½ cup sugar (110g)

2 tablespoon cornflour

2/3 cup blood orange juice

2 tablespoon water

2 teaspoons finely grated blood orange rind

75g unsalted butter, chopped

2 eggs, separated

½ cup sugar, extra

Method

Combine sugar and cornflour in a saucepan, gradually stir in juice and the water until smooth. Cook, stirring, until mixture boils and thickens. Reduce heat, simmer for one minute. Remove from the heat, stir in the zest, butter and egg yolks. Cool 10 minutes.

Divide filling among pastry cases. Refrigerate 1 hour.

For the Meringue

Increase temperature to 240 degrees.

Beat egg whites with electric mixer, until soft peaks form, gradually add extra sugar, beating until sugar dissolves. Using star nozzle, pipe meringue over filling. Bake about 3 minutes or until browned lightly.

Dear Cochinita Pibil, I haven't stopped thinking about you since we met...

...there in Yucatan…And since then I always remember you and the nights I spent by your side, sharing the moon and lots of dinners. I love everything about you, your colour, your ingredients, and the way you look at me from the plate, almost challenging me. I pile you up, pick you up and gently let you sit on your tortilla and it’s in that very moment when pointing at my mouth, I prepare myself to enjoy what you kindly offer me, without asking anything in exchange. Thanks Cochinita Pibil, thanks, Yucatán, we’ll meet again, hopefully...one day.

 This is what Cochinita Pibil inspires me, this and much more. This dish is a flavourful representative of the excellent Mexican cuisine. The pork (cochinita or puerco in Spanish) is marinated in Achiote, a native plant from which they obtain a natural dye called Annato. Its flavour is subtle and smoked, spicy yet earthy and it gives the meat an evocative and sublime colour.

Cochinita or Puerco Pibil is a legendary dish, and it’s coked traditionally by wrapping the meat after marinating it for hours, and cooked in a pit on the ground for longer hours, it comes from the Yucatán peninsula, in Mexico. This dish has an important role in Robert Rodriguez’s brilliant movie, Once upon a time in Mexico, where Johnny Depp gets so obsessed with it, that he kills the chefs who cook  it too well. You can view Rodriguez’s recipe here, it´s really worth it.

I have cooked this dish according to the way it was served to me in Yucatán, with plantain, and refried beans,  as a side dish as well as Pico de gallo and salsa verde, two V.I.S (very important salsas). Cochinita pibil can be served with rice, or just lying on a warm tortilla, don’t forget the pickled onion though!

Ingredients

For the cochinita and the marinade

½ Kilo pork fillet or loin

3 tablespoons Seville oranges

3 tablespoons vinegar

½ tablespoon achiote powder or paste

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon Mexican oregano

4 or 5 peppercorns, ground

1 garlic clove

1 or 2 dried pasilla chillies

3 or 4 big Plantain leaves

Method

Toast the chillies, deseed and grind them along with the garlic. Mix the rest of the ingredients except the meat until you get a paste. Add the chilli mix. Prick the meat with a fork and season with salt and pepper.  Toast the plantain leaves over the flame, cover an oven tray with it, and put the meat on top, spread the marinade all over it and wrap the meat with the plantain leave forming a closed package, cover with foil and leave overnight in the fridge. The next day, bake the meat still wrapped in the banana leave, at 150 degrees for 4 hours....yes, 4 hours. Once its cooked shred it with a fork and reserve.

For the pickled onion

1 red onion

½ habanero chilli

2/3 orange juice

Salt

Mix all the ingredients and marinade for two hours

 

For the Salsa verde

2 or 3 green Mexican tomatoes

 1 Serrano chili

2 tablespoon fresh coriander chopped

2 tablespoons onion

1/3 cup water

Salt

Method

Blend all the ingredients and reserve.

For  the Pico de gallo

1 red tomato chopped

¼ onion chopped

¼ garlic clove

2 tablespoons fresh chopped coriander

½ jalapeno chilli chopped

1 tablespoon lime juice

Salt

Mix all the ingredients and place in a bowl.

 

For the refried beans

Ingredients

3 cups cooked black beans

2 tablespoon lard or butter

½ cup of the water that was used to cook the beans

Feta cheese (if you can’t find Mexican cheese)

Salt

Method

Mash the beans, chopped the onion very finely and heat the butter or lard in a saucepan, add the onion, and when it start changing colour add the mashed beans along with the beans stock and the salt, and stir constantly. The beans are done when they don’t stick to the saucepan. Sprinkle with grated feta cheese and serve.

To serve the rest of the dish: Slice the plantain and grill the slices. Place a portion of the shredded “cochinita” on a square shaped plantain leave. Top with the pickled onion. Serve with the refried beans, the plantain slices, the Salsas and some warm corn tortillas.

A sponge with everything included, it's more than a sponge

There are wonderful and unexpected flavor combinations in the gastronomic world, and this is one of them. It’s a moist, delicious and custardy sponge wonderfully cooked with a mixture of fresh fruit. The original recipe comes from the excellent The Australian Women’s weekly, and it has rhubarb which is a fruit I first tried when I moved to the UK. And I have to say that it’s not one of my favorites. This is a very easy and rewarding cake as its flavors melt in your mouth and it’s also good for you because of the amount of fresh fruit.  

I used kumquats and cherries as well, because I had them at the moment of the making of this recipe and it run put really well but you can use any fruit combination you want, pear and apple, cherry and orange, strawberry and blackberry, etc.  It keeps really well in the fridge for two to three days, if there is any leftover that is!

Ingredients

125g softened butter

¾ cup caster sugar

2 eggs

1 ½ cups self raising flour

½ cup ground almonds

2 tablespoons custard powder

½ cup milk

3 trimmed stalks rhubarb, sliced

1 or 2 pear, peeled, sliced thinly

100gr kumquats thinly sliced

100gr pitted cherries

½ cup apricot jam, warmed, strained

Glaze

1 tablespoon water

1cup icing sugar

 

Custard

2 tablespoons custard powder

2 tablespoons caster sugar

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

20g butter

Method

Preheat oven to 180 and grease a 22 cm round cake tin.

Firs make the custard. Combine the custard powder and sugar in small saucepan. And gradually stir in the milk. Stir over heat until mixture boils and thickens. Remove from heat, add vanilla and butter and stir until butter has melted. Cover surface of custard with cling film to prevent skin forming. Cool to room temperature.

For the cake mixture, beat the butter and sugar with n electric mixer until light and fluffy, add eggs one a a time, beating well between well between additions. Using wooden spoon stir in flour, ground almonds, custard powder and milk.

Using metal spatula spread half of the mixture into prepared pan, top with half the fruit and spread the custard on top in a single layer over the fruit. Spread cake mixture over custard top with remaining fruit and bake cake for about an hour. Stand cake for 5 minutes before turning onto a cooling rack, mix the ingredients for the glaze, brush top with warm jam, glaze and serve.

Gyoza, the truth about the japanese dumpling

I love gyozas. Very much so. Form the first time I tried them here in a restaurant in London, and later in Japan, looking at the chefs and the street food vendors. They come originally from China, the Japanese adopted them, and now along with the ramen they are part of daily life in the land of the rising sun. The dough is thinner in the Japanese version, and the filling is so versatile, but the most typical is the one with minced pork. They freeze really well.

This is my friend´s Noriko´s recipe, and the only tricky thing is the way to seal the gyozas, but as they say: Practice makes perfect, and after three or four fiascos, you will be making them with your eyes closed. I love the way they are cooked, grilling them on a hot pan with little oil, and then steaming them with water. Brilliant!

Ingredients

1 packet prepared gyoza skins

250g minced pork

2 tablespoons sesame oil

1 garlic clove finely chopped

1 tablespoon flour

1 tablespoon water

2 tablespoons finely chopped Chinese chives (or normal)

3 0r 4 Chinese cabbage leaves or Savoy cabbage

2 tablespoons soy sauce

Salt and pepper

For the sauce

Soy sauce

A little chilli oil or rice vinegar

Method

Boil the cabbage leaves for 4 minutes. Drain and chop finely. Mix with the pork, the sesame oil, the garlic, the water, the flour, the soy sauce the chives and the salt and pepper. Place one gyoza skin in one hand and pt one teaspoon of the filling in the middle, brush half the edge with water and seal trying to follow the pattern, and keeping the folds.

To cook the gyozas, put a tablespoon of vegetable or sunflower oil in a pan, place the gyozas and grill only on one side for 3 to 4 minutes, then add a splash of water and cover the pan, so they cook in the steam. Leave them for 3 or 4 more minutes. For the sauce, mix the soy sauce and the chilli oil or rice vinegar and serve wit the hot gyozas. (One bite)

Sorry, a "what" sandwich?

Lemon sponge sandwiches with raspberries, blueberries and cream

I love Tessa Kiros, she is an unconventional cookery books author who combines familiar history with ancestral recipes, excellent photos and flavors from different countries where she spent her childhood, mixed up with beautiful colors and the flavors of her past. Her books make you wanting to run to the kitchen and starts trying out her wonderful recipes. Far from being pretentious, her wisdom and elegance takes us to her kitchen and she teaches us that the best of cooking is the fact of sharing what you are coking. I only have two of her books, Falling cloudberries, and Apples for jam and this cream sandwiches recipe comes from the latter one. This post is from the latter one, and is as easy as making a sandwich, but far much better...

Ingredients

For the lemon sponge

250g Butter, softened
280g caster sugar
3 eggs
310g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
1 lemon, finely grated zest and juice
185ml single cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the filling:
100ml whipping cream
2 tsp icing sugar
100g plain Greek yogurt
100g Raspberries, halved
icing sugar, for dusting

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C
Butter and flour a 30 x 11cm loaf tin.
To make the lemon sandwiches; cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one by one. Sift in the flour and baking powder; then add the lemon zest, lemon juice, cream and vanilla, whisking well to a smooth batter. Spoon into the loaf tin and bake for about 1 hour 10 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. If the top looks like it’s getting too brown before the cooking time is up, cover it with foil. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

To make the filling, whisk the cream and icing sugar together until the cream holds peaks, and then fold in the yoghurt. Cut the cake like a loaf of bread into slices about 5mm thick.
Spread half the slices with the cream mixture and then top with the raspberries and the rest of the cake slices to make sandwiches.
Dust with icing sugar to serve.

The sponge is delicious just baked from the oven and on its own. But for these sweet sandwiches is better to cut the slices the next day, if you can wait (I couldn't)

A rainbow in my plate

This is my first post of the New Year, and I wanted it to be a light one, after the holiday’s lovely meals and sweets. Swiss chard is one of my favourite vegetables, and one of the things that got my attention when I moved to London was to find coloured chard, we don’t have those in Spain, and you can find them all year round, whereas in the UK they are seasonal, so every time I see them I “have” to buy them. The white part is very wide and hard and I don’t use it for this recipe.

It can be made as a round tart or with a rectangular shape and the base is really simple to make, and you need to start the day before for the marinade.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish every one a Happy New Year.

Ingredients

500g Swiss chard

Handful of sultanas

Half red pepper diced

3 spring onions finely sliced

Handful of pine nuts

Drizzle of olive oil

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

Salt and pepper

For the base

500g flour

100ml water

100ml olive oil

Method

Finely slice the chard (only the green part), and place them in a salad bowl with the diced pepper, the spring onion, the pine nuts and the sultans, drizzle the olive oil, the paprika and salt and peppr, mix well and leave overnight in the fridge.

Squeeze the excess liquid and reserve. Mix the ingredients for the base and roll it our very finely, place it on the tray or the tin you are going to use. Spread the filling all over the base and bake in the oven at 180 for 30minutes if it starts getting brown cover it with foil and carry on baking it.