Monday 30 July 2007

Salted Potatoes

Mum reinvented the baked potato last night. Well not really. She used to do salted potatoes a lot, but you know how it is with food. You’ll make something every week for two months because it’s on your brain and everybody liked it the first time. Then you’ll forget about it for years because, well, there are newer and more exciting things to try.

Wash potatoes well and prick all over with a fork. Rub with coarsely ground salt. There’s no need to add oil as the moisture from the fork holes will help the salt to stick. Bake as usual directly on the rack in the centre of the oven.


Thursday 12 July 2007

Cheat's Italian Part One - Spaghetti

I’ve had some disgusting meals recently and many of them have been presented, in some for or other, under the label of “Italian cuisine”. Yet real Italian food bears no resemblance to the messes I have been offered. A cooking culture whose prime interest is in fresh ingredients prepared simply should inspire quick and lively meals. “Let’s grab an Italian tonight” is not a phrase that should send us running to the chilled ready-meals, the freezer or the local take-away. Yet this is precisely what I’ve experienced in the form of heat and serve pasta sauces, frozen lasagna and (shudder) dominos pizza. In response, I’ve decided on a three part set of cheaters' Italian recipes. While not straight out of a Neapolitan cookbook, these recipes are about fresh ingredients and are quick enough to prepare in the middle of the week.

Here are two favourite spaghetti sauce recipes. (There really is no excuse to reach for a bottle of red slop with the odd onion or mushroom slice thrown in.) The most important ingredient here is fresh basil, so buy a live plant and keep it on your window sill. With water only, it will last a month or two.

Firstly, please cook your pasta properly. Heat the water to a rolling boil and add a little salt. Cook the pasta only until it is just cooked through - 'al dente' if you want to pretend that you speak Italian. I often find that a minute less than the guide cooking time is a good way to go for UK packs.

LEMON BASIL SPAGHETTI

While your pasta is cooking, mix

a nob of butter
100 mls cream
1 tablespoon of lemon juice

in a small saucepan over low heat. (Don’t be tempted to add more lemon juice or it will sour and curdle - I tried it.) Stir until combined.
Drain you pasta but do not rinse, and leave a few tablespoons of cooking liquid sloshing around the bottom of the pan. Pour over the lemon mixture and add
the grated zest of 2 lemons
(Only take the yellow part of the lemon, as the white pith is bitter.)
Toss the pasta around and once it has cooled a little add
grated nutmeg
a handful of torn basil leaves
a handful of grated Parmesan.

(If you add the Parmesan while the pan is too hot, it will turn to a sticky glue on the bottom.)
Toss again and serve with extra basil and Parmesan scattered on top.

TOMATO BASIL SPAGHETTI

While the pasta is cooking, rub

a few hundred grams of small or cherry tomatoes in
olive oil.
Place on a baking tray with short sides under a hot grill. Give the tray a little shake after two minutes so that the tomatoes grill evenly. Once the tomatoes have split, released some juice and turned a little brown on the edges, remove from the oven.
Pour the tomatoes and the juices over the drained pasta. Add
another slosh of olive oil
a generous handful of fresh torn basil leaves
a handful of Parmesan.

Toss and serve.

Thursday 5 July 2007

Black Pepper Chicken

P recently made this wonderful chicken kali mirch and it was so good that I had to note it down. Here's what he did:

500 grams roughly cubed chicken breast or thigh
4 tablespoons whole black pepper corns
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ghee
3 cloves
15 dried curry leaves
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
1 medium red onion sliced
1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
3 cloves of garlic chopped finely
1 cup water

Coarsely grind the pepper corns, turmeric and salt. (It is perfectly all right for some whole pepper corns to remain.) Mix this powder with the chicken and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Heat the ghee in a wok; add the cloves, then the garlic and onion. Saute over a slow fire until the onion is tender and golden brown. Add the tomatoes and saute for about 15 minutes. Add the coriander powder and saute until the oil separates from the paste. Add the water and curry leaves. Once this sauce is boiling, add the chicken and cook covered. Once the chicken is cooked through, serve with basmati rice.

Compared to his usual dishes, this one was relatively quick to put together and is something that we will happily whip up mid-week or serve to friends. It seems like a lot of pepper but the curry leaves seem to cut that (adding an almost a sweet touch) and I just loved the pop of the whole pepper corns between the teeth.

Monday 2 July 2007

Pain (au chocolat).

We've recently been on a search to find the best pain au chocolat in the Haymarket area. The following entry documents our systematic failure and final success:

We first tried the new(ish) cafe on Dalry Road. Dolce Pasticceria is a lovely little place, despite the shop sign which looks like someone threw paint and wadded toilet paper at it. Unfortunately, their pain au chocolate matched the sign. It was terrible, so bad that we almost disqualified it from the competition. The Pasticceria offering was a "sort of" croissant, that had surreptitiously been sliced in half and spread with some form of nutella, several hours or days before. (The chocolate had formed a skin on the top side which prevented the two halves from truly sticking together.) The pastry was completely wrong. It was soft and dry with no hint of butter. The dough had formed air bubbles and a crust almost like a plain yeast bread and there were no flaky layers at all.
Kate: 0 points; P: 0 points


Our second pain au chocolat was from Somerfield. We thought it best to try the supermarket at this point because nothing could look bad after our first entry and we hoped this would prevent any prejudice over it coming from a supermarket bakery. Somerfield's entry was surprising good. The pastry was flaky and buttery, although it had turned a little gluey under the chocolate. It tasted just a supermarket pain au chocolate from France. Supermarket isn't good enough though. It's not that we want the best pastry every; we're looking for something that you might find in any local village or suburban French bakery. Surely someone in Scotland can do it?
Kate: 2.5 points; P: 3.5 points

Our third pain au chocolate came from the Bakehouse Cafe, opposite the Dalry Rd Sommerfield. Given that this cafe sports small French and Italian flags on the sign above the door, we entered with high hopes. Their entry looked rather like a small hedgehog as it had one small nub of chocolate poking out each end of a roll of pastry. The pastry was pretty lousy (check out the oily base) but the chocolate was probably the best thus far. There were big air pockets inside and the outside was hard and had gone all tough and crusty on the ends where the flour had obviously fried solid in the oven because of the excess fat. Obviously, the Auld Alliance did nothing for Edinburgh's bakers.
Kate: 2 points; P: 2.5 points

Our final pain au chocolat (for this round at least) came from Le Marche Francais which is on West Maitland Street just around the corner from the Haymarket pub. This pastry was easily the best of the Haymarket area. It was light and crispy and the chocolate was soft and melty. It also came served with a short black and a french accent which I'm sure helps for a lot of people. I'm still not convinced that this pastry (or any of those that we might find in Scotland) matches up to the local bakery in Loperhet but we'll probably be running out to Le Marche Francais on weekend mornings from now on.
Kate: 3.5 points; P: 4 points
Look out for part 2 of pain (au chocolat) when we head out to explore suburban bakeries in other areas of Edinburgh.