I Made That

The Secret Scottish Tortilla

I hope you are still with me, lovely readers, I have not been able to use my google stats for a while, it requires a new code which I have got but I don't know where to paste. I shall ask for advice as it is a bit lonely talking to the ether.

Anyway, I recently came back from Scotland where Ailie makes the best tortilla this side of the Alhambra. This time I stole her secret, so no telling OK?




Chop 2 onions









cook slowly 5 medium potatoes diced in olive oil for about 25 minutes







whisk 6 eggs and 2 cloves of garlic pressed.

Now pay attention because here comes the trick:

Return the content of the frying pan into the egg mixture and beat

Pour back into the pan, and here Ailie let slipped that the non-stick quality of the pan is all important. Go tuck tuck around the corner with your spatula as demonstrated. until the tortilla looks set.

do that nifty trick where you put a plate on the top of the tortilla so that it covers it and turn the lot round to transfer the tortilla into the plate, making sure that you are holding your plate with one hand.
transfer the content of the plate back in the pan for a few minutes

et voila, best tortilla known on earth.

Happy Cookies

You go away for a few weeks and on return, the world has been transformed. The world, may be a little bit of an exaggeration.
Let me elaborate: when I have a minute, I take a sweet delight in reading "the Greenwich Phantom". Every district, town, village should have a phantom, ours is a kind of contemporary freelance town-crier. This morning as I looked at his/hers website, I gasp, threw my shawl over my head and flew out of the house direction....... a new bakery. We have not had a bakery for pffffffff many many years, I got to Rhodes in 5 minutes flat, that is its name: "Rhodes Bakery" not the island, I have not grown wings yet. It was hiving, a joyous site, lovely, brown breads in the window, buttercups and tartelettes parading on their stand, this is really good new and it would seem that artisan-bakeries are back.

Sometime ago, I got an email from a friend who was about to finalise her dream: opening a bakery. Rather they are going to re-open the village bakery in Wye (Kent) which had long closed and will offer freshly baked high-quality breads, cakes and all sorts of other baked "deliciouseries". So it was with some anticipation that I tried one of her recipe.

Chocolate and Ginger Cookies

Chocolate and Ginger is a marriage made is heaven, we are all aware of the mood-boosting properties of chocolate and if the best property of crystallized ginger (also called candied ginger) is its tastes, it also relieves indigestion, the symptoms of colds, it alleviates nausea of all sorts including morning sickness and now.... wait for it..... it could even burn fat, the latter I doubt a little, certainly not when used in this recipe.

Yield: c.24
150 gm plain sifted flour
2 gm baking powder
100 gm crystallised ginger, finely chopped
50 gm soft light brown sugar
120 gm castor sugar1 large egg
120g plain chocolate chips
120g butter, softened

Method


Beat sugars and butter until light and fluffy. Mix in egg. Sift flour and baking powder and add to mixture, along with ginger and chocolate chips. Blend lightly but well.
Drop rounded dessertspoons of the mixture onto two greased baking sheets spacing well apart. Bate in pre-heated 175 C oven for about 18 minutes until light golden brown. Transfer to cooling rack. Store, when coll, in airtight container.

Slowing Down for the Summer

I am slowing down with the hot weather and the summer being here, or at least here for the next 5 minutes. I got very excited with the possibility to write on the BBCgoodfood blog but though I was shortlisted among thousand of entries, I did not make it. So I need to recharge, I will be away for a month. When I come back you can look forward to new categories: I have signed in to be a member of the "Daring bakers" and since the office has been redecorated and the computer back where it should be, I have access to the sound system so postswith music will be back on the menu. I also decided to post the book reviews I write for Paper Palate and as it is I will leave you with one to savour.

Already, I hear you say. It will be no time before they leave home again to their respective universities and colleges, resuming their busy students' lives; the question is "WHAT WILL THEY EAT THEN?" here is a book which title is a bit of a mouthful but will ease parents' worries. "The Really Useful Ultimate Student Vegetarian Cook Book" by Helen Aitken.

2 categories of recipes easy and very easy, the blurbs around the recipes are comprehensive and informative, the recipes themselves are easy to follow though some of them are not particularly on the cheap side on a student's budget as we are talking cooking and not throwing lentils in a pot. They are all accurate and will provide a myriad of variations a meal time, the recipes are suitable for beginners, tried and tested so success is assured.
I put the book to the test, asked around me, quickly realising that very little cooking was going on among young adults or if cooking was taking place it was mostly the old favorite such as pasta, so with 40 pages of pasta recipes it will hit the target. On the other end, the most enthusiastic cooks often googled the ingredients available in the fridge or cupboard so will they use a cook book? the answer remains a mystery but if they did "The Really Useful Ultimate Student Vegetarian Cook Book" would be a good choice?
I put it to the taste, there are 6 chapiters: soups, pastas and noodles, rice, grains and pulses, casseroles, curries and bakes, stir fires, salads and vegetables, breakfast, snacks and standbys. I cooked Chickpeas Patties with Caramelised Onions, it will not reach my top 10 but I realised that I hardly ever cook my onions that way and that I should they were delicious.
Ingredients
½ tablespoon olive oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
15g of fresh coriander , roughly chopped
310g can chickpeas , drained and rinsed
35g besan flour
1 small red onion , finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
½ tsp ground cumin
2 tbsp plain flour
oil, for shallow-frying
15g sunflower seeds
caramelised onion
20g butter
1red onion, thinly sliced
1½ teaspoons soft brown sugar
plain yogurt, to serve
Besan flour is also known as chickpea flour
Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the onion and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes, or until soft. Add the garlic and cumin and cook for 1 minute. Allow to cool slightly.
Blend the drained chickpeas, sunflower seeds, coriander, eff and onion mixture in a food processor until smooth. Fold in the besan lour and season. Divide the mixture into four portions and, using floured hands, form into patties. Heat 1 cm oil in a frying pan and cook the patties in two batches over medium heat for 2-3 minutes each side, or until firm. Drain on paper towels. Keep warm.
to make the caramelised onion, melt the butter in a small frying pan and cook the onion over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the sugar and cook for 1 minute, or until caramelised. Spoon over the patties with a dollop of yogurt.
Easy
50 minutes
serves 2 .

Worthy of a Restaurant

The great thing about food writing is that you are taken on little adventures all the time. As I wrote a review of Feast Bazaar, a page about Argan oil caught my imagination. Forest of Argan trees cover large areas in the Essouira region (Morocco), where the Berber community and my maternal ancestors settled.
The fruit which is a hard nut, the size of a plum contains one to three kernels, 100kg of seed yield 1 to 2 kg of oil, which make it the caviar of oils.
Though this oil has a plethora of benefits being rich in polyunsaturated fatty acid, see below for full composition, it reduces cholesterol & containing large amounts of vitamin E, what impressed me most was the production which is done entirely by hand mostly by the community of women.

After some research, I obtain a bottle from Belazu, a company which seems to have its heart at the right place, reinvesting money in good causes such as building a school in a village they work with. They import North-African / Mediterranean top quality products, have hit "fame" with their rose harissa. Argan oil has a deep golden tint to it, as soon as you open the bottle the aroma jumps out like the Genie tickling your nostrils with nuttiness and "spiciness" Anxious to try straight away I chose to a simple recipe, the result was heavenly, the nutty flavour of the oil really makes it gold. I am so taken that I am considering a visit to the land of my ancestors.

CHICKEN and MANGO SALAD WITH ARGAN OIL VINAIGRETTE

here is the recipe, The secret of a good vinaigrette is "use a fork"

In a bowl beat a tablespoon full of mustard, salt and pepper, season well with salt and pepper keep stirring, add a couple of dashes of vinegar, here you will need a non-obstructive kind, wine vinegar, for example, add 2 tbs of Argan oil, one of vegetable oil, one spoon at the time, stirring the entire time. The consistency remains thick if it gets too thin top up the mustard.

For the salad: in a bowl mix 1 cooked and cubed chicken breast without the skin, 1/2 mango cubed, as much green salad as you can fit in the bowl, toss all this add the vinaigrette, serve

recipe adapted from "the sauna club" below is the fatty composition of argan oil
Saturated fatty acids 16-20 %
Palmitic acid 12 %
Stearic acid 6 %
Monounsaturated fatty acids 45-50 %
Oleic acid 42.8 %
Polyunstaturated fatty acids 32-40 %
Linoleic acid 36.8 %
Alpha linolenic acid

Marblellous Cake

Did you know that the origin of the word "cake" can be traced back to the 13th century. It is a derivation of 'kaka', an Old Norse word. Medieval European bakers often made fruitcakes and gingerbread, but it is only in the latter part of the 19th century that "Marble Cakes" appeared.

According to the recent ---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, in Victorian times when impact was of the utmost importance, the marble cake was a novelty which had to be seen on the American tables, it was also the logical extension of the American fascination with cake color. "When marble cake first appeared, its dark swirls were produced through the addition of molasses, spice, and, in some recipes, raisins or currants. The simpler recipes were prepared using a single whole-egg batter, half of it darkened, but more ambitious recipes produced a more dramatic effect by making use of separate silver and gold batters, the latter darkened. Other bi colored cakes soon entered the scene. Hard-money cake was made by swirling silver and gold batters."

May be we should give the Marble Cake a 21st century make-over so if anyone fancies playing with their food, here is your opportunity to have a slice of fun, just replace the chocolate powder/milk with any artificial/natural lurid coloring for psychedelic effect and send me the pictures for all to see.

recipe mostly from the one the Baker by Leanne Kitchen

Marble CakeServes 10

Ingredients
185g (61/2 oz) butter , softened
230g (8 oz) caster sugar
3 eggs
280g (10 oz) self-raising flour
185ml (6fl oz) milk
1 tsp natural vanilla extract or 1 vanilla bean
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 1/2 tablespoons warm milk, extra (for the chocolate powder)

Preheat oven to 200C/400F/gas 6. Lightly grease a 25cm loaf (bar) tin and line the bottom with greaseproof (baking) paper.

If you want to make life easy, simply put all the ingredients (except the cocoa powder) into a food processor and whizz for 1-2 mins until smooth. If you prefer to mix by hand, beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

If you are using the vanilla bean, split it down the middle and scrape the seeds into a bowl. Alternatively, put the vanilla in the bowl, then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Sift the flour and fold it in, alternating with the milk until the mixture is smooth.
Divide the mixture between 2 bowls. Stir the cocoa powder and the extra milk into the mixture in one of the bowls.

Take 2 spoons and use them to dollop the chocolate and vanilla cake mixes into the tin alternately. When all the mixture has been used up , tap the bottom on your work surface to ensure that there aren't any air bubbles. Take a skewer and swirl it around the mixture in the tin a few times to create a marbled effect.
Bake the cake for 50-60 mins until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Turn out onto a cooling rack and leave to cool. Will keep for 3 days in an airtight container or freeze for up to 6 weeks.

The Baker by Leanne Kitchen

As I was writing the title, I was transported back in time, reminding me of the poetry sessions at primary school. Do you remember them? When you stood up by your desk trying not to shuffle your feet, declaiming title and verse, not really understanding what it was all about, all the time knowing that you were saying something beautiful. It was not an easy exercise, but the important thing was that you were learning, and some of us, many years later, might still read poetry.
The Baker is a bit like that: an ode to baking. Everything is in there, information on ingredients, equipment, techniques, etymology, history, even a trouble-shooting section. This sounds more like a handy reference guide than a book of poems, and it could easily have been, if it was not for the fantastic recipes and their beautifully styled photographs worthy of the best coffee-table compilation. If you have a present to give, either to yourself (especially to yourself) or to somebody else, with this book you will make someone very happy.
Now for the scientific bit: Leanne Kitchen trained as a chef, her career in food spanning some fourteen years. This book contains 100 recipes divided into chapters on Quickbreads, Yeast, Cakes, Biscuits, Pies and Tarts, Batters, Desserts and Puddings.


Mango and Passion Fruit Pies

Ingredients:
400g plain flour

165g icing sugar

200g cold unsalted butter

2 egg yolks mixed with 2 tablespoons iced water

1 egg, lightly beaten

Icing sugar for dusting

Filling:
60 ml passion fruit pulp

1 tablespoon custard powder or instant vanilla pudding mix

3 ripe mangoes peeled, sliced, and chopped

80 g caster sugar

Method:Sift the flour and icing sugar into a large bowl. Using your fingertips, lightly rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.

Make a well in the center, then add the egg yolks to the well. Mix using a flat-bladed knife until a rough dough forms. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface, then gently press together into a ball. Form into a flat disc, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Grease a round pie dish ( the recipe indicates six fluted loose-based flan tins).
Roll out 2/3 of the chilled pastry between two sheets of baking paper until 3 mm thick.

Cut out the shape of your tin. Refrigerate for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 190 degrees C (375F/Gas 5).
To make the filling, in a small saucepan stir the custard powder and the passionfruit pulp until thick - will take a couple of minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the mango and sugar.
Fit pastry in the tin(s), add the filling, roll out top pastry and fit over tins, and then brush with beaten egg. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes.
Serve at room temperature with whipped cream.

Food from Canada

is a brilliant initiative from Jasmine. She and a friend called for a round up to gather recipes from Canada. The submissions seemed to have come from every corner and the end product is inspiring.

have a look at her Confessions of a cardamom addict.

Just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy is asking the UN to award French cuisine Unesco humanity heritage status, previous winners in this field have included a Belgian carnival and the royal ballet of Cambodia, should we look at our respective national cuisine as immoveable heritage or melting pot in evolution?