Seafood & Chorizo Salad (again)

Way back last August I posted about how good Rick Stein's squid and chorizo salad is - although I made a few variations to the recipe as written. Well, I still haven't made it as the great man wrote it, but it is still a firm favourite!

"Spanish" Food

This is a bit like "Mexican" food - very tasty, but possibly unrecognisable to a Spaniard. Last night we were discussing options for dinner and decided that if we were going to have a bottle of wine (in an effort to reduce calorie intake we aren't drinking alcohol during the week, unless we are at a restaurant) it should be a good one. So we went up the road to Salud where they have a cellar of very old Spanish wines at extremely reasonable prices.

In the past when we have been to Salud, we've erred by ordering a couple of tapas to start, and then not been able to do justice to the massive main courses. This time we decided to order just some tapas and pace ourselves.

The thing that struck me immediately (with my 5 days in Spain expertise) was how much bigger the portions were than the tapas in Spain. We ordered 7 dishes and we really should probably have had 5.

The fried calamari was lovely - so tender it was almost like boiled egg. The boquerones were also very good, but piled in a huge mound over shredded lettuce it was just too much. Pollo al ajillo wasn't as good as the one I made the other week. Excellent grilled sardines. Delicious chorizo cooked in wine. Fat garlicky mushrooms. A whopping plate of serrano jamon, a little dry and too thickly sliced. All stuff that you would find in bars in Spain, but somehow not quite as it would be done there - I think all of the garlic was ready chopped from a jar, for one thing.

Anyway, a very pleasant meal with a lovely bottle of wine. And a fascinating floorshow - the only other occupied table contained a pair of frumpy middle-aged women who discussed very loudly their roles as the sexpots of Rickmansworth. You wouldn't have thought they'd have it in them, but men bang on their windows every night. Fascinating eavesdropping.

Corned beef

I do try not to serve beige meals, but occasionally I impress myself with the colours on a plate. Tonight's vibrant green and orange are so very pretty.

When I moved to the UK I had no idea that corned beef was held in such poor esteem here - it is entirely associated with the cans of shredded not-sure-what (which my husband makes into a fab, comforting pasta sauce) and not at all with the corned silverside of Australian country Sunday lunches and brilliant sandwiches. Come to think of it, I must find out from my mother how she came to be such a proponent of the art of silverside without being Australian or a country girl... On the other hand, there is a great fondness and respect for the Jewish hot salt beef bar, and from where I sit, salt beef and corned beef are very much the same animal.

Tonight's corned beef was a small piece from a brisket that I cured according to a recipe in Preserved by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton. It's been sitting in the freezer for quite some while, and I am on a bit of a freezer-emptying jag at the moment, so I decided the time had come. With the other piece from this cure, it was a bit too salty, so I soaked this one overnight, before cooking it for 2 1/2 hours in fresh water, with a slosh of vinegar, a bayleaf and an onion spiked with cloves. I don't think the extra flavourings do anything much for the flavour of the meat, but they make the kitchen smell heavenly.

I am very lucky to have found in my husband a soulmate: someone who likes their parsley sauce thick as wallpaper paste, and with far more parsley in it than white sauce just like I do. It is so rare to find that I don't think I will be making parsley sauce for anyone else, ever. So, corned beef, peering from a thick blanket of sauce, with roast butternut pumpkin, some roast cloves of garlic and steamed broccolini. Yum. Nothing like the stuff in cans.

Not a triumph

If you use "scallops and black pudding" as your search terms, you will discover that matching the plump, delicate seafood with the richly spiced pudding is a pretty common thing to do - although the Riverford Organic Farmshop (not, I would have thought, on the cutting edge) thinks it is passe.

So for dinner tonight I dressed a pile of baby spinach leaves with a mustardy dressing, fried black pudding until crispy, apple slices until golden and tender and big fat scallops until nicely browned and put it all together on a plate. And you know what? Won't be doing that again. The black pudding and apple slices together were very good, but the scallops and black pudding had nothing to say to each other. Still, the picture turned out nice.

Braised Venison Shanks

I took a half day from work yesterday and went to Borough Market yesterday - hence the black pudding with breakfast this morning. While the vegetable, flower and cheese stalls at Borough are always gorgeous (I was sorely tempted by some massive globe artichokes and an amazing gooey brie) my problem is then how to transport my booty home. Meat just travels better! So I end up buying loads of different types of flesh. This time I bought (in addition to the black pudding) some bratwurst - probably dinner tomorrow, with some sauerkraut, a rolled shoulder of heather-grazed Orkney lamb and a couple of fallow venison shanks.

The weather today has been filthy - cold and blustery and rainy - so a casserole of the shanks was most definitely in order. I've been hankering for osso bucco, but my husband isn't a fan, so I figured I would apply the best part of osso bucco, the gremolata, to my shanks. In addition, at the Market I'd tried a balsamic syrup flavoured with orange, and my friend Kim had pointed out how lovely it would be with venison. So I decided that some of the marmalade backlog would go into the sauce and that the gremolata would be orange zest, not lemon. So here we have it:

Braised venison shanks with gremolata

2 venison shanks
1tbs oil
1 onion
6 cloves of garlic, peeled
selection of winter veg (I used an M&S concoction of more onion, carrot, cabbage, swede, leek, potato and lentils)
½ bottle red wine
500ml chicken stock
1 bay leaf
5 juniper berries, crushed
2 tsp bitter orange marmalade
salt & pepper

For the gremolata

2 more garlic cloves
bunch flat-leaf parsley
grated rind of a large orange

Brown the venison shanks in the oil on all sides in a heavy, lidded casserole or saucepan (I used a le Creuset dutch oven), with the whole cloves of garlic. Add the onion, diced, and stir around until the onion begins to soften. Add the cubed veg, wine, stock, bay leaf and juniper berries and bring to the boil. Put the lid on and turn the heat down to a simmer. If your pot fits in the oven (mine doesn’t), you can put it in a 150C oven. Cook gently for about 3 – 31/2 hours, until the meat is falling off the bone.

Combine the extra garlic cloves, the finely chopped parsley and the grated orange rind.

Remove the shanks from the pot, put in a bowl and pour a couple of spoons of the cooking broth over, and put in a low oven to keep warm. Increase the heat under the pot, so that the sauce reduces. Add the marmalade and half the gremolata and season to taste. Cook for another couple of minutes to soften the parsley. There should still be a bit of liquid around the vegetables but not too much.

Divide the sauce between deep serving plates and top with a shank each. Sprinkle with the remaining gremolata and serve with a simple green vegetable.

Full English

This week the Times decided to get all silly and try to provoke controversy by publishing a debate on the Full English breakfast. Now, I love Giles Coren; I read his reviews with eagerness every weekend and take heed of his opinions. But he has Gone Too Far in denouncing the Full English Breakfast.

It isn't something for every day. In fact, I don't think it is something for every weekend, but it is a lovely occasional treat. I think the one I have just finished eating was an excellent example of the genre, too.

The thing that looks like a hockey puck is, of course, lovely Scottish black pudding, fried until crunchy on the outside and meltingly tender in the middle. Outdoor-reared, dry-cured smoked bacon. A fried tomato (only a tiny half - I thought I had more than that in the fridge). Heinz baked beans (warmed through with a shake of Tabasco). Fried eggs - sunny-side down for my husband, sunny-side up for me. Perfect.

I'd normally do some fried mushrooms as well, but somehow we have run out. We never have toast/fried bread/saute potatoes with it when we have it at home, because with all the rest on the plate you just don't need it, and there is no one to care if you lick your plate to get the last bit of eggy baked bean sauce.

Crab Ravioli

Some time ago my friend Jude introduced me to the wonders of Costco. Since I'm not quite organised enough to have all the paperwork to join myself, Jude will occasionally do me a huge favour and take me around on her card. 2kg jars of marinated artichoke hearts for less than £5 are one of the highlights. Packets of prosciutto for 1/3 the price of Waitrose are also good. Duck confit cheaper than I can make it myself. And last time I bought a 450g tub of pasteurised, vacuum-packed crab meat for a piddling amount of money.

So I have had a tub of crab meat in the freezer and no idea whatsoever what to do with it. I thought crab and sweetcorn soup (which my husband adores), crab cakes, maybe omelettes. And then my husband announced that he thought crab ravioli with a sauce of peppers. And he was very definite that they were to be orange peppers, not red or yellow. I think the sauce looks a bit disgusting actually, but it tasted good and it allowed me to use saffron, which is my current obsession (or hadn't you noticed?).

Crab ravioli

200g white fish fillets
1 egg, separated
¼ cup double cream
white pepper
450g crabmeat
snipped chives
2 packets of wonton wrappers

Saffron pepper sauce

2 orange peppers
30g butter
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 pinch saffron strands
½ cup dry white wine
¼ cup double cream
Salt and white pepper

Blend the white fish and cream until smooth, then fold through the stiffly beaten eggwhite and chill. Add the crabmeat and season with white pepper, salt and snipped chives. Make into ravioli with the wonton wrappers (I folded them into triangles for ease), sealing with the eggyolk.

Roast the peppers until blackened, peel and deseed, saving the juices. Bring the wine to the boil in a small saucepan, add the chopped shallots and saffron and simmer until the wine has reduced by 2/3. Put the reduced wine, peppers and juices in a blender and puree until smooth. Put back in the saucepan, add the cream and bring to the boil again.

Gradually incorporate the chilled cubes of butter into the sauce, using a whisk and moving the saucepan on and off the heat to make certain it does not become too hot, which will cause the sauce to separate. Season to taste.

Boil the water for the pasta. Add the ravioli and simmer gently for about 4 minutes or until the pasta is cooked as you like it. Drain carefully to avoid damaging the ravioli. Serve with the sauce.

Makes about 60 ravioli. The sauce doesn't go that far.

Because we have dozens of ravioli left over (8-10 is a pretty good main course portion) we'll freeze them on a tray and then seal them in bags.