Peppers El Padrón - Spanish Roulette

The buds on the street side bushes in town have turned into small leaves almost as green as the peppers El Padrón, my eyes registered on my way home today…and it is only end of March!

Still suffering from a cold that had suddenly hit me this week, all I could manage today was a quick mid-week roulette...despite the modest energy level I was full of excitement and anticipation of a long awaited taste bomb or at least a great mouthful.

The green thumb sized peppers come from the Galicia region in north west of Spain. They are the simplest of the simple dish to prepare and can be eaten as finger food tapas, a starter or a side dish.

All you need to do is to heat some olive oil in a grill pan, throw a handful of peppers in and toss them around a couple of times until they take on a grilled colour. At the end sprinkle some flaked salt (I used Maldon salt) on the peppers and ready to serve it is.

Pimientos - Peppers El Padrón, grilled with olive oil and sea salt

The fun is in the eating. Most of the Padrón peppers are sweet, but occasionally one can come across an explosive hot one. So far, fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve never been surprised by this small vegetable. I am told the ones grown in Murcia region are usually less hot…until next time.

When with friends you can play a game where someone who gets the spicy hot one has to do something as a challenge set by others.

Red Snapper on Wild Garlic (Ramsons) Risotto

Wild garlic - a leafy spring herb

The spring started this week. The proof of it is all the fresh greens in the market as well as the buds on the trees and birds collecting small branches from my balcony to make nests.

Spring is here when the ramsons, aka bear’s garlic, arrive on the farmers´ market.

The ramsons make a refreshing pesto, a welcome competition to the traditional basil. A heap of flavour together with a prominent garlic taste all in one.

Dandellion

I am glad to see that there are greens that I don’t really know so well. More discoveries are awaiting if I get up early enough. This is how empty the market already is at 11:30.

Vegetable market in March

 

Ingredients for 2 portions

Ramsons Risotto:

50g ramsons leaves, the white ends removed

0.5dl olive oil

A pinch of sea salt or fleure de sel

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium small onion, finely chopped

1 dl of white wine or prosecco

4 good handfuls of carnaroli rice

0.5l vegetable bouillon

25g cold butter

Red snapper:

300g red snapper fillet

Salt, pepper

A little oil for the pan

Ramsons for the pesto

In a food processor or with a hand mixer crush the ramsons together with a pinch of salt and the olive oil into a pesto paste. Set aside for later.

Keep the hot bouillon at hand. Rinse the fish and dry it with the kitchen paper. Season the fish with salt and pepper and cut the filet into desired size pieces, more or less equal in size to ensure it cooks evenly. Set aside. Heat the oven to 130ºC.

Heat the oil in the risotto pan and cook the onion until a bit glassy. Add the rice and heat further. Splash the white wine or prosecco generously on the rice and let it evaporate. Slowly start adding some bouillon, not too much at a time. Stir with a wooden spoon. When the liquid reduces add some more bouillon and keep stirring frequently. When the risotto is almost done add the ramsons pesto, stir and cook until the rice is al dente.

Heat the grill pan with a little oil. Place the fish on the pan and cook for a couple of minutes on each side. Put the pan in the oven for 5 minutes.

Finish off the risotto by stirring cold butter into the risotto to make it creamy. When serving the risotto with fish I don’t add any parmesan.

Remove the fish from the oven and serve hot.

Bear´s (wild) garlic risotto and red snapper

Quinoa Salad, Gluten Free

More and more I hear about gluten intolerance and celiac disease. Fortunately for those intolerant of gluten more and more gluten free products appear in the food stores, more often I’ve seen “gluten-free” on restaurant menus and more and more food blogs are devoted to gluten free cooking. Here are two that I like and that most optimistically show that there is pleasure in eating for those who can’t eat wheat, rye or barley:
http://glutenfreegirl.com

http://www.babycakesnyc.com/

Dry quinoa on the left, cooked on the right

My sister acquainted me with quinoa last year. I’d seen it on the shelves of a top end supermarket, but never cooked it myself. There are different kinds of quinoa, white, red or black are what I’ve seen and recently a new tricolour product appeared in the supermarket. Quinoa is sold in the Swiss supermarkets as a bio product, in Estonia one can also find it in organic or bio food shops but is seems to be more expensive there.

Quinoa is not really a grain, but seeds of a leafy green plant. It originates in South America where people have grown it for a few thousands of years. No wonder because it has high nutrition value. It can be used in salads or eaten warm as a side or it may be an ingredient in a main dish. I do wonder how the Incas ate it…

For a healthy lunch here is a very easy quinoa salad for two.

Ingredients:

150g of quinoa

0.5 l water

Half a cucumber cut into small cubes

Half a red paprika/bell pepper cut into small cubes

5-10 sundried tomatoes cut into thin stripes

Sauce:

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or rape seed oil

Juice of a quarter of a lemon

A pinch of sugar or honey

Salt and pepper

Bring the water to boil and cook the quinoa until the little tails emerge and the grains are soft for about 15 minutes (check instructions on the pack too). In the meanwhile cut the vegetables and prepare the sauce by mixing the ingredients.

When the quinoa is soft, rinse with cold water and leave to cool. Mix the vegetables and the quinoa and the sauce. Garnish with chopped parsley or chives. The salad is ready to serve. 

Quinoa salad

Variation: add some smoked trout for a more substantial meal or mix any other ingredients you have at hand (sliced black olives, capers, scallions, roasted pumpkin, etc, etc).

Birthday Presents: pasta machine and handmade chocolates

It is customary to bring a present when going to a birthday. A pasta machine and the pasta drying rack it was for my foodista cake magician sister.

Big were my eyeballs when we received a present from the birthday girl - an artistic box of chocolates. I took a peek inside, the chocolates were jaw dropping. The value of the box shot up the instance when I heard that the birthday girl had made these chocolates herself.

A selection of handmade chocolates

In addition to a white and dark chocolate mousse and buckthorn juice jelly birthday cake that melted on our tongues and caused hightened saliva production with every mouthful, we pampered our taste buds with these handmade chocolates:

A sweet present for the birthday guests

White chocolates with fresh cream, lemon and poppy seeds
Dark chocolates with prune drowned in brandy and coconut paste
Dark chocolate with fig and/or marzipan

Designer chocolate

I have been travelling this week and haven´t done much cooking. I have been eating out a lot, picking up new taste memories in six new places in the UK and Estonia. I am happy to spend money on eating out when the quality and price are in balance with each other and with my expectations.

The week has provided opportunities to distinguish between the good and the bad. The disappointment of the week has been Kama House in Tallinn. The place in an old industrial building  is great but food and service when I visited provided a long list of disappointments for the visitors at our table. The great thing on Tallinn food scene is that new eateries pop up every now and then and provide a lot of possibility to hunt for something new unlike my Swiss home town where the gastronomic curiosity is floating on a quiet waveless sea. Clear, there are great places for eating out, some that never disappoint me, but the newness and discovery peaks in the seasonal change of the specials. Let´s see what this spring brings...

Mutabal and Uzbekistan in Moscow

Moscow, a world city with modern designer shops, famous department stores GUM and TZUM with a serious facelift since Soviet time, one of the highest concentrations of 4-wheel drives per square kilometre, snail paced traffic jams, city centre restaurants mainly catering foreigners, business is booming. Flights to and from Moscow are fully booked. The rows of business class seats that shrank to 3-4 during the economic crisis have expanded back to 15, the economy class is packed.

GUM Department store and the skating rink at the Red Square

If you live in Moscow and wonder what to do on a winter Sunday afternoon you may think “Oh, let’s go skating at the Red Square and have a hot chocolate at the rink afterwards”.

The famous Bolshoi Theatre re-opened recently the doors and the stage after a thorough renovation. We stepped in only to be faced with the airport type security gate and men in black with metal detectors. We saw the stairs inside and let it at that for now.

The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow

After the walk on the Red Square, the visit to the Bolshoi Theatre we arrived in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan used to be one of the Soviet Republics, now a country of 29 million people and a restaurant in Moscow. Step through the massive doors and you are in another world. Live Russian 80s music, belly dancers, waiters and waitresses in the national dress…

The rich menu started with two pages of vegetarian dishes (how unusual!), followed by Uzbek, Arab, Azerbaijan and Chinese starters, soups, main dishes. We started off with an appetizer selection of mutabal, tabbouleh, hummus and filled grape leaves. I would go back any time for the typical round Uzbek bread cooked in their special oven and decorated with black sesame seeds. I had a lamb shashlik that melted in my mouth, a colleague of mine took beef shashlik that was equally worth the some 1000 Roubles.

What caught my attention was that there was mutabal, an eggplant dip, as well as baba ganoush, also an eggplant dip, on the menu. The difference of the two as I found out afterwards is that the mutabal is made with tahini and yoghurt and the baba ganoush or baba ganouj is made with pomegranate, walnuts, tomato. Or, who knows…the mutabal served in Uzbekistan was served with oil and walnuts.

Mutabal, eggplant dip

Mutabal

Ingredients

2 medium small eggplants

1 garlic clove

1tablespoon lemon juice (optional)

1 tablespoon tahini paste

1-2 tablespoons yoghurt nature

Salt

Olive oil

Grill the whole aubergines on the real flame or in the hot oven grill (250°C) for ca 30 minutes until the skin blackened and the inside is soft. Turn them around in between. You may put the aubergines into a bowl and cover it with a plastic bag for 15 minutes in the same way as you would remove the skin from the grilled peppers. Cut open and spoon out the soft eggplant. Mash into a paste with a fork.

Add crushed garlic and a little lemon juice, mix. Let cool. Mix in the tahini paste, yoghurt and salt to taste.

Place the mixture onto a serving dish and drizzle some olive oil on it and chopped parsley if at hand.

Mutabal, typical in the Middle East and Central Asia