Paprika-ed cod with shaved zucchini

Friday night dinner was a lonely affair as the other half was off celebrating year end. A fish and vegetables feast was called for and I felt rather pleased to be able to amp up the spicyness of the dish instead of the usual tip toe approach - spice and vegetables are at best tolerated in our household.

The feast was shaved zucchini sautéed in diced shallot, pepper and a whole Thai chilli - the chilli being optional, topped with cod coated in paprika, lemon zest, thyme and another chilli but again optional... Secret smile.

Recipe:

Shave two baby zucchinis with a vegetable peeler. Sweat a small diced shallot and one diced chilli until soft then add the zucchini. S&P (salt and pepper - I blame the tv shows...). Stir fry until just cooked which should be about 3-5 minutes. Plate. Add some oil to the same pan and fry a tablespoon of paprika, thyme and the other chilli, if using, on medium heat for about 30 seconds and put the cod over the fried paprika. Cover the up-facing side of the fish with more paprika, lemon zest and S&P ;). When ready (the piece of fish should come away easily from the bottom of the pan without too much pushing and pulling), flip the fish and cook for 30 seconds and place over the zucchini. Question is, do you dare..?

Recipe testing for allergy free choux..

Save for salt, there is absolutely no ingredient in choux pastry of which I am not intolerant to: butter, tick, flour, tick, eggs, TICK. How can I replace all the key ingredients and still make comely choux?

First trial: I'm attempting a Paris-Brest and so am making a big wheel of choux. I cooked it for ten minutes too long (I really should invest in a timer) and did not turn down the oven... and it was a tad too crunchy, but the insides were cooked to perfection. A way to go - it wasn't quite choux (more like churros!) but we ate it anyway and so only a quarter wheel is left:

Recipe test 1: 40gm trex, 30gm sifted gram flour, 35gm sifted GF+RiceFree flour, 125mls water, 4 tsp egg replacer whipped with 8 tbs water, salt. Boil water and trex on high heat. Beat in both flours until "film" stage. Leave off heat and whip egg replacers with water. On low heat, slowly beat in egg replacer mix into flour mix until mixture becomes pipeable. Stick into oven preheated to 200degrees for 40 minutes.
Next test: 50 gm trex, 150mls water.  Stick into oven preheated to 220degrees for 10 minutes, turn down oven to 180degrees and bake for 20 more minutes. Open oven door, pierce choux's bottom and leave it to cool in the oven.

Free friendly fish curry

Infections and multiple visits to the doctor week just gone have not helped the cooking-through-Larousse-thintastically cause. Instead, with no forward planning, we whipped up a fish "curry" with what we had in our cupboards, with substitution and altogether do without, the name of the game (curry-purists look away now). Well, at least it was allergy free and yummy. Ignore the rice...

Serves two: Sweat half red onion, cubed, with minced garlic, 2 bird's eye chillies for ten minutes before adding salt, 3 tbsp curry powder, 1 tbsp turmeric, and 1 tbsp Dijon mustard (law of substitution..) and fry for further 5 minutes. Add one cubed large potato and fry for further 15 minutes before adding half a can of coconut milk. Simmer until tats are cooked through. Taste and adjust. Add 400gm cubed cod and cover for further five minutes on low heat. Serve!

Allergy free cashew based ice cream

It would seem in the nick of time that we noticed that almost every aspect of my life is food related, including the scents in our home, what with all that lamb and candles, sugo, choux and pho testing and what not. In fact, not only do our cushions, upholstery and hair reek of lunch, it would appear that even the pores of my very body is food-scented.. Mango bodywash, Parsley Seed toner (which makes me smell more like an anti-mosquito spray than parsley but nevermind), Cocoa Butter, Mint Tea body creams and Ginger & Lime hand cream. I had hoped that in sleep we would escape from food but the basil and mint candle is a dead give away.

If only our need for food were satisfied by scents of smell, then I would be a very successful walking talking food-smell vending machine. That or if anyone needs anti-mosquito spray, you know where to go...

In that scented vein, I'm bent on making something which does not require any heat less it releases more smells. My cashew based ice cream is all blend and no heat... And it's dairy, egg and gluten free too.

Recipe:

Soak one cup cashews in one cup water overnight. Blend cashews and water with 1/3 cup maple syrup, 1/4 cut coconut oil, 1 tbsp vanilla extract and salt to taste. Blend as well as your machine allows and chill then freeze, stirring every 30 minutes after first 2 hours.

Cholesterol free...?

I have always counted myself lucky despite my intolerances as I am allowed to eat unlimited amounts of vegetables, seafood and meat. A recent blood test has come back with an agenda to deprive me of my (only) sense of food-fortuity, as it would appear - or given the fact based nature of a blood test, state - that my cholesterol levels are way off the chart. As my cholesterol levels a couple years back was below the normal range, my dear doctor has told me, without batting those long eye lashes one bit, that I must cut down on red meat and shellfish. He did say that should I really want and need red meat, he would allow really gamey red meat - not grouse, more ostrich... Nope, no eyelash movement whatsoever.

Back in the real world, I am righteously indignant over this whole meat&shellfish-fracas. And since a friend insisted that being hungry often keeps cholesterol levels down, I now have the following options: ostrich vs hunger. 

Such delightful options puts me at real risk of reconsidering myself lucky. While I ponder that - Korean 100% green bean vermicelli with peas and pancetta (pork is white meat, I insist!):

Allergy free brownie

When first told of my intolerances, my biggest preoccupation was that of dessert (and of a butterless life). Swearing off rice and wheat etc. is all in a day's work but dessert, biscuits, pastry, and all things sweet are the French on one's toast, the salt on all chips, the coco before the pop.

It is my very nature to obsess with finding replacements and I started with something easy (and not too dear to my heart for fear of total and utter failure): brownies. This recipe I "converted" from la barefoot and call it beginners luck at that time but it worked rather well. Note however that this recipe falls strictly into the cakey-brownie camp, for fear of over promising on gooeyness and chewiness...

Melt 450gm allergy free dark chocolate in a Bain Marie over low heat. Off the heat stir in170gm trex (vegetable shortening). In a separate bowl, mix 45gm potato flour with 150ml water and add in 3 tbsp of instant coffee granules, 2 tbsp vanilla extract and 150gm sugar. Add the melted chocolate to this mixture and let cool completely. Combine 150gm allergy-free flour with 1tbsp baking powder and some salt. When cooled, lightly mix the two and if desired, toss about 30gm of allergy free choc chips in AF flour and add that in too. Bake in a 12x18inch pan in oven preheated to 180degrees for 25 minutes. 

Allergy free corn ice cream

It's one of those days where everything I touch turns to dust (recipe testing choux and forgot to turn oven down again and in another recipe, and unforgivably rookie mistake of using baking soda instead of powder...) - high hopes then for my corn ice cream. Sweet and salty, corn ice cream could be considered the marmite of the dessert world and would more likely appeal to those who are familiar with oriental desserts - think sweet salty red bean paste mochi etc. It is after all, the preserve of south-east Asian childhood dreamers of the orient kind and therefore an apt follow-post to my recent excursions to ippudo and cay tre.

The verdict: the Italian half is not crazy about turning vegetables into dessert (not even carrot cake) and especially not ice cream... But, nothing beats the novelty of corn ice cream, and whilst we shouldn't like it, we do. Shhh.

The recipe:

Heat one cup almond milk with 2tbps cornflour dissolved in a touch of water. Stir on low heat until thick. Add in 1/3 cup sugar and a dash of salt. Stir until dissolved. Off the heat add in 160gm sweet corn purée* and blend together with a stick blender. Chill then freeze, stirring every 30 minutes. 

*If very lazy, blitz sweet corn and do not bother to sieve as bits of translucent corn "skin" could convey maximum authencity especially when stuck between ones teeth - charming. 

Sugar and allergy free chocolate sorbet

It's never a good time to go on a sugar detox, as it turns us (or is it me only?) into epicly terrible beings, and especially in January when sugar is so crucial in one's fortification against the battle of holiday blues and the return-to-work tedium. But sugar detox is unavoidable, and perhaps even encouraged, as it forces us to face our existential questions and when better to be a sugar-free grinch than against the back drop of wintry blues and greys?

So I have decided to challenge myself with a sugar free chocolate sorbet; I think it would be too harsh to forbid both sugar and chocolate, won't you agree?

This is our own recipe (http://duckandthyme.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/chocolate-sorbet-dream.html), with the sugar replaced with 5 tablespoons of granulated sweetener. Leave out the Patron too, if you can.

Recoining the allergy freetarian

Rather belatedly I googled the word "freetarian" and to my chagrin it has already been claimed, TWICE! By two different cults! First, by a political cult (and we won't delve into that here) and second, it is apparently interchangeable with "freegan" (which means people who like free, in the you-don't-need-to-pay-for-it sense, food!).

Oh the folly of impulse...back to allergy-freetarian then...

Food intolerances - Allergy Freetarian and proudly so

I was having a lovely chat with a dear friend recently and she asked me a question which got me terribly excited and concerned. It was a rather simple question - what is the term for people like you? My immediate answer was: "friends", bearing in mind that I just had 9 over for lunch of which 4 had special dietary requirements. I also postured "intolerant people" (rather apt for me) and "the troublesome ones" (referring to myself again of course...). But, what is the globally accepted term? Surely, we are not awaiting for the term to be coined - or are we?

Whilst the phenomenon which is food intolerance has been around for decades now, it is still a relatively new and "trendy" area and is now occasionally, but surely unacceptably, referred to as a "white whine". Rather personally, I object (surprise surprise) to the gentrification of the issue (yes you, gwyn) - for most of us, food intolerances are neither choice nor want and much as we would like to trivialise it (and I speak from personal experience with coeliacs (who have gluten intolerance) and the other types), we are bound up like chickens in purgatory, by the very ropes which are our health and sanity. No longer are we only intolerant to gluten or dairy but more commonly a combination of things, with different permutations for every individual. No longer are we vegetarian, vegan, fruitarian, but we are, and proudly so, "allergy free-tarians" - we are not only gluten free, dairy free, egg free, but we are also yeast free, rice free, soya free, fill-in-space free.

So, there! To ease myself into allergy freetarianism and to help me embrace rather than trivialise my intolerances, I'm taking up my other half's suggestion that I carry a freetarian card. And it's scented...Eat my heart out - something I'm not intolerant to, for a change.

Cay tre - Allergy-Freetarian approved !

A friend is swapping life in London for life in Hong Kong and took us out for lunch at Cay Tre - a Vietnamese chain which is casual but vibrant. I only went for the coffee (one must not resist Vietnamese coffee) and I was pretty certain that I would be post-lunch hungry but to my pleasant surprise, there was "100% cassava vermicelli" and the pho broth was freetarian! In my excitement and contentment, I commented, possibly in an annoying voice, on how cute everything was, from the teapot to the menu and receipt-holder (yes, pretty sad) and the waiters being super nice and friendly (or plain just wanted me out of their hair), sent me away with a little present, gratefully accepted!

Wintry pork ribs stew - with added pepper

Having posted quite a few "ragouts" and "sugos", there was hope we'd have run out of such recipes but alas, there isn't! We had lugged a dozen cans of San Marzano tomatoes (a little forlorn looking as they were battered and bruised from their adventure with lost luggage) back to London from our break in Italy and we just had to put them to good use immediately. The silver lining this time round, stewing time was only an hour instead of the usual six...

The result: sugo with costine di maiale (pork ribs to me and you) with an extra dash of pepper and chilli flakes to cure wintry ills. Buonissima! 

Recipe:

1 red onion, 2 medium carrots, 2 celery stalks, all diced. Sweat the mirepoix for 15-20 minutes with salt and pepper in a heavy bottomed pot, put aside and in the same pot brown 0.5 kgs of pork ribs on medium to high heat. Salt and pepper. Deglaze the pan with 1 cup red wine. Pour in 2 cans peeled San Marzano tomatoes,1tbs tomato paste and half a tomato can of water, salt and pepper, bring to boil and simmer for an hour, stirring occasionally. Pepper.

Ippudo - bemusing but forgettable...

A couple of girlfriends and I met up for a long awaited chinwag over dinner at Ippudo. My bemusement started from the moment we walked into the restaurant to rapturous and incomprehensible shouts from every member of staff aimed at us (I think they were trying to welcome us in Japanese rather than frighten the living lights out of us), and increased through the night. 

The others ordered the famous house buns and tonkatsu ramen, of which I couldn't have any due to my intolerances, and I, surprise surprise, ordered salad as a starter and steak as main, with sauces on the side for obvious reasons. My bemusement increased when a different waiter returned to tell me that the dressing for the salad and the sauce for the steak were different - as I would indeed hope since one is a dressing and the other a sauce and they were two separate dishes - and asked if I would still want both on the side....? I am still pondering how to respond to that statement but I noted that the salad was sent straight back to the kitchen.

The salad was boiled kale served with asparagus, some orange, cashews and raisins - the sum of the dish was as good as the individual parts, but not better, probably due to the lack of said dressing (of which a non-freetarian friend tried and noted as forgettable). The steak was served with fried garlic, onion and spring onions, and unfortunately pretty forgettable too - as I am also pretty forgetful (or forgettable, if you wish), I tasted the sauce (before a dear friend reminded me of my freetarianism) and that was equally forgettable. The waiters on the other hand, were anything but - I was sure that they had run out of serving dishes when three different waiters came up to me at different times to ask if I had finished with my salad and steak despite both plates being half full, or at least with some food left, and my companions still midst eating. I ate up quickly, afraid they would literally pounce on those rarified plates and I be collateral damage! Stabbed by a plate, special as it is, does nothing for me.

Whilst my girlfriends and I had a great time catching up on Xmas and NY antics - we even had an indulgent 10 minutes talking about sous vide machines and upcoming food trends (beetroot anything in dessert and broth were our bets) - my fruit, jelly and red bean paste drowned in prosecco was as forgettable as the steak. 

However, the night was both bemusing and entertaining, the waiters were cheerful if not a tad scary, and I am inspired to cook a new recipe! Broth, not steak, that is.

Plates, or else:

Stuffed shoulder of lamb a l'albigeoise

It wouldn't be rash to conclude that I rather like boning, stuffing and tying up all manner of meats and fish, wrong as that somehow sounds. As we were perusing the grocery aisles this weekend gone, a sudden fancy for lamb overtook us and we could not resist a half shoulder. We went home to consult Larousse and chose this recipe as we had chipolatas to hand (yeah, can't live without sausages). In short, the lamb is boned and the meat cut open like a book and a sausagemeat, liver, rosemary, garlic and parsley mix is spread on its open face. The book is then shut and tied up neatly, seared in goosefat (with 8 blanched garlic cloves) and roasted in a 230degree oven for 40 minutes. In true Larousse style, the recipe was concise - but to try this recipe, a clean oven and good candles (Jo Malone or Penhaligon's) are non negotiable or expect smoke billowing in the kitchen and hair...

Done right, the Larousse does not disappoint:

Ingredients, to serve 4:

0.7kg lamb shoulder

12 garlic cloves

30gm parleys (including stalks) and process this together with

250gm sausage meat

100gm pork liver (if not just use 350gm sausage meat)

Small bunch of rosemary, chopped

1 tbsp goose far

2 tbsp fresh ground black pepper 

1 tbsp salt 

Smooth hummus as creamy as a baby's bottom

We've all tried to prepare hummus as it is the absolute easiest thing to do (if you do not live in Italy, that is) - blend all the ingredients in a food processor and voila! But somehow, the other half is never quite satisfied with it and insists that it's never creamy, never smooth, never that-je-ne-sais-quoi enough. For the first time, we tried Barefoot but her recipe was not quite the answer, and we tried to charm a Persian restauranteur into divulging the secrets of hummus. 

He didn't. We made do with some "research" (Larousse, Barefoot, Google - you get the flow) instead. Apart from homemade chickpeas (which we didn't actually make), the key is the ingredients which are first whipped in the food processor. Note that whatever else is purported by other hummus-authorities, there is no such thing as hummus without tahini or cumin....well, no real hummus anyway. But what would I know as try as I might, I'm no Persian restauranteur and can't pretend to have any authority over this. But I do know that this was the smoothest, creamiest, fluffliest, most fantastic hummus we have ever achieved. Ever.

The secrets:
1 can chickpeas (about 200gms - 240gms net weight) drained and thoroughly rinsed if not preparing your own
3 tablespoons tahini
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 medium garlic clove, cored and minced
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
2-3 tablespoons olive oil (not extra virgin)

At least 3-5 tablespoons water (adjust to taste)
fine sea salt to taste - at least 3/4 tsp

Blend the tahini and lemon juice together for at least 1 minute. Scrape down and blend again for 30 seconds. Add the garlic, cumin, oil, salt, scrape down and blend for another minute. Add the chickpeas and blend for 2-10 minutes. Test taste, adjust, scrape down and blend again for 30 seconds. Let the processor go on slow and slowly add water down the feedtube until the desired consistency. Blend blend blend!

Drizzle over olive oil, lemon juice and dash of paprika to serve - this was omitted in the photo as it was leftovers (we made three times the recipe for the NYE party) and we just wanted to face plant ourselves into the damn thing...

The Queen and Her Pig

A pig is always a crowd pleaser and is usually easy to prepare for a dinner party as one would just bung it into the oven and forget about it. Well, it would have been in England anyway. In Italy, the "pork belly" cut doesn't quite exist and it was rather like a Greek drama to procure 4kgs of pork belly as my translator, his mum and I dragged my brother to the butchers to discuss in amusing and very loud broken Italian and English what was required, while my brother guffawed behind my back as I tried as elegantly as possible to show the butcher which part was required by pretending to be a pig.

Belly, and most importantly it's rind, in hand, we then traipsed around looking for tahini and lime both of which are rarities in Italy. Again, this involved a customary scene of utter confusion and phone calls made in panicky voices to every family, friend and acquaintance known as if in search of panacea. To everyone's relief, all the ingredients were found and the belly was marinated over night in a blend of tahini, salt, lime and lemon juice - a Nigella special but freetarianised. Salt was then rubbed onto the skin to extract moisture. Three hours before cooking the belly was removed from the fridge to allow to relax and come to room temperature and the skin wiped completely dry before cooking for 3.5 hours at 150degrees and 0.5hours at 250degrees. 

It was declared by a guest as the piece de resistance of the Christmas Eve dinner party and the cook "La Regina della notte" (the Queen of the night). Personally, I thought there was too much tahini (I could not find a measuring spoon in Italy and perhaps went tahini crazy) which the other half was also quick to point out, but I console myself with the superb crackling. Lots of crackling.

The plasticity of an Italian New Year celebration

New Year's Day was looming and we somehow found ourselves playing hosts to around 17 full blooded southern Italian characters. I say 17, but one can never be quite sure of the exact number of guests who would turn up as we are in south Italy after all, and all that passion and fire in the blood seem to make things rather dynamic...

As opposed to Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve is traditionally an affair with the loudest of friends and instead of full service dinner, we would use plastic plates and cups. Yes, turn away now if you have the slightest snobbery to eating and drinking from plastic containers, as I do. Even so, the table was set (oh, the irony) with plastic plates (antipasti and first) and cups (one for water, the other for wine and another for champagne *horror). Of course it was not just any plastic - we actually purchased different plates for each course, different napkins to match the plates, and cups, all of which had to match the iridescent silver table cloth and centerpiece...

Dinner, quite like the silver plastic service, was also prepared pot luck style. Ladies sashayed into the house dressed to the nigh and their men trooped in after them carrying crates (literally) of food. The plastic affair does not deter the obligatory amount of food one must consume during festivities; prosecco abundance, pigs in blanket, spinach and ricotta pasty, homemade smooth hummus as creamy as a baby's bum, cheese board of Asiagos and Parmesans, savoury crepe smothered in cheese, vegetarian cous cous and parmigiana, were just the starters and first courses. In my fascination with everything plastic, it would be amiss to withhold that there were three plate changes a head (why, isn't it obvious that one simply must not eat parmigiana after eating creamy crepe as they are not the same coloured food and couscous just cannot be eaten with any sauce no matter the colour...?)....!

In a truly Italian fashion, our guests held a protest and insisted on a 20 minute food-hiatus, the time of which was filled with toasts of mutual appreciation of the ability to cook industrial portions of food and purchase equal amounts of matching wines. The main course was then presented, melting slow roast pork marinated in tahini and humble but wonderful pork crackling (http://duckandthyme.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/the-queen-and-her-pig.html?m=1), served with oven potatoes and peppers. I'm also happy to report that we were allowed to eat all that food on a single plate!

Another food-hiatus was declared, and the table was cleared for gambling. The hiatus was shortly rescinded as clementines were presented as amuse bouchée. As gambling always does, it was soon time to countdown and have that bottle of Moët amidst a panaroma of fireworks in the horizon, a contented chaos of arms, legs and bodies, kisses and wishes. And if you thought that food consumption was over, you would be wrong as it is customary to have lentils cooked with ham-like sausages, as soon as possible after midnight as lentils represent round coins and signify wealth. And not to forget that dessert of chocolate sausages in three flavours was yet to be served. As the night of eating, quite like this post, gets long and tedious, I was chuffed with the imminent ending of the night but we are lulled into a false sense of tranquility as soon after 1a.m. the door bell starts ringing continuously and in trooped more well wishers, more gamblers, and at half past one, I lost count of both plates and people and also of consciousness. Rowdy table banging antics continued well past 4a.m., but I was as oblivious to it as a discarded plastic plate in a large black bag.

Fat lentils: