Barbecue squid in bay stick

squid in bay stick before cooking

Bought some fresh squids for barbecue, simply washed in salted water and thread on bay sticks, brush some oil before cooking.

Barbecue squid in bay stick

I leave the thin red skin on to give a good charred taste. Very little work but very tasty result.

Restaurant Takatak Bar, San Sebastian Spain

 

Spent half a day in San Sebastian for the seafood market and lunch there. Found this restaurant from internet reviews, very happy with it. Simply decorated place with open kitchen, small menu, some tasty good dishes. 

smoked salted cod with crunchy olive and transparent tomato jelly, good texture and balance of saltiness and sourness

rice with cockle and bottarga, really good flavor, well cooked rice with generous amount of bottarga

What caught my eyes also is the cutlery used, a delicate looking of relatively small size set, make you feel the need to savor the dishes slowly, it worked. 

Cutipol cutlery from Portugal

Low temperature cooked salmon in cream sauce

Trying different ways to cook wild salmon to bring out the best flavor and texture. This method is easy and produce a just cooked juicy effect, and with a sauce to go with it. 

poach salmon in cream sauce with potatoes

1. Season salmon with salt and pepper for an hour.

2. In a small pan, add 1/2 cup of sour cream, dilute with water, season with 1/2 cup of sherry, salt and white pepper. Bring to boil.

3. When cream is boiling, place salmon inside, turn over after 30 seconds, then reduce to very low heat. Add cooked potatoes around, to raise the level of sauce and to thicken it. 

Low temperature cooked salmon in cream sauce

4. Poach salmon for 5 minutes and turn over, for another 5 minutes. Remove salmon to serving plates and reduce sauce to required thickness.

Okra and green tomato salad

Picked a green tomato because the plant suffered from mould and died. It is actually crunchy and not sour, nice to mix with soft okra for taste and texture contrast.

Okra and green tomato salad

1. Blanch okra until just soft, around a minute. Cut into slices.

2. Cut green tomato into cubes, mix with okra, season with salt, white pepper and olive oil.

Khol Rabi pickle

This is one of my favorite vegetables for making pickle, lovely crunchy texture, far better than cooking it. 

 

1. Season Khol Rabi slices with Umeboshi (or salt) and mustard, mix well and rest for a few hours.

2. Just before serving, mix in a handful of fresh coriander leaves, for colour and aroma.

Slow baked potato in cream sauce

Very good harvest of potato this year, Rose de France, I have been serving a potato dish with most meals. After simply steam, bake, use in soup, I feel the need to make a more elaborate potato dish, for a change.

Slow baked potato in cream sauce

1. Cook sliced onion in diluted sour cream, season with salt, white pepper and nutmeg, until onion soft.

2. In a baking dish, pour a ladle of hot sauce into the dish, then put a layer of potato slices, repeat until 2/3 full, with the sauce covering all potatoes slices.

3. Bake at 160˚C until potatoes soft, around 40 minutes, sprinkle grated cheese on top and bake until golden.

Barbecue pork in bay branches and plum sauce

pork in bay branches before cooking

Barbecue pork in bay branches

 

A dish I learned in Madeira where bay tree grows wild in the forest. Local uses bay branches as skewers to cook pork on barbecues. Bay has a balsamic herbal fragrance and this is a way to use it to appreciate the unique aroma. 

pork in bay leaves

1. Season pork with soysauce, pepper, brown sugar olive oil and many pieces of wrinkled up bay leaves, marinate for at least a day.

2. Use bay branches to skewer pork pieces and grill until cooked.

Plum sauce perfumed with bay leave

plum sauce

plum sauce

1. Cut plums into halves, add a pinch of salt, place a few pieces of wrinkled up bay leaves and rest for a couple of hours.

2. Bring plum with bay leaves to boil, remove from heat and rest until cold, serve with barbecue pork.

Plum with pork and cabbage stir-fry

plum des Bejonnieres

With a good harvest of plum des Bejonnieres, I have to use them more in cooking. It has a good balance of sweet sour flavor and goes well with pork dishes.

Plum with pork and cabbage stir-fry

1. Season pork with salt, 5 spices powder, corn starch and olive oil for an hour. Cut cabbage into pieces, plums into halves.

2. Sear pork until cooked, take out. Add cabbage, season with salt and cook until soft.

3. Add plum and cooked pork into cabbage, stir a few times to soften plum, ready to serve.

King crab leg with cream sauce

Alaskan King crab legs

Fisherman came back from Alaska with a big pack of frozen King crab legs. It is hard in Europe to find crab with sweet meat.

Of course when these King crab legs are cooked on the boat in sea water, the sweetness is masked by saltiness.

King crab leg with cream sauce

To deal with this, I made an onion cream sauce, that helps to bring this delicacy back to life.

1. Defrost crab legs, place in oven pre-heated to 180˚C and switch off, just to warm the meat.

2. Finely cut into cubes onion and sweat in olive oil slowly until golden and sweetness come out. 

onion sherry cream sauce

3. Add 2 tbsp of sherry, some white pepper, then mix in half a cup cream.

4. Mix crab meat with the sauce.

Plum des Bejonnieres

peach Roussane and plum des Bejonneres

 

Every day I walk around the fruit orchard to see the status of the fruiting tress, the early variety of peach like Roussane is ready to harvest, so is plum des Bejonnieres. 

Peach Rosanne is only good because it matures early, that's it. It is not a tasty peach, mainly juicy, ok as the first harvest in hot summer.  

plum des Bejonnieres

On the other hand, this early mature plum des Bejonnieres is a small size plum like half an egg, nice sweetness and good texture, not too soft. 

plum des Bejonnieres

In the evening, it is important to give the plum tree a gentle shake, so that the ripe ones will fall down, instead of dropping duirng the night and be eaten by all the friends in the nature.  

Fermented apricot sauce/sorbetg

Fermented apricot

After 3 days in room temperature, the jar of fermented apricot has a lot of bubbles. It tasted pleasantly sour, the texture of the fruit is gone, becomes mushy, not that inviting to eat. 

Fermented apricot puree with honey

So I blended it into puree, add honey to sweeten, it is very liquid and can be used as sauce on yogurt or pancake, not thick enough as jam. 

Fermented apricot sorbet

  

Fermented apricot sorbet

So I have half churned into sorbet, the other half boiled and kept in the freezer for later use.

Fermentation added a richer spectrum of flavor to the preparation.

Coix seed/Job's Tear 薏米

Coix seed is a common healthy grain to eat. It was a pleasant surprise to find it available in a French vegetable seed catalogue. Sure I can't resist the temptation to grow it, part of my interest in gardening is to see how the food we eat originated. 

Coix seed/Job's Tear

 

Another surprise is the seeds, they are hard and shape of a droplet, with shiny grey shell, totally unlike the grain that we cook. Now I understand why one of it's name is Job's Tear.

Coix seed/Job's Tear

The seed grows into 2 feet tall grass/wheat/small corn like plant, then small chains of flowers appear. 

Coix seed/Job's Tear flowers

I now know that the variety I bought is the wild one, with hard shell, normally used as beards! The eating variety has a soft shell. Anyway it is fun to see how the seeds set.

Baked ratatouille

fresh veg today

The veg garden is starting to produce more things to eat, there is a regular supply of zucchini and little peppers, occasional eggplant and tomato, just enough to make ratatouille. 

baked ratatouille

The traditional recipe is to fry every ingredient separately in oil with garlic and thyme, before combining and cook in tomato. This is far too much work for a small quantity of ingredients, so instead use a baking method. A reasonable tasty result for not much effort!

Baked ratatouille before baking

1. Cut zucchini, eggplant and tomato into bite size pieces, onion into wedges, season with salt, a handful of fresh thyme, chopped garlic and olive oil, rest for half an hour.

2. Bake at 180˚C until soft, around 30 minutes.

3. Cut semi dry tomatoes into pieces and re-inflate in some water (or use tomato paste), mix with hot baked vegetables and serve.

Peachvass

Peachvass

I have been making beetvass and it is nice to see the colour and flavor change during the few days, fermentation makes wonders.

With peach getting ripe, there are always fruits that are pecked, or dropped before fully ripe. So I make peachvass, using the same priciple of beetvass. After 2 days, the water turns mild pinky, or peachy, very attractive. 

Peachvass

I filter out the drink after 2 full days, with just a touch of sourness and peach fragrance.

-Wash peach and cut into segments, add a big pinch of salt and a tbsp sugar, add half a cup of a fermentation starter like from sauerkraut juice, or from the previous vass-drink. Leave at room temperature for a couple of days and serve.

Pepper Lombardi

Pepper Lombardi

Bought half a dozen of this pepper seedlings in Italy,  pepper is for me one of the most difficult seed to germinate. They produce pale green thin peppers, thinner than the small finger. They have very thin skin and best suited to eat whole.

I tried pickling in vinegar, salted and eaten raw, but the best is actually baked, and fast to serve too.

Shake the pepper, whole, with some olive oil, bake at 180˚C for 10 minute when they go soft, sprinkle a little salt and serve. 

baked pepper Lombardi and cherry tomato

The whole pepper is soft to eat and have a mild sweetness, once in a while one of the pepper will have a hint of spiciness.

Cucumber Poona Kheera

 

Cucumber Poona Kheera

It is my first time to grow this heirloom variety from India. True as described on the seed catalogue, very vigorous growth and produce a lot of cucumbers. 

Cucumber Poona Kheera

The fruits are light green and turn yellow brown on maturity, 5 inches long, a good size to work with.

The flesh is indeed very dense and crunchy, better than the green variety, even after pickling they stay reasonable crunchy. I prefer to peel the skin as it is a bit on the tough side.

1. Quick pickle as a cold summer dish

seasoned Cucumber Poona Kheera

Use a peeler to produce thin strips, season with Umeboshi (or salt), mustard and chili, mix well and rest for half an hour, a lot of water ooze out. 

 

seasoned nutty Cucumber Poona Kheera

Serve as such, or mix with a nut butter for a more creamy taste.

2. Fermented like gherkins

Mix half a cup of lacto starter solution, like from sauerkraut, with boiled and cooled down water, season with salt, sugar and other spices you like, it should taste savory sweet. 

Submerge small cucumbers inside, leave at room temperature for fermentation to start for a few days before serving. Keep in the fridge afterwards.

Baked onion, beetroot, potato

Baked onion beetroot potato with gravlax

It is an easy dish to make, I like to bake them without any seasoning, so that the flavor of each vegetable, being concentrated during baking, come out clearly and full of its own character. I pair with a piece of cooked gravlax that is heavy in seasoning. 

1. Cut onion, potato and beetroot into wedges, shake onion and potato together with some olive oil to coat, repeat with beetroot separately.

2. Place on baking tray with a few cloves of garlic, bake at 180˚C until golden, around 40 minutes.

Pear harvest

 

I used to find it hard to know when to harvest pears, as they stay hard when hanging on the tree, only when picked and rested during storage then they will go soft.

It is good to read James Wong's gardening book, he has an easy to follow rule. When pear grows to a good standard size and has some red blush, lift it up gently, if the stalk is hard it will break automatically from the tree, meaning ready for harvest.  

Zucchini dry tomato salad

Summer is the time to eat cold vegetable dishes, being too hot to cook and to eat hot food. I do like my raw veg to be soft to eat, easier to digest. 

Zucchini dry tomato salad

1. Cut zucchini into sticks, dry tomato into pieces, kaffir lime leaves into thin shreds.

2. Mix together, season with Umeboshi and mustard, stir well. Juice will ooze out from zucchini and will be absorbed by dry tomato. Rest for half a day before serving.

Salmon with green pepper

Heard from a new American friend that he will only eat fish if the skin is crispy. Indeed crispy things are a pleasure to eat, but fish has other flavour to enjoy too. Well, this is my simple way to cook salmon to crisp up the skin while the flesh is still juicy.

Salmon with green pepper

1. Season salmon with salt and white pepper for an hour or up to a day.

2. Add half cm water in a small frying pan and a knob of butter, place salmon skin side down. Cover with lid, simmer at medium high heat until fish is nearly cooked, around 5 minutes depending on thickness.

3. Open the lid and let any water left to evaporate, the skin will start to crisp in the butter. Place something around salmon that is easy to cook, like pepper, that does not have liquid coming out.

4. Serve when skin is crisp, stir a handful of parsley in the pan to warm up and place on salmon.