Cucumber beetroot fig salad

 

Cucumber beetroot fig salad with pig head pate

Came home late for lunch after picking blueberry, so picked 2 cucumbers from the garden, mix with beetroot harvested and cooked yesterday, season with salt and pepper, add pickled fig and drizzle the pickling vinegar on top, serve with some pig head pate, simple and delicious lunch.

Pork & liver paté

I usually make a few jars of paté at the same time. It is a good picnic item or a quick meal option.

1. Use equal quantities of liver and belly pork, cut to chunks, seasoned with soya sauce, 5-spice powder, cooking wine, pepper and salt. Place in a blender and grind into a coarse mince.

2. In a big bowl, mix the mince with 1 or 2 eggs depending on quantity of mince, around 1 egg to 500gm of mince. Add sesame or fennel seeds, or walnuts (optional) etc. Spoon & press into preserving jars, being careful to avoid air gaps.

3. Place jars, with lids on, into a deep baking tray, filled with boiling water up to at least half the height of jars. If the jars have metal lids, cover with a large inverted glass baking dish to reduce direct heating.

4. Bake for 2 hours at 180˚C. Paté can keep in the fridge/freezer for a while. 

Salted sardines

Recently, at the end of September in Rovinj, I salted sardines. After around 40 days of curing, I removed the backbones and skin from a few hundred fish to get my fillets! It is only when I did it with my own hands that I realised it is such a time consuming job, one that cannot be done by machine!

Parsnips

Parsnips start to mature in autumn, around mid September when the core is small and edible. As they keep on growing underground, the core gets bigger, becomes more and more woody, eventually have to be cut out and discarded. I like parsnip's unique flavour and mild sweetness.

Excellent to turn into fat chips, healthier than potato chips, and kids love them:

1. Cut parsnips into 1 cm strips/rounds etc. In a big bowl, add olive oil and shake well to coat.

2. Place in a baking tray in one layer, bake at 200˚C for 40 minutes, turn parsnips over halfway during baking. 

'Ma La' pork with parsnip

1. Cut shoulder pork in to slices, season with fermented bean/miso paste, soya sauce, cornstarch, cooking wine and sugar.

2. Cut parsnips into thin slices.

3. In a wok, cook a spoonful of chili bean paste at medium heat with a few spoonfuls of olive oil, when the oil turns red, add the pork slices, turn up the heat, stir until the pork is nearly cooked, set aside.

4. Cook parsnips in the wok with a little water and salt, cover with lid and cook for around 5 to 10 minutes until soft, add in pork and freshly ground Sichuan pepper, stir together and serve. 

Scallops with sesame

Brush olive oil on scallops, sprinkle sesame seeds on top, bake at 220˚C for 8 minutes. Sesame gives extra texture and fragrance to scallops. 

Sesame

My sesame plants are ready to harvest. The green pods can be opened into 2 halves, each halve is neatly lined with 2 rows of about 10 to 15 seeds. It is amazingly beautiful, but really tedious to get the seeds out. So I tied the plants up and hang them upside down in a big bag, hoping that as they dry, the seeds will fall out naturally. 

Red cabbage and apple

The addition of apples or dry raisins can lift the flavour dimension of otherwise quite bland cabbage.

1. Cut red cabbage into shreds, cut apple into slices.

2. Cook with olive oil, salt, soya sauce, 1tbsp brown sugar, 50ml water until cabbage is soft, around 15 mintues. 

Sweet potato crumble

It is always a challenge to see how to combine produces that are harvested in a similar period, like in this case,  sweet potatoes and apples.

1. Cut sweet potatoes and apples into cubes, cook in a cup of water with 2 tbsp of brown sugar, until the sweet potatoes are soft. Cool down in a baking dish.

2. Rub together equal quantities of butter, flour, chopped mix nuts, brown sugar. Press the mixture a bit to form lumps, then place on top of the mix in the baking dish, bake at 200˚C for around 10 minutes or until golden brown. 

Duck with prunes

 1. Cut duck breast into thick slices, season with 1 tbsp miso paste (or fermented bean paste), soya sauce, 1 tbsp brown sugar, 1/2 tsp 5 spices powder, 1 tbsp cooking wine, 1tbsp corn starch, for half an hour.

 2. Cut a few dry prunes into pieces, cook in small quantity of water until soft and the water has been absorbed, mix with duck breast.

 3. Chop sweet potatoes into cubes, parboil in a cup of water. Place in the bottom of a dish for steaming.

 4. Place duck prune mixtures on top of sweet potatoes, steam for around 15 minutes. 

Sauerkraut salad

I made sauerkraut from my excess harvest, and can now enjoy a quick and easy salad anytime.

1. Cut apples or pears into slices/shreds, mix with sauerkraut with a drizzle of olive oil.

2. For extra texture and flavour, add in dry roasted sesame/dessicated coconut, or simply some walnuts.

Zeruko, San Sebastian Spain

A tapas bar with a creative Chef, the tapas look attractive and taste good. The hot tapas listed on the blackboard are cooked to order, sometimes with quite fancy ingredients (lobster, foie gras etc)

 Attractive display of tapas.

 Lobster 'rose'

'

Squid burger






Bob limon

Pork knuckle

Kidney skewer

Foie gras

Braised lamb

A simple way of cooking a joint of lamb lower-leg, the meat stays juicy and the tendons are softened.

1. Score lamb leg with half-inch deep cuts (to speed up cooking), season with salt, place in a baking tray with deep sides.

2. Boil a cup of white wine, a cup of water, with a tbsp miso paste, tbsp soya sauce, dry fruits (apricot/peach/raisin), and walnuts.

3. Pour sauce into baking tray and bake at 230˚C for 10 minutes, then lower temperature to 180˚C and cook for another 50 minutes. Turn lamb leg over midway. 

Cabbage with fennel seeds

When cooked, fennel seeds give a sweet taste and mild fennel flavor, it is one of my spices of the moment.

1. Cut cabbage into strips, cook in oil and water, with a spoonful of fennel seed and salt, serve as such or,

2. Add in tomato paste and sour cream to form a richer sauce. 

Kipper omelette, potted kipper

In order to have some protein at breakfast, I prepared kippers (= smoked herrings) omelette. Herring is an oily fish that is rich in omega 3 oil and is low in the food chain, so has less accumulation of heavy metals and pollutants compared with bigger oily fish like tuna. 

1. Cut the kipper into strips, warm up in a little oil before adding egg mix to form omelette.

2. Add butter into the warmed up kipper, mesh up with some butter to form a rough paste, serve with toast. Potted kipper keeps well for several days in the fridge 

HK green beans

Earlier this year, I visited the 'O-Farm' in Fanling, Hong Kong. The owner Mr Yip gave me some of his family heirloom green bean seeds that his father brought from Malaysia, with a record of growing to 3 feet long. I planted the seeds in my garden in May, they took a long time to germinate and showed very slow growth compared with other beans. Well into July the plants still had just a few leaves whereas other species of beans were producing pods already. I thought perhaps they do not like the French climate or the soil type and will not bear fruit here. Finally by the end of August, the speed of growth picked up, chucking out lots of leaves, and bean pods started to form. I waited anxiously to see the length they could achieve here: a bit longer than 2 feet,  so I was very happy. I let them set seeds this year and will harvest the seeds for growing on next year, hoping that they may become more adapted to grow in this climate.