• About
  • La Micaela Farm Shop

fincafood

~ culinary and horticultural life on a Spanish farm

Monthly Archives: February 2013

Catalan Fish Stew – Suquet

27 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by fincafood in Fish, Food for One, Main Courses

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Almonds, Catalan Fish Stew, Linguine Vongole, Suquet

I thought while I was thinking of fish stew that I ought to share with you the recipe for one that originates from much closer to my home. This is a dish that is quintessentially Spanish. Garlicy Mediterranean fish in a tomato sauce, thickened and flavoured with toasted almonds and saffron, spiced with pimenton picante and served up with chunks of crusty country bread and green salad fresh from the huerta. And just as easy to cook for one or ten.

IMG_0055

For 4

Selection of fish and shellfish.

Monkfish is traditional, but now that it is endangered I choose other white meaty fish –Cod, Hake, Swordfish, Shark, Grey Mullet. Haddock and Conger Eel we don’t get in this part of the Med but would be suitable. Squid – if you are buying squid in a Mediterranean country be aware that there are several varieties of encephalopods and not all of them a tender.  Make sure that it is Calamar that you buy and not Poton which is tasty but requires a long slow cooking. If in doubt the calamares are usually a bit pricier and smaller in size than the poton.

For the shellfish

3-4 largish prawns per person – if they still have their heads and shells they will add more flavour to the stew.

3-4 mussels per person – in their shells

Clams – in their shells

Olive oil for frying

Half a head of garlic – peeled and finely chopped

1 medium onion – finely chopped

50 grams whole almonds

2 pinches saffron strands

1 heaped teaspoon pimenton picante / spicy paprika

3 large tomatoes – peeled, de seeded and chopped or 5 tablespoons passata

Fish stock

Flat leaved parsley – chopped

Prepare the fish. Remove any skin and bones and cut into large chunks. In some restaurants here they leave everything on and also use small fish like Red Mullet, but I find that Suquet is messy enough to eat with getting the shellfish out of their shells and peeling the prawns without having to try to skin and bone fish as you eat the dish as well. Also some fish skin has quite a different and stronger flavour than the flesh and this can ruin a dish.

Clean the mussels and clams and steam them open. Just put them in a frying pan, cover and put on a low heat. Turn them from time to time until they are all open. Put to one side until needed.

Put the saffron in a thick based pan over a low heat and toast to dry the strands and bring out the flavour. Be careful with this as the expensive strands can easily burn.

Put the strands in a mortar with a pinch of salt and grind up.

Put the almonds in the same pan as where the saffron was and toast moving from time to time until they are a light golden brown.

Add to the mortar and grind to a rough powder. You still want some bigger bits in the powder for texture. Put to one side until needed.

Heat the oil in a pan large enough to take all the ingredients for the stew. Add the garlic and fry over a low heat until golden.

Add the onions and fry until translucent.

Add the tomatoes and fry down for 5 minutes, or add the passata.

Put in the fish pieces, the prawns and the almond and saffron from the mortar. Season with the pimenton. Add the strained liquid from the mussels and clams.

Stir all to mix in the ingredients.

The liquid wants to just cover the fish, if it looks a bit dry add some fish stock, or chicken if you don’t have fish.

Cook slowly for 5-10 minutes until the fish is almost cooked.

Add the mussels and clams and chopped parsley.

Heat to warm through.

Check the seasonings and add salt and freshly ground black pepper as required. This is done at the very end as some shellfish can be quite salty and so until it and its stock are added you won’t know how salty the dish is.

Serve with crusty bread and a green salad.

The leftovers with extra clams added make a great sauce for pasta the next day……..

IMG_0066

Spicy Fish Stew & Yuca Dumplings

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by fincafood in Fish, Food for One, Main Courses

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Fish Stew, Passata, Yuca Dumplings

IMG_0033  Here is the fish stew to go with yesterdays Yuca Dumplings as promised.

Per person

100 gms meaty fish – swordfish, salmon, conger eel, haddock

4 large prawns in the shells

Juice of half a lime

Half a teaspoon turmeric

Quarter of a teaspoon sumac

Quarter of a teaspoon chilli powder or half a teaspoon fresh finely chopped chilli

Quarter of a teaspoon fresh thyme finely chopped or half that amount of dried thyme

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil for frying

Half a sweet red pepper cut into chunks

Green beans, washed and cut into slices

20 gms sweetcorn, either frozen or tinned is fine

Small jar passata – the recipe can be found in the preserves section

3 or 4 yuca dumplings

Cut the fish into biggish chunks. Put into a bowl with the prawns. You can remove the shells from the prawns at this stage if you prefer, but they do add extra flavour to the dish.

Pour over the lime juice and add all the spices; turmeric, sumac, chilli, thyme, and season with salt and pepper.

Mix well to coat the fish pieces and prawns with the marinade. Leave for an hour for the spices to permeate the fish.

When this time has passed, heat some oil in a shallow saucepan and add the peppers. Fry for 5 minutes or so.

Add the beans and fry for another 2-3 minutes.

Add the passata and stir in. Turn the heat down and let the vegetables cook for 5 minutes.

Add the fish and any juices with it. Gently stir in. Leave to cook for 5-7 minutes until just on the verge of being done.

Add the sweetcorn and the dumplings. Cook for a few minutes to heat them through turning the dumplings in the sauce to coat them.

Serve.

Yuca Dumplings

19 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by fincafood in Techniques, Vegetable Dishes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cassava, Fish Stew, Manioc, Yuca

Following on the theme of Ultramarinos – things from far away across the sea – I thought you would like the recipe for these little dumplings made from Yuca root. IMG_0027

Manihot Esculenta – Yuca, Cassava, Manioc, Mogo started to appear on the markets here about ten years ago with the arrival of Equadorians and Bolivians who came to work in Spain. It has been cultivated in Peru for more than 4,000 years and is more of a staple in South America than potatoes. Nowadays it is also grown extensively in Africa and Asia. It can be simply boiled and mashed, cut into fat fingers and fried like chips, or dried and ground into flours of various levels of fineness for making from cous cous style grains to sweet cakes.IMG_0017

The tapioca of school dinner infamy is made from Yuca – but don’t let that put you off from trying it in a different form. The chips I have to say I found dry and a bit hard, but do try them. The dumplings I love.  They have a firm slightly glutinous texture and a bit of sweetness. I love them with spicy curries instead of rice, with sweet and sour sauce as a vegetarian dish, and in soups, again because of the slight sweetness they fit better with a spicy soup.IMG_0019

I have totally forgotten where I came across this recipe, I am constantly collecting recipes and food ideas from magazines and newspapers, so it may well have come into my life that way, the original bit of paper now long lost but the method firmly locked into my memory.

Top and tail the yuca root and then peel it with a potato peeler. Wash it and then grate finely. This is easier done with a food processor.

There may be a thick fibrous thread in the centre of the root, discard this.IMG_0020

Take a handful of the grated root and squeeze it into a small cylinder. This may seem difficult at first, but with pressure and turning it in your hand the pulp will start to stick together.

Put the dumpling on a small square of tin foil and wrap it into a parcel. If you wanted to be truly authentic, then I suppose a banana leaf would be a better wrapper.

Do this with all the pulp.IMG_0025

Steam for 45 minutes. Let cool in the steamer.

Once they are cool enough to handle they can be unwrapped and used.

Any surplus dumplings will freeze well. I recommend taking them out of the tin foil to freeze them as the foil disintegrates in the freezer and leaves bits on the dumplings which is not very nice. You can tell that I am speaking from hard experience here.

Next post the Spicy Fish Stew with Yuca Dumplings illustrated below to whet your appetite.

IMG_0030

Fishcakes with Passion Fruit Sauce

16 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by fincafood in Fish, Sauces

≈ 2 Comments

A passion fruit is a capsule of readymade sauce– aromatic, sweet and sour with its own distinctive colour and texture in a neat one-person portion sized container.  In Madeira it makes a sauce for fried fillets of fish, but I had in my minds eye/stomach that it would be better if the fish had more texture and flavour to balance the intense fruitiness of the passion fruit. Crispy gougons? Or little Thai style fish cakes? With a hint of ginger, chilli, lemongrass and garlic, but not too much, I don’t want these seasonings to compete with the flavour of the passion fruit. And some finely sliced beans for colour and texture.IMG_0009

Per person

1 passion fruit

120 gms white fish – I used a type of shark which has a nice texture –  swordfish, conger eel, monkfish would all work well

3 or 4 prawns

Pinch of grated ginger

Pinch of grated garlic

Pinch of finely chopped red chilli

Pinch finely chopped lemon grass

Pinch salt

Mangetoute peas or green beans

1 level teaspoon cornflour plus extra for dusting the fishcakes

1 tablespoon beaten egg – it doesn’t have to be a quail egg, the one in the photo just happened to be lurking in the fridge and was the right size for one person. Here in Spain quails and their eggs are not the expensive delicacy that they are in other countries.

Olive oil for frying

Dice the fish and put it into a food processor. Peel the prawns and add to the fish.

Add the grated ginger and garlic, the chopped chilli and lemongrass, and the salt.

Process to a lumpy mix. You don’t want to over process and have a mush, plus you still have a bit of processing to do.

Add the egg. Pulse to mix in.

Add the cornflour. Pulse to mix in.

Add the beans or mangetoute and stir in with a spoon.

Sprinkle some cornflour onto a plate and take a spoonful of the fish mix and form into a small fishcake coating it with the cornflour as you go along.

Do this with the rest of the fish mix. You will have 3-5 fishcakes depending on how small you like them.

Warm some olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and when hot add the fishcakes. They will only need about three to four minutes each side by which time they should be a light golden brown.IMG_0014

Serve with the passion fruit pulp as a sauce. You can leave this cold or cut the passion fruit in half and give the halves a quick warm in the microwave before scooping out the pulp onto your fishcakes.

Fruit, Fish & Flowers

15 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by fincafood in Shopping

≈ Leave a comment

Lush greenery of banana groves, orange nasturtium flowers tumbling wildly down the banks of terraced plantations, mountain peaks cushioned from the sky by clouds coloured like dissolved rainbows, layer of colour upon layer of colour making it hard for your brain to work out the perspective.  Lower down the slopes the greenery is broken by bright white houses with terracotta tiled roofs and dark green shutters framing the windows. The road on which I am travelling makes another step in the terracing which continues downwards to my left and the sea.  IMG_3624

I am in Madeira. The island of 700 varieties of tropical fruits.

Maracuya – Passion fruit – I lost count of the number of varieties that we were offered samples of. There were ones with a hint of Pineapple, or lemon, or orange, or lime. Then there are Mango, Papaya, Avocado Pears, Kiwi Fruit, bitter Cherries, Custard Apple with creamy smooth flesh and shiny black seeds, the bright orange Caci or Persimmon which we know well in Spain but are just starting to be popular in northern Europe.IMG_3674

There are the fruit of the Monstera Deliciosa – Swiss Cheese plant, called in Madeira Filodendro. You buy them green and wait for them to finish ripening when the outer skin breaks open and reveals succulent little nuggets of fruit below which you pick off. The taste is slightly of pineapple. I did buy one to bring home, and was hoping that it would not erupt before I got here where I could photograph it for you in its stages of opening, but alas it had other ideas and made a sticky mess en route.IMG_3614

There are all the citrus fruits, from Clementines to Oranges, Lemons, Limes and Grapefruit.

Pineapples, Melons, Plums, Dates, Tree Tomatoes and the more usual Apples and Pears.

And above all Bananas. Mostly the dwarf Bananas with their small soft and sweet fruit, but also Silver Bananas and Apple Bananas. Where here in southern Spain, most small plots in the countryside have a plantation of citrus, in Madeira it is bananas. They are served fried with fillets of fish, which is not one of my favourite combinations. Much more successful are slices of fresh banana with goats cheese, try it you will be surprised at how well they complement one another.IMG_3669

The island has been a favourite settling down spot for the seafaring English, who have contributed their cake baking tastes. The famous Madiera cake, custard tarts – Tartas  de Nata and Tortas De Arroz – light sponge cakes made even lighter by the addition of rice flour being the most popular.IMG_3678

Not surprisingly fish feature heavily in Madeiran cuisine. Espetada is a fish only found in these waters and those around Japan. It is a black skinned fish and not pretty, but very tasty especially served with a passion fruit sauce. The Tuna are big and meaty. Limpets prised from the rocky shoreline are a local delicacy. There are prawns and lobster, sardines and jacks, as well as the big game fish of Merlin and Swordfish. Being part of Portugal there is also dried Cod, Bacalao, but I am not sure if this is locally caught or shipped in.IMG_3679

Where did we eat that we would recommend? IMG_3676

The café on the roof of Los Lavradores Market in Funchal where we ate this fabulous salad with its topping of mango, papaya, dates, fresh goats cheese, walnuts and with passion fruit to pour over as a dressing. Their house toasted sandwich was a great combination of melted cheese, sweet onions, roasted red pepper paste and fresh oregano. Or you can just enjoy a quiet drink in the sunshine surrounded by potted plants away from the bustle of the market below.

Tasca Literaria Dona Joana Rabo-De-Peixe in the old town of Funchal. The ambiance is comfy old library with sofas for lounging and tables to eat. The chef here knows how to season food perfectly. Freshly made salt cod fritters served with a black-eyed bean salad which was dressed with finely chopped sweet onion, fresh parsley, lemon juice and olive oil. Papas con Mojo Picon, wrinkly potatoes still in their skins and firey red pepper sauce. Guacamole made in the usual way with a touch of garlic, lime and chilli, but with the unusual addition of fresh ginger. It worked really well and my guacamole will be spiced with ginger from now on.

Olives. Tucked into one of the pedestrian streets near the cathedral of Funchal this intimate restaurant has impeccable charming service and interesting food beautifully executed. The spinach and potato veloute was wonderfully light and creamy. Sardines with spicy tomato salad. Duck with mango sauce and sweet potatoes.

Pomodoro Rosso. Super stylish modern Milano décor. Good risottos as an Italian restaurant should have. The veal saltimbocca was excellent as was the fillet steak. Let down by frozen vegetables with the main course and charging for the amuse bouche.

Recent Posts

  • Sauerkraut Soup with Mushroom & Hazelnut Mash
  • Mixed Greens & Tofu with Chilli Bean Sauce
  • Mixed Vegetable & Soya Bean Stew
  • Mushroom Dumplings in Clear Soup
  • Burritos with Seitan

Archives

  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012

Categories

  • breakfast
  • Cultivation
  • Fish
  • Food for One
  • Foraging
  • Main Courses
  • Preserves
  • salads
  • Sauces
  • Shopping
  • Snacks and Tapas
  • Starters
  • Sweet Things
  • Techniques
  • Vegan
  • Vegetable Dishes

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy