Category Archives: Food for One

Skate Wings with Caper Sauce

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Fish, Food for One, Main Courses

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I have been on my travels in recent weeks and whenever I am away from my home in southern Spain there are two things that always miss – the quality of the fresh fruit – and fresh fish. So on my return from my latest trip I hot-footed it to my local market to see what fish looked good. It is the season now for Bonito which is a variety related to Tuna, and that looked really good and fresh, but what really caught the attention of my mental taste buds was the Skate.

You could have the skinned wings only, or at a more economical price the whole fish. In these straightened times I thought you would like to know how to deal with the whole fish, from which there were two portions of a wing each, the body made enough soup for eight,  and there were a couple of meals for the cats as well – all for less than 4€!

Skate has no scales, but the skin feels a little slimy and it has some sharp barbs around its head area, so rubber gloves are essential for handling it. Firstly wash it, and then put it on a board and cut off the wings. Remove the guts from the body and give to a grateful cat. Cut the body into three or four pieces for making into soup. The recipe will be in next post.skate_wingAs I mentioned above the fishmonger will skin the skate wings for you, but I prefer to cook them with the skin on as the skate cooks so quickly that it is too easy to overcook them if they are already skinned. Once cooked the skin peels off very easily.

To cook the wing put it in a pan with some sliced onion, a sliced clove of garlic and a pinch of salt. Put in enough water to just cover the fish. Put the pan over a medium heat and bring slowly to a simmer. If you want you can add sliced potatoes at this stage to cook with the fish. For a wing the size above – it is pictured on a standard sized dinner plate – simmer for seven minutes.

Prepare the sauce. In a small saucepan put about 20 gms butter, the juice of half a lemon and dessertspoon of chopped capers. Leave on one side until you are ready for it.

Remove the fish to a warmed plate. You can leave your potatoes cooking with the onions while you skin the fish. Put the sauce on a very gentle heat. Starting from the thicker side of the fish using a smooth bladed knife gently push the skin away from the flesh and then slide it off the plate. Turn the fish over and do the same the other side. The darker side of the wing always has tougher and thicker skin than the pale side.removing_the_skin_from_a_skate_wingKeep an eye on your sauce and stir it or swirl it around from time to time. You do not want the butter to melt entirely, just enough to mix with the lemon and capers, and then remove it from the heat.skate_with_caper_sauce

Transfer the fish to a clean warm plate. Drain the potatoes reserving the liquid to go towards the soup, and put the potatoes on the plate with the fish. Pour over the sauce. Season well with lots of freshly ground black pepper and serve.

I will continue with the fish soup recipe tomorrow.

Spanish Style Liver

05 Thursday Jul 2012

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I actually bought liver this week to recook the recipe in the previous post so that I could retake the picture of it without the camera shake, but on the day I didn’t fancy eating that, I fancied something more spicy. The liver was already cut into lovely thin escalopes perfect for cooking it the way that the locals here like it.

The liver is cooked simply with garlic and then the pan juices are seasoned with the Pimenton that is so popular here and with wine vinegar. The most prized Pimenton in Spain comes from La Vera in Estremadura where the peppers are dried over oak fires before being ground. This drying gives the Pimenton its distinctive smokey taste. It comes in Dulce – Sweet, Picante – Spicy and Agri-Dulce – Sweet and Sour. For this recipe I like to use a mixture of the Dulce and Picante.

So for one person peel and slice 3 large cloves of garlic and put the slices to fry gently in a shallow pan with some good olive oil.

Season the slices of liver with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and once the garlic starts to colour, add the slices to the pan. Cook gently for five minutes and then turn over and cook for five minutes on the other side.

Remove the liver to a warm plate and keep warm.

Add to the pan juices a good large pinch of sweet Smoked Pimenton and a pinch of the spicy. Stir this round for a minute and then add a couple of tablespoons of red wine or sherry vinegar. Swirl this around the pan over the heat to collect up all the juices and immediately pour it over the liver.

I served my liver with the baby courgettes that are so sweet straight from the garden and then grilled after being annointed with garlic and oil, and a little mashed potatoes.

Tagliatelle with Rabbit and Grilled Spring Vegetables

15 Tuesday May 2012

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There is something about grilling or griddling vegetables that really concentrates their flavour, and when you have the first baby vegetables ready in the spring it is the best way to maximise their special flavour. I frequently have just a plate of the mixed vegetables, but today I wanted to make a more substantial main course. For a vegetarian option substitute some mozerella, the proper made with buffalo milk, in my opinion mozerella cannot be made with anything else, for the rabbit.

Per person

20 gms 00 pasta flour

1 large egg yolk

pinch of salt

100 gms rabbit meat

olive oil

small sprig each of fresh oregano and thyme

6 cloves sweet garlic

100 ml chicken stock

Mixture of spring vegetables – a selection of the following –

baby courgettes and their flowers if you have them, green asparagus, sweet onion, baby aubergine, Florence fennel.

For the pasta – put the flour, egg yolk and salt in a small food processor and blend to a dough. Remove from the blender and with floured hands form into a ball. Wrap in cling film and put into the fridge to rest until needed later.

Peel the cloves of garlic. If some are much bigger than others, halve them so that they all cook evenly.

Cut the rabbit into small pieces.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a small frying pan, add the garlic and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the rabbit and continue frying for another 8-10 minutes  stirring from time to time.

Add the chicken stock and the herbs. Stir again to mix in all the brownings from the bottom of the pan. Simmer for 10 minutes. Season the rabbit. If the rabbit is done before the rest of the dish, then turn it off and let it continue slowly cooking in its stock until needed.

Put a pan of water on to heat up for the pasta. Add salt and a dash of olive oil to it.

Prepare the vegetables. Cut the courgettes in half lengthways, slice the onion into thick slices, slice the aubergine. The vegetables are left quite large at this point so that they are quicker to turn over during cooking. Put all the vegetables including the asparagus into a container and smear with olive oil.

Put the vegetables under the grill on a medium heat or on a griddle over a lowish heat. Cook turning every few minutes until the vegetables are browned and cooked but still have some bite. Season with salt.

While the vegetables are cooking, roll the pasta with a pasta machine in the usual way until it is pale and pliable. Then start rolling the pasta thinner until you reach no7 on most machines. Then cut into tagliatelle.

Once the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook for 3-4 minutes until cooked al dente. Drain.

Reheat the rabbit if needed and add the pasta. Remove the vegetables from the grill or griddle and cut into bite sized pieces. Add to the pasta and rabbit and mix well.

If you are making the vegetarian version of this dish, once you have grilled the vegetables and cut them up, then cooked the pasta and drained it, mix the two. Then add mozerella ripped into small pieces, mix in and serve.

Fish Chowder

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Starters

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The garden is so bursting with gorgeous vegetables that it is hard to decide what to cook with first. The potatoes that were planted in January are now all ready, and as there is little that is better than a freshly dug new organic potato, I think that they will have to be included in lunch. Yesterday we had them simply boiled with two dipping sauces. One a garlic mayonaise made with almonds in the place of the egg and the other spicy, a Mojo Picon from the Canary Islands made with picante smoked paprika, vinegar, garlic and olive oil.

But back to today. I love fish and being by the sea there is always a good selection of fresh fish. It is impossible to decide before arriving at the market exactly what will be the best fish on the day. Today I have chosen Marrajo. It is a meaty white fish, most likely from the same family as Swordfish and Shark. The skin is certainly siimilar to both of the above. There are several varieties of the above caught in the Mediterranean Sea, each of which have local names which can vary in places not really very far from one another. A fish can have one name here in the local fishing port of Garrucha, and another in Almeria City which is less than 100 km away.Image

So potatoes, fish, there is some home cured streaky bacon in the larder, fresh onions and some green asparagus. A creamy Fish Chowder will make a light lunch and is easy to cook for one.

FISH CHOWDER

Chowders hail from the Atlantic coast of the United States and are famously made in Maine with clams. There I am sure as many variations as there are cooks, but the elements that have to be included for it to class as a chowder are as follows. Bacon, potatoes, onions, milk or cream, fish or shellfish of some sort. You then add other vegetables depending on what you have and what is in season. Sweet corn being very american, fits extremely well. Peas, asparagus as I have included today, pumpkin or squash cut in small cubes, celeriac cut the same.

I like to use chicken stock as the main cooking liquid and then finish with a bit of cream to enrich the soup, but you can use just milk in place of the stock.Image

Per person

Olive oil

A quarter of an Onion – cut into dice

75 gms Streaky bacon cut into lardons

100-150 gms meaty white fish – I used a type of shark called Marrajo

100 gms potatoes – peeled and cut into dice about 1.5 cm square

150 ml approx chicken stock

6 stems of asparagus

2-3 tablespoons thick fresh cream

salt and pepper

Fresh flat leaved parsley

Blanch the potatoes. Put the cubes in a saucepan with salted water and bring to the boil. Simmer 1 minute and immediately drain.

Warm the olive oil in a shallow saucepan, add the onions and let cook slowly for a couple of minutes until translucent.

Add the bacon and fry for 7-10 minutes stirring from time to time.

Add the stock and the potatoes. Bring to a simmer and cook slowly for another 7-10 minutes until the potatoes are almost done.

Add the fish cut into cubes and the asparagus cut into bite sized pieces.

Cook slowly a few more minutes until the fish is just cooked.

Add salt and pepper and then the cream. As soon as the cream is amalgamated and warm, sprinkle over the freshly chopped parsley and serve.

Keeping it simple

11 Wednesday Apr 2012

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I am busy in the office doing the accounts today, which I have to admit is not my favourite job. I need a simple but exciting lunch to look forward to. Luckily for me I have some wonderful ingredients at my disposal.

As well as the Samphire and Ice Plant featured in the previous post, I have in the herb garden some lovely salads. Peppery Rocket. Puntarelle, which is a version of endive of which you eat the slightly bitter asparagus like shoots. Buda Chicory which has crisp curly leaves that are paler and crisper in the centre. Fragrant Coriander.

A salad of these leaves only needs the addition of some fresh and fruity olive oil, a good quality red wine vinegar and some shavings of mature firm sheeps cheese.

For the protein, a tender veal steak. To cook this to perfection you need a good pan with a thick base so that you can get it hot and when you put in the steak there is enough heat stored in the metal of the pan to sear well the steak.

The steak is to be seasoned simply with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, fresh rosemary and lemon.

Pick the rosemary from the tender ends of the branches. Wash it and cut it up fairly finely. Pick a lemon, wash it and cut it in half ready to use.

Heat the pan. When it is hot pour in a little olive oil. Sprinkle coarse sea salt, pepper and rosemary on one side of the steak. Put the steak in them pan with the seasoned side down. Let cook about four or five minutes. While it is cooking season the other side. Turn over and cook on the other side, again for four or five minutes.

Remember that veal steaks need a bit more cooking than a mature steak. I like my beefsteak cooked very rare, but veal is more succulent cooked to medium rare.

Deglaze the pan with a splash of lemon, then get your steak on the plate while it is hot.

Spring Greens with a Difference

09 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Snacks and Tapas, Starters

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After the rain that we have had and now that the temperatures are warming up, it is not only the greens in the veg patch that are sprouting. The hillsides are not only covered in beautiful spring flowers, little pink wild orchids, tiny bee orchids and miniature wild irises only a few centimeters tall, but there is also wild garlic with delicate pink flowers and wild asparagus which is worth the fight with the thorns from last years plant that protects it.

Along the seashore there are delicacies to harvest as well. Crispy bright green Samphire and the succulent leaves of the Ice Plant which are only tender enough  for a short time in the spring to be harvested. Even at this time of the year the Samphire that is in full sun all day has a tendency to be tough, so it is worth searching out bright green sprouts in shady spots. You need to take a pair of scissors and just trim off the tender ends into your bag. You can see from the photo just how you have to seek out this years tender shoots from last years dried out remains.Samphire

The Ice Plant – Mesembryanthemum Cristallinum – is so call because of the crystal-like cells that it has on its surface, particularly the underside of the leaves. To harvest the most tender of the Ice Plant leaves the same applies as the Samphire, look for brighter green leaves in the shade.

For both plants the uses are the same. You can give them a good wash and put them in your salads, steam them and add butter and a touch of lemon and have them to accompany fish, add them to stir frys and Thai curries. The Andalucian way is to make a Revuelto. This would include the wild garlic greens and asparagus, and if you are a bit flush some prawns. Fry the prawns and all your greens in some good olive oil until the prawns are half cooked and the greens a brighter colour. Add some beaten and seasoned eggs and over a very low heat stir until the eggs thicken into a creamy mass. Turn out onto warmed plates and eat immediately with crunchy fresh bread.