Archive for June, 2009
(NOTE: It looks like our server move has been successful (Thanks Darly!) and everything should be in its place, if it´s not please let us know.))
On common mistake that home-cooks and professional cooks make, is over cooking delicate ingredients such as fresh mussels and king prawns.
A bowl of steamed fresh mussels is a wonderful experience. Overcook the mollusks and you are left with a shriveled chewy piece of seafood. And that is dreadful, send them back to the kitchen!!…. 
The best way to cook mussels is to steam them over a high flame, ever so briefly, just until they have opened, but not fully. The end result is a gelatinous morsel, exquisite, elegant and cheap. 
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We cook ours in a covered hot wok with shallots, lemongrass and white wine. Once they have opened we turn off the flame.
A gentle toss is all that is needed to finish the cooking.
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The site will be offline a short period as our webmaster does a bit of spring (or summer) cleaning and moves us to a new server.
Another excuse to take a break…
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We´ll be back soon…
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Walking around town you cannot help but notice the hand drawn signs chalked on blackboards proclaiming “Hay Caracoles!”, (We Have Snails, or Snails Available) there is usually a cute drawing of a snail accompanying the wording.
As you may have guessed, Caracoles are small Spanish snails that are in season now, and every Tapas Bar has their own recipe.
Drive through the countryside and you can see people collecting the snails from plants and tree trunks. If you don’t fancy stopping to pick your own snails, you can easily buy them from vendors at round-abouts offering them by the 5kg bag.
Housewives prepare these snails by the pot load and they are shared and distributed to family, friends and neighbours. The snails are first purged for a few days before being cooked in a broth with herbs and spices.
To eat them, all you have to do grip the head of the snail (with your teeth) and pull it out of its shell (its okay to slurp if you must ). The highly flavoured broth can be enjoyed at the same time or served apart.
Such was the abundance of Caracoles we decided to have some fun and serve them in our own way. 
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“Escape to Freedom”.
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Our presentation of Caracoles kindly prepared for us by Ani, one of our cleaning ladies (whose recipe will follow her to the grave….. 
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One of my favourite food memories involves Chinese restaurants. When I was younger, a trip to London Chinatown was an event. The sight of roasted ducks, chickens and pork hanging in the restaurant windows and the aroma of spices and wok cooking were very inviting.
A weekend visit to a Dim Sum restaurant was a reward for a hard week´s work, or a impromptu family get together.
During the week, if I was in the area, I would treat myself to a take-away Roast Duck and Rice and always ask for a small pot of Chilli Oil (or Chilli in Oil).
Good Chilli Oil is wonderful, the slight sweetness that accompanies the roasted hotness is something remarkable. A good Chilli Oil has “body”.
Sadly, most restaurants no longer serve the Chilli Oil that I grew to love. They have replaced it instead with Chilli Infused Oils.
These oils are just hot, without a hint of roasted flavour or a balance of sweetness. Sometimes they just provide you with a small bowl of reddish oil that has been seeped in chilli and pass that off as Chilli Oil.
Over that past few months I have been trying to create a new Chilli Oil. I wanted something that would give me the roasted hotness, sweetness and saltiness that I tasted in my younger days, yet be a bit more daring and refined.
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Because I had no base recipe of ingredients to work from, I had to start from scratch. I knew that it would obviously contain Chillies and Oil.
The first step was to make an acceptable Chilli Infused Oil, later I would look at the other ingredients that would give my Chilli Oil its character.
I knew that the chillies had to be dried ones, these would give the oil its wonderful colour and aroma.
Various test ensued with different dried chillies. “Bird Eyes” chillies were far too hot to do anything with, they would only overpower the finished product. Dried Thai Chillies were also too hot and none of the mentioned chillies had any roasted aroma.
On one test to get the “roasted aroma”, I dry pan roasted a selection of chillies, then infused them with hot oil.
The result was a bitter tasting oil. Not only had I dry roasted the chillies, I had also further cooked them by adding the hot oil, making them bitter.
I would need to watch the temperature of the oil that I was adding, too hot and it would “deep fry” the chillies further, making them black and brittle.
Further tests continued with different chillies and oils at different temperatures.
Finally after many trials I found a dried chilli that wasn’t too hot, yet had a roasted flavour that was obtained by the heat from the hot oil. Dried Cayenne Chilli, or Cayenne Pepper.
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There was no need to dry fry them at all! In fact, these chillies are actually semi dried, meaning that they still have a tiny amount of moisture inside, the membranes remain slightly chewy. I had found my chillies at last!. All I had to do was blitz them and add oil.
There was really no question regarding the oil. Olive Oil proved too overpowering, so I chose Sunflower Oil for its neutral flavour.
To infuse anything, the liquid ingredient, in our case the oil, has to be hot. (Just like making tea, which is basically an infusion of hot water and tea leaves).
As with making tea, the temperature of the water is very important. The ideal temperature should be between 75º and 83ºC depending on the tea leaves used, and not boiling water.
In order to get the oil to infuse with the dried chillies and also “cook them” and give them that “roastiness”, trials proved that 130ºC was an ideal temperature, any higher and the chilli flakes would become bitter, any much lower and they would become “soggy” and retain too much moisture and hence remain chewy.
Finally I had the infused oil worked out, the hardest part was yet to come.
Body and Sweetness. The later I knew would be provided by sugar, but what amount? I didn’t want the sweetness to play the lead role, it had to be a co-star in my Chilli Oil play.
For the “body” I needed something that had its own unique flavour and charm. I tried a host of dried Chinese shrimps, Japanese scallops, and French mushrooms. They were good, all high in concentrated flavour, but the best was something that I would find surprising and closer to home.. Ham.
Not any Ham, but the best ham in the world. Jámon Ibérico de Bellota. Spanish dry cured and aged acorn fed ham.
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