Brussels Sprouts

Family FreshAirInspector have been on holiday, mostly next to the sea when not actually frolicking artlessly in it. I've eaten my own bodyweight in squid. Cats trail in my fishy wake, yowling disconsolately. There have been some memorable lunchtime meals (a plate of mixed mussels with limpid, peppery olive oil and homemade bread was the stuff of legend) and some mundane ones (many Balkan restaurants offer pizza, few offer any that are worth eating). Most evenings we sat on our various hotel balconies and ate bread, prsut, cheese and little tomatoes whilst guzzling tasty plonk out of plastic mugs. Sometimes the opportunity to cook presented itself. I quite like the challenge of cooking outside your own kitchen, although I really should take my own paring knife on holiday with me. Why do people invest in fancy knives and never sharpen them? What is this fascination with serrated knives?

Poor old sprouts. They get a bum rap. If they're overcooked they have that gassy cabbage smell of used poultice. They require quick cooking to retain a slight crunch and a subtle nuttiness. They can be eaten raw too: Ottolenghi does a great salad of Brussels sprouts. I like them pan fried or roasted, drizzled with a little olive oil and salt, or with nutmeg and crème fraiche.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts en grill double contact

This is a simple, healthy way to prepare sprouts that shows off their nutty, sweet crunch best. Eat as a side dish with any roast or grilled meats. I didn't have access to a non-stick frying pan in this self-catering apartment, so used the pictured “dual contact grill” or panini maker instead. The outcome was super.

Allow a handful of sprouts per person. Trim the base and discard any wilted or discoloured outer leaves. Cut sprouts in half lengthways. Toss in a bowl with 1 tsp light olive oil, and season lightly with salt and pepper. Bring a large non-stick frying pan to medium heat, and place a single layer of sprouts cut side down on the base. Place a lid over the pan (I use a flat baking tray instead of a lid) and allow to cook for five minutes. Test the sprouts by pricking with a sharp knife. They should give a little but still retain their bite. The lid helps the sprouts to steam cook, whilst the cut edge roasts. Now remove the lid, turn the heat to high, shake the sprouts around the pan to brown the edges a little, and serve.

If you are the lucky owner of a panini maker, oil and season the sprouts and cook both sides simultaneously for superlative results.

Winter salad

This is comp week for the big investment banks, where the rich get filthy and the merely comfortable get an extra pillow to prop against their back. Or as my cousin, who works for a non-revenue-generating division of the Great Satan, puts it:" tomorrow is the day when my lamentably un-obscene, non-Daily-Mail enraging bonus is announced ."

This time of the year, stories designed to get the common man het up circulate in the papers, such as that of the BarCap traders who lunched to the tune of 44,000 ocean going squid back in 2002, guzzling Ch. Petrus and foie gras with grim abandon.

In the minted world of the beautifully becoiffed, excess usually entails covering expensive stuff in gold leaf, or stuffing your second most expensive ingredient into your most expensive one. Elsewhere, back in the real world, a celebratory banquet is marked by multiple dishes, or the use of many ingredients: a wedding biryani, a royal tajine, or a roast baron of beef with all the trimmings.

This salad is a celebration of contrasts: chewy, pillowy, crunchy, and flavours: tart, sweet, earthy.

Mebos again. I love this ingredient. They have a wonderful sweet/sour flavour due to the pickling process they undergo. When cooked, they melt and soften into the dish and impart an agreeable tanginess.

Warm chickpea, butternut, mushroom and mebos salad

Enough for 4 people. We ate this with some roast chicken thighs that had been marinated in garlic, lemon, olive oil, a splash of white wine, red onion, sumac and ground allspice. Dried apricots can be substituted for mebos: allow 1 handful in this recipe.

In the morning, soak a heaped cup of chickpeas in enough water to cover generously. Allow 1 ½ hours to cook: place in a small lidded saucepan covered with 2cm fresh, unsalted water. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes, and then turn the heat down to a simmer, covered. Check every now and then to ensure they don't cook dry. Taste for doneness after 90 minutes – they may need longer. Once they have finished cooking, drain the water and toss with 1 tsp olive oil and a small splash of white wine if you have anything open. Add a grind of salt and leave lidded until needed.

Whilst you're waiting for your chicks to hatch, peel and de-seed a medium sized butternut and chop into 2cm cubes. Toss with olive oil,1 tsp thyme and seasoning and cook in an oven preheated to 180°C until the cubes have coloured and softened, around 25 minutes.

Whilst you're waiting for your butt, sweat 1 leek, sliced into ½cm rounds,in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat in a little olive oil until they are softened. Don't allow them to colour, please. Remove the leeks and set aside. Now (without adding any more oil), turn the heat to medium low and add 250g sliced brown mushrooms. Cook slowly, turning every now and then, until the mushrooms darken and give up their juice. Turn the heat up a touch, add the leeks, a good sprinkle of chilli flakes, 2 finely chopped mebos, a handful of toasted hazelnuts (dry fry until they start to colour and smell nutty, then allow to cool a little and rub together in your big hairy paws to remove some of the skins, before chopping them in half) a little chicken stock or wine to loosten, and seasoning. Add the chickpeas and butternut and a handful of something green: rocket, baby spinach, sorrel or watercress. Allow to wilt slightly, and remove from the pan into a serving dish.

Lastly, make a little vinaigrette: 1 tsp dijon mustard, 1 tsp honey, 1 tbl olive oil, and a little water (I had orange blossom water to hand). Stir well to emulsify and then stir into the salad. Taste for seasoning, and be generous with the black pepper.

Did I say lastly? What an incorrigible tease. Fry a small handful of fresh sage leaves in a little vegetable oil until crisp. Scatter over the salad just before serving.

Grains Nobles

Couscous is nice. “Keep moving, Sir. Nothing to see here.” One of my favourite comfort dishes, created of necessity, is haggis (Macsween, natch) on a bed of couscous with a dollop of crème fraiche, a splurt of harissa, and a sprinkling of chopped coriander. Sacrilicious!

But couscous is old (red fuzzy-felt) hat. Quinoa, millet and amaranth are where it's at, Daddy-O. I know, I know, they sound like hair products. But they are cheap, nutritious, and delicious.

The following salad can be made with quinoa or millet. It is important to toast the grains in a dry frying pan to intensify the nutty flavours. You can substitute other veg and flavourings to suit your mood.

Millet salad

Measure out 250g millet (enough for 4 as a side dish), rinse and drain well. Dry fry in a non-stick pan for 6-8 minutes, stirring continuously, until the millet is completely dry and starts releasing a nutty odour.

Meanwhile, finely chop 2 ribs of celery, 1 chopped fresh chilli and 1 small onion. Fry at medium heat in a dash of vegetable oil for 5 minutes. Now add 1 heaped tsp garam masala and a chopped red pepper and fry for half a minute. Add the millet, 3 cups of water, a small handful of sultanas and ½ tsp salt, and bring to the boil. Cook, covered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. The millet should swell and absorb all the water.

Add 1 finely chopped spring onion, a generous handful of halved cherry tomatoes and some fresh herbage (parsley, coriander, dill or mint). Check for seasoning. Transfer to a serving bowl and splash over a little olive oil.

I ate this with some smoked peppered mackerel, and a little sauce of horseradish purée mixed with sour cream.

Uborka Saláta

This Hungarian cucumber salad is a good accompaniment for a braai or a potjie. This makes enough for 4 people:

Uborka Saláta

Peel and thinly slice a cucumber, ditto a clove of garlic. Spread the slices in a bowl and sprinkle with 1 heaped tsp salt. Leave for 1 hour, turning occasionally, and then tip the water that has leached out away.

Make a vinaigrette: ¼ cup water, 1 tbsp white vinegar, 1 heaped tsp sugar and a good grind of white pepper. Stir thoroughly, and taste – there should be a good balance between sweet and tart. You may need to add more sugar. Pour this over the cucumber, and allow to stand for 30 minutes.

To serve, spoon the cucumber onto a plate, leaving most of the liquid behind. Spoon over ½ cup stirred sour cream which has been thinned with a little yoghurt or milk.

Sprinkle with paprika or dill. Artless presentation photo optional.

Egészségedre!

Kısır

Luanda is the most expensive city in the world for ex-pats to live in 2010. Tokyo is just nudged into second place. The annual Mercer study takes New York as the base measure for prices, comparing over 200 items, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment, in 143 cities across the globe. It is around $11 for a cup of coffee in Moscow. Glowering barrista at no extra charge.

In Budapest, Culinaris deli is probably the only place to snaffle a pomegranate out of season. I saw some for around $9 each in June. No dice. Roll on October, and you can pick them up in the big markets for less than $1. “Seasonal” has become an oft trotted out phrase of trend watchers, but it assuredly makes economic and environmental sense. Plus, stuff tastes best in season. I'm just prostrate, hands clasped in fervid supplication, glad tears garnishing the gouty feet of Aristaios (the rustic god of shepherds and cheese-making), that cheese is a year round phenomenon.

Kısır with pomegranate and celeriac tops

This fresh, substantial Turkish salad can be eaten warm or at room temperature. I ate it with the chicken recipe in the next post.

Sweat an onion in a little olive oil. Once it begins to colour, add a handful of quartered cherry tomatoes, 1 tsp tomato purée or harissa and a small bunch of celeriac tops (beet or celery tops, or parsley can be substituted) and cook for 2 minutes. Now add 250g bulgur wheat and 100ml water. Bring to the boil, remove immediately from the heat, and add the following: 1 tbs pomegranate molasses (turksvye stroop works just as well if you're reading this on the stoep in Putsonderwater, peach mampoer in an enamel mug within easy reach of your beefy paw), a glug of verjuice, 1 chopped fresh chilli, 2 chopped spring onions, 1 tsp ground cumin, and seasoning to taste. Put a lid on the pan and stand for 20 minutes for the bulgur to soften and soak up the water. Stir in 1 tsp of dried mint or dill, and scatter over the seeds of 1 pomegranate and a drizzle of olive oil.

Socca

This is a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe, from his fantastic new book Plenty. The recipe can also be found here. I commend it to you. It makes a very tasty light supper. I'm posting a photo of my effort, because I was very proud of pancake # 4, which had a shape that almost certainly occurs in another dimension's version of nature, and hardly any burnt bits.

Goats cheese and tomato tart

I'll try most anything from scratch in the kitchen. I've made my own cheese (a necessary by-product of Mrs. Inspector's overenthusiastic milkman standing order – why she thought the 2 of us would require seven pints of full fat milk a week, I'll never know), I've made Scotch eggs (huge, irregularly shaped things they were, like a prize bullock's knackers), I've even made chocolate flavoured marshmallows, albeit the thinnest, least pillowy marshmallows ever to see the light of day - they could have passed for after dinner mints, served along with the Nescafé Alta Rica the rector's wife only gets out for special occasions.

I draw the line at puff pastry, though. In order to get satisfactory puff, one folds the pastry in three, 4 to 6 times (or turns, in cheffy parlance), taking care not to allow the interstitial layer of butter to become too soft by refrigerating the dough after every turn, thus keeping the pastry foliated. The butter keeps the layers separate, and the folding action traps in air, which expands in baking and further helps to keep the layers separate. This takes an age and is fiddly, to boot. Hervé This has a good recipe for puff pastry, should you want to make the effort.

Goats Cheese and Tomato Tart

This is a good dish for a party, where it can be served warm or at room temperature, in slices of varying sizes.

Pre-heat the oven to 190°C. Roll open a packet of puff pastry onto a large, non-stick baking tray. With a sharp knife, score a line all the way round the pastry rectangle, about 1cm in, taking care not to cut all the way through to the baking sheet. This gives a nice edge to the finished tart.

Crush 2 cloves of garlic in a pinch of salt. Now add around 150g soft goat's cheese (I used a rinded French cheese similar in texture to brie, although a chevre-style log would work admirably too), 2 heaped tablespoons of crème fraiche, one finely chopped spring onion and 1 tsp of chopped fresh thyme. Mix until well combined and gloopy.

Spread this mixture evenly and thinly onto the pastry base, taking care to go work all the way up to the scored line.

Now take some good quality, ripe tomatoes, and slice them as thinly as you can with a sharp knife. Lay the slices on the tart, taking care to cover the whole surface and overlapping like roof tiles. Drizzle on a good glug of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Lay some thyme sprigs on for decoration. Cook until the pastry is nicely browned and the tomatoes are roasted, around 40 – 45 minutes.

Allow to cool slightly before cutting and serving. We had this with a glass of Dúzsi Tamás' wonderfully fruity Kékfrankos rosé. I must start drinking things with less special characters. It took me an age to type that.