Had my only blog follower “begging” me to add more recipes to the site. Here’s a quick and easy one, for when you are uninspired and hungry.
You’ll need good quality spaghetti, a can of tuna in oil (not the mini ones, but the normal sized cans), olive oil, a lemon, as much garlic as you can deal with (usually 2-3 thingies) and, optional, parley, capers and black olives.
Put the water onto the fire, allow to boil and “throw” the pasta. While it’s cooking, cut your garlic extra small and put it in a bowl. Add the tuna and the juice of the lemon (you can start with half of it and adjust as you like). You can add some capers or black olives if you want. When the pasta is “al dente”, ie: one minute before the time written on the packaging, drain it and toss it into the bowl. Mix well, add olive oil ad libidum and the chopped parsley.
Serve and eat hot, warm, cold, however you like 
I love this dish. Cheap and easy and very tasty. And reminds me of the good’ole times when living in Rome alone with my brother.
Enjoy!
Hi again,
a coupe of weeks ago, I was in Lodon for work and had the chance of meeting with my “partner in gastronomical crime”, Alan. Since we both love a good curry, we went to Southall to the restaurant Brilliant!, which was recently featured in Gordon Ramsay’s new show Ramsay’s Best Restaurant.
Amazingly, we managed to get a reservation on a Saturday night, even though it was quite a late table (21:15). We arrived there and the place was packed. All tables filled to the limit. Good sign. Very good sign. We had a very nice waitress and we asked her for advice, as we could not eat everything on the menu. So here’s her plan
Starters:
- half a butter chicken
- half a spicy chicken
Main course:
- Tilapia in a kenyan masala sauce
- lamb chops in a smooth and creamy sauce
- some dahl, rice and a naan bread.
In between starters and main course, we had a couple of mango and banana lassies, but we washed down the whole lot with 2 bootles of cold Chablis. Nishe.
Well, that was a complete feast. Each dish was better than the previous one. Most particularly, both chicken starters were foodgasmic. Butter chicken melts in your mouth. Spicy chicken is just, how can I say, fuckingly awesomly, orgasmically good. Spicy it is, hot, sweat a lot, but the blend of aromas and spices they use makes you just forget about that. You just can’t stop it. You find yourself licking the bones, crying in pain and joy and gaging for more. Fantastic (as were the fresh, cold lassies after that).
As for the main courses, also a great experience. I am not a fan of tilapia, but the way they prepared it made it a very tasty dish. The lamb chops were just too small for my taste. Can really remember all the details as we were, at that point, pretty “happy” (had a few drinks beforehand, as 21:!5 is late) and full and with half stoned taste buds, caus’of the chicken.
So, message is, if you are in London and want a real curry, take the trip to Southall (basically, just before Heathrow) and have dinner there. You won’t regret it!!!
See yous!
Fred
PS: Alan, cheers mate!
I’m on a roll.
This is the dish that Nadia prepared. Fantastic. I am getting more and more convinced that it was my favorite of the evening. I haven’t seen her preparing it (no pictures), but here are the instructions I got from her:
Osso Buco Bianco River Café
2 inch crosscuts of veal hind shank
½c flour
seasalt and ground peper
½c butter (4 oz)
2Tb olive oil
2 small red onions, peeled and chopped
4 celery stalks, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
9 salted anchovies, prepared (washed and spine bones and heads removed)
½ bottle dry white wine
Gremolata
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
1 garlic clove, peeled and finely chopped
3 heaped Tb chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
Preheat oven to 300F.
Dust osso buco with flour, salt, pepper. In large heavy-bottomed casserole just large enough to hold all the pieces in one layer, melt half butter and all the olive oil, brown and seal osso buco on each side. Remove from the pan and pour away fat. Then add remaining butter, gently sauté onions and celery until very soft but not brown. Add garlic and anchovies and mash until anchovies have melted, this will only take a second. Pour in the wine, bring to a boil and reduce.
Carefully put osso buco back into the casserole, making sure that the bones are placed so that the marrow can not fall out during the cooking. Cover with parchment paper and the lid, and cook in oven for at least 2.5 hours. Can be made ahead and reheated.
Mix together the gremolata and sprinkle over each osso buco.
This we served piping hot and enjoyed with a Springbank 12 yo, cask strength. Perfect match.
Hi again,
It’s now time to explain how we prepared our Gastronauts menu. I guess that the antipasto does not need any explanation: put a couple of mozzarelle and some parma ham in a nice serving dish, and that’s it.
So, let’s skip directly to the ‘primo’: Ravioli with truffle dough, ricotta, porcini and truffle filling, served with butter, parmigiano and truffles. I did forget to add the porcini bit on the menu, as that was a last minute improvisation.
For the dough I used (we were 7 people):
- 800 g of flour
- 4 eggs
- a drop of water
- about 30 g of finely grated black truffle
I first put the flour and the
eggs in the mixing bowl of my KitchenAid and started mixing. When all the egg was incorporated into the flour, I first added he truffle and, after that, I added very little amounts of water until the dough became nice and firm. I covered the dough and let rest for about an hour at room temperature.
For the filling:
- 300 g of fresh ricotta
- a handful of dried porcini, softened in red wine and water for 15 minutes
- ~ 50 g of finely grated black truffle
We put everything into a bowl and mixed until all ingredients became homogeneously distributed.
The sauce:
- big chunk of butter, melted in a frying pan
- grated parmigiano
- whole black truffle to be sliced on each plate (you’ll need a truffle slicer, or anything able to make very thing slices)
Now, let’s make the ravioli. I worked a bit the dough with my hands and cut it into wee balls, the size of a fist. Using my hand-driven pasta maker, I worked each ball into a thing strip of dough, going up till the second thinnest setting (don’t want it too thin, or it’ll break). I then cut each strip so that they are ~ 40 cm long, or they’ll be hard to work with. Alan was then responsible for assembling the ravioli. He started lining wee mounts of filling along the dough, then fold the dough on itself and, with his fingers, he would close each filling ball inside a tight package. The ravioli are then cut into the final shape using a dedicated ravioli cutter. We let the ravioli rest on a flour covered tray for a couple of hours, so hat the dough would not be too wet, thus disassemble while cooking.
We cooked them while we were having the antipasto. Loads of salted water to boil, threw in the ravioli and cooked them for 10 minutes. Carefully drained them avoiding complete destruction, and poured the drained ravioli onto the melted butter. Mix carefully, slowly adding the parmigiano. Once served, we covered each plate with thin slices of truffle. Eat. Wash down with some nice Amarone. Have a foodgasm.
The day after the whisky tasting, we spent a few hours recovering and putting ourselves back together. There was a dinner to prepare. Here’s the menu Alan and I had designed over the last few months:
I shall put the recipes and instructions on separate posts.
We did indeed spend the whole day shopping, cooking, shoveling the snow, and drinking coffee. Finally, at around 18:00, Angus and his wife Kiss arrived (together with the ordered kidneys and the lagerkage) and we were all ready for the feast. We sat down at ~ 18:30 and finished ~ 23:30. It was a real success. Nothing of what we cooked was left. It was a real foodgasm.
I personally loved the whole thing. Great people, relaxed atmosphere, excellent food and drinks, nice chats, no stress. Kind a of a weekend of “oblivion”. I want more and can’t wait to repeat the experience. Where and when should it be? Here again in the summer with a fish based grill session? or should it be in Campbeltown, with an associated trip to Springbank and Islay? Or something else? I’m veeery openminded
Thanks to all for the fantastic weekend!!!!!
You will need a Microplane® zester for this for grating a clove of garlic. They produce a very fine garlic puree which is far superior to a press or chopping.
Olive oil
a clove of garlic
cracked black pepper
finely ground black pepper
flour
milk
concentrated chicken stock or a chicken OXO®
Put a good glug of olive oil in a small saucepan
grate a clove of garlic and mix well into the cold oil (if the oil is hot the garlic will form a lump) and stir well
gently heat the oil until quite hot stirring constantly
add a few good twists of cracked and finely ground black pepper
add a level dessertspoon of flour and make a roux then:
EITHER
add some water until a thick paste is formed, but not reached its full thickness
crumble in a chicken OXO cube
OR
Add concentrated chicken stock (needs to be quite salty) and stir over heat until quite thick
Add milk until the required consistency is reached – do not allow to come to a complete boil
Serve over turkey steaks or steamed vegetables
I bought some fresh anchovies at the local market and was thinking of a way to prepare them and I thought “Well they’re a bit like eel so why not do them in an Unagi type sauce?”
2 volumes soy sauce
2 volumes mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine or dry sherry in a pinch)
1 volume sugar
cleaned anchovy fillets; about 10 anchovies per person
pre-heat an oven to 170ºC
Add the mirin and the soy to a small pan, add in the sugar and heat to just under boiling point, stirring until sugar is dissolved
using chopsticks or tongs dip the anchovies into the sauce and place in a baking tray
bake for 10 mins
serve with salad and rice
Well, after spending the whole day cleaning the kitchen (see previous post), I got cheered up by the arrival of Alan and Nadia from Rome. It’s Gastronauts Meeting!!!! YAYYYY!!!! Let me explain:
A few months ago, while having a mouth watering discussion on facebook with some people, Alan and I decided to organise, asap, a “food and beverages convention”, whihc would take place between my (4th) and Alan’s (11th) birthdays. Considering that the “beverages” was to be provided by one of the discussees at his store in Copenhagen, we decided to meet here and have a beverages session on Friday at Angus’ Cadenhead’s Whisky store and a food feast on Saturday at my place in Virum.
So, as I said, I finished cleaning the kitchen and left for the airport to pick up Alan and Nadia (and the suitcase full of food). Back home, store the feast’s ingredients in the fridge and off we went to meet with Angus at the store. What an experience that was. We tasted 14 different bottles, one better than the other. Here’s what we drunk:
Needless to say, we have no recollection whatsoever on how and when we got back home. There was a taxi and it was not too late. Then blank, blankety blank.
So that was the first evening of the Gastronauts. What a day. Kitchen disaster, start of Gastronauts, numbness of the white matter…. fantastic.
I shall describe Saturday’s foodgasm in the next post, maybe tomorrow
UPDATE!!!!
We finally got the kitchen replaced by the company that installed it the first time. Let;s say that whoever did the original job is not working there any longer. Anyway, we now have a new set of cupboards, a redone floor and all table-tops reconditioned. Plus the insurance reimbursed us for all broken items. And we have a new, bigger, better and fancier induction cooker!!! All for “free”.
Ok we lost a LOT of un-replaceable stuff, but we got something back afterall.
Hurray!!!!!
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Hi again and happy new year to all of you.
We ended 2010 with a clogged sewage pipe which caused the cellar to become a nasty “mud bath”. We started 2011 with another catastrophe. It’s January the 7th, morning. The kids are still sleeping and I am rearranging the kitchen, before preparing their breakfast. I decide to store that bottle of wine in the bar shelf, so that all drinks (well, those few bottles I have) are consolidated onto the same place. As soon as I let the bottle touch the shelf, armageddon! The whole thing collapses and crashes to the floor. All 4 of them shelves. CRASH!!!! I ended up trying to hold one of them, while all glass was breaking onto me. I could hear everything crashing and breaking on the floor, and I knew there was absolutely nothing I could do. Just wait for the noise to finish. Hanne came immediately and she saw me, in the corner, holding a collapse shelf with a hand, a glass jar with another, smelling of booze because of a bottle of wine and one of whisky broke and soaked me and bleeding quite a lot from my legs, as several glass objects cut me.
We are still making a list of all the damage, since everything will be covered by the insurance we have. Still, a precious bottle of wine, a cask strength Whisky, a crystal wine decanter, plates, glasses, one of my Global knives, the induction stove, plenty of stuff. DISASTER. Took me the whole day to clean that mess. Especially the floor, that was a mix of wine, whisky, cocoa powder and broken glass. Sweet. Pictures show the mess.
After a long time passing, I finally managed to take care of my knives. they were starting to get dull and almost “dangerous”. It was also getting frustrating as I don’t really like to let my good quality items to get neglected for too long. Not good for them.
I know I never introduced my other knives, but I basically only deal with “Global” blades. I like the design, the shape, the weight distribution, the handle and the sharpness of the blades (when properly maintained). If you want to be a good blade-owner, you need to know how to take care of them and, most especially, how to sharpen. I got a very nice tutorial from my favorite knife shop in Boston, Stoddard’s of Watertown, MA.
First fo all, you’ll need a stone. I prefer to use a wet one instead fo an oil stone. This might be a more expensive stone, but you use water instead of oil and I feel it works better. I got a double sided stone, where one side is a 1000 grit (coarse) and the other is 4000 (fine). Before using it I soak it in water for about 30 minutes. Now, and this is critical for Global knives, remember to always use the same angle when applying the blade to the stone. For normal knives, you would use a large angle, of ~ 30 degrees. Globals have a smaller angle, at about 15 degrees. Screw that and you might compromise your blade.
Well, I was about to start writing about how to do it, but I found this video that makes my life (and yours) easier! Follow the instructions for each side fo the stone, starting with the coarser side. I usually do 15-20 strokes per blade side per stone side. I finish it all with a quick shine-and-polish pass on a 18000 grit steel bar.
Enjoy.
Compliments to the Chef