Archive for June, 2011

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Ugly ducklings: Brussels sprouts & chipotle

June 27, 2011

I have never understood why the poor old Brussels sprout is so unfairly maligned.

Even as kids in our house, when the standard treatment for all vegetables was boil till textureless, we never complained about Brussels sprouts, and to my knowledge everyone in my family still chomps down on them with enthusiasm. But I guess the earthiness could be off-putting for kids, and I suppose the occasional metallic sort of bitterness one can experience has given them a bad name. For many winters now I’ve been simply tossing some Brussels sprouts in loads of olive oil and hurling into the roasting pan with other veg, for as we know well on this blog, a little roasting makes everything taste better. And I’m dying to try the pasta recipe offered by Diana in comments on the cabbage post here. 

It wasn’t until I had eaten these babies prepared by my friend Silas a few years ago that I really fell in love with their gutsy flavour. He steams them, then halves and stir-fries them in the wok in very hot peanut oil until they’re quite charred and deliciously crusted with fried bits.  

It was this approach that I was inspired by last week after I made the acquaintance of a very fabulous new friend, the chipotle chilli. Now, I am very late to learn of this miraculous ingredient. I was alerted to it by a Twitter chat with the fabulous Kathryn Elliott and some of her friends, about vegetarian substitutes for this and that, and chipotle – smoke-dried jalapeno chilli from Mexico – was mentioned as a good substitute for bacon. I was intrigued, as a lack of bacon would be one of the most saddening things about embracing vegetarianism, I have always thought. So off I went to Herbies Spices to get myself a couple of packs of these amazing chillies.

If you have never smelt a chipotle, you are in for a treat – open the pack and the waft of delicious smokiness is overwhelming. Once I opened that packet I wanted to play with its contents immediately, and given that chopped bacon or pancetta has always been a fab thing to add to Brussels sprouts, I decided to give it a whirl. And I am so glad I did.  There seems a kind of poetic justice in the fact that these two ugly ducklings combined – the sturdy, no-nonsense sprout and the wizened, shrivelled lumpy brown chilli – create a thing of such beauty, not only to look at, with the brilliant green and ochre red, but to eat. The chipotle was beautifully smoky, with a mild, rich heat. Its melding with the earthy sprouts and a good squeeze of lemon just gave a great big whack of flavour.

We served it with some good steak and roast fennel. And we’ll be doing so again before too long. This served two gutsers, but could probably go further among those of more restrained appetites. The amount of chilli will depend on the size of the particular one you have, as they seem to vary quite markedly in size, and on the amount of heat you like. Experiment to find your favoured level of warmth. 

Brussels sprouts with chipotle 

  • 250g Brussels sprouts
  • ½ one large chipotle chilli, chopped and soaked for a few minutes in hot water
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable or peanut oil
  • juice of ½ a lemon
  • sea salt
Method
  1. Steam or boil the sprouts until just tender – mine took 7  minutes – then drain immediately and halve lengthwise, allowing to cool.
  2. Heat the oil in a wok or non-stick pan until very hot.
  3. Toss the sprouts gently in the hot oil until very browned, almost charred, but taking care not to mess them around so much they fall completely apart. 
  4. Add the chilli and a little of the water to the mix and stir. 
  5. Add the lemon juice a little at a time, tasting all the while. 
  6. Add a liberal scatter of salt and serve. 
Has anyone else used the chipotle much in cooking? I would love to learn more about it, and what to do with it next. I am thinking grilled corn on the cob would be pretty darn fabulous with it – and am concocting all kinds of ideas for bacon-substitution in other dishes for my veg friends. All hail the chipotle! 

Posted in meat-free, Uncategorized, vegetable, winter food, zing things | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments »

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Cruciferous crusader

June 13, 2011

Does anyone else find themselves eating significantly more meat in winter?

Sydney weather has turned utterly miserable in the last little while –  freezing temperatures, wild winds and absolutely bucketing rain. It’s fantastic cooking weather so long as you have a well-stocked pantry and fridge, because going out into the rain to forage is vile. I’ve been on a pastry roll (boom tish) during the past week, as I’m determined to improve my competence in that department and have done some experimenting with blind-baking pie bases versus not doing so, with gratifying results, which I’ll post about soon.

But while this weather is perfect for pastry and all that comes with it – rich meat pies, chicken and mushroom pies and so on – the downside to all this is of course the stodge factor, the high meat factor, and the accompanying risk of increasing boombalahdism.

So my challenge in the next while is to find some hearty and delicious winter dishes that depend more on vegetables than meat. I’m happy to notch up the carbs for a bit, because it just feels right to load up a little for winter, but having worked hard to lose some weight in the first half of the year, I would rather not blow all that by going too crazy with the carbs and fat and meat for the next few months.

Enter the humble Brassica family.

My favourite thing of last week was a cabbage accompaniment to some very good pork chops – an old Jamie Oliver number I posted about way back in the early days of this blog. It’s a delicious fatfest – pork, pears, potatoes and parsnip – and needs a sharp accompaniment to balance all that sweetness and stodge.

Cabbage is one of my favourite overlooked ingredients. I think we can all hark back to childhood for some reasonably ghastly memories of flabby, colourless boiled cabbage and that sad, defeated smell. But when it’s done well, cabbage can provide a wonderfully sparky lift to a meal I reckon.  And there is also the virtuous cancer-fighting glow that comes from consuming any member of the Brassica family (love that it sounds so like a contemporary primary schoolgirl’s name, except of course the spelling would need some adjustment.  “Brassikah! Come here! We have to go pick up Crucifera from ballet!”)

In the summer just gone I was introduced to an incredibly good shredded cabbage and Parmesan salad by Caro (she of the roasted cherry chutney and many other goodies on this blog), which I will tell you more about some other time. But this not being salady weather, this week I adapted a couple of different recipes to come up with the following side dish. I recommend it.  Oh and please forgive the low photo quality – all this getting dark at 5pm makes good evening photography an impossibility…

Cabbage with caraway and currants

  • olive oil
  • ¼ cup (or less) finely chopped bacon, pancetta or speck
  • 2 French shallots, finely chopped
  • few cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • ¼ head of shredded white cabbage
  • ½ cup of cup verjuice
  • large handful currants
  • 2 tsp caraway seeds
  • salt & pepper

Method

  1. Saute the bacon, shallot and garlic in a good splash of oil until soft.
  2. Add the cabbage and stir thoroughly to coat with oil, fry over high heat for a few minutes.
  3. Add the verjuice and stir to mix well.
  4. Add currants and caraway seeds, cover and cook for a few minutes more until cabbage is tender but retains a touch of crunch. Season & serve.

And now I’d love some ideas from you about hearty, warming, non-meat dishes for winter. What are your favourites?

Posted in herbs & spices, Uncategorized, vegetable, winter food | Tagged , , | 13 Comments »

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Risky bisqueness

June 6, 2011

Smash it up: Jared Ingersoll’s crab & harissa soup

The other weekend Senor and I were looking for a punchy little entree to accompany a roast lamb dinner for friends, and he happened upon Jared Ingersoll’s recipe for this crab soup.

Unusually, the recipe involved roasting the blue swimmer crab along with other ingredients for a whole hour in the oven.  Simple enough, you think, and it is.  The only demanding bit  is that periodically through the cooking you are required to take ‘a heavy mallet or a rolling pin’ to the crab, smashing it to simithereens.

Have you ever used a mallet to smash a crab shell? I haven’t, but I have sat across the dining table from Senor and our friend Ms J years ago while they went beserk with a hammer on a mud crab as Mr J and I cowered in fear, doing our best to shield ourselves from crabby debris.  I recall that there followed many weeks of picking crab shell off  Mr & Ms J’s paintings and nearby soft furnishings  (I recall, too, Mr J’s and my anxious glances at one another on seeing how powerfully – and gleefully – our respective spouses wielded the blunt instrument).

Suffice it to say that if you want to make this soup, you must prepare for a splatter fest, given that the smash-up here involves not only crab but a soupy mix of roasted capsicum and onion and tomatoes.  I started out trying to prevent crab on the ceiling by leaning over the pan and hoping my apron would take the brunt, but eventually I just gave in and bashed away with the rolling pin, picking bits of crab and roasted capsicum and tomato off the walls and my face as I went, pitching the bits back into the pan as best I could. I even confess to a certain amount of pleasurable abandonment to the process after a while.

The hardest part of this recipe is not the bashing, but the last step. After you’ve whizzed the mixture (which by now includes fish stock)  with a stick blender to mash it all up as best you can, it’s mouli time. I have never used a mouli before, but bought one specially for this dish (I’ve been trying to think of an excuse to get one for a while now) and I would say that it would be almost impossible to make this soup without one – or without some other way of sieving the mixture so that, as Jared instructs, you “take time to squeeze out as much of the soup as you possibly can; only stop using the mouli when you are left with a dry crumbly mixture on top”.

If all this sounds like one giant headache, it kind of is. But the result, I must tell you, is pretty fantastic: a deep, velvety, richly spicy soup. The quantity, which looked small when we finally had the soup finished, was just right – it’s so rich and luscious that a little goes a long way. This recipe comes from the book Sharing Plates, which is full of good stuff including our favourite orange and quince cake recipe and is accompanied by a recipe for zucchini fritters that we’ve not yet tried.

Unfortunately we forgot to take a photo of the final result, so you’ll have to imagine for yourself  a rich mahogany-coloured, velvety-looking soup in a little white ramekin and a sweet, spicy, roast crab aroma in the air.

Jared Ingersoll’s crab and harissa soup 

Ingredients

  • 3 blue swimmer crabs (we didn’t kill our own although the recipe calls for live ones)
  • 1 teaspoon each cumin, caraway, coriander seeds and half a teaspoon fenugreek seeds
  • 1/3 cup soft brown sugar
  • pinch chilli flakes
  • salt and pepper
  • 150ml vegetable oil
  • 3 red capsicums, seeded & chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 4 ripe tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 red onion, chopped
  • 1.5 litres fish stock (I used half packaged fish stock and half homemade chicken stock)
  • 1 bunch coriander
  • a few sprigs of mint and of parsley
Method
  1. Clean and quarter the crabs, removing the finger-like gills but keeping the brown meat if there is any.
  2. Toast the spices in a dry frying pan until fragrant, then grind in mortar & pestle or spice grinder.
  3. Sprinkle the spices over the crab with the sugar, chilli flakes & seasoning and mix.
  4. Heat a deep roasting tin in the oven or on the stove top and when hot, add the oil and then the spiced crab mix.
  5. Mix everything together well, bung in the oven for about 20 minutes.
  6. Remove pan from oven, mix in the remaining ingredients and continue to cook in the oven for about an hour, periodically bashing the shit out of the crab with your rolling pin or hammer, as discussed above. I think I did it about three or four times during the whole process.
  7. When it smells good and everything is soft and a little coloured, put the pan on the stove top and add the stock, simmering gently for about 15 minutes.
  8. Transfer to a saucepan and whizz with stick blender, then mouli as thoroughly as you can, as described above. I checked obsessively for shell, thinking there was no way the mouli could get it all, but found no shell at all. I would still suggest warning your guests about the possibility, however.

If this sounds good to you, I would love to know if you make it – probably best for a day when you have a few frustrations to pound out. And in the meantime, I would love to hear any other crabby tales you might have to tell.

Posted in seafood, soup, techniques, vegetable, zing things | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments »