Happy St Anthony's day (Portugal)

Today is St Anthony's Day (mmm obscure, I know. I hadn't actually heard of him until some poking around on the wonderful www.somewhereintheworldtoday.com. Maybe it will provide a nice - though tenuous - link to my sister's blog about theological things.. www.parttimepriest.blogspot.com.) It's most celebrated in Portugal, so that's where we head this week on our peripatetic culinary tour. I think I was most drawn to the imagined sun drenched harbour scenes where people grill fish on barbeques and give each other carnations and pots of basil. Why does everything always sound so much better in hot countries?

Jamie Oliver's blog (which seems to have a lot of contributors who are not Jamie Oliver) suggested simply grilled sardines. The only problem was where to get fresh ones, especially after the massive Sainsbury's at Bethnal Green couldn't help. I should have started nearer to home - the rather smelly and sort of dishevelled fish shop, opposite the similarly described Kings Hall swimming baths, came up trumps.

THE DISH

Grilled sardines. (Jamie Oliver's blog version)

•  6 medium sized fresh sardines
•  1/2 handful coarse sea salt
•   2 large potatoes, like russets
•   2 green bell peppers
•   1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus 1/4 cup
•   1/8 cup white wine vinegar
•   1/2 onion, thinly sliced
•   2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
•   Salt and white pepper
•   1 Large tomato
•   Some slices of Cucumber (if you like)

Scale and gut the sardines (you can have your fishmonger do this). Wash the sardines under cold, running water and pat dry with paper towels. Lightly salt the sardines with coarse sea salt and refrigerate. Meanwhile, boil 2 potatoes until a knife is easily inserted. Drain and cool.

Roast 2 green bell peppers over an open flame until charred. Place in a bowl and cover it with plastic to allow it to steam for approximately 20 minutes. Remove the plastic and peel and seed the peppers.

Cut peppers into 3-inch wide strips and combine in bowl with 1/4 cup of olive oil, 1/8 cup white wine vinegar, onion, and garlic. Add tomato (sliced) , onion (sliced) and cucumber. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Preheat a grill.

Place the sardines on a hot grill. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise and place on the grill. When the sardines are done on first side, flip them over, and give the potatoes a quarter turn to create the grill marks.

Place 3 sardines on each plate with 2 potato halves and some green pepper salad. For decoration and extra flavour, drizzle with remaining olive oil

(I misread the recipe and marinated the sardines with the grilled peppers and garlic/oil/onion mix. But then I just cooked it all in a griddle - hot pepper salad instead of  cold, with tomatoes and cucumber on the side).


Toasted Tuscan bread salad with tomatoes and basil (River Cafe cookbook one)

• 1 ciabatta loaf
• 1kg ripe fresh plum tomatoes (the stronger the flavour the better)
• 2 tablespoons best quality red wine vinegar
• 250ml good quality olive oil (you don't really need anything like as much as this!)
• 2 garlic cloves peeled and crushed with a little sea salt
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• a handful fresh basil leaves
• juice 1/2 lemon

Pre heat the oven to 240C/475F/Gas9 or the highest it will go.
Roughly tear the loaf into eighths and place on a baking tray.
Bake in the oven until dry and toasted on the outside but soft in the centre (no more than 5 minutes).
Place in a bowl.
Take four of the tomatoes and using your hands squeeze them over the toasted bread.
Mix together a dressing using half the olive oil the vinegar crushed garlic and some
salt and pepper.
Pour the dressing over the toasted bread and tomato and toss.
Skin and seed the remaining tomatoes retaining their juices slice lengthways into eigths and add them with the basil to the bread mixture.
Finally add the lemon juice to bring out the flavour of the tomatoes and pour over the remaining olive oil.


Well spotted that this is not a true Portuguese recipe. It's from Tuscany. Really. But it has so much basil in it I thought those Lisbon-ites must use a similar salad if they're going around giving little basil plants to everyone to celebrate the venerable Saint A. Despite the boys helping with the fun messy bit of squeezing the tomatoes with your bear hands they didn't eat any of it after their first taste.

THE REACTION
Mr Middle: "Ugh I don't like fish." This is a boy who regularly says "my favorite food is fish pie". Muted responses to everyone else, apart from the Youngest who, before they were cooked, stroked the sardines as though they were his new pet. He was excited to find their fins still 'worked' ie concertinaed out of their otherwise rather dead backs. N, as always, expressed surprise, delight and general enthusiasm for something that wasn't Toad in the Hole.

THE VERDICT 

To be honest it was quite hard work. I mean I enjoyed it. (Though to be brutally honest I actually preferred the fish on toast the next day with lashings of malt vinegar. They way we used to have them out of the tin for Sunday suppers as a child). The Eldest Pescatarian made a valiant effort. And ate lots of basil leaves, which was pleasing for me if not filling for her. The boys really must have gone to bed pretty hungry. Mr Middle summed it up thus: I hated the fish. I hated the pepper. Even N turned down seconds. Not something I can recall him doing before. Ever.

Thank goodness for random over dinner conversation which, at one point, went like this:

Kaspar: "Do you know what I believe about God? He has an evil brother called Dave."

Must have been all that talk about Saints and things.

THE PUDDING
I have to say that I had my doubts about the pudding. There were a number of variations to the recipe, but I couldn't find any which had anything other than coffee for the biscuit dunking. A bit tirimasu-ish I guess. But coffee and lemon and cream?? I doubt Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would put them in his new book Three Good Things on a Plate. I doubted it so much I only made about half quantities. Hence the slightly strange shape of mine.

Bolo de Bolacho Maria (from the slightly strangely named fish and vegetarian recipe website)

Ingredients:
500ml whipping cream
250g mascarpone
600g rich tea biscuits
3 Table spoons lemon curd
2 Table spoons black coffee
2 Tables spoon sugar
1 Lemon


Whip cream with mascarpone, 1 tsp lemon juice and sugar until firm.
Add coffee to 500 ml boiling water.
Dip rich a tea biscuit into coffee for 1 second and shake excess coffee before placing on servicing plate.
Repeat until forming the shape desired with 1 layer of biscuits.
Lightly spread mascarpone cream over biscuit layer.
Repeat the process with 8 layers building towers.
Cover the towers with whipped mascarpone cream.
Add 1 layer of lemon curd on top of the cake.
Decorate as desired and put in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving.

But, I was delighted to find, I was wrong. It actually worked very well. And looked pretty impressive to boot. Maybe we shouldn't have given so much stick to Wills when he requested a biscuit cake (presumably of the tiffin variety rather than this foreign muck) for his wedding cake.  

I planted out the basil a couple of days later so, alongside the carnations I made - because on St Antony's day people also write poems and make carnations to give to each other - perhaps we'll at least have a permanent reminder of the visit to Portugal, even if no one really wants to go back there any time soon! (Apart from me of course. Gimme sardines on toast any day).

Jai ho!

It was with some trepidation that I rolled out 'Indian' this week. There is some history. 21 years ago I went to India having not eaten curry in my life and all too aware of a rather  limited diet spanning a couple of decades of fussy eating. The first thing that happened was a delayed flight dumping me in a posh hotel in Colombo. Posh enough to offer western dishes but hey here I was having fled my safe Surrey home life for 9 months on the Indian subcontinent. I was ready to dive in and that evening ordered a curry at random from the confusing menu. Little did I know that Sri Lankan cuisine leaves Indian looking like an insipid cousin when it comes to heat. The up side was that my culinary experiences after that shock were almost all good and I was a curry convert when I returned to the UK. 

I brought home precious recipes from friends I made there and over the years have made a mean dish or two. But, lets face it, Indian home cuisine has not moved on much from housewives rising at 5am to grind the spices on a stone  in order to marinade the meat in time for supper. I have to admit that the home made curries dwindled and the take-outs increased. 

I know plenty of people who raised their toddlers on left over take-out curries, but I could never do it. That might have been because we always polished ours off the night before while she was in bed, or because our eldest has an extremely sensitive palate and can spot a sprinkling of dried chillies at 20 paces, or that I couldn't quite bring myself to serve the glowing, luminous, red gloop to our precious progeny.

Scroll on nearly a decade and I find myself with 3 kids who all, until recently, declared their hatred of curry. Luckily the Eldest discovered (before her vegetarianism) that her favourite school meal was lamb curry. The younger two seem entrenched in their view but I long to take them, one day, to India and so am pretty keen to educate them.

Enough of the backstory. It was a busy week. We didn't even manage to do it on a Tuesday. And we had several friends round a few day before with a great take out which was not entirely polished off.  So the home made 'proper' Indian will have to wait: this week it was Anglo Asian curry night with kids!

THE DISH

Poppadoms with (home made) raita and mango chutney

Sag aloo (potato and spinach)

Kodu masala (pumpkin)

Special rice (with all those red garnishes gently dying the rice crimson. What is that about? I didn't see rice like that in 9 months of travel)

Bindhi (okra)

Good old Patak's chicken korma with toasted almonds

THE REACTION

I was surprised to find a lack of protests but this maybe because I sneakily called it Chicken Korma and tried to avoid the curry word completely. Sadly we didn't manage any music, dressing up, or other interesting side activity. I feel like its been a little light weight recently. But Mr M did dive in with delight at being able to eat with his fingers!

THE VERDICT

Can't believe it. Indian take away was given thumbs up by my children. Well, to be honest I don't think anyone ate the okra. Or Kodu masala (it is an enduring disappointment that my wonderful vegetarian daughter hasn't quite established a liking, yet, for squash). But the poppadom a were popular. And Eldest even made the raita herself, the brilliant girl.

Mr Middle - I love the rice. I love the chicken. 

Youngest - Let's give a silent cheer for the food (followed by much mouth opening and waving of arms.  Did I mention that I love their school??)

Eldest - I think she was a little disappointed to find that quorn korma isn't on the menu of any curry houses I know. I think we need to work on those root vegetables. Or maybe I should take her to Rasa? She did polish off the raita!

N - Isn't this what we had the other night? (Um. maybe that's why we never ate leftover curry!)

PUDDING

All too late for that even. I said it was a bit light weight. Mind you I had to admit to the kids that in all my travelling I never really found an Indian pudding I liked. All a bit over sweet, gloopy or dripping in ghee. We had chocolate ice cream instead. Its good to condition in a 'reward' for an Indian curry well received!!