Quick curry

The pic is not that great, but while cleaning house I stumbled upon a recipe for a quick curry, I think by Livia Claessen and Henri Kleinblatt, from the magazine Feeling. Food on Saturday cooked extra muros.

olive oil
2 red onions, thinkly sliced
2 crushed cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon of chopped ginger
400 g chicken breast or freshly peeled shrimp
400 g canned tomatoes
6 tablespoons joghurt
1 tablespoon garam masala
cilantro (or my addition, parsley)

Stew onions until browned.

Next add garlic, ginger and chicken. Stew for 6 minutes. Note: for chicken breast I deemed this a bit short-I precooked the chicken somewhat in plain water.

Next, add the tomatoes and garam masala and stew for 10-15 minutes.

Before serving, add joghurt and cilantro or parsley.

Note: I steamed potatoes until tender and added them to stew with the chicken.

Bean stew with tomato and goat cheese

Nina, my newspaper's weekend magazine, listed a few oven dishes by an Antwerp chef, Johan Segers of 't Fornuis. Originially this was Bean stew with Sainte-Maure, a commercial lightly ash-covered goat cheese. Think Panzanella, but the winter version with beans.

Original recipe (serves 4)

50 g white beans, 50 g coconut* beans and 50 g bonito* beans (*don't know what these are, I only used white beans), 50 g flagolets (brown beans), 50 g Gigantes or giant Greek white beans: all soaked for 2 hours. Chef says working from dried beans gives better taste (but it is a lot of work). If you have oceans of time or are a professional, cook each type of bean separately, and drain.

10 cherry tomatos, skinned, deseeded, cut in two (I skipped those).
2 normal tomatoes, skinned, deseeded, cut in two.
8 tablespoons tomato sauce (I used concentrate - on purpose, rich source of licopene)
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 roll of goat cheese Sainte-Maure (I used an ash-covered organic runny goat cheese, crust removed)
4 slices of bread, cut crouton-style

Preheat oven at 180 °C.
Combine beans, tomato sauce, bread, garlic, and season with salt and pepper. Put this at the bottom of the oven tin.
Cover with the fresh tomatoes, and add the goat cheese on top.
Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until cheese has melted.

Note: an even better idea is to infuse the bread with olive oil and minced garlic, just like Panzanella. Also, add a little olive oil to the bean mixture.

Add some chopped parsley, serve at once. Quick and home-made!

Why Kobe goes to Los Gatos

In an interview (Sabato, 13 June), young chef Kobe Desramaults from In de Wulf announced that he will be spending a month in restaurant Manresa of chef David Kinch, who is based in Los Gatos and who won "Best Chef Pacific 2010" from the James Beard Foundation.

Why does this young Belgian chef plan this internship? Most likely to broaden his command in the challenge of using whatever local surroundings yield in food, and to resort less to the automatic pilot that chefs ignite when buying their produce at Rungis.

Nothing wrong with Rungis - food mecca second to none, but chefs like Kobe Desramaults, in the wake of René Redzepi of Copenhagen's Noma, who have seen every new device under the stars, really want to work with impediments. They really are the new hunters and gatherers. And that's why Kobe goes to Los Gatos.

For this is what I imagine chef Kinch does: he visits the Love Apple Farm, his royal purveyor, a place where in another life I'd work, or in another life I'd try to recreate, and gathers the yield of the day for his kitchen.

Now here's what baffled me as well. Desramaults isn't using tomatoes until July. He has a Tomato Criterion.

Unlike last year, this winter I have continued eating tomatoes, solely on account of an extremely local producer (7 km) churning out baskets of cherry tomatoes out of his greenhouse. And in the past weeks, I've been eating this bounty from Holland (or the US?):
In short, conditions were such that I succumbed. Because organic seems to defy any season. Because organic goes colorful. I prepared this quick salad in a state of bewilderment, because it suddenly felt like cheating.

Green tomato salad

Green tomatoes (or if you have them, tomatillos)
1 avocado in its prime
cold cooked chicken breast
fresh tarragon leaves
olive oil
dash of lemon juice (optional)
generous sprinkling of sesame seeds
pepper (salt optional)

Lightly heat the oil over low heat and suffuse with fresh tarragon leaves. Pour leaves and oil over the ingredients, combine everything, serve.

Now start ruminating the Tomato Criterion.

Fish, fish, fish! Haddock stew with tomato and shallots

It's always a pleasure to come back to one of my first ever consulted sources for recipes online. Ofimer, the French Dept of Fish, is one of them. Invariably I opt for the most simple of recipes, as in these pages I hold both cooking from scratch and simplicity in high regard. I may be preoccupied more with spring cleaning these days, but it doesn't mean that good food is falling off the radar.

Cocotte d'églefin aux tomates et échalote - Haddock stew with tomato and shallots

Recipe from: Ofimer.fr.

600 g haddock in fillets
8 tomatoes, peeled
5 shallots
5 cl white wine
10 cl vegetable stock, piping hot
40 g butter
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper

Stew the shallots in the butter over low heat for about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the tomatoes, then stew for 5 minutes.

Add the broth and white wine, and the bay leaves, and let simmer softly for 10 minutes.

Put the fish on top, and cook for 5 minutes, and then for another 5 minutes.

Serve at once, fish on top of the tomato and shallot mixture. As simple as bonjour.

Dreaming of catching summer: minestrone

Two experiences set off wanting to eat this soup: a friend's vegetable soup which used as a base her mother's fantastic home-made sterilized summer tomatoes, to which she added a bit of leek and onion, and a visit to a local Italian restaurant where I tried the minestrone.

I also used dry gigantes elephantes, as they are called in Greece, aka the great white, the jumbo white bean, soaked overnight and cooked with fresh sage, ready for further use. I glanced over at the Harry's Bar cookbook for their Minestrone recipe with my own additions (beans, pancetta) or slight changes.

Dreaming of catching summer: minestrone

My additions:
200 g Gigantes or jumbo white beans, cooked
1 slice of pancetta, chopped in pieces
1 clove of garlic

Harry's Bar Cookbook ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
30 g butter
1 onion, sliced
1 celery rib, diced
2 leeks, thinly sliced
1 large tomato
2 small zucchini
A small wedge of Savoy cabbage
1 medium potato
1 medium carrot
6 asparagus spears (omitted here)
1 bay leaf
salt, pepper
2 liter boiling water or chicken stock
80 ml tomato sauce (I used tomato concentrate)
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Sauté the onion in olive oil, add half of the butter, wait until the onion is well browned after 10-15 minutes. This browning is indeed key to taste.

Add the pancetta, garlic, beans and remaining vegetables, bay leaf, salt and pepper, and stew until the vegetables are tender. In all about 15-25 minutes.

Add the stock, and the tomato sauce. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and let simmer for about 15 more minutes.

Stir in the remaining butter and adjust the seasoning.

Serve to plenty of folk, and imagine catching next summer in a jar.

Zia Mia's ragù (1)

Another week under a blanket of light snow. Yesterday was so cold that I was thinking of preparing pasta al ragù. No diluted tomato or vegetable sauce, but a very concentrated affair of meat. A dish mirroring my present state of mind: no thin indifferent measures, but solid passionate strength.

I have posted one recipe before here: from someone who used to prepare this for me. Before she became a foodblogger, Oleandri commented with two alternative recipes of ragù by one of my aunts, recipes which she happened to know about. I give full prominence to these versions here.

Zia Mia's ragù (1)

olive oil
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
2-3 peperoncini (optional; I used 2)
2 bay leaf
nutmeg
1-2 carrots
1 green celery stalk
pancetta or bacon (I used 2 slices of pancetta)
150 g minced meat, half pork, half beef
My own addition: 300 g steak meat, freshly ground at home
1 big can of tomatoes
vegetable stock
2 cm (2/3 inch) of water
salt, pepper

Fry pancetta, celery, onion, peperoncini, and carrots with bay leaves in olive oil for a few minutes.

Add the rest of the meat, and fry over medium heat until dry, until the liquid has evaporated.

Add the can of tomatoes, stock, water, and season with nutmeg, salt and pepper.

Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and let simmer at least 30 minutes. One and a half hour gives a perfect concentrated result.

Notes:
Because you add peperoncini early on, this is spicy.
I used 1 cup of white wine instead of stock.
Be careful with salt - this was salty to me, perhaps on account of the pancetta. Add salt only at the very end.

Serve with intensity.

Why pico de gallo here in winter is a very bad idea

Black beans work their charm on me: when seeing this rarity in a supermarket here, I instantly want to eat them. And that's where my fantasy of conjuring up the Great Texan Tastes finds its spark.

Not only did I start a reverie about Tart Black Bean Salsa, I was so overly reckless to add Texas Pico as well.

When having to decide how long to cook black beans, I choose to be on the safe side: 2 hours, as say Grady Spears and June Naylor in The Texas Cowboy Kitchen, which has the recipes.

Tart Black Bean Salsa with Texas Pico de Gallo

From The Texas Cowboy Kitchen

2 cups of dried black beans (I had leftovers of about 250 g)
16 cups of water (or 1,5 times the amount of the beans)
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 large ears of yellow corn (omitted here, replaced by a few tablespoons of tinned corn)
1 red bell pepper
1-2 granny smith apples (omitted here)
1 cup Texas pico
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chile powder (I used chipotle chile)
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon white vinegar

First, let the black beans soak overnight in plenty of water. The next day, rinse them.

Secondly, cook the black beans in water. Bring to a boil first, then reduce the heat and let simmer for 2 hours.

(Skipped here): Preheat the over at 450 °F, remove the husks and silks from the corn, brush with vegetable oil and place them on a baking sheet. Roast for 15-20 minutes, turning to roast evenly. Remove from oven, let cool, and cut the corn from the cob.

In a bowl, combine the cooked corn, the black beans, and everything else. Cover and set aside for 30 minutes. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Texas pico de gallo

6 jalapenos, sliced (replaced by small red and green chile peppers)
1 red onion
6 green onions, thinly sliced (I used scallions)
2 tomatoes, diced
2 bunches cilantro leaves, stems removed and minced
juice of 2 limes
salt

Combine everything, drizzle with lime juice, and salt, toss again, let sit for 15 minutes before serving.

I hereby solemnly declare that on account of the tomatoes, the limes and yes, even the cilantro, albeit tended to with the utmost care by destemming every leaf, making pico de gallo in Belgium in winter is a totally futile attempt. It certainly looks the part, but doesn't taste like it. I drowned my disillusion in a dollop of sour cream.

Steak in Stew, Catalan style

More snow this weekend, more short-lived Winter Wonderland, so another wintry recipe for whoever stayed indoors. In the recently quoted Leviathan of a cookbook, French cooking by Françoise Bernard, I was taken with this Catalan stew which oddly uses steak meat. Let's see how that turns out.

Steak in Stew, Catalan style

Serves 4

4 round pieces of beef (one per person)
4 carrots
2 onions
800 g potatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
30 g butter
20 cl dry white wine (1 glass)
2 tablespoons tomato puree
1 bouquet garni (herbs: bay leaf, thyme)
salt, pepper

Cut carrots and onions in slices. Peel potatoes and cut in slices of 1 cm.

Fry the beef in a pan in very hot oil until browned on both sides.

Transfer the meat to a stewing pot with the carrots, onions, potatoes and the butter. Stew for a few minutes over low heat, then add the wine, tomato puree, herbs, salt and pepper. Put the lid on and let stew for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Notes: Great dish for leftovers, with smells redolent somehow of the simple cooking seen at my grandmother's. The tomato is a great little tastemaker here.
Beware: on account of the potatoes added raw, this dish needs as long to stew.
It wasn't specified what part of beef to use, so I used steak meat. Puzzling!