Pastel de Choclo

Pastel de Choclo (which translates as 'Corn Pie') is Chiles favourite home cooked meal (according to Chilean internet site www.terra.cl), beating Porotos Granados (more on that tomorrow) and Empanadas. If you've ever tried it, you'll know why. Pastel de Choclo is real comfort food, a sort of Chilean version of shepherds pie. A rich stew (traditionally made with beef or chicken, but here I'm using chickpeas & winter squash) topped with a creamy mashed sweetcorn, like a richer, softer textured version of Tamale bake (but even more delicious!) They've been eating it in Chile & Peru since the 1800's, and it's about damn time we got in on the action too.

Pastel de Choclo (serves 4)
500g winter squash (I like butternut or crown prince), peeled, deseeded & cut into 1cm-ish chunks
2 onions, finely chopped
1 carrot, sliced
2 tbs vegetable oil
500ml passata
400g (1 can) chickpeas
2 tbs raisins
handful of sliced green olives
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
2 tsp oregano
salt & pepper

Topping
3 cups sweetcorn (thawed if frozen)
3 tbs cornflour
100ml milk (or non dairy milk to keep it vegan)
1 tsp basil
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 200C/400F. If you have a good sized cazuela, use it. If not, a deep ovenproof dish works fine too. You can also divide it into 4 individual dishes too.
Heat the oil in a large pan & fry the onion until translucent. Add the carrot & squash & cook for 5 minutes. Add the herbs, chickpeas, passata, olives, raisins & cook until the squash is tender. Season & pour into the baking dish.
To make the sweetcorn topping, put all the ingredients into a blender & pulse until you get a coarse mix that's somewhere between hummus & porridge. Spoon over the squash mixture, making sure to seal all the edges & bake for 45 minutes, or until the sweetcorn topping is golden & the tomato sauce bubbling up around the edges.

If you must serve it with something, fried plantains & green beans are happy companions.
Once you've tried it, experiment with different fillings! Mushrooms & beans in a mole sauce is pretty heavenly, as is seitan & pinto beans. A few chopped hard boiled eggs in there will go down well too.

Om nom nom!

Pumpkin Week

All the Winter Squash & Pumpkins have been harvested, cured & brought in for storage overwinter. I say 'storage' what I actually mean is 'fill every available surface in the house, even if it means moving a few cats first'.
There are pumpkins piles on perilous perches, squashes stacked on spare shelves, curcubits clumsily cast... well, you get the idea. The spare bed is currently unavailable to guests (sorry folks, unless you're okay with sharing!)

So it must be Pumpkin Week!
Every year around All Hallows Eve I post pumpkin recipes, for the next week I'll be posting recipes for squashes & pumpkins (though you can still check out recipes from previous years by casting your gaze to the right & clicking on 'Pumpkins'). So lets start with something simple, a recipe from my Ma-in-Law that we never tire of eating.

Pumpkin & Coconut Soup
750g Squash or pumpkin (butternut works well), peeled & cut into chunks
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 red chillies, finely chopped
3 tbs vegetable oil
1 thumb sized piece of ginger, grated
400ml can coconut milk
500ml vegetable stock
juice of 1 lime
salt & pepper
handful of fresh coriander leaves

Heat the oil in a large pan & fry the onion until soft. Add the ginger, chillies & garlic & stir for a minute or so. Add the pumpkin & stock, stir & simmer for 10 minutes. Add the coconut milk & cook another 5 minutes, or until the pumpkin is tender. Add lime juice & whizz up in a blender. If it's too thick for you (I like thick soups!) add more vegetable stock or water. Season & stir in the coriander leaves, leaving a few for garnish.
Ma-in-Law also stirs in a cupful of cooked white rice, rice noodles or cellophane noodles after the soup has been blended, which gives a it a nice bit of texture. You could also top it with a drizzle of chilli sauce.


Om nom nom!

Herboristeria Del Rei

In Barcelona we spent a morning trying to find the Herboristeria Del Rei. This gloriously old place is tucked away in a little side street off the Plaça Reial, and can only be found by removing all the iron from your pockets & turning thrice widdershins (okay, so not exactly. But a detailed map & the address won't make it any easier to track down, it's the sort of place you can only glimpse out of the corner of your eye under the midday sun). It is the first Herbalist shop in Catalonia, opening in 1823, and then renovated in 1860. It hasn't changed much since then, from its glass roof to the beautifully carved shelves that are lined with bottles & jars. If it looks eerily familiar, it's because it was the perfumers shop from the Tom Tykwer film 'Perfume: the story of a murder'

The shop was run by a very lovely gentleman who was extremely patient with me and my terrible Spanish. The shop is a herbalists dream - wooden drawers & jars filled with bundles of dried herbs, bottles of oils, tinctures & herbal wines & piles of hand made soaps & lozenges. In the center is a statue of Linnaeus, the smutty minded botanist who gave us Binomial nomenclature, without whom the lovely gentleman & myself would have had a much harder time communicating with each other. As we both know our botanical names we quickly understood each other, and MikeyFox watched with amusement as I sniffed and snuffed and nibbled my way through handfuls of herbs, and managed to discuss medicinal properties & flavours in a clumsy mix of English, Spanish & French.
I left with a bundle of soaps, teas, honey throat lozenges & bundles of hierba luisa (Lemon Verbena), tilo (Linden) & menta (mint).
A simply wonderful place, and the closest I'll get to what it feels like to step outside of the tardis and into another century.

A l'aquari

While in Barcelona, we went down to Port Vell, which until not too long ago was a run-down area of empty warehouses & factories but was given an overhaul for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. We avoided the shopping centre, IMAX cinema & blistering heat and headed for the Aquàrium de Barcelona (well, you know how I feel about aquariums, right?). 1.5 million gallons of sea water, 8,000 fish and 21 tanks displaying the various marine life of the Mediterranean. I was a happy little fox!

The tanks were arranged in ways that were really interesting & informative. You got a close look at life in shallow coastal waters, underwater caves, coral reefs & atolls (to name a few!). I could have spent all day staring at the shoals of grouper & bream. It was also fascinating to watch moray eels & sea anemones going about their business. And it was quite sweet to see lots of children clustered around the tropical tanks looking for Nemo & Dory (and yes, I was looking for them too!)

And there were Rays, yay! Rays are actually closely related to sharks, though you wouldn't think it to look at them. They have no bones, their skeletons being made of cartilage. Having no ribcage means that if a large one ever got out of water the weight of their own bodies would crush their internal organs before they could suffocate. Ouch. But it does give them the ability to move efficiently & beautifully through water. Rays mostly eat crustaceans, snails & small fish, the manta ray prefers plankton.

The most spectacular feature of the aquarium is the tunnel - an 80 meter long glass tunnel that curves across the bottom of the Oceanarium, giving you the sensation of walking along the sea bed (but without the stressing over oxygen supplies or being gnawed at by one of the Sand Tiger sharks). The first half of the tunnel curves along one edge of the Oceanarium, so isn't too unsettling. The way the light plays on the wall opposite was too lovely to ignore too.

The second half of the glass tunnel is breathtaking, taking you right underneath the Oceanarium (and the 1.5 million gallons of sea water. Did I mention that?). There is also a moving walkway in the tunnel, so you can drift along with the fish. I found it a little too disorientating, so stayed on solid ground (less likely to fall over when a shark swims overhead that way). It was an unforgettable experience, and deeply soothing, while being utterly terrifying.

Of all the creatures that we encountered, I fell in love with this one - Mola mola, the Ocean Sunfish (though the Spanish name translates as Moonfish, as sailors used to mistake them for the reflection of the moon on the water. Their shimmery silver colour makes me think Moonfish is a much better name for them) probably the weirdest creature I will ever see. Mola is Latin for Millstone, describing its rough textured skin & rounded body (yes, that is a body, it's not just a floating head with fins - the German name for it is Schwimmender Kopf - swimming head). They can grow up to 3 meters in length, and can swim surprisingly fast. They are docile & friendly, and this one followed me all the way around the the Oceanarium, occasionally bumping into the glass (clearly we are kindred spirits). I felt very privileged to spend time with it, there are very few Sunfish in captivity (the only other examples being in Japan & Portugal).

So if you find yourself in Barcelona, go visit the aquarium, you won't be disappointed!

Passata, Pussycat! Kilner! Kilner!

We've had a good year for tomatoes this year, and Tomato Mile has lived up to it's name - it's been endless! More than MikeyFox could possibly eat while bimbling around the garden or make into salsa. So I've spent the last couple of months making passata (a lot of passata. Next year I'm getting a passata mill, instead of spending endless hours pushing it all through my 50p Wilkinsons nylon sieve. After 6 or 7 litres the brain starts to rumble off in strange directions). Passata will keep for a couple of days in the fridge and there are lots of uses for it, like ketchup or pasta sauce. But if you've got a lot of tomatoes, you'll end up with more passata than you can really use over such a short period. You can pour it into lidded containers & stash away in the freezer, but with a bit of effort, you can further process passata or roasted tomatoes & store it in the cupboard for months (I do keep a lot of passata in the freezer, but that does mean having to plan when to use it a day or two in advance, to give it defrosting time). So it seemed like a good time to get myself some kilner jars & learn how to do some serious preserving.

Kilner jars are rubber sealed screw-top glass jars first made by the Kilner family in Yorkshire. The real trick to them is their two-part lid - a metal screw band & separate rubber-bottomed metal lid. This ingenious little system means that air can escape when processing, but not get in (bringing its friends bacteria & micro-organisms). You can process all sorts of fruits in syrup or brine using kilner jars, but vegetables are a bit more complicated. The biggest concern when dealing with tomatoes is the dread botulism, but if you're careful with keeping things sterile & clean, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. Acid prevents botulism spores from developing, so adding a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar (red wine or balsamic really brings out the flavour of tomatoes) should solve any problems. Bringing the passata to the boil for 10 minutes when using will also kill off anything nasty (and, of course, not eating anything from a jar that is bubbling or fermenting, turned a funny colour, gone mouldy or is attempting to communicate with you is also a smart move).
There are two methods of preserving in kilner jars - the Water Bath method & the Oven Method. Both methods need clean, sterilised jars (and work with screw top & clip top jars) filled with hot passata leaving a 2cm gap at the top, but you already know that.

The Water Bath is the most common method. For this you need a pan deep enough to keep your jars completely submerged, a large preserving pan works well. You'll also need a thermometer. Place a folded tea towel on the base to protect the jars from the direct heat(they will crack otherwise). Fill the jars with hot passata (about 60C) and srew on the lids, loosening by a quarter-turn (to give steam a chance to escape). Place the jars in the pan & cover with warm water. Slowly bring to a simmer (I mean slowly. Take about 20-30 minutes over it. You don't want a pan of watery tomato & glass shard soup) & simmer at 88C for 40 minutes. Remove from the heat & stand on a wooden board or folded towel, tighten up the screw bands & leave to cool overnight. In the morning check the seal (the dimple in the top of the jar should have depressed, and alarmed you at some point in the evening with a loud pop!). If there is no seal, either use up immediately or process again.

Te Oven Method takes longer, and can get a bit messy, as the passata will bubble & spit while its in the oven, but doesn't require a big preserving pan. Preheat the oven to 150C/300F/G2. Fill the jars & place on a thick pad of newspaper, or a folded tea towel in a baking tray filled with 3cm of water (to disperse the heat, and prevent any distressing breakages. Place the jar lids on top, but don't fasten with screw bands. Leave in the oven for 60 minutes, then carefully remove, clean off any tomato that has escaped & put on the screw bands tightly. Leave to cool overnight & check the seal. Store in a cool, dark place (i.e. a cupboard) for up to a year.

Yellow passata! Eeeee!

Barcelona!

So MikeyFox & I, people who abandoned life in a big damn city due to our aversions to a, people and b, all the things that go with people decided to go on an impromptu trip to Barcelona, the most populous city in Catalonia, with a population of over 1.6 million folks and 2nd largest city in Spain. During an unseasonal heatwave. A daft idea? Probably, but I was holding onto what shreds of sanity I still have like the last slip of soap in the bath, and MikeyFox really needed a break from work.

We were lucky enough to find a cheap place to stay in the l'Eixample (Catalan for 'the extension', where Barcelona expanded into surrounding towns due to the increase in the population), where the streets are arranged in regimented blocks with chamfered corners (which makes crossing the road a bit strange). many of the buildings in the area were designed by Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi was not only an architect, he was also a skilled craftsman adept at ceramics, stained glass, ironmongery & carpentry. He also pioneered Trencadís - making mosaics with broken tiles & shards of ceramic. His mosaic works are scattered all over Barcelona. He was heavily influenced by nature, and his buildings are undulating, surreal & beautiful. Everyone will tell you to visit the Sagrada Familia, his still unfinished magnum opus, but I'd recommend the Casa Milà, also known as La Pedera (Catalan for 'the Quarry', though it looks more like Neptunes Summerhouse). Built 1905-1912, it's a breathtaking piece of architecture, with it's curves like lapping waves & balconies like tangled seaweed.

Barcelona is one of those places that will give you a crick in the neck. Everywhere you look there are mosaics on fountains, buildings & pavements, elegant ironwork on doorways & balconies, stone carvings on buildings & things that make your breath catch in your throat. Even the pavement beneath your feet is richly decorated. Everything from giddy swirls, block prints of flowers or hexagonal tiles that fit together to create seascapes of corals & starfish.

You could spend weeks just walking around, and never tire of what you saw. It's a wonder we did anything but stumble through the streets, open mouthed. But we also visited museums, galleries & the delightful l'Aquarium de Barcelona (which I'll save for another post, along with the Herboristeria del Rei). We explored tiny little streets & alleys, and I dragged MikeyFox into far too many little herbalists & tearooms, while he shepherded me into vegetarian restaurants & tavernas, and nearly lost sight of me forever in the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria (locally known as la Boqueria)

There have been street markets in Barcelona since 1217, but la Boqueria was built in 1840-1853 (the plans being constantly modified & adapted). If you want to eat it, la Boqueria has it for sale. There are stalls piled high with beautiful fresh fruit & vegetables (some I've never seen before), candied whole fruits, nuts, strings of chillies, spices, herbs, cakes, breads, pastries, tapas, meat, fish (and benthic horrors that were too much for MikeyFox, who retreated to a juice bar for some aguas frescas).

Eventually I was tempted out of the market (albeit with an armful of xerimoya, kaki, tamarillo & kiwano) with some horchata. Horchata is everywhere in Barcelona, a refreshing iced drink made with almonds, sesame seeds or most commonly tigernuts. It is an unusual drink, milky but without containing milk, with a sweet nutty flavour & a slightly gritty texture. There are many stories as to how it got it's name, my favourite being the story of when James the 1st of Aragon (calm down, not that Aragon, the one that's in north-eastern Spain) first tried is, he exclaimed 'Açò és or, xata!" ('That's gold, darling')
Fear not, dear readers, there will be more horchata, as I have recipes!

As usual, I haven't returned with the usual sort of souvenirs. My case was crammed full of dried herbs, chocolates, chia, polvorón (a crumbly shortbread), tea, dulce de membrillo (quince paste), herbal soaps, black rice, artichoke pate & all sorts of little bits & pieces, many of which will be making their way to friends over the next few weeks

Until next time!

North Lincolnshire Food Fair

Lincolnshire was recently voted the UK foodie capital as part of the British Food Fortnight (which ends today, and yes, I should have mentioned something about it sooner!) And it's no wonder, for the last few months tractors loaded with potatoes, rapeseed, corn & barley from the nearby fields have been trundling back & forth our little patch of Lincolnshire (leaving the greatest harvest of all - Road Potatoes. This delicious, easy to forage food occurs on sharp bends & T junctions. The keen-eyed forager with a good rucksack can find several kilo's of Marfona & Maris Piper easily. When not scrumping apples for cider). Yesterday was the annual North Lincolnshire Food Festival, so MikeyFox & I went along.

There was an impressive range of locally produced preserves, cakes, breads, fruity booze, chocolates & beer. And samples of plum bread, marmalade's & alcohol that were nibbled & sipped. Well, it would be rude not to. As well as stalls promoting recycling, local produce, reducing food waste & even cookery demonstrations.
The whole event was held at the Pink Pig, a working farm run by the lovely Sally Jackson & her family. There is an adventure trail where you can get up close & personal with the chickens, pigs, goats & turkeys, a cafe where you can relax & enjoy a slice of home made cake or scones with a nice cuppa, and the incomparable farm shop, where you can purchase Pink Pigs own produced sausages & bacon (if you're into such things), home made preserves & salad dressing, vegetables, eggs, cakes & milk, as well as local cheeses, breads, chocolates, beers, cider & all manner of delicious bits & bobs. If you're ever in the area, do pop in and say hello. And have a slice of the coffee cake.

I'll not be blogging for the next week (yes, yes. You all fell over with shock, I know), as I'll be in Barcelona, subjecting the good people of Catalonia to my terrible Spanish, and gawping at architecture without getting in the way too much. Hopefully upon my return I will be slightly less mad, slightly less skinny, and have shaken the unnerving conviction that Martin Freeman is made of kittens.