mighty mash

The thing is... We all so love to show off. I mean, there's no deeper dungeons of depression and self-misery than a man without admirers. Think of a specimen of patheticness from Sevres and then add some. It's like listening to Portishead while burying all your relatives on a hangover. A depth three storeys beneath Mariana Trench's bottom.

Proper ugly.

And that's why it is so easy just to get carried away. To start bidding higher and higher with recipes more sophisticated and elaborate than Jonathan Ross' attempt to say 'sorry, I am an overpaid git who thinks that can get away with anything'. 

Which is fine by me.

But there are moments when it could just make sense to share some tips on absolute basics as well. 

When I started this blog it all came down to an easy way of sharing recipes with my friends who are just as much interrested in showing off about their cooking skills as I am myself. But then again, since you never know with the Internet, there is a remote chance that one day a completely lost reader that I do not know personally finds this little place and decide to spend a few minutes of his/her invaluable time to read what we're on about. And maybe that person, like my best friend (hi, Kuba!), doesn't even know that he/she can cook really well because they've never really tried since all the recipes they come across seem to be so damn complicated. And that's why I decided to throw in from time to time not as much a recipe as a little cooking help, advice, collection of tips on how to start with something easy. With a little luck, my dear colleagues will follow. And so today I'm going to start with one of the most substantial things in the whole of European food culture - mashed potatoes. And how to make it the best in the world without as much as breaking sweat.

So, obviously you need potatoes and for best result the right ones. If you go to a little high street shop just ask which ones would be best. Your local grocer will surely take a great pride in knowing his/her trade and you simply can't go wrong when following such an advice. But if you shop in supermarkets then simply read labels. There should be an explanation as to which types of potatoes are best for what. When it comes to mash, avoid the huge ones (they're for baking) and little ones (they're meant to be cooked whole or in chunks). Red ones are most likely what you're looking for.

Once you've got them, to cook you simply need to peel them remembering to cut out all the different spots you can come across beneath the skin. Depending on size it's good to halve them or even cut in smaller bits. Never let then dry and even if you peel them to be cooked later always make sure they're kept in some cold water. When your spuds are naked, wash and rinse in cold water and for cooking make sure there's always enough water to cover them. Ideally you'll have 1-2 centimetres of water above potatoes. Always cook in salted water even if your mum never used to do it that way. It may be only one or two teaspoons of salt but the difference in flavour is simply unbeatable. And then you simply boil them until soft. Irecommend trying them with knife. If the blade comes in and you can feel very little resistance, then you know the time has come. Now, here's a point when I'm going to ask you to perform some actions you'd probably never seen to be done when preparing mash. Because you not only need to drain your potatoes but dry them as well. There are two ways of doing that. You can either drain them in a colander and then return to your cooking pot or put the cover on leaving a little gap on one side and drain the potatoes that way (just remember to use some oven gloves!). Then return the pot on the fire (small to medium) and keep going for about a minute or two, shaking the pot vigourously until you can see that the potatoes are dry and start breaking. That bit is absolutely essential if you want to end up with a mash that's fluffy and light otherwise everything would be muddy and soggy.

Time to mash.

Take as much of it as you need. Now, you might have heard from different sources that little lumps in a mash are OK. That they even should be there. That it's a real secret of the trade and that's what REAL proffesionals do. So please, let me explain. These are exactly the same kind of people who would tell you that your newly fitted wall socket SHOULD be hanging on bare wires. That your new front left tire SHOULD be bigger than the right one to compensate a natural tendency of your car to pull a bit to the left while driving. And that nothing else could be done with it, actually and it's a known fact among people WHO KNOW. 

You get the idea, I suppose. 

So, simply as that. Mash equals smooth. No discussion. And once it is smooth we can proceed. 

Put the fire back on (again, not too big) and add an honest knob of butter and a few splashes of milk (although not-so-guilt-free double cream would be much superior) and seasoning. That can consist of little bit of Maggi, some rosemary, thyme, marjoram, parsley. Experimenting is always welcome. Stir everything patiently and if everything went right you should end up with something that looks and behaves like a proper bread dough.

Done.

To serve you can always sprinkle some fresh chopped parsley on top as well.

And if you ever want to try something a little bit dofferent, you can always do your mash without any bells or whistles. Just boil your potatoes as above, mash them and serve straight. Without adding any milk, butter, herbs or extra seasoning. It may sound a bit rudimentary but as for a flavour you might be in for a surprise!

Fabadas

Right! Here is a dish I did for the first time last night. I humbly served it up to this blogs founder and his good lady wife. It was met with approval: what greater accolade do I need! It is my attempt at a traditional Asturian (Northern Spanish Region) dish which I gorged myself on a few years ago.

We went to Asturias for a summer holiday and stayed at a lovely B n B right on the coast. On the first night we ate in the B n B's restaurant, ordering Fabadas for two as we had read that this was a particularly typical dish. We were presented with a large bowl of very rich, hearty stew of pork, large beans, chorizo, etc. that left us little room for pudding. Over the week we were all but adopted by the lovely family who ran the place. They normally catered for Spanish tourists, so we stuck out a bit, but I speak fluent Spanish so we made inroads fast. On the last night we decided to order Fabadas again as our farewell meal. Our now doting hosts shortly brought to the table - with some pride - an enormous tureen filled to the brim with the same gorgeous fare as on our first night. In some confusion I explained we'd only ordered for two to which we were given the smiling response 'Yes, no problem: eat!' Well, suffice to say we did our best, but we probably tried a bit too hard to avoid seeming ungrateful. We did eat most of it: we did not sleep well! What wouldn't I have done for a mint tea that night?!
Nevertheless, I cherish the memory of this wonderful dish and was pleasantly surprised by how close to the original flavour this concoction comes.

Ingredients (for 4)

1lb and a half / 700g of pork belly
1/4lb / 250g of lardons
3 inch length of chorizo diced into medium-sized lumps
2 or 3 inch slice of black Pudding chopped into medium-sized lumps
Tin of butter beans
Tin of flageolet beans
2 Onions roughly chopped
4 or 5 cloves of garlic chopped chopped into two or three pieces
White wine
1/2 to one teaspoons of smoked paprika
A few saffron strands
Salt and pepper
3 bay leaves
Handful of Rosemary
Handful of Thyme
Handful of Parsley

Method

Heat a little olive oil in a large, heavy-based pan and fry off the garlic and onion until soft. Meanwhile drain and thoroughly rinse the beans, leaving them aside in the sieve. Stick the slab of pork belly, the chorizo and the lardons in the pan and cover 3/4 of the ingredients with freshly boiled water and a very generous slosh of white wine. Bring to the boil and then drop the heat to a simmer. Add the saffron, paprika, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, and salt and pepper and leave to cook, covered, for 1 and 1/2 hours.
Give it all a good stir and add the beans and the black pudding. Top up the liquid with another generous slug of wine and continue to simmer uncovered for another 1/2 an hour or so. You want to end up with enough liquid that you are ladling a thick stew-like broth into your bowls, so guage the liquid and the amount to reduce it by accordingly. Before serving, remove the pork belly and tear or cut the meat  and bone into more manageable chunks so that everyone gets a look-in. 
Serve in bowls with some nice bread and a sprinkle of parsley over the top.

Tips

This is one of those dishes that will taste even better if you cook it the day before, allowing the flavours to steep; but then you've got the problem of resisting that gorgeous rich aroma....
Fabadas is so named because of the large beans used in the stew, called fabes. So, if you can find fabes use them instead of the butter and flageolet beans.
Black pudding doesn't exist in Spain. They have their own blood sausage called morcilla. I think that morcilla tastes much better, so again use this if you can lay your hands on it.
Equally, get the very best, smoky chorizo you can find. It is the chorizo, along with the paprika, that imparts much of the richness and smokiness that characterises the dish; so don't skrimp!
If you're going really authentic, lardons are the English equivalent of 'tocino' (bacon cut 'the wrong way' so that you get a lot of fat); but tocino does taste a bit richer in my opinion.
I didn't bother but chucking in a ham bone with some meat still hanging off it would work very well and can be found in a traditional fabadas stew.
This last tip is just a hunch that I will try some time, but cider is another famous product of the Asturias region. I reckon that replacing the wine with cider would be very effective indeed. If anyone out there tries it this way, please let me know!

Drink

I would either go for cider, due to the Asturias factor. Asturian cider is available from Booths in the UK! It's a sparkling version so you don't need to worry about the messy pouring technique: it is traditionally poured into the glass from a great height in order to oxygenate it (it really does make a difference; I tried it both ways). Otherwise I would recommend one of Sheppy's bottled dry ciders or Dunkerton's Black Fox, the latter having a lovely smoky flavour of its own.

For wine I would go for a medium-heavy red such as Marques de Riscal Rioja or the Chilean Cousino Macul Merlot. If you want to bring out the earthier tones of the dish go for a French Bourgogne Pinot Noir (not New World as it's a completely different animal). If you want something tighter to offset the fattiness then how about a Cabernet-Franc? Not so easy to find, but it could make a good partner.

Finally, on the line of the fattiness in the dish, you do have the option of a white sparkler. Cava is obviously a serious consideration, but champagne would be a decadent and unconventional accompaniment. For somewhere in between, try the New Zealand Pelorus - the vintage Chardonnay-Pinot Noir (silver label) rather than the non-vintage Chardonnay. 

Whistle while you work!

Album 'Ciudad de las Ideas' by Vicente Amigo
Anything by Paco di Lucia, Al di Meola, and John McClaughlin (amazing!)
Album 'Al Amanecer' by Jose Merce
Concierto de Aranjuez. Either the Narciso Yepes or Paco di Lucia versions.

The traditional music of Asturias is a sort of Celtic folk, but I would go for the above any day!