Cassoulet to cry for!

I remember (even if somewhat hazily and distorted) when I was a teenager and became big enough to drink adult disapproved beverages whenever said adults weren't looking, that in those blissful times pretty much anything would do. I mean, if the party was well on it's way but the supplied fuel was running out, there were simply far more important issues than being fussy. If only there was an open 24/7 shop within a crawling distance an expedition would be assembled (usually consisting of a group of growling creatures tied together like a bundled hay to keep them vertical-ish), the last financial resources would be scraped out of the bottom of the pockets very tight indeed (how could any of us fit in those stupid jeans?) and after some sympathetic cheering from a balcony or window the human centipede would sway away and then back bringing a hefty serving of whatever was cheapest.

Youth... Never bloody again!

But then things begin to change. People grow up (or at least get older), mature (some like good wine, some like bad cheddar) and generally there's a fine chance that they start develop something of a taste. It's not something we can direct in any way, it's not anything we can influence, it is more like a gravity, that makes a cloud of dust start to revolve slowly and get closer and closer together until it forms something more substantial. And that's what happens to us as well. From the bottomless abyss of 'whatevah'-ness when it comes to drinking, suddenly we realize we've got preferences. That we prefer full-bodied red to any other and white is a no-go altogether. That whisky is better than brandy. Or other way round. That Żywiec is the best continental lager ever. And so on... Now. What all this have to do with cooking? Very little in fact, but elaborate entry always makes for interesting reading, n'est-ce pas?

Anyway, not all is lost as there is actually a tiny line of thought in this gibberish capable of taking us to cooking. Just as that stormy youth takes us all over the place without any direction, sense or purpose so are our beginner's steps in the kitchen. We try whatever comes our way just because it's new, because there's no context to it and in all our inexperience we simply have no idea what we like and what we wouldn't. It takes years and a few culinary trips around the world in 80 dishes to start appreciate some ingredients more than others, develop a particular liking for some flavours and feel more comfortable with Mediterranean cuisine than Chinese or any other way round. We grow up and mature in our preferences and without realising become specialists in some areas. Me, personally, I've just had a look back at my cook-record and can see clearly one thing - I'm a stew man! (An official, caped outfit and modus operandi yet to be confirmed...) There's simply nothing better than a generous helping of food that seems to outstretch its arms and cuddle you. A good stew is like a hot bath after taking the bus from town in December. It's like a soft and woolly blanket when you can hear outside your window how the gale and rain try to kill everything that's vertical. It's like a smile, like a goose-feather pillow, like hearing 'well done, young man' when you're five, like a knee-long jumper, like anything else in this world that gives you that warm and guilt-free sense of happiness. Is good for you because it makes you feel good and that's all you need to know.

So... if you ever wondered how to get there, here's a recipe that's just as good as Willy Wonka's golden ticket. We're going to need a couple of things and preferably a few hours for all the goodness to creep in. The dish is based on a traditional French cassoulet but with some adjustments for that little touch of originality. We'll need:

- pork (pork belly, Polish boczek, pork ribs, pork tenderloin etc., see details below)
- large onion
- white wine
- a couple of tomatoes
- tinned beans (of choice, but I recommend butter beans or any other large beans)
- red pepper (optional)
- some mushrooms (optional)
- seasoning and herbs (salt, pepper, marjoram, rosemary, bay leaves, allspice)

The choice of meat is crucial as it's going to influence the flavour of the whole dish but at the same time is fully open to personal preferences. I strongly recommend the pork belly/ribs/boczek trinity but if you prefer leaner option there's always tenderloin, shoulder or leg. Avoid loin though (traditional pork chops) as it's likely to end up very dry and there wouldn't be that much flavour to give to the stew. The cooking might take some time, but it's absolutely dead simple. Start traditionally with chopped onion and fry it with a little bit of mild olive oil (not the extra virgin one!). It'd be best if you had a casserole dish or at least a heavy bottom cooking pan so you can just carry on adding things into the same pot. When onions start getting transparent and soft add the rest of the vegetables and cook under cover for about 20 minutes until everything starts to mix together. Then add your meat (in full pieces, we'll be cutting it once it's cooked. Remember to keep the skin on the belly pork as well!), wine and herbs. Do not add salt as you might not need it at all in the end. Cover the pot, reduce fire to minimum and go and read War and Peace. You won't have to come back to the kitchen until she dies in the end.

...several chapters later...

When the smell makes your stomach try to jump out you're permitted to go and have a look. If the meat is cooked, take it out and cool it down on a side. You can loose the skin from the belly pork now and get rid of the bones from the ribs. They've given your stew all their flavours by now and are free to go. The rest of the meat cut in sizeable bits and return to the stew. Time to prepare boczek. You can find it in supermarkets but if not, use pancetta. Boczek is simply a belly pork that's cured and smoked and once you've tried it once you'll never stop salivating over it. Ever.

Ever.

The best way to handle it for this recipe is to chop or dice it very finely (you'll only need a couple of handfuls) and pre-fry in a frying pan until it's crispy. Add to the stew with all the fat that melted out. The boczek is very salty itself so that's why you need to be very careful about adding any so wait with that until you're ready to serve. At this point add also the beans and carry on cooking until your neighbours come knocking on your door with spoons and soup bowls ready. Let them have some only if they've always been very nice to you. But very nice. I mean, proper, very nice. And if they ever ask you for a recipe, tell them, that it was revealed to you by an very old French lady from just outside Toulouse on her deathbed and that a terrible curse would fall upon your head if you'd ever reveal her secret to anyone. They'll fall for it, promise.

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!

the fish soup a’plenty (but not for lazy people)

Generally, cooking is about stealing. Which, of course, doesn’t mean you should storm out of your local grocery store with pockets filled with spuds and squashed tomatoes. What it means is that recipes are pretty much copyright free. And I’m not referring to Jamie Oliver’s books on the Internet which, of that I’m certain, he personally ‘leaks’ himself. I’m talking about ideas for food that seem to roam free the arch-egalitarian cuisine-sphere. 

Not so long ago I’ve stolen the idea for a fish stew from a certain cookbook. Yes, I do own said cookbook and I did pay money for it. Still, I was performing a full bodied, two bollocked, and cold blooded, adjective-filled-with theft. And that’s because I’ve read the recipe, cooked the dish and claimed the credit for it.

I’m a very naughty boy indeed.

Let me show you how bad I was on an example. Imagine, I bought a new album of (insert-name-of-your-favourite-artist-here), made a copy and presented it to you as my own work. The fact that I’ve done some minor alterations to the artwork on the cover using a marker pen and not very accurate idea of how moustache should look like, would hardly let me defend my case. Although some could find it mildly amusing it’d be generally hard to imagine I could successfully fool anyone with IQ higher than an average MP. And even they don’t exist in real life, only on TV. Anyway… here I am, with a Portuguese fish stew on a plate claiming it my own. And why would I get away with it?

Because I’m right, that’s why. Because there’s RIAA’s way and there’s Laibach way. And when Laibach recorded Let it Be album they never called any of the The Beatles songs on it ‘cover version’, they called it an original work of art. And I’m a devoted Laibach fan.

It’s exactly same story here. You may follow a recipe like Tony followed His (Texan) Master’s Voice but whatever you cook will always end up just a little bit different, than the same dish cooked but someone else. Or by you but on a colder day. For anyone with enough of culinary imagination for putting some dried tea leaves in a cup of hot water there is simply no way of not adding some personal touches or, over a time, complete makeovers. And especially in a case of a recipe that seems to be incredibly similar whether it’s Portuguese fish stew or Russian fish soup – uha, it’s simply impossible that anyone could ever claim any copyrights. And here we are – the closest to communism on Earth than a man has been since the Garden of Eden. And therefore I command you to steal my recipe, cook the dish and when serve to your friends or family simply just claim all the credits. You’ve got an absolute right to do so!

Here it is:

- carrots (1-3, depending on amount)

- fennel (1-2, depending on size)

- large onion

- leek

- quarter of a celeriac (grated) or two celery sticks

- big parsnip (grated)

- at least one red pepper

- tomatoes (tinned or fresh)

- potatoes

- fresh parsley, coriander

- garlic

- fresh chillies (as hot as you prefer)

- fish (see below)

- fish stock, oyster sauce

- salt, pepper, bay leaves, paprika, cayenne (can replace fresh chillies)

- white wine (optional)

As with all one pot dishes around the world this one allows a fair amount of freedom. The choice of fish is mainly up to you, same as whether to use any seafood or not. Want to use both? Here’s my blessing, child. For a start I’d recommend an easy option. Go for frozen. You definitely want some white, fleshy fish, so nice haddock and cod are perfect. Add some salmon (but not too much, salmon’s got quite a lot of fat and may become overpowering while what we’re looking for is a mixture of ingredients that would complement each other), maybe tuna. I even used tinned once pouring all the brine in as well and it worked just as nicely. The rule of thumb says that you should have at least three different kinds of fish each representing different flavour. And remember not to go over the top with the amount. We’ve got a lot of other ingredients so you’re most likely to end up with enough for the next day as well.

So… we start like 80% recipes in the world, from dicing onion. Can be finely, can be coarse, it’s a matter of taste and overall presentation in the end. Olive oil, deepish pan, cover and we move to the peppers. Wash, cut, remove seeds, chop (here small is better as we leave the skin on) and add to onions. Next goes fennel (wash, chop, add) and carrots (peel, slice, add). Let everything cook under a cover until you see that everything goes soft. Then goes the leek (wash, slice, etc) and cook again for about 5 minutes. After that is time to change the guns for the artillery. Put everything in a deep hob and pour some liquids. Now this will be either dry white wine, dry white wine and water or just water. Wine adds to the cot but even more to the flavour. As for the amount, let’s say that the veg at the bottom account for about 0.3-0.25 of the whole dish. Then we add the grated parsnips and celeriac, tomatoes and cubed potatoes. Now, if you’ve decided to be brave and go for fresh pomme d’oro, you need to do this: drop them in boiling water for about five minutes, cool down and peel the skin of. Squeeze to get rid of the wet bits (be careful here, it’s going to squirt like on an Asian porn movie), and quickly fry a bit with some olive oil. You should get a nice, thick pulp in no time. Add to the soup. Start seasoning (use 4-5 bay leaves) according to taste, but be really generous with paprika. You want red. Red is good. Be bold with fish stock and modest with the oyster sauce. The first one is most likely to be not very concentrated, the latter, very much so. Now, the reason why we must use them is that the fish goes in at the very end and without flavouring before we’d just simply end up with vegetable bullion with bits of fish swimming rather dully in it. Once finished with all that, have a little break until the potatoes re cooked soft. When that happens, simply add the cubed fish, stir well, kill the fire, cover and after five minutes then garnish with fresh herbs and you’re ready to shine in front of whoever you’ve invited for a dinner.

Just remember to cook it well before your guests arrive. The whole thing may easily take up to three hours.

hurry-me-not Lecso for hungry Hungarian Huns

So... when you're riding through Panonian plains, as you do, waving around your sabre and grooming your mustache it's perfectly reasonable to grow some peppers on the way.

Apparently.

Makes no sense? Well, that's Hungarian cuisine for you :) And one of it's best creations ever is lecso, a dish as simple as Jeremy Clarkson's cultural needs and at the same time as delicious as Scarlett Johansson in the opening sequence of Lost in Translation. Just more spicy. And red.
Amazingly short list of ingredients consists of:

- peppers (red or yellow, although red give the dish consistency of colour)
- onions
- tomatoes
- sausage
- olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika

There are recipes which would list lard or bacon as well, but it's much better not to go too rich here so I'm going to leave it out of the equation.Start with chopping (finely) the onions and peppers (seeds've got to go!). Pour some olive oil in a deep frying pan or wide-ish cooking pan and add the onions and peppers. put on a small fire, cover and take a break. DO NOT perform breaks a la Keith Floyd or you're not gonna last long enough to see the onions going soft! But if you're still sober then let's prepare the rest of the ingredients. Tomatoes - easy. If you can be bothered then get some fresh ones, put them in some boiling water for about 3 min, and cool down. Now the skin should peel easily and if you squeeze them you'd be also able to get rid of the seeds. Then you can chop them a bit and add to the pan.  But if, on the other hand, you cannot be bothered then just add some canned ones. And again, let it cook while, at the same time, you can prepare the last ingredient - ze sausage. Here's a little twist in the tale though. Forget your normal supermarket or even butcher's sausages as they simply won't do.  What you need is a proper smoked and cured stuff like Polish Wiejska (vee-ei-ska) which you can get at the deli counter in some supermarkets. It's pure meat with no fat and bloody delicious as well. It's necessary though to remove skin before slicing. Sausage needs to be cut into 0.5-1 cm thick half- or even quarter-slices and then just added to the veg in the pan. Once all members of the Lecso family are cuddling together on a low heat we add a big serving of sweet red paprika (spice and seasoning section in any supermarket) a little bit of salt and pepper and if you like it spicy some cayenne pepper or Tabasco sauce to your liking. I'd recommend a generous handful of marjoram as well (again, supermarkets) which is not an orthodox ingredient here, but it just goes perfectly well together. And that's pretty much it. Now you can cook it as long as you wish but no shorter than an hour. Serve with rice and send me compliments :)