Potato and Olive Salad

Kim asked for this Morrocain recipe from Claudia Rodin,

500g of new potatos (not old apparently)
3 tlb olive oil
Juice 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp paprica
1/2 tsp cumin
pinch chilli power
salt
bunch of parsley
1/2 spanish onion - chopped
12 olives

Peel and boil the potatos in salted water until tender. Drain and cut into 0.5 or 0.25 fractions. If the mean potato size < 2.5cm then scission is not necessary. In a salad bowl, add oil, lemon juice, paprika, cummin, chilli pepper and salt. While still warm add the potatos and parsley and onion and olives and agitate gently.

Roman Salted Cod stuff

I ate something like this in Rome when I was there. It was amazing but I could never find the recipe back. Google fails because it always wants plums to be plum tomatos. Stupid googel. Anyway girl is bringing back Baccalao from itally for me. This will be cooked next week I think

Salt Cod with Prunes

• Prepared Salt Cod
• Onion
• Celery
• Dried Prunes
• Pine Nuts
• Dried Bread

Thinly chop the onion and the celery, including the leaves. Heat the oil in a skillet, add the onion and celery and sauté quickly. Add the soaked salt cod fillets, the dried prunes and the pine nuts. Let simmer until the oil begins to emulsify, taking care not to stir too often so as not to break up the fillets. (If necessary, add water. The final result should be very liquid.) Adjust for taste and serve over 2-day old, toasted bread slices.

Spicy Plum Sauce

of course! der Speedy!

having been given some of BT's flukey plum largesse it's experiment time for me too.

so to the Googlemobile and instant success. this not being Baking (and therefore Science) I've done what I wanted to one of St Stephanie's recipes. hers is here. cracking stones etc is not for me, I couldn't find the muslin, and I only used 1 kg of plums instead of 1.5kg (saving the rest for something else), so this is my version -


Ingredients:

• 1 kg plums
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 1/4 cups red wine
• 3/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tsp cloves
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1 1/2 tsp seeded mustard
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp chilli
• 1 tsp salt (actually, I forgot about this)
• 1 Tbsp ginger
• 1 Tbsp garlic

Method:

• score the plums into segments. if the flesh comes off easily, well, hooray, otherwise bung them stones and all into a medium saucepan (like I did).
• put everything else into the pan.
• bring to the boil and stir well.
• turn down to a medium simmer and cook until plums collapse, stirring occasionally. this turned out to be over an hour rather than the 20 mins in the recipe. even then, they still had a lot of structure. cooking for an hour doesn't do any harm anyway, and dear god, it smelled fantastic. I stopped once the liquid started to reduce and become syrupy.
• strain liquid into a bowl then tip it back in the pan.
• pick out all the cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon stick and stones. yes, okay, the muslin would have been handy.
• dump the fruit back into the pan.
• whizz with your stick blender. you'll find out if you left a stone in there!
• bring back to the boil and continue to cook till it's as thick as you like. remember this doesn't have to become thick like jam, it's a sauce.
• spoon/pour/funnel into hot, clean jars.
• seal tightly once the steam has stopped rising from the jars. but don't just walk away from them and come back later - they've got to still be very hot.
• leave for a week before using. in theory. not sure if I can follow that instruction.
  

the resulting sauce is thick, gloopy, dark, deep, mysterious and spicy. I can't wait to try this with some good meat, or it will probably go really well with a sharp cheddar too. YUM.

Epic fail!

The jam doesn't seem to have worked. Way too runny, Don't know why. Perhaps I should have let it boil a little longer? I know I added too much vanilla essence (didn't have a pod).
I wonder if it would taste OK with ice cream?

I don't eat ice cream.
Maybe on muesli!

Kitchen adventures

Went to the market, where we found 6 boxes of unwanted plums. They were ok - a bit past it, not sellable, sure, but I've eaten worst things from my fridge. There were three of us, so we got two each.
So I built some jars of plum and apple jam, from here. I'm yet to see if they will set, or even taste good. But the sticky horrid pink jelly I had to peel off the bench fills me with confidence. They will be cold and set by morning.
I also have plans to dry some of them. But I ate one raw, and they're not flavoursome. They might not be tasty dry.
Chutney might get a look in, too.
I had to get rid of some apples, too. I just didn't eat them fast enough. Though I'd have given a medal to any who could have eaten a whole box by themeselves. So the jam was good for about 7 apples, but this apple cake took about 12 more out of the box. I think I'm down to 2 or 3 now.
Sadly, the cake turned out very, very moist...like warm delicious batter. Good crunchy around the outside though. The problem was probably the tin. My tall round tin made everything too dense. Thin and flat, like they suggest, would be great...But I don't think I have one like that.
I also made port-you-geese chicken from this site again, without too much chili so that I could share it. It's not as much fun when it's not burny. But it is still a good chicken.
The pumpkin that was slowly turning to mush on the bench became spiced baked orange for the cous salad, that went beautifully with the chicken. So of course, after all this, I had to have someone over to eat it all! And get rid of some plums!

So, got any good plum chutney recipes?

(stolen somewhat from my blog)