The greens make the meal

I bumped into one of my regular readers at Moore Wilson this week & she recommends the kefte tagine with eggs.  Has anyone tried the others?  What's your favourite to date?  This week was a Spanish influenced tagine of chickpeas & chorizo.  You could use merguez sausages or leave them out altogether & just do the chickpeas.
This is another to do on the stovetop.  In a casserole, saute 2 red onions, cut in half lengthways, halved crossways, & sliced with the grain.  Sounds complicated I know but the dish is simple & you can see in the picture that the lengths of onion look pretty.  Add finely chopped garlic & soften down.  Add one chorizo sliced on the diagonal.  For Takanini residents - they used to have the best chorizo at the Takanini Foodtown deli counter.  Add bay leaves & thyme then toss through a tin of chickpeas & 2 tsp Spanish smoked paprika.  Cover & simmer 10-15 minutes.  Add sage leaves & lemon juice.  Serving suggestions include with Turkish bread & yogurt, or as a side dish with grilled meat.  I served mine with one of these leafy salads.  In case you were wondering, you can eat radish leaves too.
On Sunday I had a hankering to do petit pois a la Francaise and I had a Kipdale chicken in the freezer for a rainy day.  The upshot was a French style roast chicken.  Make tarragon butter by mixing 50g butter, 1 tbsp wholegrain Dijon mustard, 2 tbsp chopped French tarragon, grated zest of a lemon & 2 cloves crushed garlic.  Put half the zested lemon & a tsp of the tarragon butter with some extra tarragon leaves inside the cavity.  Put half the rest of the butter between the skin & the chicken.  This gets messy but is the best thing to do with chicken.  My flatmate in London 30 years ago who was a chef taught me how to do this with the Christmas turkey.  Tuck in the wings & tie the legs together around the parson's nose then truss around the bird to secure the wings against the breast.  Rub the rest of the butter on the top of the chicken.  This will burn a bit but don't worry about that.
Put the chicken in a roasting dish with members of the onion family - 8 baby leeks, 8 spring onions, 4 red onions halved, 8 whole shallots, 2 heads of garlic beheaded a third of the way down and a bunch of baby carrots.  Add 1/2 cup white wine & 1 cup chicken stock.  Roast for 70-80 minutes at 200.  You could make a gravy with the stock & a little creme fraiche at the end.  I just reduced it down. 
To make the peas, halve a small lettuce such as baby cos or little gem & lay in the bottom of a pan.  Add six chopped spring onions, 1 tbsp parsley, a knob of butter, 4 tbsp water (or chicken stock because you got some out of the freezer for the chicken & didn't use it all), and lots of peas.  Add a pinch of sugar.  You can add 2 baby chopped carrots if you have them.  Cover tightly & simmer about 15 minutes, less if you are using frozen peas.  This sounds odd but trust me.  I went to all the trouble above because I wanted to eat this.  Julia Child calls this dish the glory of pea cookery and suggests it should be served as a separate course and eaten with a spoon. She suggests serving the peas with a chilled white wine that's not too dry, or a chilled rose.
Roast chicken for two can be a bit daunting but made good use of our leftovers with a delicious chicken salad.  I did the iceberg lettuce & verjuice aoli salad just adding the shredded cold chicken. And don't forget to make up some more chicken stock.
This week we had Angie O's walnut pesto tossed through spaghetti.  That was delicious. And no effort.
 Forget everything I ever said about Chinese greens.  I have a new method and this is amazing.  It is my version of Allan Fong's Chinese greens.  I just looked him up & he has a website!  Can you believe it - and it has the recipe.  Do it Allan's way or do it mine.  In a pan lightly saute thinly slivered or julienned garlic, ginger & baby carrots.  Chop a bunch of greens - I used baby pak choy & choy sum - on the diagonal & toss into the pan.  Pour in a good slug of gin & cook until the leaves are wilted then pour on some oyster sauce.  I added baby pea pods from the garden & blanched asparagus because it needed to be eaten.  I urge you to try this.  Like the peas, you will plan a whole meal around this dish.

Iberian Delights

I have enjoyed Portuguese food ever since Leonie & I visited back in...1982? I've recently been inspired by Spanish food and at least two of you have visited this year. Last week I bought a magazine - Gourmet Traveller - with a Spanish theme & this is the basis for this blog. In addition I have had a birthday & received a delightful fifties style apron which I think provided additional inspiration.

Let's start with Alfajores Payes. As soon as I saw these I had to have them. I immediately discovered that you needed to cook the condensed milk for 3 hours & cool for a similar time but by that time I was too involved. I was up until after 11.00 on Sunday night chocolate coating one half and up at 6.00 doing the other side before work. I took them in for my team on Monday and had great feedback which I will share with you. They are very rich - make them smaller. Some participants felt the biscuits were so delicious the chocolate was a distraction. If you think that, then make a version you just dust with icing sugar.

Then there is the Portuguese custard tart. Phoebe gave me Ladies a Plate - Second Helping for my birthday & there was a recipe. Just like a bought one, I thought. Phoebe's comment: don't roll the pastry too thin, which I think we did because we had 30 pastry cases & only enough custard for 24. The recipe suggested you would get 20.

Back to the magazine. We had Calasparra rice with chicken & chorizo for dinner this evening. This was excellent. Make sure you brown the skin well at the start & we did find the rice took a little longer to cook than suggested. Be patient. If you don't have a paella pan use a wide shallow frying pan - not too heavy bottomed.

The apron made me do it - the custard tarts left me with 4 egg whites so I dipped into Edmond's & rediscovered one of my mother's old favourites. I suspect she made it to use up egg whites too. Remember Lemon souffle, which she used to call Lemon Snow. Peter called it Lemon Fluff & Phoebe is calling it Lemon Flurry. Whatever the name, it is delicious. Very refreshing and the perfect vehicle for stray egg whites on a summer evening.

One last thought. We had a picnic at one of our favourite spots, Percy's Reserve. On the way home we were taking a turn in the rose gardens & came upon two young (18-20) women wearing aprons similar to mine, sitting on an elegant rug, tucking into the most amazing looking sponge cake, which appeared to be decorated with every kind of gummy sweet known to humankind. Our picnic wasn't nearly so inspired - but it was good all the same.