Spice on the side

Tags

blokes cooking, Chillies, Chutney, paprika, Spicy, Tomatoes

What to do with 3lb of tomatoes in varying stages of ripeness, colour and variety?

Simple, make some chutney.

For this I just took all the tomatoes from our local award-winning community garden, roughly chopped them and placed them in a pot. I then smashed four large garlic cloves, three red onions, finely chopped a couple of inches of ginger, a whole chilli (seeds and all), 300g of demarera sugar, a teaspoon of paprika (spice of the Gods) and 200ml of red wine vinegar. Oh, and a generous dash of port for good measure.

Making the chutney couldn’t be easier. Simmer all of the ingredients together in the pot for an hour or so, then turn the heat on full blast for another 20 minutes.

The cooking out of the liquid in the tomatoes, onions, vinegar and port should  reduce the whole thing down to one third of the quantity you started with, and the sugar makes for a great thickener.

Allow this to cool, preferably for a couple of hours, and store in an air-tight jar. Serve with cheese, crusty bread and a rough red wine.

Mustn’t crumble

Tags

amateur foodies, Apple crumble, blokes cooking, Custard, Fruit crumble, Plum crumble, Pudding, Sugar

After last year’s wash-out of a summer, where it rained every day, and half of England ended up under water, it’s quite a relief to see our apple and plum trees bearing such healthy fruit this year.

Our slightly excitable Bramley apple tree

While I could never be considered for the WI (1. I wasn’t born there and 2. it would be insulting to Richards, Holding, Marshall etc). and my rendition of ‘Jerusalem’ sounds like Tarzan on fire, I have put my skills to making jam. Lots of jam. Too much jam. Does anyone want any? I’m giving it away.

However, one quintessentially English dessert is in the offing using our fine harvest this Indian Summer – fruit crumble. People on a diet – look away now.

Crumble mix

For my simple crumble, take three parts flour, two parts sugar (preferably light demerara, though caster or at a push, granulated will do) and one and half parts fat (preferably butter, though vegans might go for something like Stork (it doesn’t call itself margarine any more). using light fingers, rub them together for about 10 minutes until you get something like breadcrumbs. Set aside.

You can add a generous spoonful of porridge oats as well should you wish.

Apple crumble

For my apple crumble, you need about six decent-sized Bramley apples (or similar). ‘Decent-sized’ would mean you could comfortably hold one in your hand, but would struggle with two. Luckily, we have a tree in our garden that can provide for us quite handsomely.

Peel the apples, and chop into 3cm chunks. Lay them in your dish, and sprinkle about one and a half to two tablespoons of light muscovado sugar (Bramley apples are quite… tart) and a sprinkle of a level teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Mix the apples, sugar and cinnamon together and spread evenly across the dish. Evenly distribute the crumble mixture over the top to a depth of about 3cm, and place in the oven at 220°C (around 425°F, gas mark 7) for about 35-40 minutes.

Plum crumble

It’s pretty much the same as the apple crumble filling using sugar and cinnamon, except use around 600g (about 30) plums. You can for this one, top it up with a wee drop of Kirsch or some grated lemon rind.

Better still, make a combined apple and plum crumble.

Custard

Meanwhile, the ideal accompaniment for the crumble is custard. Not simple cream – custard.

Take three egg yolks, about 10g of caster sugar for every egg yolk, and a cut-open, a de-seeded vanilla pod (vanilla essence will do – just) and a pint or so of milk, single cream or double cream – depending on how rich you want your custard.

Slowly heat the milk/cream with the vanilla pod for about 15 minutes. At the same time, mix the yolks and sugar until you hit a pale yellow consistency. Pour the infused milk/cream over the egg yolk/sugar mixture, being careful not to have the milk/cream too hot or you risk turning the eggs into scrambled eggs.

Mix thoroughly and place back on the low to medium heat, stirring all the time. The milk/cream will thicken to your required consistency. Remove the pod and set aside for another day. There is probably enough flavour in the pod for another go at a later date.

If you have a really sweet tooth, make a more caramel-like custard using dark muscovado sugar instead of caster sugar.

Serving suggestion: Don’t have a heavy main course first.

Baked beans…

Tags

amateur foodies, Baked beans, Balsamic vinegar, blokes cooking, paprika, Worcestershire sauce

Short one this one.

Baked beans – fantastic food stuff. Cheap(ish), versatile, healthy(ish), and the cornerstone of an entire fart-based gag subculture.

However, I’ve yet to come across any brands of baked beans – they’re all made in some same baked bean megafactory, aren’t they? – which I find satisfying on their own. So, whatever it is I’m having baked beans with, I’ll always – ALWAYS – dowse them in paprika (Spice of the Gods), a couple of glugs of balsamic vinegar, a couple of glugs of Worcestershire sauce, and some white pepper.

That’s all.

Baked beans in Tommy sauce

Banoffee pie – local hero

Tags

amateur foodies, bananas, banoffee, biscuit base, blokes cooking, cream, dessert, toffee

Having devoured best part of three deer’s legs (see previous blog), we made sure we had room for some dessert. I hadn’t made this local dish for quite a while, though thankfully it was quite a bit easier than I remembered from previous efforts. When I say ‘local’, I’m referring to Jevington, East Sussex’s finest, Banoffee Pie.

There was a brouhaha which kicked up around 20 years ago when Nigel Mackenzie, inventor of the dish, went to court and managed to extract an apology from Marks & Spencer after they labelled their banoffee pie as ‘American’ – simply because, they said, it fitted in with their range of desserts.

In 1994, Mackenzie, who regretted not patenting the dish, was reported to have offered anyone £10,000 if they could prove that they had made this dessert to his recipe before 1971. It is now widely accepted that banoffee pie as we know it was invented at the Hungry Monk, Jevington, near Eastbourne.

The blue plaque outside the Hungry Monk in Jevington, birthplace of banoffi / banoffee pie

So, to my take on it. If you search t’interweb for an authentic banoffe pie, you’ll find that the base is made of shortcut pastry. So I made one with a biscuit base. For this, I extracted half a packet of digestive biscuits (about 250g) wrapped them in clingfilm so that nothing could escape, and beat the living bejaysus out of them with a rolling pin. I could have used a food processor, which would have been much quicker and more efficient. But I didn’t.

In a wide frying pan, take a hefty lump of butter, (about 100-120g), and melt slowly, toss in the fine biscuit crumbs. Make sure they’re coated all over in the butter. Lightly warm for about five minutes to get a certain butter-cooked-digestive smell; careful it doesn’t burn. Take the crumbs and spread them around the base of the dish you intend to serve the pie in, and press them firmly and evenly. I used a round dish around 25cm across and 5cm deep. The quantity of crumbs there gave a depth of about 1cm.

Cover with foil and place this in the fridge.

Meanwhile – and this is where you have to be careful – take two tins of condensed milk and place them in some gently simmering water for about three hours, making sure the tins are cover in water. Do not pierce the tins first, and make sure you keep an eye on the water as, if it boils dry, you risk turning the tins into potential toffee bombs, ruining your saucepan, your kitchen, and if you’re really unlucky, you.

For the next bit, imagine that three hours have passed by…

Take the tins off the heat, and drain the water from the saucepan. Replace this with cold water as you want the condensed milk, which is now toffee, to cool down.

One unexploded toffee bomb

Open the tins and pour the toffee into a bowl, together with two large (or three medium sized) finely chopped ripe bananas. Mix all these together and pour the gloopy banana/toffee mixture over the now-refrigerated biscuit base, evening it out as you go. Cover with foil again and place this back in the fridge for another hour or so.

Pour a 600ml pot of double cream into a bowl. The original recipe calls for some coffee to be added, which I duly did, along with a capful of not-too-high quality brandy. Whisk this until it goes stiff.

Put the whisked cream on top of the banoffee layer, smooth out and, where the original calls for grated chocolate over the top, I evenly sprinkled some tiramisu-flavoured chocolate powder to finish off.

What was a whole Banoffee pie, shortly before Ed & Roz left…

Three refrigerated hours later, one big banoffee pie was served. I shudder to think of the fat and calorie content, but as our guests Ed & Roz pointed out, and I humbly repeat now, it was rather gorgeous.

Deer not dear

Tags

amateur foodies, blokes cooking, Brandy, paprika, Red wine, Slow cooker, Venison shanks

I was in London on Saturday, knowing we had our good friends Ed & Roz from the middle of Nowhereshire around for supper on Sunday evening. I made a beeline for Borough Market near London Bridge Station with the intention of spending a morning looking for and buying some excellent (if slightly more expensive than usual) ingredients. Sadly, at Borough Market, your main activity is pushing past people who’ve stopped slap-bang in the middle of the world’s busiest gangways to take photographs of people fililng their faces slap-bang in the middle of the world’s busiest gangways.

Anyway, upon finding my intended meat-selling chap – don’t ask me his name, I just know where he is – I thought for a while about what to buy. Eventually – and it was eventually, having considered boar, rabbit and hare – I settled on venison shanks. I asked for four, got them weighed, and realised I only needed two. So I bought three.

Venison may sound like a bit of a luxury meat, and is down the pecking order in terms of popularity in the UK, but regarding cost, it’s not that much more than lamb. And I rather like eating lamb. A lot. I’d rather cook too much, knowing we can have leftovers – venison curry, venison vol-au-vents, venison sandwiches – for the next few days, than not enough. It wasn’t until I did my calculations later that I realised I’d bought about 5 1/2 pounds of venison shanks. Our freezer has conked out – so I was going to be cooking the lot.

We got home later on Saturday, and I contemplated what to do with the uncooked deer legs. Venison is a strong-flavoured, robust meat, It can cope with a strong sauce or marinade to cook in or accompany it. A not uncommon ingredient to accompany them is redcurrants; another method was cooking them in a simple red wine stock. The butcher suggested cooking it in port. This was a fine idea, though seeing as the only bottle of port we have is a decent Calem Colheita from 1990 (a gift from Daisy’s dad, and needs opening soon, really), I thought I’d have to think again. I settled on marinading the meat overnight in a concoction which was half-inspired by the butcher’s suggestion, and half made up on the hoof.

Before: 2.5kg of venison shanks, marinading in booze and spices

I took a 175ml glass of not-too-high quality red wine, and added a couple of capfuls of not-too-high quality brandy, two tablespoons of light soy sauce, two tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, and a generous teaspoon of smoked paprika (Spice of the Gods). Salt and pepper aren’t really needed. Pierce the meat, and smother it generously with he marinade, and let them get to know each other in the fridge overnight.

Fast forward to Sunday morning, and I got the slow cooker out – a damn fine piece of kitchen machinery. Roughly chop an onion, smash a couple of cloves of garlic and place them in the pot. Take the shanks out of the marinade and, in a pan of hot butter, sear the outside to seal them. Place them in the slow cooker, pour the marinade in with a twig of rosemary (thyme will do) and cook on ‘high’ setting for about an hour or so, before changing to ‘slow’ settting for further eight hours. ‘Baste’ the meat in the sauce every couple of hours.

With two hours to go, I decanted a bottle of extremely fine 2007 Brunello di Montalcino, a noted favourite of Ed’s from the Tuscany wine region.

With an hour to go, I prepared roast potatoes, roast sweet potatoes and, just before serving, some green beans.

After: 2.5kg of venison shanks after spending Sunday in the slow cooker

The only thing left to do after the shanks have been cooked is to carefully take them out – I say ‘carefully’ as the bone will fall away from the meat – and deposit the juice / sauce in a wide pan with some butter and flour and stir into a thicker gravy.

The decanted Brunello di Montalcino was duly served, and proved an excellent accompaniment to the strong flavours of the venison.

A fine bottle of wine – with minutes to live

Footnote: Upon serving Roz (I hadn’t let them know what they were having until they got here), I discovered venison wasn’t exactly top of her list of favourite meats. I was very proud to be told after our vast repast that this had all consequently changed for the better.

Bean away…

Tags

amateur foodies, blokes cooking, Chilli beans, Mash, paprika, Pastry, pork and bean pie, Spicy

What do you mean – where have I been?

I’ve been working, sleeping, eating, tearing out hair watching football – you know… stuff. Anyhoo, I’m back, after a foodie-scribbling ‘sabbatical’ of nearly five months. No, I’m not Chris Huhne.

Three parts pie, one part ex-pie.

So there I was wandering through a food market yesterday and (it’s always a mistake to do this when you haven’t eaten yet) saw a ‘pork and bean pie’ for sale. Scrummy though it looked, and hungry though I was, rather than buying it, I decided to make one. No offence intended Mr Pie Seller.

Pretty simple this one. It’s basically a pork and bean stew in a pastry encasing.

Take about a pound to a pound and a half of pork – thin steaks will do – and cut them into strips about 2cm wide, fry them enough to brown them in a tad of oil. Remove the pork and, in the same oil, fry some chopped chorizo for a couple of minutes, then add chopped onion and, once the onion has softened, some smashed garlic. Flavour with salt, pepper, paprika (Spice of the Gods) and a chopped chilli / half teaspoon chill powder.  Add a couple of cans of tomatoes.

On the tomatoes front, you can do what I did which, on realising I only had one can rather than two (oops!), was to take the sauce from the leftover jalfrezi I’d cooked the night before, and toss that in. So with that in mind, it doesn’t hurt if you add a smidge of cumin, coriander and/or fenugreek to all this.

Add about a pint of water, and get the sauce bubbling for a minute, then return the browned pork to the pan, stir it all in, place the lid on, and reduce the heat to a very gentle simmer for about an hour. Maybe add some oregano, thyme and sage.

Pastry is something I’m both unimaginative with and not very good at. I took the basic recipe of two parts plain flour to one part fat. I used something called ‘Best for Baking’ in this instance because, I’m told, you can’t buy margarine in the UK. I could have used butter, as it may well have come out nicer, but I didn’t.

I also added a pinch of salt, some pepper and a half-teaspoon of paprika. Rub the fat into the flour in a finger motion as if you were asking someone for some overdue money (fingers and thumb rubbing together, not aggressively inserting them up someone’s nose). Do this until the flour/fat combination resembles breadcrumbs, and slowly add some cold water and begin mixing and kneading. For 300g of flour / 150g fat, you only need about 100ml of water, if that. Knead this into a dough for about five minutes, wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.

I don’t know why you need to do that last clingfilm bit, I only got ‘C’ in chemistry at school.

After 20 minutes have elapsed, flour the surface and a rolling pin, and taking just over half the dough, roll it thinly into a rough circular shape. Rotate the thinning dough, rather than roll at funny angles. Make sure it is rolled thin enough in order to be big enough to cover the base and the sides of the well-greased dish you are going to use. Gather up the thin pastry over the rolling pin and lift and transfer it over the dish. Press down carefully onto the base and pinch it into the sides.

What I’ve written above might be peasy for pastry-makers, but I find making pastry a palaver, and screw it up far too often, so seeing as I’ve written this not long after a successful rolling-pinned surface-to-dish transfer, I’m including it here as a small triumph in this process.

Take the cooked pork filling and spoon it into the pastried dish. Don’t toss it all in as the liquid might still be quite… wet. Open a couple of cans of beans; I used kala chana (black chickpeas) and empty them into the pie, having drained the water first. Meanwhile, turn the heat up full blast on the remaing liquid in order to reduce it. Then empty that into the pie too.

For the lid of the pie, repeat the process of flattening and thinning the pastry mentioned above, preferably with the same heroic success I had. Pinch the sides and lid of the pie together so there are no gaps, but insert two or three holes in the centre of the lid of the pie to let the steam out.

Cook in the oven at 200ºC / 400ºF / gas mark 6 for about 30 minutes.

Serve with garlic & mustard mash potato and some greens.

In a week where I’ve discovered I’ve accidentally lost some weight recently (don’t know how much, I only know girth sizes), I suppose it’s quite ironic I should be writing about pies, but it seems I’ve been so virtuous lately, I think I’ve earned this one.

Dinner was served with this wonderful candles and apples-in-a-vase arrangement.

Gelato Zuppa Inglese – a mere trifle

Tags

amateur foodies, blokes cooking, Brandy, dessert, gelato zuppa inglese, Ice cream, trifle ice cream, zuppa inglese

EXT. PUB BEER GARDEN – NIGHT.

I’m having a lop-sided conversation with my good friend Ed on an unspecified evening between Christmas and New Year.

‘What ice cream would you like made if you had any choice at all…?’ I asked him in the haze of a sodden hour.

‘Well, when I lived in Italy in 1970…’

Oh no…

‘… you could go to any corner gelateria and get something called Gelato Zuppa Inglese…’

‘That’s Trifle Ice Cream, Ed…’

‘Yep. And I’ve not had it in this country since…’

So, with Ed and his better half Roz coming round on New Year’s Eve, I duly considered the gauntlet to be thrown down – and wearily picked up by myself.

My first issue was that I had never made trifle before, let alone trifle ice cream, and didn’t actually know where to start. Well I did – t’interweb. The second issue was the in putting ‘Zuppa Inglese’ into the omni-present search engine powered by wilful tax-skippers Google, all that came up was, understandably, recipes for trifle. ‘Zuppa Inglese Ice Cream’ came up with recipes for trifle. ‘Ice Cream Zuppa Inglese’ came up with blogs about… trifle. ‘Gelato Zuppa Inglese’ was a bit more helpful, it came up with recipes for trifle ice cream – in Italian.

Cutting this now drawn out bit of the story short, I managed to translate two or three recipes (and that’s about all there seemed to be) and do what I usually do with finding conflicting recipes for one dish – I took an ‘average’.

Actually, what follows is basically an abandonment of most parts of the various recipes, and an attempt to go my own way. Yeah, wild guessing is fun…

So, I made ice cream in the usual way. (See https://alanwares.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/i-scream/, minus the chocolate, brandy and orange bit, for my usual way of doing ice cream). I froze it initially in a large flat tupperware container in the freezer for about three hours. Fast forward those three hours less about ten minutes, and at this point I finely chopped up some strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. About ten minutes after the three-hours-less-about-ten-minutes point, I took the ice cream out of the freezer and mixed it and the fruit together.

Meanwhile, I took a packet of ‘Lady’s Fingers’ (sold in Sainsbury’s, for example, as ‘Sponge Fingers’)…

… and soaked each one in brandy (regular trifle makers would swear blind to sherry being the liver-wrecker of choice – but I didn’t have any), though Italians use a spicy liqueur called Alchermes. I took the slightly softened soaked sponges and lined the bottom of a dish (one that I was happy to put in the freezer) with them. From there, I deposited half of the semi-frozen ice cream on top, smoothed it out, and added another layer of soaked sponge fingers, then poured the remaining ice cream over that, covered with clingfilm and put back in the freezer.

After another six hours or so of freezing, it should be ready. In this instance, it was. Ed heroically played guinea pig, and declared the dessert ‘excellent’… for what it was. In other words, it was Gelato Zuppa Inglese – like Gelato Zuppa Inglese had never been tasted before.

The principle problem, I believe, was that I’d soaked the sponge fingers in the brandy for about 30 seconds each, when 5 seconds would have been plenty. As a result, the very thirsty sponges soaked up the booze, and deposited it back into the ice cream – and booze needs a much lower temperature to freeze solid than the freezer itself will go.

Result – fruity ice cream, slightly overpowered by brandy. Possible solution – soak sponges for less time.

However, it did taste pretty damn good.

My first take on Gelato Zuppa Inglese – excess booze an optional extra

Seeing as it wasn’t really what I’d intended to make in the first place (though to be fair this was mainly guesswork, as I’d never had Gelato Zuppa Inglese before), I guess this concoction might well need a new name.

How about ZUPPA CAKEY FRUIT GELATO – EXTRA ALCHY DOSES…?

I do apologise.

Chocolate & beetroot brownies

Tags

amateur foodies, beetroot, blokes cooking, brownies, Chillies, Chocoholic, Chocolate

I haven’t put too many desserts into my blog – it’s not my forte, all things considered. I much prefer making paella.

However, a good friend of mine was in need of a chocolate fix. I’d already sent her a generous slab of chocolate tart (i.e. this Moorish Tart). She was doing work for Daisy, and needed a pick-me-up. A week later I understand her cravings had got more acute and more of the brownstuff was required. You’ve got to realise I’m not making chocolate stuff for me, you know – this was a drooling choco-maniac going cold turkey. What could I do?

Chocolate and beetroot brownies. That’s what. Unlike the Moorish Tart, which had certain element of palaver about it, this one is pretty simple. Uh-huh.

Moister than the downpour I got caught in walking home through Brighton last night…

(I get that ‘uh-huh’ sign-off from a character in a couple of Peter James novels; an oddball Brighton taxi driver with a fetishist’s obsession with ladies’ shoes; no shoes were harmed in the making of this dessert.)

You need 250g unsalted butter, 250g dark chocolate (min 70% cocoa solids), 250g caster sugar, 250g beetroot, 150g plain flour, and four eggs.

In making this, and it is pretty simple, all I’d say is don’t be brutal. Over mixing doesn’t really help the consistency.

Break the chocolate and butter into small pieces, and slowly melt in a bain-marie over slowly simmering water. Mix slowly and gently. Meanwhile, beat the four eggs in with the sugar until you get that pale yellow gunk (see Large Al’s Cookbook passim). Take the melted chocolate off the heat, and making sure it’s not too hot, mix in with the egg gunk. Stir firmly, but not too much. Add in the sifted flour, and the mixture will thicken to a loose gloopy texture.

Finally, grate the beetroot. If you’re using beetroot from a supermarket packet, simply open and grate. If you’re using fresh beetroot with stalks and skin still on, you need to prepare the beetroot, and that is very simple – cut away the stalks and boil in unsalted water for 20-30 minutes or so. Drain and, peel off the outer skin (it should just fall away), and the flesh inside will be firm, but soft enough to grate.

Stir the grated beetroot into the chocolate/butter/egg/sugar/flour mix.

Liberally grease a square 25x25cm tin, and pour the mixture in. With these quantities, it will take up the tin to a depth of about two inches (5cm). Bake at 180 deg C / 350 deg F / gas mark 4 for about 25 minutes. It will start to dry on the top and sides, but the middle should be moist. When I removed it from the oven after 20 minutes, I dipped the knife into the middle, and it was still a bit ‘wet’, rather than ‘moist’. There is a temptation is to slightly over-do it because of its final cake-like texture. The trick is to find the right spot between ‘wet’ and ‘moist’. All the while it is still in the tin, it will retain its moisture (helped by the moisture within the beetroot), so I turned off the oven, and left it in there for another 10 or 15 minutes.

The results, thankfully for this happy amateur, were superb. The intended recipient of some of the brownies (I was never going to let her have ALL of it) was delighted. Which was nice. I just hope her cravings are satisfied.

Brownies variation – my good chum  Tim Herbert suggests adding some chilli powder in there, or maybe even chopped chillies – either as well as or instead of the beetroot. Or you could just try this without the beetroot, but where’s the fun in that?

Cheers, Al

Spud-free fishcakes

Tags

amateur foodies, Blender, blokes cooking, carrots, fishcakes, paprika, peas

As a quick follow-up to this little morcel that I posted a couple of weeks ago, Fishballs, dear (please read, you can catch up quicker on this blog then), I thought I’d post a variation on this from something I prepared just this evening – Spud-free fishcakes.

A couple of days ago, we had a friend round for roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, two (well, three) veg etc, and as ever I’d cooked far too much. That in itself doesn’t present a problem – leftovers can provide such a goldmine of possibilities…

Naturally, in that time, all the roast spuds had already been scoffed, so using my mini-minor whizzer blender thing, I took the leftover carrots, peas and broccoli (just the florets – the stalks made the blades start whining like Noel Edmonds going off on one), and smashed them into mash. Acting on a tip-off from Jo from the awesomely brilliant, multi-award-winning Piglet’s Pantry (several stratospheres of quality above this mere chimpanzee), I added a dashette of balsamic, and then broke into several pieces three mackerel and mashed it all together. What helped the taste was that the carrots had originally been steamed after being marinaded in honey and English mustard.

Mixing them all togther, forming patties, and dipping them in flour and egg, I coated them in breadcrumbs enhanced in flavour with grated lemon zest, dried dill and paprika (spice of the Gods), shallow fried them and served with rice and salad, and a cheeky little Pinot Grigio.

Cheers, Al

The versatility of the simple tomato sauce

Tags

albondigas, amateur foodies, blokes cooking, garlic, paprika, pasta sauce, patatas bravas, tomato sauce

For those of you who have kept up with reading these pages (for which I thank you – I hope you’re enjoying them), it’s probably pretty obvious by now that I’m no professional.

However, there is one part of preparation cooking (when I’ve been doing several plates for parties and gatherings and stuff) that I do want to talk about – and it’s one of the simplest things to do. It’s so helpful to make a decent amount of tomato sauce.

A tomato sauce bubbling away – on the way to being wonderfully versatile

Why? Because it’s one of the commonest accompaniments to so many dishes (at least a dozen spring to mind without trying). It’s versatile, simple to make and there are so many variations, most of which will be dependent on the accompanying dish in question. Ask any number of kitchen-dwellers (amateurs, dabblers or pros) about how to make your perfect tomato sauce, and you’ll get any number of replies. So, despite not being asked, here’s mine…

I use… a large white onion (not a mild one – one that makes your eyes leak at 20 feet), garlic, tomatoes (obviously), red wine, herbs, a dash of balsamic vinegar, a dash of Worcester Sauce – and salt & pepper to taste. C’est tout.

In an olive oil / butter mix, lightly fry the chopped onion, and break in a generous quantity of ground pepper (black or white – I prefer white) and a pinch a salt. I say lightly fry because I don’t want the onions to brown, only soften. After 5 minutes, add some smashed garlic – and be generous here, at least 4 or 5 cloves. Stir in, and a minute later add about 125ml of red wine, and turn the heat up.

Give that a few minutes, until the wine has evaporated – and it’s time for the tomatoes to go in. The simple method is to open a couple of cans of plum tomatoes and toss them in.

Howver, if you’re using fresh tomatoes, make sure you have some which you know are going to be rich in flavour. I’ll throw the floor open as to which is best – and indeed, would appreciate some advice. You probably don’t want THE freshest, just picked tomatoes – that would be sacrilege. Something picked a few days previously – having allowed them to fully ripen – would be dandy.

Incidentally, as a side issue, if you’ve grown your own tomatoes, I sit in envy of you.  I just do.

Place them in a pan boiling (unsalted) water for about a minute, until their skins loosen. Remove them from the water, peel off the skin, and chop, removing the seeds and firm flesh inside. Chop up the remaining flesh, and place in the pan with the onions and garlic. For the equivalent of two cans of tomatoes, you’ll need around 700g of fresh tomatoes.

Keep the heat high, and add some chopped herbs. I tend to stick to four herbs – rosemary, thyme, oregano and basil – and they combine for an exquisite taste. Finely chop them up in equal measure. You’ll want enough for about a tablespoon’s worth. No skimping – we’re going for a wipeout of all flavours here. Dried herbs are fine too – you’ll want about two-thirds the amount of them in comparison to fresh herbs.

You may notice there’s no parsley there. I find that parsley too often has a fight with the garlic, and seeing as I’d always want the garlic to win – I keep parsley out of harm’s way.

I also like to add at this point a dash of balsamic vinegar and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

Cook on high heat, and you’ll notice the liquid from the tomatoes begin to reduce. Eventually it will start to thicken, so if you wish to carry on cooking (because, for instance, accompaniments aren’t ready), either turn the heat down or add some water. Point is – the thicker the sauce (without congealing), the richer and darker the flavour.

Depending on what your dish is going to be, from here you can serve straight away or you can add various ingredients. A couple of ideas…

– for patatas bravas or albondigas (meatballs), add a teaspoon of smoked paprika (spice of the Gods) at the time you add the herbs

– for a spicy side dish, add a couple of chopped jalapeño peppers and/or cayenne peppers

– for an alternative spicy dip to go with a Mediterranean mezze, add a teaspoon of ground cumin, coriander, paprika, chilli and caraway seeds

The quantities I’ve listed above are good enough for one dish for four people. Simply increase the quantities proportionally for parties, gluttons or simply for ‘I’ll save that for later…’

Would love to hear your variations on tomato sauce.

Cheers, Al