All posts tagged: food

early morning at the mercado central de atarazanas

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Mechanical, beautiful, merciless. There they stood, gutting and chatting, fishmongers all, masters of their craft, placidly ignoring the one or two mad people (hello) early enough to have arrived at the Málaga food market – the Mercado Central de Atarazanas – before the day’s wares were unboxed, the shutters rolled up, the fish disembowelled. They couldn’t give two figs that we were there. They weren’t going to rush; this is just how their days start. An easy flick of the wrist and the prepared anchovy whizzes into the box. New fish. Practised movement. Mind hardly on the task, more focussed on the chat, which, of course, we couldn’t understand – or look away from. We were meandering through the market, staring openly. The language barrier somehow making us invisible, or so it felt as we gaped, openly, at the links of chorizo, dangling from hooks. The huge heads of swordfish, de-bodied and staring at the metal roof, pointing their rapiers to the sky. Fuzzy sunset-coloured peaches. Gleaming red, yellow, green tomatoes. Tightly packed Padrón peppers, …

cured lemons

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My pickling and preserving ambitions have now exceeded the limitations of my fridge. There are jars of dilly pickled carrots. Homemade limoncello. Seville marmalade, of various sorts and peel stripes (grapefruit, lime, blood orange – oh my!). The old bars of my fridge shelves are sagging under the weight. And I can’t stop. There are too many things to make. One of my favourites, which has been out of commission for a while, are the cured lemons from The Palomar Cookbook, gifted to me a few Christmases ago by my brother and his girlfriend. The Palomar itself is a restaurant in London serving the food of modern Jerusalem, by way of North Africa, Spain and the Levant. And the book – a labour of love, with input, recipes, and techniques from different members of the team – is a collection of some of the restaurant’s great dishes. Some you might recognise, like labneh and fattoush, others you might not, but you’ll soon clamour to make, like the scallop carpaccio with “Thai-bouleh” (which swaps out lemon …

buttermilk beignets

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It’s my birthday this week, and it falls on a Sunday. First, this is incredibly exciting – I love my birthday. I love other people’s birthdays. I love them all. A day to celebrate the people you love with food and presents? And then a day to get food, presents, and love? What’s not to excitedly bounce up and down in anticipation of about that? But argument could be made that Sundays are also my favourite days. So it’s a double whammy. They speak of pjs and papers. Hot coffee and pottering about the house in socked feet. Brunch and, more specifically, beignets. Making beignets has been a revelation, born out of my recent obsession with the food of the American South. You make a dough the night before and the next morning, after a little oil heating and dough rolling, you’re in for crispy, fluffy, sugary perfection with your Sunday morning.   J and I have been known to make a platter of these, liberally snowed with icing sugar and plonked down on the …

Peter Reinhart’s bagels

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I’ve always loved bagels. Chewy, tasty, slightly crispy – they’re the whole package. But I’ve recently upped my bagel ante. Gone are the days when all I’d do is wax lyrical about the different ways to top a bagel – of which, incidentally, there are so very many more than the four I mentioned here back in the day. You see, I’ve now baked bagels. And I can’t go back. They’re too good, and they’re so easy to make. In fact, I think it’s safe to say I’m now forever ruined for supermarket simalcrums. I have baker extraordinaire Peter Reinhart to thank for this particularly wonderful new addition to my life. Not being a native New Yorker, or living near enough London’s Brick Lane, believe me when I say that I did not know bagels could taste like this. Baking these came about as part of the recent bread-baking kick I’ve been on. And, let me tell you, a little bit – and I do mean a “little” bit – of effort here goes a …

what is “a cook’s bookshelf”?

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A friend recently stood in the middle of the kitchen and exclaimed: “Wait – these are all cookbooks?” Swivelling in place, he took in the numerous bookshelves and stacks, seemingly seeing a new book with every turn. He seemed surprised enough; I didn’t mention that this is just the kitchen. Books – cooking and otherwise – have free and full reign over the whole flat. There are currently three book stacks on either side of the bed, another on my desk chair, two on the desk. There are piles in corners. On (and under) coffee tables. Hiding in the wine rack. There are little ones perched on scrappy-thin surfaces. Big ones squatting, happily, waiting. New ones, old ones, all jostled up next to each other, brimming with beautiful ideas, flavours and places. Cookbooks are windows into other worlds. They show you how people eat on the other side of the planet. How they ate in the past. How I want to eat in the future. They tell stories, and show places. They’re made by people …

bread baking

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More often than not nowadays, there is a smudge of flour somewhere on my person. Usually it’s on the cuffs on my favourite baggy blue cardigan. Sometimes it’s on my face. I’ve gone out with it splashed down my front, like a walking Rorschach test, and with handprints on my butt from where I’ve hastily brushed off the snowy white dust before dashing off a few lines on my laptop, or darting to the oven to check on whatever is currently making my kitchen smell like heaven. You see, I’ve been baking a lot of bread. I’ve made bagels and wheaten bread. Challah and cornbread. And one of my happiest achievements to date – sourdough. Sourdough is a tricksome beast. The first time I tried, it was completely off. More like a dense wholemeal loaf than the chewy, crispy, airated bread I was aiming for. All was not lost, however; the brown doorstop made a pretty decent bread salad (once liberally doused in olive oil and introduced to the grill). The problem – I surmised, …

Kitchem Gremlin – A New Year, A New Recipe

chapter 3: on being a hibernating kitchen gremlin

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So, it’s been a while. I’d like to blame the weather. Maybe work. But I think it all comes down to wintertime hibernation. I mean, there have been storms. (FYI: the best way to spot the English woman in Glasgow is to look for the one wearing a non-waterproof wool coat and charging into gale-force winds and torrential rain with a mini folding umbrella). And I’ve had work to do – after all, bills come with alarming regularity whether you’re in the mood for earning money or not. But mainly my flat was cosy, if not wholly warm (having all the windows ripped out and replaced in mid-December was hardly a barrel of laughs), and I was somewhat shocked by finding myself in a new country where I didn’t know anyone and where I still hadn’t quite got an ear for the local accent. So I stayed inside. We invested in a fleecy electric blanket and covered the sofa in it; quite possibly the best decision ever made by hibernating humanoids. I ordered more and …

bagels: 4 ways

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So, this week I had a hankering for bagels. This is not unusual – especially as blueberry bagels can be found in the UK again. Praise be the bagel gods! Personally, I believe that there’s no such thing as a bad bagel topping; these beauties will work with whatever you throw at them. But there are a few combinations that I LOVE. I’m going to limit myself to four of my favourites today, otherwise I could ramble on forever. And, word to the wise, I go for toasted bagels every time. Anyhoo, without further ado, here are four of my beloved bagels: sweet, savoury, hangover-alleviating, and Monday-morning-easing bagels of brilliance! Hangover Alleviating Bagel: Wholemeal bagel with cream cheese and sun dried tomatoes. This is an epic hangover breakfast; trust me, I’ve done the legwork on this one. It’s also best served with a strong cup of coffee made with one’s trusty Bialetti. I’d give you the rundown on how to make it, but it’s literally a healthy shmear of cream cheese, topped with whole sundried …