Three continents in a pan: stir-fried spinach with chorizo and onions

Considering what I stash in my cupboards, it's no wonder most of my cooking is some kind of fusion. Whether 'improving' French stews with Thai fish sauce or spiking hommous with dried lime powder, the Post-Modern culinary pastiche is the order of the day.

Today's lunch was whipped up at the epistemic crossroads of Thai, Spanish and West African cuisines: the classic Thai phat phak fai daeng was made with Asturian chorizo as well as African spinach, onions and Scottish bonnet peppers, proving a very happy marriage.

1. Slowly saute a lot of crushed garlic with a tad of finely chopped Scottish bonnet pepper.
   
2. Add sliced chorizo and fry on a medium fir until it makes the oil red.
   
3. Add some chopped tomatoes and red African onions, fry until the onions are soft.
   
4. Add a lot of chopped African spinach (it's more robust and sweeter than the regular one) and fold into the mixture. Fry until the spinach retain just a bit of crunch.
   
5. Season with Thai fish sauce.
   
   
6. Serve with steamed rice.

Pumpkin bread with walnuts and sage

This rich bread made with pumpkin and walnuts is more like a cake. It is very easy to make, ask me for the recipe, if interested.

Why I bake my own bread

started making bread about two years ago. It had been in the pipeline for a while, within my general trend of opting out of processed food, but the tipping point came in May 2014. As we drove down a stretch of the Adriatic between Istria and Montenegro, I noticed that in Croatia it is apparently legally required to display bread ingredients in a visible, readable fashion. Going through long lines of unpronounceable chemical compounds has tripped off the final alarm in my brain. Back in London, I discovered that supermarkets guard such information for their dear lives: from Iceland to Waitrose, none shows what exactly they put in their bread. It took me an arduous, drawn-out email exchange with M&S to get them to reveal what they put in their baguette.

As I started digging around, I found out that the Chorleywood bread process, invented in the UK in 1961 and then spread all over the world, puts speed, bottomline and efficiency ahead of compatibility with how humans digest their food. It turns out that the bastards only let the dough to proof for a few minutes, barely allowing the yeast to break down things that the human stomach is not well equipped to process, such as gluten and various sugars. The latter-day pandemic of  the celiac disease, when people get adverse symptoms from eating bread and pastry, might well be credited to that wondrous innovation introducing the values of capitalist production into your digestive system. 

That's how I got converted into hand-made bread. My two specialties are largely inspired by the wonderful custard-running Gino d'Acampo. Every now and then I diversify and try other recipes, but my two mainstays, week in, week out, still are pagnotta con finocchietto, farmhouse loaf encrusted with fennel seeds, and pagnotta ligure con patate, Ligurian rustic loaf with potatoes and rosemary. I do modify and jazz up the recipes, with quite splendiferous outcomes, so please feel free to contact me, should you fancy a recipe. All pictures here are of my home creations.

Stewed octopus recipe: χταπόδι στιφάδο, jazzed up a tad

Greek recipes are nearly always straightforward, relying on the quality of ingredients to achieve the desired oomph. Even the notoriously difficult to get the knack of avgolemono requires skill rather than any convoluted kitchen gymnastics - and, of course, locally grown organic produce that in Greece is known simply as food. That's, perhaps, why it's so hard to achieve that gobsmacking level of meals so common in Greece when cooking Greek elsewhere.

So I decided to commit a sacrilege and spritz up the good ole octopus stifado with just a couple of very modest innovations. It has proven a major success when I made it for dinner in our vacation house in Lanzarote.

So here are the cooking instructions:

1. Warm up a very generous glug of olive oil in a thick-bottomed pan. Add the spices you are planning to use to infuse the oil with their essential oils. This time I used adobo canario, to pay homage to the host land.

2. Sautee one and a half heads of garlic until golden brown, then add three finely sliced red onions. Sautee until golden brown.

3. Add one gutted, cleaned and chopped up octopus (about 1 kg weight) as well as one and half heads of garlic broken down in cloves but unpeeled. Turn down the heat and stew until tender. Takes about an hour.

4. Add 700-800 g of chopped tomatoes, salt and ground pepper to taste. Stew 10-15 more minutes.

5. Serve with papas arrugadas - potatoes boiled in skin with lots of salt (or even better n sea water) until they get all wrinkly.

Pisto manchego (the best recipe)

The most satisfying recipe for that simple and hearty Manchego farmer treat, the pisto.

1.  Sautee  crushed garlic in olive oil.
2. Add chopped onions, red bell peppers and tomatoes.
3. Season with salt, black and red pepper.
4. Serve on top of slices rustic bread, topped with fried bacon dices and fried egg.

Roasted fennel with yoghurt dip

1.  Cut a fennel bulb lenghtwise in four and baste with some olive oil.
   
2. Heat a ribbed skillet and slowly fry the fennel on both sides.
   
3. In the meantime, crush three cloves of garlic, mix with a few tablespoonfuls of full-fat Turkish yoghurt, and season with black pepper, salt or fish sauce, and a generous amount of chopped mint or parsley.
   
   
4. Serve as the main for lunch, a starter for dinner, or an entry for a tapas feast.

Mole con chocolate y chipotle: Mexican chocolate and chipotle stew recipe

I am not entirely sure how I came up with this. I knew of the chocolate stew, the concept pops up here and there in Mexican cookbooks and food blogs. But then when it came down to cooking it, adding the tangy, smoky pepper known as chipotle, just seemed like the most natural thing to do. After all, both are Mexico's gifts to the world. My gut did not lie. The stew came out luscious and scrumptious, definitely chocolatey, yet savoury and spicy.

So here goes the recipe:

1. Briefly marinate bite-size chunks of organic free-range beef in freshly ground black pepper and fish sauce. Pat the beef dry with kitchen rolls and fry in a cast-iron pot with a bit of oil. Do it in batches, if necessary, to make sure that the meat gets nicely browned, instead of getting steamed in its own juice. Remove to a plate once done.
   
2. Slowly sautee crushed garlic, finely chopped onions and celery in the oil until golden brown.
   
3. Add the meat, red wine to cover, bring to a boil and let simmer until tender. 
   
4. Add a nice chunk of good quality chocolate (or pure cocoa powder) and some chipotle peppers to taste, as spicy as you prefer. Let bubble away slowly for another 10-15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
   
5. Serve on top of steamed rice and beans, with red wine to wash it all down. As with all stews, it tastes better the next day, but also benefits from sitting an hour or so on the counter before being served.

Mole con chocolate y chipotle - Chocolate and chipotle beef stew recipe

Nettle soup, done well

It's again this time of the year when foodies and those aligned with them start cooking foraged weeds. What used to be (really) poor man's grub, these days is a social marker of the educated classes. Now, I've seen and tried and number of nettle soups this year and, I hate to say that, people you need to get a grip. Just boiling leaves with random veggies does not do the trick, or any trick for that matter. That's what my 85-year-old farmer uncle cooks for his piglets, literally. Nettle has its own special flavour that, if served to humans, needs to be cherished, flaunted and taken proper care of.

So here I will share the proper nettle soup recipe, as it's been cooked in my family for at least three generations.

1. Pick a bunch of young nettle leaves, they need to be light green and with no flowers forming.
2. Remove the stems and rinse well in cold water.
3. Sautee in butter on a low heat.
4. Add chopped shallots or onions. Cook until soft.
5. Add a can or two of chopped tomatoes with juice. If too thick, add water.
6. Beat a nice large biodynamic egg and add into the boiling soup, as you stir it, making sure it comes out stringy, not cloudy.
7. Let it bubble away for a little while to let the tastes mingle.
8. Salt and pepper in moderation. Sprinkle a few drops of fish sauce to enhance the flavour.

This recipe balances the sourness from the tomatoes and the sweetness of sauteed onions to give the nettle a proper stage to show off its zing.

Old wives' tales (that are quite likely true):  

• Nettles are supposed to stimulate your liver to cleanse blood. 

• It is not recommend to eat too much nettle soup, not more than 2-3 times a year, naturally in the spring.