Monthly Archives: December 2012

If you go into the woods today…..well, take this book with you! Don’t pick any mushroom unless you have this book, it is the BEST book of mushrooms identification i know….to be honest i’m a world class sissy about foraging mushrooms, and to be honest i’m terrified when people say they know what they are doing, eat this you’ll be okay. I only eat mushrooms and funghi that are vetted by a professional.

Nonetheless: mushrooms: magical, delicious, gorgeous, and if very occasionally lethal, all the more deserving of respect. And this book is fascinating, and makes running around the forest or even just walking the doggies–my own daily treks through the forests and fields involve 3 lively jack russells, so i am always watching the ground where they scamper, leap, dig, yap, the whole dog thing.  but i’m getting off topic: the thing is: i see the mushrooms! and they are everywhere!

Having The Identification Guide to Mushrooms of Britain and Northern Europe, by Josephine Bacon has made my daily walks a total adventure. I go walkies, i see mushrooms, i look them up in the book. i’m not brave enough to eat any yet, and don’t know if i will be ever, but this book provides me with so much wonderful knowledge and discovery. its available on Amazon.

ps: it goes without saying that i love, adore, swoon over, beautiful wild mushrooms. i think a mushroom recipe is in order here. going through files right now, will post soon.

not completely tested, so you’ll need to fiddle with he liquid amounts, etc. but the whole fish and mushroom combo, soooo good.

Fish with Chanterelles

serves 4

Inspired by a fish and chanterelles dish at a restaurant/bistro, Lou Peyrol, in southwest france…..

4 red mullet fillets (loup de mer) (400g/about a lb)

Seasoning: salt, pepper to taste

a little flour for dusting

400 g/12 ounces or so chanterelles, or a mixure of chanterelles and other foresty mushrooms

1 shallot, chopped

2 tabpespoons  butter (or half butter, half olive oil)

65 ml/about 1/3 cup dry white wine

juice of 1 lemon

75ml/1/2 cup fish or chicken stock/broth

2 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

2 tablespoons chervil leaves

Mix fish with a little salt pepper; set aside while you do everything else. Rub with a few drops of lemon juice, then dust with flour, shake off excess.

Clean chanterelles, trim off rough edges, and cut into large pieces.

Lightly saute the shallot in the butter until softened, then add the mushrooms, cook about 5 minutes, then remove from the pan. Pour in the wine, raise the heat until it reduces by about half, then add the fish stock. Season with lemon juice, add more stock/broth as you need for a brothy jus, and finally sprinkle in the parsley. Set aside and keep warm.

Heat the pan to medium high, the place remaining butter in pan and add the fish, skin side down. Cook over medium heat for about 5-8 minutes or until it is just about cooked through. Turn over carefully to cook lightly.

Warm the mushrooms through. Pour a little bit of the sauce in the bottom of the shallow soup bowl, place a few spoonfuls of the sauteed mushrooms on top, then a fish fillet on each. Drizzle a little more of the sauce on top and around the edge, then sprinkle with chervil and serve right away.

Trying to find an idea for my chicken--which was waiting for me patiently in the kitchen--I put on my fake leopardskin heels and started to dance

I had a chicken in my kitchen, a beautiful plump chicken; and in my head swarmed ideas for its roasting. Alas, i was too unfocused: lemon and olives, smoked paprika, cinnamon and cumin,what about a streamlined Peruvian pachamanca ?

Who could decide? my normal ways of pursuing taste have abandoned me, I gotta find new ways. I went down to the kitchen, put on my fake leopardskin heels, and started to dance.

As I danced I started to feel happier, and soon I was in my cabinet of Asian flavours where, since visiting Taipei I have been spending a lot of time, gathering ingredients. And so I made a paste of preserved tofu, garlic, ginger, spices, and rubbed it all over the bird. Let it sit a little while to enjoy the evening air, while i danced a little longer, then into the oven to roast!

Here are the exact-ish amounts: it served the two of us, with leftovers for 3 small chicken-loving doggies.

1 whole chicken, med-small in size

4 cloves garlic, chopped

About 1-2 tablespoons chopped ginger

Pinch five spice

Pinch cumin

4 squares chile-fermented bean curd,mashed into a paste

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Drizzle sesame oil

2 tablespoons ginger wine or rice wine/mirin and a little extra ginger

1 clementine, cut into wedges

Coriander/cilantro to serve
Place chicken in a roasting pan just large enough to fit it.

Combine the garlic, ginger, five-spice and cumin, with the preserved tofu, soy sauce, sesame oil, and either ginger wine or mirin plus a little extra chopped ginger. Rub all over the chicken inside and out. Stick the clementine wedges into the cavity of the chicken. Set aside to marinate a bit–30 minutes is good, 2 hours is better.

Heat over to 400F; place chicken in, roast in high heat until browned, then reduce head to about 325 and continue roasting until its cooked through–usually takes about 1 hour 20 minutes in my oven.

Remove from heat, place chicken on plate, covered with foil while you make pan sauce.

Spoon off or drain off fat from pan drippings, then place roasting pan on stove top and add either water, broth or more wine, and cook, quickly, until pan juices or a nice intense jus forms. Pour the juices from the roasted chicken into the pan, and remove the clementine wedges, squeezing them into the pan juices too.

Serve the chicken either whole, or cut into serving pieces with its jus, sprinkled with coriander leaves/cilantro.

the pan juices are so savoury,the meat tender

eating piquillo peppers filled with chevre at bistro balzar, paris. next course was roast chicken. so good went back the next day!

Inspired by my Parisian peppers: you can roast your own if you have a glut of great red peppers, but the Spanish piquillo peppers, roasted and lying cozily in a tin, really: are wonderful, even for make-it-yourself moi. In the pic below you can see the bistro (Paris’ Bistro Balzar) served 3 tiny piquillo peppers; when I make it I serve one pretty large pepper; it really depends upon the size of the peppers you have available!

INGREDIENTS:

2 large roasted red peppers or 4 smaller piquillo peppers (see first paragraph below or note about pepper sizes above)

5 ounces soft goat cheese (from California or France), plain or herb/chive

1-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1-2 cloves garlic, chopped

A light sprinkle of pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika)

A few shakes of raspberry or balsamic vinegar

Handful young arugula, baby greens, young pea shoots, watercress, basil, whatever delicious little greens you fancy

1 tablespoon chopped chives, or chervil, or basil

INSTRUCTIONS:

If using large peppers, cut or tear each into two pieces; if using smaller piquillo peppers, leave them whole. Fill each pepper or pepper half with one quarter of the goat cheese; if using halved peppers, fold the pepper around the goat cheese; if using whole peppers, simply stuff them.

To serve cold: Place the stuffed pepper on a plate and sprinkle with the olive oil, chopped garlic, pimenton and a few sprinkles of raspberry vinegar. Accompany with greens, tossed in some of the olive oil and vinegar from the plate. Sprinkle with chives or other herbs, and serve.

To serve hot: Place the goat cheese-stuffed peppers in a heavy frying pan with the olive oil and garlic. Heat over medium-high heat on one side until it begins to sizzle, then turn over for a minute or two or until it heats through and the cheese just begins to run a little. Splash in the vinegar and sprinkle with the pimenton. Cook a minute or two longer, then serve on plates, with the greens, each hot pepper sprinkled with chopped chives or herbs.

Serves 4 as a starter

Taiwanese Preserved Turnip Omelet

The first time I tasted this was at lunch at a rice farm: the farmer, in addition to his experimental rice farm, also runs a country restaurant. I’ll post the details, pictures, address, etc separately.After that, the omelet appeared fairly often, all similar, delicious, and slightly different as well.

Everything we ate at that lunch (and for the entire week following) was beautifully prepared, but this omelet….this omelet  i fell in love with:so simple: so western, like a fritatta, yet filled with nuggets of utterly Asian diced preserved turnip, tossed in garlicky oil. A combination of all of my favourite Eastern and Western tastes: oily, salty, crunchy, soft, crisp.

Preserved turnip is available in Chinese and other Asian groceries: its salted dried daikon, sort of chewy, soft-hard pliable, and very salty.

I soaked it a little bit here to get rid of too much salt, but i use them in other things without soaking, such as meatballs, or dumpling fillings. it smells a bit funky so might take you awhile to get used to it–i found that once i did, i felt a near addiction to it–having it on hand is a necessity in my kitchen!

The omelet has a lovely hit of  garlic so i guess falling in love with it was inevitable. its one of those things you can make without thinking, and since i’ve been moving around in a world hazy with jetlag, i’ve been whipping this up pretty regularly. it brings the taste of taipei right into my home, kitchen, plate.

piece of dried turnip being put into water to soak

dried turnips, in their package

Preserved Turnip Omelet

Serves about 6 as part of several dish meal; or two as the main plate.

1-2 ounces (50-60 grams) preserved turnip

about 1 tablespoon oil, more if you like

4 eggs, beaten

5-6 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped

about 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped cilantro (fresh coriander) or thinly sliced green onion

1. Rinse the preserved turnip for a few moments, or place in a bowl and cover with cold water for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from water, wipe well with a paper towel. When dry, chop coarsely and set aside.

2. in a small to medium sized frying pan (depending on how wide or thick you want your omelet) heat about half the oil and stir fry over medium low heat the chopped turnip and the garlic; don’t brown, just enhance their aromas!

3. Remove the mixture and add it to the beaten egg; mix well.

4. pour remaining oil into pan, heat a few moments, the pour the eggs and turnip into the pan, spreading it out, tipping the pan, etc to form a flat fritatta-like omelet. Cook over medium low heat until the eggs seem set and the egg is golden underneath, then flip by placing a plate on top of the pan, flipping, then sliding the omelet back into the pan.

5. Continue cooking a few moments, raising heat if needed, until the bottom layer is golden browned, only a moment or two.

6. Serve on plate, cut into wedges and sprinkled with either cilantro (coriander leaves) or chopped green onions.

It hits you when you first arrive: the excitement of deliciousness is in the air, and literally it seems to be: everywhere your nose takes you, there is the smell of temptation: grilling, roasting, baking, stewing, frying…..fragant smells coming from shops, cafes, street nosh, all right there, irrisistible and exciting. I felt like taking a nibble every step or two i went, then continuing on. (Confession–and those who were with me know it to be true: in fact, I DID take a bite and another and another and another, everywhere we were, so many things to taste. even if strange or i didn’t like it, i just needed to taste taste taste–some places are just like that. and no place more than Taipei).

But it didn’t seem to be just the visitor so affected: the locals were pretty excited not only about their own dishes, but also what we might THINK of their dishes: get a pork-stuffed fishball near the dock area, and the local police might just offer you a suggestion of where else its even better. Enjoy the pickled vegetables at a restaurant and chef might just come out with a container of pickles for you to take home (and i did, munching them all the way back, with enough leftover to share with my UK buddies).

Streets are lined with motor scooters, tidily parked though often-crazily driven, their riders en route to the market, cafe, local snack bar: see the scooters lining the street as their occupants line the barstools, eating any of a wide variety of dishes, from tiny crabs to crisp fried chicken, dishes featuring as much tripe or other offal as you could ever imagine…

Shaved ice cafes are everywhere, with kids, teens, families, everyone, spooning into crisp snowy mounds piled with syrups, candied fruits, topped with fluffy ice cream like swirls. (One of the strangest, silliest, and okay: kinda delightful) restaurants for such sweet deserts is Modern Toilet–the theme is, yes, you guessed it. silly and strangely delightful for ice cream dishes, a bit less so for stewy savoury dishes.

Taiwan is a small island with an amazingly rich variety of eating traditions. Indiginous tribes–of which there is a very touching exhibit of lifestyle in Taipei airport, were the first residents, their presence and influence still strong. Around the 15th century immigrants from China began to come; first from Fujian, Hakka people–this layer of taste is a strong part of modern Taiwanese food. Next came Portuguese sailors, giving the island a name, isla Formosa which remained its name until fairly recently. Then came colonizations of Dutch, Spanish and Japanese (who were sent back to Japan at the end of WW2), each adding layers to the cuisine of the island, especially the Japanese who brought among other tastes, the taste for raw fish.

In 1949, at the end of the Chinese civil war, Chiang Kai-shek fled with about 2 million compatriots and the defeated Nationalist army. Many of Chinas top chefs fled to Taiwan as well–the new communist regime didn’t have a place for such luxury. During the following turbulant years on the mainland, Taiwan was the upholder of Chinese traditional cuisine, keeping alive the traditions and tastes that had dissappeared on the mainland.

The melting pot of regional Chinese cuisines thus became an intrinsic part of Taiwan/Taipei food.

There are elegant fine dining experiences in Taipei, dumplings awaiting you are every turn, night markets filled with the exotic, and the just plain delicious such as a flat spicy fried chicken breast to woo the heart of this not crazy about fried foods gal.
I ate at a rice farm high up on a hillside on the outskirts of Taipei, and sipped tea–blissful, spiritually– in a tea house on the docks.

There was a very zen lunch of all vegetables in a tranquiol sculpture garden, and a very meaty dinner paired with fabulous wines and accompanied by jamon from spain: combined with wine from italy and noodles of traiwan, as well as various little niblets of offal and pickles, what a memorable kinda only in taipei feast.

And the macadamia nut nougat! and the islands traditional pineapple cake!!!! and the soothing, cozy warm almond soup, partially tea, partially dessert, endlessly delicious.

And i’ve not even mentioned beef noodle yet; that bowl of noodles in clear strong broth that comes with a bowl of spicy beef stew, another bowl of shredded pickled mustard greens, and a saucer of spicy sauce. This needs its own posting, with pictures! It all does! And over the next few weeks, months, lifetime, its all coming!

And I can’t wait to go back.