discochef

meat is murder...

2008-09-30T01:37:00.000-07:00

...but molluscs are marvellous! And pretty stupid, so they probably don't mind being eaten at all.

I could eat mussels all day, perhaps with occasional breaks to eat asparagus. I imagine that's a perfectly balanced diet.

In spite of this, somehow I'd never actually cooked them...

These ones (and the photo, obviously, is of the aftermath) were simply washed, and added to a pan of fried onion and garlic, over which I poured a 200ml box of white wine.
(200ml box of white wine? Is that for kids to put in their lunch boxes? How continental!)
The pan was covered, and simmered for a little over 10 minutes.

My supermarket sells them in netted bags, and I failed to notice their weight; I think it was less than a kilo...

discoriggall empanadillas

2008-07-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

so this I DID invent.

a medium sized pumpkin
a medium sized onion
soft goat's cheese
an egg
salt, pepper, aargraavaard
pastry

Chop and boil the pumpkin and onion until soft, then drain and mash them roughly. Season the mixture, then stir in a handful of the soft goat's cheese (it's a lightly flavoured cheese, if it can't be found I imagine anything similar would do).

Make squares of thinly rolled pastry about 10cm squared, teaspoon some of the mash onto the squares and pull up the corners to make little packages. Make as many as you can/want to. Paint with some beaten egg.

Bake for 15 minutes (or until golden) at 180 million degrees.

They have been described as "wonderful" and "wow".

vegetarian bean burgers

2008-06-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

I found this recipe in the Gruaniad last year, then lost it; in the mean time I´ve made them 3 times, and I imagine the recipe has changed enough for me to claim authorship...

They have been very popular too!
This makes a load of the mixture, which will feed 4 or 5 people at least, I would imagine.

So,

1 large onion, chopped.
3 large potatoes, peeled, quartered.
tin of red kiddly beans.
150g baby spinach.
handful of dried bread crumbs.
an egg.
some flour (...)
mild curry powder
mixed herbs
pepper, salt blah blah blah

Fry the onion lightly for about 5 minutes, then add the spinach until it has wilted. Put it all on one side.
Meanwhile, be boiling the potatoes, for 15 minutes. After 7 minutes, add the beans. Once the potato is cooked, drain and put in a BIG bowl. Add the spinach and onion, seasoning, a heaped teaspoon of curry powder then mash it all about roughly - not to make a smooth paste, but rather a lumpy mix. I did it violently with the back of a spoon. Then crack open and stir in the egg, followed by the breadcrumbs.
Leave. To. Cool.

sprinkle a large plate with flour, then take small handfuls of the mixture, made into burger shapes, and roll in the flour until covered.

Once you have a few burgers, you can fry them! 5 or 6 minutes on each side, on a medium heat, in a reasonable amount of olive oil.

Serve with whatever you want! The mixture seems to keep quite well, so you can make it for use later (but I might be wrong and you might get salmonella, though so far I´m not dead)

courgette soup

2008-04-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

or "insert vegetable here" soup.

Two medium sized courgettes,
a big onion,
a meduim sized potato,
150ml cream (18%)
pinch of ground pepper,
1.5 teaspoons of salt,
2 glasses of water

chop everything except the water. The potato is best thinly sliced.
In a large saucepan, fry the onions over a low heat in a little oil, for about 5 minutes. Add the other vegetables, mix around, fry for a couple of mins, then add the water, salt and pepper. The water shouldn´t entirely cover the vegetables.
Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 15 mins.
Assuming everything is really soft, take of the heat, and carefully blend the mixture with a blending thingy. Add the cream, while blending, or stirring at the same time.
Yasta.

The onion/potato/water combo can be mixed with any vegetable I reckon, to make a soup (works with pumpkin and leek, anyway).

broccoli "stuff"

2008-03-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

this is a wrong version of two different things, but it's quite nice!

enough for 4 people, I reckon.

A large chopped onion,
a "head" of broccoli (if that's the word),
4 med chopped button mushrooms,
100g cheese of your choice (NOT emmental(sic), it's rubbish),
250ml cream (18% stuff for cooking),
and egg yolk,
pinch of salt, pepper

serve with pasta or boiled potatoes; I've done both.

Now, I'd never actually cooked broccoli before - hope it wasn't one of those 1000 things you're supposed to have done before you're thirty (like sky-dive with Paris Hilton, eat a Ferrari and orchestrate a coup in Latin America etc etc etc). And I didn't ask for any advice.
So this is what I did: cut the small heads off the big daddy head, and boiled them for 8 minutes. I chose that number arbitrarily.
At the same time, I fried the chopped onion in butter over a low-ish heat for 5 mins, then added the mushrooms.
Drained the broccoli, and left it to think about its future for a while.

As far as timing goes, I wanted the potatoes to be ready at the same time, so with ten minutes to go (out of 15-20 for boiling potatoes), I added the cream to the onion etc, and heated it quickly, then lowered the heat again. Added salt and pepper. Not enough salt for anyone else's tastes, mind you.
Oh, you will have grated your cheese!
...which I stirred into the cream bit by bit until it all started to thicken. Once that was done, the egg yolk was next; stirred in as quickly as was possible without without making a big mess. Heat was lowered as low as low could go, and the broccoli dumped in and stirred about a bit.
I left it, again, while the pasta or potatoes were drained, and put on plates, then the broccoli mixture on top of or next to the carbohydrates.

That was that. It was good, according to the two reviews it has had so far.

Leek & Mushroom Pie re-edit

2008-02-16T14:30:00.000-08:00

Pie!

Here's a nice pie:

This fed 6 people, with more to spare: It was a big pie.
200g cheese of your choice
1Kilo mushrooms, cleaned and quartered
1Kilo leeks, chopped,
2 big onions, chopped
1.5 tablespoon of flour,
glass of milk
an egg
salt and pepper

packets of frozen pastry (in my case accidentally puff pastry, but who knew?)
(enough pastry to line and roof a big oven dish, mine was about 45*25*10cm)

Sooo, in a pot, fry the onion, leek and mushrooms in a little oil, over a medium heat until they look cooked - the mushrooms will get a lot smaller, and add a bit of salt and pepper to taste at some point (I don't think it really matters when).

Low heat now. Then stir in the flour, and then the milk. Stir it quite vigorously. It should be a sticky mixture, not excessively liquid.
Line the dish with pastry, and cut a lid of pastry for the it.

Now, mix the cheese into the mixture... then fill the dish with it. Carefully put the lid on, pressing the edges with a fork so it's sealed. Make a couple of incisions in it, then brush it with some of the egg - which you will have beaten!

Use excess pastry to make decorative shapes, to stick on the lid of the pie (paint with egg too).

After that, stick the dish in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees (centigrade!), for about 45 mins, 'till the pastry looks golden brown.

It's done. We had it with a salad.... It was a very good pie! Thanks for the help :)

Pancake Day/Amazing pasta

2008-02-05T14:23:00.000-08:00

Pancakes, lemon juice, white granulated sugar.

Pancakes fried in butter, in a good pan. I would explain how to make pancake batter, but it wouldn't be helpful, as I did it like this.

Overestimate half a pint of milk; beat an egg into it; then beat flour into that until the batter is thick enough to work - this is thinner than you would think!

So as that is useless, I will describe the incredible Italian Pasta recipe I had given to me by Italians. Don't try to adapt this: I wondered aloud about that once, and got shouted at by irate Italians for doing so. This recipe is perfect already.

Ingredients:

Pasta of your choice!

125ml 18.5% cream, (pouring cream, whatever)
an onion,
a handful of frozen prawns,
a courgette.

chop the onion into strips, the slice the courgette not too thickly.
Slow-fry the onion in olive oil until it softens, then add the courgette. When the courgette is softening, add the frozen prawns.
Things will get a bit wet as the prawns defrost. Once they have defrosted, fry for another couple of minutes, then put the gas on minimum, and pour on the cream. Let the mixture simmer, while stirring, for no more than 5 minutes.

Time everything so after that 5 minutes your pasta is also cooked.

Then serve together. This, by the way, was for 2 people. It's fantastic, too.

Spinach 2

2008-01-31T02:21:00.000-08:00

...well I've been busy, ok? And have also had salads the past couple of evenings, which isn't really cooking, is it?

G made a salad, which apparently was someone else's invention.... it's more popeye, though:

Half a bag of baby spinach
approx 200g sliced mushrooms (button ones, I guess)
cashew nuts
Goats Cheese (one which is very similar to a tubular Brie, if you can't get a goaty version)
Soy Sauce.

Well, the sliced mushrooms should be lightly fried in olive oil, but only for a couple of minutes... not so cooked they've gone completely limp. And not burnt, either!

Mix the spinach, mushrooms, and a small hand-full of cashews together, with a little olive oil and soy sauce.

Serve onto plates, and stick slices of the goats cheese on top.

Now I thought that sounded pretty bland before I ate it, but it's actually a very pleasant and delicately flavoured dish; so I hope I've remembered all the ingredients this time :)

Anybody thinks that's too much spinach? You can't have too much spinach!

I'm cooking alone tonight, sniff, but I have some asparagus, which is some consolation. What to do with it?

...I almost added a link to Delia Smith's web site, as I like her books. However, it's the most horrid looking site I've seen - even horribler than Last.fm :P - so I couldn't do it.

chick peas, honey, couscous. plus nuts.

2008-01-26T01:21:00.000-08:00

This was dictated to me in the kitchen... so I can't claim authorship, but it's a simple and curious recipe, so I'll write it down.

In at number one, for the third post running;

a big onion.
400g jar of chick-peas, or garbanzos, depending what language you're in.
a green bell pepper (not too big)
Jar of clear honey
and some cashew nuts (I realise I forgot those yesterday)

Couscous, and some butter.

Chop the onion like this; half it, top to bottom, then slice both halves thinly along the vertical axis. Then use your fingers to pull apart the resulting slices, so you have kind of semi-circle strips of onion. Sorry; I'm not sure how to explain that without pictures or something, and well; I know what I'm on about.
Also, chop the green pepper into something like little squares (approx 1cm?). No need to be exact.

Right. Frying pan out. Olive oil in it (table-spoon full). LOW heat.

Stick the onion and pepper into it, and cook gently until the onion has gone very soft: I mean when it's totally lost the will to live, like a tortured interrogation victim, etc. Then add about half the jar of chick peas, stir around a bit, then finally drizzle on about a table spoon full of the honey and stir some more. Forgetful upadate! Then stir in a few cashew nuts. ahem.

Heat off!

For the couscous, you can follow instructions on the box, as I have no better instructions myself. (this is where you should need butter)

Then it's done! We ate it on it's own, but I think it would make a nice couscous accompaniment to something else. Don't be scared by the idea of putting honey in food, either, it's not weird at all!

Don't forget the nuts...

Baked Potato stuff

2008-01-23T23:23:00.000-08:00

I made a topping for baked potatoes yesterday, which was similar, but not as good, as this one I did a while ago... Doh!

1 tin chopped tomatoes
1/2 big onion (or 1 smaller onion. What do you have?)
1/2 jar of beans (I like kidney beans, but any will do)
1/2 aubergine, diced
1 chopped stick of celery (no one in Spain has EVER tried celery. Fact.)
salt, pepper, mixed herbs
1 or 2 crushed dried chillis, depending on how much fuerza you have.

Feta cheese

2 potatoes (biggish ones)

Sooo, dead simple again: Use a frying pan. Chop onion and celery, fry in a little olive oil on a low/medium heat until the celery starts to soften. Takes longer than I have patience for.
Add the aubergine and fry for another couple of minutes, then I usually put in the salt/pepper etc, and the crushed chilli. Followed by the tomatoes and beans.
Leave to simmer, for about 10-15 minutes is fine.

Potatoes: In this kitchen sin el horno, I have a good excuse to cheat and use the microwave, which is good! Full power, 4 minutes for every potato. So that was 8 minutes for me.

Then cut open the very hot potatoes, put on plate, add mixture from frying pan, and put some crumbled feta on top (better than it sounds I promise).

the end.

If you'd like to know what it looks like; use your imagination. And listen to our song:

Spinach Pasta

2008-01-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

2 big tomatoes (verde, or beef)
1/2 bag of fresh baby spinach (I forget the weight, oops, see below)
1/2 big onion
2 garlic cloves
mixed dried herbs, salt, pepper (to taste)
lump of cheese
250g tagliatelle
(Was for 2 people, but I cooked far too much)

so, chopped half a big onion, and two cloves of garlic, and fried for a couple for minutes.
Added two diced "beef" tomatoes (the big ones!), mixed herbs, salt and pepper, and continued to fry over medium heat until softening.
Then, two big handfuls of baby spinach, roughly chopped, slowly fed into the frying pan: It looks like a lot of spinach, but it shrinks really quickly, and you can get loads in!

Leave simmering while...

All that should've taken about 10 minutes, and I was heating a pan of water to the boil at the time. I always boil water for pasta with a little salt and olive oil. I decided to use tagliatelle, which is the most needy of pastas, in my opinion:
Needs constant watching and stirring or it sticks together. Anyway, 5/6 minutes later it's done.

Served with grated "semicurado" Spanish cheese (that's where I am).

Honestly very good; I will repeat it.

Leeks!

2008-01-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

Right, I'll change my layout soon, but basically, this isn't "discoriggall", it's my cooking blog.

I cook a lot, ok? And I usually make stuff up as I wander through the shops, so I thought I'd write down anything that works, for future reference.

If anyone else is reading this (if I am reading this, I can stop here - I don't need to explain myself), I am not a chef; I like food, but rarely spend over an hour cooking, so my "recipes" will be pretty simple.

But I like them.

You can also expect mostly vegetarian food, as I am de facto vegetarian, in the Pulp Fiction sense.

Any snooty snobby comments will be welcomed, but coughed rudely upon :)