World Cup Cuisine – Honduran Pupusas
So, day six of our World Cup Cuisine series and our first loss: none of the teams that we have chosen so far have lost their games, but when choosing Honduras we figured that that roll was likely to end anyway. I only had a vague inkling where Honduras was before I looked it up, so for those who don’t know, it is in Central America, with El Salvador and Guatemala bordering it to the west and Nicaragua to the east.
Our first idea was a coconut and seafood soup, but it looked complicated and also contained various vegetables that we would have been hard pressed to find, although I am certain that they could have been found somewhere in London had we looked hard enough. Then we found a recipe for pupusas, which are a something like thick, stuffed corn tortillas. They originated in neighbouring El Salvador, but are very popular in Honduras too. As we had masa harina for making tortillas and also some left over Mexican beans that we could use to stuff them, they sounded like just the thing.
We added a little more water to the masa harina than we normally do to tortillas, to make it a bit more pliable. We formed it into four balls, made a little dent inside each ball and filled two of them each with some of the beans and some left over chorizo (from last night) and a little grated cheese. Then we pressed them in our tortilla press (not quite as thin as a tortilla though or the filling would get squashed out) and dry fried them for a minute or two on each side.
Those with the beans inside them were more successful, especially if you bit into a nice cheesy bit. We made some salsa roja, to go with it, which is a cooked tomato, onion and chilli salsa with quite a lot of dried oregano in it. It was a good match to the pupusas, especially since the filling sometimes didn’t get that well distributed inside it and you ended up with half of it being mostly doughy and needing something to make it more interesting.
So a success from the point of view from making something new and interesting, but if we made them again we’d need to work on trying to get a bit more filling into them and getting it more evenly distributed inside.
World Cup Cuisine – Portugese Pea Soup
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the first of the fresh peas for ages so was delighted when Stephen bought these home on Sunday. I’d earmarked them for either a Pea and Mint soup or a variation of this, my favourite new Summer recipe from last year.
And then I realised I needed to cook something Portugese to fit in with today’s game. I was disappointed at first as I’ve waited almost a year to cook the braised dish but, part of the point of this exercise was to challenge ourselves and hopefully find interesting new dishes so, off to Google I went. At first my search was fruitless and then Stephen found a pea soup recipe that sounded interesting so we decided to go with that. In that recipe, the chorizo was boiled and the peas were cooked for two hours which I couldn’t bear to do so I used some of the ingredients and made the rest up as I went along.
I actually cooked this a day ahead and added the fresh peas as we reheated the soup which worked really well. The soup itself was rich and deep but the peas provided a brilliant freshness.
4 small chorizo sausages, sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
Glass of red wine
Teaspoon cumin
Teaspoon cinnamon
Teaspoon paprika
1 bay leaf
4 small potatoes
500g peas, shelled
Start by frying the chorizo until it’s almost cooked through and then remove to a plate.
In the same pan, fry the onions and garlic until soft. Add the chorizo back to the pan, throw in the spices and the bay leaf and season. Stir for about 30 seconds and then deglaze with the wine.
Add the potatoes and stock, bring to the boil and then simmer for about an hour.
Just before serving, add the peas and cook through.
World Cup Cuisine – Japanese Clams and Spring Onions with Miso and Mustard Sauce
Day four in our World Cup Cuisine escapade and we are already a quarter of the way through our target of cooking the food of half the countries! Today we went for Japan, and chose a recipe that at first glance looked a little like a Japanese version of moules mariniere, but turned out quite differently.
We found the recipe in a Japanese cookbook that we have; it sounds quite quick when reading through the recipe, but there are lots of little bits that need to be done separately and then combined at the end, so it took longer than expected. It was worth it though, the flavours all worked well together and it was quite different from the sort of food that we normally cook.
When it came to the wakame (dried seaweed), we found a bag of it in our cupboard that had been there for over a year, so tried to use it all up and ended up with a small mountain of the stuff when it had rehydrated – it expands hugely. Delicious stuff though, and goes well with the clams and the miso and mustard sauce. Not sure why it isn’t wasabi rather than mustard, but that’s what the recipe says. I initially thought that they might assume that maybe we wouldn’t be able to get wasabi, but if they expect us to be able to get wakame then surely we should be able to get wasabi? Anyway.
The recipe goes like this – serves four according to the book – but we did half of this for two of us and found that we needed to cook some vegetables to go with it to make it meal-sized.
900g carpet shell clams or cockles
15ml sake
8 spring onions, green and white parts separated and chopped in half
10g dried wakame
For the dressing:
60ml shiro miso
20ml caster sugar
30ml sake
15ml rice vinegar
pinch salt
7.5ml English mustard (am sure you could use wasabi here…)
Wash the clams and discard any that stay open when tapped. Pour 1cm water into a pan and add the clams, sprinkle with the sake, cover, and bring to the boil. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and let it stand for 2 minutes. Discard any shells that remain closed. Drain the shells and keep the liquid. When the shells have cooled a bit, remove the clam meat from most of them, keeping a few whole for decoration.
Cook the white parts of the spring onions for 2 minutes in boiling water, then add the green bits and cook for another 2 minutes. Drain well.
Mix together all of the sauce ingredients other than the mustard in a small pan and add 45ml of the reserved clam cooking liquid. Put onto medium heat and stir constantly, then add the mustard when the sugar has dissolved. Check for seasoning and add a little more salt if required. Let cool.
Soak the wakame in water for 10 minutes, then squeeze the excess water out of it.
Mix it all together and serve. The recipe says to serve it cold, but we had ours warm.
World Cup Cuisine – Ghanaian Nkrakra
Ghanaian food is something that we have been planning to try for a while but somehow have never got around to it. One thing in particular that we were keen to try was a peanut soup. But when searching for something to cook for today as Ghana was playing we found Nkrakra, which is a beef and vegetable soup / stew.
This included beef and squash, with the squash cooked with the beef and then taken out, mashed and returned to the pot. It also contained French beans and chopped tomato and was spiced up with dried ginger and chilli. The result was quite similar to what I had expected it would be, but was somehow rather “plain” and felt that it could do with a little more flavour concentration. The simple process of simmering the meat without browning it first and not containing anything like onion, garlic, etc probably contributed to that. However, having said that, I still enjoyed it and felt it was an interesting experiment – always good to try something new and maybe that’s just how it is supposed to taste and doesn’t need to be shoehorned into common European culinary ideals.
World Cup Cuisine – Argentinian Steak with Chimichurri Sauce
When thinking of what to cook for Argentina, we automatically thought of this dish. Having cooked it before though, we felt that maybe we should be a little more creative and try something else, but we remembered it having been particularly tasty and were keen to eat it again. As it turned out, we were at a friend’s barbecue and he kindly allowed us to hijack the barbecue briefly to cook the steak. After cooking it, we sliced it up into strips and added more sauce so that people could share it.
The beef wasn’t actually Argentinian because we couldn’t find any unfortunately. We had put it onto the barbecue first when it was still too hot to cook most things, which gave it a delicious char-grilled taste on the outside after just a few minutes, leaving the middle succulent with a slight sweetness. The sauce was a perfect match and we added it to a few other barbecued foods later on too.
World Cup Cuisine – South African Milk Tart
Kerri and I came up with a rather ambitious plan for the World Cup – to try to cook the food of the participants on the day that they were playing. We figured that we could probably get through roughly half of the countries involved, which is probably a bit over-ambitious but something to aim for at least.
With the first game involving the hosts South Africa, that was obviously where we needed to start. One of the most popular South African desserts is milk tart, or “melktert” which is the Afrikaans translation. The tart originated from a Dutch custard tart centuries ago, which Malay cooks in South Africa personalised with a sprinkle of cinnamon.
Having grown up in South Africa, I’ve eaten it many times but never tried to cook it before and it surprised me when the first recipe that I found on the web didn’t include a crust. I thought it was a little strange to have a tart without a crust, and searched around for another recipe and found one that included pastry. But due to laziness eventually tried the crustless one anyway!
I think I overdid the cinnamon because the top of the tart was completely brown rather than the white with brown speckles that is common, but it certainly tasted good. The base and edge had actually formed itself into something of a soft “crust” during the cooking process, which when I tasted it seemed instantly familiar – the crustless version must be quite common.
BLAM!
The humble sandwich. I eat a lot of them but rarely post about it. I generally favour the plainer fillings: ham and mustard or leftover roast chicken. As long as the bread is fresh and crusty and the butter isn’t margarine then I’m easily pleased. Ready-made sandwiches don’t do much for me, the sad, soggy bread, dripping with mayonnaise encased in plastic always leaves me feeling unsatisfied and ripped-off.
I had to go nil-by-mouth last week which was horrifying enough for a food-obsessive like me but the combination of no food or liquid on the hottest day of the year sent me slightly mad. As I entered my 21st hour without anything to eat and my seventh without water, the noises from my stomach started to reverberate around the waiting room and my mind inevitably turned to food. When I’m really hungry I normally crave hamburgers but this time, in my slightly delirious state, what I craved most was a toasted bagel with bacon, lettuce, avocado and mozarella. This isn’t a combination I’ve ever eaten before but it came to me with such clarity that I knew I had to try it. And now I’m almost grateful for those hours of starvation because I’ve found my new favourite sandwich.
A version without bacon and with pesto instead (the PLAM) worked well too and I suspect adding pesto to the BLAM (a BLAMP) would also be a winner. The other obvious addition is tomato but aside from the fact that I hate them, I can’t make the acronym work so that’s obviously a no-go.
I’m not going to give you a recipe for a sandwich but I will say that you’ll enjoy this experience more if you get the mozarella onto the hot bagel quickly so it starts to melt and go stringy.
Pork Rib Ragu
Finally. I’ve been planning to make this for what feels like forever but each attempt has been thwarted for one reason or another. A couple of weeks ago, I actually went to the butcher and purchased the ribs I needed but a bout of illness meant I had to put them in the freezer. Needing the freezer space for ice blocks this weekend, I was forced to make this on Saturday and, I have to be honest, it felt like a bit of a chore. Gone was the enthusiasm I previously had for the dish, replaced by a desire to be outside in the garden with a glass of wine. Still, it had to be done and, having just finished a huge bowl-full, I’m glad I sacrificed the sunbathing for the stove.
My initial plan had been just to use ribs for the dish but I’d picked up a pack of reduced diced pork shoulder in Waitrose so that went in too. The original inspiration came from the pork ragu I made back in April using leftover pork which had worked well but was somewhat lacking in porky flavour. I hoped using bone-in ribs would add the flavour that was missing last time and, I think it did. Of course, that flavour could have come from the pork shoulder. My ability to change only one thing at a time when tweaking recipes continues to fail me so I don’t know for sure. I liked it though although I would add an extra tin of tomatoes next time. Full of rich, meaty flavour but with a lightness coming from the tomatoes and herbs. I used white wine this time instead of red which also contributed to the lighter feeling.
Removing the meat from the bone was a little faffy, it’s easier to do that when everything is still hot and I didn’t have time on Saturday so had to do it while re-heating the ragu tonight. The initial browning takes a little while too but it’s worth paying attention to this stage to maximise the flavour. Aside from that, it’s a dish that looks after itself which meant I got my glass of wine in the garden eventually.
Pork Ragu
Serves Four
8 pork ribs
450g diced pork shoulder
2 onions, finely diced
4 cloves garlic
1 large carrot, finely diced
2 sticks celery, finely diced
2 bay leaves
Large handful mixed herbs (I used sage, oregano, rosemary and thyme)
Tablespoon tomato puree
Salt and pepper
Large glass white wine
Tin tomatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
200ml milk
Start by browning the seasoned pork ribs and shoulder in batches. Remove to a plate and reserve.
In the same pan, soften the onions, garlic, carrot and celery. Add the bay leaves and herbs and mix, cook for a couple of minutes.
Next, add the tomato puree, mix and cook for a couple of minutes. Season.
Deglaze the pan with the wine, add the tomatoes, the stock and the milk.
Return the meat to the pan, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 3-4 hours, or until the meat is falling apart. Don’t forget to keep an eye on the liquid level and add more water if necessary.
Salami, Pesto and Watercress Pizza
Stephen mentioned in passing that he was considering taking a break from his wheat-free diet as he was craving bread. As a confirmed bread-lover, I’ve missed homemade pizza the most since Stephen’s experiment started so, seconds after he admitted his resolve was weakening, I’d convinced him we should eat pizza for dinner.
We had rather a lot of salami and mozarella left over from a previous sandwich-making extravaganza (which was brilliant but I forgot to photograph so watch out for that soon) so that was the starting point for this pizza. At the last minute, Stephen threw on some artichokes which are perfect for this sort of thing and so useful to have in the fridge. After a brief searing in the oven, the pizza was topped with some watercress which I’d tossed in some pesto and some fresh mozarella (a tip we picked up at a Pizza Express Masterclass).
Stephen thought this was a good pizza but not as good as last time, I thought it was brilliant though. The watercress adds a great pepperiness to the pizza and the fresh cheese is a great contrast to the cooked, stringy mozarella which makes the whole thing seem lighter and fresher.
Thai Red Chicken Curry
We’ve been without broadband for a few days, due to some unknown BT fault, hence the very late update – we actually ate this on Wednesday.
I feel I should try to say something interesting, given the gap in posting, but this was actually made with ready-made paste that has been in the freezer for a while. More than a while if I’m honest and while I’m generally an advocate of freezing Thai pastes, this one had definitely deteriorated over time. We thought that might be the case so added lots of it to increase the heat and fragrance which worked fairly well. Not a bad effort for a mid-week meal but nothing like as good as a homemade paste.
