Squid with peas and mint

Squid's have been christened just about correctly. The single rubbery syllable, squirting muscle and watery propulsion: they must really dart about in the sea. Above the water they look rather alien - the thick sheath of muscle, the plasticy translucent mantle and the horrible mucus in the body cavity.

Squid are notoriously rubbery when cooked of course, and to combat that you must either cook very briefly (a quick dip, floured, into a deep-fat fryer for instance) or at some length. This recipe goes down the second route. It's a simple combination of squid with fish-favourites white wine and fennel, plus peas and mint. It's in the second Moro book (billed as cuttlefish with broad beans) and is well worth a go. As ever I've tweaked the version to my taste - fiddle at will with the basics below.

• squid - a couple per person as a main
• a medium glass of white wine and a big one of water
• paprika, fennel seeds, bay leaves
• onion and garlic
• peas or broad beans
• mint

Fry one sliced small onion in olive oil per squid. Add sliced garlic.

After ten or fifteen minutes add a few bay leaves and a teaspoon of fennel seeds. Fry for a few more minutes. Add a teaspoon of paprika. Add the wine and water to make up a sauce. Add the squid or cuttlefish chopped into small pieces. Keep the crowns of tentacles complete unless the beasts are monsters. They will shrink when cooked.

The muscle fibres will contract and tighten when exposed to heat. They need to be cooked enough to start breaking down. This may well take around fifty minutes on a low, puttering heat. Keep an eye on things and stir from time to time.

 more tentacle vicar?

When the squid tastes done add the peas or beans and cook till done. Good time to draw for the frozen veg here. Also added some ripped up mint - as much as you see fit. I found I needed more than I first thought. I gave it a minute on the heat to wilt the herb down pleasantly.

Wow. The sauce itself almost outshines the squid. It's perfectly balanced and made to be mopped up with a fat slice of bread grilled and rubbed with a cut garlic clove. This sauce would also be excellent with a fried piece of white fish or how about some asparagus, peppers and artichokes for a veg version?

Sweet and sour poached leeks

This is a very nice side dish from the second Moro book.

I think the real key here is the make sure you use young and tender leeks. I used some bargain but borderline superannuated ones from Ridley Rd and their outer layer turned out to be extremely chewy. They were edible but after a going over the soft inner bit disappeared and just the stringy outer bit left with its gentle throttle on the way down.

The key to the poaching liquor is the sweetness from the sugar and the sourness from the lemons - I used chopped preserved lemons here and it worked well. Their salt-sour taste made the liquid extra jazzy. The books suggests using other green vegetables you may have to hand - peas, broad beans, cabbage or artichoke.

Ingredients

• leeks, young and slim
• sugar, water, garlic and lemon

Old school

Fry a few chopped garlic cloves in olive oil lightly and then added the trimmed and cleaned leeks. Add a couple of hundred mills of water, a tablespoon of sugar and either the juice of a lemon or some chopped preserved lemon. Poach until done - around fifteen or twenty minutes. Get some young ones and save the big woody leeks for the soup pot.

With grain salad again

I made this a week or so ago and, lo, what appeared on Ridley Rd this week but packs of tiny leeks!, snaffled naturally. In a bizarre reversal of the laws governing vegetable behaviour the leeks looks like small spring-onions whilst the actual spring-onions have gone rogue: giant, tough and whip like, barely fitting in the fridge. The little ones worked a treat with this dish.

Peppers stuffed with saltfish and chorizo

Saltfish. What other un-tinned fish can just sit in your cupboard waiting for a chill evening and a keen hand to remove and ready it for the pot? Nocturnally hydrated it is ready to lend its bounce to soups, salads, patties and pastes. Cookbooks sometimes stress how expensive saltcod is and how its availability is limited to Spanish and Italian delis. There is a simple way to get around both problems that they never seem to mention - get down to a local market with a Caribbean stall and fill your boots. I got three packets of saltfish (it's pollock but I guess we shouldn't be eating cod anyway right?) for five pounds.

There is a recipe in the second Moro book suggesting stuffing spicy peppers with saltfish and I admit that it was the idea for this combination. But nothing was taken so so I'm claiming this one as a SD, ON (near) original!

Ingredients

• 400g saltfish
• six spring onions or a similar amount of onion or shallots
• 100g chorizo
• 2 medium cooked potatos
• five peppers
• dried chilli, garlic, cumin

 

Hydrate and desalinate the saltfish either by soaking overnight or boiling from a coldwater start a couple of times or until it tastes acceptably (un)salty. In the last boil put the potatoes in to cook cut into small chunks. When fish and potato are ready mash together in a bowl.

Meanwhile soften the onions with plenty of garlic in a pan and add the chroizo to colour. Add chilli flakes, cumin  and black pepper to taste. Allow all to cook for a couple of minutes and lubricate with plenty of olive oil. When this mixture is ready combine with the saltfish and potatos and correct seasoning. Stuff this into the peppers and bake for forty-five minutes in a moderate oven until the peppers have started to break down and blacken on top. I had a few tomatoes in the mix too.

For a salad I made a lovely Moro one - blanched cauliflower, chickpeas and preserved lemons dressed with olive oil thick with cumin seed and chopped coriander. This is a wonderful salad that should be made as often as possible.

We had it with pittas.

Lamb soup with preserved lemons

The idea for this soup comes from the second Moro book where they do a steamed lamb dish. This is a soup version of this with lamb neck (scrag). It's super cheap and tasty. It's well quick to prepare, though needs a couple of hours on the hob.

The prep time is very low and you can forgo browning the meat for ease (I'm still on the fence about the value of browning, Harold (McGee) says that the idea of sealing the juices in is nonsense but it does get the wicked Malliard reaction started and the roast meat flavour going on, still are you gonna notice that in a big stew or soup, I don't know...ho hum. If I do brown meat I reckon putting on in a non stick frying pan on a high heat so it gets really brown is the one, I'm not sure a gentle browning serves much purpose, answers on a postcard.) Lamb neck is such a great ingredient - it made me realise it's the lamb version of oxtail (and half the price). It's rich in collagen and gelatine, the bone gives amazing flavour for stocks and sauces and the meat can be shredded and put back into the dish.

I'd really recommend preserving your own lemons. I did mine from the same Moro book and they taste amazing. They need to sit in the salt solution for around three months but are just so good and much cheaper than buying them - they taste like a grown-up lemon sherbet, all salt and savour.

Garlic, cumin and chilli fried in olive oil really sum up the taste of Turkish soups and stews to me and are a great base from which you can just add anything, eg chickpeas and spinach and bread and have something good to eat.

Ingreds

• 1 scrag end of lamb cut into large chunks (mine was just over three quid in Turkish shop)
• preserved lemons
• two big potatoes / a tin of chickpeas / a handful of barley
• parsley or coriander (I know they don't taste that similar but both would be fine here)
• 2 onions
• garlic
• cumin
• dried chilli
• olive oil
  
  

1. Fry the onions in olive oil for five minutes.
2. Add four garlic cloves chopped roughly, one tablespoon of cumin and one of chilli flakes (Turkish shops good for this) and one large or two small preserved lemons rinsed and chopped. Fry for another five minutes.
3. Trim any excess fat from the lamb and pull out the spinal cord sections if you fancy. Brown if you can be bothered.
4. Add to the pan with the veg and fry for a couple of minutes before adding a litre or so of boiling water. Cook on lowest heat for one hour and a quarterish.
   
5. Check out the meat and if really soft take out and take meat off bone.
6. Add the potato, chickpeas or barley. The chickpeas will only take a minute to warm up but the other things longer natch so simmer accordingly.
7. Add the meat back to the soup and check seasoning - add salt (shouldn't need much as lemons are pretty salty), plenty of pepper and a bit more lemon or juice from the lemons if need be (the lemon should provide an amazing background tang that cuts through the richness of the lamb fat). Add the herbs - I like lots of flat leaf parsley here.
   
   

There you go, it's rich and meaty as you would expect, comforting flavours for the colder weather. You could put anything in really - tomatoes towards the end, courgette, more chilli etc.If there is some left and you stick it in the fridge you can skim off the fat from the top when cool if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Source: Moro and me. Verdict: tasty.

PS Blog still a bit rubbish probably but hold tight I'm working on it. :)