Long weekend, small plates

This weekend was another one of those meaningless public holidays, which really meant an excuse to spend hours in the kitchen. 

We cooked a tapas-ish feast for a few friends. It's tapas-'ish' because the dishes aren't all Spanish. I can't be bothered with scrupulous authenticity.

To start we had some spiced almonds, which were blanched almonds pan-fried with cayenne pepper, salt, oregano and paprika. Delicious. I can definitely see myself snacking on these all summer. Soda also made a Cava cocktail with Licor 43, vanila extract and orange peel which was pretty great.

Our first wave of dishes included some ugly-but-satisfying jamon croquettes (pictured above), from this easy recipe. We also had a salad of white anchovies, parsley and shallots. I love white anchovies. I like to think of them as gateway anchovies, because they're not hairy and not too salty, so they'll hook anyone who's not already an anchovy fiend. It turns out that all our friends already love anchovies (we know good people), so this was just preaching to the converted.  

We served things in threes, with the third part of the first wave of dishes being chickpea pancakes with onion confit and creme fraiche. I'm not sure what I was thinking with that one.

The second wave included some slightly disappointing shoestring fries with smoked paprika salt that were a bit soggy, but also the spectacularly successful salad of home-cured salmon with blood orange and fennel, pictured above, and these quail egg, chorizo and romesco bites (pictured below).

I got the idea for these little bites from an old Manthatcooks post in which Mr Spice Magazine made an apéritif thing of chorizo, aioli and sliced soft-boiled quail egg. Soft boiling and peeling quail eggs seemed a bit fiddly to me, so I fried them and cut around the yolks (messily, as you can see), and sat them on top of romesco rather than aioli. I'm not sure what everyone else thought (I think they were confused, mostly) but I was quite happy with these. I made the romesco extra acidic to try and balance the yolks, which worked well I thought. Someone did mention that it tasted like bacon and eggs, which was true and a pretty big compliment in my book. 

The third wave of dishes included albondigas (aka meatballs) with a sauce of blended piquillo peppers. The sauce was incredible and vibrant, one of the highlights of the night. It was just a tin of Spanish piquillo peppers, blended, with salt. Nothing else.

We also had some slow-braised octopus that I dressed in a lemon vinaigrette. This was another highlight. I'll post the recipe for this later. Unfortunately both the albondigas and the octopus were not particularly photogenic, so I don't have photos of those dishes. 

The third wave also included some beautiful thin new-season asparagus with an anchovy dressing. I just quickly grilled the asparagus and tossed them in the dressing. Lucky everyone was an anchovy fan.

 

The final set of savoury dishes included oxtail rillettes with a Pedro Ximenez reduction, which was one of my favourite dishes of the night. I braised the oxtail for 3 or 4 hours in tomatoes and white wine with smoked paprika, then shredded the meat off the bone, blended with a few cornichons and capers, spooned it into a ramekin and baked in a bain marie. Once it was warm and semi-set I turned it out onto a plate alongside some sherry that had been reduced to a sticky syrup with a star anise and some blood orange peel. We served this with some thin slices of baguette, so that you slathered a bit of meat and a bit of sauce on a crostini. Holy hell this was flavourful. This is another that I'll write up later with a proper recipe.

The final course also included some squid with a chorizo and sherry vinegar dressing. Tasted great, though I overcooked the squid slightly. 

Finally we had little capsicums stuffed with manchego cheese. The butcher at Torre on Lake St saw me eyeing off a can of piquillo peppers (which I ended up using with the meatballs), and offered to get me some little peppers that would be better for stuffing. He came through with the goods, these were delicious.

We finished with churros and pots of chocolate. Delicious.

How to make shoestring fries, Spotted Pig style.

I'm pretty happy to have recreated the shoestring fries that they serve at the Spotted Pig in New York with their famous burger. At the Spotted Pig they chuck some rosemary into the fryer for the last 30 seconds and season the chips with salt mixed with lemon zest. I seasoned mine with smoked paprika salt, to go with some saffron aioli I had left over.

This is too simple to really count as a recipe, and chips are so basic that I'm sure everyone has their own way of preparing them, but these chips are delicious and worth recreating.

Shoestring Fries

Ingredients

Potatoes (about 1kg for four people)

A few litres of vegetable oil

Salt

Smoked paprika (aka Pimenton de la Vera, Dulce)

Method

1) Peel your potatoes, then slice off the tops and bottoms. Lay the potatoes on one of the flat sides you just made, and cut into very thin slices. Cut the slices into matchsticks.

2) Toss the matchsticks around in some paper towel, to dry them out a bit and blot off the excess starch.

3) Heat your oil in a deep fryer to 180c. If you don't have a deep fryer, heat the oil in a deep pot and chuck in a cube of potato. It's at 180c when the potato starts to sizzle.

4) Slowly drop your potato matchsticks into the oil. If you've got a heap then you might need to do this in batches. This is really a lot easier if you have a deep fryer. You can get a decent enough Breville for about $130. Do it.

5) Give it around five minutes, but keep an eye on the potatoes. Some of them will cook faster than others (unless you have laser-precise knife skills), but that's kind of nice. So long as you don't end up with any that have turned the corner into burnt then you're OK.

6) While you're waiting for the chips, mix about one teaspoon of smoked paprika with about four teaspoons of good salt.

7) Drain the fries on some paper towel, then place them in a metal bowl and season them with your paprika salt using that chefly wrist flick method you've seen on TV.

Fish and Chips

All has been quiet on the cooking front lately. I seem to go in and out of cooking phases, and I'm currently 'out', but I'm reading the French Laundry Cookbook and Heat by Bill Buford so I expect I'll have a renewed enthusiasm for cooking soon.

Anyway, this is the sort of dish to cook when you can't be bothered cooking: basic grilled fish and chips. Sweetlips has disappointed us the last few times we've been there, so we thought we'd make some at home.

The fish: season and dust in a little flour, then pan-fry over medium-high heat in butter and a little olive oil. Sprinkle some lemon zest over the top and add a bit of lemon juice and parsley at the end.

The chips: cut into roughly 1cm chips, add to a large pot of cold, salted water. Bring to the boil, then immediately drain. Leave to steam/dry for a few minutes in the colander, then spread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toss them in plenty of olive oil and salt, then roast at 220c for about 40 mins (or until they're nice and crispy).

Serve with a few slices of lemon and tartare sauce.