Yesterday´s bread today´s gnocchi

crispy bread gnocchi with sausages in a spicy tomato sauce

"Food waste is one of the biggest problems of our century and our generations cross to bear.Almost one billion people are undernourished.One third of the food we produce globally is wasted every year, including nearly four trillion apples".

 Yes four trillion.Just think how many tarte tatins we could make? If we dont do something now and make some positive changes to the way we treat food,things will only get worse.
 With a little bit of effort and creativity, salvaged, overripe or bruised and beyond expiration dated food,as well as scraps and trimmings,that would have otherwise been thrown away can be turned into not only edible but delicious dishes.
Anyone who is interested in cooking has a social responsibility more than ever before.We are responsible for the community at large. It is important for us to support artisan producers,the farmers and the cheesemakers.There is much more we can do to make our world a better and more delicious place.We were given for Christmas, a copy of Massimo Bottura´s book "Bread is Gold, extraordinary meals with ordinary ingredients".
 This book is a call to act, a wake up call.A way to look at what is happening in the world and find solutions to fight the terrible tonnes of food waste we put out there every day,with absolutely zilch regard to the homeless sleeping rough on the streets of big cities.It is an absolute disgrace. Each time we throw left over bread away our conscience should be pricked that as consumers we could have done something to prevent that food from being wasted.Perhaps for a start we should only buy what we know we will consume within that foods lifespan.
 This book gives us everyday recipes using all those discarded,undervalued,and neglected ingredients that play a central role in a kitchen, bread, cheese,milk etc.It is about making nourishing meals from what we would normally waste, like chickpea water.
The most valuable lesson you can learn from this book is to make the most of everything and to never throw anything  edible away.I have learnt to make pesto with popcorn instead of costly pine nuts.I have learnt to make a ragù out of almost anything and everything.Like Massimo I will never look at a banana in the same way ever again,having learnt that I can make chutney out of banana skins.Brown overripe bananas make the best banana bread.Ice cream,one of the great joys in life is one of the best ways to reclaim ingredients that are no longer perfect.
The resounding message that comes from this book, loud and strong, is "Improvise,experiment,and cook with urgency".This book is a guide and a starting point for cooking out of your pantry and refrigerator.It is noticeable since Christmas how our food bills have dropped dramatically.
Many of the recipes in the book come with condiments,sauces and side dishes and all these elements can be taken as individual elements and applied in a different context.The first recipe that caught my eye was fish soup with bread gnocchi.
I know stale bread dumplings mightn't sound too appetising, but swimming in a rich piquant tomato sauce they are an absolute delight. Comfort food at its finest I would say.
I passed on the fish soup as it would mean me making a special journey to the market to buy fresh fish.So I took the bread gnocchi made from yesterdays loaf and served them as they would have been served with the soup but instead I used sausages I had in the refrigerator and made an Italian style tomato and sausage based stew ( salsicce al sugo di pomodoro).This is a dish I would  normally have served with mashed potato. I awarded myself brownie points for being resourceful.As I said this book is about improvising and experimenting.Having made the "Gnocchi" from the book I found another similar, but more traditional Italian recipe for bread and pecorino dumplings,so I tried this too,but with more cheese and without the sausages.
To make the bread gnocchi from"Bread is gold" 
 Bread Gnocchi are typical from Trieste, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region near the border between Italy and Slovenia.They are typically served  two ways ,either in broth or sautéed with butter and sage

To serve 6
500g stale bread,chopped
11/4 cups(300ml) milk
2 eggs
3/4 cup (100g all purpose (plain) flour
1 tsp flor de sal
freshly ground black pepper
extra virgin olive oil for drizzling
1/2 cup (50g) freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
In a large bowl,soiak the bread in the milk for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC / gas mark 4
Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
Squeeze the excess liquid out of the soaked bread.Discard the liquid and return the bread to the bowl.Add the eggs,flour,salt and pepper and mix them thoroughly to form a dough.Shape the dough with your hands to form gnocchi.In a medium pan of boiling water,cook the bread gnocchi until they float to the surface,about 5 minutes.Drain.Transfer the prepared baking tray and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with the parmesan.Bake until golden brown about 40 minutes.
Alternatively use this recipe....

Bread and pecorino dumplings (pallotte cacio e ovo) 

An iconic dish from the Abruzzo region got its start as a way of using up leftover bits of cheese and stale bread. The mixture is then bound together with egg and formed into balls and, just like meatballs, fried and simmered in tomato sauce. As they simmer, the pallotte swell and absorb the flavour of the sauce. You’ll be surprised how much they actually taste like ‘real’ meatballs. Its a perfect example of how the poor in Italy would take simple, humble ingredients that others might discard and then turn them into something incredibly tasty.

Originally served as a vegetarian second course to replace costly meat, in these times of austerity this dish is just as likely to show up again as an antipasto.

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 spring onions, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, skin on, bashed with the back of a knife
1 clove garlic, extra, finely chopped

1 small celery stick, finely chopped

¼ red or green capsicum (pepper), coarsely chopped
2 x 400 g tins tomatoes

salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper
200 ml water

torn basil leaves, to garnish

DUMPLINGS
200 g day-old Italian bread (such as pane di casa or ciabatta), crusts removed, cut into chunks

1 cup (250 ml) water or milk

2 cups (160 g) finely grated parmesan or pecorino

1 egg , lightly beaten

3 tbsp roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley

3 tbsp roughly chopped basil

salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

olive oil, for deep-frying 

 To make the dumplings, soak the bread in the milk for 20 minutes or until soft. Squeeze out any excess liquid then, using your hands, break down the bread to a pulp. Add the cheese, egg and herbs and mix to form a sticky batter. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium–high heat. Add the spring onion, garlic, celery and capsicum and cook, stirring, for 3–4 minutes or until fragrant. Add the tinned tomatoes and water, season with salt and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low and cook gently for 20 minutes or until reduced slightly.
To cook the dumplings, half-fill a saucepan with olive oil and heat over medium–high heat to 180ºC or until a cube of bread browns in 15 seconds. With wet hands, shape the dumpling mixture into 5 cm balls.
Add the dumplings to the oil in batches and cook for 3-4 minutes or until golden and cooked through. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a plate lined with paper towel. Add the cooked dumplings to the tomato sauce, cover with the lid and stand, off the heat, for at least 1 hour before serving to allow the flavours to mingle and the dumplings to soak up the sauce. Reheat if you like or serve warm, garnished with torn basil leaves. 
Note

• This dish tastes even better the next day – if you have any leftovers, that is...

Parsnips Molly Parkin,nostalgia revisited

There are legions of dishes named after famous people, Peach Melba,Tournedos Rossini, Chicken Picasso, Beef Wellington, Eggs Arnold Bennett, just for starters. More recently I coined Eggs Benedict Cumberbatch. But Wales can also claim its own place in the world of named dishes with the perhaps lesser known delicacy of ‘Parsnips Molly Parkin.’
2017 marked the 85th birthday of the colourful journalist, painter and novelist Molly Parkin, who was born in Pontycymer on 3rd February 1932.  Molly Parkin rose to prominence in the 1960s propelled by her influence on swinging London as fashion editor of the Sunday Times.She is credited with championing the early careers of designers including Manolo Blahnik and the Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki.

But she gained notoriety for her own outrageous dress sense, an addiction to alcohol( I once encountered her propping up the bar in the Chelsea Arts club) and a love life as colourful as her wardrobe.

As the story goes,according to her memoirs,"Welcome to Mollywood", it was her dislike of parsnips which inspired the dish named after her, and it was in fact created by a fellow journalist.  Denis Curtis, a food writer friend of Molly, who worked for the Daily Telegraph in the 1970s, and knew of her hatred for parsnips.
Taking on the challenge he invented Parsnips Molly Parkin to persuade her that the root vegetable could be tasty if cooked correctly.  By combining their sweetness with the piquant tang of tomatoes and plenty of cream, Denis changed Molly’s mind and so her dish was born.
But then this was the 70’s and they did things very differently then… I suppose parsnips were the height of fashion back in the day…?

How to bake a "Thoroughly modern Molly" 
The Molly Parkin Classic Parsnip Dish

2 large parsnips

2 large beef tomatoes

1oz butter

2 tablespoons of mild olive oil

80 ml creme fraiche

salt and pepper

Emmenthal cheese

• Peel, top and tail the parsnips, discard peelings.
• With a peeler take fine strips of the parsnips until you reach the woody core.
• Melt the butter and oil in a saucepan and fry the fine strips on parsnip until it almost turns to mush.
• Slice the tomatoes into thin slices.
• Parsnip layer: Place a third of the parsnips in an ovenproof dish.
• Season: Sprinkle with a little salt, and a good amount of pepper.
• If the parsnips are sweet (generally in the depths of winter after the first frosts) omit the sugar
• Creme fraiche: pour over a third of the creme fraiche
• Tomatoes: layer a third of the tomatoes on top.
• Make a second and third layer of parsnip, seasoning, creme fraiche and tomatoes ending with tomatoes on top.
• grate some emmenthal on top.

Bake for 30 to 40 mins at a medium heat (if using a high bake for less and let rest for 10-15 minutes, it stays extremely hot for a while).

Pie fetishing

 a bold expression of pig

‘All culinary traditions have a way of using up bits of animal that might otherwise go to waste, and the pork pie is one of the noblest’

“yum yum, pig's bum”, “pickle me walnuts”,

 “spank me gently with a wet chamois”

 There is something about a pork pie that brings out the Len Goodman in me,and there is nothing I bloody love more than a Melton Mowbray pork pie,and even better,getting the satisfaction from one I have made at home.I love that interplay of crisp, animal fat-boosted hot water pastry, the dense meaty filling, punched up with white pepper, anchovy essence, sage and thyme, and then the jelly, reintroduced back into the tight cavities from which it has leaked during cooking.
It is a thing of utter joy.But with the stock, the filling and the pastry, making your own pork pie can seem like a daunting prospect. But get stuck in and lo and behold the finished product is a thing of beauty But, why you ask,would this task occur to anyone, with so many good ones around in the shops? Well, let me tell you exactly why. I suffer from ED (expat deprivation)This means I do not have access to an award winning English butcher´s pork pie within walking distance from my home. I am therefore faced with no other option if I am to succeed in satisfying expat cravings,than making my own.

 glazed and ready for the oven

Rarely have I enjoyed making anything quite so much as I did making my annual Pork pie this year. It was stonkingly good.Kneading that soft, warm dough ready to mould into shape took me back to my art school days of trying my hand on the potters wheel.I was never destined for a career in ceramics I have to say.Twisting the lid into pleats around its circumference,The agonizing consumption of time in trying to get all that jelly in down the funnel but finally that proud moment when you prise your huge heavy porky creation from the shackles of its springform tin and there it is resplendent before you. Making a pork pie is something to file under "a bit of performance". Yet it is undoubtedly a thing of unmistakable homely beauty. Something I always look forward to at this time of year, unlike making marmalade.I now feel committed to making pork pies more often,maybe a pork pie is for all year round ,not just for Christmas.
The trusted and proven recipe I use
There are many really helpful step by step videos on Youtube and this is where I started.

The return of the Spanish inquisition?An omelette and paella divides Europe

Following research for my recent post on Brussels sprouts I stumbled upon some more culinary troubles afoot in Spain. Certain cooking methods must be respected,and at ones own expense some things are better left unmeddled with. At the end of last year, fears that Spain had become irreparably divided following two inconclusive general elections and almost 10 months of ceaseless political bickering, were allayed after Jamie Oliver united the nation by tweeting his own "twist" on paella. Spaniards were outraged by his decision to re-vamp their country´s signature dish.The rich dish which hails from Valencia,traditionally includes meat,fish, shellfish and vegetables,but not chorizo.The inclusion of the Spanish sausage saw Oliver bearing the brunt of much Iberican outrage.I put this to the test and found the internet abounds with paella recipes that include chourizo.If one can not trust online food retailer La Tienda to purvey authenticity, then something is amiss.They have been online suppliers of traditional Spanish food for over 20 years.I would also trust Sam and Sam Clark,chef-owners of restaurant Moro,in London.in the Moro cookbook they give us an authentic paella recipe, Paella De Cerdo Con Chorizo y Espinaca (Rice with Pork, Chorizo and Spinach),a recipe I have been cooking for years.

Paella de cerdo con Chouriço y espinaca

In these times of political turbulence and division it is never a good idea to cause an international incident, particularly in a country that will ruthlessly defend its culinary traditions and territory too.The UK had already been accused by Spain of “treachery” and acting “under the cover of darkness” in an escalation of a war of words over the future of Gibraltar.A few months earlier Simon Manley the UK´s ambassador to Madrid, instead of trying to restore the reputation of Britain´s diplomacy and cuisine, thought he would come up with a novel solution by meddling,live on Spanish TV,with another of the most sacred of Spanish dishes the Tortila de patatas (Spanish omelette).Appearing on the late-night Spanish cooking programme El Comidista ( the food lover), Manley, 49, boldly dismissed suggestions that some formulas should never be messed with.More sparks flew.Not for the first time, the worst transgressors were deemed to be Oliver and those who “commit atrocities” by adding chorizo, cheese, raw onion and, perhaps most egregiously, coriander.In my opinion the secret of a good tortilla lies in the sweetness of the onions and the luxurious softness of the potatoes.When it comes to onion, the cookbooks say a Spanish omelette’s ingredients are egg, potato, olive oil, salt and onion.The issue of whether cebollas belong in the emblematic fried dish runs like a faultline under the nation’s bar stools and dining tables, dividing families and communities and pitting concebollistas (with-onionists) against sincebollistas (without-onionists).Whose side are you on? Should we be on a diplomatic mission to defend the emblematic paella and Spanish omelette or are we having none of it? Are you a concebollista or a sincebollista?

The vegetable that divides a nation

 zesty shavings, bright green leaves crispy radish, carrot, and creamy dressing

It is the vegetable that divides a nation, a family,friends, a dinner table at Christmas.Brexit or no Brexit, empires will rise and fall and Brits will still be arguing about whether Brussels sprouts are tasty or just a horrible excuse for food. So how did we end up with this Brussels-hating gene?
No doubt Brussels sprouts are controversial,and as a nation we will never be reunited again over the issue of Brussels. Personally, I have always loved them but for a lot of people, they're like the friend no-one likes turning up to the Christmas party.I do understand why Brussels sprouts top the list of detested vegetables for many people. They have a sharp or bitter taste that people either like or hate.When they are large, old, or overcooked, they tend to have an obnoxious, barnyardy flavour that some people are sensitive to, whereas others are not.It might also have something to do with the smell,also a tad barnyardy.You can minimize all this by choosing smaller,younger, fresh-looking sprouts.
Here is my recipe  for people who think they hate Brussels and coleslaw
Slaws aren’t just for summer; their crunch and creamy, tangy dressing is a welcome contrast to the heartier dishes of winter and a well earned and refreshing respite of what we´ve been fed over the last two years.

Prep 15 min
Cook 5 min
Serves 4, or 8 as a side dish
For the salad
300g brussels sprouts, peeled and thinly sliced
1 crunchy dessert apple, quartered, cored and thinly sliced
2 semi-ripe small pears,grated with skin on  
1 carrot, coarsely grated
4 breakfast radishes, grated
Juice of ½ lemon
Salt and black pepper
1/3 cup slivered salted almonds,for garnish (optional)

For the dressing
2 tsp honey
2 tsp English or dijon mustard
1 tbsp cider vinegar 
1 garlic clove crushed
1 tsp Sriracha sauce
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp good-quality mayonnaise
Trim the sprouts by cutting the very base off each one, then peel away any tired outer leaves. Put them on a board, slice them thinly, then transfer to a large bowl.
Add the apple slices and grated pear, the carrot,red onion and radishes squeeze over the lemon juice and season.
Combine all the dressing ingredients and stir well.
Trickle half the dressing over the slaw ingredients and toss together. Pile the slaw on to a serving plate, spoon over the remaining dressing and finish with a scattering of salted almonds,if using.

When "Hoppin' John" becomes "Skippin' Jenny"

Talking about leftovers,something on all our minds at the moment,how about this one which should make a pretty good move to clear our fridges of seasonal debris.Seems pretty healthy to me and offers loads of room for improvisation. Hoppin' John, also known as Carolina Peas and Rice, is a dish of blackeyed peas and rice served in the American South.Eating Hoppin' John on New Year's Day is thought to bring a prosperous year filled with luck.On the day after New Year's Day,today, leftover "Hoppin' John" is called "Skippin' Jenny" and further demonstrates one's frugality, bringing a hope for an even better chance of prosperity in the New Year.
Prep 10 min 
Cook 1 hr 30 min
Serves 4

2 litres ham stock
2 bay leaves
250g black-eyed beans, soaked overnight
150g long-grain rice
50g unsalted butter
50g bacon fat or lard
100g  ham trimmings or serrano ham, finely diced
1 small onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely diced
1 small red pepper, finely diced
¼ tsp chilli flakes
1 jalapeño, finely diced
Juice of 1 lemon
Tabasco
Salt and black pepper

 variation on the theme of "Hoppin John"

Put the stock and bay leaves into a pan, bring to a boil and add the drained beans. Simmer until tender – about an hour – then strain and chill in the fridge, reserving the cooking liquid. Bring the cooking liquid back to the boil, add the rice and cook for 10 minutes, or until tender. Drain the rice and chill.
Melt the butter and lard in a frying pan, add the ham, onion, garlic, celery and red pepper and cook gently until tender but not coloured. Stir in the chilli flakes and jalapeño and cook for two minutes.
Combine this mixture with the beans and rice. Season to taste with the lemon juice, Tabasco and salt and pepper.

Georgia on my mind.Have a little faith in tradition.

 Matsoni: The easiest yogurt You’ll ever make

Many of the predictions about what we’ll be eating and drinking in 2019 point to a calm, restorative and potentially grim time ahead. Then again,I am always wary of these forecasts from wellness market analysts always arriving with a clean, healthy pine scent of New Year’s resolutions.So what's the forecast? 
 As the obsession with digestive health dovetails with the fascination for fermenting, kimchi, sauerkraut and all things pickled will work their way into new territory. Smoothies with kefir will be popular, and kombucha may well start showing up in unexpected places like salad dressings. 
On the downside it looks like we'll be bombarded with products designed to encourage  us to buy and eat more things from labs.For some of us maybe, but I for one will be campaigning to stop  engineered proteins from being called “meat".
However, anything to do with your gut flora means that you can be ready for more ways to ingest probiotics and prebiotics and foods designed to improve the bacterial health of your intestinal tract.I´ve found just the thing for this, and it´s delicious too.It´s called Matsoni: The easiest yogurt You’ll ever make,that is if you are a yoghurt maker.
It doesn’t get easier than matsoni, or the many other traditional yogurts that culture best at room temperature. Just whisk starter culture with milk,leave it in a warm spot in your kitchen, come back in one to two days, and it’s done.You’ve made Matsoni.
Matsoni and other easy, room temperature yogurts require a longer period of fermentation.  Where Greek, Bulgarian and other thermophilic yogurts require only eight to twelve hours to culture properly (you can culture them up to 24 hours, if you like), Matsoni should be cultured for about 24 hours and up to 48 hours.  After 24 to 48 hours, the beneficial bacteria present in the matsoni starter will cause the milk to transform from liquid to a syrupy, semisolid mass, and that,my dear real food lovers, is the easiest yogurt you’ll ever make.
what?!? you expect me to leave milk on my counter for two days? Well, yes, I do.In a time when everything is being pasteurized, purified within an inch of its life and chilled to preserve freshness, it’s easy to forget that, yes, there was a time before refrigeration.  And it wasn’t that long ago.  Simple techniques like culturing milk into yogurt helped to preserve foods for long-term storage.
The bacteria naturally present in Matsoni will prevent spoilage as they do their magic turning milk into yogurt.  Remember, these are lactic acid bacteria; that is, they turn sugar into acid.That acidic environment preserves the milk, is responsible for yogurt’s characteristic tartness, and that prevents spoilage by opportunistic or pathogenic microorganisms.
My dear friend Janny returned recently from Georgia bearing tidings of comfort and joy, and as an added bonus she brought with her a live culture of this Caucasian fermented yoghurt.Funny that because one of my premonitions recently has been that we are going to hear a lot more about things Caucasian this coming year....I feel a song coming on
"Georgia, Georgia...", 
Only the other week I read extensive coverage on two consecutive days by Guardian journalists plauditing what they found there,only to be endorsed by our friends who had just returned from Tbilisi.Sprawling food markets purveying some of the key components of Georgian cuisine:

"burstingly ripe tomatoes, heaps of blue-purple plums, aubergines and veritable forests of herbs and edible flowers – parsley, tarragon, dill, purple basil and marigold – with spices and salt mixes piled up on tables like little volcanoes of flavour".

Well I am already hooked on making their yoghurt or Matsoni as they call it.I am sure it wont be too long before I am mastering the art of making khinkali dumplings,Khachapuri (Cheese Bread) Phkali ( Vegetable Mousse)and lots of healthy applications of walnut paste and sauce.Look out for these recipes popping up on O Cozinheiro in 2019
So what else can we expect to see and eat in the coming year?
Traditional sauces from Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, such as pomegranate molasses and tahini, will be finding "innovative applications."but also ancient traditional foods from other far-off lands,like Matsoni for example.
My other premonition,Oh no I´m starting to sound all Mystic Meg is The new foil or parchment wrapped supper.Remember your first Boy Scout or Girl Guide camping trip? With barely any cleanup and a deep whiff of nostalgia,trust me cooking dinner in foil packets is poised for a resurgence of popularity.Olive magazine and Good Food will be full of it in the months to come.Searches for “foil-pack dinners” have jumped nearly eightfold in the past six months.Bye bye boil in the bag. Buy yourself a nice piece of fish Get the aluminium roll out wrap the fish with some veggies and hi ho silver bream you have a lovely supper in next to no time.

Have a little faith in tradition this year.

Happy New Year to all of you!!!!

Bloody ñora!!!! or when Ñora met Mary

  " Bloody Ñora is the girl I love, now ain´t that too damn bad "

Unless your name is Mary Berry,you’ve all no doubt heard of a cocktail called a Bloody Mary. It’s bloody delicious and just what the doctor ordered if you’re having a bit of a ‘morning after the night before’.
A Bloody Mary is just the thing to drink with a turkey sandwich. At its most basic, a measure of vodka is topped up with tomato juice and seasoned with Worcester sauce, Tabasco and lemon juice, but the fine details can be tweaked to your own taste. There is an endless list of tiny twists to the classic recipe, but each addition requires your Mary to be rechristened.While a Virgin Mary lacks booze,a Bloody Fairy requires absinthe.
 Well a few months back I was having one of those mornings, and our dear friends Jane and Patrick were with us.Over a round of pre-lunch drinks Jane told me that she wanted to invent a take on the Bloody Mary and call it a Bloody Nora, and we had a discussion about what would go to make a bloody good Nora.Well ñora peppers would be a start I suggested.Jane had never heard of a ñora pepper,so I explained...
The ñora is an ingredient indigenous of Spanish cooking.Pronounced “NOR-a”, these chilli peppers are from the Capsicum annuum species, which is part of the plant genus Capsicum. They are closely related to bell peppers. These chillis are also known as pimiento choricero , and are sometimes referred to as the paprika pepper because of their intense and sweet-fleshed taste,which is the basis of the paprika produced in Spain.

The Ñora pepper´s appearance is somewhat similar to cascabel chillies, with a heart-shaped body (approximately 1” tall by 1” wide) and a glossy, wrinkled flesh that is dark red in colour.
Native to the Valencia region of Spain, these are the most commonly used chilli peppers in Spanish cuisine. They are rarely used fresh; they impart a deep red colour to dishes whether used whole, sliced or crushed.
  Columbus brought back numerous Capsicum annuum chiles from his voyage to the New World, and it is believed that he left the early ancestor of this chilli with the Spanish monks of the Yuste monastery. These monks then shared it with their brothers in the congregation of La Nora in Murcia, which is where it gets its name. Today, Nora Chillies are primarily cultivated in the Valencia region, which is located on the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula fronting the Gulf of Valencia on the Mediterranean Sea.
Ñora peppers are used in crab cakes, chorizo sausage, rice dishes like arroz a banda and paella, mashed potatoes, romesco sauce, soups, stews and sautéed vegetables. They also pair well with chicken and seafood, especially cod, octopus and rockfish.And now my friend Jane and I add a whole new meaning and flavour sensation to the Ñora when we introduce her to Bloody Mary.
Our recipe for the perfect Ñora
Makes 2 x 125 ml servings,to make a pitcher multiply 
by the number of servings you require

1 Ñora pepper,rehydrated overnight in 100ml vodka,
(discard seeds and flesh of pepper after infusion)
 
2 dashes Worcester Sauce
Juice of half a lemon
2-3 dashes of Tabasco
1/2 tsp sriracha sauce
1 tsp. prepared horseradish
150ml fresh or very good quality canned tomato juice
pinch of celery salt 
One third fill a glass with ice. Add the pepper infused vodka, Worcester sauce, lemon juice, celery salt Worcester sauce,Tabasco, horseradish and sriracha. Pour on the tomato juice, Stir vigorously then season with black pepper. Taste and adjust the seasonings.Serve with Victoria Coren-Mitchell´s poker faced muffins.

Curry makes the world go round

Here I am four days after Christmas, in elasticated waist jogging bottoms, cooking turkey curry with a pitcher of Bloody Mary on the go.Its time to regain some sense of normality while struggling with a fridge load of leftovers.Curry makes the world go round.A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound can buy us many different styles of curry from across the globe.And what shouts curry louder than anything? - Christmas left overs.Turkey, pork,vegetables,maybe lamb if you opted for an unconventional Christmas like Ottolenghi proffered.
A jar of mass produced curry paste off the supermarket shelf may well go half way to emulating the flavour you tasted in your local "punjab" "Malabar woodlands""Thai-Chi" "Chutney mary""Pok Pok"or "Sukho Thai" but won´t match the taste of a home made curry paste.
Curry pastes are easy to make from scratch.For years I have been making a Thai green Curry paste.I thought this time I would try my hand at a Thai "red" curry paste.Red curry paste makes for excellent Thai curry, including curry chicken and ​seafood curries, ​beef curry, ​vegetarian curries and fish curry. Or add a dollop of this red paste to flavour Thai soups, noodles or other dishes.Homemade curry paste makes curries way way tastier, and  the process from pestle and mortar to mouth is not a lot more time consuming, and it´s much healthier too!
Home made Thai red  curry paste
1 shallot (or 1/4 cup chopped red onion)
1 stalk fresh lemongrass, minced
1 to 2 red chilies (or 1/2 to 1 tsp. cayenne pepper, or 2 to 3 tsp. Thai chili sauce)
4 cloves garlic
1 thumb-size piece ginger, sliced)
2 tbsp. good quality tomato puree or ketchup
1 tsp. ground cumin
3/4 tsp. ground coriander
1/4 tsp. ground white pepper
2 tbsp.Nam pla,Thai fish sauce
1 tsp. shrimp paste
1 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 to 2 tbsp. piri pri flakes
2 tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice 
Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender and process well to create a fragrant Thai red curry paste.
To make a simple curry sauce with your curry paste
1/2 can coconut milk
1 tbsp home made peanut butter
2 tbsp home made red curry paste
3/4 tbsp nam pla ,Thai fish sauce
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp soft brown sugar
1/2 tsp minced garlic
Vegetable stock for thinning (optional)
Put coconut milk in a pan.add the peanut butter,curry paste,sugar,garlic,fish sauce.Whisk over a low heat for 15 minutes or until a desired consistency is reached. You can now add the rest of the ingredients for your selected choice of curry.

The turkey and paxo sandwich tradition,a guilty pleasure

Stuff your face with a leftover turkey and Paxo sandwich, the one that tastes so much better than actual, proper Christmas lunch

It shouldn’t be surprising to hear that dehydrated breadcrumbs and onions aren’t exactly the most wonderful thing a home cook can shimmy to the table with, but the flavour combination of onion, sage and a healthy dollop of butter is a beautiful thing, served with some white wodgy sandwich bread, left over turkey and some bread sauce.If you have no clue what Paxo is, then please don’t unsubscribe when you hear that it is, in fact, a packet mix of sage and onion stuffing.Oh I know, I feel so very ashamed of myself,one who is against laboratory created"meat" made from plant cells.
But, it is the stuff of my childhood, as I am certain it is for many a Brit like me of middle class beginnings! (Like Bisto gravy and Oxo stock cubes, Paxo is a bit of a British institution!).

Paxo stuffing was invented in 1901 by John Crampton, a butcher, who wanted to make Sunday lunches more exciting. And for me as a child he certainly did that.
Available in a range of seven great-tasting flavours, there was a stuffing designed to complement all kinds of meat.
The  favourite for us Brits was Paxo’s traditional Sage and Onion stuffing, the perfect compliment for your roast dinner.

Goodness gracious ,great balls of stuffing