Roasted vegetable gazpacho

sunshine radiating from a bowl of soup

I thought recently while making yet another variation on the theme of gazpacho,that I could write a book about it, then I discovered that one was already in existence.On examining the contents of the book I realised that I had never made any of the 50 types of gazpacho on the list.The chief reason I suppose being that most of my recipes were my own creations,or re-interpretations.I have notched up ten gazpachos to date and continue my search for further inspiration.
Gazpacho is a hearty soup that is served cold, making it a perfect way to cool down and replenish the body on a hot, summer day in Andalucía. There is the classic gazpacho recipe, but there are many other variations. Gazpacho is typically served along with the main course, or afterward. Some Spaniards serve it in a glass, as a beverage to accompany the meal. 
Here are my top ten favourites

Cordoban samarejo
Beetroot gazpacho
Ajo blanco
Melon and ham gazpacho
Avocado gazpacho
Cherry gazpacho 
Tomato and Pequillo pepper Gazpacho with Sherry
Indian gazpacho
Watermelon gazpacho
Roasted vegetable gazpacho (above)

My favourite to date has to be the watermelon incarnation.The amazing thing here is that coincidentally it is gluten free.Traditionally gazpacho is made with day old or stale bread.The watermelon gives the soup the same texture.
My most recent venture was the  Roasted vegetable gazpacho from the young Irish chef Mark Moriarty,who cooked the soup at Reffetorio.I had cooked all the ingredients the night before as a side dish for our guests,so all I had to do was add some passata and blitz it all in the blender.The soup would work equally well made from scratch.Here is the recipe.....
Serves 6
2 garlic bulbs
2 aubergines,peeled and sliced 1/2inch (1 cm) thick
4 courgettes,sliced 1/2 inch(1cm)thick
2 red bell peppers
1 fennel bulb,trimmed and thickly sliced
6 canned whole peeled tomatoes
10 basil leaves
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
4 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp flor de sal
1/2 cup(125ml) extra virgin olive oil
Preheat the oven to 350ºF(180ºC) gas mark 4.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Wrap the garlic in foil and bake until soft,about 30 minutes.Let cool,then squeeze out the garlic and set aside.Meanwhile arrange the aubergines on a prepared baking sheet and bake until soft,about 20 minutes,set aside.
Arrange the courgettes on the second lined baking sheet and bake until soft,about 15 minutes,set aside.
Char the peppers over the open flame of the stove until the skin is completely blackened.(If you dont have a gas stove,char under a hot grill.)Transfer to a bowl,cover,and let sit for 5 minutes.peel,seed and roughly chop,set aside.
In a food processor combine the aubergine, courgette, peppers, fennel, tomatoes, basil, garlic, vinegar, sugar,and salt and pulse until smooth.
With the machine running,stream in the olive oil.
Season to taste with more salt.
Transfer to a bowl,cover and refrigerate to chill.

Exótica e muito saborosa! Figuero da India.Que delícia o pequeno almoço acabou de se tornar

 Home made Indian fig jelly spread on toast for breakfast....YUMMMMMM

Followers in colder climate zones will have to excuse my temporary bout of Opuntia (Prickly Pear cactus ) mania, but I’ve had a hell of a lot of cactus fruit to deal with this last couple of weeks.I´ve juiced and I´ve jammed and I´ve jellied and next year I’m going to take a crack at creating some other preserves,Indian fig gazpacho, fruit pies, a jelly topping for cheesecake, cocktails, licores —and who knows? Que delícia.

My love affair with the opuntia began one Saturday afternoon in September when I was shopping, and local producer Nelson Ventura from Herdade de Malhada,Alcoutim was promoting the fruit in our local supermarket.Having got into conversation with Nelson,I wrote an initial blog and am now finding out further information about this unusual and intriguing fruit.He very kindly dropped off a box with six kilos of them for casa rosada to try out on our guests.Thank you for that O senhor,muito gentil de sua parte.Opinions differed from o nobre para o delicioso, the sublime to the delicious,but pip content came up high on the points of view list.I made delicious juice which I blended with pomegranate to up the exotic content and then I came up with an exotic jam with just a hint of pomegranate which will be just one new addition to the casa rosada breakfast table. My "romance" with the prickly pear is turning out to be a long,and well, fruitful one.

Geleia Figo da India
Unlike many other cactus jelly recipes on the internet that I have tried unsuccessfully, this one works. The proof is pictured above.
2 1/2 cups prickly pear cactus juice
1/2 cup lemon juice
5 cups sugar
1 box of powdered pectin (18 teaspoons-note that not all pectin brands contain the same amount in a box, so measure it out to make sure)

Wash Peel and scoop out flesh from the fruit.Blitz the fruit in a processor or with astick blender in a cylinder. Use a fine colander or sieve to strain liquid from the juiced fruit. 

Combine strained fruit juice and lemon juice and cook over medium heat until solution is boiling.  Once boiling add sugar and pectin and stir constantly.Continue to keep mixture at a rolling boil for ten minutes,or until jell point is reached then remove pan from heat.  If canning jelly, ladle into sterilized jars.Prickly pear jelly may take up to two weeks to gel inside the jars.  If using for fresh jelly, cool jelly and store covered in the refrigerator for up to one month.

11 years in the Algarve, Tales of the unexpected

...when you enter a home and realised immediately that cooking is taken seriously!  

Photo and quote: Luciana Bianchi

massimobottura   spettacolo!!! 

                                               thank you both  casa rosada

You just would not believe the lessons and things we have learnt over the last eleven years.The first thing you learn as the hosts of a bespoke establishment, is that everyone wants to meet the owner.You soon realise that nobody goes into the bed and breakfast business to make money; its a lifestyle choice.The most important thing is that you have to like people- a lot.And to be kind and patient with those more needy guests.

It all becomes worth it when exciting surprises and unexpected happenings occur simply because we’re open to following a whim. Not that this is an example of a life changing “happening”, but isn’t it the small moments in life that really count? 
Its like that feeling when you take the plunge and step into a restaurant you have never tried before and you leave having experienced one of the best meals you´ve ever tasted ,and you vow never to return in case it will not match up to the previous visit.
The old saying - never go back to spoil a memory -

"this is comprehensively kicked into touch on a return visit to Casa Rosada". TRIPADVISOR

Helping deliver an extra special holiday-by giving lots of inside track suggestions will guarantee they return.Its a truism of the business that the more you put in the more you get out.Give guests a key to come and go as they please.

"They also directed us to some wonderfully located local beach restaurants, though sadly the food never matched the quality of dinner at Casa Rosada".

 Make sure you are always around after breakfast and when they return in the afternoon to answer questions,book restaurants and iron out any small admin problems. 

“As charming and chic as George Clooney!” TRIPADVISOR

First and foremost Casa Rosada is not a boutique B and B; Bespoke yes, exclusive perhaps, but In my book a boutique is a French shop selling fashionable clothes or accessories.It is a misappropriation of the word;perhaps a boutique within a hotel but never a hotel being a boutique.Many boutique hotels are furnished in a themed, stylish and/or aspirational manner.They are businesses serving a sophisticated or specialized clientele.The quality and the service we have offered from day one is no less than the standards we expect when we ourselves travel.Right down to the 400 thread count of the linen we put on the beds.

"You didn´t just pop into Debenhams and
pick up those sheets "

"The dining room - that chandelier!"

Over the years we have met and hosted some both charming amusing and interesting individuals, many who have returned and others who have become friends.I asked a guest only the other day if everything was alright 

 "Beyond......."she said "You really do live in a magical place.Your garden is a special place. Its only in fairy tales that trees are grafted and bear two types of fruit."The garden is indeed a special place lovingly tended  over the years by Andrew.It is his pride and joy where guests can enjoy their own little pocket of private space in one of the many secret areas.

"Just when you thought the day couldn´t get any better......."

Many of our conversations and resulting reviews centre around the food and my cooking.Discussing menus with guests can sometimes be difficult and sometimes a great source of amusement.Suggesting a starter of gazpacho caused a look of bewilderment "its a tomato soup isn´t it, she said.As a main I offered them a traditional Frango à cacciatore, Hunters chicken I further explained.I went away and allowed them some time to deliberate and cogitate and returned with some possible alternatives.We will go with the "Gestapo soup" she said and maybe have the Hungarian chicken next time.As a B&B host you must always remember you are a service industry and must have the utmost patience at all times.On jams for breakfast,having just talked the breakfast table through what all the home made jams were, thereon ensued what reminded me of an early Victoria Wood sketch of the Trivial Pursuit obsessed flatmates "What is the brown one again" (they all had a brownish tinge to them).Who were the Beeeattles? Am I wrong in thinking there are only three major tea producing nations,India,China and Ceylon? So when it came to the next question I was thrown

"we´d like tea please but only if its English we dont like "continental"

What is termed English Breakfast tea is usually Indian,or there is Lapsang Souchong. Perhaps they had been watching too much television and wanted Yorkshire tea.Hey ho, keep smiling I told myself.I realised in hindsight that some teas packed under licence abroad dont always come up to taste expectation.

"Rupert's cooking was excellent and his personalised approach to the menu, sourced fresh every day from the local market, made our dinners there very special - an approach that one would be hard pushed to find elsewhere."

"....regional and international cuisine, produced with flair, local ingredients and a huge dollop of panache (you can't get that in your local supermarket!)".

I am not a chef I had to explain to one guest.A chef has had training and acquired a professional qualification.A cook is self taught like myself and there the difference lies.I have no qualification but have acquired the confidence and the skills to cook instinctively and intuitively rather than blindly following what I am told to in a recipe,or stick by the hard and fast rules of what is drummed into one at chef school or catering college.

"The last night we sampled the Tasting Menu, 7 courses, all of which which just oozed tastiness. Details on request but we've done TM in some nice places (Gleneagles/Mount Juliett/Munich/Stockholm) which were not a patch on what we were served here. Very Big Hat Tip to Rupert (Recommend his blog for cookery tips/menus) whose genuine love of food just comes through".

 "There are a couple of good restaurants a short drive away, and I've reviewed them on trip advisor, but if you can, have a meal in Casa Rosada, cooked by Rupert. We ate in on 3 occasions and were never disappointed, I have attached a few pictures of the sort of food we ate... superb! Just a selection of dishes we had were seared tuna loin (cooked on a salt stone), wind-dried tuna (texture like Iberico ham, in a tuna), red mullet with saffron potato and baby leeks and a tapa with tomato, almond and anchovy, served with a cold manzanilla and a sublime lemon geranium flavoured pannacota served with homemade limoncello (made with home grown lemons from the garden). On one night we had planned to go out but were too chilled, so we joined Rupert and Andrew for a simple bowl of pasta (did I say simple?), pasta beautifully flavoured with rosemary, garlic, tomato and anchovy... let me rephrase.. a great bowl of pasta".      TRIPADVISOR

Never forget you are a service industry and the customer must be given what they ask for or have paid for.One of my favourite memories, but for one moment a tad anxious, happened last summer.Staying in the house was an Italian couple.She had the style and exuberance of a young Sophia Loren and her husband equally charming was built like a brick sh......."she came down to breakfast the first morning and said they had a problem.I prepared myself for the worst but then had to subtly sustain my amusement.
  "Ugo no fit in bed"
I addressed the problem by saying that if she could wait another day when it would become free I would move them to the room with the largest bed in the house.They were very happy and Ugo slept well.
Sometimes there have been amusing anecdotes stemming from language.My favourite here was an email thread concerning payment of a deposit and when requesting bank transfer details the guests email read...

"Give me you NIB"

And when all is said and done the years pass by and we await for what treats and surprises will be awaiting us in the coming year.Thank you to all of you who have enhanced our lifestyle choice and made it all worthwhile.We would not have changed it for anything else.

 

 

The tasting menu - marathon or removal of responsibility?

The first of my tasting options -minted pea panna cotta 
and gazpacho andaluz with Indian flavours

A high-end anomaly a few years ago, three or four-hour menus now look like the future of fine dining.Restaurants are dropping their à la carte menus in favour of all-or-nothing tastings. Before Pret a Manger and Marks and Spencers begin stuffing sandwiches into 18-course boxed office lunch tastings, it’s worth asking if this is the future we want?

salt cured beef fillet

Restaurant tasting menus offer small portions of several dishes as a complete meal. Some restaurants and chefs specialize solely in these tasting menus, while others just make it a further menu option.Tasting menus may be offered to provide a sample of a particular type of cuisine, or house specialties.Some restaurants and chefs use it as an opportunity to showcase a particuar cooking technique - dry-aging, curing, fermenting,salt stone cooking, smoking or grilling over fire.
 When I face a marathon of dishes chosen by a restaurant, I often feel a trapped, helpless sensation. I am in the hands of a chef who grasps the challenges and possibilities of  a tasting menu which can yield for him a succession of delights that a shorter meal could never contain. It is a chance for him to show off. Why should I fork out over the odds oodles of dosh for his three or four hour marathon, and along the way have to suffer some horrors that I would never in a normal visit to a restaurant dream of ordering? Everybody knows how much a plate of chicken should cost in a fancy  restaurant, but what is the value of 30 courses you haven’t even seen? You’re not buying 30 courses, of course. You’re buying a ticket to a show that is probably going to sell out, which leaves the restaurant free to charge whatever it likes.Making each course as different as possible from the last is not just a chance for chef to show off, it’s necessary to keep the diner’s attention. And if a meal goes on for hours even radical costume changes from course to course may not be enough.

Octopus salad

These menus are a hot topic these days.But why? You can’t eat a meal like this with a passing acquaintance or blind date since you’ll be together for hours, and you certainly can’t go with somebody you really want to talk to, either, since there’s little time between courses for sustained conversation.

The consumer of such a meal may feel as much like a victim as a guest. The reservation is hard won, the night is exhausting, the food is cold and the interruptions are frequent.Some of the courses can be  repetitive in ingredients or preparation, and others can feel like padding.The palate flags and the bill stings.Degustation evenings don´t come cheap but in these hard times,surprise surprise, they are spreading like an epidemic.  

Tuna on the salt stone

Perhaps part of the joy of a tasting or set menu is the removal of responsibility. Maybe the recent trend for tapas-style sharing plates has become so popular because it relieves the decision-making pressure.

Turning the table back from customer to chef these degustations are a missed opportunity for research.A restaurant that sells appetizers, main courses and entrees quickly learns which ones customers like. But surely one-bite dishes rarely come back to the kitchen untouched, so the chef has little chance to learn what customers think. Asking “How was everything?” of somebody who has just consumed 26 items isn’t likely to produce constructive criticism.Unless the whole reason for the degustation was a food led focus group as is the case twice yearly when we are invited to our favourite local restaurant Cha com Agua Salgada, where the sole purpose of the evening is to get creative crit, feedback and observations from us as customers.I think this is a great idea,the chef gets to see how his new proposed menu is going to be recieved by his customers and at the same time the customers are having a great networking evening.

So having recently sampled the latest Degustation menu at Cha com Agua Salgada with provision on each menu to comment on each dish accordingly,it was time for me to abandon my cynicism.Perhaps I have misunderstood the concept behind tasting menus and there is an enjoyment and a purpose to a tasting menu.It is not just a poncey chef showcasing his talents.I started to feel that perhaps it was the time to become a dedicated follower of foodista fashion and introduce a degustation menu into the Casa Rosada repertoire.Our most recent guests from England who have stayed with us before, mentioned their penchant for tasting menus.They had expressed their intention to dine in one night during their stay here and I decided that the time was right and the people were right to try out my first tasting menu.It also provided a chance to demonstrate the salt stone technique for cooking (above).So I have now launched the 8 course Casa Rosada Degustation

the two dessert items

The Casa Rosada Degustation

8 courses- 6 savoury / 2 sweet

Minted pea panna cotta and Gazpacho andaluz with Indian flavours

Salt cured beef fillet

Beetroot pudding and Tunisian carrot dip with pipas

Octopus salad with Thai flavours

Tuna on the salt stone with a cucumber coriander and mint salad

5 spiced quail with jewelled Ras al hanout cous cous

Chocolate truffle torte with strawberry and limoncello ice cream

Pear and moscatel sorbet in a serpa cheese shortbread cup

Why walk out dazed when you could have been dazzled.

Indian summer

Could it be better than Bollywood?-  Kick start August with a Bollywood bash in the Bay of Cadiz.Its summer time in Lusitania and the temperatures are rising, so lets put a little spice back in our lives and enjoy some cool comestibles. Tomatoes are plentiful and watermelons abundant. Are we being previous or will we get an Indian summer. Here´s hoping......

Vicky Bhogal´s Watermelon and feta cheese skewers with Indian spices

1/2 watermelon

200g block Feta cheese

11/2 tsp garam masala

1/2 tbsp cumin powder

dash of lime juice

dash of extra virgin olive oil

sprinkling of piri piri flakes

1 tsp chopped fresh coriander leaves

salt and pepper

Cut the watermelon into chunks and set aside. cut the Feta into chunks of the same size and put in a bowl. add the remaining ingredients and stir well to coat, Thread alternate chunks of watermelon and feta onto skewers and serve

My Samarejo ( Cordoban Gazpacho) with a difference
Traditional Andalusian gazpacho with Indian flavours

675g tomatoes, skinned and seeded
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 heaped teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 red chillies,de-seeded
2 tablespoons fresh coriander leaves
225g robust country bread torn into pieces
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
16 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
300ml iced water

Put all the ingredients in a liquidiser and process to a purée.
Adjust with a little water and more olive oil until you achieve your desired consistency.

For a real fun taste of India serve with spicy poppadoms broken into the soup.