White Truffle Butternut Squash Veloute w. Pecorino Crisp

Behind this extremely posh sounding name is a rather simple recipe which gives the butternut squash, the chubby ginger kid of the autumn season, an MTV style make-over and turn it into an unctuous and velvety superstar of a dish. I've just returned from a small vacation in Rome where I picked up a bottle of white truffle oil which seems to give this dish that extra layer I was looking for. If fancy sounding recipes make you cringe and bring out your worst kitchen phobias, this might be a first step in overcoming those fears as it's as good as fool-proof. And this way you can wow your next dinner guests with something fanciful, making them believe you've turned into some kind of super chef overnight. Truffle oil is becoming easier to find nowadays, mainly because it's mostly chemically produced and has never actually seen any truffles. Some chefs frown upon it, but for the rest of us who can't afford to buy a real white truffle, we'll have to do with this.

Ingredients:

Veloute:

1 onion

1 kg butternut squash, peeled and cubed in about 2x2 cm

1 small twig of rosemary

about 0.5-0.75 l of water

2 slices of sandwich cheese

50ml cream

about 1 small tsp of white truffle oil

Salt

Pecorino Crisps:

50g of grated Italian pecorino cheese, or parmesan

Pinch of dried oregano and thyme

Start by frying the onion at medium heat in a large pot for about 8 minutes.

Add the cubed butternut squash, the rosemary and enough water to nearly cover. The more water you add, the runnier the veloute will be. You can always add more if it gets too thick. Boil until the butternut squash is tender and falling apart. I used a pressure cooker to speed up the process.

Meanwhile, grate the pecorino cheese in small mountains on baking paper, sprinkle a bit of dried herbs on top and grill them until they become golden brown around the edges. Set aside to cool off completely and you should have small, crunchy cheese crisps.

When the butternut squash is cooked, remove the rosemary and blend the lot until smooth.

Now for the wada-woom. Add the cheese, cream and white truffle oil and stir until the cheese is completely melted. Taste for salt and add a bit more truffle oil to taste. But be careful, it's quite pungent and you only want a hint of it.

Serve with a good rustic bread, the pecorino crisp and a bit of cut chives for decoration.

Octopus Stew as seen on Ramsay's F-Word

I love cooking shows. Master Chef, The F Word, Kitchen Nightmares (The British version for sure), In Search of Perfection, Good Eats, Jamie Oliver, the lot. Great inspiration for the kitchen. In the recent edition of the F Word, Ramsay had local restaurants battle it out in the kitchen to become the best locale restaurant. He had divided the contestants into categories according to their cuisine. In the best Italian restaurant episode Ramsay went to Italy to catch some Octopus and ended up making a little octopus stew. From what I could see, this is how he did it.

Ingredients:
1 octopus
Splash white wine
salt, pepper
Bay leaf
1 red chilli
1 red onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 plump tomatoes
Olives
1 tbsp. Capers
Fresh Parsley
1 to 2 cups of fish stock
Olive oil

Bring a big pot of water to a boil, add plenty of salt, a bit of white wine, and 1 or 2 bay leafs. Rinse the octopus and boil it in the water 10 minutes under lid.
Meanwhile, fry the chilli, onion and garlic in a bit of olive oil at medium heat until it's soft and translucent.
Take out the octopus, remove as much of the skin as you can. Cut the tentacles in bite sizes, and use the meaty part of the head. Discard the rest.

Add the octopus to the onions, along with the chopped tomatoes, chopped olives, capers and parsley.
Add fish stock and a bit of olive oil. Let it simmer without lid 30-35 minutes until the stock is reduced and thickened.

One tasty octopus stew coming up.

Asparagus Soup

Spring is here, asparagus season has just started, so there's no excuse not to go and make yourself a big bowl of soothing asparagus soup. Here's my version.

Ingredients:
2 bunches of green asparagus
1 litre of chicken stock (vegetable stock can be used if vegetarian)
1 tsp butter
1 tsp flour
1 egg yolk
Salt to taste

Cut the dry end off the asparagus and cut then in to smaller pieces. Bring the chicken stock to boil, add the asparagus. I usually add the tougher parts first, simmer then for 10 minutes before adding the much more tender top parts and let it simmer for a further 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, I mix the flour and the softened butter into a ball.

After simmering the asparagus, blend them with a stick blender.

Stir in the butter/flour ball. Make sure it dissolves completely. Bring it back to a simmer so it thickens a bit. At this stage you can pass it through a sieve. This way you won't find pieces of stringy asparagus fibres in your soup.

Put your yolk in a cup, add a spoonful of the soup to temper it. Stir it back in to the warm soup and stir. This adds a bit of extra creaminess and taste. Just don't bring it back to a boil or the egg will coagulate.
Serve with bread.

Leek Soup w. Bacon Bits

Just happened to have come in possession of lots of leeks. So how do you quickly get a handful of them out of the way? Make leek soup.

Ingredients:
5 Leeks
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 l. chicken stock
1 squirt of sherry
Salt, pepper
Bacon for the non-vegetarians

Start by removing the outer leaves and cut the leek open lengthwise, stopping just before the root end. Rinse them thoroughly.

Chop them and sweat them in butter. Add a bit of salt to draw out the water from the leek.

When they are all soft and cooked, add the grated nutmeg and the flour. Stir it in and let the flour cook a bit. Make sure you keep stirring. The Flour will start to stick to the base and make the leek lump together. Don't worry, it's all part of the plan.

Add the chicken stock and stir. The flour will thicken it.

Fry the bacon, or place it between two pieces of kitchen towel and blast it in the microwave for aprox. 2 minutes. It'll be crispy and have less fat and less cleaning to do. Set aside.

When the soup has simmered for 5-10 minutes, blend it with a stick blender.

Add a bit of sherry for effect, taste for salt and pepper.

Cut the bacon in small pieces and sprinkle them into the soup.

Broccoli Soup

I'm not the biggest fan of broccoli, but, somehow, I've become a big fan of broccoli soup. And it's so easy to make. You don't need anything apart from broccoli, water and a bit of salt. If you want to make it fancy, you can spice it up with some walnuts, almonds, bits of fried bacon, parmesan, or my favourite, blue cheese. Of course, it's healthier on it's own. High in vitamin C and lots of nutrients with anti-cancer properties. I'll show you how to make it.

Wash your broccoli, turn it upside down and cut off the florets. Cut the stalk into thin slices.

Put it in a big bowl of boiling water. At plenty of salt. The trick is to cook them as fast as possible. Put a lid on and boil for 4-5 minutes or until a knife goes through the broccoli.
Put the broccoli in a blender. Fill it up with halfway up to the height of the broccoli with the same water you boiled it in.
By holding a kitchen towel on top of the blend and giving it light pulses to begin with, you will avoid it explodes and scolds you. Blend till smooth.
Serve with a slice of toasted bread and any of the aforementioned fillings. I've used walnuts and Cabrales blue cheese.

Kinda Clam Chowder

I usually try not to throw too much food away. And especially all sorts of bone go straight to my freezer for later being tuned into stocks and soups. And thus I had some frozen fishbones and heads which have now been converted to the base of this chowder.

Ingredients:
Stock
1 spring onion
1 carrot
1 celery stick
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
Fish heads and bones (about 500g)
1.5 glass of white wine
1/2 lemon, sliced
5-8 pepper corn
1 small bunch of fresh parsley
2 l. water
Chowder:
100g bacon
1 small onion
1 medium potato
1 tbsp butter
1.5 l of the fish stock
500g of any white fish (I used whiting)
200g frozen prawns
250g clams
100g soup pasta (optional)

Start by slowly sweating the vegetables in a bit of olive oil.

When they are soft, add the fish bones and heads (eyes removed) and the white wine. Let the wine reduced to half.

Add the lemon, pepper and parsey. Pour over the water. Bring to a simmer. Simmer at low heat for 20 minute.

Remove all the big pieces of bones. Filter the stock through a sieve or a cloth. Set aside. Use within 3 days or freeze in smaller portions for up to a month.

Now for the chowder. Fry the bacon until brown but not crisp. Remove.

In the same pot where you've just fried the bacon, add a table spoon of butter and the onion and potato cut into fine cubes. Fry until the onion is soft. Then add the bacon again.

Pour in the fish stock and boil the potatoes for 12 minutes.

Cut your fish into smaller pieces. Add them to the soup and boil for 5 minutes or until the fish is nearly done.

Add some peeled, raw prawns, I also added some thin pasta, specially for soups, but you can leave it out. Cook for 3 minutes.

Add the cleaned clams and cook until they start opening up. Discard the ones which don't open up. As you might have noticed, I haven't used salt up til now. So, go ahead and add salt to taste. I added about a tablespoon full. Start with less. Stir it in, taste and adjust.

Serve with a good slice of bread with a crunchy crust.

Fish Soup

So I tried to make fish soup. Something I had never tried before. And it was so much simpler than I thought it would be and is quite tasty if I may say so myself. I was going through my freezer and found the prawn shells from the other day when I was making pad thai. So I thought I'd give the old fish soup a try. You obviously don't have to go out and buy lots of prawns just to peel them. It just gave and extra dimension to the soup. The fish I'm using is hake but any white meated fish will do. My local fish monger said the best piece for a soup would be the area around the head where the jaws are. So that's the one I bought.

Ingredients:
Empthy, raw prawn shells (optional)
1 clove garlic
1 cup of water
2 carrots
1 leek
2-3 shallots
2 cloves of garlic
1 glass of white wine
1 l fish fumet (stock)
400g hake
200 g raw prawns, peeled
150 g peas
Mini Pasta (Optional)

I fried the prawns in a bit of olive oil. Crushed a clove of garlic under a heavy pot and threw it in without removing the peel.

When the shells had changed colour I poured in the water and let it simmer for 5 minutes, turned off the heat and let it cool off a bit.

Then I strained it and discarded the shells.

I chopped the veggies finely.

I threw them all in the pot except the garlic. Sweated it until the leek and onion started to get translucent. Then I added the garlic, fried that for a minute and poured in the white wine. I let the wine reduce to half.

Then I added the stock made from the prawn shells.

The chicken fumet.

While I waited for the stock to reach a boil, I prepared the fish and prawns. As soon as the stock started simmering, I added the fish.

After about 10 minutes I added the peas, which were frozen. So I waited for the soup to come to a simmer again...

... before adding the prawns.

Then I added the mini pasta and let it all simmer without reching a hard boil for about 5 minutes.

And there it is, my very first fish soup.