Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music... Ad Infinitum

I have a confession to make. Nothing drives me wilder than the smell of peppers being roasted or baked. The only other aroma that comes close to it is onions and garlic skating on sizzling oil on a frying pan. Which is why when I came across the recipe below in the July issue of the Observer Food Monthly I knew I had to share it with you, dear fellow bloggers and readers.

I'm aware that summer is gone and autumn is poking its sleepy face through my bedroom window already but this side dish or light lunch works with any season, like most of Nigel Slater's recipes, as I've found out over the years.

Baked peppers with a summer sauce

Serves 2-4 as a side dish (or light lunch, believe me)

large peppers
4olive oil
For the basil dressing:
basil leaves, a couple of good handfuls
oregano leaves, a small handful
mint leaves, a small handful
garlic 1 plump clove, peeled
extra-virgin olive oil about 150ml

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4. Cut the peppers in half, tug out the seeds and cores and lay cut-side up in a baking tin. Trickle a little olive oil over them then bake until the skins have blackened. Remove from the oven and cover with a tea towel or clingfilm. (The steam this creates will make it easier to remove the skins of the pepper.)

Put the basil leaves into a blender or food processor together with the oregano and mint, the peeled clove of garlic and the olive oil. Add a good pinch of sea salt and mix till almost smooth.
Peel the skins of the peppers and put them on a plate. Trickle the herb sauce around them and serve warm.

The music to go with this recipe is full of unbridled hedonism. The reason is simple: Nigel is one of the few food writers (I can't think of any others, and Nigella 'tries' too much for my liking) who makes the phrase 'plump clove' sound both sensuous and naughty without meaning to.

Hence my first musical choice. This tune is sick. The DJ and keyboard player sound houseish, the singer and backing vocalists are pure soul, the brass section, THE BRASS SECTION! yeeeesss! is jazzy and the guitar, drums and bass combine for a slow-burning reggae sound. This is the sickest melody - 'sick' as in 'good', by the way - I've come across in a loooooooooooong time. If this song carried a label it would read: 'No artificial flavours or colourants, just raw ingredients'. Fat Freddy's Drop for you, ladies and gentleman.



Telmary is a Cuban rapper who has a very strong side (she needs it badly in such a male-dominated medium) as well as a softer one as the clip below demonstrates. I reviewed her CD, 'A Diario', here last year and everytime I listen to it I never cease to be amazed at the wild array of melodies her record contains. Whenever I hear this tune or watch this video I think of that olive oil sliding down the sides of those peppers as they are getting baked. Indulgent.



It's a pity that Macy Gray's subsequent records haven't achieved the same success as her debut album 'On How Life Is'. But this track from her sophomore effort, 'The Id', is as tasty as that plump, juicy garlic clove Nigel mentions in his recipe. Consume carefully. Have a brilliant weekend. Ta.



© 2010

Next Post: 'Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music', to be published on Sunday 19th September at 10am (GMT)

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Ad Infinitum...

I admit that when I first cooked this dish I realised too late that I was missing two valuable ingredients: spring onions and shell-on raw prawns. I did have peeled prawns, though, but it was not the same. Since then I have made amends and now I can vouch for this recipe's delicious taste. And my favourite bit, besides eating it, of course? The aroma whilst it's cooking. It's just superb. And yes, it's yet another Nigel Slater's recipe. This blog, and this section in particular, is a fervent follower of Nigel Slater. The full description below has been copied and pasted from his regular column in The Observer newspaper, a publication for which he has written for sixteen years.

Prawns with Sichuan peppercorns and spring onions

2 fresh hot red chillies
a tsp Sichuan peppercorns
a large pinch of sugar
2 tsp of finely minced (or very finely chopped) ginger
4 cloves of garlic
6 spring onions
6 tbsp groundnut oil
400g large, shell-on raw prawns

Halve the chillies, scrape out the seeds, chop the flesh finely, and put into a small bowl. Put the peppercorns into a non-stick frying pan and toast for a minute or two until fragrant. Tip them out and grind to a fine powder using a spice mill or a pestle and mortar. Add to the chillies with the sugar, minced ginger and a teaspoon of sea salt.

Peel and finely chop the garlic. Trim the spring onions and chop them into fine pieces then add, with the garlic, to the chillies.

Pour the oil into a wok and get it smoking hot. Lower in the prawns and let them cook for a minute, then lift them out with a draining spoon. Add the chilli mixture to the wok and stir it round for a minute or less as it sizzles, so it does not burn.

Return the prawns to the pan, continue cooking for a couple of minutes, then serve immediately and eat while hot and peppery.

The music I selected to go with this dish is also full of aromas. Give me Azam Ali's voice any time. It brings much solace and warmth to my soul, just like this dish.

Cassandra Wilson's take on this Bob Marley's classic is, in my humble opinion, a classic itself.

Frank Black, who is one of the few performers I have heard doing an excellent version of 'Dirty Old Town', regales us a tune that burns your insides in the same way those chillies and ginger seethe on the pan.

And last but not least, a good old tango, because whenever I'm cooking a simple dish as the one above I have simple but deep music on in the background. And Astor Piazzolla is one of those artists who is capable of bringing the full flavour of music to any song he performs, just like spring onions and garlic. Enjoy.

Next post: 'Song for a Summer Sunday Morning' to be published on Sunday 14th June at 10am (GMT)

Food, Movies, Food, Movies, Food, Movies, Food, Movies, Ad Infinitum...

Repression usually begets a strong desire to transgress what has been suppressed. If you starve someone of something coveted and yearned for, the person will stop to nothing to overcome the hurdles between the object of affection (or fixation) and him or her. Luckily my love for cooking has never had such pathological tendencies; the way I see it now is that it was an essential part of my quest for my personal freedom.

I grew up in a household where women outnumbered men. On the male side it was only Dad and I. The females were represented by my mother, grandmother, auntie and cousin. And from a very early age it was made very clear to me that the entrance to the kitchen was verboten for both my father and I. In Cuba we have a name for men who wander into so-called women’s affairs, ‘casueleros’, and so far I have never been able to find a translation in French, German or English. I must confess at this point that it never bothered me much for the first twenty-odd years of my life to be waited on by this large coterie of women, especially after my Dad left the family home when I was thirteen. Call it the alpha male effect, but I loved having my cake and eat it.

That all changed when I met my then girlfriend and now wife. Coming from a country like the UK with such liberal views on partnerships and the roles of both members of a relationship, she would not tolerate, I was sure, the argument that I was completely ineffectual in the kitchen. That I could not even break an egg properly (that will be another post, yes, it’s a real story). So, I pulled my socks up and decided to face up to the challenge. I began with my own house arrangements. I demanded (yes, dear reader/fellow blogger, I made my presence strongly felt) that I be allowed in the kitchen whenever it took my fancy. The first time I almost left with the mark of a frying pan on my bottom, courtesy of my late Nana and I won’t translate the words she used out of respect for you my dear readers, but if ever you’re studying Cuban Spanish and want to learn some slang words of the four-letter variety, drop me an e-mail with a link to this post and I will graciously comply.

Where was I? Oh, yes, attempting to break into the fortress, sorry, the kitchen. After many efforts, I was nicely rewarded with small dents on the solid and staunch wall here and there. The change did not happen overnight, but at least I was allowed to cook my own omelettes. I must mention now that as we’re referring to Cuba’s darkest period in the economic crisis in the 90s, eggs were scarce, so any mistakes on my part were admonished severely.

After I became more confident in the kitchen I started trying out more recipes, which due to the situation I just described above, turned me into a very imaginative cook. I loved mucking about with various ingredients and making do with substitues en lieu de the real product.

Thus, my then girlfriend and now wife and I never had any problems concerning cooking. She was and still is a great cook and loves trying new recipes, especially healthy ones.

The main reason why I’ve related this story to you is so that you understand why I like Nigel Slater’s cooking so much.

Nigel has been The Observer Newspaper’s cook-in-residence for over fifteen years and although I only came across his recipes about ten years ago when I started reading the paper, from the word go I knew I had found someone who liked food and the preparation of it as much as I did.
Nigel is a cook, not a chef. And there is an important difference between the two. The former is someone who cooks for pleasure and gets paid for that hobby. The latter is someone who swears on Channel Four (reference only for the dwellers of these isles).

He has authored seven cookery books, an autobiography and presented the BBC television series A Taste of my Life.

Moreover, Nigel is the type of down-to-earth person whom you would most likely invite to an away weekend with both your and his family and friends and whom you would probably catch red-handed at 2am in the downstairs kitchen tucking into the chocolate and banana toffee pie you had made hours earlier for dinner. With a guilty but naughty smile on his face he’d probably say something along the lines of: ‘I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help myself... and I’m sorry to be a pain, but do you happen to have a bit of cream anywhere? And, by the way, do you fancy some of this?’ And there you are, torch in hand and hairs on the back of your neck standing to attention because you thought it’d been an intruder that had broken into your house, and all you can do is laugh your head off and sit down on the floor, back to the wall, to finish the toffee pie with Nigel… plus the cream on top.

As you will see from the recipe I am uploading this week his cooking is understated, straightforward stuff that is easy to accomplish, without a trace of what he affectionately calls ‘cheffery’. He is not fond of fussy cooking and prefers simple suppers made with care and thought. He believes that making something good to eat for your self or for others can lift the spirits in the way little else can. “There is something quietly civilizing about sharing a meal with other people. The simple act of making someone something to eat, even a bowl of soup or a loaf of bread, has a many-layered meaning. It suggests an act of protection and caring, of generosity and intimacy. It is in itself a sign of respect.”

Sweet and sticky chicken wings

These little culinary wonders are strictly meant for picking up with your fingers, preferably while curled up on the sofa in front of the television. Although the mustard brings with it a certain amount of deep warmth, these are not at all spicy, and are for those who revel in an occasional sweet and extremely tactile supper.


Serves 2-3, depending on the size of your wings
chicken wings - 12 (about 600g)
grain mustard - 2 heaping tbsp
runny honey - a heaping tbsp
lemon - a large, juicy one
garlic - 3 large cloves

Heat the oven to 220 c/gas 7. Carefully check the chicken wings for stray feathers (they are often the least scrupulously plucked bit of the bird) then put them in a roasting tin.
Mix the mustard and honey with the juice from the lemon. You should get about 5 tablespoons from a large fruit. Peel the garlic, crush it and add it to the honey with a grinding of pepper and salt.

Toss the wings in the honey mixture and roast for 40 minutes by which time they will be a healthy colour. Turn the wings over and continue cooking for a further 10 minutes. They will now be dark and intensely sweet and sticky.

Such a yummy recipe deserves an equally reputable playlist. The only difference is that this week I've chosen movies over music. Find below clips from the movies I would be watching whilst tucking into this marvellous and scrumptious dish.

Cabaret

Amadeus

Esperando la Carroza

In the Line of Fire

La Muerte de un Burocrata

Glengarry Glen Ross

This photo was taken from the masak-masak blog

For earlier editions of Food, Music, Ad Infinitum columns click on any of the links below:

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Ad Infinitum... (Cat's Crumbs/Migas de Gato)

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Ad Infinitum... (Garlic Prawns)

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Ad Infinitum... (Cashew, Prawn, Brazil Nuts and Lemon Rice)

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Ad Infinitum... (Black Bean Soup)

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Ad Infinitum... (Spicy Grilled Aubergine)

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music, Ad Infinitum... (Chocolate, Banana and Toffee Pie)

Copyright 2008