STUFFED SQUID

This dish is seafood for beginners, not only in the sense that it’s easy to prepare but also in the sense that it's easy to eat: if you have a friend/relative/boyfriend/girlfriend that refuses to eat seafood “because it looks weird”, this could be a good chance to try and enlarge the nutritional horizon of this person. You can chop into little pieces the most squiddy-looking parts, like the tentacles, and hide them inside the body, so in the end you will be serving a sort of abstract object in the shape of a cone, with a yummy and fairly harmless look, lying in a bed of rich tomato sauce. It's basically the same strategy of giving some cream of vegetables to a kid that hates minestrone.

Stuffed squid is a fairly common dish in both Spain and Italy, and you can find many different variants around. My version of the filling makes it almost a “land” dish, as it includes sausages and some parmesan (which means it should be even more accessible to all those seafood haters). The final result is supposed to create an interesting balance of rather different flavors.

Timing:

1 hour, or maybe a little more. 30-45 mins to clean, chop, sautée etc followed by 30 mins of simmering.

Ingredients for 4:

1kg of fresh squids

1 carrot

1 onion

1 celery stick

2 sprigs of rosemary

1 good bunch of parsley

White wine for cooking

1 big can of tomato sauce, around 800g. No tomate frito!

50g grana padano (or parmesan. If by chance you have to use an aged/strong one, you might diminish the amount a bit to avoid an overpowering cheese flavor)

100g old bread

150g plain, coarse-paste sausages, like longaniza fresca

Salt

Pepper

Extra-virgin olive oil

A word on squids

Careful to buy squid and not cuttlefish, which is a tougher cookie and not really appropriate for this recipe. Since squids come in many sizes, you might end up cooking several small ones or a few big ones; it doesn’t make much of a difference. Small ones means more cleaning work, big ones means that you will have to slice them to make individual servings.

It’s very easy to clean a squid. If you already know how to do it, just jump directly to the How to section. Otherwise:

*With your hands remove the membrane covering the body (with body I mean the biggest part of the squid, the sort of cone-shaped hat that you are going to stuff later). Remove also the two fins on the sides. Throw the membrane, wash the fins quickly in cold water and save them.

*Hold the top of the body with one hand; with the other hand pull the tentacles part: squishy stuff will come out attached to it, leaving the body empty.

*Cut off the squishy stuff from the tentacles using a sharp knife or scissors. Throw away the squishy stuff (although if you want you can first remove the ink sac and save it, it's great for pasta sauce. Just be careful not to break it, the ink stains like crazy. Also, it’s still a fishy thing, so it needs to be consumed quickly, better not have it sitting around for long).

*Again with a knife or scissors, get rid of the eyes and the beak in the middle of the tentacles. Wash the tentacles part and put it aside together with the fins.

*Grab the now-white body and with your fingers remove whatever is left inside – you could find some leftover squishy stuff, and you will definitely find something that looks like a transparent piece of plastic. This is called pen, and it’s a vestigial remain of a shell (interesting no?).

*Carefully wash the body, in and out...

*...and you are done. Here you can find a video of the whole process.

How to:

Roughly chop 200g of the squids’ fins and tentacles. Put them in a fairly big anti-stick pan with a splash of olive oil. Peel the sausages, break them into small pieces and add them to the pan. Turn on the heat, set it on low, and cook for some ten minutes, stirring every now and then. In this time the sausages should have changed color, and the squid should have released quite some liquid.

Put the content of the pan, including the liquid, in the bowl of a food processor. Add the bread, parsley and cheese, mix until you get a coarse paste. Notice that it should look rather “wet”; if it seems too dry and crumbly just add water a bit at a time – or fish stock if you have it handy.

[if you don't have a food processor just manually chop the parsley, grate the bread and cheese, then mix everything thoroughly with the content of the pan]

The filling is now ready, so grab the squid bodies and stuff them. Remember they will shrink quite a lot during cooking, so don’t fill them completely; just a bit more than halfway should do. Roughly close the open end of the squid using a toothpick. After this you will probably have some leftover filling: you can add it to the sauce later, or just save it for some other time.

Again put a splash of olive oil in the anti-stick pan; add the filled squids, any remaining raw tentacles/fins and sautée for 5 mins on medium heat. Turn the filled squids after 2 or 3 mins.

In the meantime, clean and chop into little pieces the onion, celery and carrot; after the 5 mins have passed, add them to the pan along with the sprigs of rosemary and some or all the leftover filling (if you have any). Cook for another 5 minutes, stirring every now and then; add a splash of white wine, and when this has evaporated, add the whole can of tomato sauce.

Once the sauce starts to boil, lower the heat, add a pinch of salt and pepper, cover partially with a lid and cook for 30 minutes or so. Add water if it gets too dry; check with a fork if the squid is tender enough, and taste in case more seasoning is needed.

This is a very versatile dish. If you serve it immediately the filling will be nice and creamy; if you put it in the fridge for a while, you will be able to cut the squid in regular slices, as the filling will become more compact, and then re-heat it. You can also use the sauce for spaghetti, or any leftover filling for fishmeatballs.



MUFFINS!

Weekend or not, I love breakfast; can’t really start the day without my favorite combo tea + homemade cake/muffin/biscuits. Because, call me crazy, but I can’t really see the last slice of cake disappearing without thinking about the next one to bake (that normally degenerates into a pathetic picture of me baking until 2am :/).

...anyway, I have been looking for a nice muffin cookbook for a while and when I saw Bob’s recipes published by Marabout with the wonderful pics of the amazing Akiko Ida... well... I guess you know how it ended.

The fact is that muffins are a serious issue as most of the ones you can find out there are huge and pretty BUT dry... terribly dry. And please, don’t try to tell me Starbuck’s muffins are notthatbad :P!!

Bob promises not-SO-nice-looking but extremely good and moist muffins, so I convinced myself it was worth a try.

Choco-chips muffins

Dry ingredients:

320g wheat flour

50g sugar

3 teaspoons of yeast powder

1 teaspoon salt

150g dark chocolate roughly chopped

 

Wet ingredients:

325g crème fraîche

175ml semi-skimmed milk

50ml sunflower oil

1 egg, white and yolk separated

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 200º. In a big bowl mix the flour, the sugar, the yeast and the salt; then add the yolk. Beat the egg whites till stiff.

Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ones + yolks. Then add the egg whites and the choco chips. It’s important to NOT mix/beat the mixture too much to not produce too much gluten that will cause a leak of gas (that is the magic thing that allow the mixture to rise once in the oven) so don’t worry if there’s still dry flour or lumps here and there.

Divide the mixture in muffin moulds and bake for 20-25 minutes. You can verify if they’re properly cooked introducing a cake tester (magic tool); if it comes out completely dry the muffins are ready to take off from the oven.

Note: as usual, what makes the difference are the ingredients so - please - don’t buy pre-made choco-chips: just buy a good dark chocolate and chop it roughly. Same for the vanilla extract; just avoid the chemical “vanilla savour” and buy a real natural extract. It’s a bit more expensive but it’s worth the money, it tastes great :).

REVIEW: VIVA LA VIDA

Vegetarian

Area: La Latina

Category: Lightweight, you can expect to spend 15-20 euros per person


Madrid is often considered a bit of a vegetarian-unfriendly city, and it's true that veggies are not exactly all over the place at traditional tabernas and bares: most dishes served in these venues de toda la vida tend to be meat or fish based. In the lunch place next to my office your only pseudovegetarian option would be a sandwich that actually includes tuna :).

On the other hand, this gap in Madrid's food market is happily filled by various alternative places featuring an interesting and usually rather eclectic form of cocina sana (healthy cooking). So it would probably be more correct to say that there are many vegetarian-unfriendly places in Madrid, but the city still offers valid options even if you don't feel like eating animals. Just to be precise.


The place

Viva la Vida, like other fashionable green restaurants, deploys a sort of tree-hugging-chic look in its decor: low lights, happy colors, ethnic stuff hanging here and there, and some nice touch like the head of a plush lion placed on the wall. Overall the atmosphere is pleasant and rather cozy. There is no menu here; instead you take a plate and head to the buffet, where you can grab the food that you want. Once you are done amassing all sorts of stuff you go to the counter; the bill is determined by the final weight of your plate - a funny concept, no? and the fact that you can basically get in and start eating right away is somewhat very rewarding.

The food


Now, in terms of food quality vegetarian places can pose a bit of a dilemma if you are a restaurant reviewer, I think, as you can fall in different psychological traps. You might end up giving a grade that is higher than deserved, as you think that the food is meh but you should somewhat reward the place for being vegetarian/ecological/green; or the opposite, you might give low grades just because secretly you are convinced that no restaurant that doesn't serve animals can be REALLY good.


Doing my best to maintain an absolutely objective attitude, I'd say overall food here does not disappoint, and it's good enough to satisfy non-vegetarians (like me).


Again like other fashionable green restaurants, Viva la Vida does two interesting things:


1) it tries to mimic traditional meat and fish dishes - as if to demonstrate that vegetarian food can be just as good. So we have soy burgers, croquetas de avena, champiñones y queso (oats, mushrooms and cheese croquettes), meatballs actually made of cereals, funny stuff like the chori-tofu (fake chorizo);


2) it fills you up quite a lot, with dishes that tend to be rich - as if to fight the stereotype that associates vegetarian food to meagre meals and strict dietary restrictions. See the epic desserts section, with abundance of chocolate.


The general style of the food preparation shows a lot of Arabic and Mediterranean influences, with dishes based on couscous, bulgur, the levantine tabulé et cetera. Sometimes inspiration comes from further east, with Indian curry and vegetarian sushi.



Anything bad?


Well, I found a bit odd that they don't seem to have a working website - although this is not really spoiling the eating experience, of course.

I'd say mainly I felt the lack of a killer application; meaning, the food is generally good, but I didn't find anything there that made me really scream with pleasure. But could be my non-vegetarian tastebuds, really.

Also, it doesn't seem like all the dishes are always really superfresh - maybe they are, actually, but they fail at conveying that impression to the user. And sometimes stuff that is supposed to be served really hot was just slightly warm: all little things that somewhat end up reminding you that you are still eating at a buffet (albeit an ecological one) and not at a "proper" restaurant.

Finally, I also believe they could state more clearly which dishes are ok for Vegans, as sometimes I imagine you might be left doubting.



Overall

But overall, pretty good! I should mention that the place works also as a tearoom; that they have some nice organic drinks (beer, wine and juices), and, last but not least, they have wi-fi. Oh, and if you really like what they serve, there is also a shop-only Viva la Vida in Calle Huertas.

Final grade: 7

Costanilla de San Andrés 16

913 663 349

WEEKEND DOUBTS AND A BIRTHDAY

Today a friend celebrates his **th birthday and I obviously wanted to partecipate in my very own way. The fact is that - as far as I remember - this friend likes cheesecakes A LOT.

But I didn’t have the *right* ingredients for a real cheesecake; instead - thanks to my late crush on tiramisù - I always have a good dose of mascarpone and ladyfingers (also known as Savoiardi) in my cupboard.

But preparing a tiramisù to celebrate the mentioned friend didn’t just seem to be the right thing to do... so after a few hours spent thinking about it (in the meantime I actually had beers with friends... I’m not THAT much of a freak :P) I decided to go for a deconstructed tiramisù/cheesecake :). So, here we go! Happy Birthday, Stefano!

Tiramisù cheesecake

Base:

50g ladyfingers

30g butter

Mascarpone cream:

100g mascarpone cheese

2 tablespoons brown vanilla sugar

100g + 2 tablespoon whipped cream

1,66g (1 sheet) gelatine leaf

Choco-coffee cream:

75g dark chocolate

1 tablespoon milk

3 tablespoon coffee

1,66g (1 sheet) gelatine leaf


Prepare good espresso coffee and let it cool.

Melt the butter and mix it with the crumbled ladyfingers. Divide the crumbles in 2 glasses or cooking rings (mine were 8cm) wrapped - inside - with acetate ribbon*.

Prepare the mascarpone cream mixing the cheese with vanilla sugar and whipped cream. Soften the gelatin with water into a bowl; heat 2 tablespoons of whipped cream and melt 1 sheet of gelatin into it. Add it to the mascarpone cream and pour it on the crumbled biscuits.

Refrigerate for 1 hour or until the mascarpone layer thickened. In the meantime prepare the choco-coffee cream, melting the chocolate together with a tablespoon of milk, then adding the coffee.

Heat 1 spoon of whipped cream and melt the gelatin into it. Add the cream+gelatin to the choco-coffee cream and pour it on the mascarpone layer. Refrigerate for another hour until the 2nd layer thickened, then remove the little cheesecake from the acetate ribbon and steel ring and serve.

* Acetate ribbon is a medium gauge clear plastic often used for cake decorating and chocolate work. Sold in rolls, it can be found in baking supply stores.

CHESTNUT TAGLIATELLE WITH BRUSSELS SPROUTS PESTO

Ok, I have to admit it: I’m in love with the entire cabbage family! I actually ignored them until a couple of years ago when I started receiving a bio-box* weekly. In winter the box is often full of savoy, broccoli, cabbage... and brussels sprouts! That’s how our love story started :).

Now, I know cabbage, broccoli & co. are not the most fun veggies on the planet, but let’s just try to forget their usual smell and all the related childish nightmares and let’s, instead, try to cook them in a “modern” way. I promise they won’t disappoint you. AT ALL :).

I was looking for a nice “sauce” for chestnut tagliatelle when I had my very own Epiphany seeing all the sprouts at my favourite fruteria del barrio :).

Tagliatelle:

150g chestnut flour
100g wheat flour
2 eggs

Place both flours in a bowl or on a board (I actually use my Kitchen Aid). Make a well in the centre and crack the eggs into it. Use a fork to beat the eggs until smooth, then mix them with the flour and start kneading. The result should be a smooth and elastic dough that you will cover with clingfilm and let rest for about 30 minutes before rolling and shaping it into tagliatelle.

Sauce:

250g brussels sprouts - external leaves
1/2 clove of garlic
100g hazelnuts
50g parmesan cheese, grated
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
20g butter

Blanch 2 handful brussel sprout’s leaves for about 1 minute; strain them and then use a food processor - or a mortar, if you have some more time - to mash them with the half clove of garlic, the hazelnuts and the olive oil. Season to taste then add Parmesan cheese. Your pesto should have an oozy consistency; if it’s not the case just add a bit more olive oil or parmesan cheese.

Once the pesto is ready, slice the remaining brussels sprouts; melt the butter in a saucepan on a medium heat and add the sprouts. Cook them for a couple of minutes and then add 2 or 3 tablespoons of water. I like them better when they’re crunchy, but this is personal taste so just add some more water if you like them a bit softer.

In the meantime cook the tagliatelle in a pan of boiling salted water for 3 or 4 minutes; drain and then stir them into the pesto. Season to taste and serve adding some brussels sprouts slices.


*In case you're wondering what it is, a bio-box is a box containing bio veggies/fruits. You don't choose them, you just take what the season, the weather and the farmer give you :).

In Madrid it's pretty easy to find such thing: lots of bio-shops prepare boxes and there's a lot of online shops-farms, too, such as Cajanature, Milhistorias, Cestaverde…

Just google "cajas de fruta biologica madrid" and you'll find an entire bio world :)!

SPRITZ

Spritz is the aperitivo par excellence in the North of Italy. It's deceptively easy drinking and it's usually not too strong, although this can vary a lot depending on the proportions chosen by the bartender... I tasted versions that packed quite a punch.

For me it's also a very festive drink, with its bright reddish color, so I thought it would make for an appropriate toast to the Three Kings:).

The classic trio of ingredients would be prosecco, either Campari or Aperol, and sparkling water. Prosecco is a dry, sparkling white wine, usually of good quality but rather cheap; it's sort of a less glamorous cousin of champagne. Comes from the Venice area - that's where Spritz was originally invented. Campari, in case you don't know it, is a bitter liquor that can be found in pretty much any big supermarket. Aperol is similar but less strong, both in terms of taste and alcohol percentage; hard to find around here, anyway.

Various Italian towns/cities/areas/bars have their own customized versions of Spritz, where prosecco is often replaced by a local wine. In Trento for example they use Ferrari; in Brescia a very popular aperitivo goes under the name of Pirlo, and is suspiciously similar to Spritz - prosecco is generally replaced with a Franciacorta wine. Unusual variants include non-sparkling wine, or liquors like Cynar (artichoke flavored) and China Martini instead of Campari/Aperol.

Spritz is usually served in a wine glass or a large tumbler, with ice and a slice of lemon or orange. Being an aperitivo, it is often accompanied by munchies or, in the best places, by tapas-like dishes that can get quite elaborated.

The version I have prepared:

-30% Campari
-30% tonic water
-40% cava semiseco (I used a Codorniu, bought for 7 euros at a shop in the neighborhood)
-a slice of orange
-ice

Simple yet very effective :). By the way, I found out there are some places in Madrid that serve Spritz, like Nonsolocaffé and Il Profumo d'Italia. I'll have to take a look...

GÂTEAU CHOCO-MARRON MERINGUÉ

Every time I go to France I of course come back with food and products that I can hardly find here or that I simply find interesting and nice-looking.

It’s the case of this nice chestnut spread with a vintage design, created by Clément Faugier :).

Well, it was staring at me from my cupboard when I finally found, on Saveur, a very warm and wintery recipe to use it. I’ve already tried it twice, changing and adding ingredients to the original recipe, and I have to admit I really loved the results.

I would suggest to keep the cake “fondant” (that means that the inside has to be moist and not completely cooked) but If you like the consistency of a cake mixture just leave it in the oven for a few more minutes :).




Gateau choco-marron meringué (adapted from Saveur):

250g butter
200g chocolate
80g chestnut spread
150g icing sugar
4 eggs
100g all purpose flour
50g chestnut flour (you can find it in any bio-shop)
110g canned chestnut (normally they are simply boiled), crumbled
50g Maizena

Meringue:

2 egg whites
40g caster sugar
4 marrons glacés (optional)
salt

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter and flour 4 small cake pans or a single one (24cm) and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

Melt the butter and the chocolate in the microwave (or au bain marie), then add the chestnut cream.

In another bowl whisk the eggs and the icing sugar, until the mix becomes frothy then add chestnut and wheat flours, Maizena and the chocolate mix. Stir the crumbled chestnuts into the mixture and pour it all into the pans.

Bake 20-25 min the mini-pans or 25-30 the big one; as I said you can leave the cake in the oven a bit longer if you don’t like the fondant texture.
Take out from the oven and let it cool down.

For the meringue: beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt, then add the sugar and keep on beating for another minute. Spread the meringue on the cakes, crumble the marron glacés on it and brown the meringue with a blowtorch (my favourite :)) or under the grill-oven for 2 or 3 minutes.