Tamarind and Thyme

You know how if you take a banana cake batter and pour it into a loaf pan, what comes out is “banana bread”? Well, I don’t get it. Why is it bread when technically it’s just cake in a different shape? And bread doesn’t sound as much of a guilty pleasure; cake is all comfort and happiness and sweetness and nothing bad can happen when there’s cake around. “Banana bread” sounds like it should be good for us; banana cake is the exact opposite.

The idea of this cake started a while ago. One day, just out of the blue, Blai decided that he’d like some fried bananas. I, of course, thought he meant pisang goreng (fried battered bananas, Malaysian style) but he was thinking much more simply – he craved plain sliced bananas tossed with a bit of sugar and fried in a bit of oil, nothing more. I was skeptical (and now craving pisang goreng) but went along with it and watched that night as he happily stirred together his banana slices at the stove, cooking them into a mush (that was a bit unexpected but our bananas were very ripe). But that mush, which he’d let caramelise in the pan, was utterly delicious!

How marvellous for this fried banana to be incorporated into a cake, I thought, and here we are. I think it would be splendid with a couple handfuls of chocolate chips or chopped candied ginger or walnuts or pecans tossed in but Blai accuses me of over-complicating things. Ok, ok, perhaps I do overthink things so the cake was kept very simple here. (And do toss in any of the above if you like the sound of them!) I’m not sure if the flavour of the caramelised bananas does come through but I do know that it’s a delicious cake.

Oh, and I’m pretending that this was the beginning of my Chinese New Year baking, which is still nonexistent otherwise!

Banana Cake
Adapted from this recipe.
Makes one cake, 9×5 inches in size

2 tbsps butter
sunflower oil
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4 small or 4 large bananas
1 tbsp white sugar

Preheat your oven to 175C.

Melt the butter in a frying pan and pour it into your measuring cup. Top up with oil until you have a 1/4 cup. Pour all into a large mixing bowl. (Feel free to change the ratio of melted butter-oil. You could even use all of one.)

Peel the bananas and slice them thinly. Toss them into the pan in which you melted the butter (no need to wipe it down) along with the 1 tablespoon of sugar and set on a medium heat. Cook, stirring often, until the bananas have gone to mush and are starting to caramelise. Turn off the heat and let cool. (If you don’t feel like doing this step, just peel and mash the bananas with a fork or potato masher.)

Add the rest of the sugars to the bowl with the oil and butter and stir well. Break in the eggs and add the vanilla extract and continue stirring. Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon and combine. Finally, add the banana mixture and stir through to combine once more.

Grease a 9″x5″ loaf pan (you might want to line the bottom too – ours popped out but with a bit of banging!). Pour the batter in and level it with a spatula. Bake 40-50 minutes, check after 40 – a skewer should come out clean. Let cool a bit and then turn it out onto a rack to cool fully. Tuck in!

Roasting seems to be the cooking method of choice for vegetables lately in our flat. Yesterday, I cut a head of broccoli into little florets, tossed them with oil and roasted them at a high heat; after their edges went all brown and crispy, they were tossed into rice cooked with plenty of garlic and oyster sauce. Yum. Sure the roasting broccoli reeked of fart about halfway through cooking but I pressed on and the smell disappeared as the florets browned.

But this recipe I knocked together last week won’t stink out your flat. It will instead scent it with the sweetness from roasting onions and peppers and the spice from curry powder (a jar I was gifted that needed using up) and garam masala. All good, not like fart. And couscous is such an excellent lazy person’s carbohydrate; ever since I discovered that you can get away with just pouring over boiling water rather than steaming the grains, well, I was all over it (apparently this is because the couscous sold here has been pre-steamed). Again, this dish makes for a lovely light dinner and keeps extremely well for a packed lunch the next day too.

Oh yeah, and blah blah healthy blah blah packed lunch blah blah new year’s resolution.

Curried Roast Vegetable Couscous
serves 2.

1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 courgette
1 aubergine
1 red onion
(or any other vegetables that are suitable for roasting)
2 tbsps olive oil

1 cup of dry couscous
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp hot curry powder (or chilli powder, to taste)
1 tsp garam masala
salt
a few sprigs of fresh coriander

Preheat your oven to 200C.

Deseed the peppers and cut into medium sized chunks. Cut the aubergine into medium sized cubes and the courgette into similar sized chunks too. Quarter the onion and then sliced thinly. Toss all the vegetables into a roasting pan and drizzle over the olive oil. Toss together and roast in the oven for about 30 minutes – or until the vegetables are all roasted to your liking.

In a large bowl, mix together the dry couscous, teaspoon of olive oil, curry powder, garam masala and a good shake of salt. Pour in one cup of boiling water (same volume as of dry couscous – but refer to your box of couscous if necessary), give it all a good stir, cover and let sit for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes has elapsed, flake it with a fork until it’s all fluffy.

When the vegetables are roasted to your liking, toss them in with the couscous. Chop the fresh coriander and throw that in too. Mix well and serve.

On our first weekend back from Barcelona, you would think that we’d go off in search of another cuisine other than Catalan or Spanish. But one Sunday morning, we wanted to go out for lunch at a place we hadn’t tried before (ok, that was my requirement), a place where we could relax over a nice meal, a place that wasn’t too far away from home. We planned on heading to Chiswick and I remembered The Duke of Sussex, a pub next door to Le Vacherin. Their menu was always dotted with Spanish dishes, triggering my interest every time I passed it. And now I’d have my chance to try it!

We arrived at the pub just past noon that Sunday and it was a good thing too as we didn’t have a booking (it got pretty packed soon after). Many tables were booked but there were enough free that we had a choice of sitting in the bright and airy bar in front or the restaurant in the back. We opted for the front and got a table right by the large windows. Ah, it was lovely that day with blue sky and bright sun! We liked the look of the pub; my brother liked the selection of ales available. I opted for my usual pub drink: Coca Cola (regular readers of this blog probably know that I’m not great with alcohol!).

It took us a while to select our dishes but once ordered, it took an even longer while for the food to arrive. I suppose we weren’t in a rush as it was a relaxing Sunday afternoon but my stomach was growling! It turned out they were preparing everything to come almost at once. We started with a few fried bits and pieces. The salt cod fritters (£5.50) were lovely and light though Blai found a large bone in one of them. Ham croquetas (£5.50) were huge, of the requisite creaminess, and weren’t bad at all.

The chorizo con huevos (£6.25) came looking very different from how I expected; this is not necessarily a bad thing. Here the eggs had been beaten and cooked together with slices of chorizo and chopped vegetables. However, this dish was a bit of a letdown as we could taste undercooked onion pieces in the vegetables.

Somehow we settled on trying two of their rice dishes – they both did sound gorgeous! The Catalan rice w/ meatballs and prawns (£13.50) was a soupy rice dish that almost resembled a stew. Sloppy, soupy rice dishes like this exist in Catalunya but this one had the unfamiliar flavour of paprika. Unfortunately, it was also too soupy and required more rice but overall, it was a delicious dish with tasty meatballs and extremely fresh prawns. (But the kitchen really does need to look at its preparation – I nearly cracked a tooth on a nubbin of bone in my meatball.)

The Roast cod, black rice, aioli (£13.50) was excellent and nothing could be faulted with it. The cod was flaked beautifully at the touch of a fork while the black rice left rings of squid ink around our mouths as we shovelled it in along with the creamy aioli.

There was still a little room for dessert and we chose the only sweet on the menu that wasn’t British: the crema catalana (£5.25). It was very good but could have been a little bit bigger!

There are definitely a few things that need to be ironed out in the kitchen but overall, it’s not a bad place for a meal or a drink and I’d probably return since I live close by; however, I doubt I’d cross town just to eat there – so it’s a good local instead (I hear they have a good garden for the summer) and a very pleasant place to while away the time if you happen to be in the area. There was a man noshing on a bowl of excellent looking chips with aioli at the bar and I’ve already decided I’ll be having that next time! If Spanish food isn’t your thing, there are a number of British dishes also available; the boys at a neighbouring table were tucking into lovely looking Sunday roasts.

The Duke of Sussex
75 South Parade
Chiswick
London W4 5LF

I’ve still got Barcelona on the mind! I keep meaning to get to Bar Pinotxo at La Boqueria to try their famous chickpea dishes (usually with morcilla, a Spanish black sausage, and raisins or apple) but I’ve never been able to wake myself up early enough (I’m under the impression that it’s less crowded early in the morning). We had some leftover chickpeas one night and the thought sprung to my mind to create a similar dish at home.

This recipe is based on this video I found which shows one of the cooks at Bar Pinotxo preparing the dish. I’ve had to tweak it somewhat to use ingredients that I can easily get here and of course, I have no idea how mine compares to the real thing. One thing I do know – it’s mighty tasty with the creamy chickpeas and savoury pork mingling with the sweet raisins and nutty pine nuts and a bowlful makes a fine supper with a small hunk of bread alongside.

Chickpeas with Sausage, Raisins and Pine Nuts
serves 2-3.

2 tbsps olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 pork sausages
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup pinenuts
1 tsp dried oregano
a pinch of dried thyme
1-2 tbsps chopped flat leaf parsley
500g cooked chickpeas
salt
2 tsps balsamic vinegar
2 tbsps extra virgin olive oil

Heat a large saute pan over medium heat and pour in the oil when hot. Add the onions and cook them slowly until golden, about 10 minutes.

Peel the sausages and add the filling to the pan. Add the raisins, pine nuts, oregano and thyme in too. Fry, stirring and mashing the meat constantly – you want the meat to crumble to little bits. When the meat has cooked through, add the parsley and stir through. If it’s starting to look a bit too dry, you can toss in a bit of water at this time (a bit only!).

Add the chickpeas and stir to combine well. Let cook for another 5 or so minutes, stirring often. The chickpeas are precooked so you just want to heat them up here. When hot, take the pan off the heat, season with salt and pour in the balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Stir through well and serve.

On a somewhat related note, I purchased these fresh chickpeas at a shop on Ealing Road near Wembley this past weekend. I wasn’t too sure how to prepare them so I boiled them for a few minutes, as I would edamame. Unlike edamame though, there are only one or two chickpeas per pod.

The pods collected lots of water and with a gentle squeeze, they’d shoot out jets of hot water. Sure it was a bit dangerous but we were rewarded with tender green chickpeas that made for a nice pre-dinner nibble.

Is it mid-January already?! This is quite late indeed! Ah well, let’s rewind to a fortnight ago. It was New Year’s Eve and after all the Christmas feasting already, I was a little nervous about what we were going to eat that night. We were all again staying home for New Year’s and yet again, Blai’s mother was planning a most impressive meal. The table was set and we sat down at 10pm, ready for the wide variety of bits and pieces that would make up our first course.

Those little dishes didn’t all fit on the table! There was a little trolley (which folds down flat – it’s amazing) alongside with even more food. There were pastries and pate and duck ham and more pastries and those gorgeous fried artichokes of hers. We were all already full after this course!

For the second course, my mother-in-law opted for something simple – but what delicious simplicity this was! We feasted on fillet steak with fried apples and pine nuts. All absolutely gorgeous and I recreated this with pork fillet when I came back to London. So so good.

Dessert time! That afternoon, Blai and I had gone to visit Oriol Balaguer’s shop in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi. He’s one of the top chocolatiers in Spain and his chocolates truly are excellent. This time, I was there for a couple of confections that Kathy from A Passion for Food had mentioned. One was his marshmallows; the shop girls wouldn’t sell me a box of his colourful fruity marshmallows (they’re sold as part of a bigger selection box) but I bought these chocolate marshmallows instead that were wonderfully fluffy and not too sweet and a perfect addition to the dessert selection.

The other sweet I wanted that night was his Mascletà (literal translation: very strong fireworks! Perfect for New Year’s Eve) and I bought a boxful of them. These beautiful chocolates had centres flavoured with either vanilla, hazelnut praline or mandarin and all were chock full of popping candy. The best way to eat these were to just take a bite and let it melt in your mouth slowly. Pop pop pop they go!

And when it was close to midnight, grapes were brought out for the traditional grape scoffing (twelve grapes – one for each toll of the clock bell. Eat them all and there’s good luck for you in the new year) and we got to work preparing them. Blai and I both peeled ours (yeah, we were cheating). Here were my grapes…

… and here were Blai’s. Does their arrangement on the plate say something about us?!

And yet again, we failed after bursting out with laughter halfway through. Ah well.

The next day, of course, was New Year’s Day and we were heading again to the village to see Blai’s extended family. And this meant another big meal! I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going to fit it all but somehow I managed (the stomach is an amazing thing!).

Blai’s aunt had outdone herself again. We had a first course of various things: xató, salt cod, botifarra blanca and white bean truita (Catalan for a tortilla). Can I admit that I look forward to that xató every year? I should learn how to make it here.

For the second course, Blai’s aunt wheeled out a most impressive cassola of estofat de senglar (wild boar stew). The boar had been hunted by her son and husband; there are quite a few of them in the surrounding forests – I haven’t come across one myself but Blai has. Anyway, the stew was gorgeous with its meltingly tender chunks of boar, potatoes, prunes and wild mushrooms (we think they were lleneges). Despite a few of us going up for seconds, we made only a modest dent in this massive delicious stew.

For dessert, again with the traditional torrons and neules. I also brought along another treat I’d picked up at Oriol Balaguer – a little boxful of his Bola-Bola, caramelised coffee beans covered in dark chocolate. Again, they were delicious. Yup, I’m a fan.

What fabulous feasting again in Barcelona – thank you so much to Blai’s family who are my family now too!

If you are planning to go to Oriol Balaguer’s shop, you might want to take a look online at what products are available. Not everything was on display and the shop girls weren’t very forthcoming about what they had in the back. I had to ask for the large box of Mascletas (12 in the box).

Oriol Balaguer
Placa St Gregori Taumaturg, 2
Barcelona, Spain

Well, that’s the end to this series of Barcelona posts for this trip. All my photos from that beautiful city can be found in this Flickr photoset – it’s a little larger than usual due to my visiting all the touristy sites with my brother. I particularly enjoyed our visit to Mies van der Rohe’s pavilion.