Category Archives: Starters

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas 6.

Oil a small roasting tray with half the olive oil. Wrap a half-slice of serrano around each asparagus spear stem leaving the tip naked. Place the wrapped spears in the oiled roasting tin and brush them with the remaining olive oil. Season the spears with pepper.

Just before you are ready to serve, roast the asparagus and ham in the oven for ~10 minutes, depending upon thickness, until tender but still firm.

[A little aioli for dipping would not be wasted, if you fancy it.]

Method

First, sweat the onion, together with a pinch of salt, in the olive oil until soft and translucent. Toss in the chopped garlic and fry for two minutes more making sure that the garlic doesn’t toast. Set aside to cool.

Top each slice of baguette with some of the sautéed onion and garlic together with a little of the pan oil. Arrange two slices of goat’s cheese on each.

When ready to serve, warm your assembled treasures in a 160°C oven for a few minutes to soften (but not toast) the cheese.

Method

The caramelized red onion. In a small frying pan, melt the butter with one tablespoon of the olive oil and then sweat the finely sliced red onion for five minutes until soft and translucent. Pour in the red wine and sherry vinegar, then add the sugar and a pinch of salt. Simmer gently until the liquid has evaporated (~20-30 minutes).

The Pedro Ximénez. Boil it to reduce by 50% then allow to cool before use.

Cooking and assembling. When you are ready to serve, fry the chicken livers in the remaining half tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat leaving them slightly pink in the middle. Top each slice of baguette with some of the caramelized red onion and sit a chicken liver on top. Drizzle over a teaspoon or so of the reduced Pedro Ximénez.

Method

Rinse the asparagus tips then cut them to a length of about 5cms/2ins. Steam them for 2-3 minutes (depending upon thickness – go for an al dente finish). Let them cool then tie them into four bundles of three spears using the chive stalks.

Spread the baguette slices thinly with a little mayonnaise. Fold a half slice of salmon attractively on top of each baguette slice and top with a bundle of asparagus spears.

Method

Deftly chop together the crab meat and prawns before mixing it together in a small glass bowl with a couple dollops of mayonnaise. Season to taste. Handle the piquillo peppers very gently as they can be frustratingly fragile. Open the peppers and support them in one hand while you stuff them with the crab and shrimp mixture using a teaspoon.

Just before serving, top the bread, if using, with the stuffed peppers (do not do this too early ‘cos the bread may go soggy). Either way, sprinkle over a few drained capers.

[A decorative squiggle of Marie Rose sauce on each pepper wouldn't go amiss if you happen to have some in the cupboard/refrigerator.]

Method

In a small glass bowl, mix together the finely chopped egg, olives and anchovies. Moisten the mixture with some of teh reserved anchovy oil to make a pleasing consistency. Season with a few turns of black pepper – you won’t need salt because of the anchovies.

Invert the tomatoes so that they stand on the stalk end. Cut a cap off the round end of each tomato and hollow it out carefully with a teaspoon. Slightly over-stuff each tomato with the mixture and sit a cap back on top to pretty it up.

[If you can get a mixture of red and yellow tomatoes, you're really cooking on gas - or not.]

Method

Roast the peppers in a blisteringly hot oven (230°C/450°F/gas 8), turning a couple of times, until they are, well, blistered all over (~25-30 minutes). When nicely blackened, put the peppers into a bowl and cover them with cling film. Let them steam thus for ~15 minutes to help loosen their skin.

Hold each pepper over a clean bowl and snip a hole in its base (the pepper’s, not the bowl!) gently squeezing the juices out. Peel off the blackened skin (a blunt knife can help with this and let’s face it, most people’s knives are blunt). Remove the stem, core and seeds before slicing the flesh of each pepper into thin strips. Arrange alternating coloured strips of pepper on a serving plate.

To the reserved pepper juices, add the olive oil, sherry vinegar and crushed garlic. Whisk together seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Cut each olive lengthwise into 2 or 3 pieces.

When ready to serve, drizzle a little dressing over the pepper salad, then scatter over the olive pieces, capers and chopped marjoram/oregano.

Serve as part of a mixed spread of tapas , preferably with some dry sherry as is traditional.

Method

Marinating the chicken. Dissolve the molasses cane sugar in 100ml of the dark soy sauce. Stir in 2 crushed cloves of garlic, ½ the lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of groundnut oil then set this marinade aside while you work on the chicken. Cut the chicken breast meat into ~2cm cubes and thread them on wooden skewers/satay sticks. Put the skewers of chicken on a shallow dish/plate and pour over the marinade. Turning occasionally, marinade the chicken for two hours or so.

The peanut sauce. Skin the peanuts if necessary. Put the peanuts, red chillis, remaining 3 garlic cloves, onion and a teaspoon of salt in a blender/liquidiser. Add 2 tablespoons groundnut oil then blitz it all together adding just enough water to prevent the liquidiser from sticking. [Slaves to originality could smash this paste together in a large pestle and mortar, should they be that desperate.] Heat two more tablespoons groundnut oil in a small saucepan and when hot add the nut paste. Reduce the heat and fry for three minutes. Keeping the paste quite thick at this stage, stir in a little more water and cook for a further five minutes until thick and smooth. Remove the pan from the heat. Dissolve the soft brown sugar in the 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce before stirring this and the remaining juice of ½ lemon into the peanut mixture. Adjust the salt and lemon juice to taste. Set aside.

When you’re ready to eat, reheat the peanut sauce over a gentle heat stirring in enough water to slacken it off to a usable consistency (you decide). In increasing order of preference, either under a grill (if necessary), on a ridged griddle pan (much better) or, (if you’re really lucky) on a charcoal barbecue, cook the marinated chicken skewers on high heat for five minutes or so, checking (obviously) that they are then cooked through. (You are after some nice tinged crusty bits.)

Serve the chicken skewers with some of the peanut sauce separately in individual saucers.

Method

Melt about 30g butter in a frying pan and add one third of the chicken livers and one third of the chopped anchovies. Add a few grindings of black pepper and cook them gently, turning once, for about 7 minutes until cooked through. Tip them, along with all the pan juices, into a food processor. Repeat this process with fresh butter for the remaining two portions of chicken livers.

In the same pan, melt a further 30g butter and sweat the chopped shallots, along with the fresh thyme, until the shallots are soft but not browned (about 5 minutes). Stir in the smashed garlic towards the end and cook it for about 2 minutes. Toss in the brandy and simmer it for a minute to drive off the alcohol. (Sniff it, don’t waste it.) Tip this lot into the blender with the livers.

Assuming you have 2 x 250g/8oz packs of butter, you will have used half of one pack. Keep the remaining half to melt and seal the top of the paté. Roughly dice the contents of your second, unbroken pack of butter and add it to the processor. Blitz it all until smooth. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper, being careful with the salt because you have anchovies in there.

Fill your chosen paté container(s) with the blitzed paté and smooth the top. Melt the reserved 120g/4oz/half pack of butter over gentle heat. Place the bay leaves on top of the paté and gently pour over enough melted butter to cover the top completely. The bay leaves will, of course, try to float away so be firm.

Allow the paté to cool and then refrigerate until needed. Remove it from the fridge about an hour before you want to serve it though – it tastes better at room temperature.

Method

Having purchased your rarely-seen-in-the-UK octopus, prepare it for cooking. Basically this means turning the body inside out and gutting it, cutting out the eyes and beak, then washing it. I find a mushroom brush (got one?) handy for getting any bits of dirt out of the suckers.

Having cleaned your octopus, pop it into a freezer bag, label it and freeze it for about two months. Many people acuse squid of being rubbery; I strongly disagree but octopus can be. Freezing is said to help tenderize it and I’m not about to argue with Mr. Stein.

When you have a suitable audience and the day arrives to use your octopus, thaw it out. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F/gas 2. Oil a shallow casserole that has a tight-fitting lid and pop in the octopus. Drizzle more olive oil over the top of the octopus. Don’t season it; cover it with the lid and pop it into the warm oven to cook for 2 hours.

Remove the casserole from the oven, take off the lid and let the octopus cool. Magically, quite a bit of cooking liquid will have been produced.

Octopi have a purple-ish skin, much of which will have split, contracted and clumped during cooking. Remove the octopus to a chopping board and, without being too finicky (it’s perfectly edible), rub off the worst of the skin. Many of the suckers will come away with the skin. Chop the now largely white octopus into chunks about 2½cms/1in long.

Make a dressing based on the octopus cooking liquor. The liquid will be a mixture of octopus juice and the olive oil you added. Whisk it into an emulsion and grab about 4 tablespoons of it. Whisk in further olive oil to get to the consistency of a vinaigrette dressing. Whisk in enough lemon juice to give it a pleasant, lemony tang. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper, being careful with salt because the juices are already quite salty.

Toss the octopus in the dressing then stir in the chopped parsely. Serve with crusty bread and butter.