Slow Cooked Spicy Squid Casserole

Slow cooked spicy squid casserole

I had to cook for a large group this week end and got one of my old favourites out the bag. This is a guaranteed crowd pleaser,  a good chance you will even entice those who don't like squid. The slow, low cooking gives a soft, melt in the mouth texture.  Serve with plain boiled rice, or crushed new potatoes and a zinging palate cleansing salad. 

The recipe is a guide, as it is one of those dishes that's better improvised each time.

Serves 4

• 1kg squid, cleaned and sliced
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 hot red chili (you can use dried flakes)
• 1 stick of lemongrass sliced (optional)
• 1 tin of plumb tomatoes
• 1 lime or lemon
• Handful of coriander
• Olive oil and seasoning

Simply

1. Fry the onion off in some olive oil until soft.
2. Add the garlic, chili, and lemongrass and stir for a minute
3. Up the heat and stir fry the squid for a minute
4. Add the tin of tomatoes and break up the tomatoes as they cook out
5. Season and add lime or lemon juice
6. Simmer for at least an hour on a really low heat, or in a low oven
7. When it's soft and tender, check seasoning and add the coriander.

Chinese New Year

Welcome Year of the Ox

To celebrate the New Year according to Chinese custom, a good spring clean, to rid the house of all old energy and adorn the house with spring flowers. I was out scouring my neighbourhood for any blossoms, to no avail. I asked my son to get some if he should see any, and he did, but he said some old classmates (girls) saw him gather the sprigs and felt really embarrassed and hid them in a book!!

Spring rolls are an auspicious food to cook for the New Years Eve meal. I was surprised at how economical these are. A small amount of rice noodles, grated carrot, Chinese mushrooms, bean sprouts, spring onion and oyster sauce, a bit of sugar, soya sauce, some spring roll wraps and sunflower oil. They are one of those fiddly foods which are hugely satisfying to make. There's something about the wrapping, rolling and deep frying which changes this collection of ingredients into something so different from what they started off as, it becomes magic.

We then had strips of beef (topside) marinaded in an improvised collection of the following:
Marinade
A thumb of ginger grated
1 clove of garlic minced
1 stick of lemon grass finely sliced
Some chili flakes
1 Tbsp Sesame oil
Juice of a lime
a glug of soya sauce

The longer you leave the marinade, always the better.

This was stir fried in a wok at high heat and served with special fried rice.

Special Fried Rice
A cup of cooked rice (i used basmatti)
1 cup of peas
half a cup of cashews
3 spring onions
some random amount of ham cut up really small
a handful of coriander (i know it's not typical)
glug of sesame oil
glug of soya sauce
sunflower oil to stir fry the whole lot off in.

For our green offering I simply stir fried some brussel sprouts with garlic, ginger and lemon. Absolutely anything green will do here, some curly kale would work really well.

And so we toasted the New Year and enjoyed our feast.

The Seville Arrives

Having found some Seville oranges at Tony Booths of Borough Market, I set to making some marmalade. I haven't made orange marmalade for 15 years. There's something so satisfying about using ingredients who make a brief appearance, so much more so when one preserves it's particular flavour. There's no doubt that Seville oranges make the best marmalade, of that there is no doubt.

This marmalade is reminicent of my childhood, when my mother would make enormous batches of a years supply for ourselves and both grandmothers. There was this large cast iron mincer which would perch on the side with a vice holding it in place and all the peel would go though it and turn it into the marmalade 'bits'. This device was also the meat mincer and baby food masher. (What would health and safety risk assessments make of this? There probably won't even be a category of disaster likelihood available to express it's utter horror at the cross contamination inevitability. ) There would, now I think about it, be rows of marmalade along with other preserves in the 'pantry'. Ahhh, they were the days!

The recipe

1Kg Seville Oranges
1 Lemon
2Kg preserving sugar
2Ltr Water

Large pan and a good size of muslin, 6 Jars

Juice all the oranges and lemon - reserve all the pips - discard the lemon halves.
Add the juice to 2Litres of water.
Cut all the orange halves in half again and scrape out all the pith and flesh, so the pieces are all very clean.
Slice all the peel into the size of 'bits' you want or use a devise - add to the water and juice in the pan.
Add the pips, pith and flesh to a piece of muslin and tie it up tightly - add to the pan.
Bring the water, juice, peel and muslin bag to the boil and let it gently boil for about 2 hours.
You want the peel to be soft and the liquid reduced by about half.
Now add the sugar and slowly bring to the boil.
Boil vigoursly until setting point is reached (usually 15/20mins)
Add to steralised, warm jars.

So, I set about making the marmalade, and cut up all the peel by hand. I had to restrain myself from deviating from the original plan of Seville Orange Marmalade, as the idea of Whiskey marmalade, or orange, lemon & lime marmalade, or ginger marmalade was hugely tempting. Within two and a half hours six jars of deep burnished orange marmalade with flecks of peel adorned my kitchen sill with the sun shining through them. It was one of those moments.

This is where some freshly baked bread, thick butter and marmalade is the only thing that will do!