Arroz al horno (Baked rice)

First of all, I'd like to say that I make absolutely no claims for authenticity here. Arroz al horno is a Spanish dish, from the Valencia region to be precise, but this version is my approximation, based on my experience of eating it and checking out a couple of online recipes.
When I lived in Valencia, it was often on offer as part of a cheap set menu for lunch. It's a delicious rice dish, cooked in an earthenware dish with black pudding, chickpeas, tomatoes and potatoes. According this website, it was until recently the most popular rice dish in the Valencia region (which is, as we all know, also the home of paella). Apparently it's good for if you're not sure what time your farmer hubbie's coming back from the fields, as it lasts for a while - and even gets better with a bit of hanging around.
I decided to try and recreate it because Mr Splorer is back from Spain and has brought me back lots of goodies. I'm going to try and eke out the yummy stuff for as long as possible, so today I was trying to think of recipes to put chorizo in. I'm not quite sure why I went for arroz al horno, because it doesn't usually contain chorizo, but it actually worked really well as an alternative to black pudding. In fact, given that I made it up and used some different ingredients, I was surprised by how similar it was to a Valencian arroz al horno. It was also really easy, although it does take quite a while to cook. But once it's in the oven, you can more or less leave it alone, perhaps occasionally popping by to add some stock.
Now, if you make it properly, what you do is fry the bits and bobs in your earthenware dish and then transfer that to the oven. Unfortunately I don't have a dish that can multitask in this way, so I transferred halfway through. Also, I don't think that artichoke is usually an ingredient, but I've seen it in paella, so I thought it would transfer well. I'm a recent convert to artichokes, so I bought some of those nice smokey marinated artichoke hearts, which made it very easy to pop some in. The whole garlic in the middle is inspired by seeing it cooked with a whole head of garlic cooked in the centre in Valencia.

75g chorizo, chopped
1 rasher of bacon, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped, plus 2 more whole, still in their skins
3 tomatoes, 2 chopped and 1 sliced
1 potato, thinly sliced
1 cup of paella rice
200g chickpeas
teaspoon paprika
100g artichoke hearts
3 cups of vegetable stock

Serves 2 greedy pigs who want seconds!

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C.
Heat a splash of olive oil in a saucepan, add the chorizo, bacon, chopped garlic, chopped tomatoes and potatoes and fry for about 5 minutes. Add the rice, chickpeas and paprika and stir. Transfer to an ovenproof dish. Squash the artichokes in at regular intervals and squash the whole garlic cloves in the middle. Arrange the tomato slices on the top. Put the dish in the oven and pour over the stock (my dish wasn't big enough so I had to keep adding stock as it cooked). Cook for about an hour and a half, or until the rice is cooked.

And the verdict? Very very tasty, though I say so myself. Mr Splorer devoured his and zoomed off for seconds, so he seemed to like it! The rice was full of flavour, without being overwhelmingly garlicky. And the artichoke hearts added some extra interest to the dish. It even had the delicious crunchy rice that I associate with good Valencian rice. I think this one's going to become part of my repertoire - I'm already considering possible variations. Maybe a veggie version...

Midsummer fairy cakes

If I could just pass on just one piece of wisdom to you now, it would be this: never cook cupcakes when you've had a few glasses of wine and are feeling a smidge squiffy and therefore just that bit more clumsy. And if you don't heed that advice, then at least don't balance the aforesaid cupcakes precariously on the windowsill. Because, believe me, the inevitable will happen. It turned out that I hadn't learnt these important rules and therefore some of my first batch of fairy cakes this evening are still decorating the roof below our kitchen window. But this story has a happy ending, as my second batch came out much more successfully and I think I know the reason why.
Anyway, let me backtrack a little and tell you the story of the Midsummer fairy cakes. Tomorrow, in case you haven't noticed, is Midsummer Day. And I'm off to watch an outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which also involves a picnic. So, I thought I'd see if there was any such thing as a Midsummer cake which I could make in honour of the occasion. Through Google, I found that Midsummer cake exists in Sweden, where it is a sponge cake with strawberries and cream. Eagle eyed readers will note that I made something similar fairly recently. However, recipes for the Swedish version seemed scarce and the ones that are around involve going shopping for things such as potato starch.
So it was time to be a bit more imaginative. And after much thought it finally hit me that cake + Midsummer Night's Dream = fairy cakes. There are fairies in the play, you see. Oh, how clever I am, I thought. Until I managed to chuck a whole load of delicious cakes out of the window. But let's not dwell on the past. Let's dwell on cake. And how to make it.
This is basically Nigella's fairy cake recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess, with a strawberry baked in the middle and strawberry and whipped cream for the top. (The idea of cooking a strawberry inside cupcakes has been sitting in the back of my mind since I saw this recipe at The Caked Crusader.) Yes, they're sweet, but they taste so good and so summery. Just the thing for celebrating Midsummer and seeing your friend kick ass as Lysander.

Midsummer fairy cakes

125g unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp milk
about 18 strawberries
200 ml whipping cream

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 6. Put all the ingredients except for the milk in the food processor. Whizz up until smooth, then add the milk while pulsing. Spoon half the mixture into 12 bun cases. Add a strawberry to each bun and then cover each strawberry with the mixture. Make sure the strawberries are fully covered, otherwise the middle of the buns will collapse. (This is what happened to the first batch). Bake for 12-15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
When they are cool, whip the cream. Smooth over the top of the cakes and then top with strawberry quarters (cut lengthways) in an attempt to look like fairy wings.
Makes 12.

Munching my way through London

Mr Splorer is currently in sunny Spain, helping Dad with a little DIY and eating mountains of paella, the lucky thing. So, rather than tootle around the flat on my lonesome, I thought I'd visit Mum and little sis in the big smoke for the weekend. Historically I've never been that keen on London, but I have become a pretty frequent visitor of late. And the place is growing on me, due in no small part to its restaurants. And this weekend, armed with the latest edition of Time Out Cheap Eats, Mum, little sis and I sought out a couple of extremely good little restaurants. I'm not really an accomplished restaurant reviewer but I'd definitely recommend these two to friends and acquaintances, so I feel they deserve a mention.

The first restaurant we went to was Bi Won, a Korean restaurant on Coptic Street, near the British Museum. Now five days in Korea do not a connaisseur of the cuisine make, but this food tasted pretty similar to the sort of stuff that I was eating a couple of weeks ago. In fact, as I was put in charge of ordering, I ordered some of the same things, including:

Cucumber kimchi - so good we had to have seconds. Really tasty. (And I'm determined to try that one at home - can't be that hard, can it?)

Bulgogi - the beef dish so popular with foreigners in Korea. Yummy strips of beef with onions.


Korean pancakes, written as jeon, not chon, which confused me for a moment. We had ones with seafood and spring onions. They were delicious - all tasty and squishy.

So, all in all, a very fine meal, with the pancakes as a definite highlight. For 3 of us, it came to about £60, including a service charge.

Restaurant number two was Song Que, a Vietnamese place on Kingsland Road, surrounded by lots of other Vietnamese restaurants. Although Song Que is the only one in the area that gets a special star from Time Out, so that's why we ended up there. And they have reviews dotted all over the walls, so it must be pretty well known. The review they'd put up next to our table advised us to steer clear of the stir fries and was quite scathing about the decor, but apart from that it was positive! Anyway, we were very impressed.


The starters were fabulous. The best part of the meal. (Isn't that so often the case?) We had some of those fantastic summer rolls - big juicy prawns, rice noodles and fresh greenery wrapped in rice paper with a thick peanut sauce for dipping. No snaps unfortunately as was using Mum's swanky new phone and kept accidentally shooting videos instead of taking photos. But got the hang of it by the time starter number two arrived. It was beef wrapped in betel leaves, as recommended by the Time Out guide. In our family, guide books are treated as gospel. Sometimes this is problematic (exhibit A: Mexico, Christmas 2007 - a whole other story), but sometimes it turns out that guide books know their onions, as it were. And here Time Out came up trumps. So, if you do ever find yourself in Song Que, do yourself a favour and order the beef thing. Those delicious smokey little bites disappeared in record time.


And then of course it was time for some pho - a broth full of noodles and whatever other goodies you choose. I went for prawns and pork, although there was of course much more pork than prawns. It was very tasty though and there was lots of it.
Lunch for three at Song Que was about £40 - and we were all totally stuffed and happy by the time we left!

Meanwhile, my other, less successful, mission in London was to find a Korean recipe book. They are surprisingly difficult to locate, especially seeing as there are plenty of Korean restaurants around. It seems that Londoners are quite happy to eat Korean food prepared by others, but not so keen to make it themselves. Bunch of weirdos. I had wanted to make my pilgrimage to Books for Cooks, who will surely be able to help me, but I wasn't allowed to go because Notting Hill was too far away. Next time I'm in town, however, nothing's going to stop me!

Wednesday round-up of deliciousness

Evening, deliciousness lovers! Due to my exciting trip across the sea, I missed the round-up last week. Please accept my sincerest apologies and allow me to present a list of most delicious goodies, taken from the last two weeks of food blogging. I must warn you know that my choices seem to be reflecting an obsession with sweet stuff, featuring cakes in abundance. I am choosing to believe that it's because food blogs are stuffed full of these things, not just that I'm a cake obsessed greedy pig!
Let's start with a couple of pancake recipes. Both buttermilk pancake recipes, actually. I've never made buttermilk pancakes, so I'm taking this a sign that I have been well and truly missing out. If you've been missing out to, take yourself over to these recipes - Irish buttermilk pancakes and Blueberry buttermilk pancakes. Oh, and while I have buttermilk in the house, I'll simply have to take the opportunity to try this Strawberry buttermilk cake. With a scone-like crust on the outside and squishy strawberry cakeyness in the inside, it looks just amazing.
I have also been lusting over a pair of cheesecake recipes. I'm a big fan of most cheesecakes, but a couple of recipes I've spotted combined one of my favourite desserts with some of my favourite fruits. Check out these individual Crème de framboise cheesecakes. They look so cute - and so easy. The other cheesecake recipe is this Baked gooseberry and gingernut cheesecake. Doesn't that sound spectacular? Mr Splorer has yet to be introduced to the wonder that is gooseberries and I think that might well be the way to do it.
And I've still got a few cakes up my sleeve. There's this beautiful Lemon and ricotta cake and this Orange and poppy seed cake. And a couple of really exciting ones. This Neapolitan cake looks totally spectacular. I've never seen anything like that before. And I love the surprise of this Un-birthday cake - so much fun!
You want even more sweetness, you say? Well, perhaps it's time for a couple of puds of British origin. There's this gorgeous blueberry fool with pistachios and this modestly named Best strawberry rhubarb crumble ever. Might just have to test that particular claim out.
Next we have a couple of breads, but guess what, they're sweet too! Both this Brown sugar oatmeal raisin bread and this Cinnamon raisin bread caught my eye. Imagine them toasted and covered with butter for breakfast. Mmmmmmmm.
And just to prove that I don't just spend my life guzzling cake, but also guzzle other things, here are a few savoury options. I always loved cheese straws, so it's really time I got round to making some. Deb at Smitten kitchen says that it's extremely easy and I believe her. And then there's this Blue cheese and spinach tart with caramelised onions - one of those recipes that sounds like a list of good things. That post at Half a pot of cream has also brought to my attention the existence of a place called Books for Cooks, to which I'm going to have to make a pilgrimage. And finally, in a nod in the general direction of healthiness, here's a salad: Leek and potato salad. Why didn't I ever think of that?!

Munching my way through Seoul

In case you were wondering, there is a reason why I've been absent for the last week or so - I have been in Seoul in South Korea on a work trip. I must admit that it's not a country, or a cuisine, that I've ever been particularly interested in, but now I'm a total convert. As it was a work trip there wasn't that much time for exploring but it was a really fascinating experience. And of course, we did get to eat! And the work trip bonus is that we were always eating with Koreans, so food was ordered for us and they also explained how to go about eating it. Very useful, I can assure you.
The first real Korean meal we had was a traditional banquet style lunch 'for kings', involving a never ending procession of small dishes. Among all the dishes, there was one that will forever stand out for me - rotten fish. A big delicacy apparently, but it looked like rotten fish, it smelled strongly of rotten fish. Strangely enough, wrapped in kimchi and other bits and bobs, it tasted OK. But my head just wasn't happy about it. Either that or it was the smell. Either way, it was hard to get down, but I got there in the end. The rest of the banquet was also an experience - there were some flavours and textures that seemed very alien and strange. At that point, I was a little worried about whether I was going to enjoy Korean food.
As the week went on, however, the food we had was more and more the sort of thing that Koreans eat, I believe! And it was lovely. I really like the fact that there were usually lots of little dishes for everyone to share. It really cuts on the problem of people getting annoyed when you want to steal/taste their food!
So, here are a few culinary highlights:

Kimchi, pickled vegetables, which has lots of varieties and is served with pretty much everything.

Bulgogi, a dish of marinated beef, usually barbecued. This is our hotel's slightly sanitised version. Still good though.

Korean barbecue, with the meat cooked on a grill in the middle of the table. Yummy, especially with kimchi.

Chon, which was translated as pancakes, but was really more like an omelette stuffed with various goodies. Always popular with foreigners, apparently.

I don't know the Korean name for these but they were delicious custardy little fellows with bean stuff in the middle. This was street food and possibly my very favourite mouthful in Korea. (And I'm not generally that fond of custard.)

Hang wa, which apparently can be translated as 'Korean snack'. It came in various forms. This is the one I brought back for Mr Splorer, with lots of nuts. Very very moreish.

So, all I have to do now is find a decent Korean recipe book so I can recreate some of these delicious things at home. Any recommendations gratefully received!

Vegetable pancakes

A most exciting thing happened to me this morning. As I was leaving the house, I nearly tripped over a big box. Opening it up, I found a whole load of delicious fruit and vegetables:


I have been sent my very own vegetable box by Abel and Cole. I've seen word of these little numbers in other blogs, such as here and here. But I was quite surprised when they contacted me and offered to send me a free one. I was delighted to give it a try, in exchange for a blog mention, of course. Plus, I had actually been attracted to the idea of getting one, so was keen to see what it was like.
And I must say, I'm rather impressed. The vegetables were covered in satisfying dirt, for that extra straight from the ground authenticity. There seems to be lots of lovely things, including spring greens, which I don't think I've ever cooked with before. What a great way to intrdoduce yourself to new things, and at just the moment when they taste best.


And I've just had a very delicious meal made with them (though let's not underestimate the influence of my post-pub culinary inspiration!). I used the some of potatoes, carrot and courgette to make vegetable pancakes based on this potato pancake recipe. I just replaced one of the potatoes with half a courgette and half a carrot for some extra colour and variety. My pancakes weren't quite as fluffy as the ones in the photos on the recipe, but I think that was due to thicker grating.
I served them with spring greens fried with lots of garlic and then steamed, some pork and apple sausages and some simple tomato sauce made with cherry tomatoes and garlic. And I must say, it was delicious. The pork and apple sausages and the tomatoes added just the right amount of sweetness and the greens were garlicy and fresh. And of course, the pancakes were crunchy and yummy. Perhaps, only a tiny amount of sour cream could have made it better.
Mr Splorer was most impressed. Not only did he head back to the kitchen for more pancakes, he also announced that pork and apple sausages are to be added to his list of favourite British delicacies, up there with ginger beer (a very high compliment, I can assure you!).
And hopefully, this is just one in a long line of veg box themed meals. I'm going to bursting with vitamins!

Wednesday round-up of deliciousness

One of the great things about reading recipes on food blogs is that you get to read recipes that are right for the time of year (give or take a couple of Aussie blogs talking about autumn). So now that it's summer there are lots of recipes for lighter meals and things to pop on the barbecue. As a girl without a barbecue, and who's never been that confident with big chunks of meat, the barbie themed things have been mostly eye candy, but the one thing I'm determined to make if ever I get my hands on a barbecue is these Spiedini Toscana, chicken kebabs with garlic infused lemon butter wrapped in slices of courgette. And perhaps on the side, a delicious pesto potato salad with green beans.
And oh, what a lot of choice for dessert! I think the current favourite is this Dutch Apple Torte. It's like nothing I've ever seen before - a cake INSIDE a pie! Can you imagine?! Very exciting indeed.
There were also a couple of very fine looking chocolate cakes out and about this week - check out this Chocolate Mud Cake and this Sunken Chocolate Cake with Blackberry Fool. Or for when I'm after something a bit less, well, chocolatey, I am definitely going to be trying out this Cardamom Sour Cream Cake, which would incidentally be my first Rachel Allen recipe. I saw her once on TV and found her incredibly irritating and smug but that looks like a cake to bring a sceptic round, if ever there was one.
There were also some savoury recipes for those of us who cook inside. There was a Chickpea and Chorizo Stew, which is rather unsummery but right up my street. Then there's a special Chicken Kiev recipe from someone who was born in Kiev, which adds that extra touch of authenticity. And some delicious Green Thai curry vegetable ribbons with coconut milk. Oh, and some Greek style eggs with tomato, complete with feta and roasted pepper.
Finally, let's not forget that food blogs also talk about restaurants and Lizzie at Hollow Legs has got me aching to make a trip down to London to Cafe East, based on the photo of the summer rolls alone. Mmmmmmm, just look at those prawns just peeping through.

Tag! (And a bit of cake)

I've been tagged! Ruth at I love flavour, me! has passed on a tag and the idea is this: having been tagged, I then post the sixth picture in my sixth folder under My Pictures on my computer. Then I have to give some details and tag six other people. Ruth posted a rather delectable looking Portuguese chorizo bread and talks about taking it to work. What I want to know is why no one where I work brings in delicious chorizo bread! Anyway, as I try to get over my jealousy, let's have a look at my snap:


As you can see, it ain't food related. But rules is rules, so this is the picture you're getting. It's Orosi, Costa Rica, where I went on a day trip with Mr Splorer in September 2007. If I remember correctly, this was supposed to be hot springs, but turned out to be a couple of swimming pools swarming with adolescents. But we had a lovely, if rather rainy, day out in the green hills near San José.

So, here are my tags:
http://teaandwhimsy.blogspot.com/
http://anneskitchen1.blogspot.com/
http://syrianfoodie.blogspot.com/
http://jodsgirl.blogspot.com/
http://broxholmroad.blogspot.com/
http://essexeating.blogspot.com/

Looking forward to seeing your snaps!

In the meantime, if you really feel the need for a food photo here's one I made earlier.

Strawberries and cream sponge

My sponge cake totally failed to rise, so I shan't give you the recipe. (It was a Delia - I don't know what it is but I just can't get on with Delia recipes.) It's more the idea of making a sponge cake and whopping on some whipped cream and strawberries that I wanted to pass on. So very summery, so very simple, so very delicious. And a really great way to cover up the fact that your sponge cake didn't rise!