My philosophy when cooking has been informed by an approach that is largely Mediterranean in its influence. Apart from over 10 years spent living in Spain (and numerous holidays spent there) I have travelled fairly widely throughout the Mediterranean region - Italy, France, Greece, Turkey and, althought it looks across the Atlantic towards the New World, I am going to allow myself the indulgence of including Portugal in the mix.
I have enjoyed some wonderful meals in all of these places. This brings me to the issue of presentation. Certain television programmes would have us believe that food is rendered inedible if it is not presented in stacks and towers with artfully applied swirls of jus surrounding it. My experience, however, is that all the great meals I have ever had, have been in places where the presentation aspect has been limited to simply putting the food onto a dish or a plate: indeed the best meal I ever had was served not on a plate but on a sheet of greased proof paper. If you look at the art of presentation in the light of what the food will surely become in 24 hours or so, then you can see that this is time best spent doing something more profitable.
With presentation dealt with, I can now go on to explain my feelings on certain ingredients. So many of the things we associate so readily with the Mediterranean countries have their origins in South and Central America. Peppers (including chilli peppers), tomatoes and potatoes all come from the New World. These days though, they have been adopted by the good people of Spain and all the other countries I mentioned earlier. When I cook with these things I feel as if what I am cooking will turn out with a Mediterranean look or taste to it. I recognise, however, that home for many of these ingredients was, originally, the chilly altiplano or the steaming rain forests.
With regard to the equipment I use in the kitchen, I use simple things: wooden spoons, good quality non-stick frying pans and one or two Spanish oddities. The peas and ham from yesterday's blog I cook in an enamel pan with a diameter of about 30cm and a depth of about 10cm. These black and white speckled pans are ubitquitous in Spain. The good points are that they are cheap and you can use just about anything to clean them with. The bad points include the fact that they heat up and cool down very quickly indeed, tend to burn things left unattended and will break if dropped (the enamel will chip off and the metal underneath will then rust.) I also like to fry things, especially prawns in garlic (gambas pil-pil) in a heavy earthenware cazuela. To British eyes it seems an unlikely thing to fry anything in a vessel made of glazed clay. The Spanish really got it right with this one though, as unlike its speckled friend, it keeps the heat for a long time. They also look good when you bring them to the table and serve the sizzling prawns directly from them.
So with that in mind, I will give you a recipe for a surefire dessert that has always been a winner for me. My simple fruit salad with pineapple, mango, golden rum and brown sugar. As you can see none of the ingredients in authentically Spanish, yet they are all easily available in Spain, the UK and the USA. The golden colour of the finished desert is both refreshing and summery and it could not be simpler.
You will need 1 large ripe pineapple, 1 large ripe mango, a shot of golden rum and a bit of brown sugar to suit your own tastes. Peel the pineapple and cut into cubes - about the same sort of size you would get in a tin of pineapple chunks. Peel and slice the mango into generous slices. Add a good shot of rum and a sprinkle of soft brown sugar and allow the juices to seep out of the fruit and meld with the booze and the sugar. Serve any way that takes your fancy. Just one word of caution, you need to be careful with your non knife-holding hand as the semi-peeled mango will be slippery and difficult to hold.
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