Recipe: Squid, Chorizo and Broad Beans

It all started with Rupert Everett. He was in white T - the sort that only those who want to show off what’s underneath it wear. We were at the counter of J Sheekey Oyster Bar, Dee and I, feeling as though we’d bunked school to eat fish pie and drink champagne.

Rupert walked through the door.

Our octopus with chorizo and broad beans arrived.

Slight panic. What to devour? Hollywood-star-in-tight-T-shirt-and-designer-stubble or good-looking-seafood-dish-that-dies-when-cold?

I think you know the answer to that question, friends. If Rupert had decided to give us a star turn of Say a little prayer I might have reconsidered but as he didn't I chose to spend the next day or so obsessing over the dish. The chorizo and broad bean dish, that is.

Anyway, here’s my attempt at it. I like J Sheekey's meaty-mollusc combination, especially their baked razor clams. Unfortunately I could find no octopus at the fishmongers, only frozen baby squid from Waitrose. But for a light Sunday-night supper, this is still a bit of a luxury. Great as a starter.


Recipe: Serves 2

I won’t go into how to prepare squid, but click here for a good ol’ Mitch Tonks BBC demonstration.

8 baby squid, cleaned and complete with tenticles
Under 100g chorizo slices
About 20 broad bean pods (thanks Riverford)
1 big garlic clove, sliced (optional)
Salt
Butter
Olive oil
Squeeze of lemon

Pod the broad beans and throw into a pan of boiling water for 4 minutes.
Drain, refresh with cold water then peel the skin of each bean. Keep to one side.

Slice the body of the squid in half, lengthways. Drizzle oil over the squid halves and tenticles. Heat a griddle pan, and when searing hot, season squid with salt, and lay squid on pan a minute each side until they curl. Be quick, and fry in batches, you don’t want to overcook them - in fact, better to undercook. Set to one side.

In another frying pan, heat some olive oil over medium-high heat, and throw in garlic (if using), then a minute later, the chorizo slices. When they start yielding that gorgeous pimentón-coloured oil, throw in the broad beans just to heat through, followed by the squid. Heat for a minute or two to ensure the squid is just cooked, and the orange-red oil coats the beans and squid and add a little butter to enrich the sauce.

Take off the heat, season and serve with a spritz of lemon. Lovely on lightly-toasted bread with a drizzle of olive oil.

J Sheekey Oyster Bar
Website
28-34 St Martin's Court
WC2N 4AL
020 7240 2565

Bank Holiday Asam Udang (Tamarind Prawns)

Crete is unforgiving.

As Professor Trefusis says in Stephen Fry’s The Liar, travel broadens the behind and my eight days on this craggy beaut of an island has certainly done that. Sixteen meals of carnivorous feasting was just mixed-grill pleasure.

And so I arrive back on bank holiday Monday - the depression of the Royal Wedding weekend - resolutely craving a week of Asian food. Craving Nonya food in fact.

Nonya flavours are magnificent. The wince of tart tamarind, against the salt-tang of shrimp paste. I grew up with those flavours - so glorious in Penang laksas and satay. The cuisine is the 600 year old offspring of Chinese merchants and local Malay women along the Malaysian Straits. Nonya originates from Malacca, but Singapore has some of the greatest Nonya food I know. Personally I think this is the best food in the world - and I don’t say this lightly - the best of both Chinese and South-East Asian worlds.

The things to have in your larder will be a block of tamarind, a bottle of shrimp paste, lemongrass, galangal and chillies - all readily available from your Chinese supermarket.

Unfortunately, bank holiday supermarkets are also unforgiving, so all I managed to pick up was a pack of raw prawns and I had to shave a lemon as I didn’t have any lemongrass.

Still, my hit has begun the process of unbroadening that behind.

Asam Udang (Tamarind Prawns)

Serves 2 and takes 15 minutes max

150g prawns - either legs trimmed off, or for convenience a packet of raw prawns (as pictured)

Sauce ingredients
1 onion sliced
1 stalk lemongrass - bruised (peel from 1 lemon, bruised, if you don’t have any)
4 birdseye chillies - red and green, deseeded and slit lengthways
1 generous tablespoon tamarind pulp mixed with 450ml boiling water
1/3 tablespoon shrimp paste
1 level tablespoon sugar
pinch salt

Push the pulp through a sieve and collect the water in a saucepan. Put the rest of the sauce ingredients into the saucepan.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes uncovered. Let the flavours get to know each other.

Add the prawns and simmer until just cooked.

Serve with rice and a generous helping of garlic broccoli with oyster sauce.

A State of Undress in the South of France

So fresh, each morsel was eaten nude bar the merest spritz of lemon
The village of Neffies. An excited sun.

Villa. Pool. Five girls and fifteen bikinis.

This trip was strictly educational. We learnt much about our capacity to eat. Informed enough to tell you the merits of panaché versus shandy and to advise on only choosing figs that almost puncture at the touch, we can also prove that it is possible to consume €300 worth of cheese and wine. Over 3 days. By a pool. (See Must Drink below for sauce suggestions)

But we took a break from sun-ripening and pool-dipping to venture over to the town of Bouzigues in the Etang de Thau - the largest oyster-producing area in France. La Palourdière is the sort of restaurant one has to snaffle out rather than stumble across. With views overlooking the spectacular oysterbeds that cultivate the Bouzigue flat oyster, it is worth snaffling out.

Rumour has it that Rick Stein, on his French Odyssey, fell in love with this place. Though there’s no evidence to say it was here (he refused to divulge the name of the restaurant), we like to think it was.

The menu at La Palourdière was thus:

Bread and aïoli
I verily believe aïoli improves everything savoury.

Le Pêcheur - Fresh mussels, snails, prawns, clams, oysters (photo top of page)

Moules Gratinées
Plump and juicy with the delight and satisfaction of a cheese-flavoured crunch.

The waiters undressing the grilled bream and sea bass
I was disappointed by this undressing- I like the ritual of eating the whole fish.

The bream undressed

Gambas flambées à la Provençale
Prawns probably spritzed with brandy

Zarzuela (which means ‘Operetta’)
A Catalan dish - a mix of seafood cooked with tomatoes, onions, garlic and peppers. We affectionately named this vuvuzela as it was victually just as noisy.

So, by the end of our trip, what had we learned? Not much, to be honest. But what we do know is that our cheese eating abilities can only be complimented by our amorous seafood tendencies.

Thank you Hannah for introducing us to a French life beyond panaché and piscine.

La Palourdière
Port Loupian
www.lapalourdiere.com
04 67 43 80 19

Must Drink
A better man than me - Hugh Johnson - said Picpoul de Pinet is "perfect with an oyster". Since we were eating oysters in the Bassin de Thau, just a few miles south of the demarcated area where Picpoul de Pinet wine is grown and made, it would have been silly to drink anything else. And Hugh Johnson is right. A mouthful of lemony fresh Picpoul, followed by a gobful of salty shucked oyster, followed by a mouthful of lemony fresh Picpoul, and so on, and you could easily lose an entire afternoon in these lipsmacking flavours. And so we did... At its best, Picpoul is mineral and mouthfilling, with flavours of citrus, dried herbs and white flowers, tasting of the smell of the Languedoc countryside. Even at less than best it is still light and crisp and wonderfully refreshing. A glass of this is like diving into a cool, green pool under the hot Languedoc sun.
Ruth Ford

Picpoul de Pinet, Coteaux de Languedoc AC, Languedoc, France
White wine
Grape: Picpoul Blanc
Available: Majestic, Oddbins, and other independent retailers
(see www.wine-searcher.com)

Chilli Crabs, Fish Heads and other stories

The feasting begins at 7.30 Saturday night and wraps at 1 Sunday morning.

Thinking about what we eat - I can now see why...

7.30pm - ‘Loh Sang’ salad
8.00pm - Grilled fish heads

BREAK (We’re pretty full at this point, and this is only the beginning)

9.00pm - Chilli crabs
9.45pm - Steamed crab shells
10.15pm - Baked pomfret with chilli pepper and fried noodles

ANOTHER BREAK (Walk, breathe)

11.15pm - Garlic and spring onion prawns
11.45pm - Pomelo and satsumas

On the seventh day of Chinese New Year falls ‘Everybody’s Birthday’- a day in the Chinese calendar apparently more important than your own. Cue excessive eating back at the Lee family household. My mother has commissioned me to cook chilli crabs, and her school friends who also whip up some prime seafood (and whose grilled fish head dish makes its way onto this post).

I’m only posting recipes for Malaysian Chilli Crabs and Grilled Fish Heads, but special mention must go to the evening’s opening salad, the extraordinary ‘Loh Sang’ - which I’ve only ever seen Malaysian Chinese make. Everyone round the table must toss the ingredients - a variety of shredded vegetables, like carrot, fruit, pomelo, raw fish (symbolising life) and peanuts. A sweet dressing is poured over it, and everyone grabs their chopsticks and tosses the salad altogether. Permissible playing with food. We're beginning to enjoy ourselves.


Adding the dressing then mixing the salad.


Thinking of chilli crabs evokes outdoor restorans in the cool of a Kuala Lumpur evening - piles of crustacea lacquered with sauce, mucky hands grabbing the next leg, hearing the crack of teeth against shell and the satisfying sound of the suck of sweet crabmeat from the claw.

It’s such a wonderfully communal dish and there are infinite ways of making chilli crabs – but this particular recipe has been cooked countless times for hawkeyed Malaysians who leave not a scrap, which I guess is a good sign. I’ve experimented with brandy, extra tamarind, and even vermouth (big mistake) but the ingredient that makes the difference is actually lashings of Sriracha hot chilli sauce (discovered by accident when a friend up-ended a bottle into the wok). And when I didn’t have the chilli sauce, the understudy was ketchup, which worked as lickably well – both add a sweetness and depth that cut through the spices of the base paste.


And then fish heads. They provoke strange behaviour in the older generations.

Imagine you’re at dinner. You’re having a perfectly normal conversation about the demise of Cheryl and Ashley over a plate of whole fried fish, and all of a sudden, passionate spatting erupts, and chopstick-wielding parents and uncles fight over the fish head in the way teenage girls squabble over a spotty pubescent boy.

And I’ve noticed that whoever wins is silent for the next 15 minutes as they work to reach then savour every morsel of cartilagey goodness and soft meat and cheek that nestles in the head.

I realise this may not be to everyone’s taste, but I can say with a surety a fish head is an absolute treat as it yields so much flavour and tender meat. The Chinese talk about whether you ‘know how to eat’ something. Fish heads are something you have to ‘know how to eat’ because it’s a maze of bone which you expertly nibble around. My very English boyfriend does amazingly well amongst such seasoned cranium-eaters. But he can’t bring himself to eat the eyes. He’s still got a way to go.

And, as you can imagine, the heads are also terribly terribly cheap. I once went to Billingsgate market after 2 hours sleep (post-night- out). Marvelling at how little everything cost, I bought five huge salmon fish heads for £2.50 (as well as 3 lobsters, 5 cheeky crabs who terrorized my kitchen, 3 sea bass and 5 sea bream all for 35 quid. To say I got carried away is beyond understatement). Bargainous.

I wanted to post this fish head recipe – it’s so simple, so cheap, and such a tasty starter that I salute anyone brave enough to make it.


Grilled salmon fish heads

Serves 4

Ingredients

- 4 salmon fish heads, cut in half down the centre between the eyes (get your fishmonger to do this for you if you don’t have a sharp enough knife)
- Lots of salt

Recipe

Preheat grill to the highest temperature.

Wash the fish heads, and if there are still scales on them, give them a quick rub with a knife to take the scales off. Pat the heads dry with kitchen roll – the skin should be dry.

Salt the fish heads by rubbing the entire surface of the heads, skin-side and flesh side, with plenty of salt.

Place the heads on a wired baking tray, skin side up and put under the grill for about 15 minutes, or until the skin has JUST turned black. You want the skin to be a little blistered and blackened.

Take the baking tray out and turn the heads over so it’s flesh-side up.
Grill for another 5 minutes until the flesh is just cooked and still tender.

Serve immediately.


Chilli Crabs

Serves 4

You’ll need a good wok, or a deep frying pan

Ingredients

- 2 large live crabs. Buy on the day you want to cook them. You can keep them in the fridge in wet newspaper until you need to use them.
- Plain flour seasoned with salt and pepper
- Sunflower, vegetable or groundnut oil
- 1 teaspoon tamarind paste mixed with ¼ pint water and 1 teaspoon sugar
- 4 large squirts of Sriracha hot chilli sauce OR tomato ketchup and chopped fresh chillies

For the paste:

- 1 stalk lemongrass
- 12 shallots
- 6 cloves garlic
- 4 cm ginger (or 2 cm galangal, 2cm ginger)
- 1 level teaspoon turmeric
- 1 teaspoon shrimp paste
- 10 birdseye dried chillies

Garnish:

- 2 spring onions finely sliced
- 2 sprigs coriander

Recipe

Chop all the ingredients for the paste. If you have the energy, forgo the gym and pound all the ingredients in a pestle and mortar. This seems to yield a better texture and taste. You can magimix the paste instead though - put all the ingredients in and whiz until an ochrey yellow paste. It won’t be smooth, but you want all the bits small enough so that there aren’t individual bits of lemongrass that get stuck in your teeth. Set aside.

Prepare the crabs.
Clean the crabs first under running water. An old toothbrush is best for a thorough scrub.
Place the crabs on a solid chopping board. Hold the crab on its back (shell side down) and stick a sharp knife into the crab directly behind the eyes to kill it.

Pull off the tail flap from the underside and discard. Then, either press down on the centre and legs and pull off the shell, or, if you’re having difficulty, insert the knife under the shell to give yourself some leverage.

Pull off the gills (dead man’s fingers) and throw away the spongy sand bag, which sits behind the eyes.

Using a sharp knife, cut the crab in half, and then cut off the claws. Use a mallet or rolling pin to bash each piece so that it’s easier for those eating to get to the meat.

Dip these parts (claws and legs) into the seasoned flour and make sure they are dusted all over.

Heat about 200ml of oil in a wok or a deep pan. You know the oil’s hot enough when you stick a chopstick in and the oil furiously bubbles.

Fry 4 pieces at a time, 2-3 minutes each side. The outside of the crab should be bright red and the flour crispy. If the oil turns brown at any point, use fresh oil.
Set the crab pieces aside on kitchen roll.

Heat the wok again. Using 2 tablespoons of fresh oil, fry the paste in the wok for about 2 minutes, until the spices smell amazingly fragrant. You do not want the paste to burn.

Add the tamarind-water-sugar mixture. Bring to the boil, then tip in the crabs back into the wok. Stir to make sure all of the crab is covered in sauce. Then cover the wok for about 5 minutes, giving the crabs a stir every now and then, so that they steam a little.

Open the wok, and add the ketchup and chillies/chilli sauce. Stir and cook for an extra minute.

Add the spring onions and coriander.

Stir once more, then serve.

If you’re at a loose end with the crab shells, which have the roe inside, you can either cook them the same way as the claws and legs, or you can steam them just as they are, and eat with a spoon. They are an acquired taste, but absolutely delicious.