Crap Chef

OK, quick one today.  Everything was closed yesterday for a holiday, so I went to the market today. I was thinking Thai food, or an approximation of it.  That's a shallot and some garlic, ready to be roasted in the oven for 20 minutes.   Then I let them cool and ground them in a mortar with some salt and some chili until it was a paste.  Cooked the paste in the wok and then threw in three big prawns.  I neglected to take a picture of that.  I can't eat them, they're for Vero.   Cook them a couple of minutes until they're done. That's ginger, garlic, chili, cilantro, basil, carrot, bell pepper, nam pla (thai fish sauce) and some tamarind paste.  Quick stir fry for about 5 minutes.  That's the final dish.  Really quick and quite tasty.  Also a bit out of focus.  Maybe I should start Crap Photographer as well.

Taco Night! This is great when you're feeling lazy.  Almost no cooking involved, just chopping things up! From top left: soft tortillas, sour cream, a quick salsa that I made (tomato, onion, ginger, lime, chili, garlic - should have been cilantro in there too but it had gone off and had to be chucked out), bell pepper, lettuce, tomato, cheese, avocado, ground beef cooked with garlic, onion, paprika, cumin, red pepper and a tiny touch of cinnamon.

A very quick and simple Sunday lunch, but tasty and pretty. Spaghetti with olive oil, spanish chorizo, raw garlic, cilantro and fresh black pepper.  Ten minutes start to finish!

 Dinner tonight - an attempt at recreating one of my favorite dishes from Thailand - fried fish with a tangy sauce.  From  top right...on the plate is ginger, shallots, garlic and chili.  Fish sauce.  Tamarind paste mixed with a little warm water.   Sugar.  Spinach.  A fish, I think it's a dorado.  And some cilantro. Top left is rice.  Next to that is the spinach mixed with a little black bean and garlic.  Bottom left is the fish - placed in hot oil, fried 8 minutes on one side, then flipped over.  Bottom right, I browned the ginger, garlic, shallots and chili, then added the tamarind paste, fish sauce and a couple of teaspoons of sugar.  Cooked that down a bit, then added a bit of water and let it reduce while the fish was cooking. The finished product.  Fish in the bottom, pour the sauce on top, sprinkle some cilantro and squeeze half a lime all over.  Could have used something red, next time I'll use...

 For lunch today, I made pot-stickers/gyoza/shu mai/dumplings, whatever you want to call them.   I mixed some ground pork with ginger, spring onions, soy sauce, rice wine and some blanched and well drained spinach.  And a handful of chopped cilantro, as Vero loves cilantro like mad.  Then I folded up the dumplings.  I cheated and bought the wrappers.   I bought 1/2 kilo of pork, way too much, of course.  It made about 40 dumplings.   The recipe I'd looked at said to brown them in oil first for a minute or two, then add some water and steam them.  They were a bit soggy, so next time I think I'll skip the steaming part and just get them nice and crispy with the oil. Like I said, way too many for just me and Vero.  Next time I think a little bit of garlic and some chillies would be a good addition.

Breakfast  I'd run out of the bananas that I usually have for breakfast, so it was a chirimoya along with a couple gourds of yerba mate to get me going. I've got to finish the chirimoyas tomorrow or they'll go off. I like them when they're just on the verge of going rotten, so they're really soft and smelly inside, but it's a fine line to walk! Lunch I'm not usually a fan of canned tuna with pasta, but Vero does this really nice one with peppers and a tomato sauce. Really yummy and just a little bit spicy. This was leftovers from the day before. Dinner We'd been talking about Jalapeno poppers the other day and how good they were. I couldn't get any jalapenos at La Boqueria today, but this time of year in Barcelona, there's a lot of peppers that look a lot like them, only they're not spicy at all. So I got some of those. But I still wanted a bit of a spicy kick, so I mixed the cream cheese with a dried chili that Karim brought me back...