COCIDO

Does every nation have a national stew? In France it might be a toss-up between pot au feu and bouillabaisse. In Belgium, it would be carbonnade flamande. In Italy, maybe osso bucco. In Ireland, well, Irish stew. Numerous West African nations have a chicken & peanut stew - sometimes called palava. Cocido would be Spain's entrant in the stew stakes. Like most of these dishes, there are many variations. This one has no beef (which would be the meat used in the version from Madrid). It is made with chicken, ham hock and chorizos, all slow cooked in stock & white wine with onion, garlic, chickpeas and potato. Given that Spain is playing in the World Cup final, it seemed like an appropriate dish.

COCIDO

SALMON ADOBADO, ANCHO RICE, HERB & LEMON PUREE

There are many different recipes for adobos. All of the Mexican ones have dried chillies of some sort - anchos and guajillos are popular. Various spices, garlic, sometimes crushed annato seeds, usually vinegar. (Mexican vinegars tend to be low in acidity. Many cooks make their own from pineapple or banana skins.) I use coconut or palm vinegar. The paste lasts for quite a while in the fridge. Before use, I thin it with more vinegar and sugar or sometimes with orange juice. I like my salmon seared on the outside, raw but warmed through in the middle. The puree is simply coriander & green onions blended to smooth with a little salt and lemon-infused olive oil.

SALMON ADOBADO, ANCHO RICE, HERB & LEMON PUREE

BREAST OF CHICKEN WITH GREEN RICE CAKE & MAPLE CORN

Ah, what would we do without leftovers? The chook is the other half of the chook I cooked last night. There was some risotto verde left over from the previous night. I added an egg and some panko crumbs and sauteed it in ghee to make green rice cakes. I got some corn this afternoon which looked like it had been harvested perhaps yesterday. Sauteed that in corn oil with some maple syrup. A bit of wild rocket from the garden and there's dinner.

BREAST OF CHICKEN WITH GREEN RICE CAKE & MAPLE CORN

POLLO CON PIPIAN VERDE, ARROZ CON CHILE ANCHO

Classic Mexican fare tonight. For those of you unfamiliar with Mexican food, pipian verde is a thick sauce of hulled pumpkin seeds, green serrano chillies, epazote (a plant native to Mexico - which I am now growing here at home) and various other spices. (There's a good recipe for pipian in Zarela's Veracruz - link below.) The rice is from a Diana Kennedy recipe, which in turn is based on a recipe published in 1877 in a book called La Cocinera Poblana - the Puebla cook. It combines Mexican and Spanish ingredients - rice and saffron from Spain with ancho chillies from Mexico. I cooked the chicken in a Schlemmertopf. That's a proprietary name for a lidded clay pot made by the nattily-named Scheurich-Keramik company in Germany. Lots of cuisines have clay or terracotta cooking vessels. The great things about these is that the moisture in the terracotta keeps the chicken or whatever else you cook inside it moist.

POLLO CON PIPIAN VERDE, ARROZ CON CHILE ANCHO

RISOTTO VERDE

Some risottos are dry. They sit in a neat mound on the plate. Other risottos are wet and settle into the plate. There's no rule on what's right. If I'd cooked this a bit longer, more liquid would have evaporated and it would sit up. I didn't do that because I wanted to keep the bright green colour and this would have dulled with extended heating. The great thing about a green risotto is that you can pretty much put any green vegetables into it. In this case there are diced zucchinis & Brussels sprouts. The stock is chicken (home made, of course). At the end of the cooking process, I added a couple of cups of snow peas, beans & green onions which had been blended smooth with some chicken stock. Other vegetable that I'd consider would be broccoli & broccolini, rape, kale, silverbeet, spinach and cavolo nero. Some freshly grated grana padana was stirred through before serving, along with some good butter - Lurpak. A great way to get people who won't eat vegetables to eat vegetables.

RISOTTO VERDE

ROASTED CAULIFLOWER & GRUYERE SOUP WITH HAZELNUT OIL

Some soups are simple broths - delicate little things admired for their subtlety. Some are more robust. This is one of the latter - one of those big, boofy soups. Well as big and boofy as a soup can be - but not as big and boofy as a rib of beef. To add extra flavour to this, I broke the cauli into pieces, shook these with extra virgin olive oil and roasted them, along with a large onion and a few cloves of garlic. I then placed the roasted vegetables into a large saucepan with about 2 cups of home-made chicken stock, covered this and simmered it gently until everything was perfectly soft. I added salt and pepper, then pureed the lot until smooth. I grated a few tablespoons of gruyere into this and stirred it through. Finished with a drizzle of hazelnut oil in the bowl. Some crusty sourdough from Sydney's Sonoma Bakery. And that's it - a satisfying, simple, warming meal for winter. If you make stock regularly and keep some in the freezer, a soup like this is a cinch.

ROASTED CAULIFLOWER & GRUYERE SOUP WITH HAZELNUT OIL

WHOLE FISH WITH SAW-TOOTH CORIANDER

Luderick sounds like a character from Blackadder. Here in Australia it's often called blackfish. You don't see it in fish markets very often. It's not a species that's fished commercially. It lives in estuaries and bays and mostly eats seaweed. Occasionally worms. My grandfather used to fish for this down the road from his home in Sydney's Drummoyne. I was surprised to see our local fishmonger have this on his blackboard this morning. My guess is that a local fisherman caught more than he needed and sold them to the fish shop. Anyway, it's a great fish to cook simply like this. The fish was marinated for a half hour in a mix of light soy, palm sugar, fish sauce and tamarind water. Then patted dry inside and out before being deep fried in a wok of peanut oil. The oil was almost smoking. This ensured that the skin crisped up and the flesh virtually steamed inside. A squeeze of lime juice and a sprinkle of chopped saw-tooth coriander (culantro in Mexico, where it's also used). A salad of watercress with an Asian dressing. A crisp young riesling. Heaven.

WHOLE FISH WITH SAW-TOOTH CORIANDER

PRIK KING PRAWNS

Prik king is a Thai chilli paste. It isn't a million kilometres away from a typical red curry paste in composition. I could have called this prawns with peas and beans. I didn't. The peas are snow peas. The beans are snake beans. Snow peas aren't traditional Thai, but they had big bags of them at the fruit shop and the sweetness of these worked well against the other flavours going on here. Snake beans seem to be around for most of the year. They like warm climates, which is probably why they are grown in far north Queensland and the Northern Territory. They're best when they're young and not too thick.

PRIK KING PRAWNS

CRANBERRY & PECAN BRIOCHE PUDDING WITH CREME ANGLAISE

I don't do desserts. Maybe once every few years. This one came about because we had some friends to dinner and I just got the urge to serve something sweet at the end of the meal. I bought a brioche from the French baker at the markets. The pecans come from Tweed River Pecans over the hill. For the creme I used a vanilla pod that I also bought at the markets - from a woman with a farm in New Guinea. Even in the outdoor space of the market, the seductive aroma of the vanilla was discernible metres away from the stall.
Tweed River Pecans

CRANBERRY & PECAN BRIOCHE PUDDING WITH CREME ANGLAISE

MASTER STOCK PORK BELLY WITH WATERCRESS

Berkshires are an old breed of pig that virtually disappeared in Australia - and elsewhere - as people tried to breed the fat out of pork. That was a stupid mistake. The result is the crap that's sold by most butchers and all supermarkets - pork with no discernible flavour that becomes dry and tough with cooking. Here in Australia, it took the passion of people like Joe Byrne of Bangalow Sweet Pork to encourage breeders to return to some of the heritage breeds that carried a natural amount of fat. That fat meas that pork from these breeds behaves differently in the kitchen than standard pork. Its fat content allows the meat to retain succulence. Natural sugars in the flesh caramelise in a pan. The Berkshire is a black pig with short legs. Byron Bay Berkshire Pork is raised in the area between Ballina and Byron Bay in northern New South Wales. In Japan, kurobuta pork is produced from a pure strain of black Berkshires. It is as highly prized as the best Kobe beef and regarded as the best pork in the world. A Berkshire's belly flesh doesn't seem to be as thick as some other breeds, but it is beautifully flavoured. I braised a whole piece in master stock. The original stock dates back about 6 years. Every so often, as the quantity reduces, I supplement it with fresh ingredients. After each use, I strain and refrigerate what's left. I lift off any fat that has solidified on the surface and freeze the stock until I need it again. This piece of belly was cooked at 130C for six hours.
Bangalow Pork Berkshire pigs - Wikipedia

MASTER STOCK PORK BELLY WITH WATERCRESS

RIB OF BEEF WITH BALCK BEANS, ZUCCHINI & FIELD MUSHROOMS

This is more of the fabulous beef that Paul from Jack Sprat's has been dry-aging.I thought I'd give it some Mexican flavours. A bed of black beans finished in home-rendered pork lard. Lard is brilliant. Not healthy, just brilliant. There's no substitute - no matter what people might say. Vegetable shortening, butter, olive oil ... great in their proper places. But no stand-in for lard. The beef was rubbed with a dry adobo spice mix. Huge field mushrooms were roasted with olive oil and garlic. Zucchinis were sauteed in ghee. Pretty simple meal. Home Cooking 101.

RIB OF BEEF WITH BALCK BEANS, ZUCCHINI & FIELD MUSHROOMS

JEWFISH, RED QUINOA, BRUSSELS SPROUTS & DOUBLE SMOKED BACON

How did the jewfish get its name? According to the Oxford Dictionary, William Dampier (an early white visitor to Australia) is largely responsible. The dictionary quotes a 1697 book by Dampier - "A New Voyage Round the World" Whilst in Jamaica (a good number of years before Appleton rum was first produced on the island) Dampier happened across this fish. To quote his log, "The jew-fish is a very good fish, and I judge so called by the English because it has scales and fins, therefore a clean fish, according to the Levitical law, and the Jews at Jamaica buy them and eat them very freely. It is a very large fish, shaped much like a cod but a great deal bigger; one will weigh three, or four, or five hundredweight. It has a large head, with great fins and scales, as big as an half-crown, answerable to the bigness of his body. It is very sweet meat, and commonly fat. This fish lives among the rocks; there are plenty of them in the West Indies, about Jamaica and the coast of Caracas; but chiefly in these seas, especially more westward." The jewfish is also called mulloway in Australia. It is in season right now. I had some lovely jewfish prepared three ways at Flow restaurant in Tugun last week - and bought some at the fishmonger today. Here it sits on a bed of red quinoa - one of the so-called superfoods for all the goodness it possesses. I bought some double smoked bacon at the North Sydney growers market. It comes from the Tunkey property in Orange and is deliciously smoky without being salty. A drizzle of Colonna lemon-infused oil to finish.

JEWFISH, RED QUINOA, BRUSSELS SPROUTS & DOUBLE SMOKED BACON