DOUBLE DIPPING

Bonjour summer! Amazingly, it seemed to have arrived for a few days there! In celebration, one gloriously sun-kissed day at Clever Hands HQ we decided to indulge in this colourful, simple and sunny selection of dunking delights. These dips or spreads, depending on how greedy you are, are quick to whip up, easy to keep and quite healthy (good God, what is happening to me?!)

On our menu was hummus, tzatziki, broad beans with coriander and yoghurt, mirza ghasemi, tabbouleh, a chunky chilli sauce, borek and falafel. A vegetarian feast lay before us.....

HUMMUS 
A staple in most fridges, especially these days what with middle eastern food becoming more and more popular. Hummus is also health central. Its core ingredients are chick peas which contain no cholesterol or saturated fat, whilst garlic and lemon juice - both antioxidants - help to boost your immune system and to top it all off, olive oil, which the adverts say help Italians to live longer. Hooray! The only fatty little fly in the ointment is our friend the tahini which, alas, is fatty and calorific but there's not that much in here, soooo...

Recipe
1 can of chickpeas
2 tablespoons tahini
3 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons very cold water (this is going to help you decipher your consistency so you may have to play around to get exactly what you're looking for)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil, and more to garnish

Whizz up chickpeas with tahini and garlic, add the olive oil. Add lemon juice to taste and water for creaminess. Season it with salt and whizz again. Finito! ps. I threw in some sweet paprika and parsley at the end for a bit of colour.

TZATZIKI 
For years I've made this with fresh mint, hoping that the glorious aroma of the mint would permeate the yoghurt and cucumber mix in a refreshing yet subtle sort of way... don't bother. It doesn't. If anything the yoghurt kills the mint and then you're left with a wierdly textured yoghurt concoction with annoying leaves in your mouth.  My Persian father has always said dried mint is best and it turns out (for once) he is right.

Recipe
3 tablespoons greek yoghurt
half a cucumber, chopped into baby chunks
1 tablespoon dried mint
2 cloves of garlic crushed
olive oil - add to taste and required consistency
lemon juice, I reckon about half a lemon
salt, lots - but taste it as you go

Combine all the ingredients, taste as you go. This is also a good thing to have to serve with lamb, not just for dipping bread!

BROAD BEANS WITH CORIANDER AND YOGHURT 
This does exactly what it says on the tin. I just add a bit of chilli (just because I had some for colour) and lots of lemon, oil and salt.

Recipe
3 tablespoons greek yoghurt
juice of 1 lemon
a good handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of broad beans , cooked and cooled
olive oil for consistency and taste
salt to taste

Simply combine all ingredients, tasting as you go.



TABBOULEH 
What you see pictured below isn't really a taboulleh - the real deal has bulgur wheat running through it though it's essentially herbs with a little bit of wheat rather than the other way round. This herb fest is gloriously fresh (with or without the wheat) and is a must have at any BBQ. I know there's a lot of boring chopping to do, but just bring your laptop into the kitchen and watch/probably just listen to an episode of something while you do it. What you see below is a recipe for tabbouleh. Remove the bulgur wheat to get what's pictured here.

Recipe - serves 4
30 g bulgur wheat
two hands full of flat leaf parsley, chopped
hand full of coriander, chopped
hand full of mint, chopped
half a red onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
2 tablespoons of olive oil
hand full of pomegranate seeds

Wash the wheat in cold water until the water runs clear. Dry and combine with all the chopped leaves, onion, garlic and pomegranate. Dress with olive oil and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

CHUNKY CHILLI SAUCE 

Say hello to zest! Chopped raw onions bring a wonderfully bright zinginess to this salsa. They add crunch and are helped along by delicious lime juice.

Recipe

6 tomatoes chopped into 8

tablespoon olive oil

2 chillies chunkily chopped, leaving the seeds in

1 red pepper chopped to the same size as the chillies

3 garlic cloves crushed

1/2 a diced onion

1 lime zest and juice

salt and sugar to taste

Just chop tomatoes into 8 and pop into a pan with the chillis, peppers and a little olive oil. Once the tomatoes have boiled to a chunky sauce, throw in the garlic. Switch the heat off, in with the chopped onion and all the limey goodness. 

Mirza Ghasemi

This really is saving the best til last. This dip is ideal for throwing together - it takes 10 mins total. Mine is a quicktime cheat, but it's still DELICIOUS. It's unusual (a bit of Iranian heritage food) and without exception a favourite amongst all my friends and clients. Here I served it in one of my quaint pretty bowls, but this has the thick consistency that would allow for the classic Ottolenghi style -  spread flatly over a plate. I highly recommend providing a spoon as it's a bit thick to simply dip, it's also outrageously moreish (especially when served with toasted Turkish bread) and the spoon will slow everyone down a bit!

here I've garnished with mint - I reckon coriander is better suited though

Recipe

2 aubergines

4 garlic cloves

1 chopped fresh tomato (for the longer cook - optional)

olive oil

2 tablespoons tomato purée

2 eggs, whisked

salt

Smoke your aubergines either by just resting on flaming hob, and turning once the skin has burned OR sticking under the grill. Keeping the skins on is what traps the smokey taste inside. Once your skins are nice and burned peel the aubergines. Chop the pulpy flesh and throw it into a pan with 4 crushed cloves of garlic and cook it gently with a bit of oil. Now add the tomato purée. At this point, if you have a bit more time throw in a chopped fresh tomato and cook the mixture for 30 mins on a low heat. If you're going for fast and simple just make sure the aubergine and tomato purée is nicely combined and the pulp in the pan has a nice reddish colour, cook for 4 minutes. Next blend the mixture til smooth(ish) in a food processor or in/with a blender. Put it back in the frying pan on a high heat, along with more oil and the egg mixture  - yes, you're frying eggs. Wait til the eggs are cooked before combining everything and season with salt. I really like serving this with flaked almonds and fresh coriander....not sure that's very traditional, but it looks pretty!

Here's hoping the sun comes back soon!
S x

BARRAFINA

I've been hearing a lot about Barrafina recently so when I happened to find myself on Frith Street one Sunday I was determined to try it out. On this particular Sunday I was with oldest friend Sophinna (oldest not in age but in length-of-time-knowing and who would kill me if she wasn't mentioned) - it was one of those deceptively cold numbers which in classic British style we chose to ignore and opted to sit outside under a well-placed heater.

I realised when we found it that I must have been unwittingly walking past Barrafina quite often but had somehow never been inclined to go in. Perhaps it was the stooled interior – a lot of filled stools does tend to put me off at first sight - I'm only little and it's tough to get up on those things. Plus, they're not exactly comfortable.

Anyway, the first thing to happen upon being seated outside was being told to move our table and chairs closer to the restaurant window because the council weren’t keen on the tables being there. Good.  Surely don't put them there!? Following that we were told that the restaurant was too busy so they could only serve para picar (or 'nibbles' for the uninitiated) for the next 30 minutes. Fine. But from then on, every time we wanted to order, the waiter would dismissively shout "one minute!" or "one second!" and then scurry inside. It became almost hurtful when he gave the table next to us the specials menu, completely failing to acknowledge us or our pleas.

The menu is a little bit weird. Not the food they're selling, just the language -  it was neither consistently in Spanish nor English. Perhaps written by an Englishman who knew a few Spanish words and thought that would do? I'm not sure it makes much difference... it's just rather peculiar!

Service and menu writing aside, the food when it finally came was DELICIOUS. The best croquettes I've ever had in this town. My mouth is salivating at the mere memory of those little morsels. The tortilla alone is worth returning for - so yolky and well seasoned. Everything we ordered - which was a lot (Sophinna interprets sharing plates as an opportunity to order as much as she possibly can) was amazing. It was authentic and the kind of food that really makes you smile. 

I must admit we did order too much... I wasn't convinced we'd make it through those final plates and it was only on the merit of everything that had come before that greed won out.

crazily creamy croquetas

"pan con tomate", we also had "bread with alioli" (see what I mean about the menu?)

chorizo, always a winner

these prawns were flavour sensations

gooey tortilla - so cool you get your own freshly made little number

more goo

asparagus a joy to see on any menu when the season arrives, and it has!!

beef - rich, a bit overwhelming after all the food we'd devoured

grilled quail with alioli

For a moment with the sun shining down on us in our puffer jackets we could almost have been in Spain. Then the bill came. Not Spanish prices, but the sad fact is that we were not in Spain and if you consider that Bar Italia across the road charges £7.50 for a take-away panino, a £90 bill for two people to eat glutinously was not unpredictable. Definitely worth a visit if you're up for splashing a bit of cash and aren't in a hurry.

http://www.barrafina.co.uk

54 Frith Street

W1D  4SL

CROQUE MY BOUCHE UP

The croquembouche: the tower of delight that looms large at a wedding reception.  It knows that you know that you want some, with its sweet, fluffy, sticky, crunchy buns.  What a tart.  And with wedding season almost in full swing we have been experimenting with the croque construction conundrum: how to build?  

To pile or not to pile?  Upside down in a cone or upside up on a cone?  And crucially, what glue is the best glue?!  If feeding an army of half-cut wedding guests, the traditional stacking looks like a winner; the pile will be plentiful and hold its own as it’s demolished by greedy fingers.  But for the smaller party, sticking them around a cone provides the drama of height and presence without squashed profiteroles at the bottom (and if you’re going to croque it you may as well show off)(not a natural Local Sauce trait, obviously).  In this weeks Local Sauce lab, we opted for cone.

The building blocks for this sugary skyscraper (this construction analogy is just too good to let go) are so simple: choux buns with a creamy filling.  For an added bit of fluff to our buns, we tapped into the knowledge of a Mr.J.Martin, throwing half a cup of water into a hot dish at the bottom of the oven to steam them as they rose, before piercing and crisping.  He doesn’t lie! It works a treat, with plenty of space for the filling - crème patissière (or ‘chefs concrete’, I thank you Raymond Blanc for that one) for a proper job, or whipped cream for a quicky.

And so to glue: Chocolate vs Sugar syrup. In method one, our recipe championed melted chocolate as means to fix buns to base; a nice idea if building in, say, a fridge or a wind tunnel, but not in a little kitchen on a summer’s day.  The little bunners just wouldn’t hold!  With little warning and no fanfare, they gently slid down before an avalanche of buns hit the counter.  Not so much a thundering collapse as a sticky thud. Thud. Thud thud thud. Thud.  The thought of a sobbing bride, face awash with mascara and snot as she wails at the chocolatey heap is not appealing, even with the back-up arsenal of the ever comforting, “but it tastes great!”.   Suffice to say, the chocolate method is a potential minefield.  Avoid that one.

Croque and choc carnage.

Method two: sugar syrup, which again requires some fairly rapid cooling to prevent subsidence (still going....).  In House of Clever Hands we have at our disposal a fan; a massive, turbo, hyper-cooling beast with the thrust of a Boeing 747.  I cannot recommend the cooling fan enough; when choux + glue hit cone, and they really aren’t going anywhere.  As we worked from the foundations up (okay, that’s enough), the buns kept their shape beautifully, keeping their crispiness for the contrast of crunchy shell and explosion of the sweet, creamy filling.  But before punching the air, there is of course the taste test...  The Boy Wonder came home to find a monument to pastry and joy, and couldn’t help himself. “That’s really good that”.  

Achieved.  

Croquembouche with white chocolate and almonds

Phoar.

The recipes

You can find a good profiterole recipe here.  

For the sugar glue we dissolved 150g caster sugar in 250ml water before boiling the mixture for about 5  - 8 minutes until the mixture was super glue -py! It's handy to have a pot of water and a pastry brush to hand just in case the sugar crystallises at the side of the pan while it boils. Allow the glue to cool and thicken before use as croque glue. Good luck!