My latest favourite recipe

I already mentioned this recipe on my last post, however, as I cooked it again last night, I wanted to put here my own adapted version.

Spiced Fish Soup

Ingredients for 4 people (or serves two people for two days, which is what I do)

• 5 tablespoons vegetable or sunflower oil
• 2 ½ tablespoons brown mustard seeds
• a handful of fresh curry leaves
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 teaspoon medium curry powder
• 1½ teaspoons chilli powder
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 2 large thumb-sized pieces of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
• 6 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 onions, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 handfuls of basmati rice
• 600ml water
• 600g fish (I get “Fish Pie Mix” from the Fish Tesco counter -Salmon, Cod and Haddock- and some prawns too)
• 1 x 400ml tin of coconut milk
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• juice of 2 limes

In a big pan, heat up the oil and add the Spices (mustard seeds, cumin, garam masala, chilli powder, curry powder, turmeric and curry leaves). Cook for a few minutes, but be careful because after a couple of minutes the mustard seeds will start jumping like popcorn everywhere. Put a lid on when this starts to happen and cook for another minute or so. Next add the onions, garlic and ginger (I put the garlic and ginger in a garlic crusher for better results – see picture below). Continue cooking until the onions are soft. Then add the rice and water (put the rice in first, give everything a good stir and then add the water). Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Add your fish and the coconut milk with a pinch of salt. Put the lid on the pan and simmer for a further 10 minutes, then stir well to break up the pieces of fish. Taste and correct the seasoning with salt and pepper, then just before you serve it squeeze in the lime juice.

It’s so easy to make. The only “difficulty” lies in getting all the ingredients ready first. Then you just chuck them all in a pan and it’s done.

I took the time to take a few nice pictures of all the ingredients as I was getting them ready, but completely forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Doh! Have a look at the piccies:
  
Vegetable oil                  Finely chopped onions                     Garlic

  
Fresh ginger                                        Crushed garlic and ginger

  
Mustard seeds                                     Cumin

  
Garam masala                                    Chilli Powder

  
Medium Curry Powder                     Curry leaves

  
Prawns                                                 Fish Pie Mix

  
Basmati Rice                                      Coconut milk                 Water

  
Salt                                                        Pepper

                             
                              Limes

In defense of Jamie Oliver

Spain is a very ground breaking country in cooking matters. We have world reknown chefs and everybody has heard of the amazing qualities of the Mediterranean Diet.

The problem is that I was anything but interested in cooking when I was in Spain, so I never watched any programmes by these amazing chefs like Arguiñano, Arzak, Adriá, etc.

I have only started being interested in cooking since I am in England (and even more in particular, since I am living with Jon) Thank god (and only god knows why) there are hundreds of cooking programmes in the UK. It seems as if the British try to compensate for their bad cooking reputation by saturating day time and weekend television (and even some prime time, like The F Word) with cooking programmes. I don’t know about any other countries like France or USA, but I dare say that the UK has got more celebrity cooks than Spain (from Ainsley Harriot, Gordon Ramsey and Antony Worral Thomson, to Gary Rhodes, Rick Stein and Nigela Lawson)

However, one of the most famous ones outside the UK (apart from Ramsey) is Jamie Oliver, due to all the good work he’s been doing to improve the quality of the school meals and because he is probably the chef that most cooking programmes has had on telly. Some of these programmes have even reached the Spanish shores and are shown (dubbed into Spanish) in Spanish television.

So a lot more people than I would have thought know him. Even my mum knows him. The problem is that if you compare him to any Spanish cook, Oliver may not be the most skilled, inventive or even “higienic” of them all.

It’s a shame that some people won’t look past that. At the end of the day, recipes are to be followed, improved and changed to taste, and it will be you cooking them, so to label him as unhigienic simply because they don’t show a close-up of him washing his hands every five minutes, I think that’s a bit mean. He makes simple, easy to cook dishes and that works for me. Simple as that.

This past weekend I have cooked two of his recipes, and I must say that both of them were gorgeous, outstanding.
The first one (we have renamed it “spiced fish soup“) is the most delicious and tasty fish soup that I have tried in my life. And the second one (monkfish wrapped in bacon) was simply gorgeous and not difficult to make at all.

So from here I just want to “defend” Jamie Oliver a bit, as he is not getting the most deserved publicity from other fellow Spaniards (and who cares if he’s a dick or if he has a bit tongue, or else… Arguiñano used to go on live telly completely high on cocaine and people simply found it “funny”…)

Voices

Don’t worry. I am not going to talk about the voices in my head (just because they’ve been extremely quiet lately)

This is just a very simple post to talk about my favourite male voices in UK at the moment.

Needless to say, I love the British accent (especially the Home Counties one) having spent all my learning years in these places. I don’t particularly like the American one. The Australian I find interesting, and the New Zealand one I find very cute (together with the South African one, although I struggle to understand it more)

There are lots of different accents in the UK (same as in Spain, really) and out of the “famous” ones, I really like the Liverpool one (Scouse).

However, unless the accent is very pronounced and noticeable (like Scouse, Geordie or Glaswegian) I still can’t tell accents apart and wouldn’t know where a person comes from based on their accent alone (I can do it –roughly- with Spanish areas)

These are the three voices that I enjoy listening to the most in England at the moment (there are probably more, but these are the three that firstly jumped to me)

Tom Baker, of Doctor Who fame, but for me better know due to his voice over in Little Britain.

Alan Rickman, known to everybody as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, he is a very successful English actor who has played “the baddie” in many a Hollywood film.

Jimmy Carr, comedian apparently born in Ireland from Irish parents but raised in the UK.

Roadtripping

Maybe I’ve seen one too many American films, but the thing is that I’ve been wanting to do a roadtrip for quite a while now. I love travelling, I love visiting new places, and I don’t mind car journeys that much (as long as you have plenty of good music to sing along to). If we put all those ingredients together, we get a lovely road trip as a result.

The ultimate road trip has to be a West Coast to East Coast of the United States. I’ve been daydreaming about it for a while, but since you’d need something like 3 months to carry it out properly (due to the vast land mass and huge amount of “must-see” places), I believe it is out of reach until we win the lottery. Or maybe we just have to befriend Stephen Fry and ask him to take us with him in his next Black-Cab-Around-The-States TV Series.

I’ve been consulting it with Google and apparently it would only take us JUST two days to do Boston to San Francisco (no stopping even for a piss, though)

But since none of this is going to happen any time soon, I thought it would be a bit better for my own sanity to try to get a more achievable target in mind. So I came up with the idea of Ireland.

I’ve felt quite curious about Ireland for a bit now. It all started when I read the book “Dublin” by Edward Rutherford (it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as his “London” one), the descriptions (especially the ones of the Wicklow Mountains) really captivated me and I have felt like I had to see all of that beauty with my own eyes ever since.

I’ve been having a look at the “Discover Ireland” website, which is quite good compared to other tourism websites I’ve seen, and they even have a section on “Getting around by car” – exactly what I was looking for!

There are lots of different trip ideas and multiple routes according to your holiday needs. From Castles and Cathedrals, to culinary coast-to-coast tours. Mountains or Cities. Coast or Wildlife. Anything, really.

The one that has caught my eye is the “Medieval Ireland” one, with Castles and Cathedrals and all that really photogenic scenery.

So! We have the plan, the route and the willingness. We just need the time off and the money to pay for flights, accommodation and car rental. Anyone wants to give us a hand here?

Numbers

I was listening to U2 today, to “Achtung Baby” (which -after Joshua Tree- is their best album) and the song “One” started to sound. I remember the first time I heard this album. I was in Primero de BUP (equivalent to Year 8 or 9, more or less) and I had very recently started to listen to rockier music (from Phil Collins and Madonna to Manic Street Preachers and REM – quite a change). That album was quite a breakthrough for me.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I simply want to list out some songs with numbers in their title that I love. Just because I heard “One” today …

Here it is, in no particular order.

- One – U2
- 156 – Mew
- 1973 – The Smashing Pumpkins
- 33 – The Smashing Pumpkins
- Zero – The Smashing Pumpkins
- 27 – Biffy Clyro
- 57 – Biffy Clyro
- 12:51 – The Strokes
- 8 – Sunny Day Real Estate
- One – Sunny Day Real Estate
- 47 – Sunny Day Real Estate
- 1/80 by summer – Taking Back Sunday
- Seventy times 7 – Brand New
- 33 – Coheed and Cambria
- 46 and 2 – Tool

Interestingly, some of those songs are also included among my favourite ones from those bands, for example “One eighty by summer” by Taking Back Sunday is more than probably my favourite song by them (and they have LOTS of songs that I love!)

So, in the same fashion of other blogs that have “musical Fridays” entries, here I leave (on Thursday still) a little piece of inspiration for whoever wants to listen. Ladies and gentlemen, I present you a very young Biffy Clyro and one of the best tunes they’ve ever come up with.

Enjoy.