THE WORLD IN YOUR KITCHEN
Going overseas may be off the table, but that’s only one way to travel. Cook your way there instead – starting with a recipe for Spain's revueltos with chorizo and potato.
I keep getting flashbacks, to The Time Before. I’m walking across a rooftop terrace in Paris with a croissant in my hand. I’m in Singapore’s Chinatown, buying coloured chopsticks. Montreal, sitting on a hard stool at Wilensky’s with a salami and bologna roll and a sour pickle. Taiwan, drinking snake soup from an actual snake oil merchant.
These flashbacks aren’t disturbing, they’re comforting. They make me smile.
What intrigues me is how these memories of past travels are floating up to the surface now that life is back-to-normal-but-without-travel. It makes sense to dream about what you can’t have, in a wistful, never-mind, sort of way; like catching yourself with a cigarette in the middle of a dream, long after you have given up smoking. Some sort of catharsis, perhaps.
My kitchen is full of such triggers, and they bring me joy. The colourful Sabre cutlery I used to pick up, a handful at a time, from Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Olivewood spoons from the medina in Fez. A mosaic of a fish from Tunisia. My favourite little long-handled plastic spoons, from the market in Saigon. The little olive dish from Roscioli in Rome (thank you, Kim), and the little brown jug from Zaragoza.
And the bottles – I still have half a bottle of the most beautiful Patchun soy sauce from Hong Kong, and will cry when I finish it. The sherry vinegar I talked half my tour group into buying in Malaga. The crazy grappa bottle from Venice that I’m too scared to open.
There are many ways to travel, and one of them is in the mind. So now, the trick is to get them out of your mind and onto the table.
Tonight I’m going to make the huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) I watched the chef cook time and again in a little bar in Palma, Mallorca, as I drank beer and made notes. Or I might make saffron risotto, a dish I was eating at Peck in Milan when I received a text to let me know that Antonio Carluccio – my friend and risotto maestro – had died. Soon, I’ll be making Indian mee goreng, because steamy images of Singapore keep popping into my head. And those fabulous dark chocolate biscuits cracked with icing sugar that I fell for at the Notting Hill market every Saturday morning for years on end; they’re definitely on the list.
My world may have shrunk, but my kitchen never will.
HUEVOS REVUELTOS, THE RULES.
Use great eggs.
Fry all the good bits in the pan first then add the eggs, which take on all the rich, oily flavours in the blink of an eye.
Use a wooden paddle to move the eggs around the pan slowly and calmly - not so much stirring, as pushing. That allows the egg on the surface of the pan to cook but then be taken back into the curds without overcooking, which would be boring.
Remove the pan from the heat before you think the eggs are cooked, as they will keep cooking.
Have warm plates ready to go.
Huevos revueltos with chorizo, potato and maybe prawns
Serves 2
1 medium potato, peeled
Good handful of spinach leaves, washed
4 large eggs
sea salt and black pepper
half tsp Spanish paprika
2 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, as finely sliced as you can
1 fresh chorizo sausage, sliced
4 prawns, peeled and deveined, if you feel like prawns
Roughly chop the potato and cook in simmering salted water for 15 minutes or until tender. Drain and cut into 1 cm cubes.
Toss the spinach leaves into a medium-sized frypan with just the water on their leaves and cook over medium heat, tossing, until wilted. Drain well and press dry.
Break the eggs into a bowl, add sea salt, pepper and paprika and whisk.
Heat the oil in the same pan, and add the garlic, letting it flutter in the oil like a butterfly. Add chorizo and potatoes, and fry until golden – I like burning them a bit, myself.
Add the prawns if you are doing the prawn thing, and fry briefly, tossing well, then add the spinach to the pan in bits, so it doesn’t wad.
Draw the pan off the heat for 10 seconds or it will cook the eggs too quickly, then return it. Pour the eggs over the top and push them gently around the pan with a wooden paddle, resting them for a few seconds at a time to allow them to form curds. This will take less than a minute.
Remove from the heat while eggs are still a little runny on top, and serve on warm plates. Sourdough toast slathered with olive oil is pretty essential at this point ( I should probably have mentioned that earlier).
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Copyright © 2020 Jill Dupleix. I live and work on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging.