Freekeh with magic onion potion & saffron cauliflower + pistachio
Cooking the med is a melting pot
Hello everybody! Today i want to talk a bit about how we cook. Because i think it’s all about cherishing our intuition. Maybe we sometimes forget! Last sunday i was making a pasta for our sunday lunch and there was a pumpkin. I fried some garlic in olive oil, added pumpkin in rough cubes, some salt and let it cook with a splash of water. Added a dash of cinnamon to open the flavour of the pumpkin and lots of grated parmesan cheese to pair the sweetness with saltiness. Some of the cooking liquid of the calamarata pasta turned it into a creamy sauce, a handful of chopped up roasted hazelnuts completed the flavour burst and boy it was so good! It popped up in my head while cooking: something sweet, something like a spice, something salty and something nutty, with some carbs. No recipe needed. I was following my intuition.
INTUITIVE COOKING
Honestly i think this is really what makes us cook in our most authentic way. Sometimes we have to forget everyting, about following recipes (what am i saying i’m writing recipes for a living!!) or following the latest insta tiktok trends or what we think we should cook. And freely cook with all the experience we have, take all those moments we’ve learned from trying tasting new things with us, looking at how other people cook, take all that with us as our most reliable kitchen tool. Mix flavours in our heads and come to new things while cooking and building up a dish like that. Exactly why Mediterranean kitchens are inspiring us forever: recipes that came from this same intuition, cooking with what is available in the most clever way. Most of the times there are no recipes but hands that know. And finally people wrote them down in 1000 variations.
THE TOMATO ONION SECRET POTION
The above is more or less how this dish of today came to life. I never forget a cooking session with the mum of a dear Italian friend in the Piemontese mountains. It was winter, all white outside, and we were making the most delicious Piemontese gnocchi with celery (i promise to share this recipe before christmas too). But the miracle happened with the ‘sauce’ we were making. I had to cut an onion into the smallest cubes, and fry them golden in olive oil, with meticulous care. She was of course treating me as a 6 year old new in the kitchen. I smiled and tried to do exactly as she told me. And i understood her precision. Because when you want to get the maximum flavour out of humble ingredients. You need time and dedication. So there i was in her kitchen, frying those onions like never before. And just at the perfect moment she ordered me to add some spoons of tomato paste and salt. Let it bubble away for a bit, until sweet and savoury: a magic potion of onion tomato oil. She used it with the gnocchi and it’s been 15 years or more but i’m still impressed with it. So simple yet so clever.
This is the golden colour you want! After this you add the tomato paste, more salt and you leave it on low fire for 10 minutes. Now you can store it in a jar and use for for multiple purposes: in a pasta with lots of parmesan cheese, to a sauce, in stews, to risotto, to grains like bulghur and like in this case freekeh. To anything if we use our imagination really.
SAFFRON GRINDER!
I got a saffron grinder from a friend from Iran and that has been a real revelation! Gone is this soaking of saffron strands or trying to grind them in a pestle and having a yellow mortar without a lot of saffron coming out. Because this little thing grinds the strands into a fine saffron powder and collects it and you can use it directly. The one i have is sold out everywhere but there is another model on Amazon and it will work fine too. So easy to make a saffron marinade now, like i do for my cauliflower!
FREEKEH AND RAISING OUR VOICE
Now the recipe. I paired it with freekeh. The ancient grain from the Levant very much appreciated and grown in Palestine. As i still have Palestine on my mind where the thousands are still being butchered as we speak, with our governments in support, i can only feel angry and sad. But since i’m positive by nature i think we have to go on raising our voice for change. I hope when you read this you realise too (or you did already) this is our huge force: showing we care to the world and we don’t stay silent.
Back to freekeh. It’s wheat like bulghur, but mostly the whole kernel or just split. Harvested early when still green and burned in bulk on the field: that’s why the beautiful smokey taste is there. The grain has a lot a lot of bite, and i just love the gooey but firm texture. Traditionally paired with chicken or meat, but so good in many ways. Today as a kind of side dish with the tomato onion oil and golden saffron cauliflower and a hint of cinnamon and cardamom.
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