G Is For... Gazpacho

It was hot and sunny few weeks ago that I decided to try my hands and knives for the first time to make Gazpacho ~ that famous cold soup slurped world wide! Every where I went, it's in the Summer Menu. It's so famous that food companies even produced it in tetra-paks, cans and bottles! It's one of Spain's famous export besides Paella, La Tomatina, Bull Fighting, Flamenco and... Real Madrid :-D Ok, I admit am not a football fan but I do knew few names here and there.

Gazpacho is a kind of seasonal raw soup with refreshing quality ingredients that's a sure hit and instantly remembered of European Summers besides it's suitable for vegetarians too. You won't go wrong if you serve it at dinner in those hot summer days! By the way, another similar cold soup to Gazpacho is the Vichyssoise (scroll down to the bottom page of how Vichyssoise influenced Anthony Bourdain and in entertainment). Traditionally, it's blended with hard bread (or stale bread) rather than serve separately as toasts with or without onions. Some people don't like hard bread incorporated into the soup :-) Of course, you can add hard boiled eggs, ham, croutons, almonds if you want to make other variation of non-vegetarian cold raw soups like Salmorejo and Ajo Blanco or Gazpacho Manchego which is a meat stew (mainly rabbit and chicken meat) from La Mancha, Spain.

So, here's my first try of traditional homemade Gazpacho or Gazpacho Andaluz with seasonal ingredients! I don't use mortar and pestle for the pounding of vegetables even though is sometimes favoured to give the soup textures and to avoid foaming created by food processors. I imagined with horror, a large barrel-size mortar, long pestle pounding away with loads of vegetable chunks strewing everywhere on the kitchen floor... and a chirpy 3 ½ year old, happily picking up the scraps? Oooofff... :-|

Gazpacho Andaluz

Serves 4-6 portions

To be blended in food processor:

½ Cucumber ~ skinned, deseeded & chopped roughly

5 nos Red Tomatoes ~ deseeded & diced (choose medium size sun ripened tomatoes)

1 no Yellow Onion/White Onion ~ medium size, roughly diced

½ Red Capsicum ~deseeded & diced

2 cloves Garlic

3 slices of hard breads (or stale bread) ~ wholemeal or white, no problem

1 Liter Water

2 Tbl Red Wine Vinegar/Xérès Vinegar

3 Tbl Olive Oil

2 Tbl Tomato Concentrate

Sea Salt & freshly grounded Black Pepper to taste

Garnish:

½ Yellow Onion/White Onion - finely diced

½ Cucumber ~ deseeded & diced

½ Green Capsicum ~ deseeded & diced

Extra Virgin Olive Oil ~ for drizzling, generously

Method:

1. In a food processor, add in the vegetables and stale bread. Blend them into a mixture. Add in the salt and pepper to taste. Then the vinegar and blend the mixture again until it's smooth and creamy.

2. While the food processor still turning, add in the olive oil and tomato concentrate.

3. Pour into a soup tureen or pot and chill it minimum 2 hours in the refrigerator. Just before serving, check the taste again and adjust if necessary.

4. Ladle the gazpacho into individual bowls or soup plates and sprinkle the reserved garnishes over the soup.

Note: I like to use Yellow Onion for this soup because I like it's stronger and complex flavour that complements the Capsicums and vinegar. You can use milder and sweeter white onions or omit it if preferred as sometimes it's not included in the Andalusian region . To chill the soup faster, I poured it into a stainless steel pot ( I would love to have it in a Soup Tureen but I don't want to break it accidently) or if you use a tall blender, you can just put the whole jug in the fridge. If you think it's too liquid, you can start with 800 ml of water and slowly add extra water to achieve the consistency you like... or lessen the liquid to make Arranque Roteño, gazpacho cream :-)

Enjoy!

Stir-fried Ginseng Eryngi Mushrooms With Leek & Capsicum

It's been several times now that I included Eryngi Mushrooms in my diet and my family like it as well. Firstly, it's a hardy mushroom and not easily spoilt compared to other species of mushrooms. For this dish, I used Ginseng Eryngi Mushrooms with some leeks and capsicums. Usually, when I had my meals, I like to have some varieties on the table with minimum 2 dishes with rice or noodles. I tried to have meat, vegetables, poultry or fish combinations but most of the time vegetables are the highest quantity consumed :-) I think my fridge has more vegetables than ever before. Must be the habit since childhood... :-)

Stir-Fry Ginseng Eryngi Mushrooms With Leeks & Capsicum

250 g Ginseng Eryngi Mushrooms

100 g Leeks

1 nos  Red Capsicum - medium size

2 cloves Garlic-minced

Sesame Seeds - toasted

Soya Sauce to taste

Shaoxing Cooking Wine to taste

Cooking Oil

Method:

1. Remove any grits from the mushroom and cut off the hard stump. Wash the whole mushrooms and pat it dry. Slice the mushrooms about 2-3 mm thickness or to your liking. Set aside.

Note: This is the only mushroom that I would wash under running water :-P

2. Wash the Leek stalks thoroughly from grits. You can slice it first then wash with water or remove each layers which were affected by dirt and soak in water so that the dirt will sink to the bottom. After cleaning, slice diagonal the leeks and set aside. You can slice in rounds but I prefer diagonal cuts in leeks.

3. Wash and cut capsicums/bell peppers in halves. Remove the seeds and white pith. Slice diagonally as well.

4. In a pan or wok, heat the oil. When oil is hot, add in the garlic. Give it a few stir until fragrant.

5. Add in the, vegetables. Give a good stir and then add in the Ginseng Eryngi Mushrooms. Stir the vegetables thoroughly.

6. Stir in some soy sauce to your taste and add in some Shaoxing cooking wine. If you don't have Shaoxing wine, you can use brandy/cognac or dry sherry instead... :-)

7. Just before serving add in the toasted sesame seeds. Give a few stirs and serve hot with rice or side dish to your main meal...

Note: You can make a thicker grave/sauce by mixing 1-2 tsp of cornflour/cornstarch with some water and pour back into the wok/pan. Stir a few minutes until the gravy thickens. Dish up and serve hot.

UPDATE: For those who are interested to read more about Folklore/ Cookery/ Mycology/ Drug, you can download this digital edition of Mushrooms, Russia and History, 1957 by Author, Robert Gordon Wasson & his wife,  Valentina Pavlovna Geurcken. It was scanned from original from a generous contributor and hand corrected by Igor Dolgov, Zachary Jones and Gred Golden. It's a rare book which fetched thousands of USD!

♫ Enjoy ♪

Eryngii Mushrooms & Lily Buds

I simply love mushrooms… anytime of the year since it’s widely mass cultivated, they are easily available all year round. The first time I saw this mushroom at supermarket, it was called ‘Drumstick Mushroom’ which was wrongly labeled even though it looked a bit like skinless chicken drumstick. Nevertheless, mushrooms are delicious! In Europe such mushrooms are considered exotic and very, very expensive compared to Chanterelle or Cepe. Well, still can’t beat the price of Black Truffles aka Black Gold though … :-D

Nowadays, Eryngii mushrooms or Pleurotus eryngii ( also known as King Trumpet or King Oyster mushroom ) are easily found in local supermarket or fresh market - mostly imported from Korea. When I was in Athens, I had a simple grilled Pleurotus which is another species of this Pleurotaceae family called Pleurotus ostreatus. I had a plate all for myself…hehehehe! If not for the price, I would order more. It's also a vegetarian dish by itself.

Close up view of the Eryngii mushrooms... they sure live up to the name!

Just look at the size of Eryngii mushrooms to my hand! That's about 250 g ±

I also realised that this unique mushroom looks a bit like scallop when you cut into 1/2 to 1 inch thick rounds! I even got my hubby fooled because he's not into bivalve mollusk and any sea creatures that look weird (like Geoduck....ewwwww) with tentacles or slugs! He should see his face when I serve the dish I cooked with the special 'scallops' :-D

Here's a simple and fast recipe for a vegetarian dish with Eryngii mushroom and edible Lily buds. Fast, because that's the only 2 things left in my fridge until my next grocery rounds :-P 

One thing to remember is to heat up your pan or wok really hot for a quick stir-fry method. Also, this dish has fragile lily buds. If you stir to hard, the buds break apart, turned soggy or brown when cooking too long. I like my vegetables crunchy and even raw if needed.

Note: Edible Lily Buds; I'm not sure of this species I used-it has yellow-orange petals. Could be Day Lilies and it's seasonal. So far, that's the only species I found locally.

Stir-Fry Eryngii Mushroom with Lily Buds

Ingredients:

200 g Lily Buds

100 g Eryngii Mushrooms

2 cloves Garlic

Cooking oil ( I used about 2 Tbl )

Soya Sauce/Tamari to taste

Oyster Sauce to taste - you can use also Vegetarian Oyster Sauce for vegetarians

Method:

1. Wash the lily buds under running water. Toss to dry. Clean the mushrooms with kitchen paper or a soft bristle brush to remove any grits. (I know some people wash mushrooms-it's their preferences. For me, I found that after cleaning with water before cutting makes them soggy and slippery.) Cut the mushrooms into 1/2 to 1 inch rounds.Put them aside.

2. Heat the pan/wok until it's very hot. Pour in the cooking oil. Add in the garlic and fry quickly until it's fragrant but not brown.

3. Add in the cut mushrooms; give it a quick stir. At this stage, you can add extra oil if you want if you feel it's too dry. 

4. Throw in the lily buds; becareful not to stir too hard because the buds are fragile. Stir too hard you may ended with broken buds instead of whole buds intact.

5. Splash a few dashes of soya sauce and oyster sauce to your taste; give another few stir and dish out to serve. 

You may add some Sesame Oil if you like before dish it out, to give the extra ooompph. In this recipe I used Kikkoman Special Fragrant Sauce. Not sure you can find that in Europe but it's easily to find in Asian countries. Still you can use tamari, Kikkoman All Purpose Soya Sauce or any soya sauce you fancy.

You can omit the garlic or add in slices  of onion if you want to. I thought I would use some carrots or tomatoes but can't find any lurking in my fridge; if not the dish would be colorful :-(

If you can't find edible lily flowers, you can replace it with any vegetables you love. Maybe throw in some fresh prawns, Surimi crab meat (imitation filament crabmeat made from fish meat) red chillies or capsicum? Yummmyy...