Unlike other guacamole I have tasted before, this was not pureed (in to a consistency resembling baby food!) or an odd-shade of green, but chunky and fresh and has already received good reviews from friends during a picnic last week!

One ingredient used was a Mexican cheese, however, I have been unable to source this back home and so have removed it from the ingredients list below. I shall update this post when I locate a supplier!

Ingredients (makes a tub enough to serve 4 for a side salad, or 2 for a dip to much watching a film!):

• 2 Avocados (ripe)
• 4 or 5 small shallots, chopped finely
• 2 to 4 cloves of garlic (dependent on your taste preference) – crushed or chopped finely
• 2 tomatoes – chopped, but not too finely
• 1 Green chilli, chopped finely
• A good handful of chopped coriander
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Juice of a lime

Method:

If you had a large enough pestle and mortar, I would recommend mixing and smashing up the ingredients in this, as you will extract more flavour, however, the method below assumes you do not.

• Slice the avocado in half, remove the stone and scoop out the flesh
• Slice the flesh relatively finely, but leaving chunky rather than down to a smooth paste
• Place the avocado in to a bowl and add the garlic, tomatoes and chilli
• Mix together the ingredients and season with salt/pepper to taste
• Add the lime juice and mix once more
• Taste – adjust seasoning and add further ingredients if you feel the balance is not right

This can be placed in to a sealed container in the fridge and kept for a couple of days, however eat straight away for the ultimate fresh taste!

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The Island of Korcula has a thriving fishing industry serving local restaurants, guaranteeing the finest and freshest ingredients the surrounding seas have to offer every time you dine, including squid, cod, shrimp, sardines, mussels and cuttlefish (if you have a chance, try Cuttlefish Risotto, which is coloured black with its ink!). The local dishes have Italian and Greek influences using similar ingredients such as garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, basil, pasta and risotto rice.

We found a fantastic, family-run restaurant just off the centre square in Vela Luka, which served amazing home-cooked dishes, packed with flavour and generations of refinement as recipes have been passed down. A truly wonderful family – Mum is the Head Chef, Dad cooks on the grill and Son is the waiter. We ate here several times during our two-week stay, as the food was inspiring and the service was very friendly – we learnt much about local Dalmatian culture, general life and history during conversations with the waiter. On our final night in Vela Luka, I sat down with Mum and Son and they passed on a couple of recipes to me – Buzara with Langoustine (or shrimp as they called them!) and Seafood Risotto, both of which I have cooked back home. Buzara is a messy way to eat, however the flavours are just wonderful.

Ingredients:

• Langoustine – 4 or 5 per person (this could be substituted with large prawns, just adjust the quantity accordingly)
• 2 Cloves of garlic minced or chopped finely
• Skinned, deseeded and chopped tomatoes (you could use a tin of chopped tomatoes)
• 1 Onion, chopped finely
• Good handful of chopped parsley
• 1 Glass of white wine
• 50g of breadcrumbs (used to thicken the sauce, so you may alter to suit your preference)
• Olive oil
• 1 Teaspoon of Vegeta (powdered seasoning, like vegetable stock – I purchased some from a local Polish Deli)
• Ground black pepper to taste

And the fun bit:

• Heat the olive oil (not too hot, or you will burn the ingredients) and then tip in the breadcrumbs.
• Cook the breadcrumbs until they start to change colour and toast.
• Add the garlic and fry briefly until it starts to change colour, then add the tomatoes, wine and Vegeta and simmer for 10 minutes.
• Add pepper to taste and place in the langoustine – cover and leave to simmer for 15 minutes (or until the langoustine has cooked)
• Remove the lid, add the parsley and stir in

Serve up with napkins, because you will need them! If you can find some, I recommend a bottle of Croatian Posip, a wonderfully crisp, dry white wine from Korcula.

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Ingredients:

• Minced chicken – approximately 250 grams
• 1/2 Onion, chopped in to medium-sized pieces
• Green beans – sliced in to bite-sized pieces
• Baby corn – sliced in to bite-sized pieces
• Holy basil leaves – a good hand full
• 1 Tablespoon of crushed garlic

Sauce Ingredients:

• 1 Tablespoon of fish sauce
• 2 Tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1/2 Tablespoon of dark soy sauce
• 1 Tablespoon of sugar (palm or brown, preferably)
• Between 1 and 15 fresh, finely chopped red of green hot chillies (for example, Thai Finger Chillies) – obviously this is dependent on how hot you would like the dish to be

Add all of the sauce ingredients in to a bowl and mix.

How to cook:

1. Add a little olive oil (or vegetable oil) in to your wok and fry the garlic until it starts to change colour and look yellow
2. Add the chicken and cook
3. Once the chicken is cooked, add the onion, green bean and baby corn and stir for 30 seconds to 1 minute
4. Add the sauce
5. Check the taste and adjust if required
6. Add the holy basil leaves and cook for 10 – 20 seconds
7. Serve and enjoy!

This can also be made using Thai Sweet basil, which gives a completely different perspective of flavour and is fantastic, especially if you like aniseed flavour!

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During a long weekend trip with my wife and daughter to Barcelona, a passion for the Spanish tradition of Tapas was enlightened.  A chance discovery of the La Boqueria food market (one of the largest in Europe} was an experience I will never forget.  The market is definitely not just there to provide a tourist attraction but to provide the people of Barcelona with the freshest, best quality, locally-sourced produce. The senses were bombarded in en

Within the market there are a number of Tapas stalls cooking small, exquisite dishes from the produce that is being sold around them. The freshness of the ingredient’s is unsurpassed and the variety of options seeming to be almost endless.

A Spanish waiter explained Tapa means lid or cover and the cuisines origins comes from inn keepers placing a slice of bread with ham or cheese on top over drinks being served, to keep out flies. The theory goes that the food offerings became more and more  elaborate with rival inn keepers competing to entice in clientele.

Modern Tapas is a mixture of small tasty dishes served in the earthenware (Cazuelas) or paella pan it’s been cooked in. Tapas can be eaten alone, shared one portion or as many dishes as you care to eat over any amount of time. All the traditional flavours of Spain can be found within tapas dishes. Wonderful fresh seafood, vegetables, meat, manchego cheese, Iberian Chorizo, Serrano Ham Paella, paprika, olives and tomatos. It is the ultimate in social relaxed eating. I hope to share with you some of my favourite recipes I have experienced whilst exploring this exciting cuisine.

Gambas pil pil

This dish is very simple but a really good way of showcasing large fresh prawns.  I love the simple pleasure of dipping bread into the oil the prawns have cooked in the combination of flavours is divine.

Equipment needed; individual Earthenware dishes (Cazuelas), knife.

Ingredients per individual dish

• 3-4 Tbsp of good quality olive oil
• 6-10 large prawns
• Clove of Garlic
• 1 Dried Red Chilli
• 1 Lemon
• Pinch of Pimenton (paprika)
• Basket of Bread

Method

1. Peel and devein Prawns.
2. Peel and thinly slice Garlic.
3. Add Garlic, chilli, and paprika to oil inside earthen ware dish. Place dish directly onto  hob, heat until hot but not smoking.
4. Carefully add prawns, cook  for 2-3 minutes till prawns are pink and starting to curl
5. Serve immediately in same dish being careful of hot oil, lemon wedges for garnish and bread for dunking
6. Enjoy

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I was keen to learn as much as possible during the visit, because going out to eat good Thai food here is seriously expensive and has always come across to me as being a form of alchemy to concoct. With this in mind, we arrived in Northern Thailand and promptly booked ourselves on to a local cookery course. On the morning of the course, we arrived at the school feeling slightly nervous about how difficult this could be – after all, Thai curries are bursting with flavour and surely, must be pretty complex to create? Well, we couldn’t have been further from the truth and I noted down a number of the dishes we had the delight of cooking and sampling to share with you and hopefully dispel with this myth of ‘complexity’ (unless this myth was self-created, of course….).

In addition to this, my brother’s wedding was scheduled to take place during the trip; he has married a local girl from the Lisu Hill Tribe, who reside in the middle of the jungle, on the mountains near the Burmese border. During the wedding, we we honoured to be invited to to stay for 3 days in my brother’s wife’s village and during this, were able to sample some fantastically simple, yet incredibly tasty indigenous food. I think I shall dedicate another article to this, as it probably merits its own – it is the first time I have ever eaten raw pork, but as it was slaughtered not ½ hour before being consumed, then its also the freshest pork I have ever tasted too!

Ok, so here’s a recipe I noted down for Thai Red curry; its incredibly easy to put together, seriously flavoursome and the paste can be stored in the fridge for about a month (if you put oil over the top to seal it).

Red Curry Paste

So first of all, you need to make a paste – just up the amount if you want to make more for storage in the fridge:

• A couple of fresh red chillies (if you want spicy paste, then leave in the seeds)
• 1 tablespoon of lemon grass
• 1 tablespoon of galangal (if you can’t get hold of this, then double up the lemongrass)
• 1 teaspoon of garlic
• 1 teaspoon of shallot
• ½ Teaspoon of lime skin
• ½ Teaspoon of coriander root (or, 1 teaspoon of coriander stem)
• ½ Teaspoon of coriander seeds
• ½ Teaspoon of black peppercorns
• ¼ Teaspoon of cumin seeds

Ok, so start with the seeds and dry fry them in a wok until they become fragrant (they may even begin to pop) and then put them in to your mortar and grind them in to a powder.

Now there are 2 ways you can produce the paste:

1. Place all the ingredients in to the mortar, with a pinch of salt and grind together to make a paste, or
2. Place all the ingredients in to a blender and whiz up for a moment until its a paste

I’ve used both methods (usually the blender if I’m running short on time!), but they both produce good tasting paste. Obviously the traditional method is using the pestle and mortar and there is something pretty satisfying about expelling energy pounding the ingredients, rather than flicking a switch….!

Red Curry Recipe:

As with any recipe, this is just a guideline so feel free to use other vegetables – I’ve thrown in mushrooms, green beans (these added another dimension of texture as well as flavour), pepper and used fish such as cod rather than chicken. I also find that using chicken thighs rather than breast means the chicken remains moist.

• 1 Onion, chopped
• Eggplant (I tend to chop these at the very last minute, otherwise they turn brown)
• A couple of baby corns, chopped
• 1 Kaffir lime leaf chopped
• 4 or 5 mushrooms chopped
• 20 or so sweet basil leaves
• A couple of chicken thighs, de-boned, skin removed and chopped in to bite-sized pieces
• 1 Cup of coconut milk (about ¾ of a can)
• 2 or 3 Tablespoons of curry paste (to taste)

You also need to prepare a sauce to add at the end of the cooking, which is made of:

• 1 Tablespoon of palm sugar or brown sugar
• 3 Tablespoons of fish sauce

Ok, so now the fun bit!

1. Heat some oil in a wok
2. Add the curry paste until it becomes fragrant (only takes a matter of seconds)
3. Add the chicken and cook
4. TIP – if the paste or chicken start to burn, then just add some coconut milk
5. Add the onion, eggplant, baby corns (and any other harder vegetables you’re adding) and cook for about 30 seconds or so
6. Put in the coconut milk and stir, then wait until it starts to boil
7. Add the sugar and fish sauce
8. Throw in the mushrooms
9. Turn off the heat and add the basil leaves

I tend to cook either Thai fragrant or basmati rice to go with this. Enjoy!

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