The power of a vegetable

Give us Greeks a vegetable, any vegetable, and we're going to transform it, chop it, fry it, stuff it, grill it, bake it, broil it, you name it! We have a real talent for that. Or perhaps we just have access to so many vegetables that we have to do something with them.
When I was little, I hated almost any vegetable I laid my eyes on, let alone put them in my mouth. I didn't even give them a chance. They were too green, too soft, too hard, too bitter (never too sweet mind you), too slimy, too awful smelling, too... anything! I was driving everyone crazy. Little did I know that a couple of decades later, I would be the stronger supporter of vegetables in my family. What? Having a meal without a vegetable being included? Unfathomable! Oh, how times change.






As it happened with eggs, my mother had to find ways to make me eat some vegetables. Camouflage was the name of the game. Vegetables not in plain sight, but artfully covered or mixed with let's say pasta, rice or meat.
The addition of a heavenly minced meat-tomato sauce filling (or better yet topping) and some scrumptious cheese on top, was all little Magda needed to be persuaded to eat a stuffed eggplant, or as we call it in Greek "Melitzanes Papoutsakia", the actual translation of which is "Eggplant little shoes".






This is a recipe well rooted in the hearts and stomachs of every Greek. It is a staple dinner dish enjoyed by the whole family, though still a special one that can be served at a celebratory dinner or a special occasion. Including hearty vegetables, meat, dairy in the form of cheese and of course olive oil, it covers every single food group a person needs to incorporate into his daily diet. And flavor, oh the flavor. It's magnificent. The slight bitterness of the eggplant marries perfectly with the sweetness of the tomato and the earthiness of the onion. The meat lends its precious proteins to the dish, making it both satisfying and substantial, and the melting cheese on top, cascading down the shiny eggplant, gives an extra depth of flavor to the overall dish.






Stuffed eggplant is a versatile dish, since you can either serve it as a main or as a first course dish. Either way, be sure to pair it with a nice bottle of robust red wine, like the excellent Greek wine Amethystos, which is a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and an ancient Greek variety called Limnio.











Melitzanes Papoutsakia (Greek Stuffed Eggplants with Minced Beef-Tomato Sauce Filling and Kefalotyri Cheese)


Literally every home cook in Greece makes their minced meat-tomato sauce filling in a different way. I suppose it's a matter of taste as well as family tradition. I've played around with enough ingredients myself for this recipe over the years, making this filling different almost every time, but the following recipe is my favorite.
Feel free to experiment yourselves, using your own taste and instinct. Keep in mind though that the more ingredients you add to your sauce, the less room you're leaving for the eggplant to shine as the main ingredient of the dish. Less is more in this case for me.




In Greece, the majority of people eat veal instead of beef, so that would customarily be the minced meat of choice for this dish. But beef works marvellously as well in this recipe, as long as it's a clean, lean cut of beef.

Traditionally, the cheese used in this dish is Kefalotyri, a hard, yellow Greek cheese made from raw goat or sheep's milk that has a slightly salty, mildly acidulous flavor and a sharp aroma. This cheese will bring authenticity to the dish.
Alternatively you can use Pecorino Romano or Parmiggiano Reggiano (Parmesan cheese) and if you're a Dutchie or simply want to try a cheese from the Netherlands, you can use Oude Geitenkaas, an aged goat's cheese which is fantastic.


Yield: 4-5 main course servings or 9-10 first course servings*

Ingredients
5 large eggplants (around 19 cm in length each)
1/3 cup olive oil
1 medium-sized onion, chopped
1 medium-sized garlic clove, sliced
400 g minced beef (from a lean piece of beef)
400 g fresh tomatoes, skinned, seeded and cubed or canned diced tomatoes
2 tsp tomato paste
2 fresh thyme sprigs or 1/8 tsp dried thyme, crumbled
A small pinch of sugar
1/2 cup water
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
130-140 g Kefalotyri cheese, grated


Preparation
Be sure to choose eggplants that are firm, with a vibrant purple color, smooth skin and no disfigurement whatsoever. You also need to buy eggplants of similar size so that they take an equal amount of time to cook.
Wash them well under cold water, cut off their green stems and leaves and cut them in half lengthwise. Prick lightly with a fork the inside of the eggplants.
If you want to take the bitterness out of the eggplants, sprinkle the inside with some salt and leave them inside a colander for an hour. Then rinse them well and squeeze them lightly to get a little bit of their juice out.
You can skip this part, and actually I do, because I rarely find eggplants bitter nowadays.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Place the eggplant halves, skin side down, on a baking pan, sprinkle with a little salt and black pepper (if you have left them salted for an hour then you do not need to salt them again) and put pan on the middle rack of the oven. Bake them for about 45 minutes, until they soften but are not cooked all the way. You don't need them to be overly soft because they're going to bake for another 30-35 minutes.

Meanwhile, start preparing the filling. Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed saucepan, over medium-high heat. Sauté the onions for about 5 minutes, until they become soft and transparent and then add the garlic. Sauté for 1 minute and add the minced beef. Sauté the meat for 4-5 minutes, stirring continuously with a spoon or spatula, until browned. Season with salt and black pepper, add the tomatoes and tomato paste and stir well.
Then add the thyme and sugar and pour the water all over the ingredients. Stir well and let the mixture come to the boil, uncovered. Once it does, cover and cook over low heat for 20 minutes, or until the meat is almost cooked.
While the filling is cooking, you need to keep an eye on it, stirring occasionally, because it might need more water.
Once cooked, the filling should not be dry. It must have an average amount of liquid in it in order to permeate the eggplants and give them extra flavor.

Press the inside of the partially cooked eggplants a little bit with a spoon to create a shallow shell and add the filling on top of the whole eggplant**. Place the baking pan on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 25 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. Take the pan out of the oven and add a generous amount of grated cheese on top of the filling. Bake for another 10 minutes until the cheese has melted and has taken on a golden color.

Place stuffed eggplants on individual dishes and serve immediately.


*In case you want to make this dish for 2 people, you can buy and cook only two eggplants and use the rest of the beef-tomato sauce the next day, on top of a nice big bowl of spaghetti. Don't forget to grate your favorite cheese on top.

**Variation: At this point you can also add a béchamel sauce on top of the filling, but I usually avoid doing that because the dish becomes too heavy.

What's in a name?

My name is Magda but it could have easily been Rebecca. That's the name my mother wanted to give me when she first found out she was having a baby girl. She preferred though to honor her own mother by naming me after her. Magdalene.
Would my life be different had I been named Rebecca? No, not really, just my initials. Sure, our name is the first thing that defines us, that gives us an identity. "What's your name?" is one of the most common questions a person's being asked his whole life; from an old lady asking a cute little 5-year-old to ones future husband asking on the first encounter.




Having something named after you though is a completely different thing. In my mind, having food being named after you is an amazing thing. And so begins the story of a young, French 18th century peasant girl named Madeleine, or a French 19th century Cordon Bleu pastry chef named Madeleine, or... well, there are many theories regarding the origin of the name of these small cakes named madeleines.
Even though they're not named after me, I've always felt like I can share a bit of their glory because of my name (Magdalene is Madeleine in Greek).





I probably don't have to introduce these remarkable little sponge cakes to most of you. I bet you've eaten them at least once in your lives. But for those of you out there who haven't, let me be the one to familiarize you with them.
These wonderfully tasty sweets are incredibly light and fluffy, like a proper sponge cake should be, and when you effortlessly bite into them you can taste the rich butter and the delicate notes of lemon.




The recipe I adapted called for honey, so I had the chance to use one of the best in the world. Honey from the Greek island of Kefalonia, where I spent ten days of summer bliss last August. This honey is also known as Golden honey, which is wild thyme flavored honey. It really transformed the character of the madeleines, giving them a deeper and more luscious flavor but not making them overly sweet.

Madeleines are traditionally dipped into tea and then savored, but I'm not a tea person so I prefer having them on their own, plain or with a dusting of icing sugar, with homemade marmalade, or even with homemade strawberry syrup and a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream.









Madeleines with Honey and Lemon
Adapted from Rick Stein's French Odyssey

The recipe for madeleines is very easy but you do need the right equipment for baking them. Their distinctive scallop shape can only be accomplished through the use of a mold/pan with shell- shaped depressions. You can find these molds at any decent cook shop or online stores, and they come in three types: silicone, non stick, or metal. I don't have a preference, but keep in mind that if you use the traditional metal pan, you have to generously butter and flour the molds so that the madeleines don't stick onto them. They tend to be very, very sticky.
There are two different sized molds for madeleines, small and large. I used a large one (cavity size 6.5 cm x 4.5 cm).

Yield: about 30 large madeleines

Ingredients

100 g sugar
3 medium-sized eggs
Zest of 1 large lemon, finely grated
100 g all-purpose flour, sifted, plus extra for dusting the molds
1 tsp baking powder
100 g butter, melted, plus 2 Tbsp butter, softened, for greasing the molds
1/8 tsp salt
1 Tbsp and 1 tsp good quality clear honey
Icing sugar (optional)

Preparation

If you're using a metal pan/mold, brush the cavities with the 2 Tbsp of softened butter and then dust with flour, making sure to tap out the excess. You don't need to do this if you're using non stick or silicone molds.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a small bowl and set aside.
Place the 100 g of butter in a small saucepan and melt over medium heat. Once melted, remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius and start making the batter. Put the sugar and eggs into a large bowl and whisk with a hand-held electric mixer for about 3-5 minutes, until thick and mousse-like. Whisk in the lemon zest and then add the sifted flour, baking powder and salt, a little at a time, folding them in gently with a rubber spatula, until incorporated. Be careful not to deflate the mixture.

Whisk a little of the egg-flour mixture into the cooled, melted butter along with the honey and then pour everything back into the egg-flour mixture. Fold in carefully until everything is incorporated. Place the batter in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to thicken slightly.

Fill each cavity 3/4 full with the batter and bake for 10 minutes, on the middle rack of the oven, until golden and puffed up. If you're using the small madeleine mold then bake for 5-6 minutes. Take pan out of the oven and allow to cool, then remove madeleines carefully from the cavities.

Wash the mold and repeat process to bake the rest of the madeleines.

If you want to dust them with icing sugar, wait until they have cooled completely.

You can store madeleines in an airtight container, at room temperature, for 2-3 days.

Citrus fruits revisited

Right in the middle of the gray winter, some rays of color appear in the form of the gorgeous grapefruits, lemons, oranges, clementines, and limes. Isn't that strange? How the cruel, rough winter gives life to such bright and vivid colored fruit? Like nature trying to battle its blues through the creation of small miracles.

These jewels of winter are the juiciest and most flavorful fruits of the season. They're so incredibly versatile making even a novice cook seem seasoned, a simple dish seem complex.
So many different cultures have incorporated citrus fruits in their everyday meals and their celebratory feasts. Who isn't familiar with the classic French recipe of duck á l'orange, or the Italian limoncello? What would the Mexican ceviche be without lemons or Thai tiger prawn dishes without limes?






Right here, in my little expat kitchen, the night before last, a salad composed almost entirely out of citrus fruits was about to make its debut on the dinner table. Don't let me confuse you though. I'm not talking about a bland after-dinner fruit salad. This is a proper dinner salad that hits you in the face with its hotness and sourness, and titillates your taste buds with its sweet nuances.






The protagonists? Ruby red grapefruit, orange, lemon, kumquat. The extras? Olive oil, red chili, peppercorns, mint leaves.






The acidity of the grapefruit and kumquat and the sweetness of the orange complement each other and welcome the addition of heat from the chili and the presence of body from the flavored olive oil. The black and pink peppercorns enter and steal the scene for a moment with their pungent flavor and crunchy texture.

When you bite into the fruits, you can taste little explosions of sharp nectar in your mouth and immediately you feel your lips burning from those devilish chilies and then suddenly the mint comes into play to sooth and refresh your senses.





It's a perfect roller coaster of flavors but beware. This salad is better not eaten on its own. It's too powerful, at least for my palate. It definitely needs a side of a nicely grilled beef rib-eye steak or entrecote, to balance out the sour and hot notes, or if you prefer fish, a tuna steak or salmon, also grilled, would be perfect.
I paired it with a grilled veal steak and it was a match made in heaven.










Hot and Sour Salad with Grapefruit, Oranges, and Kumquats
Adapted from Greek Gourmet

Try to use the sweetest oranges you can find in this salad, since the grapefruit and kumquats tend to be very sour.






Yield: 6-8 servings

Ingredients

for flavored olive oil
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Peel of 1 orange, cut into strips
Peel of 1/2 lemon, cut into strips
1 or 2 fresh red chilies, cut in half lengthwise
2 1/2 tsp pink peppercorns, crushed
1 tsp black peppercorns, crushed
1/2 tsp ground coriander

for salad
2 large ruby red or pink grapefruit, cut in wedges with pips, peel and white pith removed
2 large oranges, cut in wedges with pips, peel and white pith removed
5 kumquats, seeded and sliced
1 Tbsp pomegranate seeds
1/3 tsp salt, preferably Fleur de Sel
A pinch of good quality sweet paprika
4-5 small mint sprigs


Preparation
The process of flavoring the olive oil must be done very carefully as to not burn the oil.
Pour the oil in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan and add the orange and lemon peel, crushed pink and black peppercorns, coriander, and chilies. Heat mixture over very low heat, uncovered, stirring occasionally. Once you're able to smell the aromas of the fruit and chillies, about 5-8 minutes in, remove from the heat and let stand, covered, until the mixture has completely cooled.

You can prepare the flavored oil the day before you serve the salad, keeping it in a glass bowl, covered with plastic wrap, at room temperature.

The way to cut the grapefruit and oranges is by using a sharp knife. First cut the peel off, then the white pith, and finally cut free the flesh of the fruit from the membranes.

To serve the salad, arrange the orange, grapefruit, and kumquat pieces in a salad bowl or platter. Remove the chilies, orange and lemon peel from the flavored oil, and pour the oil all over the citrus fruits. Sprinkle with salt and paprika and adorn the platter with the mint sprigs and pomegranate seeds.
Serve immediately.

Lentil heaven

So many recipes so little time. That's a constant thought on my mind. But there's only so much a person can cook or eat, especially after the greediness of the Christmas holidays.

I feel like I can really use a break from meat, poultry, cream, desserts, and butter. But don't go thinking that I'm going to abstain from every type of fat. No, no that would be preposterous. Fat in the form of pure, rich, luxurious olive oil is the fat of choice. The dish of choice is a classic Greek recipe of lentils.

It is well known that the ancient Greeks enjoyed lentils, mainly in the form of soup, and lentils have been praised by Aristophanes, the ancient Greek comic playwright, in a number of his plays. So who am I to doubt their power? I'm a mere modern Greek girl declaring that I love, love, love lentils. I don't know what it is; maybe it's the appetite of my ancestors running through my blood, making me crave those small, round, tasty legumes. Maybe it's the fact that they're so nutritious that, without me even realizing it, they make me feel a little healthier and more balanced after I've eaten them. It's true; lentils are full of iron, dietary fibers, proteins, minerals, vitamin B1, thus an absolute delight for any of you vegetarians out there. They come in so many colors and sizes, which is curiously impressive, and above all they are so easy to cook.






Greek lentil soup (called "fakes soupa" in Greek) is supposed to have a small list of ingredients. Not fancy or flamboyant fare but simple and straightforward. It's soothing yet potent and full of flavor. When you take a spoonful of this dense soup and savor it, you can immediately taste the rich essence of lentils along with the acidity of tomatoes, the sweetness of the onions, the "kick" of the garlic, the silky smoothness of the olive oil and the aroma of the bay leaf. Adding a small amount of red-wine vinegar at serving time takes the soup to another, higher level.






Being a perfect remedy against the cold weather, this hearty dish is traditionally enjoyed with a side of anchovy or mackerel fillets in olive oil, a chunk of Greek feta cheese and a loaf of rustic bread.











Fakes Soupa (Greek Lentil Soup)

Before you cook the lentils it is important that you pick them over. Sometimes you can find spoiled, blackened lentils or small stones or debris. Just put them in small batches onto a plate and pick them over carefully.






Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients
500 g large* brown lentils
2 medium-sized onions, finely chopped
3 large garlic cloves, sliced
400 g fresh tomatoes, skinned, seeded and cubed or canned diced tomatoes
4 tsp tomato paste
3 dried bay leaves
1/2 cup and 1 Tbsp olive oil
5 plus 5 cups water (and a little more if needed)
A pinch of sugar
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Red-wine vinegar (optional)

Preparation
Pour 5 cups of water in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and add the lentils. Bring them to the boil over high heat and drain them immediately through a colander. Through this process the lentils get cleaned and ready for proper cooking.
Heat the olive oil in the same pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and sauté them for 3 minutes, then add the garlic and lentils and sauté for 3 more minutes, making sure the lentils are well coated with the oil. Place the tomatoes and tomato paste in the pot and stir everything around. Pour the rest 5 cups of water all over and add the bay leaves and a pinch of sugar. The sugar is added in order to take away some of the tartness of the tomatoes. Add salt and black pepper, bring the mixture to the boil and then simmer over very low heat with the lid on, stirring regularly, for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until the lentils are cooked. They should be soft but not mushy.

It is very important that you keep an eye on the lentils while they cook because they tend to absorb a lot of water. You may need to add more water, so check and stir lentils at regular intervals.

Once lentils are cooked, discard bay leaves, check the seasoning and serve soup in bowls. If desired, add a teaspoon of red-wine vinegar per serving. You can add more or less depending on your personal taste.

*You can also use small lentils, but you'll have to cook them for a shorter amount of time. They need about 30 minutes.

...and a Happy New Year!

Being home in Greece for the holidays feels like time travel. Nothing changes at my grandmother's house where the whole family spends the holidays. And the holidays mean one thing and one thing only for my family. Food, food and... food! Planning meals, shopping for meals, preparing the food for meals, cooking meals, eating meals while discussing the meals, cleaning up after the end of each meal, planning meals for the following days. This is a vicious cycle I tell you! And of course I'm caught in it. I have to do my part, not that I'm complaining. Cooking is as important to me as for the rest of my clan. It's just that when three home cooks -my grandmother, my mother, and I- try to organize the festive family meals and cook them, chaos is the appropriate word to describe these occasions. We each think that we can contrive the best menu possible and the fact that each one of us has their distinct cooking style and method, makes it even more difficult to reach common ground on these menus.




My grandmother, being the more traditional cook, wants to prepare every single dish she has been preparing for the past forty years, proud of her heritage and always wanting to please every single member of the family. My mother, the spontaneous cook, wanting to try things that she'd never attempted before, gleefully and with the enthusiasm that is characteristic of her personality. I, the innovative cook -at least to my family's eyes- always trying to introduce new ideas and flavors that usually contradict the traditional greek concept of what Christmas and New Year's menus should include.
I can assure you that we eat extremely well during these days. No matter which menu we decide to choose eventually and who is the head cook for the day, it always turns out to be a magnificent experience for us and our loved ones.




This year I tried to familiarize myself and the family more with chestnuts. I've always eaten them in turkey stuffing or roasted, but never as a soup.
During the holidays, on the busy shopping streets of Athens, you can find stands where corn on the cob and chestnuts are being roasted on an open fire and sold to the passers-by. To those wanting to get warm standing by the fire, picking with greed yet carefully the flesh off, from the almost blackened from the fire, shells of the hot chestnuts and savoring them.
I wanted to create that same feeling of warmth and comfort with a soup made of chestnuts. Mission accomplished. This is a rich creamy soup full of flavor. The woody, nutty taste of the chestnuts complements the tartness of the port, and the addition of fresh vegetables and butter composes a sweet mixture that gives pleasure in every mouthful. The cream comes at the end to round up all the flavors and to give a smooth texture to the soup.
It's a scrumptious soup worthy of a New Year's dinner, served as a starter. It will most surely intrigue your guests' palates and they'll look forward to what's coming up next on your menu.











Chestnut Soup with Port

There are two ways to peel whole chestnuts. One way is to peel them with a sharp knife when they're raw. First peeling the outer, hard layer and then the inner soft hairs, leaving the flesh of the chestnut exposed. The other way is to boil them first and then peel them. I prefer the first method since I believe it is easier and less cumbersome. When you try to peel chestnuts after you've boiled them, you tend to lose a large amount of the flesh in the process since the shell tends to stick very hard onto the flesh, making it difficult to remove it.






Yield: 6-8 first-course servings

Ingredients
670 g whole raw chestnuts (2 3/4 cups raw peeled chestnuts)
1 cup celery, chopped
1 1/3 cup carrot, chopped
1 cup onion, chopped
125 g butter
240 ml (1 cup) Ruby port
5 fresh thyme sprigs
950 ml or 4 cups good quality chicken stock, preferably homemade
120 ml (1/2 cup) cream, plus a little more to pour on top of soup when serving
A pinch of white pepper
Salt
Créme fraiche (optional)

Preparation
Place the raw peeled chestnuts in a medium-sized saucepan and fill it with water. Bring to the boil over high heat and then simmer over medium heat for about 15-20 minutes or until the chestnuts are soft. Drain them in a colander and leave them to dry while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
Melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over high heat and add the onions, the carrots and the celery. Lower the heat to medium and sauté the vegetables until they become soft, stirring constantly, for about 10 minutes. Add the thyme and port and let simmer for 3 minutes. Place the chestnuts in the pot and stir well so that they get coated with the port and butter. Cook for 4 minutes and add the chicken stock and white pepper. Bring the mixture to the boil and then simmer over low heat, with the lid half-open, for about 40 minutes. Remove the lid and let simmer for 10 more minutes.
Once soup is cooked, discard the thyme sprigs and pour soup in a blender*. Purée in batches until smooth and place in a clean pot. Stir in the cream, check for seasoning, and reheat the soup gently over very low heat, stirring. Ladle soup in warm bowls and pour a little cream over it or a small spoonful of créme fraiche.
Serve immediately.


*You can alternatively use an immersion blender directly into the pot and purée the soup.


HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!!!

Cranberry delight

Most mediterranean countries rarely use fruit in traditional savory dishes and that is certainly true for Greece. I suppose it's the fact that there is such a plethora of vegetables that one can pair meat or fish with, that there's no actual need to substitute with fruit. So fruit is used mostly for desserts or just enjoyed on their own in all their freshness and deliciousness.

I have used fruit in dishes oftentimes, usually in latin- or asian-inspired recipes, but ever since my boyfriend and I moved to Holland, we've expanded our culinary horizons. I started experimenting even more with fruit, incorporating them in numerous main or side dishes and hors d'oeuvres. Well, I know that the Dutch are not known for their excellence in gastronomy, but rather for their lack of, but I'm a firm believer in giving anybody a chance. So the journey began with apples and a try at hachee, then I moved on to pears, and suddenly here comes Christmas, and with it the sight of cranberries all over the greengrocer's stalls and super markets. I had to do something with them. I was mesmerised by their glorious red color and their juicy roundness.






I didn't want to pair them with game meat though, like in some dutch recipes I discovered, I needed something simpler for my cranberry debut. And what is more straightforward than chutney?






This strikingly red concoction has a pungent aroma. Its sweet and tart flavor along with the fiery heat from the chili can excite even the most demanding of palates. Only in the aftertaste you get a slight hint of the garlic and ginger that give an earthy tone to the chutney. It is perfect as an accompaniment to a piece of Stilton or Fourme d'Ambert cheese on top of crostini* and served as an appetiser.






The vinegary and syrupy taste of the chutney becomes more splendid when paired with a big chunk of Parmesan cheese and cold cuts of cured ham or roast beef on a cheese platter, for a night with friends, not forgetting a bottle of your favorite red or white wine.


*Crostini is the italian word for croutons, but it usually implies toasted slices of bread, most commonly baguettes or the Italian bread, ciabatta.










Cranberry Chutney
Adapted from Gourmet

If you wish to make this chutney another time of the year when you cannot find fresh cranberries, you can most certainly use frozen ones. Use them directly from the freezer.
The chutney tastes much better the day after you've cooked it and even better a week after that.





Yield: 2 cups

Ingredients
3 medium-sized shallots, chopped coarsely
1 Tbsp olive oil
320 g fresh cranberries
3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
150 g (2/3 cup) caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 large garlic clove, minced
20 g (1 ½ tsp) fresh ginger, peeled and minced
A pinch of dried chili flakes or chili powder

Preparation
Heat olive oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and cook, stirring occasionally, until they become soft but not browned, about 3-5 minutes.
Add the remaining ingredients and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally and making sure that nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan, until the cranberries just start to pop, 12-15 minutes. At this point you may want to cover the pan, but not fully, so that the berries don't pop all over your stove but still letting some steam come out of the pan. When most of them have popped remove pan from heat.
If you want to serve it the same day, let it cool, place it in a small bowl and serve.

If you want to preserve it, take the hot sterilized jar, making sure you are not touching the inside of the jar, and fill it with the still hot chutney. Close the lid tightly and put it in a cool, dry place for storage.
You may keep an unopened sterilized jar of chutney in a dark and cool place for up to a year.

Once you open a jar of chutney you have to immediately refrigerate it. It will keep for about 3-4 months as long as you don't contaminate it with dirty spoons or hands.
(Read this)




How to sterilize glass jars
Sterilizing jars is extremely important if you wish to preserve chutneys. It is unhealthy and risky for you to store chutneys in unsterilized jars.
Preheat your oven to 100 degrees Celsius. Wash the jars and lids with soap in hot water. Put them, while still damp and without touching the inside of the jars or lids, on a baking tray and into the oven for 35 minutes. Take them out of the oven, fill jars with the hot cooked product and seal the lids immediately.

Something real

It's incredible how Christmas television cooking programs make me feel like I am a subspecies of the cooking race. Everyone looks so graceful and pristine, with their flawless make-up and their impeccable clothes whilst cooking a turkey or a ham.
Their nails are all done even though they are supposed to have been cleaning the turkey's bottom and chopping two kilos of onions and carrots for hours, and their kitchens are immaculately clean and dolled up with decorations even though we all know what mayhem a kitchen can become when preparing a festive meal.
It's ridiculous how they want us to "buy" that whole false concept of the home cook. I mean, take Nigella, who is actually the instigator of this post. I was watching her Christmas special this morning on BBC and I realised that her producers must be geniuses of their trade, because they're making me wanna purchase her series of plates and cups so I too can feel like the domestic goddess that she is. Well, you know what? I don't!
I am happy with the messiness of my kitchen when I cook my favorite food for my favorite people. I don't mind when my clothes get spilled with a little bit of sauce, and I don't own every fancy kitchen gadget that exists out there. But I still am a happy and creative cook!
It's a nice fantasy, these cooking shows, don't get me wrong, and I wouldn't be mentioning Nigella if I was not actually watching her programs, and sometimes I am a sucker for the latest fashion in cooking appliances and gizmos, it's just that I wish for something a little bit more real.