During my student days, I would occasionally post about my parents and their cooking- or rather the lack of it. See post on attempting to cook in my parents kitchen, the lobster incident or my personal favourite, the Christmas vegetable stir fry. Since leaving home I have cooked in their kitchen only a few times as the lack of equipment has totally driven me mad. Hollandaise Sauce with no whisk- are you crazy?

Then there are the fond memories of being served up tandoori chicken made with strawberry yoghurt and the thing I could have sworn was over cooked pork chop but actually turned out to be lamb.

But apparently things are changing. Today Dad e-mailed me with the link to his new website.

http://www.rohana.co.uk/

That’s right. He’s got a food blog. Hell has frozen over and pigs are airborne.

I need to do more storecupbioard based cooking. The results never fail to please and it’s always a good feeling to know you’re saving money. I guess I do it less than I used to because I’m spoiled by the area in which I live. Everything’s available within a five minute walk unless, of course, it’s Sunday. 

Last Sunday I wandered into Waitrose on my way home and found a pack of duck liver in the bargain bin. At £1.30, I couldn’t say no. Although I’d never cooked duck liver before, I thought it fair to assume it tasted similar to chicken liver and that’s the basis I worked on when I made this.

 Lurking in my fridge was a bunch of parsley and a bag of rocket which, combined with some walnuts from the storecupboard and a chopped granny smith apple made a nice tart accompanimnet to the livers. I dressed this salad with extra virgin olive oil mixed with a little apple juice and brown sugar and then served it on a bed of black pudding. The potatoes were just thickly sliced and roasted until golden brown in duck fat (from the last time I had duck). The livers were simply seared until just browned on the outside.

And that was it really. No need for a recipe with something so simple, and I doubt I could remember quantities anyway. The duck livers were, as I thought, similar to chicken livers but more rich with a great texture. At that price they’re a much better choice than calf liver.  

A few weeks ago, the very lovely Alex of Eating Leeds tagged me for this meme, the idea being that I share seven random facts about myself. So here goes….

1. I walk 8 miles each day. 4 miles in the morning and 4 miles in the evening. It’s a chance for me to reflect on the day’s teaching, plan the next day’s lessons and work on difficult maths problems like these ones. Oh, yes, I think about food in great detail too. It also acts as a partial remedy for the next fact
2. I am a chronic insomniac. I’ve not been given proper medication for it but I randomly discovered last year that a certain anti-allergy tablet knocks me out like a light.  I discovered this while suffering a horrible reaction to an antibiotic. The pharmacist at first suggested I might have an allergy to cheese or red wine. I nearly cried.
3. I really, really, really want a polydactyl cat. Preferably a black one. I’ll call it Sekhmet.
4. When I was at university I used to love being in musical theatre. I never got a main part though and was eventually driven to leave after being cast as a prostitute four years running. No one needs that kind of typecasting.
5. I have two phobias. The first is sometimes crippling and I won’t mention it here because I’ve learnt that some people have a cruel sense of humour. The other is vertigo. 
6. I was painfully geeky as a child. Adventure games were my life and  the number of Star Wars/Star Trek/ Babylon 5/… the list goes on …..lines I could quote was just embarrassing. Fortunately I’m now over that although a lot of Red Dwarf has persisted in my memory.
7. When I was thirteen years old I was convinced that I would neither get married nor have children. In fact, I was so sure of this that I made a bet with my best friend of the time that if I was wrong my children would be slaves to her! If I was right she would give me 1 million pounds. The bet takes effect at age 35… and to be honest my feelings haven’t changed much…. so, Sun-Hee, you’ve got 7 years before you owe me that million.  

In theory I’m supposed to tag seven people to do this now but as I’m usually the last to get round to memes, I’d probably just end up tagging someone who’s already done it. So I’ll say, let me know if you haven’t done this meme and want to be tagged and I’ll link to you.

Well, maybe not, but this is as close as I’m likely to get.

So here we have some beef fillet steak, seared until just cooked on the outside as an attempt at beef sashimi, a hot peanut dipping sauce, tangy mango and papaya salad with lots of lime and a soothing contrast of coconut rice.

Many of the best meals I have made have come from absolute necessity. The realisation that you have a couple of pounds left in your bank account and only a few storecupboard staples can work wonders for your cooking inspiration. It was a similar mindset I had when creating the meal above.

No, I’m not for a second pretending that anything in the meal pictured above is a budget item but, at the end of a particularly long and tiring week, they were almost all sitting in my fridge and the fillet steak in particular needed to be used fast.

So how did I come to have some ’spare’ fillet steak sitting in my fridge. Exhaustion, that’s how.

Parents’ evenings are always tiring. The parents’ evening of the upper sixth year is the last one before the kids sit their A2 exams that determine which university, if any, they can attend. When you teach BOTH bottom sets in a subject like mathematics, you know you’re in for a long evening that will involve dealing with some emotionally fruaght parents.

In a school like mine, you can be sure that not even the bottom set kids are going to fail their A2 maths. However they are mostly B and C grade candidates trying to get into some very good universities to read subjects like medicine and engineering. They REALLY need As  and Bs. Their parents by this point are getting more than a little anxious about their child’s future and in particular their apparently incurable inability to do any work. 

I actually had one parent, scratching his head and looking perplexed saying, “Well he’s never done any work. He’s not going to start now but he needs an A in maths. So how do we make sure he gets it?

Ummm…… tricky one…… getting me to dress like a boy and sit his exam might work but unfortunately that’s called fraud.

Anyway, after three and a half hours of trying to console around 20 pairs of very worried parents,  I left, just caught Sainsbury before it shut and grabbed some fillet steak. Then I got home and passed out on my sofa before I even thought about what I was going to do with it.

A few days later, the steak needed to be used. Fortunately I had a little more time on my hands so I made up a dish inspired by a salad I’d had at my favourite local Thai restaurant which conveniently used up some of the exotic fruit my parents sporadically give me.

 Beef ‘Sashimi’ with Mango and Papaya Salad, Coconut Rice and Peanut Dipping Sauce

Quantities for One Person

For the Beef

• 150-200g filet steak in one piece
• A little vegetable oil or groundnut oil
• Salt and pepper

Rub the steak with the oil so it is is just coated. Season with salt and pepper and sear over a high heat for 45s per side or until it is just cooked on the outside. Wrap in foil and leave to rest.

For the Rice

• 2 handfuls of basmati rice
• half a can of coconut milk (keep the rest handy in case you need some extra
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Rinse the rice thoroughly in cold water. Bring the coconut milk to a boil, stir through the rice  with a teaspoon of salt and bring back to a gentle bubble. Stir frequently until the rice is cooked (about 8 minutes) - test a grain to see if it is cooked. Drain off any excess coconut milk and add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

For the Peanut Sauce

• 1 tablespoon unsalted peanut butter
• 1 chopped red chilli, deseeded
• a quarter can of coconut milk
• half a tablespoon chopped coriander leaf
• fish sauce- just a little

Combine the ingredients in a small saucepan and heat through for a few minutes until the peanut butter thickens the sauce. Taste and season.

For the Salad

• half a ripe mango, peeled and thinly sliced
• half an under-ripe (green) papaya, peeled, deseeded and thinly sliced
• juice of 1 lime
• a few drops of fish sauce
• half a teaspoon of sugar
• 1 small clove garlic, pasted
• 1 small green chilli, deeeded and finely chopped
• finely diced red onion- mi just used a heaped tablespoonful and kept the rest to use another time.
• a tablespoon of coriander leaves

Mix the fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, chilli and garlic paste. Toss this through the rest of the ingredients. 

Slice the beef fillet thinly and serve with the accompaniments.

It’s 8am and I’m awake even though I’m not working today! It’s a miracle!

Well, actually it’s more of an accident. London woke to around 4 inches of snow this morning which meant, of course, that nothing worked. Buses and tubes all stopped running. Schools closed. My head of department rang me just as I was leaving the house to tell me I could go back to bed. Sadly, by then, I’d already consumed a two very strong cups of coffee so sleep wasn’t really an option.

Generally I don’t like the snow. I detest being housebound and already the boredom of being stuck inside has resulted in me scoffing most of a big block of cheese, several slices of toast and a significant amount of a giant Hotel Chocolat slab. But then again, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to teaching the Lower Sixth a lesson on data representation. At least now I can put that topic off for another few days and can blog and play the very silly facebook game that I seem to have become addicted to. Anyone want to be my hunting buddy? No, I thought not.

Another first for me was this bottle of Resposada Tequila I bought over the weekend to use in an interesting looking dish from my Mexican recipe book.

I know what you’re thinking, ‘Any excuse,’ but please note that I have refrained from drinking more than one double shot over the whole of Saturday and Sunday.

This tequila has bas a slightly smoky, woody taste from being aged in oak casks. It is rounder and fuller than standard tequila but still works best when paired with citrus. It was this fullness of flavour that as called for in the recipe for salmon with avocado and tequila cream sauce. 

Salmon with Avocado and Tequila Cream Sauce 

Quantities for 2 people  

• 2 salmon steaks about 180g each
• a little vegetable oil for frying
•  a touch of flour to dust the salmon skin (optional)
• 1 small, ripe avocado, peeled, pitted and sliced into thin strips
• half a small onion, very finely diced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, cut in half and deseeded
•  zest and juice of half a lime
• 150ml fish stock
• a splash of single cream
• salt and pepper 
• strips of green pepper and chopped fresh parsley to garnish

1. Put the halved jalapenos, skin side up under a medium/high grill. When the skin is blistered and charred, turn off the heat and allow to cool. Peel the skin off and chop the flesh finely. 
2. Sweat the onions gently in some butter or vegetable oil.
3. Add the fish stock and bring to a gentle bubble.
4. When the stock has reduced by one half, stir in the cream, lime zest and jalapeno and continue to bubble until it has thickened.
5. Brush the salmon with a little oil and pan fry skin side down until golden brown. Dust a little flour and salt onto the skin side (if it has skin) then turn over and fry until the skin is crispy and golden.
6. Stir the tequila  and lime juice into the sauce, season to taste and warm through for a minute ior two.
7. Pour the sauce onto the centre of a large serving plate. Arrange the avocado and salmon on top, then garnish with the green pepper and chopped parsley. This meal worked well with sides of fried potatoes and roasted red peppers dressed in olive oil.

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I think salmon is too often served with bland flavours. It has a farily robust flavour, especially if it’s wild, and it is a welcome change to pair it up with a stronger sauces like this one. The jalapeno and tequila played equal parts in the flavour of this sauce and the lime gave it a light and fresh aftertaste. It would suit a white meat like chicken very well too.

New potatoes, cubed, par boiled then fried in olive oil made an excellent accompaniment to this. We also had roasted sweet red peppers dressed in a little olive oi.

but oh, so good.

I’m aware that this blog is turning into a bit of a  red meat -fest. I make no apologies. This phase will probably wear off when it gets warmer.

Steak Bearnaise is my idea of treat food but at the moment treat food happens every time Goon visits. I really shouldn’t spoil him so much. In spite of my best efforts to get him to live like a civilised human being, Goon has reverted to eating ‘convenience’ food of the lowest order. By that I mean the sort of food that most of us would be reluctant to eat even if the only alternative was to chew off our own arm.

I’m serious! He eats tinned chicken curry on pasta. Or tinned steak and kidney pudding on pasta. Or tinned chilli on pasta. You think I’m joking? I didn’t believe it until I went around there and saw his bin.

Ah, well, at least he’s learned to cook pasta.

Even though these poor living conditions are entirely self inflicted, I feel the need to treat him when he comes to my place and, on school nights when I’m feeling uninspired, steak bearnaise is an obvious choice. It’s not cheap and it’s not healthy but it is tasty and  if the home made chips weren’t a safety issue, I could probably make it with my eyes shut.

Steak Bearnaise and Home Made Chips

1. 2 sirloin steaks (200-250g each)
2. 4 medium maris piper potatoes
3. oil for deep frying

For the Bearnaise Sauce

1. the yolks of 2 large eggs
2. 100g unsalted butter
3. tarragon vinegar - around 1 tbsp
4. 1 level tbsp finely chopped tarragon

A green vegetable such as asparagus or green beans to serve

To make the sauce

1. Melt the butter in a pan. .
2. Bring a small pan half full of water to the boil
3. Whisk the egg yolks in a heat proof bowl.
4. Place the heat proof bowl on the pan so it is sitting above the boiling water
5. Continue to whisk the eggs until they start to thicken, then trickle in the butter a little at a time while you keep whisking.
6. When the sauce is smooth, fairly thick and light yellow, add the tarragon vinegar a little at a time. It pays to taste it after adding a teaspoon, to see that it isn’t becoming too tart.
7. Finally stir in the chopped tarragon and season with salt and pepper.
8. Take the water off the boil. The sauce can be left while you make other things but it needs to be whisked ocasionally to stop a skin forming on the top.

For the steak and chips 

1. peel the potatoes and cut into large chips.
2. Bing a pan of salted water to the boil. Boil the chips for 5 minutes. Drain thoroughly and set aside. 
3. Rub the steaks with olive oil, season well with salt and pepper and cook on a griddle to your preferred taste. I got a griddle pan very hot, then cooked on one side for 30 seconds, turned the steak around by 90 degrees then cooked it on the same side for another 30 seconds. then I turned the steak over and did the same on the other side.
4.  Wrap in foil and keep at room temperature for about ten minutes.
5. While the steaks are resting fill a large sauce pan one third full of sunflower oil. Heat over almost full power for two or three minutes. Keep a large plate covered with two or three layers of kitchen towel ready to drain the chips on.
6. To test if the oil is hot enough, drop a cube of bread in. It should sizzle and go brown in anbout 1 minute.
7. Remove the bread cube with a slotted spoon and discard. Add the chips in batches to the oil. Remove with a slotted metal spooon as they turn golden brown. Drain on kitchen towel and allow to drain completely.

Serve each steak with the chips, a green vegetable and a big dollop of sauce. Garnish with extra tarragon. 

Regrettably, I’ve never been to Japan. I hope to one day. It sounds like an amazing place and the little bits I hear about the culture fascinate me.

Of course, the cuisine captivated my attention as soon as I heard about it. Raw fish! How many other cultures will serve this up? Ok, there’s the cured salmon we have in Europe and things such as ceviche in Mexico, but not such a range as you’ll find in Japanese cuisine.

Having said that, I remember being unimpressed the first time I was introduced to sushi. Those little rice rolls from M&S in the mid nineties did nothing for me. But then, sometime during my student years, I was at a certian popular conveyor belt restaurant and discovered sashimi. My fellow mathmos raised their eyebrows slightly as I devoured several plates of raw salmon and tuna and then they indiscreetly pointed ot that I was now responsible for most of the bill.

Within the last week or two I visited a nice Japanese retaurant in Westminister, heard a friend wax lyrical about his amazing new life in Tokyo ad was told about a nice restaurant in Barcelona that I must visit if I ever got around to going there. I take this all to be a sign that I should learn more about Japanese food. So my starting point was to buy some Japanese ingredients I hadn’t used before.

In the dish below, which is an amalgamation of various ideas I found online, we have my new purchases of mirin and soba green tea noodles. I used these and some wasabi powder and pickled ginger to create something which is probably not much like a real Japanese meal but at least is a step in the right direction. I’m not confident enough in my knife skills to atempt tuna sashimi yet. I go for the next best thing- tuna just seared so it’s practically raw but the very outside is cooked.

Tuna ‘almost sashimi’ with Soba Noodles, Mirin dressing and Raw Vegetables with Wasabi Dip

• 350-400g fresh tuna steak in one piece. I find that it is best to let it come to room temperature before searing it.
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds( I think black would look good but I couldn’t get any) plus a bit extra to garnish 
• Sesame oil (2 tbsp should do)
• salt and pepper to season the steaks
• about 175g soba noodles
• half a cucumber, finely diced
• 4 small spring onions, sliced thinly on the diagonal
• 1 tbsp finely chopped coriander 

For the dressing

• 4 tbsp mirin
• 2 tbsp light soy
• 2 tsp ginger, finely grated/crushed
• 1 heaped tsp brown sugar
• a squeeze of lemon

Accompaniments

• 8 baby carrots, sliced into thin strips
• 2 stalks celery, sliced into thin strips
• wasabi and pickled ginger to serve, plus perhaps extra soy

1. Prepare the vegetables and coriander. 
2. Rub the tuna steaks all over lightly with sesame oil. Season and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Sear over a high heat until just cooked on all sides, Wrap in kitchen foil and leave to rest in a warm place.
3. Make up the mirin dressing. Combine the dressing ingredients as listed above. Taste and adjust to your liking.
4. Cook the soba noodles according to packet instructions, drain and refresh in cool water.
5. Toss the noodles with the spring onion, cucumber and coriander, then toss the mixture in the dressing. Place a portion of the noodle mixture on each serving plate.
6. Thinly slice the tuna steaks amd arrange over the noodles. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
7. Serve with the matchstick vegetables and the wasabi and ginger.

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I did a bit of research on my two new ingredients. 

Mirin is an ingredient I haven’t knowingly encoutered before, although no doubt it was one of those flavours in plates of sushi unidentifiable to me. True mirin apparantly is about as alcoholic as sherry, although versions with less than 1% alchohol are produced now which have the same flavour. The flavour is unique and very strong, but dominated by a heavy sweetness. 

The word soba can refer to any noodle of medium thickness- i.e. not an udon noodle. Usually they’re eated cold with a dipping sauce or dressing  or hot in a broth. Mixing them with salad vegetables like this is a fairly modern idea. My soba noodles were flavoured with green tea but the flavour was barely discernible even before the dressing was added.

Also, Goon says the noodles don’t taste good raw. He should know, he ate a quarter of a pack. You probably guessed that yourselves without trying them.

after several months of not being able to properly access your blog. When I finally opened up my admin page after goodness knows how long, I was pleased and slightly suprised to find some people had linked to me. Of course I was less pleased when I found they’d just been hotlinking my photos. Chuh!  

Then there were the forty or fifty comments largly made up by spam. Having been there when my spam filter was designed, I know that this spam isn’t made by spam robots as it used to be. There are apparently now many hundreds of trained spam monkeys trawling the internet and leaving badly disguised links to their websites, masqueraduing as gushingly complementary comments.  

Anyay, yes, hello, I’m back, at least temporarily. I still don’t have a real computer. Just a laptop with a screen I can barely read and no keyboard. Thank God the boredom of the Christmas holidays has finally forced me into typing on a barely functioning USB device to update this poor, neglected website. So now I can tell you about my recipe for sheep.

No, of course I couldn’t eat a whole one. Not in one go anyway. But this dish includes a fair number of sheep consituents.

Towards the end of August, I went to the Covent Garden Night Market specifically to see Fergus Hendrson perform on their stage kitchen. Softly spoken and slightly awkward in front of the large audience, he was a far cry from what you’d expect from a ‘celebrity chef’, yet he conveyed his passion for good cooking and ingredients better than any popular household name. Two things in particular stick in my mind. The first is his assertion that recipes are merely guides, not rules, for a genuinely good cook. The second is what I have come to hold high in my list of cooking commandments:

Love Thy Butcher

According to Henderson, if you find a butcher worthy of your custom and let them know how much you love them, you can expect great things. In his case, he got pig trotters. I was after sonething slightly different.

I was expecting a negative reaction clutching my short but unusual shopping list but the gentlemen at H G Walters barely batted an eyelid when I handed them the piece of paper. One veal kidney, some lamb sweetbreads and two lamb tongues would apparently be no problem.The two latter ingredients were destined for a recipe that held my fascination for some time: lamb rack with sauteed tongue and sweetbreads.

The original recipe, from the first series of ‘The Great British Menu,’ had obviously been created in the summer and required fresh broadbeans and samphire. I made do with defrosted peas but otherwise the ideas are largely unchanged. 

Sheep Feast (Rack of Lamb with sauteed tongue, sweetbreads and peas)

For Two People

• 1 large rack of lamb (wih about 6 rib bones in)
• 2 lamb tongues
• 350g lamb sweetbreads
• 2 handfuls of peas, fresh or defrosted
• 200ml fresh lamb stock
• unsalted butter- around 30g
• salt and pepper
• parsley to garnish

1. Prepare the sweetbreads: If they’re frozen, allow them to defrost. My butchers say that if you’re short on time, let them sit it some warm water to speed this up. Then soak them in cold water in the fridge for two hours.
2. Drain the sweetbreads. Bring a pa of water to the boil. Drop in the sweetbreads, bring back to the boil. Drain immediately and refresh in cold water. When they’re cool, peel off the tough outer membrane, then pop them in the fridge until ready to cook.
3. Prepare the tongues: Place in cold water and brinng to the boil. Simmer until tender (around 1 hour 15 minutes). Remove from the heat and allow to cool in the cooking liquid.
4. Roast the rack of lamb as you norally would. I brushed mine with olive oil, seasoned and roasted it in a preheated oven at gas mark 6 for15 minutes This gave me pleasantly rare meat. Wrap in foil and leave to rest.
5. While the lamb is roasting/resting, cook the peas in boiling water then drain.
6. Pat the sweetbreads dry and dust them with the seasoned flour. Heat half the butter in a frying pan and when it is foaming add the swweetbreads and fry until golden brown on all sides. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
7. Drain the tongues and cut in half. Sautee on both sides auntil golden brown.
8. Add the sweetbreads, stock and peas to the pan Simmer together for a few minutes.
9. Cut the lamb rack into cutlets and serve with the peas and sweetbread mixture. Garnish with parsely. Minted new potatoes made a good accompaniment to this.

All in all a good recipe. The slighly diappointing thing for me is that the sweetbreads weret te crispy type I’ve had before. Perhaps that is easier to achieve with calf sweetbrads. Still, the flavour was good and I imagine that if I’d had a chance to get my hands on some samphire, it would have been even better. Incidentally, lamb sweetbreads are CHEAP. Excellent value for money if you have a good butcher that can order them for you. The most expensive part of this meal was the lamb rack but, given the quality it was well worth it. 

Happy New Year, everyone!

…to those of you who have tried to contact me via e-mail. I still have no home internet and our school server appears to not like my web based mail page. I can read your messages as they come into my Blackberry but I have no easy way of retaining or replying to the messages. Blame BT.Apparently I have missed some good blogger meet ups. Boo!

(otherwise known as squid in a tomato and clove sauce, Indonesian style.)

West London really is the place to be at the moment. This morning I discovered that what appears to be the world’s biggest Waitrose has opened by Shepherd’s Bush Green along with 40 or so restaurants as part of the Westfield development.

This shopping centre is ludicrously large. I intended to ‘pop in’ today on my way into school to see what the fuss was about. Not only do you need a map for the development itself, individual shops are big enough to merit having their own complex floorplans. At one point I found myself looking diagonally across the centre so most of it was in my sight. It was so enormous, I had a slight attack of vertigo, felt a bit sick and had to leave. Then it took me 15 minutes to get to the exit.

Yes it is THAT big. So big that, if it wasn’t for Wholefoods, it would render Kensington High Street totally redundant. So here I am, nestled in between cheap restaurants, the best butcher in London and a gargantuan shopping centre. This is my smug face.

Goon has become a bit disconcerted at my sudden good mood. I suppose that from his point of view, his girlfriend has undergone a complete personality transformation, from grumbling and snarling to generally quite happy. If it wasn’t for BT, I would only have one other complaint: the seemingly endless stream of colds.

Colds are an occupational hazard for teachers, particularly when they’re new to a school. I can’t remember a day this term when we (the maths department, that is) were all sniffle free. Germs like children and children like giving their germs to teachers. Fortunately I know the best thing to treat a cold: a big bowl of curry.

I have more than made up for last year’s lack of curry making and have been trying to expand my repetoire. The dish below originates in Indonesia and is lightly spiced and not at all hot. It’s perfect if you want something pleasantly invigorating but aren’t in the mood for a chilli based assault on the senses. It’s so mild that you might not class it as a curry, but it hit the spot for me, especially after the burningly hot Thai curry I made the previous night. It’s quick to make too, so a perfect schoolnight dinner.

Cumi Cumi Smoor (for 2 big portions)

• 400g of squid, cleaned, hoods cut into strips, 
• the juice of a lime 
• 1 onion, peeled and finely diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 plum tomatoes, peeled and chopped  
• 8 whole cloves
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 150ml unherbed fish or vegetable stock or water
• plain boiled rice or saffron rice to serve
• chopped coriander/ sliced spring onion to garmish

1. Get a large frying pan hot and stir fry the squid until it just curls up. Remove it from the pan, place it in a bowl, toss in the lime juice, cover and keep warm.
2. Turn the heat down to low, add a little more oil, then add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook gently until soft.
3. Add the tomato, stock, cloves and nutmeg. Stir well, ten allow to bubble gently until almost dry. Taste and season.
4. Stir in the squid and warm through.
5. Serve with saffron rice or plain boiled rice, garnished with chopped coriander and/or spring onion.

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