Chick peas were soaked overnight and then into the processor (raw) with onions, garlic and various spices and pulsed until a paste formed.
This paste was then popped in the fridge to chill for a couple of hours.
While it was chilling I made some Mezze style dips to serve alongside.
Roasted aubergines were turned into Baba ganoush by adding tahini, olive oil lemon juice and spices - the horrible grey flesh turns into a silky smooth dip when whizzed.
I also made some hummous out of tinned chickpeas.
The chilled pasted was formed into patties, and then shallow fried - the bit I was anxious about - what was going to hold the mixture together?
But they worked!! I served them with the dips, flatbread and a greek salad on the side.
For afters a delicious greek walnut cake - this was a bit like a meringue, with no fat in it, and just a little bit of flour. Once it was cooked a syrup infused with cinnamon was poured over.
I served this with frozen greek yoghurt which I sweetened with a touch of honey.
This was an interesting read. I tried this recipe a couple of weeks ago and started off by thinking "this looks easy to follow but the Cavalo Nero looks a bit of a faff and, with anchovies and capers as an accompaniment to a lump of meat that has absorbed stock containing half a pound of salt it looks like a disaster waiting to happen in the taste stakes" so I ignored the salsa and simply used ordinary cabbage instead. Truth is I wanted to see if the brining process produced the crisp crackling as advertised.
ReplyDeleteMy version of this was, however, a disaster. When doing something new, as I am an untrained, enthusiastic but not terribly proficient amateur, I follow a published recipe to the letter on first use and then adapt if the fancy takes me in future renditions. I found this recipe on two web sites - the BBC and Redonline.co.uk - both are to all intents and purposes identical. I am now bl**dy annoyed to read that there is a mistake in the salt content that can only be spotted if you read the author's tweets?! For heaven's sake, if Kerridge knows there is an error it takes a ten minute email to the publishers to edit the listing. How lazy for nobody to correct something like that. Absolutely unforgivable and infuriating.
And now to my question - did the crackling crisp up as represented in the images? After two and a half hours of roasting at 150 deg C in a fan oven my wife came home, took one look (sadly she is a semi-pro trained cook and graciously permits me to play once a week) and said "You can cook that for the rest of your life but you'll never get a damp piece of crackling to crisp at 150 deg, its not hot enough". I opened the oven and, sure enough, the skin was like rubber; so I cut it off and grilled it to rescue it. Which sort of worked. The meat was beautifully tender but was too salty to eat and the whole thing ended up in the bin (we don't have a dog). Salt aside - what should I have done to get the skin crisp and dry as shown in the piccies?
Hi Robert - I had to resort to a blow torch to get the crackling to resemble anything crispy on that pork. Even with the half quantities of salt in the brine the meat was revoltingly salty - I should have learned from making his fried chicken with the same brine recipe which was also inedible!
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