Lomo Saltado

Hola! Hola to all my Peruvian visitors - you're few and far between, but you are there ... so this one is for you. I hope I did it well?

Chef Martin Morales was on the BBC's 'Saturday Kitchen' yesterday and he made up a simple dish, which I guess is kind of comfort food for Peruvians (much akin to the British obsession with Fish & Chips, I would think) ... and it looked good, tasty and something I really fancied doing.

Chef Morales tells us that this is actually a fusion dish - Chinese traders brought their influence to Peru, namely soy sauce and spices. I'm not going to use soy sauce, but I do know what it tastes like so can work in a number of complimentary flavours to get the same effect.

Lomo Saltado is beef, marinated in vinegar and spices. It's that simple and so we should keep it simple ... and primally approved.

Maybe an hour before you want to eat, get the marinade started.

I used red wine vinegar, tamarind paste, anchovy paste, garlic, ground coriander, black pepper, lemon juice, tomato purée and chilli paste. Mix well. I would have used ground cumin too, and you should, but my Mrs abhors the smell and taste ... so it was left out.

Basically, we've got a red wine vinegar with a sort of Worcestershire cum Soy Sauce ... from scratch.

Drop in your meat - sirloin is good, fillet, perfect. Skirt, I believe is a popular cut for this, as it topside. I went with fillet, cut into good sized chunks maybe an inch and half square.

Let that marinate for an hour.

Lomo Saltado is a simple dish and the remainder of the ingredients are: onion, tomato and chips. Red onion is often used, but don't stress if you only have white - shred it; the tomatoes are skinned and de-seeded, then chopped into slices; the chips (that's fries for continental and States-side folk) are quite thick-cut.

I went with potato chips/fries, par boiled by dropping into cold water and raising the temperature quickly on the hob until the water just begins to boil, then drying off and shallow fried in goose fat.

If potatoes are not within your ancestral template, there is an abundance of roots and tubers which could be used. Sweet potato jumps to mind, but having now eaten this, celeriac or jicama would be perfect, even just raw juliennes alongside. Mooli, likewise, raw julienne.

While the chips are cooking through, bring a heavy-based pan up to temperature and with a little coconut oil, just soften off the shredded onion until it begins to colour. Toss in the beef pieces, leaving the residual marinade behind and keeping it moving - "jumping beef", they call it! In with the tomatoes so they don't simply mash up and finally, a good handful of roughly chopped flat leaf parsley.

Serve up ...

Many pictures online, you'll see the chips/fries mixed in with the beef. I served them side by side.

I have since found Chef Morales' recipe online. Although I don't "do" recipes, I think I did it justice.

We enjoyed a fine wine alongside. Malbec is perfect with beef and I'm sure there are good Peruvian Malbecs out there, Argentine, certainly, but that would be culturally offensive! I went with French, finding Argentine often too much in flavour and completely lacking the subtlety of old French. Discuss.

La Patrie Cahors Malbec 2011

Warm Ceviche

Chef Martin Morales was on the BBC's 'Saturday Kitchen' this morning, Peruvian, he now runs Ceviche in Soho, London.

His dish was ceviche, but warm ...

Ceviche is a curing method. Simply generously cover seafood with lime and within the hour, the flesh will be cooked. Chef Morales made up a blended paste of spring onion and chilli pepper to put over his sea bass and clam ceviche, then warmed through on a banana husk over a burner.

My version used what I have to hand: haddock.

Cut into small goujons and covered in lime juice, chopped chillies and some fine parsley tops were added. 20 minutes, or so, later, the fish was almost cured through.

Placed on some kitchen foil and then in a lidded pan, a mere couple of minutes are sufficient to warm through. The first hint of steam gives us the clue that it's ready.

That's it ... warm ceviche.

To serve, being breakfast, some scrambled eggs. As a dish for later in the day, a light salad would do well, perhaps in a wrap?

Peruvian Fried Fish

In my desperation to stretch out sea bass over seven days, particularly to our Friday night spicy meal, I turned to our South American friends and a dish called Tacu Tacu ...

... or so, I thought.

Tacu Tacu is some kind of Peruvian dish, that's for sure, but when I googled (love google) the matter, I found fried fish with spicy lentils and some rice. I later found that Tacu Tacu is something quite different, so the title remains as it does, not Tacu Tacu.

Anyway ...

It's Friday! We survived! We won! We got through another week, we worked it, we did our thing and we did it well; but now, it's the start of a beautiful weekend, cold, bright, sunny and full of all the things we hope will bring us joy, recovery, recouperation and drum up the strength to get out there and do it again for another week.

But no, Friday is about kicking back and saying, "Fuck, yeah! I did okay this week." ...

We need fun, flavour, spice and some booze, so ... let's get on with it, eh?

First, lentils ... second, rice ... neither are paleo, so if you're one of those paleos who cannot abide the notion of folks eating outside of the box just look away and carry on ... LOOK! A MAMMOTH! GO! No, serious! GO! There's a mammoth! Go get it!

Phew! We've ditched our purist friends who can go about keeping the straight and narrow, erm, straight and narrow ... let's have some fun! It's Friday ... Fry ... Day.

First, lentils ...

Lentils are part of the Fabaceae or Leguminosae family: legumes, and as such have no place in the paleo diet, yet are tentatively acceptable as part of what I would call a paleo+ diet.

Legumes as a family represent a wide spectrum. When considering food sources, one does need to look at the whole, the big picture - red kidney beans represent the most toxic end of the spectrum, while lentils represent the least toxic. Beyond paleo, Archevore author Kurt Harris makes no mention of legumes, in fact, considers them a useful food source although not ideal.

Legumes MUST be prepared by soaking and then pressure cooking. Canned legumes will have already been soaked and then pressure cooked, or super-heated with steam.

Second, rice ...

Rice, especially white rice, is a simple starch. Eat it, eat it every now and again and don't worry.

Arsenic? Yeah, maybe ...

Okay, so we're ready to roll, right?

First, cook them lentils - lentils, can of, green, onions, garlic, tomato puree, chillies, more chillies, something else hot, more chillies, Worcestershire Sauce and more chillies - we want this hot!

Rice, boil it, drain it, stir in some parsley.

Ready to eat?

You've gutted, cleaned, scaled and filleted your fish, so drop the fillets in a skillet with some butter.

Plate up - lentils on one side, rice on't t'other, fish in the middle.

Eat!

Drink? Tequila! Tequila ... lots of and enjoy it.

Tequila! It makes me happy ...

Yeah, there's an egg on there ... fry an egg! What? You want a support group?

Of course, this, like always is inspiration ... do your fish the way you want to, spicy, coz it's Friday, accompanied with whatever you like.

Just have some fun. Life is hard enough without complicating it with strict diets.