My Mediterranean Diet

How to make water.

2011-06-15T12:46:00.000+02:00

OK, I lied. I'm not quite done with the Morocco videos. But you'll like this one.

I filmed it inside a water factory. Well, factory is perhaps the wrong word. A mineral water bottling plant. It's close to Chaouen in the Rif mountains of northern Morocco. They bottle two brands which, unsurprisingly perhaps, are called Chaouen and Rif. Enjoy.

A walk through Chaouen's medina

2011-06-10T07:49:00.002+02:00

I've been posting a lot about Chaouen recently, so I thought I'd go for one more. Last one, promise. No words this time, just pictures. Enjoy.

A taste of new Morocco

2011-06-09T12:21:00.000+02:00

There’s a lot of change in northern Morocco, once the poorest region in the country but now a hive of development activity.

The coastline near Fnidaq on the road to Tetouan has been transformed. Where not so long ago there was not much at all to see, now you’ll find new marinas, luxury villas and posh hotels.

Follow the coastline in the other direction, toward Tangier, and you’ll find the new port development known as Tangier Mediterranean, a massive industrial and passenger complex, complete with new road and rail transport infrastructure. Further inland, you’ll new free trade zones are being established to tap the Strait of Gibraltar’s strategic geographic location on major east/west and north/south shipping routes, and its proximity to Europe.

The possibilities on offer, not least cheaper labour compared to Europe, have already attracted some major western companies who are setting up here. Think of it as similar to the dynamic evident on the US/Mexico border. Good in some respects, bad in many others.

Make no mistake, there is still a big gap between this new Morocco in the north and the real-life existence of many of its citizens in this region. But there are now many opportunities to be grabbed.

When I was over in Morocco a couple of weeks back, I visited an interesting project set up by the Moroccan government. It’s a state-run catering and hostelry school, designed as a boutique hotel on the outskirts of Tetouan. Here, underprivileged children who might otherwise have few options open to them are learning how to cook and look after guests in the hope that they can find rewarding work in Morocco’s burgeoning tourism sector.

Morocco has so far largely escaped the problems evident in other Muslim countries where communities are seeking greater democratic representation. But the balance is a fine one. Morocco’s King Mohamed VI has promised a wide-ranging constitutional reform to strengthen parliamentary democracy in the country. But in the meantime, street protests in the larger cities have on occasion turned rough.

All eyes are now on the promised reforms and how far they will go. Hopefully it will be far enough. Morocco is beautiful country, its people welcoming and friendly. The investment of recent years has opened up huge potential for development. Any further step toward an effective and representative democracy can only be for the good.

Roadside dining, Morocco style.

2011-06-06T12:23:00.000+02:00

I've been back from Morocco for a week now and I've spent some of that time putting together some videos of the trip. Here's the first, a short film about lunch in a roadside diner deep in the Rif mountains of northern Morocco.

You'll have to excuse the sound levels, my gloomy voice and my jumpy camera work. This is the only third video I've made and I'm still learning, so please be nice. Actually, scratch that, just be honest.

I filmed all of these on my Lumix LX3 and I edited them on my iPad using ReelDirector. I think I have to work on my story lines and my voice overs, in particular. The mic I was using for the voice over was the inbuilt one on my iPad, so it's not great. I also had problems working out the sound levels. As for the shaky camera, well, I'm working on that too.

I know this isn't Discovery Channel quality, but I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out and really excited about the possibilities it opens up on this blog. I'm taking it one video at a time.

The food at this place, incidentally, was wonderful. I know those carcasses hanging by the road and covered in flies conjure all sorts of hygiene concerns but hey, when in Morocco... In any event, the meat - mutton mostly - was cooked on coal and that would have killed off anything nasty...in theory at least. We survived, suffice to say.

The only bit of the meal I didn't like was the bissara, a thin paste made from green beans and garlic, served hot with olive oil. I should like this, but there was something in it that put me off. I think it was smen, or Morocco's version of ghee. Clarified butter, in other words. And anyone who knows me knows I don't get with butter, in any of its forms.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video. Your thoughts, as always, are much appreciated.

Art on the street is neat

2011-05-18T15:05:00.000+02:00

A week or so ago an image of a monkey wearing a crown appeared prominently sprayed in black on a white wall in Gibraltar. It bore a remarkable resemblance to the work of the well known graffiti artist Banksy. Could it be that the mystery British artist had paid a visit to the Rock? Or did Gibraltar have a Banksy copycat?

First off though, a little info about Banksy himself. He is an anonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director and painter. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique, just like the one used in the monkey image in Market Square in Gibraltar. His critics dismiss him as an irresponsible prankster, scarcely one step up from school dropouts carving slogans on park benches. But the fact is he has a loyal and growing following, including some who have taken to copying his style in their own street art.

That is the most likely explanation for the image of the monkey that appeared on a freshly-painted wall near the market late last week. In all probability, it was a Banksy wannabe at work. Either way, I quite liked it. I like the thought of someone taking the time to prepare a stencil and then heading out into the street to put the image out there. A message or meaning? Maybe. Something about monkeys and royalty, or Gibraltar’s British heritage perhaps? Who knows. I just liked the image and the fact someone had gone to the trouble of painting it.

It reminded me of another street artist, one I hadn’t heard of until I read this piece by my blogger friend Corinne at Gourmantic, a most excellent site that explores all things related to travel and food, my two favourite pastimes. This chap Gregos creates plaster masks in his own image and sticks them on walls in public places in Paris and other cities. The one in the photo above is in Malta. You can also buy your own Gregos mask, paint it and put it up in your own town. It’s pretty neat and innovative. Go see.

How to clean squid

2011-05-15T14:36:00.001+02:00

I was planning to post a squid recipe here but it dawned on me that not everyone knows how to clean these guys, so here you go, a video showing you how it's done.

If you want good tapas, then pick your bar carefully...even in Madrid.

2011-05-10T18:26:00.000+02:00

We took a walk around the back streets of central Madrid, just off Princesa, in search of a decent bar. We were sick of those plastic, trendy, off-the-shelf franchise tapas bars that are becoming popular even in Spain. Why is this happening? More to the point, how is this happening? Particularly when you can still find places like the Bodega Central.

There's not much to the Bodega Central, which is little more than a corridor with a bar that runs almost the length of the room, ancient tiled walls and shelves lined with bottles of spirits. On tap they had beer and vermouth with soda water.

We asked for red wine. "What will you serve?" asked one of our party. "Cune," came back the answer, in a 'what else would I serve?' kind of tone. The voice belonged to one of two men tending bar, both wearing black trousers and neatly pressed shirts. One of them focused on the back-bar business, collecting empties and ensuring the front guy had all he needed. The other patrolled the length of the bar like a sentry on the wire, monitoring his clientele, attentive to their every need.

He poured our wines and, without us asking for them, served up a bowl of olives and some pickled anchovies. That's real tapas for you. With round two came more olives and a plate of salted anchovies, enough for a mouthful each. With the third round came a plate of alioli potatoes.

And then, when it came time to pay, they saved the best surprise for last. Twelve glasses of wine, plus the tapas, came to 13 Euros. What can I say?

Compare that to one of the fast-food tapas outlets we inadvertently ventured into, where the traditional Madrid dish huevos rotos came on a bed of frozen chips. Enough said.

In the land of honey, lamb and nuclear waste.

2011-05-02T16:21:00.026+02:00

I had the opportunity recently to visit the first nuclear power station ever constructed in Spain. The plant at Zorita, deep in the Alcarria hills about an hour from Madrid, is surrounded by a rolling rural landscape of majestic beauty, a region made famous by the Spanish writer Camilo Jose Cela in his book Journey to the Alcarria. This is a land of honey and lamb. It is also a land of nuclear waste.

The Zorita plant is in the process of being dismantled after four decades in service. Enresa, the state company overseeing the job, provided a guided tour of the site. The main fuel rods have been removed and safely stored but the four-year project has just begun and there are many areas of the plant that remain radioactive and out of bounds.

This is a huge job that involves removing the entire plant to leave a greenfield site. In essence, it is waste management on an industrial scale. Pretty much everything here is toxic in one form or another, and Enresa's task is to ensure it is all safely removed. It is a methodical, carefully-calculated process that will dispose of an estimated 1,004 tonnes of waste, of which around four tonnes will be radioactive. It is possible because four decades ago when the plant began operating in 1966, someone had the foresight to charge a levy on every home and business that purchased electricity. A dismantling fund was thus built up over the years. Incredibly, even through lean times, the fund remained untouched.

Parts of the plant remain in operation while the dismantling process continues. We visited the main control room, where for 30 years operators had monitored the nuclear reactor and provided electricity for the national grid.

We met Ramon, who had worked there for over 30 years and confessed to being sad that the plant had come to the end of its lifespan. He talked us through a basic day at the plant and pointed out the various control panels, including a meteorological station, pictured below, which provided up to the second weather information and, in the event of a leak, would have enabled staff to predict the direction of a radioactive cloud.

From the plant, we drove to the nearby village of Pastrana for lunch, picking up some of the region's world class honey en route. During the visit there had been inevitable gags about radioactivity and how we were all going to get contaminated. No chance of that, of course. In any event, the real danger that day was cholesterol, not spent uranium.

We sat down to a heavy lunch at a roadside grill in Pastrana. The meal started with plates of cold meats and Manchego cheese, followed by migas, which are basically bread crumbs fried with chorizo and black pudding to make a fatty, greasy, delightful stodgy mess, served with hunks of deep fried bread. Not one to eat too often!

That first assault was followed by dishes of black pudding and scrambled egg, served with pine nuts and more hunks of fried bread. They were accompanied by wooden dishes piled high with boiled octopus drowned in olive oil and liberally sprinkled with paprika and salt. This was pulpo a la gallega, and it tasted good. We washed it all down with some red wine, not sure where from but it was rough on the palate and provided a good, sharp antidote to the grease.

To finish off the meal, we had a choice of lamb or kid, as in, baby goat. I went for the kid, which I'd only tried once or twice before. It's full a flavour, stronger then lamb and more fatty. I drew the ribcage unfortunately, which meant a 30-minute struggle to shave the meat off the bones. Leg next time, methinks...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Train to Madrid

2011-04-29T17:56:00.002+02:00

They are loud, opinionated and argumentative. There's nothing they like more than an intense exchange of ideas. They laugh a lot, at themselves mostly, and they're great fun to be with. My friends, the journalists from the Asociacion de la Prensa del Campo de Gibraltar.

I just got back from a trip to Madrid with a few of them, a three-day seminar that included a visit to Spain's oldest nuclear power station (more on that soon). We rode up on the train from Algeciras, hanging out in the bar mostly, watching the landscape zip past through the panel windows on either side of the carriage.

Leaning on the bar, chatting, debating, arguing, inching closer to the capital hour by hour. The train winds through the beautiful mountains around Ronda, the track hewn from the steep sides of deep valleys, overlooking strong streams swollen with the recent rains. Then on to the central plateau and Madrid beyond, a journey of just over five hours.

In the bar the conversation was laced with wine, beer and coffee. I played around with my iPhone and the Hipstamatic app, snapping old-style pics and looking forward to a good meal in town. With us was John Searle, the doyenne of the group, ex editor of my newspaper and a veteran journalist and all-round good guy. He's eighty something, but has more energy than many people half his age. Here he is, looking pensive.

Good memories of Marrakech

2011-04-29T15:11:00.005+02:00

I was shocked at the news from Marrakech yesterday. A suicide bomber appears to have entered a packed cafe and exploded a bomb, killing at least 15 people and injuring many others. The Argana overlooks the Djema el Fnaa, the city's central hub, and is extremely popular with locals and visitors alike. I had dinner there several times during a week in Marrakech last year.

The images of the devastation caused by the blast are horrific, as is always the case in these circumstances. But the memories I have of this place bring it home even harder. I can close my eyes and imagine the terror, the nightmarish scene after the explosion.

I hope this doesn't put people off visiting Marrakech and Morocco, a beautiful country with warm, welcoming people. To stay away would be to hand a victory to the bastards that did this.

Condolences to the families of those who died. As for Marrakech, I'd rather remember it like this.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Our secret bar.

2011-04-24T09:34:00.010+02:00

We took a stroll through Algeciras before tapas at our favourite bar. I'd love to tell you where it is but I was sworn to secrecy by my friend Marco. He wants to keep it as it is, and that's fine by me.

So anyway, I thought I'd mess about with my iphone and try a new app I downloaded called Hipstamatic. It gives pics taken on the phone an old-style touch, like film from the 60s or 70s. I love the effect bit what do you think?

I'm also posting this from my phone, so apologies for any layout hiccups or typos. But that's pretty cool isn't it? Take a pic, write some words, post on the blog, all while nibbling octopus tapas and sipping cold beer.
And just as a tease, here's what I could from our table if I looked up. If you know where that is, you'll know where the bar is too.

Eric's garden.

2011-04-20T15:02:00.000+02:00

This photo (by Jim in London) shows the east side of Gibraltar as it was in 1992. The slopes were covered in corrugated iron and served to collect rainwater that was then stored in huge tanks deep inside the Rock.

These day's Gibraltar gets its water through desalination and the slopes have been returned to their original state. I went up there recently with Eric Shaw, one of the people involved in the work to nurse the slopes back to life. It's a wild place and that's a rare thing in Gibraltar, where space is at a premium. Enjoy the video.

Note: Even though I call this Eric's Garden, there were many others involved in this project, most of them expert volunteers with the Gibraltar Ornithological and Natural History Society. These guys work across all areas of conservation in Gibraltar and their site is a treasure trove of information. Go see.

Back from the dead.

2011-04-19T10:24:00.000+02:00

Someone nudged me back to life last week. It was Fouad in Sydney. He writes an excellent blog and muses on food and life. Out of the blue, he emailed and asked if I could throw some pointers at friend who was heading to Morocco later this year. He had some nice things to say about this blog. He also said it was neglected. Fouad, of course, was right.

It's been almost six months since I last posted here. I was obsessive about this blog, always looking for things to write about. I turned every meal turning into a photo shoot and spent hours putting it all together. I ate better than ever before, trying different recipes, searching out new ingredients, and I loved it. I'd get home after a day covering the courts and writing about crime for the local paper, my day job, and switch chip to sit down and blog about food and the world around me. It relaxed me and I loved the feedback. I had readers from around the world and they kept coming back. It was modest traffic, but it was a buzz nonetheless. I started to exchange thoughts and ideas with other bloggers. Fouad. Diana at A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa. Alfonso at On The Wine Trail in Italy. Joumana at A Taste of Beirut. Peter at Kalofagas.

So what happened? Well, what started out as relaxation slowly started to feel like work. Unpaid work, unfortunately. Blogging, I learned, is tough. It takes commitment, passion, and it's hard to sustain. When you write for a living as I do, a steady diet of crime, courts and politics, you can rapidly reach saturation point if you blog for a hobby. I didn't see it coming. It happened overnight. One day, I just couldn't muster the energy to sit down and write on the blog. I didn't dwell on it, figuring I'd find inspiration the next day. But it never came. The days slipped by and the blog began to gather dust.

I wasn't idle mind. I really enjoyed blogging and I missed it. But words, well, they failed me. Instead I turned to pictures. I set up another site, The View Across The Bay, images of life in and around the Strait of Gibraltar, where I live, a unique place. I roped in some friends, journalists and photographers all of them. Together, we try to post an image a day. It's fun. For a while, it was also enough.

But when Fouad wrote last week, I did something I hadn't done for months. I had a look at this blog. It brought a smile to my face. I enjoyed reading through the posts and comments, spent a long while looking at the pics. I liked what I saw.

I also logged on to Blogger and had a look at the stats for the site. What a surprise! I was expecting a flat line. Instead, I found the blog was still getting traffic on a daily basis. It was erratic, but it was there, over one thousand unique visitors every month, mostly first timers. It was bizarre. After all, I wasn't doing anything to drive the traffic to the site. It was finding it's way there organically. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, though I’m still trying to figure it out. Your thoughts, as always, much appreciated.

So here I am at a crossroads. Can I get myself fired up for this again? I want to, that much I know. I’ll probably give it a go. It won’t be all about food though. Sometimes, changing the chip is just too much hassle. You may well find a bit of crime and politics here too in between courses. Can I sustain it this time round? Who knows. We'll just have to wait and see. But please, watch this space.

The photo above was taken on a ferry from Morocco to Spain. It's from my other blog, The View Across The Bay.

Between a port and refinery, cold beer and tapas

2010-10-28T15:42:00.000+02:00

Here’s a little gem in southern Spain, the bar in the Hotel Bahia on the outskirts of Algeciras just across from Gibraltar. It’s right on the beach, it’s open all year round and it’s a great little place for pre-lunch beers and tapas. It’s also sandwiched between Spain’s largest commercial port and a refinery, but don’t let that put you off.

OK, I can forgive you for not wanting to eat with port cranes on one side and chimney stacks on the other. But actually, the view’s pretty stunning. First you have the Rock of Gibraltar directly opposite. Then you have the constant comings and goings of some of the world’s largest merchant ships. I’ve spent many years writing about the maritime industry for a London newspaper called Lloyd’s List, so I like ships. In fact, I confess I’m a bit of maritime anorak. On Sunday we saw container vessels, tankers, bulk carriers and passenger ferries. If, like me, you like ships, then you could pick worse spots in which to have a beer.

If you look left, you’ll see the refinery. But in between is a lovely stretch of beach and, behind this, a pristine area of sand dunes and salt marshes, rich in wildlife and an important staging post for migrating birds of all types and sizes. Sometimes the marshes are smeared with splashes of pink as flocks of flamingos catch their breath before continuing north or south. It’s quite spectacular and I wish I had a photo to show you.

It’s one of the weird things about this part of the world. There’s a lot of heavy industry here, a lot of pollution of different types. But it’s also an area rich in biological diversity, both on land and at sea. The Strait of Gibraltar is among the busiest maritime chokepoints in the world. Every year, 100,000 ships sail through this narrow waterway separating Europe from Africa, the Atlantic from the Mediterranean. But even here there is room for nature’s spectacular sights.

Last year I heard a speech by a conservation expert in Cordoba, Spain, describing this region as a hotspot not for pollution, but for conservation. “People go to Mexico and Alaska to see whales,” said Andrés Alcántara, director of institutional relations at the Mediterranean section of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a leading international conservation organisation. “Don’t they realise we have them on our doorstep in the Strait of Gibraltar?”

The Strait is a major migratory route for all types of cetaceans. Not only that, but we have resident pods of pilot whales and even orcas. Now that’s something special. By chance, a few days after the talk I received an email from Steve Warren, a marine photographer who runs Ocean Optics & Mavericks Diving in London, where he teaches underwater photography. Steve, a member of the Gibraltar-based 888 Sub Aqua Club, sent me this wonderful picture by Mark Koekemoer of fellow diver Andrew Pugsley swimming over pilot whales while filming a documentary for the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation in the Strait of Gibraltar. It’s beautiful shot that rammed home the uniqueness of this region and why we should do our utmost to protect it.

But anyway, I digress. On Sunday we popped in to the bar for a beer and a few tapas. Not many people I know come to this place. Most end up in Casa Bernardo, a seafood restaurant next door and a place I’ll write about some other day. Bernardo’s does amazing shellfish and is well worth a visit, but if all you’re after is a snack and quick drink, try across the road. In the summer this place is heaving and lively. I like it best in the autumn and winter, when it’s quieter. On Sunday it was warm in the sun, but not overbearingly so. Below us on the beach, people strolled and walked their dogs. Some even braved the sea for a quick dip. The beers were ice cold and the roe salad tapas, in particular, delicious.

From blog to print to blog

2010-10-18T18:42:00.005+02:00

I’ve been offline for a while and it’s been gratifying to have people ask me when I was thinking of posting again. “Don’t you eat anymore?” one reader enquired. “No more bulls?” asked another.

There’s a simple reason why I’ve slowed down on the blog front. Time, that most valuable of commodities for anyone who makes a living writing. I don't have any to spare. It’s been one of those months. Nonstop, too much going on, not enough hours in the day. And not enough energy either. Who wants to sit down and write about food after a day covering a murder, or reporting on an armed robbery, or writing about a complicated fraud case, or a session in parliament, a village fete… That’s what my month’s been like.

I do have some exciting blog-related news to report though. In between all the rushing, I’ve started writing a monthly column on food for a local magazine, the aptly titled Gibraltar Magazine. It’s colourful, it’s glossy and it’s very gratifying. I long ago stopped keeping cuttings of all my articles. After 16 years working on daily newspapers, the thrill of seeing your name in print wears off. But this is different, not least because it’s about food. I was like a newbie when I picked up the edition with my first column. What a buzz!

Which takes me full circle back to some thoughts on blogging. My first blog was about current affairs in Gibraltar. It was called Letters from Gibraltar – it’s still up and running, if anyone’s interested, though I haven't posted there for ages – and it did quite well in terms of traffic for a while. I enjoyed it, but slowly it started to feel like work. It was, in effect, an extension of my daily grind, one where I allowed myself the luxury of an opinion or two, something I would never do in print. But it felt too much like a slog.

So I killed Letters and started this one, mainly because it relaxed me to write about food. But guess what? Slowly, the Diet became like work too. I just couldn’t find the time or the focus to write the sort of post I wanted to see on the blog. I’m not into short, anodyne posts, written off the cuff and with little thought. I like a little research, a little legwork to prop things up. That takes effort. I marvel at some of the bloggers I like to read, people like Alfonso at On the Wine Trail in Italy, or Joumana at Taste of Beirut, Peter at Kalofagas, Fouad at The Food Blog and Diana at A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa. How they keep the momentum up, God only knows.

After several weeks off the radar, I’m inspired to get up and running again. I like seeing my blog posts make their way into print. I like the thought that people miss me when I don't write. I like feeling like part of an online community of wordsmiths pumping out a regular stream of material, for whatever it's worth.

And so, I’m going to aim for a post a week. This is my 50th post on this blog, a landmark of sorts, and there's more to come. Some will be long and well researched. Others will be quickies. If I miss a week, please don’t hold it against me. And don’t fret, I’ll be back.

p.s. Some of you used to receive email alerts every time I posted. Well, bad news. My laptop died on me, and with it loads of data including my email lists. So, if you want receive those alerts again, use the tab at the left of this screen to sign up.

Bonito sashimi

2010-09-23T00:24:00.002+02:00

It’s Bonito time. The sea around Gibraltar is teeming with these beautiful torpedo-like fish, a member of the mackerel family. My dad, true to form, is filling the freezer with these babies.

Bonito is an oily fish, its flesh lighter than tuna but still bloody. One way round this, a tip we learned from this excellent book on catching and eating fish, is to bleed it just after you’ve caught it. You do this by cutting the gills. Not pleasant, but worth it.

Bonito flesh is firm and sweet on the palate. For me, the best way to eat it is to do as little as possible to it.

We had some of this raw at Ned’s the other night. My dad can’t get his head round this. He thinks we’re going to get worms (unlikely, as the fish was frozen for a couple of days beforehand). In Gibraltar, people tend to cook their fish, but more on in a later post.

We didn’t do much to this, so I won’t bother with a recipe. My dad had filleted the fish and given us a long, boneless flank. Half of this I sliced thinly and served on a bed of red onion (above). We splashed a little soya sauce on it, not much. Just a drop per slice.

The other half we rolled in cracked black peppercorns, crushed dry chillies and rock salt before searing in a pan to form a thin crust. Coat the pan with olive oil first. Then we sliced thinly and served on a bed of rocket with a dash of lemon juice.

Lovely.

Ned's honey and chilli steak salad

2010-09-13T18:18:00.000+02:00

Still on the meat theme I’m afraid, though it’s cow this time. You know, steak in a Styrofoam tray, not bull slaughtered in a ring. And there's a bit of salad in there too...

This one is Ned’s creation, a mouth watering combination of rare barbequed steak on a bed of rocket and lamb’s lettuce. That bit is straightforward enough I guess, but it’s the sauce that goes over the meat that makes this dish.

I asked Ned and he came back with this. You fry some garlic and chillies in a little olive oil, then add some dark cooked Spanish honey (or any runny honey, if you haven’t got any) and some soya sauce. Reduce it and then drizzle over the meat and leaves.

It’s pretty tasty, trust me.

My mate Jon also does some wicked things with honey but he’s too proud to give me the recipe so we’ll all have to do without, I’m afraid. Unless, of course, he changes his mind. Go on Jon, I dare you…

Bull stew.

2010-09-09T13:55:00.000+02:00

Before you read this, read part one of the series here, and part two here.

The bull stew was a hit. We ate it as a side dish at a BBQ at Ned’s. There were a few qualms here and there, but these disappeared with the first spoonful. The meat was tender, the sauce thick and rich with dense beef undertones.

The photo of the finished thing doesn’t do the dish justice, for which I apologise. I was fiddling with my new camera, a Panasonic Lumix LX3, and I messed up on the settings.

Anyway, I’m not going to ponder this one any more. Here’s the recipe, which is pretty simple.

Bull stew

Half a kilo of bull meat.

One full head of garlic.

Two large onions.

Four sticks of celery.

Four carrots.

One green pepper.

Salt and pepper.

Two bay leaves.

Half a teaspoon of nutmeg.

Teaspoon of paprika.

Teaspoon of dried oregano.

In a deep pot, sautee the garlic and onion, carrots, celery and a green pepper, roughly chopped. Throw in the meat, which should have been sealed lightly in a pan first. Add the spices and the bay leaves. Sautee for five minutes on medium heat.

Add the bottle of wine, turn the heat right down and cover. I cooked mine for five hours for a rich, meaty sauce and really tender flesh.

Serve with crusty bread.

Kitchen bloodlust

2010-08-30T10:05:00.001+02:00

In the market in Algeciras there’s a butcher who specialises in bull meat. He sells two kinds. There’s meat from bulls slaughtered in the abattoir, and then there’s meat from bulls slaughtered in the ring. Toro de lidia, as it’s known. The latter flesh is dense and dark, with only the leanest coating of fat. It’s the flesh of an animal that’s lived for several years roaming free in hilly pastures, contact with humans kept to a minimum. It’s also the flesh of an animal that died in excruciating pain, tortured to death, some might say, for the sake of entertainment, tradition and culture.

The flesh of a toro de lidia is a delicacy in Spain, but it’s not the nicest meat by a long shot. It’s pumped full of adrenalin and lactic acid, the inevitable effects of 20 minutes in the ring. It needs heavy cooking and strong flavours, and lots of red wine. But the meat, once cooked for several hours on a slow heat, becomes tender, rich and full-flavoured. It makes for a succulent, earthy, hearty meal. Even so, it’s not for everyone, and taste is the least of it.

Why on earth would anyone want to watch a bullfight, let alone eat the bull afterwards? It’s a question I’ve often been asked, and one to which I have no answer. I could, I suppose, talk about how these animals live for five or six years in the wild before their time in the ring. How they get to run around with a herd of cows, procreating and doing what all bulls should be doing. In my book, that beats being factory-farmed for your milk or your low cost meat. I suppose it’s a lot less disturbing to buy a steak from the supermarket, packed in a Styrofoam tray and wrapped in cling film stamped with a clearly-visible ‘sell by’ date. Or eating a hamburger without a second thought to where it came from. But at least there’s no hypocrisy in eating toro de lidia. You can’t pretend that what you’ve got on your chopping board wasn’t alive at some point, especially if you saw it die the night before. My mate Ned says such comparisons make for a poor excuse. Moral relativism, he calls it. ‘One thing is OK because it’s better than another, the lesser of two evils’. Well, maybe it is a poor excuse, but it still makes sense to me.

Even so, these comparisons only go so far. Ultimately, there’s a morbid fascination in all of this, what the Spanish food writer Pepe Iglesias calls “…a halo of magic and mystery that one should not try to explain rationally.” He says eating toro de lidia answers some long-lost instinct, the feast after a violent, bloody struggle for food. I don’t quite buy it, I have to confess, but he touches on something. Perhaps subscribing to his view is also a cop out, an easy way of ducking difficult questions. Ned, of course, sums it up quite simply, and rather less flamboyantly: “You’ve got bloodlust.”

Maybe they’re both right on some level. How on earth can I justify what I’m about to eat to any right-thinking human being? How can I explain away what’s in the pot and get away with it? I can’t, but I’m still going to eat it.

Next, the recipe.

Uncomfortable research ahead of dinner

2010-08-20T18:04:00.001+02:00

If you think bullfighting is a brutal, incomprehensible blood-sport, then you should really stay away from the novillada, which is where aspiring matadors get to practice on young bulls in front of a crowd. This is where the future talent is spotted. It’s for serious fans, aficionados, and, perhaps inevitably, it’s not pleasant. The main reason for this is that novilleros, as trainee bullfighters are known, often aren’t very good. They have occasional flashes of inspiration, like this spectacular pair of banderillas above. But they’re learning too, and it shows.

They fumble with the cape and stand too far from the bull as it charges on each pass. They hold the cape too low, or too high, drawing criticism from the old men in the stands. They don’t stand right, they take too long, or they move too quickly. But nowhere is this lack of skill more evident than when it comes to killing the animal. Where a seasoned matador will drive his sword deep into the bull, piercing its heart and bringing about the death of the animal (relatively) quickly, these guys often need three, four, even five or more attempts. The novice will lunge forward like a real professional, only for the sword to hit bone and bounce off, leaving the bull bellowing furiously in pain. On other occasions, the sword goes in skewered left or right, slicing through the bull’s internal organs but missing the vital ones. The bull is left drowning in its own blood, a gruesome spectacle. It also poses a tricky dilemma for the hapless novillero, who now has to retrieve his sword from an angry, foaming mass of raging muscle with horns, before starting all over again.

These bulls are called novillos and are meant to be small. But they usually weigh in at 450 kilos, give or take a few, so it’s all relative. To the untrained eye, they are anything but small. One evening in Algeciras, I watched Miguel Ángel Sánchez, a novice fighter in his debut event, get tossed up by a mean-looking novillo, pick himself up and dust himself off only to be trounced by the bull again. And again.

At one point he tumbled and came narrowly close to being spiked against the wooden barrier surrounding the arena. To his rescue came David Galván, another trainee fighter, who bravely – foolishly perhaps is more accurate – vaulted over the barrier, placed himself between the horns and Sánchez, and kicked the bull in the head. I captured the moment in the photo above. I was down at ground-level in the press enclosure, right up close, and it was dramatic. We all thought that Galván had pushed it too far, that he’d end up gored in a poorly-attended fight in Algeciras, his promising career dashed in a crazy moment of blind bravado. For a bullfighter, to be skewered against the wooden barrier is the worst of all possible outcomes. There is no room for manoeuvre in that position, no hope that you can twist away from the horns at the last minute. But both Sánchez and Galván were lucky this time. The bull backed off and they all lived to fight another day.

Well, almost all of them. The bull wasn’t so fortunate. Sánchez has balls of steel, you have to say that about him. He recovered quickly from the fright and trooped out into the ring once again, sparkling skin-tight pants splashed with blood, cape in hand for a few more nervous passes at the bull before setting up for the kill. But it wasn’t his night. I stopped counting after the fifth attempt. The animal was on its knees, vomiting blood as it snorted its last breaths in short, visceral grunts. With each failed attempt it would pick itself up and charge the bumbling novillero, one last lunge before flopping back onto its knees again. It was excruciating to watch and even the veteran taurinos, the old men who don’t miss a fight, were turning away or staring into their glasses of dry sherry. ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ I thought. But I forced myself to keep on watching. This was research, after all, and that bull was my dinner.

Next, the difficult issue of to eat, or not to eat.

Sardine stew...give it a go, honest!

2010-08-14T12:20:00.006+02:00

It’s time to talk about the sardine. In my effort to eat fish sustainably and pick at the food chain from the bottom up, I fear the sardine is going to become a staple in my diet. I say fear because sardines can be a hard sell. Hard-packed in low grade oil, canned with skin and bones, these little guys can put even a hardened fish-lover like me off his salad.

Which is why step one in rediscovering the sardine is to buy and cook them fresh.

The quickest way to cook sardines is to slap them over hot coals. You don’t need to do much to them, just run them under cold water to get rid of the scales, sprinkle them with sea salt and put them on the grill. In southern Spain, they do this guts and all. You eat the fish like a cob, eating round the belly area and picking off moist chunks of salty, succulent flesh. You can’t beat this.

But having lunch at Pepe’s the other day, I tried a different sardine recipe, one that I’m going to share with you because it truly was delicious. It’s a sort of sardine stew, At first blush that sounds yucky, I know. But trust me, it works. And please, don’t judge by the photo. It’s not a great pic, it doesn’t do the dish justice, but dammit, it was the only one I had.

This is a variation on a traditional Spanish dish. It adds a powdered Moroccan spice mix called ras el hanout. There’s no definitive recipe for this blend, which you can mix yourself. Typically it would include cardamom, clove, cinnamon, ground chilli, coriander, cumin, nutmeg, peppercorns and turmeric. The easier alternative is to buy it mixed.

Read The Atlantic's Corby Kummer on sardines.

For more fish recipes, try the absolutely unrivalled book The River Cottage Fish Book

Sardine Stew

One kilo fresh sardines

Three large onions

Three large green peppers

Four cloves of garlic

Four large tomatoes

Salt and pepper

Ras el hanout

First step is to clean the fish, removing the head, guts and backbone to leave two fillets of flesh per fish. Take your time with this as the fewer bones you find in there (though some are inevitable), the better.

Step two is to slice the vegetables and chop the garlic. This is a layered dish and each strata has a bit of all the ingredients.

Coat a deep pot with a little olive oil and layer the bottom with onions, pepper, tomato and garlic. Add a layer of sardine fillets and sprinkle with half a teaspoon of ras el hanout. Add a little salt and pepper.

Repeat the process until all the ingredients are in the pot. Cover with a lid and place on a low to medium heat until the vegetables are soft. There’s no water in this. The juice comes from the vegetables.

Serve and eat with crusty bread.

Bluefin sushi, delicious self denial

2010-08-04T18:25:00.003+02:00

So, what to do with several kilos of freshly-caught tuna? I gave this long hard thought but, from the outset, there was really only one option: eat it raw.

I’ve eaten more sushi than I can possibly remember (the Blue Ribbon in Brooklyn stands out), but I didn’t have a clue where to start when it came to preparing it. So I enlisted Ned, doctor, charmingly-witty cynic, good friend. Oh, and a dab hand with raw fish.

Together, with a little help from Su and Kate (Chino too), we prepared the mother of all sushi fests. We set aside any niggling doubts about eating Bluefin and carefully filed the guilt on the freshly-dusted shelf of self denial.

Ned did the rice and the rolls, I sliced the fish into firm, ruby-red morsels of tantalising tuna flesh.

On the side, we added a little salmon for variety, including wonderful rolls filled with rice and crispy fried salmon skin.

We prepared fiery wasabi and pickled ginger, poured thick, creamy soya sauce into dipping bowls.

Then we sat on the terrace, the sun setting over the mountains of Morocco on the horizon on the far side of the Strait of Gibraltar, and we ate. And ate. We devoured the lot. The fish was sweet yet salty, dense yet creamy, lean but fatty too. Words fail me. Nothing I could write would do justice to this formidable fish, which only hours before had been swimming in the strait.

Did it taste better because Bluefin is on the verge of extinction? Probably. The thought that this fish was a rare, rare treat, that every bite should, really, be illegal, that this was not something to be repeated, all of that no doubt worked its way to the taste buds. How far had this beautiful, magnificent beast roamed on its travels? What seas and oceans could we taste with each nibble? How could anything possibly taste this good? And, of course, ever the pragmatists, what on earth would it cost to eat this much tuna in a restaurant?

There’s still loads of tuna left, frozen in meal-sized packs in my dad’s freezer. I’ll be eating more of that in the coming weeks. But when it’s done, it’s back to the ban for me. I’m sticking to my guns. We should all stop eating tuna. I’ll be a beacon for that cause. I’ll pontificate endlessly and complain incessantly. I’ll do my best to explain at every opportunity why we should eat fish sustainably, why we should keep Bluefin off the menu. But please, I beg of you, don’t hold me to account if my dad turns up with another one of these beauties.

My (outrageously tasty) double standards on tuna

2010-07-29T18:04:00.004+02:00

A while back I made a conscious decision to stop eating tuna. I took this decision because I am genuinely appalled by what we’re doing to the world’s fish stocks. I stopped buying and eating Bluefin tuna. I started pontificating about the need for consumers to stand up and force someone to start counting, to ram home the message to inactive politicians who seemed incapable of taking the steps that were so obviously necessary. Nothing short of a total ban on the commercial fishing of certain species would keep me happy.

Then, to test me, along came my dad with 130 kilos of the freshest tuna I’d ever seen. Oh dear…

In my defence, it wasn’t Bluefin. It was Yellowfin (or so I was told), and it was huge. It was caught by my dad and his mates using a single line out in the Strait of Gibraltar, somewhere between Tangiers and Ceuta. But dammit, it was tuna, and suddenly I had to make a decision. Put my money where my mouth was, or slip into it a memorable, delectable, sumptuous slice of sushi instead. Obviously, I chose the latter.

I felt bad about it, don’t get me wrong. But not too bad. I mean, the fish was dead, right? And it was sustainably caught, right? And it doesn’t really mean much that Yellowfin fisheries are also under pressure, right? At least it wasn’t Bluefin, doesn’t that count? (Actually, I don't know much about fish and my dad insisted it was Yellowfin... but, to me, I have to confess it looked like a Bluefin...ahem...anyway...)

I’m not even going to bother with a recipe on this one. The first lot of meat was from the belly, known here as ventresca. It was red, raw, fatty and fresh, fresh, fresh. It looked like pork. I dusted it with salt and crushed black peppercorns, flashed it on a pan lightly coated with olive oil, and served with some stir-fried asparagus and a hint of garlic.

What can I say? I didn’t feel half as guilty as when Ned and I prepared a sushi feast the following day. But more on that later.

Killing time with Berber whiskey

2010-07-27T16:21:00.003+02:00

If there’s one flavour that spring’s to mind when I think of Morocco, one taste that comes to the fore, then for me it’s got to be tea. Thé a la menthe. Berber whiskey. Whiskey Marocain. Call it what you will, but one sip of a scalding glass of sweet mint tea immediately transports me back to Morocco. It’s a nostalgia drink.

Moroccans drink this several times during the day, taking their leisurely time over a silver pot filled with steaming dark liquid. They drink it from small glasses that are repeatedly filled, the tea poured in from a height of 10 or 12 inches. It takes a bit practice to get this right, so watch out for burns when you’re learning.

Tea is about taking a pause. It’s about finding a little space in the day to contemplate life. It’s about hospitality, greeting your visitor with a nourishing hit of sugar and caffeine. You’ll find it’s often served while you’re haggling in a shop, so maybe it’s also a distraction tactic! Even in the desert, drinking tea is a must. Despite the heat, it’s surprisingly refreshing and provide a much-needed lift to tired bodies.

The key to making good mint tea is to not be shy with the sugar. Forget about those teeth occasionally, forget about weight issues. A few glasses of good, potent tea are unforgettable, each glass fragrant from the mint and loaded to the brim with sugar.

The photo above was taken in the Elite Café in Marrakesh. It’s in the ville nouvelle, the modern part of Marrakesh.

This is a world removed from the souks and Djemaa el Fna, and at times you could almost think you were in Europe. Western brand names abound here.

On the terrace in the Elite we sat, sipped Berber whiskey and watched the world go by.

Here’s how to make it.

Moroccan mint tea

One tablespoon of green tea leaves. Chinese Gunpowder is best.

One large – that’s LARGE – bunch of fresh spearmint leaves.

Half a litre of boiling water.

Four tablespoons of sugar (adjust to taste).

Put the tea into a pot and add the boiling water. Let it steep for 15 minutes, then strain into another pot to get rid of the leaves. Place the second pot onto a hot stove and bring to the boil again.

After a few minutes, add the sugar and stuff the mint into the pot. Pour tea into a glass, then empty the glass back into the pot. Do this several times to ensure the sugar is properly dissolved and mixed before you serve the tea.

The restaurant on the edge of the Sahara

2010-07-24T13:04:00.002+02:00

In my experience it’s almost inevitable that if you sit down to eat at a restaurant next to a major tourist attraction anywhere in the world, the food is invariably crap and overpriced. I guess a captive audience leads to lazy cooking and overzealous pricing.

So imagine my surprise when, in 50 degrees on a recent trip to Ouarzazate, in central Morocco, sweating, tired, thirsty and hungry, all my preconceptions went out the window into the shimmering heat haze of the Sahara desert. Sat on cushions in a breezy room in La Kasbah restaurant, a stone’s throw from the Kasbah Taourit, the town’s main attraction, we enjoyed a sumptuous three-course meal for the meagre cost of E10.

It took half a day to drive here from Marrakesh, traversing the Atlas mountains and driving through scorching desert past lush oases and crumbling adobe fortress towns. Ouarzazate is a bizarre place. It’s main source of income is from Hollywood. Numerous movies have been filmed here, ranging from Biblical classics to Star Wars and, more recently, Babel. It has wide modern avenues but retains a close affinity to traditional Moroccan architecture. People stop here en route to the desert. Beyond Ouarzazate there is Zagora, and then the Sahara.

We stopped at La Kasbah before visiting the Kasbah Taourit, just across the road. We climbed three flights of stairs, crossed covered terraces and entered a spacious room at the top of the building. Colourful cushions lined the walls, with low tables in between set for lunch.

We ate salads to start with, followed by a choice of mutton and vegetable tagine with couscous, or mixed lamb and chicken brochettes.

For desert, we had thick wedges of melon and watermelon, sweet nectar to dry throats and cracked lips, sore from the desert dust. We drank water – what else? – and washed down bite-size almond cakes with sweet mint tea.

Across the way, the Kasbah Taourit was a fascinating place to see. A former palace belonging to the Glaoui clan that once ruled this part of Morocco, it is a maze of cool, spacious rooms and narrow passages, stairs winding between levels, arched windows and intricate mosaics adorning walls and ceilings.

One room was where the caliph's wives lived, hidden from view by intricate metal grilles that looked out over the town and allowed them to watch the world go by out of sight. It's a weird concept to get your around, but there you go.

We heard the history of this place from our guide Ali. In his white djellabah it was as if he had been plucked from the stories of harems and tribal fighting that he was recounting as we walked through.

This piece will appear as a guest post on CheapoAir, a travel site that offers cheap airline tickets and much more.