THE SUN-SOAKED PLATE...Mediterranean recipes for family and friends

A couple of years ago, I had the great pleasure to meet and cook with an Inspirational Chef called Greg Malouf in the wonderful setting of Hangar 7, Austria. Greg is of Lebanese heritage but was born and raised in the Australian City of Melbourne. He is viewed not only as one of the most influential and innovative cooks in Australia, but also as the originator of his own style—modern Middle Eastern cuisine. I think Greg was born to be a cook. Even as a child he was fascinated by his family’s refrigerator, which was filled with exotic specialties. He was even more impressed, however, by family meals, which his mother and grandmother spent days preparing and at which Arabic cuisine was celebrated in all its opulence and variety: refined tajines (one-pot dishes), substantial meze (appetizers), spicy meat dishes and off course, all those wonderful sweet pastries. I have always loved Middle Eastern cookery and I find the spice mixes and flavour combinations incredibly intoxicating. ...

Walk into any food store these days and you can’t help but be amazed at the amazing array of weird and wonderful salts on offer. Be it grey, pink, white or blue, from rocks, deserts, tidal flats, mines or barely accessible mountain ranges in the Himalayas, common salt is diversifying, going up market and becoming chic once more. One of the trendsetters in this new designer salt movement is a Mallorcan company called “Gusto Mundial Balearides”, formed by the very talented Katja Wöhr. They have been hand-harvesting Flor de Sal in the "Salinas de Levante" salt pans next to the beautiful beach of “Es Trenc”, since the beginning of 2003. Flor de Sal (known as “Fleur de Sel” in France) is the very first layer of salt crystallizing on the surface of the salt marshes. It is achieved by a traditional extraction method originating from the French Atlantic coast. The salt obtained is 100% natural and it reaches your palate without having suffered any alteration During the long ...

On a hot summer’s day, there is nothing more refreshing than a cool slice of melon or watermelon. With their wonderfully aromatic fragrance and cool flesh, they are one of the glories of summer market stalls. Melons vary enormously in size, skin texture and colour. They all have a high water content that makes them refreshing, but they can be a little disappointing if eaten either under- or over-ripe. A ripe melon should have slight 'give' to the skin, and at room temperature the perfumed aroma of the fruit should come through the skin. If the fruit is under-ripe it tends to be rather bland and lacking in sweetness; an over-ripe melon has a fermented, slightly unpleasant taste. All melons are believed to have originated in India and have been cultivated since ancient times when the aptly named watermelons were traditionally offered to thirsty travellers. They grow well in warm climates, and many varieties such as honeydew, cantaloupe and the oddly named “Piel de...

The authentic Parisian dance troupe found time to visit Simply Fosh Restaurant during a recent visit to Spain. For the very first time in Spain, the ballet dancers of MOULIN ROUGE PARIS presented the Premiere show in Mallorca to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the Moulin Rouge in Paris and enjoyed a special lunch menu prepared by Chef Marc Fosh as well as picking up a few cooking tips in his kitchen. Thanks to Klaus siepmann for the photos.

Recently I was travelling on a plane back to Mallorca from Moscow, just flicking through a Russian Magazine when I came across a recipe of one of my signature dishes. The Sea Bass with anchovy, parsley & liquorice was printed exactly as I had written it some four years ago, embarrassingly still with the same grammatical errors, for a website called Global chefs. The only difference was the picture of the smiley chef next to the recipe was not of me, but a French Chef from a famous Moscow hotel claiming the dish to be his own. I found it mildly amusing at first, but slowly it niggled at me and bothered me enough to email the chef to ask if there had been some sort of mistake. He denied using my recipe at first, until I pointed out the very same grammatical mistakes and the identical content on global chefs. He then confessed and stated that he is a big admirer and I should be proud of the fact that he liked the recipe so much in a, copying is the best form of flattery, kind of way....

Remember when a salad consisted only of some limp lettuce, tasteless tomatoes, soggy pickled beetroot and a few slices of cucumber? Thankfully times have changed and I was pleasantly surprised walking around my local supermarket the other day at the many different varieties of lettuce and salad leaves available. You don’t even have to go through the hassle of cleaning your lettuce as you can buy ready mixed salad leaves, full of different flavours, textures and colours all cleaned and ready to eat. All you need to do is drizzle the leaves with a little dressing at the last minute and tuck in. So what is the correct dress code when talking salads? Vinaigrettes, tossed with salad leaves, drizzled over poached fish, pooled around a nest of steamed vegetables, or adding just a touch of gloss to plateful of boiled potatoes, help to jazz up the most elementary of foods. They are the simple yet sublime components of countless appetizers, salads, main courses, and even some desserts. At ...

F or me, nothing beats the salivating bouquet of garlic and onions sweating in olive oil. It’s the first easy step of so many recipes, but it’s also the one that so many people seem to get so wrong. Do not brown your garlic as this leaves a strong, slightly bitter aftertaste in the finished dish. Make sure you warm your pan slightly, and then add a little olive oil. This way you will use less oil saving you money, because the oil spreads and thins out in the warm pan. Add the onions and garlic, and then place them over a gentle heat. Let them cook slowly without colour, stirring with a wooden spoon. Don’t fry, but sweat them gently to encourage them to release the heavenly smell that can fill your kitchen with this most amazing, mellow aroma. Long slow cooking of garlic removes most of its pungency and should pacify even the most ardent garlic-haters. Spanish Restaurants are awash with garlic from marinated olives, aioli, chorizo and anchovies. In spring young green garlic shoots ca...

Roast lamb is a magnificent thing. The complex flavour is bold yet delicate, the texture is a study in contrasts between the crisp, flavourful exterior and the tender, juicy interior, and the heady aroma is tantalisingly good as you wait impatiently to tuck in whilst your joint is in the oven. It never ceases to amaze me how something so simple can be so good….a leg of sweet spring lamb, a couple of garlic cloves, a sprig of fresh thyme, a splash of white wine and little drizzle of olive oil and seasoning. 90 minutes in the oven at 150 degrees and job done. The Spanish are justifiably proud of their lamb and early spring is without doubt the best time to enjoy it. The taste is sweeter and more refined at this time of year, before the hot weather arrives and the lambs start to suffer, like the rest of us, and sweat in the heat. The local Spanish breeds are small and sturdy animals and lend themselves perfectly to the long slow cooking favoured by the local restaurants throughout mos...

AFTER THE FOAM HAS GONE I am amazed how many young chefs come into this business without knowing the very basics of cooking. I watched Andreas, the head chef at Fosh Food, make a perfect Veloute the other day and he was complaining about just the same thing. You see, once upon a time, you had to know how to make a good Béchamel sauce before going on to master your Velouté. It was one of those benchmark recipes of all good cooks and the base of countless other classic sauces such as Nantua, Soubise and Mornay. These day’s, most young chefs are more concerned about how much lecithin they have to put in their sauces to make their foam stand up for half an hour and a good Roux has practically become obsolete. This is a real shame as a well-made béchamel sauce is truly delicious, and for any home cook, it opens up an endless stream of classic dishes from Gratins, croquettes to lasagnes. The secret to a well made béchamel is to make your milk as flavoursome as possible. If you infuse your on...