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

If chocolate ever went out of fashion, and if it did, nobody bothered telling me, it is certainly back with a vengeance now. Over the last few years there has been somewhat of a chocolate revolution happening in Spain with several, forward-looking companies springing up and selling amazing designer chocolates full of weird and wonderful combinations and off the wall flavours such as black olive, balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese. Names such as the Chocolate Factory, Cacao Sampaka, Chocovic and Enric Rovira, with their high quality products and modern, sleek packaging have helped, once again, to make Spanish chocolate makers the envy of the world. Once known as ‘the food of the gods' in Aztec culture, the story of chocolate really began with the discovery of the Americas when Columbus returned in triumph and laid before the Spanish throne a treasure trove of strange and wonderful things. No one could ever have imagined how important chocolate and their bitter cocoa beans w...

The world's appetite for tuna appears insatiable and tuna populations worldwide are in serious decline. At both of our restaurants we have decided to remove tuna from our menus while we debate a sensible way forward in an attempt to understand the problem better and look at viable alternatives. It is a difficult decision for any Restaurant as Tuna remains a very popular item, but we feel strongly that something has to be done. We encourage comments and look forward to the views of our cliental and anyone who is passionate about this controversial issue. The End of the Line is a powerful film about one of the world's most disturbing problems - over-fishing. The End of the Line :: Home Page Shared via AddThis

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....