Yours Gerhard Schwaiger

While remaining true to our culinary style I am currently in the process of bringing a more Majorcan influence into our kitchens. The challenge in this will be to remain creative considering the fact that practically all Majorcan dishes are rooted in the same tradition of using what the island has to offer. The basic ingredients are garlic, onions, peppers, tomatoes, courgettes, and aubergines and the dishes are nearly always prepared with olive oil. The cuisine is often mistakenly seen as being too oily and substantial. This is because restaurants frequently serve the more opulent Majorcan dishes that are normally prepared on special occasions and that have little to do with the light and easy day to day cuisine.

A classic in this category is for example Majorcan Pisto with Pasta:

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 red pepper
• 1 green pepper
• 1 aubergine
• 3 fully ripe tomatoes
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 red onion
• ? litre olive oil
• The juice of 1 lemon
• 1 chilli
• 2 slices of fresh ginger
• 2 bay leaves
• Salt
• Pepper
• Fine noodles (manufactured product)

Preparation:

• Dice the pepper, aubergine, chilli, onion and garlic.
• Sweat the onion and garlic in olive oil. Do not let them brown.
• Add the aubergine, chilli and pepper cubes.
• Add the ginger and bay leaves turn the heat up high and roast for about 10 minutes.
• Place the tomatoes plus what is left over from the peppers (without the stalk) into a food processor and blend finely.
• Add the blended mixture to the cooked ingredients and simmer for a further 10 minutes.
• Add the lemon juice and flavour with salt and pepper.
• Cook the fine noodles in salty water for 2 minutes, drain and add them directly to the pisto mixture.
• Swirl and serve.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 tbs. avocado oil

120 g. red pepper

120 g. cucumber, peeled and cored

400 g. tomatoes

700 g. freshly pressed beetroot juice

Salt

Pepper

Fresh ginger, grated

Guar Gum as thickener

Preparation:

Heat the avocado oil in a saucepan. Chop the tomatoes into small pieces and sauté these in the oil along with the pepper and cucumber without letting them get brown. Pour in the beetroot juice and simmer until all the ingredients are soft. Place in the food processor with the thickener and blend well. Strain through a sieve and season to taste with the ginger, salt and pepper. Cool until ready to serve and garnish with crème fraîche.

When I buy frozen fish from the shops I have no control over what condition it was in when it was frozen and at what temperature it was frozen. I can control this perfectly at home however. Fish loses consistency and taste after 2 weeks so please do not leave it frozen for too long. Sushi restaurants also work with this system, except that they have high performance freezers that freeze to ? 70?C, at this temperature neither the taste, the colour nor the smell of the fish changes.

Last week we had the pleasure to present the new football kit of the RCD football club for the next season.

There is a simple rule for any successful menu: start cold – serve fish before the meat, then a cheese course followed by a dessert.  Should you wish to serve a cheese platter then serve the dessert and allow enough time before you serve the cheese. Cheese is not only an appetizer it is also good for the teeth. The bacteria in the cheese inhibit caries.

The rules for putting together a menu have however become much more flexible and it is rare that a sorbet is served before the main course in order to neutralise the taste buds. If you have a soup planned then it should be served as the second course. The rule of thumb being warm after cold – a hot soup puts pressure on the taste buds. You have probably experienced this yourself – the second bowl of soup never tastes as good as the first. The main course should be the aromatic highpoint of the menu.

A good menu will also not have any repetitions. Two different kinds of pasta don’t have to be a problem, but herbs, fish or seafood should not be repeated. A repetition of spices for instance, quickly becomes boring. The longer the menu the lighter the courses – many hosts get worried that their guests will not have enough to eat and make the portions too large, although there is nothing worse for a guest than having to eat their food out of propriety.  Perfect timing is to leave 15 minutes between courses. The brain tells us after about 10 minutes that we have had enough and it is a good idea to keep this in mind when planning the preparation and cooking of your menu. If you put the meat in the oven after you have served the fish you will be making a grave mistake. The one place that you can leave yourself time is with the dessert.

Throughout my career I have had to read and also to learn about many different diets and my experience makes me question strongly their effectiveness.

When following the media it is noticeable that a new diet appears almost weekly in women’s, men’s and cookery magazines, each guaranteeing weight loss. As far as I am concerned, and looked at logically (although this I leave for the reader to decide for themselves), if there is a diet that really functions then why are new diets being permanently created?  I am in fact sure that if there was such a thing as a really successful diet, then anyone who wished to lose weight would use it. My misgivings are such that I seriously think that this theme is being kept alive even though it does not lead in any way to the results we wish for. What is more it has been shown that magazines have a higher circulation when their covers advertise diets or dietary tips.

Evidence shows that in any dietary change the body finds it much easier to digest carbohydrates during the day and animal proteins at night, the reason being that these proteins are important for cell regeneration, a process that only takes place at night. The daily intake of fruit and vegetables is also very important.