Cuk-Cuk
A fortuitous mistake led to the Cuk-Cuk ‘experience’. Looking at reviews of restaurants in Ciutadella during a chill out in Menorca we spied Cuk-Cuk smashing TripAdvisor reviews: beloved by everyone. A hasty booking meant we missed the key feature – you make your own meal. Had I known I would have been even keener of course! What else does a FatSteaker do on holiday but learn how to make a great dish they aren’t familiar with? So off we went to whip up and then devour a squid ink risotto.
The first thing you notice is how beautiful and chilled this back street restaurant is. A relaxed drink in the courtyard as all the other ‘diners’ arrived. We were allocated a cooking station to each pair and talked through each stage as we went.
The owners gave up the office life to help others enjoy the traditional approach to classic Spanish dishes. The majority of the dishes are rice based and feature local seafood heavily. When you book you are told what that session’s dish is. I was delighted we’d lucked on the squid ink risotto, something I’ve enjoyed before.
We started preparing and cooking some huge prawns and a quarter of a cuttlefish while our guide got some stock bubbling using a couple of crabs and a piece of fish along with various herbs. Onions, garlic and asparagus are fried off before being doused with tomato puree and then the rice and stock are added (1 cup of rice to 4 cups of stock), and we are shown the correct stirring technique to get a ‘crust’ at the bottom. The seafood is returned to the pan near the end and the whole lot allowed to sweat under a towel before being served outside with wine (included) and dollops of aioli.
It truly was the best paella I’ve eaten and a wonderful experience. The whole thing was relaxed, friendly and took about two and half hours. Afterwards they sent us the full recipe and a picture of us posing with the final dish. I’ll be back.
I trained as a chemist, and now I don't work in a laboratory anymore, I apply that knowledge to my cooking. I do love my gadgets, experimenting and using an understanding of the principles of chemistry to make the very best food. I seem to cook more and more as a hobby now I don't wear a lab coat, and still dream of retiring to run a small restaurant somewhere quiet.
My confidence really came when I taught myself to cook Italian and found I was pretty good at making pasta. I was married to a vegetarian then and it was the one cuisine where I didn't miss meat. I'm big on meat usually and passionate about great ingredients and doing things from scratch yourself. I did a butchery course last year and intend to learn all the skills needed to butcher and make use of a whole pig nose to tail.
Eating out is also a passion, and I particularly like to go for things I don't think I could do at home easily or better! Mind you, I do love a pie.
