Best Friends and Favourite Foods

I am truly blessed when it comes to friends. I have some extra special best girlfriends who have been there for me through the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the youth and the wrinkles. Ria and I met at school, a wonderful convent in South London, and have been best friends ever since.

We laughed through our school days, she sent me stamps to write to her when I went to University as I was poor and she was earning. She also gave me a sewing box as a going away gift and still, to this day, gets me to adjust her clothes and sew on buttons. We even worked at the same company for a few years and mopped up the tears through tough endings to relationships in later years.

She invited me to a weekend with friends in Scotland without telling me we would be walking part of the West Highland Way. She knew I would have refused, but we had fun and I forgave her, eventually.  Then I told her she was doing a run to raise money for Charity and she didn´t complain once.

Hot, sweaty but very happy with what we achieved!

We know and love each other´s families like our own, and also know our way around each other´s kitchens. Very important indeed.

When we both hit 40 within a month of each other (not soooo long ago), we threw a massive party then went off on a Round the World Trip.  I have a lovely photo of us on our last day before we headed back to London. It was taken in Hong Kong on the Kowloon ferry. We don´t look glamorous, or made up. In fact we look exhausted, a little chilly, but happy. We had spent about 3 months in each other´s company 24/7 and not a cross word or row, just fun, laughter and quite a few adventures.

I moved to Spain permanently six years ago, and we had to find a new way to make things work across the miles.  E-mails, phone calls and of course, visits.

So, when your best buddy comes to visit you don´t want to spend too much time in the kitchen as there is talking, laughing, dog walking and wine drinking to be done.

We barbecued squid which we enjoyed in the sunshine.

We ate what we jokingly called a “deconstructed chicken salad sharing platter for friends” – cold cooked chicken, spiced cauliflower, a platter full of delicious vegetables and topped with blanched then grilled asparagus with a lemon dressing and mayonnaise. Perfect for sharing.

And of course, my best friend knows how much I adore curry, so several happy hours were spent in the kitchen cooking up a storm, or the “Cortijo Curry” as we called it. Goat curry, tarka dhal, spinach and tomato curry, poppadums and roti.

I´ll share the recipes with you soon, but now I´m tired, happy and sad, and rather full up, so I´ll leave you with a photo of the perfect dessert for friends who don´t have time to make dessert.

Salpicón De Mariscos – Seafood Salad

So many colours!

A typical tapas here which offers the best from the sea and the best from the salad garden is a Salpicón de Mariscos. We also enjoy it as a light lunch or supper dish or a starter.  Of course, there are many ways of making it, depending on what you have available.  Avocado? Yes, put some in. Don´t like cucumber? Leave it out.

Here´s my version which I also made a lemon vinaigrette for.  Typically though it would just be dressed with salt, white wine vinegar and olive oil.

Serves four as a starter or two as a main course.

Vegetables (all to be chopped into roughly 1cm squares)

• Two long thin green peppers or one green bell pepper
• Half a large red bell pepper
• One medium red onion (or a sweet white onion). Tip…if you thinly slice and then leave in iced water for about 30 minutes and then drain before adding to your salad, it will remove any harshness of flavour
• One small cucumber, partly peeled
• Two carrots peeled and cut into thin strips with a peeler (this is not typical, but I enjoy the crunch and colour) and then cut into smaller pieces
• One large salad tomato (add this just before serving)
• Two heaped tablespoons of chopped flat leaf parsley

Seafood

• A mixture of cooked prawns, octopus, mussels – I had about 2 cups in total

Dressing

• One clove of crushed garlic, half the juice of a lemon, olive oil (you want 3 measures of oil to one of lemon), salt, pepper, half a teaspoon of sugar, a quarter teaspoon of English mustard powder (or use half a teaspoon of made up mustard)

Also – the grated zest of one lemon

Method

Mix together the salad and seafood.  If you are using tomato (and/or avocado) add just before serving.

Shake the dressing ingredients in a jar, taste and adjust seasoning to your preference.  Pour over the salad and mix gently.

This benefits from sitting somewhere cool  (but not cold) for at least an hour before eating. Otherwise you can make ahead, store in the fridge and then remove it an hour before serving.  Add the tomatoes and/or avocado if using, grate over the lemon zest and give it one final stir.

Have plenty of crusty bread to hand to mop up all those lovely lemony juices.

Back to the 70´s – Prawns in Lettuce Cups

Getting Groovy with the Prawns

Do you remember the 1970s? Well, I am sure some of you do, even if you were only babes in arms.  I was a young teenager at the end of the 1970s but it was a time in London when great changes were afoot in the world of food.  The height of sophistication at the time for a dinner party was probably something along the lines of prawn and avocado cocktail, steak with pepper sauce and Black Forest gâteau for dessert. And nothing wrong with any of that I say…but the 80s were soon going to herald the advent of Nouvelle Cuisine (or really tiny portions) and strange mixtures of ingredients such as Loin of some Obscure and Almost Extinct Creature Marinated in a Gooseberry and Guinness Jus. Well, you know what I mean.

Having watched a DVD of Abigail´s Party (I wish I knew how to insert video clips), I was clearly feeling nostalgic and decided to go a bit retro with my peeled prawns. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and accept you´re getting old…

Ingredients for 4 people as a starter

• Two lettuce hearts (use 8 of the bigger outside leaves and use the rest for salad)
• 1 cup of peeled prawns, cooked and cut in half if large
• 2 hard boiled eggs, chopped (not too finely)
• 1 ripe avocado (chopped into small cubes)
• 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley
• Salt & pepper to taste
• Half a cup of Marie Rose sauce (I made mine using 3 tablespoons of tomato ketchup, 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise, 1 heaped teaspoon of horseradish sauce, 1 teaspoon of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce and 1 tablespoon of sweet chili sauce)
• Pimentón to taste

Simply mix all the ingredients together and spoon into the lettuce leaves.  Sprinkle with hot or sweet Pimentón.

Now, put some groovy 1970s dinner party music on the built in Hi-fi, slip into a glamorous kaftan and enjoy the evening….

Citrus, Avocado and Radish Salad

We love our citrus fruit here in Andalucía.  Our lemon tree, after 3 years, now keeps us well provided in lemons all year round.  We have planted 3 orange trees too, so in a year or two, we´ll be enjoying our own oranges.

In the meantime, we rely on the kindness of friends and neighbours who keep us well supplied in oranges from about November to March, which is when Andalucía is lit up in the colour orange.  Fields of orange trees are a delight to the eye, and so too are the city streets lined with the trees of bitter oranges which are destined for England and its world famous Orange Marmalade.  But more of marmalade another day.

I was inspired by a stunning recipe from Sawsan over at Chef in Disguise for a beautiful orange and avocado salad. Grilled fish was on the menu for lunch, but sadly I have no idea what it is called in English.  As it´s a fairly oily fish, I thought that the tangy flavours of a citrus salad would complement the fish perfectly.  I was right!

Ingredients for 2 people

• 1 large pink grapefruit and 1 large orange peeled and cut into bite sized chunks
• 1 ripe avocado peeled and cubed
• Radish – our radishes here are HUGE so I only used one finely sliced, but use however much you like (or not)
• Dressing:  any juices that run off the fruit as you peel them plus a teaspoon of lemon juice, the juice of an orange and twice the volume (of the citrus juices) of olive oil, a pinch of sugar if your orange is sour, half a teaspoon of mustard powder, a grind of pepper and a pinch of salt.

Mix up the salad ingredients gently or layer onto a plate.  Mix the dressing ingredients in a jar, taste and adjust seasoning if necessary and pour over the salad.  Any remaining dressing can be stored in the fridge for use another time.

So pretty, so tasty, and so good for you.

Caponata – Calabrese Style

When I was young we used to spend summers in Calabria, Southern Italy, where my father is from.  He was the youngest of 9 children, 6 of whom were girls.  His older sisters all used to fight over who we would stay with during our holiday, as most of them had had a hand in bringing him up and treated him almost as a son.  We used to try and divide our time up with the various families, but my happiest memories were of staying with my Zia Santa.

Grazie Zia - ti voglio bene

When I mentioned this once to someone in the UK they asked me if it was strange having an aunt named after Santa Claus.  How bizarre, I thought, it had never once crossed my mind that her name might sound unusual to anyone else.  In Italian Santa is a female saint, or a “blessed one”.  My Zia Santa was indeed a saint, she had a hard life and lived in very basic simplicity for the whole of her married and then widowed life.  But we loved being with her.  She had one bedroom where my parents slept in her huge dark wood framed bed with my younger brother on a fold out bed.  Her bathroom only had a toilet and a sink where she also washed all her clothes.  The only other room was a large living, dining, kitchen area which looked onto the main street of the little village, called Longobardi.  I slept here with my aunt, her on a bed and me on a mattress – and every night we would giggle together like two little schoolgirls rather than an aunt and niece who were separated in age by over 40 years.

There was a small balcony which served as the telephone. If people wanted to give you a message they stood in the street and whoever was nearest the window stood there and took the message.  Likewise, if you wanted to let a neighbour know some news, all you had to do was stand on the balcony and tell a passer-by.  You were in no doubt that the message would reach its recipient almost as instantly as an e-mail or text nowadays.

Zia Santa was an incredible cook.  August was always taken up with drying tomatoes on her flat roof, or bottling tomatoes to go into the huge storage area on the ground floor.  It never struck me as odd that there was this enormous space downstairs that could have been converted into a bathroom, bedroom, laundry room…whatever.  It was more important back then to have a good space to store the cheese, salami, prosciutto, olive oil and tomatoes for winter.

I´m trying to write down all the recipes that Zia Santa taught me, my mother and, some years, my English grandmother to cook.  Today it´s Caponata.  I had to call my mum to ask her what the special ingredient was.  Our family caponata was never the same as any other I´ve tasted.  I´m sure there are thousands of family recipes, each one different from the other.  This is ours.

• About 1kg of aubergines (eggplant, melanzane) finely chopped and salted, then left to drain for about 30 minutes then rinsed and patted dry
• Olive oil – plenty for frying
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 3 sticks of celery finely chopped
• 4 tablespoons of red wine vinegar (although I used white as that´s what we have here and it was delicious)
• About 500g of ripe tomatoes peeled and finely chopped
• Up to 2 tablespoons of sugar
• About a quarter of a cup each of chopped capers and chopped stoned olives (black or green)
• Seasoning
• The grated zest of half an orange – the secret ingredient!

Fry the aubergine chunks (which in all other recipes I´ve seen is left much chunkier).  Zia Santa used to deep fry, I shallow fry.  The choice is yours.  Set them aside when they are browned and soft.

Now add the onion and celery to the pan with more oil if necessary and fry with the lid on until soft and translucent.  Turn up the heat and add the vinegar and allow it to reduce almost completely. Turn the heat back down and add the tomatoes, seasoning and about half the sugar and simmer for about 15 minutes or so or until the celery is tender but still retains a little crunch.  Stir in the aubergines, olives, capers and orange zest and taste.  It should be “agrodolce” sweet and sour – add the rest of the sugar if necessary and allow it to dissolve.

This dish is best served the next day and will sit quite happily in your fridge for several days.  We used to eat it at room temperature as part of the antipasto but it´s also good as a side dish.

And don´t forget, do shout out of the window to let me know if you enjoyed it!

Tasty Tabbouleh

Fresh and delicious

When you are lucky enough, as we are, to have a vegetable garden full of tasty summer tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, you are always looking for new ways to serve them. Arriving home from our holiday, we found the veggie garden over run with peppers plus we had a few cucumbers and the first of our new batch of tomatoes turning red.  A neighbour had also left four huge and sweet onions in a bag hanging on our door.  What a great homecoming!

I love tabbouleh, but had forgotten about making it until another kind neighbour bought me round a bag of bulghur wheat.  I have very kind neighbours! It reminded me of how much I enjoy it and what a great use of my summer vegetables it would be.

It´s very easy and quick to prepare and can be made a little in advance of eating so that all the seasoning is absorbed and flavours your salad.

As I was finely chopping a mixture of tomato, cucumber, onion and garlic I realised how similar the base ingredients are to an Andalucían gazpacho, both the blended and the chunky versions.  I also added chopped green and red peppers. I´m not sure how traditional they are but we still have so many, it seemed silly not to.

The wheat had been cooked according to the instructions on the pack, all very simple and straightforward, and when it had cooled a little I added my chopped vegetables, chopped mint and parsley, salt, olive oil and plenty of lemon juice.

And that was it. I left it to chill a little then bought it back to room temperature before eating.  How simple and delicious was that?!

Gazpacho as we know and love it

In Andalucia we don´t eat tomatoes...we drink them!

So, now we come to the Gazpacho most people are familiar with – the iced tomato and vegetable soup famed the world over (well, almost!).

It is served both as a soup here and as a drink.  In most homes it comes in a glass.  In fact there is a wonderful advert for my favourite Spanish beer, Cruzcampo, which celebrates all things Andalúz.  One line in the voice over says something along the lines of “In Andalucía we don´t eat tomatoes, we drink them!” (If you have time to watch it, it´s worth it, even if you don´t understand Spanish, just to see a few snippets of summer life in Andalucía).

Every housewife will give you a slightly different recipe, adding her own little tweaks (more of this, less of that). Some use stale bread, some don´t. I tend not to unless I want to serve it a little thicker as a soup which can then be garnished with little chopped cubes of the same vegetables that go into it.

So, without further ado, here´s how I make mine.

Peeled Tomatoes, Green Pepper, Red Pepper, Onion (optional) Peeled Cucumber, Salt, Water, Olive Oil, White Wine Vinegar.

It´s difficult to give quantities. If my tomatoes are lovely and red, I use less red pepper. Sometimes I don´t use onion.  But the green pepper and the cucumber do give it that distinctive fresh taste, so try not to leave them out.

A few simple ingredients

Today I used 4 large plum tomatoes, one thin green pepper, a small amount of red pepper and a small chunk of onion and half a small peeled Spanish cucumber.

Put all the vegetables into a jug or the food processor.

Put into your jug or blender

Start with one level teaspoon of salt, 3 tablespoons of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of olive oil and about half a litre of water.

Add water, vingegar, oil and salt

Now it´s time to start blending.  Add more seasoning, vinegar and water as you go along if you want to.  Today I added another tablespoon of vinegar (you remember they like it “alegre” or lively here right?!) and about another 250ml of water to thin it a little.

...and blend!

Then chill until you need it.  If you have put onion in it´s fine on the day you made it but I find it starts to “ferment” a little if you have any left over.  Also, while standing in the fridge it may start to separate a little with the water at the bottom and the vegetables on top – just give it a stir before serving and it will be fine.

Big Man gets arty with the vegetables

Now, go and put on a straw hat, a paso doble on the cd and lie back in a shady spot and sip on your ice cold Gazpacho.  Or ga-pacho, as they tend to say here! These Andaluces and their habit of dropping the “s” sound….most confusing!

Ensalada Cateta – Country Salad

Before I start this quick post, I have to tell you that I´m having a giggle.  The word cateto or cateta translates perhaps more literally as “Peasant”, but not in an offensive way.  Before I started typing I just thought I´d do a quick translation check to see if there was another word I could use and all the on line translation tools, bizarrely come up with the word “leg”!  Not quite sure what is going on there…but I decided to call it Country Salad. 

It´s another celebration of that most Andalucían of fruits, the orange.  Again, typically a poor person´s salad it was originally made with salt cod as it was cheap and you didn´t need to use much.  A few other bits of country produce like potatoes, peppers and olives, a good soak in olive oil and you were done.

Of course, nowadays you can get all sorts of glorified versions, but the one I´m giving you here is the one you´ll find in all my local bars and homes around here.  It´s served as tapas in bars, and as a light meal at home.  Of course, some people make their own little tweaks, and why shouldn´t they?  They might leave out the peppers and add tomatoes.  Some people like tomatoes or onions in it, others don´t.  And complete heathens, like me, sprinkle chopped fresh chili all over it to the amazement of their other halves….each to his own I say!

A delicious serving of "Leg" Salad!!

This is what you´ll need (approximately) per person as a light main dish serving size

• 1 hard boiled egg, finely chopped
• 2 medium potatoes (boiled in their skin) peeled then chopped into chunks
• 1 small tin of tuna (I use tuna in brine and drain it, but use your favourite)
• 1 roasted red pepper, choped
• 2 medium oranges (bitter if possible) peeled and cut into chunks
• About 2 tablespoons of pitted olives sliced (or use ones with stones, your choice!)
• Optional – chopped onion, chopped tomato, small flakes of salt cod (or use whatever you have available)
• Salt & Pepper
• Olive oil
• White wine Vinegar (optional) but I like to use it

All you need to do it combine everything in a bowl, season and dress it and leave it for at least half an hour in the fridge so that the potatoes can soak up some of the lovely olive oil.

Good to serve at a party or buffet as it can be prepared ahead and does not suffer from being forgotten in the fridge for several hours.  Hope you enjoy it!

Chicken Pinchito Salad

A tickle of spices...

Pinchos, or Pinchitos, are Spain´s answer to Kebabs.  Despite their “Moorish” (i.e. Arabic) origins, they are usually made of pork, but you can also find them made of chicken.  This is typical Feria food, cooked in front of you at the bar, speared with a slice of bread, and if they use metal skewers, you just hand them back when you´ve finished eating!

The spices which the cubes of meat are rubbed in can vary slightly, shops and butchers sell their own mixes.  Typically though it´s a mix which is like Ras el hanout, which is used widely in North Africa, from which Andalucía receives many food influences. 

When we went to Morocco earlier this year, we bought a supply of spices to see us through a few months and because it´s so good, I didn´t want to just save it for kebabs. 

Beautiful Spices...

Here´s an easy salad, which (if you have any kind of spice mix you like to use on meat) you can pull together from store cupboard ingredients.  This recipe made a light supper for two.

For the salad

• Two chicken thighs deboned, cubed and rubbed in 1 heaped tablespoon of spice mix and seasoned with salt.  These are then cooked on the griddle (plancha) with a small amount of olive oil and left to cool
• 6 rashers of streaky bacon cooked for 6 minutes in the microwave then left to cool and roughly chopped
• 2 medium cooked potatoes, peeled and cubed
• Half a cos lettuce finely chopped
• Half a cup of pitted black olives, roughly chopped
• One small green pepper, finely sliced

For the dressing

• Half a cup of mayonnaise
• Two tablespoons of milk
• An additional teaspoon of spice mix
• A squeeze of lemon juice
• Salt and Pepper

Mix all the salad ingredients in a large bowl then in a jar shake together all the dressing ingredients.  Pour over the salad and toss well to get all the dressing into the leaves.  Would also be good with some croutons.

Merluza A La Barbacoa y Ensalada Arcoiris – Barbecued Hake & A Rainbow Salad

Dressed For Dinner

Fish Man came up trumps the other day with a whole hake in the back of his little van. It was rather large, too much for just Big Man and me, so as it was fresh it went into the freezer.

A few days later friends were coming over for lunch, and the sun promised to shine, so I decided to barbecue it.  A quick visit to the garden to gather mint and lemons, and out into the olive grove for the tops of the wild fennel which is everywhere, and I was set.

I had to gut and clean the fish, but if you´re buying from a fishmonger, I´m sure it will be cleaned for you.  It´s not that tricky (wear kitchen gloves though, or you´ll smell like a hake for the rest of the day!) but not for the squeamish.

Pat the fish dry with kitchen paper and salt the inside slightly.  Stuff it with bunches of herbs and thin slices of lemons, then sprinkle the outside with coarse sea salt.  No oil needed, but the salt will protect the fish and you´ll end up with lovely charred skin which I personally love to eat, but I know some people don´t.

Then it´s on to the barbecue for your hake.  We cooked it on a low heat and the lid on for about 15 minutes in total.  If you do use hake, but you could do this with pretty much any fish, it´s firm, so easy to turn when it´s half done.  Check it´s cooked by peeking inside – the flesh will be white when it´s ready.

Ready to eat!

I served this with a delicious salad which was so beautifully coloured, it didn´t matter that the sun went in and a big cloud hovered over us all through lunch!  I used chopped new boiled potatoes, cooked beetroot, oranges, thin slices of raw carrot and chopped chives. I made a simple dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, mustard powder, a clove of garlic, salt and pepper.

With so much colour, it can´t not be good for you...

Food for a sunny, or not so sunny day!