Category: Baking

Oh My – Chicken Pie!

Chica Andaluza52 Comments

On my recent trip to London I spent plenty of time talking to my mum.  As a fellow cook and foodie herself, we talked quite a lot about food. As you do.  She mentioned that she really enjoys making and eating pies, but that my dad is not so keen on them.  When she asked me what Big Man´s view was (you can tell can´t you that this was a deep and meaningful conversation) I realised that I had never made him a savoury pie.

Of course, once I was home, I couldn´t get the thought of a chicken, mushroom and bacon pie out of my head.  The rain came down, the fog closed in, the tiny hole in the roof that we think we´ve fixed each year started its relentless drip, drip, dripping.  It was time to make that pie.

I´d bought two old fashioned pudding basins in a junk an antique shop in Lewes, a beautiful town where a friend of mine is hoping to move.  As I´d managed to get them home without breaking them, I needed to road test them.

Making a pie is a straightforward business if you´re using ready made puff pastry – which was the case for me. If you´re making your own pastry (flaky or shortcrust), it´s not all that much extra work, just a little waiting time while it rests in the fridge.

To make two hearty pies I used

  • 2 small chicken breasts, cubed
  • About 4 slices of thick cut bacon, cut into small cubes (or use lardons or pancetta)
  • 6 mushrooms thinly sliced
  • 2 cups of chicken broth (or you can use a mixture of milk and water)
  • 3 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 4 tablespoons of flour
  • Seasoning
  • Puff pastry
  • One beaten egg

Put the chicken into the flour which you will have seasoned and toss it around.  Heat the oil in a deep frying pan remove the chicken from the flour and seal it.  Don´t throw the flour left in the bowl away.  Now add the bacon and mushrooms and cook on a medium heat until the mushrooms have softened.

Add the remaining flour to the pan and stir with a wooden spoon to slightly cook the flour and then gradually add the stock whilst stirring to prevent lumps forming.  Once the liquid has all been added, turn up the heat and let it bubble gently until it reaches the consistency of pouring custard.

Put the mixture into a pie dish or small oven proof dishes if you want to do individual portions. Lay the puff pastry over the top, trim if necessary and cut a couple of small slits in the top to let the steam escape. Brush with the beaten egg and bake in a medium over (about 180º C) for about 25 mins or until the pastry is golden brown and risen.

Delicious served with baked or mashed potatoes and vegetables.  I made runner beans in garlic and tomato, we drank wine and watched the rain dripping down the windows.  Big Man voted the pie a big hit, and now wants to know if I can make him a beef one. I think we can safely say that we have another pie eating convert in the family.

For an idea of what to do with any leftover puff pastry, check out this tasty recipe.

Autumn Quince and Apple Crumble

Chica Andaluza32 Comments

You have probably noticed that there are not so many dessert recipes on my blog. There are several reasons for this.  First of all, I don´t really have a sweet tooth, and as I´m the cook in this house, if you want sweet, there´s always chocolate in the larder!  Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Big Man and I do need to be a bit sensible about the calories – so dessert is a special treat for us rather than an everyday occurrence.  Finally, Spain doesn´t really have a culture of home made desserts.  Yes, we have our Flan (Crême Caramel), Arroz con Leche (Rice Pudding) and Natillas (Cold Custard) but mostly it´s a piece of fruit to finish the meal. As we are able to get hold of such delicious seasonal fruit, that´s mainly what we eat and enjoy.

Having said that, quince are now in season, and we´ve made our annual supply of Quince Jelly or Carne de Membrillo. Our kindly neighbour is still providing us with a couple of quince (or is that quinces?) as the last few ripen and a nearby village has some delicious sweet, crunchy apples…which make a lovely change from the usual inspid, spongey monsters that are typically available to us.

Sunday lunch recently, after a hard morning´s work on the house and garden, most definitely warranted a delicious dessert and I must have been feeling nostalgic for England.  I decided to make a delicious autumnal crumble with quince and apple and to serve it with hot creamy custard.

Ingredients

  • 1 large quince peeled and chopped (or one large sour cooking apple)
  • ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
  • 2 tablespoons of honey and 1 tablespoon of water

Put the above ingredients into a saucepan with a lid and simmer until soft and all the liquid has evaporated

Peel and slice two large apples and stir into the cooked quince and sprinkle over 1 teaspoon of mixed spice.  If you like your desserts sweet, add brown sugar to taste.

For the crumble

  • One cup of plain flour, half a cup of oats, 100g grams of grated chilled butter and half a cup of brown sugar.

Put all the above ingredients into a food processor and blitz for a few seconds until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. You can also do this by hand.

Put the fruit mixture into a pie dish, cover with the crumble topping and bake on high for about 30-40 minutes until slightly browned on top.  Some of the fruit mixture is likely to bubble out and caramelize, so I recommend putting your pie dish onto a baking tray lined with foil.

Serve with custard and fight your nearest and dearest for the crispy caramelized bits.  Serves four.  ¡Buen provecho!

Gardens and Puff Pastry with a Side Order of Steak and Chips

Chica Andaluza41 Comments
Bushy Garden Oct 2011

It´s that time of year here when you need to “put the garden to bed”.  Before you tuck it in for the winter, you can hack back the summer growth and give it a little room to breathe.

The interent and phone were down most of Sunday and all day Monday.  Frustrating but being “incomunicado” forces you to get up off your nether region and do something!  Gardening was the answer.

After a morning of hard work in the garden, we needed something to reward ourselves with – what better than steak and chips?  Steak is a rare treat for us, so we tend not to mess around with it too much.  A little massage with olive oil and seasoning, and onto the grill pan.  Chunky potatoes cooked in olive oil, and a little English mustard mixed with mayonnaise do it for me.

I had some leftovers from making my Chicken, Mushroom and Bacon Pie (recipe to follow another day) , so decided to make an easy dish to go with the steak and chips.

I cut what remained of the puff pastry into two rectangles and lightly cut (but not all the way through) another rectangle about one cm inside the outer edges of the pastry.  I brushed the pastry with milk and baked at 200ºC for about 15 minutes until puffed up and golden. When the pastry had cooled down I pushed in the middle section of the rectangle to leave a hollow space.

Save on the washing up and have a starter and main on the same plate

With very little oil I fried 4 thinly sliced mushrooms with 2 crushed cloves of garlic until soft then added 2 heaped tablespoons of chopped bacon.  I then added 1 heaped tablespoon of plan flour and stirred until it was cooked through.  I gradually added splashes of milk (about 5 or 6 in total), stirring all the time until I had a thick sauce and then filled the pastry cases with this.  I put them back into the oven on a low heat until I was ready to dish up the rest of the meal.

Bald Garden Nov 2011

A lovely glass of El Coto Rioja went down well with this and we sat outside for 15 minutes in the last of the afternoon´s sunshine admiring out work and drinking a good strong coffee.  It was a good day.

DVD Night Empanada

Chica Andaluza37 Comments

Back from our surprise mini break, the fridge was pretty bare and we needed a quiet night in to recover from living life in the fast lane with the oldies! It was a tough job to keep up with them…we needed a night on the sofa to recharge the batteries.

If you´ve ever spent time in Spain, you´ll probably realise that tv here is generally not all that much to be reckoned with. There is one programme called Cuéntame Cómo Pasó which I love.  It´s a well observed period drama which has won loads of awards and has been going on for years.  It documents the social changes in Spain particularly during the Franco regime and the collapse of it.

There are also some good UK and US series which are shown, although often quite badly dubbed.  They tend to use females with silly voices to play the parts of children, which is most bizarre.  And of course we have plenty of football, tennis and sports coverage as well as pretty good news coverage.

That said, summer tv scheduling is, as in most countries, pretty dire.  Well, who wants to be stuck inside watching tv when they could be out dancing at a fiesta?  Sometimes though you just want to slump in from of the “tele” and disengage the brain for a couple of hours.  Time for a DVD.

Inspired by some of the delicious Empanadas we ate on our recent trip, I decided I´d make a large one to see us through the DVD.  Kitchen skills for this dish were fairly minimal relying on two sheets of defrosted puff pastry and a quarter of a kilo of minced pork. A traditional Empanada from Galicia is more typically made though with a light bread dough, so apologies for the shortcut.

I sautéed the pork with a chopped onion and two cloves of crushed garlic. Then I added half a cup of tomato sauce and one chopped grilled red pepper, some sliced mushrooms and a few chopped capers (which I´m having a bit of a love affair with at the moment).  You can use whatever you have to hand and you fancy. Don´t let it dry out, you want it a little “saucy”.

To assemble the dish lay one sheet of puff pastry on a baking tray and turn the edges up slightly all the way round to form a lip.  Fill with the cooked meat mixture and spread it around evenly.  Put the other sheet of pastry on top and pinch the edges together.  Prick it all over with a fork and brush with beaten egg.  Bake in a medium oven for about 25 minutes until the pastry is golden.

We ate it with a tomato, onion and basil salad and long cold glasses of tinto de verano.  That´s red wine mixed with casera which is a sort of not very sweet lemonade.  I know, it sounds odd but believe me when it´s a warm evening and you need to drink lots it´s a great refresher with not too much alcohol and lots of ice cubes.

And what did we watch? Well, a very foody film which I thought was going to be in Spanish but we only realised about 20 minutes into the film that we were actually watching (and both fully understanding!) in Italian.  It´s one of my favourites, Big Night, with Stanley Tucci.  Watch this short clip if you have time.  I bet we´ll all be making Timpano soon – I know I´ve already spoken to my mum to find out our family recipe.  We call it Timballo though, but it´s the same thing.

For a fantastic version of this amazing dish, hop over to Ambrosiana´s recipe here.

Copy Cat, Copy Cat – Doggy Treats and Scones for the Big People

Chica Andaluza41 Comments

Me that is…I´m the Copy Cat!  I´ve been picking up lots of fantastic recipes over the last few months via all the blogs that I am following, many of which I have promised myself I would cook once the temperatures started to drop and I could bear to put the oven on.

Well, yesterday the storm clouds gathered and at one point we had thunder and pouring rain.  It was dark and gloomy – perfect baking weather. Added to this was my technical nightmare with WordPress, but thanks to all you lovely people out there I eventually got things sorted and am able to post again.  It was lovely to have so much support – it´s a funny old thing isn´t it that people you don´t really “know” and will probably never meet face to face care enough to step in and offer help.  Made me feel very warm and good, so thank you again.

Anyway, back to the kitchen.  I have seen a few great recipes for dog biscuits recently and I asked myself “why the heck am I forking out for rubbishy treats for my beloved pooches, when the rest of the food they eat is healthy?”.  So, recipe number one comes from Greg and Katherine over at Rufus´Food and Spirits Guide, or more precisely their faithful hounds Mingus and Coltrane, who are probably nearly as good in the kitchen as their master and mistress.

That´s a lot of doggy happiness on one tray

Mingus and Coltrane, Luna and Alfi salute you.  It was hard to get pics of them eating the biscuits as they were gone too quickly and Luna, for some reason is camera shy!

Anyway, here are a few photos so that any dog lovers out there can say “aah” and chuckle again at Alfi´s new haircut.

The second Copy Cat experiment today was with scones.  Well, I did have the oven on.  I love scones but have never had too much luck baking them. Either they turn out really hard and I tell people that they were MEANT to be rock cakes, or they rise too much and are far too dry and crumbly.

Well, my scone woes are over thank to Cecilia at thekitchensgarden and this is the recipe that changed my scone baking forever.   God I love that woman and her family recipes.

Super Size Me

The only problem is that it was a long, long afternoon.

The butter was cold, I couldn´t spread it any thinner...honestly!

And I had so many jams to try.

Cherry or apricot? Oh go on...have both!

Well, I had to just check a few of them out to make sure that the first Super Scone of my life wasn´t a fluke.  It wasn´t.

PS. I did quite seriously debate with myself about not telling Big Man there were scones left and offering him a delicious “peanut butter cookie”.  But I didn´t.  You see, not such a greedy guts after all!

Roasted Tomato Tart with Chard and Home Made Curd Cheese

Chica Andaluza51 Comments
Beware the Giant Fork!

The great thing about writing a blog and reading other blogs is that inspiration comes from all around you.  Not so long ago I got into a dialogue with ChgoJohn over at From The Bartolini Kitchens about cheese.  He makes all sorts of cheeses and has posted a fantastic recipe for ricotta.  It reminded me that I hadn´t done this for quite some time, although my version doesn´t use cream.  Unfortunately we just can´t get anything other than UHT whipping cream or a chemical mix which masquerades as single or cooking cream here.  A shame, but that´s how it is.

A freezer clear out to make room for all my lovely beans that are growing, rewarded me with a packet of filo pastry.  Time to get making something tasty.

Here´s how I made my curd cheese.

Bring one litre of milk (I used semi skimmed) almost to the boil (when little bubbles start to appear round the edges).

Bubbly milk

Turn off the heat then add citric acid, lemon juice or white wine vinegar (about 2 – 3 tablespoons but add it gradually) whilst stirring with a wooden spoon.  Once curds start to form, put a lid on the pot and leave to stand for about 10 minutes.

Beautiful Curds

Drain and leave for a few hours or overnight. 

The Waiting Game

Stir in salt to taste and you´re done! Don´t forget to save that whey for making soda bread.

Lovely Curd Cheese

To make the tart I lined a loose bottomed tart tin with four sheets of filo which I brushed with olive oil (but you could also use butter).

I put in a layer of chopped, wilted chard (with all the water squeezed out) which I had mixed with two beaten eggs, 3 tablespoons of grated parmesan and seasoning. You could substitute the chard with spinach or beets.

 Then I added a layer of curd cheese and then a layer of halved roasted tomatoes.  You could also use thinly sliced raw tomatoes.  Finally I folded over the filo sheets and added two more to the top, brushed the whole thing with a little more oil and baked for 30 minutes at 180ºC.

Lots of flaky, crispy crumbs!

It was delicious warm, but just as tasty (although not quite so crunchy) cold the next day.

100th Post – Banana Bread

Chica Andaluza57 Comments
One slice or two?

Well, I really can´t believe it, but WordPress tells me that this is my 100th post.  I still get a buzz from writing and posting, but equally I love to receive comments, to know that new friends “out there” are interested in what I have to say.  I love that I have “met” so many interesting people with amazing blogs about all the things that interest me, the way we share tips and ideas, encourage each other to try new things and share little glimpses of our lives with each other.  Thank you!  You´re all invited over for coffee and cake…

I´m not a huge banana fan.  I know they´re good for me and I sometimes force a really unripe one down before I go to the gym, and I don´t mind them in Banoffee Pie.  But when they start to ripen even just a little bit, the smell really turns me off.  Bizarrely I adore Banana Bread, so I have to overcome my feelings for overripe bananas and just get on with it.

When I first told Big Man (who is a huge banana fan but often responsible for forgetting to eat them and then leaving me with stinky overripe ones) I was making banana bread I got a very puzzled frown from him.  Maybe it´s because I translated it literally to him as “Pan de Platano”… I´m not quite sure what he was expecting, but he´s now hooked and even brags about what a great delicacy it is to those poor unfortunates not in the know.

I may need to bake a few more...

My recipe is on a scrappy piece of paper which is covered in grease and crumbs so I don´t know who to credit.  I think it was one of those recipes passed from friend to friend with alterations on the way.  It´s a recipe that always works for me, so without further ado, here it is.

Ingredients

½ cup of sultanas soaked in dark rum (or strong black tea) I usually heat this and let it cool while I make the cake

1 cup + 2 tablespoons of self raising flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup oil (I use olive oil)

½ cup sugar

2 large eggs

4 small ripe bananas mashed

¼ cup chopped nuts (I use almonds or walnuts)

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Heat the oven to 180ºC and line either a large loaf tin or two small ones with greaseproof paper.  Beat the oil and sugar together then beat in the eggs. Add banana, nuts, sultanas and vanilla and stir then gradually stir in the flour. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour (large tin) or about 45 mins (smaller tins).

And if you are a member of the Banana Fan Club, check out The Food Doctor´s incredible posts at Chef In Disguise which give some amazing ideas for using up those pesky little yellow fruits here, here and here.  And thank you to Sawsan, alias Chef in Disguise for very kindly passing on the Blog On Fire Award to me recently.  Honestly, this could all go to my head!

Up The Mountain Soda Bread

Chica Andaluza46 Comments
Time to get the butter out of the fridge...

When Big Man and I went to Dublin at the end of last year, one of the things we really enjoyed eating was Soda Bread.  It´s a staple they serve with bowls of fish soup (and lots of other things too), it really filled you up on what was a very wet and windy November weekend.

This morning, bread man let me down, but I didn´t mind too much as I had been looking for a reason to use up the whey (or maybe it´s called something else) which came off the yogurt and cream cheese I had made the day before.

I turned to the BBC Good Food Website for a recipe.  I like this site because people like you and me cook the recipes and then give their feedback about what worked and what didn´t.  They´re usually pretty reliable recipes too, and the first one that popped up had 5 stars, so I thought I´d give it a go.

Ingredients called for were:

250g plain flour

250g whole meal flour

100g oats

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

25g butter

500 ml of buttermilk

I substituted my whey for the buttermilk and found that I only needed about 400ml, so add your liquid gradually – much will depend on the absorbency of your flour.

Heat the oven to 180ºC and flour a flat baking tray. Mix the dry ingredients together and then gradually add the liquid until you have a soft and not too wet dough.

Shape it into a round and put in the baking tray then cut a cross in the top. Supposedly this is to let the fairies out (so sweet) but actually helps rising.  And leaves you with lots of little good spirits flying round your kitchen of course!

All the fairies have been let out...

Bake for about 30-35 minutes until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped then leave to cool on a baking tray.  I confess, I love this smothered in creamy butter (I don´t eat it very often here, so I feel justified) but it´s just as delicious on its own.

When we were in Ireland, we were also told that if you see a lone tree in the middle of a field, it´s very magical, a fairy tree and brings good fortune.  If I stand on my roof terrace and look across to the field next to our house, we have a fairy tree all our own…so here´s a snap of it.  Am surrounded by the little people today it seems!

Away with the fairies today....!

Almost Tomato Tarte Tatin

Chica Andaluza43 Comments
Make it a big slice for me please!

Yes, tomatoes are now officially ripening at a rapid speed in our Huerto, and apart from drying and preserving, we are eating them too!

If you head over to Cook, Eat, Live Vegetarian you´ll find a wonderful tomato and quinoa recipe which shows you how to slow roast the delicious summer tomatoes we have in Andalucía at the moment.  The other night we were heading out for dinner, so on the way out I popped a couple of trays of tomatoes into the oven set at the lowest temperature, and when we got back about four and a half hours later I had perfect roasted tomatoes.  The house smelt wonderful too!

The next morning I braved the heat of the oven and decided to make a tomato tart.  You can also find another wonderful version over here at Sweet Pea´s Kitchen made with Heirloom Tomatoes.

I put greaseproof paper at the base of a loose bottomed tart tin (that always makes me giggle, it sounds a bit saucy!) and put the tomatoes in, cut side down.

Then I mixed 200 grams of my garlic and herb cream cheese with one egg and spread this over the tomatoes.  Finally I covered the whole thing with a sheet of puff pastry and tucked all the edges in.

I cooked it at 180ºC for about 50 minutes, left it to cool slightly in the tin for 10 minutes then turned it out on a plate.  You get a few lovely juices dripping out and it´s best served at room temperature.

Breakfast On The Beach

Chica Andaluza34 Comments
Better than a Breakast Bap!

Big Man and I decided that we would have a little day away from mountain and head down to the beach.  We would go for lunch in a local restaurant we know near the spot we like, but decided to have breakfast on the beach.

For once, we were organised, and made this plan the night before, so I decided to prepare something ready for the morning.

I defrosted a sheet of puff pastry and folded the edges over to create a little rim.  I baked this in a hot oven for about 10 minutes until it was just starting to turn brown.

For a filling I beat two of our free range eggs with two tablespoon of milk, seasoning and a cup full of chopped wilted chard (just the green part) with the excess water squeezed out.

I poured this into the pastry “case” and baked for another 10 minutes or so until it was set.  It looked lovely when it came out of the oven, but I didn´t take the snap until the next morning when it looked a little less crusty and flaky.  Nonetheless, it was delicious cold and we didn´t even get any sand in it!

PS. Bet you´re glad I spared you a photo of us eating it on the beach…