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…
Well, summer is finally here and with it comes gorgeous red and juicy tomatoes. Soon we´ll have so many it will be time to set some by for the months when tomatoes are sadder and greener.
One of the ways I like to store tomatoes is by sun drying them. Of course, if you live in a country that has less sun, or it´s winter right now, you can use your oven instead. I have never dried tomatoes this way but understand that as long as you wedge the oven door open slightly with a skewer or similar, then they´ll dry out nicely rather than steam.
This is the way that I do it, it does take a little time but I like to think that the final taste includes a little warmth of the Andalucían sun.
Wash and dry your ripe but not squashy tomatoes – this time I had plum tomatoes (also known as Roma or Pear tomatoes in Spain).
Big Man chose well...
Cut into halves and then sixths or eights (or smaller depending on the size of your tomatoes). Don´t remove the centre core or seeds.
and cut!
Lay them out on a large tray lined with kitchen paper and sprinkle them fairly heavily with salt. The salt will help to draw the liquid out of the tomatoes and they won´t taste super salty, I promise. Use coarse salt (or kosher salt) if you can.
Now leave them in a sunny but sheltered spot. If there is risk of wind or flies, cover them with a muslin cloth or net and take them in at night if you have humidity.
This batch took just over 48 hours.
After one hour of sunshine
After one hour
Sunbathing without protection...naughty!
After four hours
Day two...
Next day
A Blustery Day Three
Final day (after a windy morning!)
When they´re as dry as you want them (you may decide to leave them a little “juicy” for sun blush tomatoes) you are ready to put them in a sterilised jar (or canning them).
Sterilise your jar in the dishwasher or give them a good wash in very hot water then dry them out in a low oven for about 10-15 minutes.
Now pack your tomatoes into a warm jar. Can you believe nearly 3kg of tomatoes fit into this jar?
Pack ´em in!
You can layer with basil, thyme or oregano if you want.
The you will fill the jar with olive oil. I know it seems like an awful lot of oil, but in a few months time when you´ve eaten the last of the tomatoes in that jar you can use the oil for salads, drizzling over pizza, making pasta sauce….
As a final security measure, I put my jar into a deep pot of simmering water so that it´s almost covered and leave it in there for about 10 minutes. This will ensure a good seal and that your tomatoes run no risk of fermenting.
Now, what will you do with your sun dried tomatoes? Maybe some canapés, or crostini, or chop them up in a salad or sauce, or maybe serve them with a little flaked fresh parmesan and olives….the choice is yours!
I adore aubergines, so when my first two aubergines were ripe for picking, I decided to treat them with the love that they deserved.
My two little purple beauties
It was a very simple dish, especially if you already have some tomato sauce made. If not, fry up a little garlic, add some chopped tomatoes, a slug of red wine and some basil then season and simmer.
I sliced my aubergines (eggplant) and grilled them on the barbecue until smoky and tender. Then I put them on an oven tray and layered them with pesto, cheese, tomato sauce and basil leaves.
Then I popped it all into a hot oven for about 10 minutes until the cheese had softened (it was a very hard goat´s cheese, so it didn´t really melt!).
Finally I drizzled some basil oil over, poured myself a glass of rosé and sat back to pay homage to my first little purple beauties of the summer.
I can´t believe that I´ve been picking veggies and not bragging about it!
Today we finally picked our first red tomatoes…hurrah! We were late planting, but now that they´ve kicked in, there will be no stopping us for quite a few months now. Am planning salads, sauces, sun dried tomatoes and goodness knows what else. My plum tomatoes (or roma) are getting huge, but still frustratingly refuse to turn red.
Please do the decent thing and turn red soon!
We planted 18 runner bean plants this year (as opposed to the totally ridiculous 60 last year) and have been picking them almost daily for about 3 weeks now. We´ve still got a way to go with them, but thanks to my nifty runner bean slicer, we´re enjoying beans and freezing them too for later.
The aubergines are ripening and I´ve started to pick them quite small. Later I´ll leave them to get a little larger, but I couldn´t hold back.
Our long thin green peppers which are great for gazpacho are now being picked every couple of days. They´re also wonderful deep fried (stuffed or not) in olive oil and just sprinkled with salt. Our bell peppers are growing well, but need some more time to get bigger and then red.
The dwarf beans we planted a couple of weeks ago are all in flower, so it won´t be long now until they´re producing little bobby beans for us. I´m quite excited as I´ve planted two varieties, one green and one yellow. I´m sure they´ll taste pretty much the same but they´ll look extra pretty!
Our little bobby beans...
Our Spanish radishes, which are long as opposed to round, are doing great. We pick a couple each day and they have a good bite to them. We´ll probably plant a few more as they come up from seed so quickly.
And our little Spanish cucumbers are doing well. We grew them from seeds from a cucumber we saved last year. The cucumber had come from plants that our neighbour Diego gave us from seeds of his own – so these are several generations old. It´s good to have a little bit of history in the garden!
Our chard flourishes, I keep giving bunches of it away, but will do something this week with it for us. And our celery is slowly but surely getting bigger.
Very Happy Chard
We have other things going on in the vegetable patch, and I´ll take some pics as the become ready. I do have to mention our little vines. Big Man is very rightly proud of our muscat grapes which are now trained over the kitchen window. They look amazing, we had to remove some as we had so many bunches but they would never have all ripened. Am looking forward to grapes in September and drying some for Christmas too.
Gorgeous Grapes
I love summer…but I´m off to water the garden soon as it´s very hot here during the day and the plants are thirsty. ¡Hasta luego!
When my pals came over from the UK recently they came bearing gifts, just like the wise men. One package was from my lovely mother and she had made up Za´atar and Dukkah for me. What a lovely mum I have! We can´t get them or all the ingredients to make them up here. At least, I can´t seem to track them down, and it´s always lovely to have a gift like this as every time you use it, you think of the person who gave it to you.
We had a very small shoulder of goat in the freezer (enough for two hungry people or two regular appetites with enough left over for sandwiches) and I thought I´d do it on the barbecue.
It was very easy to pull together and quick to cook. I made a package with a double layer of foil to put the meat in the seasoned the meat with salt before sprinkling over and rubbing in the Za´atar.
Give it a little massage...
I wrapped it up and put it onto the barbecue at a low heat for about 40 minutes and that was it.
Oh go on then....just one more slice!
We ate it with lemon juice squeezed over, a big salad and some cold runner beans from the garden dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. Oh, and a glass of wine of course!
I love Indian food. If I had to choose a favourite cuisine, I think Indian would be it. We do have a few Indian restaurants not too far away from us (i.e. about half an hour´s drive) but I usually get my curry fix when I go to London. I was lucky enough to live in a neighbourhood that was predominantly Indian and African, so I was spoilt for choice in wonderful ethnic restaurants.
Sometimes, however, my cravings get the better of me and I have to make curry at home. Big Man hasn´t ever really “had” the full curry experience, so doesn´t really understand my need for curry, but on the occasions I´ve made something “currified”, he´s enjoyed it.
We currently have a lot of chard growing and usually eat it wilted with oil and lemon juice but I decided to substitute the spinach in a Saag Aloo (that´s a Spinach and Potato curry) for chard, and see how it worked. Fortunately it was a perfect substitution and Big Man adored it. I think he´s starting to become a curry monster like me!
Freshly picked but not yet cleaned
I lay no claims to the authenticity of the spices I use in relation to a real Indian Saag Aloo, but the combination worked well and had good spicy (but not too hot) flavour.
Ingredients used:
Smells wonderful even before cooking
3 teaspoons of Garam Masala mix (you can buy ready made or make your own). I used a mix bought over by a friend which a chef friend of hers makes up and I then grind as I need it. I don´t know the exact mix but I picked out coriander seeds, curry leaves, cumin seeds, black peppercorns, cinnamon and coriander.
1 or 2 teaspoons of hot chili powder (or use mild) according to taste
1 teaspoon of ground turmeric
Half a teaspoon of mustard seeds
Two medium potatoes (mine were ready cooked as it´s what I had in the fridge but you can use raw) cubed
About 3 cups of uncooked (or just wilted in its own steam), chopped spinach or chard, otherwise you can use frozen
About half a cup of chopped tomatoes
3 cloves of crushed garlic
Oil for frying (something with little flavour, not olive oil)
Salt
Lemon
Start by frying the potatoes until lightly browned then remove them from the pan and drain off most of the oil.
Fry your potatoes
Fry the spices until they start to release the most wonderful smells and then add the garlic and fry until it softens.
Breathe deeply and enjoy the wonderful spicy scents
Add the tomatoes and simmer for about 5 minutes then add your spinach or chard.
Add your spinach or chard to the tomato
Put a lid on the pan and simmer for another 5 minutes or so then add the potatoes.
Add salt, Indian food can take (and usually needs) a heavy hand with the salt, but use low sodium if you can´t use regular.
Simmer, uncovered until most of the liquid has evaporated but all of the vegetables are coated in the tomato and spice sauce.
I like this served with a generous squeeze of lemon juice.
Can be served as a side dish or a main (vegetarian) dish with plain boiled basmati rice. Now, where are my popadoms?!
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!
Over at Lavender and Lime, Tandy has set a Weekly Food Challenge to cook using citrus fruits. Anyone who pops over to my blog regularly will probably have noticed that I use a lot of oranges in my cooking, particularly salads, so I felt inspired to take part in my first ever challenge!
I´m not sure if you´re allowed to submit two recipes, but I recently put up a post for one of my very favourite salads, Ensalada Cateta, so I´m putting that one forward too!
However, I also thought I´d like to try something different and as I´m in jam making mode this week, I had a little play around with ingredients. After the visit from my friends from the UK last week I had a few limes left over from a Mojito session, so I took it from there.
I love pears, but tend to either eat them as they are, or with cheese, or poached in wine. How about trying a chunky, spicy preserve instead? I could eat it on bread or toast, or serve it, almost like a soft quince jelly with cheese or, finally, as a sweet option drizzled over creamy vanilla ice cream.
In the end I decided to marry the pears with lime juice and fresh ginger, and I have to say I was thrilled with the results. Just a hint of the tang of lime and the warmth of the ginger combined with the fresh taste of the pears. Pears contain a lot of water so I cooked the preserve for about half an hour for the quantities given below on a gentle boil. The final result left me with soft pear chunks which still held their shape and a jelly like syrup.
I used the following:
500g of pears (peeled weight) chopped into small chunks
250g sugar
A piece of fresh ginger (about 3cm in length) peeled and grated
The juice of two limes
For the method I used, please see either my Ruby Jewel Jam recipe or my Summer Cherry Jam recipe. This quantity gave me two medium jars of preserve. I do hope you enjoy it, it has an almost autumnal taste to it – I think it must be the ginger!
Being the sort of girl who needs no excuse to raise a glass, here´s a big “Cheers” to all my new blogging pals celebrating the 4th July. Hope it´s a great day for you all.
As you know, it´s cherry season here up the mountain and after stoning far too many kilos for jam making, I decided to ring the changes and make something gorgeous for the cooler months. I came across a wonderful recipe over on Olive and Artichokes for a cherry liqueur they have made with Eau de Vie. We can´t get that here, at least, I´ve never come across it…but I didn´t let this stand in my way!
I bought a bottle of Spanish Brandy, not one of the rough ones might I add, and got my sugar, cherries and bottles ready.
Not many ingredients...
I followed the instructions given in the recipe, that is layering cherries and sugar and then filling the containers with liqueur.
Get Layering...
Hopefully in a few months time I´ll have a delicious cherry flavoured brandy and some brandy flavoured cherries. Can´t wait!
Fill....and wait!
Just over three weeks ago I started to make some alcoholic ginger beer. If you want to give it a go, you´ll find the recipe here.
It´s very simple, all you need is a sachet of yeast, a jar of powdered ginger, sugar and a jar or jug you can loosely cover.
This is what you´ll need
After a week of adding yeast and sugar to your initial mixture (see the recipe) you´ll add water, lemon juice and more sugar to make about 7 litres of ginger flavoured drink.
Get Squeeeeeezing...
You need to leave some space in your plastic bottles for expansion, so only fill them about three quarters and then squeeze some of the air out before sealing them. If you don´t do this you´ll have exploding ginger beer all over the place and it´s very sticky. I know this from experience!
Not long to wait now!
Once you´ve been patient you will be rewarded with gorgeous sparkling, lemony, gingery Ginger Beer. I don´t know exactly how alcoholic it is, although it does get stronger the longer you leave it. After about 3 months it starts to taste acidic, but I don´t suppose you´ll have it for that long as it´s delicious. And if you can´t wait 3 weeks, wait a week and mix it up with soda or water for a refreshing, non alcoholic drink.
Yes, it´s back to jam again today. You may, or may not, recall that a nearby village is famed for its cherries. We had a very, very long and wet winter which meant that a lot of the blossom this year was lost from the cherry trees. Such a shame for those whose livelihoods depends greatly on selling their crop, a shame for the cherry fiesta which is coming up next weekend, and a shame for all the customers who were hoping for a bumper crop.
We were very lucky in that a friend gave us a kilo the other day. We tried a few and they were delicious, but I wanted to make my first cherries into jam, to capture a special moment at the start of summer. Cherries are quite hard to get to set (at least, these were!), so in this jam I used a sachet of pectin powder, the setting agent which occurs naturally in some fruit like apples and citrus fruits. If you can´t get hold of it (or the liquid pectin) don´t worry, a little grated apple or the pith of a lemon plus a few minutes extra boiling should do the trick.
After pitting the cherries (that´s a messy job!) I ended up with 600g of fruit to which I added 400g of sugar and the juice of 2 lemons. Feel free to vary these quantities a little if you like your jam less tart and more sugary.
As with most recipes for jam, start it off at a low temperature until the sugar has dissolved. This is when I added the pectin powder and then turned the heat up and got it bubbling
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Keep it bubbling away for about 10 minutes. Don´t get distracted or walk away! If you have a jam thermometer, do use it, it saves having to reboil the jam later if it doesn´t set. Otherwise you can drop a spoonful of jam onto a saucer which you have previously placed in the freezer. When the jam cools on the saucer you push it slightly – if it wrinkles, it´s at setting point. If not, boil a little longer then repeat.
Leave the jam to cool down a little for 5-10 minutes so that when you pour it into still warm, sterilized jars (I run mine through the dishwasher to do this), the fruit will not float to the top.
Seal the jars while they are still hot and this will keep for at least a year. It´s delicious on bread but also fantastic on ice cream, especially if you warm it a little first.
Sorry, I only took a photo of it in the jars, and they are already earmarked to wing their way back to the UK with my friends! Luckily Big Man came home with several cartons of cherries this morning, so tomorrow I´ll be busy stoning cherries again for the next batch.
So in 2016 I turned 50. I was in Italy for my 21st, 30th and 40th. To keep this birthday tradition going I always knew I'd be in Italy for my 50! This blog starts with my 5 week adventure in Puglia but my love affair with Italy continues.....
Chica Andaluza 