This so very nearly wasn´t a recipe. I treated us to two Dressed Crabs which we had planned to eat with a crispy salad and some beautiful new potatoes dripping with butter.
In my flustered and tired state I left them in the fridge in the house we are renovating and we got home to face an entirely different supper. I rescued the crabs the next day, but as they weren´t as super fresh as on the day they had been dressed, I decided to turn them into a luxurious soup. This wasn´t really Cooking Under Fire either as I used my parents´ kitchen in their holiday home, but I did still have to rummage around to find the Brandy…so there was some small element of hardship involved in the process…
Serves 2 as a hearty main course or 4-6 as a starter
2 dressed crabs (white and dark meat)
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into small chunks
2 tablespoons of brandy
About 150ml of single cream
1 bay leaf
1 dried chili
Half an onion
A thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and cut into 2 or 3 pieces
Water
Remove the meat from the crab shells and reserve. Break up the shells a little with a rolling pin and put into a saucepan then cover with about 1 litre of water. Add the onion, ginger, bay leaf and dried chili. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 10 mins, drain and reserve the stock.
Add the crab meat and potato to the stock and simmer (uncovered) until the potatoes are tender and the stock has reduced a little. Stir in the cream and brandy, taste and season with salt if necessary and pepper (I used white pepper). Mash the mixture gently so that the soup thickens but there are still chunks of crab meat and potatoes. If you prefer a smoother, silky texture, blitz in the blender or with an immersion blender stick. Warm through gently before serving and remind yourself that sometimes being forgetful can be a good thing.
Yes, it´s that runner bean time of year here Up the Mountain. We´re picking them daily, freezing some, giving some away and of course, eating plenty.
This was a light supper dish that was quickly pulled together as I had already blanched the beans and had some cooked potatoes in the fridge (a staple in our house for potato based salads) and some cooked prawns. If you don´t have these ready though, it´s not the work of hours to blanch some beans and boil some potatoes before throwing in raw prawns to cook through at the end.
Ingredients (Serves 2 as a light meal)
About 500g of sliced, blanched runner beans
2 medium cooked and peeled potatoes, cut into small chunks
About a cup of cooked, peeled prawns
1 teaspoon of grated fresh ginger
2 fat cloves of crushed garlic
½ teaspoon of ground cumin
½-1 teaspoon of hot or sweet pimentón (or chili powder)
Olive (or vegetable) oil
Salt
Into a deep, heavy frying pan pour a few tablespoons of oil for frying and quickly fry the potatoes until they start to brown over a high heat. Reduce the heat to low and add the ginger, garlic, cumin and pimentón and fry gently until the garlic and ginger have softened. Now add the beans and continue to fry gently until they have cooked through. Add the prawns (I chopped mine as they were quite large) and taste. Add salt if necessary. This would be great with some finely chopped coriander but I didn´t have any. Serve hot with crusty bread or try this beautiful recipe for pita bread from Tandy over at Lavender and Lime.
Finally, I thought it was about time I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) for this classic recipe. I went to a local expert, he´s called “Chef Colorin” and he makes the paellas for all the local fiestas. Be warned, there are LOADS of photos in this post, but I hope you enjoy seeing the process.
Of course, he wasn´t going to just sit down with me over a glass of wine and give me the recipe. Much better than that, I was going to join in with the cooking. Fantastic, I thought, how many are we cooking for then Chef? Oh, not too many he told me, only 420 on Sunday. Get there about 11am he said, and we´ll show you the ropes.
Not one to balk at such a challenge, and I even wore the exceedingly unflattering hat (yes, I´ll show you the photos). It was one of the hottest and windiest days we´ve had for a while, so we couldn´t even put a shelter up for shade. Hey ho, the show must go on, and of course, it did.
We used 3 Paella pans which make 140 portions each. Feel free to adapt for smaller groups! The ingredients below are per 140 person pan.
Start with your base stock which is made in large 50 litre pots, sheltered from the wind today with a clever little device which goes round the base of the gas ring.
Into each pot goes 800g of stock cubes to 50 litres of water (at home, you´d probably use home made chicken or fish stock), 5 bay leaves, 2 tablespoons of sweet pimentón, 200cl of dry white wine, 500g each of chopped peppers and garlic, 1kg of monkfish, assorted fish bones, 400g of chopped tomato and 4 kilos of prawns with their shells on. Bring to the boil then simmer for about 20 minutes or so. Chef added 14 sachets of paella food colouring to the mix but at home we´d use saffron or turmeric.
Strain out the prawns, fish etc.
Then, wearing your glamorous outfit, count out 280 prawns (that´s so that everyone gets at least 2 each) and pull any meaty bits of fish off the bones. First come, first served on any extra prawns!
Lookin´good Chica, and rockin´that mesh hat look!
Is your fire ready to cook? I hope so, we´re going to begin.
Heat 3 litres of olive oil in your pan and add 8 kilos of chopped pork and season with salt to taste. Fry gently for a few minutes.
Now add a couple of heaped tablespoons of sweet pimentón.
Next comes a kilo each of red and green peppers and 250g of chopped garlic. Don´t forget the seafood – 2 kilos of chopped squid.
Stir gently while making silly faces.
Big Man has a go wearing the “Sherry Server” hat from Jerez!
Time to add 4 kilos of chopped tomatoes and a kilo of sliced roasted peppers.
Open the bags of rice carefully – 14kg for 140 people, which translates to 100g per person at home.
Such concentration – I take my work very seriously!
Add to the pan.
Stir gently into the sofrito with your giant paddle.
Now add30 litres of stock (which is 2 litres of stock per kilo of rice, plus a little extra – at home you would add 200cl plus a dash per 100g of rice…see, not so complicated!).
Keep that rice moving without burning your legs on the fire underneath the pan.
The professionals in action…
It´s much harder than it looks! (And don´t forget to taste).
Rookie cooking….
Remove from the heat and sprinkle over those prawns and the fish you set aside.
Was he trying to sneak one of my carefully counted prawns?!
Phew, job done. Time to show off an enormous loaf of bread baked by a local baker.
While we´re eating, you can enjoy a vaguely arty shot of a clean paella pan (don´t forget to oil it after washing up).
PS. Am off to London tomorrow for a week so will try to keep up with all your lovely blogs and comments, but apologies if some have to wait until after 20th June. Hope you enjoyed the paella making as much as I did, sorry it was so long but I really enjoyed putting it together. I do have to admit though, I was quite glad to take my “uniform” off and sit down in the shade of an olive tree with a large glass of tinto de verano.
This is a lovely, light dish which looks impressive but is quick and easy to prepare. More so if you have already made some tomato sauce and buy ready cleaned squid.
If you need some help cleaning your squid, click here.
Ingredients Per Person
3-4 medium squid, cleaned
1 cup of garlicky tomato sauce (To make mine I soften 3 crushed cloves of garlic in olive oil, then add 1 kilo of crushed peeled tomatoes, 2 tablespoon of tomato purée, half a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of sugar, plenty of fresh garlic, a glass of red wine and a few stalks of basil leaves. Simmer for about an hour, remove the basil and you´re done. This will give you 6-8 cups of sauce).
Seasoning
Simply warm the sauce through then drop in the squid (this can be served whole or cut into smaller chunks. Simmer gently for about 5 minutes or until the squid has turned white. Taste, season, then serve – see, I told you it was easy!
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.
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.
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….
One of my very dearest friends, Donna came to stay in the summer, and she´s a chick who enjoys cooking and eating, even though she´s a tiny little thing who looks like she eats like a sparrow! On her first night I wanted to prepare something special for us all and one of the first questions she asked as I picked her up at the airport was “What are we eating tonight?”. When I told her I was making a fish soup I could see her little face fall, she looked so disappointed. I don´t know what she was expecting, but when I served a similar version to this recipe, she brightened up considerably and then gave me a good telling off for giving such a delicious meal such a dull name.
So that´s why it now has a “proper” name, and I have to agree, it does sound so much nicer than “Fish Soup”. Mind you, a lot of things sound so much more exciting when you say them in French.
For two hungry people as a main course I used a mixture of mussels (500g), prawns (250g), clams (250g) and a large squid cleaned and chopped into bite sized chunks.
You´ll also need an orange, half a bulb of fennel (however I used wild fennel), a pinch of saffron stamens or turmeric, a cup of chopped tomato, four fat cloves of garlic peeled and thinly sliced, a medium onion peeled, halved and thinly sliced, the juice and zest of a medium orange, a bay leaf, a dried chili (optional), a glass of white wine (also optional but if you prefer to cook without it you may need a little extra liquid) and some olive oil for frying.
Of course, this is not an authentic version of the Provençal fish stew which is served with a rouille, but my adaptation.
Start by peeling the prawns and covering the shells with about 600 ml of water. Then add the bay leaf and bringing to a boil. Turn down to a simmer for about 10 minutes and then strain, reserving the stock.
Clean your mussels well and rinse the clams two or three times to remove any grit.
Now lightly fry the onion and garlic in some olive oil until soft and transparent, and add the finely sliced fennel and cook for a few minutes more. Add the tomato and allow it to cook down for a few minutes. Now add the chili if using, season with a little salt and and few good grinds of fresh black pepper and the juice of the orange plus the grated orange zest, the fish stock and finally the wine. Simmer for a further 5 minutes then begin to add the seafood and shellfish. Start with the thickest first (in my case it was the squid) then after about 2 minutes when the squid had turned white I added the clams and mussels and covered with a lid. When they had opened I added the peeled prawns which were quick to cook, just a minute or two.
Finally, remove from the heat, taste and adjust seasoning and serve garnished with fennel tops, some grated orange zest and with plenty of crusty bread for those lovely juices.
For another, slightly different version with vegetables and fideo, take a look at this recipe.
We´re very lucky Up The Mountain to be able to get hold of fresh fish, even though we live 45km from the coast. Having said that, I do keep fish in my freezer and cleaned squid is one of those things that keeps well and seems to suffer no ill effects from freezing. We don´t get a visit from Fish Man on Mondays, becuase there is no fishing on Sundays, but this morning he drove up, and this is what we bought.
One of the effects of little Alfi´s run in (literally) with Fish Man´s van is that when he hears him approaching and bipping his horn, he runs and hides under the nearest table, shaking and looking very sorry for himself. Whilst I don´t like to see him frightened, at least I know he has learned a very important lesson as far as cars and dogs go.
Today I´m going to give you a super easy way of cooking squid, which I know can be quite scary looking. I´m also going to tell you how to clean them if you ever do get lucky enough to get hold of fresh squid for either cooking that day or freezing for another day.
Feeling brave? Come on then, get those kitchen gloves on and let´s get cracking.
First of all you need to grab hold of that squid like you mean business.
Now pull the legs and anything that comes with them out and put to one side for the moment.
Now pull out the spine which looks like a sliver of clear plastic. Sorry this is a bit blurred – Big Man was in charge of photos and was excited about eating squid!
Rinse the body (including the inside) and go back to the legs which you will pull or snip away from any mucky bits in the middle just below the “eyes”. Still blurry, still excited!
From the centre of the legs (which are really tentacles!) pull out the hard centre core (or beak).
Rinse the legs and contemplate your bowl of lovely clean squid. Well done!
Now you can either cut the squid up or leave it whole. For battered squid rings (covered in flour and deep fried) “A La Romana”, you´ll need to slice. Today we´re just going to keep it very simple.
Sprinkle with salt and olive oil and put onto a hot griddle or into a frying pan (no oil needed as you have already put some on the squid). Keep the heat high, they´ll need a couple of minutes on each side depending on their size. When the flesh is no longer opaque but a good white colour, turn and continue to cook.
Remove from the heat when done and either drizzle with salsa verde and lemon juice, or add some finely chopped parsley, garlic and lemon juice. Serve with plenty of delicious crusty bread to mop up those amazing juices.
And if you can´t get hold of fresh squid, oriental stores often sell packets of squid tubes frozen which are very good!
Fish Man took a week off recently and oh how we missed him! Fortunately, he came back refreshed and with a van packed full of gorgeous things for us to enjoy.
After our enforced fish free week, I went a bit mad, and bought some tiny little crabs and a large fillet of rosada (a firm white fish) for us to enjoy.
The crabs were simple to deal with – a good rinse then plunged into boiling, salted water. You need to be quite heavy handed with the salt as they are usually cooked in sea water. In the absence of this up our mountain, a little extra salt goes a long way. After about two minutes they will turn a darker pink colour, drain them and then put into a bowl of iced water to stop them cooking further. It´s the same process that you would use for cooking prawns.
Eeek....
These were then chilled and served as a starter with alioli and lemons. It looks like a huge portion, but there is not a lot of meat inside these little critters. The fun is in chomping, slurping and licking your fingers!
The rosada was treated equally simply. I sautéed red peppers with onions and courgettes until soft, lay the fish fillets over the top and seasoned everything. After covering the pan with a lid I let them cook through gently for about five minutes (until they were no longer opaque), then squeezed plenty of lemon juice over.
Fabulous FIsh
Healthy, light and delicious…all we needed was the sound of the waves lapping against the shore.
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 