Vegetables – Page 17 – Chica Andaluza

Chicken, Egg and Bacon Salad

May 12, 2011 Chica Andaluza4 Comments

Chicken, Bacon & Egg Salad 004 — Shame there were no leftovers...

I´m not sure that this one can exactly count as a recipe, as it´s more a “chuck it together and enjoy” kind of dish. Here in Spain the main meal of the day tends to be at lunch time. Even in cities where people work in shops and offices, there is still a tradition to shut at 2pm and then re open at 5pm. Lunch is taken very seriously! The evening meal is rarely eaten before 10pm, which was a bit of a struggle for me at first, even though I usually ate at about 8pm in the UK. Over time I´ve got used to it, especially now that I´ve realised that the evening meal is generally something very light. A soup, or salad perhaps.

Of course, there are times when the evening meal is something more elaborate, but that tends to be related to an event, in which case you wouldn´t go to bed early (that´s around midnight here!) but more like somewhere between 3am and 7am…crazy hours. Of course, that gives you time to digest dinner, dance it off, and perhaps even indulge in a breakfast of hot chocolate and churros before going to bed to sleep off the festivities.

Last night was just a regular night. We fancied something light but filling, so I made one of our favourites – Chicken, Egg and Bacon Salad.

Ingredients are rather approximate – use what you have to hand. We used:

One lettuce heart roughly chopped
Two small-ish potatoes (boiled in their skins then peeled and roughly chopped)
Two hard boiled eggs, quartered
One large chicken breast, griddled
4 rashers of streaky bacon (griddled)
1 small packet of anchovies in olive oil
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Seasoning

I also made an extra dressing, which make enough for another salad

Half a small tub of natural yogurt (half a 125 tub)
The same quantity of mayonnaise
The juice of half a lemon
A tablespoon of milk
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

There´s no method to this, just combine the salad ingredients, season and dress very lightly with olive oil and lemon juice. You can leave this out if you like lashings of the yogurt and mayonnaise dressing. It´s entirely up to you. For the dressing, just put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix until you´ve got a smooth, fairly runny sauce and drizzle over the salad.

Other ingredients which are good in this salad, which I guess has a touch of the “Chicken Caesar” about it, are avocado, croutons, grated hard cheese….go on, give it a go!

Pea, Spring Onion and Mint Soup

May 9, 2011 Chica Andaluza9 Comments

: I´ll have a Pea please…

I think I´m still about bit confused as to whether it´s Winter, Spring or Summer here in Andalucía. The calendar says May, so I´m thinking Spring. Last week we had torrential rain and had to light the fire again in the evening. Yesterday I was sunbathing and gardening and the temperatures reached the high 20´s. No wonder I´m feeling a little confused.

Soup always fits the bill, especially for a light supper. Warming when you want it to be, chilled when you need cooling down and always very comforting.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Saved...from the compost heap!

We still have the last of our Spring Onions in the garden which have grown to enormous proportions. Big Man is going to pull them up as the last few are pretty tough, but the centres are still incredibly tender, so I thought I´d save a few before they ended up on the compost heap and turn them into a soup. A quick nip outside the back door led me to my beautiful mint which has really taken off again after its winter rest and a trip to the freezer for some frozen peas and I was almost set.

Now, Big Man claims not to like peas, so when I first made this soup for him I told a porky and said that it was made with a mixture of broad beans and peas. Once he had declared it “delicious, you must make this again” I confessed and it´s become a bit of a favourite. Our broad beans are now ready to eat, so perhaps next time I´ll make the “true” version and see which one we prefer.

The serving I made fed two accompanied with plenty of crusty bread and is equally good served piping hot or icy cold.

I have a saucepan which I know makes a perfect serving for two, so measurements are a bit vague for this one I´m afraid. Will try to explain! Ingredients used were:

Just under half the pan full of frozen peas (a cup and a half approx)
A potato the size of my clenched fists (I don´t have big hands – if only the rest of me was in proportion!)
2 very large spring onions, including the green stems cleaned and chopped
About 10 large mint leaves
Water
Seasoning

This is quick and also very low fat (well, no fat actually), so also good if you´re watching the waistline. Which I really should be doing, but hey, back to the cooking.

I had a ready cooked potato left over from some potato salad – I cook them in their skins and then peel them and tend to keep these in the fridge as a staple. If you don´t have a ready cooked one, peel, cube, boil until tender and then drain.

Put all your ingredients into a saucepan, season and cover with twice the volume of water (or vegetable stock) and bring to the boil. Cook for a few minutes until the peas are done and then leave for another few minutes to cool down slightly. Check and adjust your seasoning.

Then all you need to do is to blitz it with a hand blender and it´s ready to serve. Quick, delicious and easy!

I´ve also served this with cubed jamon (or you could use lightly fried lardons or diced bacon). If you wanted a creamy version you could swirl in some cream or yogurt just before serving. A drizzle of extra virgin olive oil over the top just seems to finish it off perfectly. No photo of the finished dish I´m afraid as we were clearly too hungry and forgot to take one! Enjoy…

Onions and Rainbows – Onion Soup for a Rainy Day

February 16, 2011May 8, 2011 Chica Andaluza6 Comments

We´ve had some amazing mild, sunny February weather, but yesterday things changed and the rains came down. The temperature dropped and made me yearn for warming soups. I had bought a couple of kilos of red onions from a lady in the market a few days previously. They were probably home grown as she had a wheelbarrow full of them and nothing more. The onions were eye wateringly strong, as I had found out when I used some in a salad, so I thought that perhaps they would have a gentler flavour if cooked slowly in a chutney or soup.

Memories of a romantic week in Paris with Big Man reminded me of French Onion Soup. I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower for him, despite a severe dislike for heights. After returning to ground level, pale, shaking and cold, we found a little bistro where we warmed ourselves up with Onion Soup and a bottle of red wine shared on one of those tiny Parisian Bistro tables which lend themselves to knees and hands touching over a romantic meal.

If you fancy a bowl of cockle warming Onion Soup, with or without the Gallic Romance, open yourself a bottle of white wine, pour yourself a glass and get ready to chop and cry. For two, you´ll need:

Half a kilo (or more if you don´t mind chopping them) of onions, finely sliced. French if you have them, but otherwise any nationality of onion – it doesn´t even need a French accent
Two tablespoons of olive oil
A thick slice of butter
A level teaspoon of sugar
Two heaped teaspoons of plain flour
750mlof beef stock or chicken stock with a teaspoon of marmite or Bovril (or you can use stock made with a beef stock cube)
A glass of dry white wine
Salt and pepper
A slug of brandy (optional)

It´s not a difficult dish to make. It´s cheap too, but needs a bit of patience. No rushing this one I´m afraid!

First you´ll thinly slice those onions, then you´ll blow your nose, wipe your eyes and melt the butter with the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onions, mix them around to coat them and turn the heat down to low. These will now cook very gently until they start to caramelize but still remain soft.

This can take at least half an hour, sometimes double that. It just depends on the time of year and how much water the onions have. Stir them with a wooden spoon from time to time and when they start to turn brown, sprinkle the sugar on top and keep cooking until they are dark brown. This can take another 10-20 minutes.

Now sprinkle over the flour and cook gently while stirring for a minute.

At this point you can add your wine and then your beef stock (if you have it, but it´s very hard to buy good beef, let alone find beef bones to make stock in Southern Spain). I use chicken stock (if I have some made) otherwise water and a stock cube and I add a good teaspoon of marmite to give it a beefy taste. I know it´s salty, but you haven´t seasoned yet, and depending on how much salt you like to use, you can leave this part of the seasoning out at the end.

Today I used homemade chicken stock, and because our chickens are corn fed, my stock is very golden in colour. This means that unless I add loads of marmite to darken it, it won´t be as dark as it usually turns out. Too much marmite makes it super salty, so I live with golden coloured soup sometimes!

Simmer gently for about 15 minutes and you´re almost ready to serve. Taste to check and add salt and pepper if you like. If it´s a touch sweet from the caramelized onions, I find a sprinkle of salt and a slug extra of white wine usually balances the taste out.

If you like you can serve with little rounds of melted cheese on toast at the bottom of the soup bowl, or floated on the top, but what really gives it that extra warming hit is a small hit of brandy poured in just as you serve. Bon Appétit!

Just as I finished making my soup, the sun broke through the clouds and rain, and I had a beautiful rainbow to look at and brighten my day. Lucky me, Onion Soup and a Rainbow – life can be full of the most unexpectedly lovely moments.

Chicken with Mushrooms and Artichokes

February 9, 2011May 8, 2011 Chica Andaluza1 Comment

Once you´ve planted a couple of artichoke plants, they seem to last for a couple of years. As long as you keep cutting the “fruit”, more keep on growing. A couple of weeks ago we cut more than we needed, so stop them from getting too big and tough and a peeled off the outer leaves to reveal the hearts, blanched them in water with lemon juice to stop them turning black and then froze what we didn´t use.

As we now have more artichokes blooming, I thought I should use up the batch from the freezer (although a tin of artichoke hearts would do just as well). I also had some chicken breasts which would go well with the artichokes in a lovely dish with a thick sauce. Neither Big Man nor I are huge fans of the chicken breast, but when you rear your own chickens for eating, you´re always going to have them!

Ingredients for this dish for two are

One large or two small chicken breasts, cut into small cubes
A tin of artichoke hearts or about 8 fresh ones (prepared as above), sliced into quarters
Half a dozen medium sized mushrooms, thickly sliced
Two fat cloves of garlic, thickly sliced
Two cloves, ground (or about a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cloves) with about 5 peppercorns (or use half a dozen twists of freshly ground black pepper)
Half a teaspoon of paprika
A pinch of saffron soaked in a tablespoon of water (if you have a packet of paella spices, you can use half a packet in place of the cloves, pepper, paprika and saffron)
Two thick slices of day old bread, crumbled roughly
A bay leaf
A sprig of thyme (optional)
Salt
Olive oil
Water
A glass of white wine (optional) plus one for drinking while cooking (not optional in my kitchen)

Start by lightly browning the chicken in a little olive oil in a deep frying pan or a wide saucepan. Then add the garlic, artichokes and mushrooms and fry gently until the mushrooms and artichokes start to brown.

Add the spices and herbs and season with a little salt. Pour over the wine and enough water to comfortably cover everything and simmer, without a lid, for about 15 minutes.

When the liquid has reduced by about half, but is still watery, remove the herbs and then add the bread crumbs, stirring as you do this. You will simmer this for another 5 minutes stirring a couple of times. The sauce will come together and will look smoother, with some texture from the bread after a couple of minutes. You want to end up with a sauce roughly the texture of a thick gravy. If it looks too runny near the end of cooking, add another half a slice of bread. If it´s too liquid, just simmer until it gets to the consistency you want – it´s down to you! Check and adjust the seasoning, and you´re ready.

This can be prepared ahead and reheated, and takes about 40 minutes to prepare from scratch.

Delicious served either as a “spoon dish” (as they call dishes the consistency of stew which are served in bowls and eaten, as expected, with a spoon) if you prefer the sauce more liquid with bread and a side salad or with some green beans, mashed potato or rice.

My Favourite Spanish Breakfast

January 30, 2011May 8, 2011 Chica Andaluza6 Comments

A beautiful sunny, Sunday morning. All the more surprising because it´s the penultimate day of January. But just warm enough to brew a pot of coffee while I feed the dogs and get myself a little breakfast sorted out before Big Man and I head off for a walk. It´s been dry for two days with rain before that. Perfect weather for heading up the mountain and looking for wild asparagus. I have to confess I´m not the biggest fan of these beautiful fronds. Although I love strong flavours, they´re just too bitter for me. But Big Man loves a little tortilla made from these for a light supper and I enjoy a simple poached egg on toast – so everyone is happy and minimal cooking for those evenings when you just don´t fancy spending time at the stove.

I do enjoy my breakfast. I don´t go all faint and feeble if I miss out on it, but my favourite quick and easy breakfast here in Spain is fresh bread, drizzled with olive oil (from our olives if I´m lucky) with crushed fresh tomato and seasoned with sea salt and a good grind of pepper. All you need to do with the tomato is blitz a ripe tomato with the hand blender – remove the skin or not, your choice and that´s it. It´s usually tastier in summer when the tomatoes have more flavour, but if I come across a gorgeous specimen outside of the warmer months, it´s earmarked for my breakfast. If the bread is a little stale, it´s toasted lightly on my griddle pan. If I fancy some spice, it´s sprinkled with little fresh or dried chili at the end (not so Spanish), and if I´m extra hungry a few slices of jamon are added. But the truth is, the simpler the better.

That´s not to say I don´t enjoy a Full English, or a Bacon Buttie when the mood strikes. Come to think of it, a bowl of porridge in winter always goes down well too.