Category: Vegetarian

Easy Green Tomato Chutney

Chica Andaluza41 Comments
Something to relish....sorry, couldn´t resist it!

I hope I´m not too late with this recipe as I know there are plenty of tomato growers out there who will, no doubt, be left with some green tomatoes at the end of the picking season.  I, like many others, had some green tomatoes left from our first crop and decided to give this chutney a go, for the first time ever.

Some of the recipes I found had daunting lists of ingredients.  Finally I came across what looked like a straightforward one in Floyd on Britain and Ireland by the late Keith Floyd. I know the poor man fought with the drink demons at times, but I did love his programmes and his cooking style – always adding in a big dash of wine and a slurp for the cook.

I made very few changes to his recipe, and was pleased with the results.  Here´s what I did.

  • A thumb sized piece of garlic, peeled and grated (his recipe calls for it to be bruised and placed in a muslin bag with the chilies and then removed at the end but I left mine in)
  • 4 chilies (he calls for 8-10 and I think next time I´ll use more than I did as there was only a little heat with just 4) I chopped my chilies finely and left them in
  • 2kg green tomatoes, chopped
  • 500g apples (peeled cored and chopped)
  • 250g raisins (chopped but I left mine whole)
  • 625g shallots (I used onions) chopped
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 500g  brown sugar
  • 600ml vinegar (he says malt, I used white wine)

Place all the ingredients into a large pan, bring to the boil stirring until the sugar has dissolved and then simmer until it has reached the desired consistency.  Pour into warm sterilised jars and seal.

Result – sweet and sour chutney with a hint of heat.  Perfect with cheese, cold meats, burgers….

Tasty Tabbouleh

Chica Andaluza30 Comments
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?!

Pickled Chilies, Fridge Chilies, Dried Chilies, Chilly Chilies

Chica Andaluza45 Comments

Can you guess what this post is about? There´s a small hint in the title…

Yes, I am a complete chili addict.  I love things hot and spicy, but I know that not everyone else does.  Big Man has gradually increased his “heat tolerance” over the last few years, but he´s still got a way to go before he catches up with me.  A way around this is to grow your own chilies and then use them as you like.  They´re hard to buy here, Spain is not typically a nation of spicy food lovers.

Most of the chilies ripen at around the same time.  We planted late this year, so ours are all starting to turn red or orange (some are picked green) in early September. When you have this glut of chilies, you have to do something with them to keep them for the year ahead.

Chili Heaven

The simplest methods are (apart from eating them fresh), to freeze them or dry them.  Last year I planted long thin green chilies, some stubby orange ones, and the fiery cayennes.  You can see them in the photo.  If anyone wants seeds, please let me know and I´d be happy to mail them to you…honestly, if you have the weather for growing them they should do well.

This year I also planted some that a neighbour gave me (I don´t have a photo as they are not ripe yet) of some super fiery pinky red chilies that look like little balls or rose hips when they are mature.  If anyone knows what they might be, I´d love to know.

Some of my chilies I pickle and I followed the guidelines in Olives and Artichokes post here.  I used mustard seeds and peppercorns in this particular jar, but am going to enjoy playing around with spices and pickles over the next few weeks.

And a final way, which may be new to you, is my mum´s refrigerator chili preserve (for want of a better name) which keeps for a month or two and is for dedicated chili lovers who enjoy spooning spicy fresh chilies over anything and everything.  Cut your chilies finely, scissors help with this as they help avoid nasty incidents with chili fingers in eyes.  Put them into a sterilised jar (recently out of the dishwasher is good). Cover the chilies with oil (I use olive oil but any oil will do) and soya sauce (about 8 oil to 1 soya).  Keep in the fridge, shake before serving, and enjoy the buzz!

We are off on holiday tomorrow (yay!) for a week – looking forward to catching up on all your posts and comments when we´re back.  ¡Hasta luego!

Pickled Courgettes

Chica Andaluza43 Comments

What do you do when your Big Man comes home with about 15 mammoth courgettes and you´re the only one in the house who really enjoys them?  Well, you have to give a few away to a courgette loving neighbour, and then get creative.

The courgette loving neighbour gave me a recipe for her courgette bread which looks delicious and rather like my Banana Bread recipe.  As soon as I´ve made it I´ll let you know how it goes. Then I made some little courgette pancakes, but more of those another time.  And then I thought it was time to tackle some pickled courgettes.

These remind me of special Italian family meals when I was younger – lots of salamis and pickled vegetables as a big Antipasto.  It´s been years since I made them, and I used mustard powder and turmeric which is not so Italian, I have to confess.

I used a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food Website with a few small tweaks.

500g courgettes, very finely sliced (I used a mandolin slicer)

500ml white wine vinegar

140g brown sugar

1 tsp mustard powder (I used Colemans English Mustard)

1 tsp mustard seeds

4 dried cayenne chilies, crumbled (use less if you like)

1 tsp ground turmeric

Sprinkle the courgette slices with salt and then cover with ice cold water and leave for an hour. Drain and pat dry. Meanwhile put the rest of the ingredients into a saucepan and heat to dissolve the sugar and leave to bubble for a couple of minutes.

While the pickling liquid is cooling down a little, pack the courgettes into two sterilised jars, pour the liquid over and seal tightly.

The recipe says to keep them in the fridge and that they will keep chilled for a couple of months.  I have them in the larder which is cool.  They will taste great in a few days, but I had a few slices that wouldn´t fit into the jars which I covered with a drop of the pickling liquid and ate that evening…and they were delicious!

Up The Mountain Spicy Tomato Ketchup

Chica Andaluza55 Comments
Getting Saucy In The Garden

When you have lots of tomatoes growing, or you can buy them cheaply, it´s fun to play around with recipes and see what you can come up with.  An excellent book for anyone interested in growing their own (or who just dreams about doing it) and cooking with the “bounty” is The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

One of his recipes that I´ve played around with over the years is the one he gives for tomato ketchup.  The beauty of it is that you can adjust spices and flavourings to suit what you and your loved ones enjoy.  I like my ketchup spicy, so I go heavy on the chili.  Some of the things he mentions in his recipe I don´t always have to hand (like mace or celery seeds) so I have changed things round just a little.

This is the Up the Mountain version, and I can highly recommend it.

3kg ripe tomatoes roughly chopped

3 sliced onions

1 large red pepper, chopped

¼ cup of celery leaves

100g brown sugar

200ml white wine vinegar (he uses cider vinegar)

¼ teaspoon of mustard powder

A stick of cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoons of allspice

1 ½ teaspoons whole cloves

2 teaspoons black peppercorns

Some freshly grated nutmeg

4 small hot chilis, roughly chopped

1 bay leaf

1 large garlic clove, peeled and crushed

1 teaspoon of hot smoked pimentón (or paprika)

Sea salt to taste

You´ll need a very sturdy heavy based saucepan for this as you´ll be reducing and reducing the sauce until it gets to the right consistency.

Put tomatoes, onions, peppers, chillis and celery leaves into the pot and simmer until very soft.  Put through a mouli or fine sieve and then back into the pot with the sugar, mustard powder and vinegar.  Put the remaining spices apart from the salt, nutmeg and pimentón into a cloth and tie securely then drop this into the mixture.  Grate a little nutmeg over and if you want more later you can add it nearer the end. 

Cook the sauce slowly until it has reduced to the thickness you require.  If you like you can give it a whizz with the hand blender (don´t forget to remove the spice bag first though!), then season with the salt and pimentón.  You can either put it into sterilised bottles or jars (I use the small juice bottles we get here in Spain) or it will keep well in the fridge for a month or you can freeze it.

Delicious with chips (or French fries for my US pals), burgers, fish, veggies…well, pretty much anything in fact!  And mixed with mayonnaise it makes a wonderful Marie Rose style sauce with a bit of a kick.

Vegetable Fried Rice

Chica Andaluza39 Comments
Crispy and Vegetable-y

With the hot weather we´ve been having, the desire to cook has been low.  But…a girl and her Big Man have to eat, so the other night we decided on some grilled langoustines with some vegetable fried rice to accompany it.  Fried rice is an alien concept to most Spaniards, so Big Man had visions of me deep frying individual grains of rice or making some sort of croquette.

To his relief, and mine (due to the heat), it was a simple dish with only the smallest amount of oil and frying involved.

I boiled some rice (I used brown, but the choice is yours).  While this was cooking I fried a finely chopped onion and two crushed cloves of garlic in a very small amount of oil in a non stick pan until it started to look brown at the edges.  Then I added finely chopped courgette and a long thin green pepper and continued to stir fry them.

In a separate pan I made the thinnest omelette known to man!  Whisk one egg and pour into a lightly oiled pan- almost as if you were making a crêpe – and make a very thin omelette.  Flip it over to get both sides lightly browned and slide onto a plate to cool a little.

When the rice is cooked, drain well and add to the vegetables.  There´s no need to add more oil if you have a good pan as you will now almost dry fry it.  Season with salt and pepper and every few minutes give it a stir until the rice starts to brown.

Are those prawns ready yet?!

Roll up the world´s thinnest omelette and cut it into fine shreds.  Sprinkle these eggy shreds over the top of your rice, mix gently and serve.

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…

Potato and Broccoli Tortilla

Chica Andaluza26 Comments
A tasty tortilla

Now, I´m not laying claim to this being the most authentic of Spanish tortillas. For a start, the most famous is the potato one, sometimes with onions added.  Secondly, the potato is cooked from raw in a fairly significant amount of olive oil, very slowly until tender. It´s wonderful, but when I´m at home I try to cut out a few calories and this is how I make my tortilla. To be honest, no one seems to have noticed the lack of oil!

For a Spanish tortilla to be successful, i.e. to be able to turn it over half way through cooking without ending up with an eggy mess all over the kitchen floor there are a couple of things which I have found help in the process:

  • A large quantity of filling in relation to egg – the egg just binds the ingredients together
  • A deep high sided pan (you´ll see from the photos that mine is very old and battered but it´s perfect for making a one person/two egg tortilla and I won´t throw it away!)
  • A very, very low heat
  • A lid to put over the tortilla in the first stage of cooking
  • Slow cooking, it takes patience, this is not a speedy French omelette

So, for one person, this is what I use, just multiply the ingredients for more people and of course, use a bigger pan! This makes a tortilla large enough for a decent supper or light lunch, served with salad, bread and of course a glass of wine.

  • Two eggs
  • Cold cooked, peeled potatoes
  • Any other vegetable, cooked, that you want to use in your tortilla
  • Salt and Pepper
  • About a tablespoon of olive oil
  • A tablespoon of milk

Start by putting the oil into the frying pan and then chopping your potato into small chunks.  Also add the vegetables if using. You want the potatoes and vegetables to fill the pan almost to the top.

Warm them through turning them over gently so that they are all covered in the oil for a few minutes.

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In a bowl beat the eggs, seasoning and milk with a fork then add the potato mix to the eggs and mix it all in gently with a spoon.

You should have a little oil left in the pan, but if not a tiny splash extra will be sufficient.

Pour the egg and potato mixture into the pan, turn the heat down to the lowest setting, put the lid on the pan and then leave the bottom half to cook slowly.  Depending on how large your tortilla is, this could take a while.  The two egg tortilla takes about 10 minutes.

Every so often, press gently on the sides with a wooden spoon or spatula to see if it is browning underneath. When it is a lovely golden brown and the top is set, it´s time to flip it over!

You can use a plate, or two plates (tip out onto one plate, invert onto another and then back into the pan).  I have a plastic tortilla “flipper” which has a small handle underneath.  You turn the tortilla onto it then slide it back into the pan.  A flat saucepan lid would work just as well.

Now turn the heat up a little, leave the lid off and cook for about another 4-5 minutes until the bottom has turned the same lovely golden brown.  Leave it to stand for a minute or two once it is cooked, then turn it out onto your plate and enjoy.

Thanks go out to JamieAnne at A Dash of Domestic for her wonderful tutorial on how to insert a slide show!