Sopa de Bacalao – Cod and Spinach Soup

Chica Andaluza52 Comments

If you do an internet search for a typical Spanish soup called Sopa de Bacalao, you’ll find many versions of a firm favourite. I don’t lay claim to my version being authentic, especially as it uses a very non Spanish ingredient – Ras El Hanout – but as the spice mix comes from North Africa and there are such very strong connections between Africa and Andalucía, I feel no one will be up in arms.

The ingredient list is short and simple, the preparation too. But the taste, oh the taste, your friends and family will think you’ve spent hours reducing stock to achieve the intensity of flavour.

Sopa de Bacalao (3)

Ingredients (to serve 2-4 as a main or starter)

  • 1 large cod fillet, skinned and cut into bite sized chunks (use either fresh cod or desalted salt cod)
  • 1 medium onion finely chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
  • 4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into bite sized chunks
  • About 2 cups of chopped fresh spinach
  • Salt
  • 1 teaspoon of Ras El Hanout
  • About 1.25l of either fish stock or water (if you use a cube to make your stock, I won’t tell!)
  • A little olive oil

Start by sweating the onion and garlic until softened then add the potatoes. Toss them around in the oil until they are all coated in oil then add the Ras El Hanout and mix in. Pour over the stock and cook until the potatoes are almost done.

Add the cod and cook for a minute or two until the fish is cooked. Taste and season if necessary and then add the spinach. Turn off the heat, cover with a lid and wait for the spinach to wilt before serving with plenty of fresh lemon to squeeze over.

Tamarind Spiced Aubergines and Spinach

Chica Andaluza60 Comments

The Veggie Garden, although planted sparsely and late this year, continues to reward us with a bounty of aubergines. Always on the lookout for new ways to prepare old favourites, and in the midst of spring autumn cleaning, I came across a packet of tamarind paste from one of my UK trips. Perfect!

Tamarind Spiced Abergine (9)

Internet searches came up with curry recipes, so thinking of a curry type base as inspiration, I made it up as a I went along, and oh my goodness…what beautiful flavours emerged from a few very simple ingredients.

Ingredients (to serve two as a main course with rice or four as a side dish)

  • 1 large aubergine cut into small dice
  • 1 large tomato, diced
  • 1 medium onion, finely chopped
  • About 1 heaped tablespoon of fresh garlic and ginger paste (make this by finely chopping or mincing equal quantities of garlic and ginger, it can be stored in the freezer, and you can scrape off what you need)
  • About 2 cups of chopped fresh spinach
  • 2 teaspoons of tamarind paste soaked in a little hot water
  • 1 teaspoon of brown sugar
  • Salt to season
  • Water or vegetable stock
  • Half a teaspoon of hot chili powder (or to taste)
  • 1 teaspoon of garam masala
  • Oil for shallow frying

Fry the aubergines until lightly browned and remove from pan. You can omit this step if you like but will need to cook the dish when all the ingredients have been added for about 10 minutes longer. Both methods are good.  Add a little more oil if necessary and fry the garlic and ginger paste and onions until the onions are soft but not browned.

Add the tomatoes and cook until softened then add the chili powder and garam masala. After a further minute, add the aubergines, sugar and tamarind, season and pour over enough water or stock to cover the vegetables.

Tamarind Spiced Abergine (4)

Simmer gently until the aubergines are completely tender (about 15 minutes) and just before serving add the spinach and cook until wilted.

Serve with a little chopped coriander and some plain boiled rice. Observant readers will note, however, that in the first photo I picked parsley by mistake!

Autumn Days and Autumn Nights – Apple and Blackberry Pudding

Chica Andaluza53 Comments

The days are getting shorter, the sun still shines most of the time but not with the intensity of summer. The air smells different, fresher, more invigorating. It’s time to finish off doing things you meant to do in summer and plan for the next few months.

Time to enjoy autumn fruits like prickly pears…

Chumbos (2)

Big Man and I haven’t had the great summer we had hoped for in Spain this year. That’s the way life goes sometimes. You just have to accept it and move on.  We hadn’t had a single chance to go to the beach, so at the end of last week we made it happen. Granted, we didn’t get down there until lunch time, but luck was on our side and a beachfront table at one of our favourite Chiringuitos (beach restaurants) became available as we arrived.

Beach 12 Sep (8)

Perfect, time to relax with a bottle of chilled white wine, a mix of deep fried fish and some peppers and a plate of little pieces of grilled monkfish.

Beach 12 Sep (5)

After a reviving coffee it was time for a gentle snooze down by the sea, listening to the waves and the distant sounds of murmered conversations.

What a difference a day makes, the next day Up the Mountain was grey and misty with low clouds lurking around the house.

VIstas 13 Sep (10)

A day that made me wish the blackberries here were still going strong, as they had been in England. A little bag of about 2 cups of blackberries had been picked on a seaside walk in England Down by the Sea and turned into a delicious autumn pudding.

Blackberry & Apple Pudding (3)

Apple and Blackberry Pudding

  • 2 cups of blackberries (approx.) washed, two small apples peeled and thinly sliced and both fruits mixed together and sprinkled with about 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
  • 1 cup of self raising flour, a pinch of salt and quarter of a cup of sugar mixed together in one bowl
  • 1 large egg, a teaspoon of vanilla essence, a quarter of a cup of oil and a quarter of a cup of natural yogurt beaten together until well mixed.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix well, if the mixture is very stiff, add a tablespoon full of milk.

Mix the cake mix into the fruit and pour into an ovenproof dish. Bake at 180º for about 30 minutes or until a skewer poked into the centre of the pudding comes out clean and the top is slightly browned.

Blackberry & Apple Pudding (1)

Serve with cream and/or ice cream whilst making sure your dog does not sneak up on you and pinch a mouthful.

Well…it was a nice idea….”Carpaccio of Octopus”

Chica Andaluza61 Comments

When you blog over a period of time, you realise that often you cook and eat old favourites because they’re easy, familiar and, well, they’re good to eat. Because we have the lovely Fish Lady who delivers, we make the most of local fish but I confess to mostly cooking it quite simply on the grill or in the oven.

Pulpo Carpaccio (3)

When we are lucky enough to have an octopus delivered, I usually make Pulpo a la Gallega. Octopus cooked in the style of Galicia. And very good it is too.

Just before we took off for England a few weeks ago, Fish Lady (who is actually called Ana Maria) sold me an enormous octopus which weighed nearly 2 kilos. A monster from the deep. I knew that we wouldn’t eat it before we left so I cleaned it and divided it into two portions and froze it. Octopus (if it’s fresh when you buy it) actually benefits from being frozen as it tenderises it and beats slamming it on a nearby rock for half an hour in native fisherman style.

Looking for a new way to cook my tentacled friend, I came across a recipe for a Carpaccio of Octopus. It’s not really Carpaccio as the octopus is cooked first, but I liked the idea of beautiful thin slices of octopus laid out on a platter and dressed with lemon and olive oil. Here’s the video for you to see how it SHOULD be done.

I cleaned and cooked my octopus until is was beautifully tender. I even kept the delicious purple cooking juices to use in another dish.

I washed a water bottle, pierced some holes in the bottom and cut the top off.

Pulpo (1)

Then I packed in the tentacles, making sure to twirl them into an attractive pattern.

Pulpo (2)

Slits were cut into the top of the bottle then folded down.

Pulpo (3)

A weight was put on top of the beastie and it was left to chill and drain.

Pulpo (4)

So far so good, it even turned out beautifully from its plastic tunnel when required. It just didn’t keep its shape. Hmph.

I think I didn’t press it down enough, perhaps I drained off too much juice. But no matter. I cut it into rather chunky chunks, dressed it with olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt and parsley and it tasted wonderful.

Pulpo Carpaccio (4)

Big Man, on seeing it, asked where the pimentón and potatoes were (the usual accompaniments for Pulpo a la Gallega). I explained it was a different dish. He tasted, he smiled and said “Delicious, but you’ve cut it into really big chunks haven’t you?” He was lucky he didn’t get the native fisherman treatment.

Ten out of ten for taste, but it’s back to the drawing board for Chica and her Octopus Carpaccio when it comes to presentation.

And when she got there, the cupboard was bare….Olive Oil Tortillas

Chica Andaluza70 Comments

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
To get her poor dog a bone
When she got there, the cupboard was bare
And so the poor dog had none*

Olive Oil Tortillas (3)

Our little break Down by the Sea is over and yesterday we got back to Spain and are now back Up the Mountain. Today is Sunday, and of course in our rural area pretty much everything is closed.

We could have gone out for lunch but we are exhausted. Time to dig around in the freezer and the store cupboard and become an inventive Chica.

On opening my fridge I actually screamed with shock and slammed the door shut again. Big Man came running thinking I’d left something in there that had grown gills while we were away. But no, it was 3 weeks of tomatoes kindly picked and stored by our neighbours. Here’s a photo of about half of them…

There's still the salad basket below which is packed too!
There’s still the salad basket below which is packed too!

Well, there was definitely going to be a tomato salad on the menu. Every day for a long time.

The freezer kindly delivered up an Ottolenghi Chicken and Hazelnut dish and all I needed was bread. Did you know that most Mediterranean folk I know won’t even consider a meal complete unless there is a basket of bread on the table? In fact, I think if there was nothing on the menu in a restaurant they’d order bread with bread.

With not enough time or patience to make a loaf, I thought of tortilla wraps and headed over to check out Tandy’s brilliant recipe at Lavender and Lime. Of course, I had no butter but in the land of olive oil, a substitution was possible, and gave great results.

Olive Oil Tortillas

  • 180g plain flour
  • 30g olive oil (yes, I did this by weight and not volume!)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • Pinch of sugar
  • Up to 100ml water

Add the sugar and salt to the flour and mix then pour in the olive oil. Rub the oil into the flour until small lumps form and then rub for a moment or two more to break the little lumps down. Gradually add the water and knead for a few minutes until you have a smooth dough.

Rest the dough for 30 minutes (I just left it on the counter) and divide into four equal pieces. Roll out into thin rounds and dry fry in a very hot frying pan, pressing down with a spatula to stop air bubbles forming. Cook on both sides until lightly browned and keep warm by wrapping them in a tea towel.

Olive Oil Tortillas (1)

Enjoy your tortillas whilst asking your other half where all your glass jars with lids are for your tomato bottling session, only to find out he has thrown them all in the recycling.

*Rest assured that no dogs or even humans ever went hungry in our house!

For a delicious gluten free bread/wrap, take a look at my Socca recipe.

Busy Doing Nothing…Working The Whole Day Through…

Chica Andaluza36 Comments

We are Down By The Sea in our little second home. Mixing work and play, family, friends and colleagues. It’s just what we needed.

Early morning walks on an empty seafront.

Bexhill Ago 2013 (1)

A few days away in the New Forest.

Hol Lymington (24)

Watching the world go by while sipping a cold glass of wine.

Lymington (1)

Celebrating 50 wonderful years of marriage with my parents.

M&Ps 50th (104)

Oh, and eating. It wouldn’t be the same without good food.

M&Ps 50th (105)

We’ll be back Up the Mountain next weekend and (hopefully!) normal blogging service will be resumed.

Socca – How can something so ridiculously simple taste so outrageously good?!

Chica Andaluza62 Comments

In Spain we can easily buy chick pea flour as it’s used to make Tortillitas de Camarones, little deep fried “pancakes” made with the tiniest prawns imaginable. They are so very, very good. My previous experience of cooking with chick pea flour (or gram flour, garbanzo flour or besan) was in Indian cookery to make bhajis.

In my search for other uses, I kept coming across recipes for Socca, a chickpea flour pancake, usually cooked at high heat in the oven in a small cake tin or tray. I also found a version in my wonderful River Cottage Bread Handbook which was cooked in a frying pan. Perfect for summer when you want food you can cook quickly without using the oven. We ate this with Chargrilled Aubergines in Tomato Sauce – tearing up pieces of the pancake and dipping. Fantastic if you enjoy sharing dishes and are not too proud to slurp and lick your fingers!

Socca (1)

Ingredients (per pancake)

  • 100ml chick pea flour
  • 100ml water
  • A good pinch of salt
  • Olive oil for frying

Mix the flour, water and salt together and leave to stand for a few minutes. Put a couple of tablespoons of oil in a frying pan and heat until it sizzles (this pancake is meant to be oily, so go on, be heavy handed with the oil!)

Pour the mix in, it should be thick in the pan and cook until it starts to char on the edges. Flip it over and cook the other side. Serve immediately and imagine you are eating it sitting in a bustling bar in the South of France sipping an ice cold beer and watching the world go by from under the brim of your slightly battered panama hat….

On Thursday morning we’ll be heading off down the mountain and driving north across Spain. Hopefully we’ll get our heads down for the night near Bordeaux and onwards Friday morning towards Calais and an early evening crossing to Dover.  Then we go west to our little home in Bexhill. Just for a few weeks you understand, we have a Golden Wedding Anniversary to celebrate with my parents and walks along the beach with the pups. We will enjoy the last of the beautiful English summer before we head back to our mountain home for the September fiestas. I’ll still be checking in here, but perhaps not as often as usual. See you when we get there!

Chargrilled Aubergines in Tomato Sauce

Chica Andaluza52 Comments

Our little veggie garden is reduced this year, we planted only peppers, aubergines and tomatoes as we were too late back from England to plant much more and we will head off to the cooler shores of the English South Coast again before all the vegetables have been harvested.

Chargrilled Aubergines in Tomato (7)

Never mind, we are still trading with neighbours and this year we have an impressive crop of aubergines (eggplants). Interesting for me as a cook as Big Man has never been a huge fan, but he knows I love them. It makes me think about different ways of serving them to see if I can convert him. I don’t think he’ll be signing up for Aubergine Weekly yet (if such a magazine existed), but he’s eaten everything I’ve made so far without that look on his face. You know, the one children do when they are about to put a sprout/piece of liver/most hated food into their mouth!

Today’s dish was a quick one as it was so hot. We ate it with Socca, but more of that another day.

Ingredients (to serve 2 as a main dish)

  • One large aubergine thickly sliced and cooked on the griddle or barbecue on both sides until lightly charred (no need to salt and don’t brush with oil if doing on the bbq as you’ll only end up setting fire to them)
  • About two cups of tomato sauce (this was prepared in advance) Soften 3 crushed cloves of garlic in olive oil, then add 1 kilo of crushed peeled tomatoes, 2 tablespoons of tomato purée, half a teaspoon of salt, a few good grinds of black pepper, half a teaspoon of sugar (if required), a glass of red wine and a few stalks of basil leaves. Simmer for about an hour, remove the basil and it’s ready. This will give you about 6-8 cups of sauce

Chargrilled Aubergines in Tomato (4)

Cut the grilled aubergines into bite sized pieces and simmer in the sauce for about 10 minutes and you’re done! This is also wonderful cold and great over pasta.

Roast Chicken with Saffron, Hazelnuts and Honey

Chica Andaluza77 Comments

I’m not an expert on poetry, I can’t even claim to get immense pleasure from reading it regularly, but there are some poems that stick in my head. One such poem is “If” by Rudyard Kipling. Different lines from it seem appropriate at different times.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

That seems to be the part that resonates right now, and I wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to you all for your kind words of support and encouragement while Big Man and I deal with the highs of a wonderful year of hard work behind us, and the lows of the ill health of loved ones in the here and now.

However, life really does go on. We live, we laugh, we cry and of course, we cook and eat. Cooking soothes the soul, eating does too. Well, we all knew that didn’t we?!  Today I have another beautiful Ottolenghi recipe that is stunningly simple and simply stunning. I followed the recipe almost exactly, which is rare, and I wouldn’t change a thing. When we ate this dish, I found myself thinking what beautiful Arab flavours it contained. As I looked up the recipe again to pull this post together, Yotam Ottolenghi says that he was influenced by a recipe from Claudia Roden’s book, Tamarind and Saffron. Aha, now I need to buy that one too!

Chicken with Saffron Hazelnuts & Honey (8)

Serves 4

  • 1 large (organic, free range if possible) chicken cut into portions
  • 2 onions roughly chopped
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tsp each of ground ginger and ground cinnamon
  • A generous pinch of saffron strands (but use turmeric if you don’t have saffron)
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 4 tbsp cold water
  • 2 tsp coarse sea salt
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 100g hazelnuts (actually, I did change this, he says unskinned, mine were skinned!)
  • 70g honey
  • 2 tbsp rosewater

In a large bowl mix the chicken pieces with the onions, olive oil, spices, saffron, lemon juice, water, salt and pepper and leave to marinate (from 1 hour to overnight in the fridge)

Heat the oven to 190 degrees (Gas 5). Brown the hazelnuts on an oven tray for 10 mins (I dry fried mine in a pan), cool slightly, roughly chop the nuts and set aside.

Transfer the chicken and marinade to a large tray or oven dish (you want to spread it all out) and bake for about 35 minutes.

Meanwhile mix the honey, nuts and rose water to make a rough paste and spread it over the almost cooked chicken. Return the meat to the oven for about 10 minutes (or until cooked) and it is all golden brown.

This dish looks so beautiful (well, less so in my photo!) and is good even when cold.