Chica Andaluza

Pan Fried Sea Bream with Asian Style Noodles

March 16, 2013March 16, 2013 Chica Andaluza54 Comments

Is it because it’s Lent, or I’m Down By the Sea, or because Spring keeps teasing me that I am cooking and enjoying lots of gorgeous fish? Who knows, who cares….!

The recipe is more for preparing the noodles than the fish which was simply lightly pan-fried in olive oil and sprinkled in sea salt and then drizzled with a little extra olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. I haven’t given many details for quantities, you know how much you can eat!

Ingredients

Fresh or dry noodles
A mixture of chopped, sliced, slithered veg….I used chopped broccoli, sliced peppers, finely chopped spinach leaves and thin slithers of carrot (I used my peeler)
About a teaspoon of fresh ginger, grated
2 or 3 fat cloves of garlic, crushed
Half a teaspoon of Chinese five spice powder
A few splashes of fish sauce (go easy, it’s strong)
Soy sauce to taste
Sesame oil for stir frying
A couple of fresh chillies, thinly sliced

This is a three pot cooking session, sorry, but it’s quick! Put the water on for your noodles and heat the oil for the fish in a large frying pan. Now add a little sesame oil (you may want to do half vegetable or sunflower oil as it has a strong taste) in a wok or frying pan.

Using all three of your hands and arms, drop the noodles into the boiling water and cook until almost done. Turn the heat off at this point and give one of your arms a rest. At the same time fry the bream lightly on both sides and stir fry the veg, spice, garlic and ginger for about 4-5 minutes. It all comes together at once.

Drain the noodles and add to the vegetables, adding the fish sauce and soy sauce and stir fry for another minute. Plate the noodles and vegetables up, artistically place your fish on top and sprinkle with chilli if using. Use two hands for your cutlery and your third for drinking wine and dabbing genteelly at your mouth. Or you could just give yourself a pat on the back.

Smoked Cod & Butterbean Stew

March 11, 2013March 18, 2013 Chica Andaluza60 Comments

Lent is a time in Catholic countries of preparation for the celebration of Easter. Believer or not, it also means a few changes to diet in Andalucía with a reduction in meat heavy meals and a focus on vegetables, pulses and fish. A typical dish during this period is Potaje de Semana Santa, Holy Week Stew, which is typically made with chick peas (or a mix of chick peas and giant white beans) and salt cod. I was sure I had previously given you a recipe for this, but alas I have been remiss. Fortunately, Giovanna over at Blue Jellybeans, has done the honours, do check it out!

As we’re still in the UK, and the weather has turned icy again, it was time to reinterpret this classic dish using ingredients available locally to me here. We were pleased with the results and it’s definitely a dish that can be eaten any time of year, not just Lent.

The ingredient list is simple, but the slow cooking turns this into a beautifully flavoured dish.

Ingredients (to serve 4 as a main course)

2 cups of dried butterbeans
1 head of garlic
A bay leaf
1 large fillet of fresh cod (I used smoked but unsmoked would also be good) flaked into chunks
2 cups approx. of finely chopped fresh spinach or kale
A pinch of saffron (or half a teaspoon of turmeric)
3 cloves (optional)

Start by soaking the beans in water with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda overnight. The next day drain them, cover well with water, add all the ingredients except the fish and spinach and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for a couple of hours (or cook in a low heat in the oven for about 4 hous as I do) until the beans are really tender. Just before serving remove the garlic, bay leaf and cloves (if using), add the cod and spinach and cook on a medium heat. Stir a little to break up some of the beans and thicken the soup. Season with salt to taste.

Serve with a drizzle of fresh olive oil.

If you want more Lenten recipes, take a look at Chgo John gorgeous Grilled Salted Cod recipe or my Parpuchas (Salt Cod Fritters) from last year.

PS. I have jsut come across a company that supplies (in the UK) some Spanish ingredients. Here’s the link (they haven’t paid me for this) but have just ordered the ingredients for Fabada Asturiana from them, so am hoping they’ll be good.

Giant Cous Cous with Red Peppers and Pomegranate Molasses

March 4, 2013March 4, 2013 Chica Andaluza45 Comments

My new best friend, Yotam Ottolenghi, mentions giant cous cous (or Mograbieh) more than once in his cookbooks. I was keen to try it and surprised to come across it in a local supermarket.

Cooking instructions vary, I expect, from make to make but generally it seems to be cooked very much like pasta (i.e. boiled) and not like the traditional cous cous I am more familiar with.

I cooked mine in vegetable stock and left it quite “wet” when done, then mixed it with chopped roasted peppers, flaked almonds, some olive oil and lemon juice, salt & pepper and a tablespoon of pomegranate molasses. I served mine with a grilled steak and some avocado. It was a great side dish. I think with other flavours or vegetables it would make a lovely vegetarian main or a filling salad dish.

Would I buy it again? In all honesty, unless it was on special offer, probably not, I think I’d rather have pasta or cous cous and not pasta type cous cous, but I’m glad I tried it.

Maybe I’m just an old fashioned girl at heart…

Baked Skate with Oven Roasted Vegetables

March 1, 2013March 1, 2013 Chica Andaluza52 Comments

Regular readers of this blog may well know that at home Up our Mountain or in our (now soon to be) second home Down by the Sea (well, I’m working on that phrase…give me more time) we have a passionate love for eating fish. Fish Man provides for us Up the Mountain and Fishmonger does the job Down by the Sea.

Skate is also a regular favourite and it’s usually pan fried in my biggest pan possible. The other day I was busy glossing paintwork but wanted to get dinner on the go. Not wanting to stand over a pan for all of ten minutes, I decided to turn on the oven and get cooking.

Ingredients for 2 people

1 skate wing cut into two pieces
1 large lemon thinly sliced
A selection of vegetables for roasting (I used courgettes, peppers, onions, tomatoes and garlic)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Set the oven to about 180C degrees or medium. Start by coating your vegetables (cut into chunks or strips) in a little olive oil and season them. Put into a deep baking tray. Add a favourite herb if you like – I used thyme. Roast for 20 minutes then lay the skate on top, season it and then drizzle a little more oil over and lay the lemon slices over the fish. Cover with foil and continue to cook for another 20 minutes.

Check that it is cooked by prodding with a sharp knife in the centre (the flesh should be cooked all the way through in the thicket part). If it’s still a little raw (this will depend on the thickness of your fish) put it back in for another 5 minutes and check again.

You will have a lot of delicious juices in the pan which you can drizzle over but you will have extra which can be saved (freeze if not using within 2 days) and used another day for cooking with rice to make a delicious paella or as a stock for a fish soup.

Healthy, low fat, delicious. And plenty of time to jump under the shower and wash that paint out of your hair.

Save water…bath with a friend

February 25, 2013February 25, 2013 Chica Andaluza55 Comments

Or, you could just install a very large shower. At least, that’s our plan.

Remember this ~~quaint~~ vile bathroom?

This how it looks now.

We’ve cut a hole in the wall up high as it’s an internal room with no natural light, so we’re putting in a long window panel which will give us light from the room next door which leads onto the garden. Clever eh?

It’s all getting very messy, but exciting. More to come soon…

Faggots and Onion Gravy

February 22, 2013February 22, 2013 Chica Andaluza78 Comments

Faggots are an old fashioned English dish made from offcuts of meat (usually pork) and offal. I remember as a child my grandmother waxing lyrical about them and me turning my nose up in disgust. Of course, now I’m almost grown up, my tastes have changed and having lived in Spain for 7 years, I am used to enjoying every part of the pig, including the oink.

A local butcher in Bexhill on Sea sells home made (or butcher shop made) Faggots for the princely sum of 50p each. That’s less than a euro or a US dollar and I mistakenly bought 6 for Big Man and I to try. Bad plan. Two was plenty for him and I managed one and a half (although I did serve the leftovers cut up cold the next day meatloaf style and the dogs feasted too)!

This is not a recipe for making them. As I started typing this I thought, I’ll pop over to Mad Dog’s blog, he’ll have something on there about faggots. Of course he did. My method for preparing them to serve was very similar, but different. If you know what I mean.

I cooked my faggots in the oven in a deep oven dish covered tightly with foil for about 40 minutes on a medium heat. I had drizzled them with a little olive oil and a splash of water.

While they were cooking I fried off lots of thinly sliced onions until tender and starting to brown. Then I added the cooking juices from the faggots, some tomato purée and a splash of red wine and seasoning. Then I thickened with a heaped teaspoon of butter mixed with a heaped teaspoon of flour (I’m sure there’s a proper name for this, please enlighten me) which I dropped into the gravy and allowed to cook gently whilst it thickened. Next time (and there will most definitely be a next time) I’ll brown the faggots at the end of cooking while I’m finshing off the gravy so that they don’t look so in need of a week in the sun.

We served it with plenty of creamy mashed potato and a good glass (or three) of wine. An economy meal fit for a king. What more can you want on a cold winter’s night?

One Dish, Two Ways. Trout and Prawns Go Asian and Mediterranean.

February 19, 2013February 19, 2013 Chica Andaluza54 Comments

I have to confess, I’m not a fan of cooking different meals to accommodate different tastes. Maybe I’d have been a horrible mum if I’d had children. I can imagine them all demanding their favourite meals and me refusing point blank and screaming something along the lines of “this is not an a la carte restaurant you know”. But sometimes, just sometimes, I go all contrary and make something different for me and Big Man. As long as it doesn’t involve anything too stressful in terms of extra work.

We were in the mood for fish and I had bought some gorgeous trout steaks and langoustines from the fishmonger. Having made a recent trip to a wonderful Chinese Supermarket I had been dreaming all day of oriental flavours. Big Man was coming down with a cold and feeling in need of a taste of home. No problem – this was an easy fix and we would both be happy.

Asian Style Dish

1 trout steak and 2 large langoustines marinated for 30 minutes in a little freshly grated ginger, a large clove of crushed garlic, a tablespoon of soy sauce, a teaspoon of sesame oil and a splash of fish sauce

Mediterranean Style Dish

1 trout steak and 2 large tiger prawns/langoustines marinated for 30 minutes in the grated zest of half a lemon, the juice of half a lemon and a tablespoon of olive oil

Both dishes

Steamed pak choi and sautéed sliced mushrooms

Griddle or grill the trout and langoustines on a high heat until the trout is almost cooked through (I like it a little pink in the middle but cook for longer if you like) and the langoustines turn from black to pink.

Mediterranean Style... — Mediterranean Style…

To serve the Asian Style Dish

Drizzle a little chili oil over the fish and prawns and some oyster sauce over the vegetables and top with finely shredded spring onion.

To serve the Mediterranean Style Dish

Drizzle a little olive oil and lemon juice over the fish, prawns and vegetables.

Easy, healthy, fairly quick to prepare and cook, and everyone is happy!

Broad Beans with Griddled Pork Belly

February 16, 2013February 16, 2013 Chica Andaluza60 Comments

Reading a beautiful recipe over at Cooking in Sens which involved broad beans stimulated a craving for those little green beauties. Back home in Andalucía right now I would normally just pop out into our veggie garden and pick me a basket full. I haven’t seen any here in England yet but they do have excellent frozen broad bean pods.

I decided to make a little dish with echoes of home as a pretty substantial tapas which we enjoyed with some lovely crusty bread from my dad’s Italian baker pal, wine from a recent jaunt over the channel to France, juice from some of our lemons that Big Man bought back recently and locally reared pork. You can’t say we don’t embrace all that is available to us!

Ingredients as a main course for one or starters for two

1 cup of broad beans cooked until tender and drained
2 thin slices of pork belly cooked on the griddle until browned and cut into small pieces (or use bacon or lardons, or mushrooms for a vegetarian version)
1 avocado cut into small chunks
Olive oil
The grated rind of one lemon and the juice of half
Sweet pimentón
Salt & Pepper
Chopped parsley to finish (I didn’t have any but I think it would be perfect)

Mix together the still warm beans, pork and avocado. Add the lemon rind, about 2 tablespoons of olive oil (more if necessary) and the lemon juice. Season with the pimentón, salt and pepper and mix again. That’s it. Tricky wasn’t it?!

Something Old, Something New – Melokhia

February 11, 2013February 11, 2013 Chica Andaluza44 Comments

Don’t you just love it when you discover a new ingredient, something you’ve never come across before that just leaps out at out and says…buy me, try me, taste me! Or is it just me? No, I didn’t think so.

The other day I popped in to see my new chum at the Caribbean shop and he had bunches of something green and leafy. It looked similar to bunches of basil which has sprouted a bit too high. It was, he informed me, Melokhia (there are many variations on the spelling) and was used a lot in Arab cooking. If you don’t like the texture of okra, he said, don’t buy it. Well, I do like okra, so I did buy it, and to be honest, I didn’t find anything slimey or slippery about it at all, it adds texture to a simple soup.

I got straight onto the phone to my oracle of Arab recipes, my mum, and she knew immediately what I was talking about and told me that she had bought it dried and made a recipe from Claudia Roden’s A New Book of Middle Eastern Food. I jotted down the details to make it, and then promptly ordered the book together with another of hers Arabesque which I am now devouring slowly.

Ms Roden tells us “Melokhia is one of Egypt’s National dishes, an ancient peasant soup”. As I like to embrace my inner ancient peasant, I knew this was for me. Fear not if you can’t get hold of it, use spinach or some delicate green leafed vegetable. I was thinking of something old, something new as this is essentially a chicken or vegetable soup recipe with the added new ingredient. Sorry the photos don’t look that exciting, it’s not a looker, but it really wins points on flavour.

Ingredients (these are my scaled down version, the recipe calls for double)

1.25 litres of chicken (or meat stock, but I think vegetable would be good too) reserve the meat if using
500g of melokhia (leaves only), washed and chopped (or 60g of dried melokhia crushed and saked in hot water until doubled in size)
2 cloves of garlic
Seasoning
Olive oil
½ tablespoon of ground coriander
Cayenne pepper (I used pimenton)

Bring the stock to the boil and add the fresh or reconstituted melokhia and boil for 10 (fresh) or 30 (dried) minutes. Prepare a garlic sauce by frying crushed garlic and a little salt in a small amount of oil. When the garlic is golden add the coriander and cayenne, mix to a paste and fry for a few moments longer.

Add the paste to the soup and simmer for a few minutes more.

This can be served as is or with rice. I added in the vegetables and chicken from my stock. The flavour is delicate from the Melokhia, and it was exciting to be discovering a new ingredient and rediscovering the wonderful recipes of Claudia Roden.

Edwardian Style Standard Lamp

February 7, 2013February 7, 2013 Chica Andaluza52 Comments

Isn’t it always the same…when you’re looking to buy something you can never find it in quite the right style, shape colour? And then, when you least expect it, something perfect throws itself at your feet?!

Ugly sofa too - don't worry, it's not permament! — Ugly sofa too – don’t worry, it’s not permament!

One of the exciting things about our new project here in Bexhill is that we get to furnish it too! When we set up our home in Spain it was relatively easy as we both already had furniture and we merged, purged and started making new memories. Here we had nothing. Starting from scratch is fun. Not starting anew though as we are both agreed that we like buying second hand, preloved, vintage, antique and car boot bargains. Clearly car boot bargains cost less than antiques, but they give us just as much pleasure. Half the fun is restoring, cleaning, seeing the potential.

The property is part of what would have been an Edwardian Family “Villa”. This means it was built around 1903, from what we can tell, and whilst we don’t intend to live in the past completely….we need a decent oven, tv and internet for goodness sake…some older touches will also work well.

Dashing around the other day I popped into a local shop which deals with House Clearances. Some of the stuff they have is junk, some is clearly high quality and very much loved (and priced) antique furniture. And some of it falls between the two. I spotted a wrought iron standard lamp with a very ugly pink lampshade. It spoke to me. Really, it did. I could hear a most refined Edwardian Lady reclining in the bay window of her drawing room on a chaise longue saying “Pray, take this lamp stand home. Clean it, love it and it will add some much needed elegance to your home. Oh, and your hair could do with a brush…standards are slipping”.

So we haggled a little and the bemused owner helped me put it into the car with the back window down so that it would fit and off to House Number 2 I drove where Big Man was impatiently waiting for me to arrive with a bag of masonry nails.

It was dingy brown and I had planned to clean it and paint it black and then buy a new lampshade. So I cleaned it and underneath all the grease and grime it was a beautiful cream colour. Then I popped out to the supermarket and was waylaid in another House Clearance shop (I know now where all the good ones are) and found a perfect sized lampshade in a gold colour and once more turned up at House Number 2 with nothing for dinner but an unexpected bargain that I wore on my head for extra effect.

Then I rummaged in a bag of goodies given to me my Best Friend’s sister who is downsizing and used to make costumes for shows, curtains, clothes and found some beautiful lace and a strip of beading. Two evenings later it was done and I heard my Edwardian Lady murmur in approval “Beautiful my dear, very elegant indeed. But your hair could still do with a good brush”.