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!
When I was a grown up, living in London with a “proper” job, I often used to get invited to functions which required me to dress formally. And great fun it was too. Nowadays, I hardly get to change out of my flip flops, unless it´s into my wellington boots. I have a large suitcase full of some lovely evening wear which will most probably never see the light of day again. At least, not wrapped around my body, it won´t.
Short and Sleevey
We do get invited to lots of weddings though, and formal attire here bears no resemblance to what I would have worn in London. Forget all thoughts of the Royal Wedding and think Gala Dinner and Dance or Cocktail Party. Long gowns, sparkly frocks, big hair. And when you stop to consider that most weddings here take place in the hot summer months, it can be hot work looking gorgeous.
I generally, well never to be honest, wear a full length frock. I go for cocktail length (i.e. on the knee for me) and it seems to work. Not too hot, but glamorous enough. I have also accepted that as the years pass, it´s best to try and cover up my “bingo wings” – those lovely flabby bits at the top of the arms that many of us girls become prone to. Ain´t getting old fun?!
Anyway, in a bit of a dressmaking mood, I remembered a lovely red strappy dress that I had tucked away and decided that it needed a makeover.
It was floor length, with spaghetti straps so I cut it to knee length and adjusted the new hem.
With the scraps of material that came off from cutting it down I cut out new sleeves. I made a muslin template with a sleeve pattern I had from making a dress a while back. Luckily I did the muslin version first as I had to make it slightly larger to accommodate the different sleeve shape.
Getting those sleeves right
I cut out the final version of the sleeves in velvet. The length of the sleeve was determined by the material I was working with, but I craftily used the hem of the dress to work as the hem of my new sleeves, saving me a little job.
I pinned the new sleeves round the straps.
Pinned...
...tacked...
Then I tacked (basted) them into place and removed the pins.
...and sewn!
I sewed the sleeves in by hand, which also served to overcast the edges and then machine sewed the inside hems of the sleeves together.
That was it. The dress needs a good iron, but I´m sure it will now get to enjoy a happy second life at a party some time soon.
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.
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!
Nearly ready
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…
Well, it´s been a while since I posted anything at all, let alone a recipe. It´s been a hectic 5 or 6 weeks with 3 lots of visitors, which was wonderful. Also, a fall down the patio steps (am still feeling rather delicate in the nether regions) and a broken camera which meant that I couldn´t take any pictures. All very frustrating but the derrière is now on the mend and we´ve bought a new camera. Hurrah!
Fish Man came by this morning, and I decided to see what he had tucked in the back of his little van. I´d been fancying a warming soup as we´ve had the worst (and wettest) Easter here in Andalucía for 80 years, and the rain and storms are set to last for a few days more. Combine this with the most dreadful hay fever and I feel like I have a bad dose of flu with a serious hangover on top. I don´t actually have a hangover, although it might have been fun putting in the work to achieve it, just the pain! Fortunately Fish Man had some beautiful mussels, not of the bicep kind you understand, so I bought a kilo.
I was torn between doing them in a creamy, oniony, white wine base or a garlicky, tomatoey one. The tomato won – I felt that my nose needed a good assault of powerful smells! This is a very easy and quick to cook dish that looks as though you spent hours in the kitchen creating something “gourmet”.
The serving I made would feed two as a main course or four as a starter.
Ingredients used were:
A kilo of mussels
3 fat cloves of garlic, crushed
Half a medium onion finely chopped
About a cup or half a tin of chopped peeled tomatoes
Olive oil for frying
Small glass of white wine
About 2 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley
Salt and pepper
Water (optional)
Rinse the Mussels Several Times
Start by cleaning the mussels. Not as tricky as it may seem. I usually rinse them three or four times in cold running water. Throw away any that are cracked or open. You then need to remove the “beard” which is the small strand of seaweed looking stuff which usually just pokes out of the straighter side of the mussel. Hold the mussel in one hand with the point facing down and the curved part into the palm of your hand. Grab the seaweedy strand with your thumb and forefinger of the other hand and pull it upwards – it will slide out and you´re done!
Cleaned and De-Barnacled!
If your mussels have any barnacles attached, you can pop these off with the blade of a flat (butter) knife. Finally a quick scrub (I use a metallic pan scrubber for this) and a final rinse and they´re done.
Put the mussels to one side and start on the base. In a deep saucepan which has a lid, heat some olive oil (enough to sweat the onion and garlic). On a low heat, sweat them off for a few minutes until soft and transparent. I used a red onion today as it was what I had, but it´s just as good, if not better, with a stronger tasting white onion.
Gently sweat the onion and garlic
Now add your tomato (you can also add a teaspoon of tomato puree if your tomatoes are a bit pale or lacking in flavour). Keep on a low heat and put the lid on and leave to simmer for about 5 minutes. Remove the lid, add your wine and seasoning and bring to a bubble then reduce to a simmer and leave to cook gently for 5 minutes.
Make the tomato base for the soup
The base is now ready and you can stop here until you´re ready to eat – the final stages will only take you about another 5 minutes, so this is a good “prepare ahead when you´ve got guests” dish.
Finally...add the mussels and parsley
When you´re ready to eat, warm the tomato sauce, add the mussels and the chopped parsley and put the lid on. I usually do this on a medium heat and after about 2 minutes check and see how the mussels are doing. You may need to put the lid on and give the pan a shake to move the mussels around a little.
Once they´re all open they´re ready to eat. The mussels will release their juices so see how much you have in the pot. If you feel you´d like a little more liquid, add a glass of water (or fish stock or wine), if not, they´re fine as they are. I don´t usually add more liquid, these measurements give two large bowls of mussels and enough stock for two good bowls of soup.
Enjoy - but don´t forget the wine!
You can serve with a salad and plenty of crusty bread to mop up the juices. I recommend serving with a spoon and fork. The fork is for getting those mussels out of their shells for those guests who don´t want to use an empty shell to do this, and the spoon is for the soup part. They´re also nice, particularly if you serve them with less liquid, with crispy chips and garlicky mayonnaise. Don´t forget to put an empty bowl on the table to chuck the shells into and a bottle of chilled white, rosé or red wine. Yes, I do mean chilled red, believe me, it works! It´s one of those dishes that works with any wine. A bit like me really…
It´s that time of year again. Spring has sprung, or at least it´s starting to spring and our plum tree which sits quietly in our little olive grove has exploded into blossom. Couldn´t resist taking a few snaps.
A Very Happy Plum Tree
The olives are showing their first very tiny flower buds which will start to open up very soon. This, alas, I´m not looking forward to as I am hideously allergic to olive pollen and have suffered terribly for the last few years. Fingers crossed that the 3 year programme of medication I´m signed up to with Malaga hospital does its thing. Have been taking drops daily since October, so it will be interesting to see if I suffer any less this year than last….!
A day when I feel like an exhausted mother who has been given an hour´s respite while her partner takes the children to the park for an hour. Big Man has taken the dogs out for a walk and I´ve just made myself a cup of Lady Grey tea and plonked myself down on the sofa. I´m sure real mums have it a lot worse, as it´s constant, but I have spent a lot of time with little people today and it´s worn me out! Probably because I´m not used to it, at least that´s my excuse.
Having said that, it´s been a fun day. Tomorrow in Spain it´s the feast of San José, Saint Joseph, which means it´s Father´s Day here. One of Big Man´s sisters is a teacher at the local primary school and I went along to help her out with classes today to get gifts and cards sorted out for the Dads.
The day was focused on healthy eating, balanced diets, and talk about vitamins, minerals, calcium, protein etc. All pretty advanced for 7 year olds I thought, but they loved it. We made Fruit Salad, which is called Macedonia here, and the children ate this in their morning break. We also squeezed some oranges that one of the dads grows and made a Moroccan dessert of sliced oranges sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon. All were made with much laughter and consumed without a single cry of “I don´t like fruit”.
Cards with hearts and sunshine were also made and finally we moved on to some Moroccan pastries (a recipe from one of the mums who comes from there) made with ground almonds, eggs, butter, grated lemon and coated in icing sugar. Good, sticky, messy fun.
This afternoon was spent with Big Man´s niece who is studying English at the University of Malaga and we had a conversation class. To get the ball rolling, I asked her to help me prepare some jam, which she happily did, and we covered a whole new cooking vocabulary which is not usually studied in a typical language class!
A few weeks ago I bought a bag of frozen mixed berries. I think they´re called Fruits of the Forest sometimes. We only used a little which I had whizzed up with yogurt, but I think the fruit had been picked very much out of season and was eye wateringly sour. There was nothing for it but to convert the remaining 600g from a 1kg bag into a delicious, and beautiful, mixed fruit jam. Here´s how we went about it:
600g berries
600g sugar (any amount if fruit and sugar will do, but they need to be equal quantities)
2 apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped
The juice of 1 large lemon
2 tablespoons of water
A large, deep saucepan
Wooden spoon
A saucer
2 or 3 clean jars and lids
Start by putting the apple and water into the saucepan and bring to a simmer. As it simmers, mash with a fork or potato masher. This will only take a few minutes.
If you´re going to sterilize your jars in the dishwasher, put them in now as this jam doesn´t take long to make. Put your saucer in the freezer for testing the setting point of the jam later.
Warm gently until the sugar has dissolved
Add the lemon juice, fruit and sugar to the pan and warm gently until the sugar has dissolved. Once the sugar has dissolved, turn the heat up and bring the jam to a boil. This only needs to boil for 5-10 minutes to reach setting point which you can test with either a jam thermometer or by putting a teaspoonful onto your icy cold saucer. If the jam wrinkles when it has gone cold and is pushed slightly with your finger, it´s ready. If not, boil for a couple more minutes then retest. Be really careful with the boiling jam as it burns incredibly if it splashes onto you.
When it´s at the right point, leave to cool down a little while the dishwasher finishes its cycle and then pot your jam, screw the lids on while still hot but label the next day when the jam has cooled down completely.
Now all you need to do it bake some delicious scones to go with your beautiful jam!
Love ´em or hate ´em – my friends and family seem to be divided in their opinion of croquettes. I´m most definitely in the “Love” camp, as is one of my god daughters who can eat them non stop. Big Man sits in the other camp and every now and then I try a new batch on him to see if I can convert him. He loved the Falafel I made recently, which are pretty “croquettey” in my view, so I haven´t given up hope.
Love, love, love ´em!
Croquettes in Spain are generally made with a béchamel base to hold them together, rather than potato, which is the way I´ve always done them. I´ve never tried to make them Spanish style, but after making a fish pie the other day I had a small bowl of béchamel sauce left over and I thought I´d give them a go. What with having dogs and chickens, it´s unusual now for me to have many leftovers in the fridge. The chickies get the sad vegetables, salad and fruit (if I haven´t already turned them into soups or jams) and the dogs get bones and scraps of meat. Anything else should go onto the compost heap, but there never seems to be enough left!
Croquettes can be made from any filling, but I really recommend searching through your fridge and using up any little scraps of leftovers. I had a small bowl of cubed jamon which hadn´t gone into the soup and a few leaves of chard which were looking a bit floppy, so my decision was made. Other suggestions could be cold veg, tuna, leftover chicken, cheese, hard boiled eggs…ooh, I could go on, but I´ll just get on with telling you how they were made.
Not a lot of photos today as my hands were getting mucky (despite wearing latex gloves) when making the croquettes and Big Man wasn´t around to take snaps for me.
Ingredients used were:
About 2 cups of cold béchamel which had gone quite solid. If you need to make it from scratch, use about 250-300ml of milk for your béchamel and then leave it in the fridge to get really cold.
About a cup and a half of filling – I had a cup of very finely chopped Spanish jamon and a cup of shredded chard which, when cooked, reduced to half its volume
A tablespoon of plain flour
Salt and pepper
A beaten egg
Dried breadcrumbs for coating the croquettes
Oil for deep frying
A pair of latex gloves if you don´t want to get too mucky and a couple of tablespoons
Mix it all up
Start by mixing your filling into the béchamel and season to taste. Add the flour to bind together slightly.
Beat your egg in a shallow bowl and prepare another bowl with some breadcrumbs.
Take heaped spoonfuls of the mixture and shape either by hand or with the spoons into croquettes. I went for the traditional cylinder shape but this is really up to you. As soon as you start to work with the béchamel it will soften (hence my recommendation of using gloves!) but persevere as things will get easier once you get to the breadcrumb stage.
Roll your croquette in the beaten egg mixture. Using a spoon to lift it in and out and spoon the egg over seems to help here, then drop it into the breadcrumb mix. Roll it around and then put onto a plate.
When all your croquettes are ready, and I got eight pretty big ones from the above mixture, pop them back into the fridge for at least an hour or until you are ready to cook them.
Get your oil nice and hot, once it starts to smoke, turn it down a little and gently drop the croquettes in. They probably take less than a minute to cook – just enough time for the outside to turn a golden brown and the centre to warm up. Lift them out with a slotted spoon onto some greaseproof paper and then to a serving plate. You can make them in advance and then gently warm them up for a few minutes in the oven if you are not serving straight away.
Pour yourself a nice cold glass of white wine or dry Spanish sherry and imagine a hot Andalucían summer´s evening in a noisy tapas bar while you enjoy your Croquetas de Jamon!
Big Man hasn´t exactly gone hungry over the last two weeks, but a lot of my time has been taken up with recovering my dining chairs so we´ve eaten a lot of tortilla. I´ve never been taught properly how to “do” dressmaking or upholstery, but have just picked things up as I went along. I´m sure the finished results are not perfect, and certainly not to a standard that I could get paid for the work, but I was really pleased with the way my most recent project turned out. Big Head me!
Sad Chair (right), Half way through makeover (centre), Happy Chair (left)
When we moved into the house 3 years ago, we bought a lovely dining table in a light oak colour and six matching chairs which were upholstered in a cream cotton type fabric. Obviously over time the colour started to look a little sad. Particularly at the top where the chairs are held and moved around. I tried fabric shampoo on them but it didn´t seem to make much difference. At a fabric shop near Malaga, on a sneaky trip to Ikea (to buy napkins and candles, what else?!) I saw some lovely fabric in a burnt orange colour at a bargain price. I had already measured the chairs and knew I needed just over six metres, so asked for seven (allowing for any mistakes). There was eight and a half metres of fabric left on the roll, so the shop very kindly discounted the last metre and a half and I went home a happy woman.
I started out by pinning large sheets of plain paper to a chair. I had had to stick several together to get the pages wide and long enough. Then I drew around the outline of the chair marking corners and edges and then cut the pattern out.
Making the Pattern Template
The pattern was then pinned to the fabric and cut out, leaving a 2cm edge all around.
Pin Pattern to Fabric and Cut Out Leaving 2cm Edge
The hard work then began, as the next part took the longest, particularly on the first chair which I needed to make sure was absolutely right before cutting out any more fabric. Luckily it all worked out well! I pinned the fabric, inside out, to the chair, using the pins as though I was tacking the material together. This allowed me to pull it tight and manoeuvre it to get a good fit around the chair. The fabric was then tacked in a contrasting cotton and the pins removed.
Pin and tack to chair
With the first chair I turned the fabric the right way round and slipped it back onto the chair to see how well it fitted. Phew, all ok, so I was ready to sew. Out came the trusty sewing machine and I machined the tacking in a matching thread with a straight stitch. In order to ensure the fabric wouldn´t fray at the edges, I switched the machine to a zig zag and stitched all the edges to tidy them up.
...and stitch away...
The final part was to turn the fabric right side out, slip it over the chair, and pull it tight at the bottom. The chair was then flipped upside down and with a fine, flexible sewing needle, I tacked the zig zagged edges onto the underside of the chair. I guess this could have been done more quickly with a strong stapler, but after Big Man put the wrong sized staples into ours the other day (we still can´t get them out), it was hand sewing for me.
Hand sew or staple to base of chair
The first chair took me the longest, probably about 8 hours in total over a couple of days, but by the time I got to the sixth and final chair, I think I was down to about 4 hours! They´re all finished now and I´m happy with the results. Here´s to many delicious meals eaten whilst sitting on the newly covered chairs.
My birthday falls at the end of January. A month of cold and damp here and after the excesses of Christmas, it feels like a time to shy away from more celebration. Especially when you´re suffering from bronchitis like I was. Big Man asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate my birthday and I told him I wanted to be like the Queen of England and celebrate on a second date, preferably when the weather was warmer. Anyway, last year he surpassed himself and surprised me with our rescue puppy, Luna, so I didn´t think a bottle of perfume or a box of chocolates was going to tick the boxes for me. Selfish moo that I am.
The local town hall often organises “cultural activities” for the village folk, not something I have ever been interested in. Probably a bit of smug self importance creeping in, thinking I´m already culturally aware enough already and mixed with a healthy dose of a severe fear of group activities of any kind. When Big Man surprised me (again!) on my birthday by telling me that we were going to join 35 other villagers on a three day trip to Tangier at the end of February, I wasn´t really sure what to think. It´s a destination I´ve always wanted to visit, but Big Man had always said it didn´t interest him, and we both hated anything that involved coaches and tour guides. I decided to keep an open mind about the whole thing, dose myself up with cough medicine and make Falafel to get us in the mood.
Here´s how we got into the Moroccan vibe and made six Falafel. Enough for 2 as a light lunch or 6 “tapas” sized servings:
1 tin (400g) or jar of cooked chick peas
2 spring onions
1 large clove of garlic
Salt
Half a teaspoon of ground cumin
Half a teaspoon of ground coriander
Large pinch of chili powder (optional) or a chopped fresh green chili
2 level tablespoons of flour plus extra for dusting.
Parsley (enough to chop down to about 2-3 tablespoons according to taste)
Oil to fill a frying pan to a depth of about 1cm (I used olive oil)
Serving Suggestion
Pitta or flat bread and chopped lettuce and mint, a squeeze of lemon juice (optional)
This is a dish which is very fast to prepare if you have a food processor. It took me longer to wash up than to whizz the ingredients. It can also be done by hand with a potato masher and a bit of fine chopping and mixing in a large bowl.
Put all of the ingredients apart from the oil and serving suggestions in a food processor and whizz them up for about 30 seconds then pulse until they reach the texture of grainy, wet cement. If it looks really sloppy add a little more flour but it will still be fairly wet when it´s ready. Add salt to your taste.
Put a couple of tablespoons of extra flour in a bowl and drop in a heaped tablespoon full of the chick pea mixture and using two spoons get it lightly covered in flour. If you can work quickly just drop this straight into your frying pan of hot oil, or if you prefer to work more slowly, prepare the falafel first and put them onto a plate, then heat the oil and drop them in.
Sizzle those Patties!
Make sure your oil is hot, let is start to smoke then turn the heat down slightly. You only want to get a nice crust to the outside, the chick peas are already cooked. Flatten the balls of mixture down as you put them into the pan and after about a minute flip them over (but make sure they´re nice and browned first).
The second side will take slightly less time, so just check on them, take them out and place onto kitchen paper to blot the excess oil and you´re ready to serve. They´re great with a squeeze of lemon juice then stuffed into pitta bread with some finely chopped lettuce and mint and a spoon full of natural yogurt mixed with an equal quantity of mayonnaise. I´m not sure how authentic that is – but it´s delicious!
So, the damp weather was looking like it was going to continue, and my yearning for comfort food followed the same pattern. I love casseroles and braised dishes with lots of sauce to be slurped up with a spoon or soaked up with bread or creamy mashed potato. It was time to make something warm and comforting. A hug in a casserole dish.
Hearty Winter Food
Oxtail used to be, I understand, a cheap and cheerful cut of meat to buy. It needs long and slow cooking, so this probably influenced the price. It now seems, from my recent visits to the UK, to be a bit of a “gastro pub” highlight and the price has correspondingly increased. Even in Spain, where it´s sold as “Bull´s Tail” it´s no longer that cheap a cut of meat to buy. But hey, sometimes you´re worth that little bit extra and it´s that delicious, it´s worth all the love and long cooking it needs.
I made a large pot of this delicious casserole which gave me 2-3 main portions plus enough meaty sauce left over to give me a further 2 hearty bowls of oxtail flavoured soup.
Here´s what you need:
1 ox tail, cut into slices. Your butcher should do this, or it will come ready prepared. Mine weighed about 1.2kg
3 medium carrots, diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 medium courgettes, diced
2 sticks of celery, diced
3 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 jar or tin of cannellini beans
1 tin of tomatoes, crushed or chopped
2 heaped teaspoons of tomato puree
1 bottle of red wine, less a glass for the cook
1 mug of water or stock (beef, chicken or vegetable)
Salt and pepper
Approx 2 tablespoons of plain flour
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
A large, deep, ovenproof dish with a lid
Take One Ox Tail...
Chop. Chop
First prepare all your vegetables and put them to one side. No need to keep them separate as they´ll be cooked together.
Now coat your pieces of ox tail in flour and after heating the olive oil in the ovenproof dish, brown them on all sides. Don´t rush this part as, if you over crowd the pan, the meat will steam and not brown. Put the ox tail to one side.
Start to brown...
In the same pan, and with the oil that remains, add the diced vegetables and make sure they all get coated in oil. Put the lid on and let them sweat for about 5 minutes.
Turn your oven on low (about gas mark 2).
Put the meat back into the pot, add the beans, tomatoes and tomato puree, stir and bring it up to a simmer.
Bring to a simmer
Now add the wine and water, season lightly (you can adjust this when the dish has finished cooking) and bring it to a simmer once more.
Put a lid on the pot, and the whole thing now goes into the oven where it will cook slowly for at least 4 hours. I like the sauce to thicken a little so it usually ends up cooking for 5-6 hours. It won´t dry out, you have plenty of liquid in there. Every couple of hours check on it and give it a stir. If it does look like it´s getting too dry for your taste, add a mug of boiling water.
When the cooking time is up (and it´s a very forgiving dish), take it out and check for seasoning. If it´s too liquid, simmer on the hob to reduce a little. You can eat it immediately if you wish, but it´s a dish which really does improve if left until the next day. Leave to cool completely. If you find your have a layer of fat on the top the next day, you can remove this before heating up and serving.
It looks like a lot of meat, but it´s nearly all bone. How many it serves depends on how hungry you are and how much sauce, vegetables and potatoes you serve it with. Any leftover sauce and can be diluted slightly with stock or water and served as a filling soup another day.
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 