Yummy Almeria

One day last week, when I knew that I had a busy day ahead, I went to the freezer to pick something out for dinner that was all ready to go.  I had some lovely homemade barbeque ribs so decided on them and then all I had to do was make a salad and put a couple of jacket potatoes in the oven, leaving me free most of the day to get things done.  However, when I returned later that day, our supper had vanished from the table – this has never happened before but obviously I knew who the culprit(s) were!  And there they were in the courtyard enjoying the bones immensely.  I guess the smell was too good and Kevin, the Pointer, had managed to move the kitchen chair out of the way and steal the foil container.  Digby was also joining in when I arrived.  Great.

I had a look in the fridge to see what I could come up with without having to spend much time cooking, and then had a look in my Bill Granger ‘Holiday’ cook book.  He is fantastic for the most delicious and often simple food, and it always tastes so fresh and healthy even if it isn’t!  Anyway, this is what I came up with – I had everything at home apart from an avocado and cooked chicken (as this recipe was really for when you had leftovers from a roast chicken the day before).  Anyway, I decided that it looked gorgeous and popped out and bought a cooked chicken and the avocado.

It’s worth making sure you have all the other things in your fridge/larder for the next time you want to have a go at this.  If you are making it for children, just omit the chillies.

Chorizo with shredded chicken tortillas – this is enough for 4

A slug of olive oil

2 chorizo sausages (not the dried kind, but the ones you might barbeque –

take the skins off and roughly chop

1 onion chopped

Quarter of a Savoy cabbage finely shredded

2 garlic cloves

3 red chillies seeded and chopped

5 tomatoes chopped

2 cups of cooked shredded chicken

4 fl oz chicken stock

Salt and pepper

To Serve

Flour tortillas

2 Avocadoes Diced

2 tablespoons of coriander

2 tablespoons lime juice

Grilled tomato and chilli Salsa

heat the olive oil in a large pan and add the chorizo and cook for a few minutes.  Add the onion and continue to cook for a further 4 or 5 minutes.  Then add the cabbage, minced garlic and chilli and cook for 5 minutes.  Add the tomatoes, and then simmer gently for 10 minutes.  Add the cooked chicken and the stock and simmer until most of the liquid has disappeared. Season with pepper and a little salt.  Warm the tortillas in a clean frying pan for about a minute or so flipping half way.  Put the chicken and chorizo onto half of the tortilla and fold over.   Mix together the avocado, coriander and lime juice and spoon over.  Serve with the tomato and chilli salsa. see below.

Grilled tomato and chilli salsa

3 large ripe tomatoes

2 large green chillies

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 tablespoons olive oil

half teaspoon of caster sugar

Pre heat your grill and put the tomatoes and chillies on a baking tray and grill, turning once until they are a bit charred. When cool peel the skins off and roughly chop. Chop the chillies and stir together with the garlic and olive oil and then season with salt, pepper and the sugar and put in a serving dish for everyone to help themselves.

This is just so delicious and will only take around 30 minutes to make.  I will definitely serve it to a large crowd and let everyone make up their own tortillas.  To make more of a meal serve with a salad too.

This is the dessert bit of my easy Sunday lunch – actually it is reasonably fiddly but only because of the whisking up of egg whites part!  The reason I like it is because in my opinion chocolate cake only improves with age (within reason!) and so make it the day before and then you can forget all about it until you serve it.  I seem to be attracted to cake recipes that contain ground almonds lately and this one also has them, so just be careful of people with nut allergies!   Nigel grinds his own but we can buy them here very easily so I don’t feel the need to.  Also, don’t overcook the cake if you think it is too wobbly – l didn’t trust my instincts and mine, though yummy, was a tiny bit too firm – it should be slightly squidgy in the centre.   Anyhow, there were no complaints.

You can serve this however you like – I had some homemade strawberry and raspberry sorbet in the freezer and so served a little of that, a few strawberries (raspberries are better but I couldn’t be bothered to drive for 25 minutes on Saturday to get them!) and a splash of pouring cream.  Frankly just some whipped cream would have done the job.

You will need a spring form cake tin, 23cms in diameter, lightly buttered and lined with baking parchment

200g Fine dark chocolate, 70% of course!

200g Butter

A small hot espresso or strong filter coffee

80g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 level tbsps of good quality cocoa powder, not drinking chocolate!

5 eggs

200g golden unrefined caster sugar – I’m afraid I didn’t have any so just used normal sugar, shame on me!

Pre heat the oven to 180c/gas mark 4

Break up the chocolate and melt in a bowl resting over saucepan of simmering water.  When it starts to melt, pour over the coffee.  Cut up the butter in small pieces and drop it into the chocolate and coffee.  Do not stir it, but just leave it gently heating.  Sieve the flour, baking powder and cocoa together.  Separate the eggs, and whisk the whites in a bowl until they are stiff, then fold in the sugar with a large metal spoon.  Remove the chocolate from the heat and stir to dissolve the last of the butter.  Mix the egg yolks together then stir quickly into the chocolate.  Fold firmly but gently into the egg whites and sugar.  Lightly fold in the flour and cocoa and then the ground almonds.  Just keep cutting and folding until everything is incorporated without knocking the guts out of it. Put the mixture into the cake tin and cook just above the centre of the oven for 25-30 minutes – test the middle with a cocktail stick or a small skewer – it should come out just clean.  As said, don’t over cook, leave to cool a little before taking out of the tin.  Rather than spoil the top, I quite often just put the tin bottom onto the serving platter, but you can flip over if you like and remove the bottom, plus the baking parchment.  Dust with cocoa powder and voila, pud is done.

What a week of weather we have had – rain, rain and more rain – of course it is a gift but we are not used to it so we are all moaning away – it gets us every year too!  One day you are having to move under the tree in our courtyard because it is too hot (as in two weeks ago) and the next you are rally driving through the mud up our track!  Anyhow, the thing that never fails to cheer me up is getting stuck into a big cook up for friends.  We were out to lunch last Wednesday at our friends Graham and David having a magnificent lunch – they had just come back from Istanbul and so were making a Turkish banquet – and I mean banquet – it was sensational.  Anyhow, because I knew the forecast was still a bit miserable for the end of the week, I invited them to ours for a warming traditional English roast lunch – the thought of lamb or chicken sizzling away in the oven with mountains of roast potatoes is real food for the soul.  They had another friend coming so I said just bring them too. Another friend from England, Ilse, was staying with us as she is over checking repairs to her cave house which had suffered a little with the inclement weather, so we were going to be a nice little group.

As it turned out, Sunday dawned bright and sunny – and hot!  So I changed my menu slightly and laid up the table outside instead.  This meant saving loads of time lighting wood fires to warm everyone up and instead I flung open all the doors to let the day into the house.  Originally there were to be eight of us, which is the amount that I am most happy to cook for without stressing too much – any more and it is a barbeque, a curry or something that requires no last minute faffing.  Well, there were to be only six but the lunch I made you could actually easily do for 10 without any fuss, even if you are not comfortable cooking for a crowd.  In Spain, we easily get lovely little Picantones – Spring baby chickens – I love them, not just for the taste, but because you have one each and so there is no carving involved at the end and therefore everything can be served very easily, and more to the point, hot!  The recipe I use for this is actually from a tapas book by Penelope Casas where she uses Quail.  But because this is a main course, one would have to have at least two Quail and delicious though they are, they are too fiddly for what I want today.  If you can’t buy baby chickens, then just use one or two beautiful free range hens and joint them before cooking to achieve the no hassle serving.  One very large hen will do for six, but for eight buy two and have some leftovers for the next day.

You need to start the recipe the night before.

6 baby chickens or one large hen jointed (your butcher will do it for you if you ask)

20 cloves of garlic peeled and minced

1 or 2 onions – if they are very large, one will do – cut into chunks

A slosh of stock, I used a bit of chicken stock that I already had but frankly a bit of a vegetable stock cube is fine – use about half a cup full of liquid

A slosh of white wine

A good slug of olive oil

2 or 3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar

Salt and Pepper

Put everything into a food processor and whiz it all up until you have a paste – if you don’t have a food processor, just chop the onions as finely as you possible can, and mix everything together in a bowl.  Put the chickens or jointed chicken pieces into your roasting tray and cover with the marinade.  Turn all the pieces so they are coated, cover with foil and put in the fridge overnight.

These will take about an hour and hour in a fan oven – start off at 200 c, gas mark 6, and then lower after 20 minutes to 190, gas mark 5.  Cook skin side down for the first 30 minutes and then turn over and baste once or twice throughout the cooking time.  If you like you can remove from the oven, cover and then reheat at 190 for ten minutes when you are ready to serve.

Yesterday I served these with a lovely green salad and a pan of potatoes that I had sliced with a mandolin and layered up with onions and sage, a little olive oil over each layer and a cup of stock, salt and pepper and just put them in with the chicken on a lowish shelf, then turned up the heat to crisp the top layer.  They are utterly delicious and much healthier than Dauphinoise!  I also baked some onions, having simmered them whole for 20 mins, popped them cut in half in a baking tray with a good cup of double cream and sprinkled with parmesan cheese.  Then they sat alongside the potatoes for about 25 minutes. Then instead of stuffing I wrapped spicy sausages in bacon and oven baked for 30 mins and served with the chicken platter.   I didn’t put any of the food onto posh serving dishes, just put them out as they were for everyone to help themselves.  I promise this is so much easier than trying to keep a traditional roast lunch hot and is really every bit as good.  The fact you can prep everything in advance just means you are free to be with your friends for most of the time instead of in the kitchen.

For Mick and Sadie’s birthday on Wednesday I made a cake – I hardly ever make birthday cakes but I have a book on Lemons (quite useful for here!) and there is a lovely recipe for what I wanted.  I find with Victoria Sponge type cakes, you have to eat them on the day – after that the cream goes a bit funny and the sponge isn’t the once light and fluffy thing it once was.  This recipe is a bit sturdier, doesn’t have cream or jam to make it soggy and therefore is good for quite a few days (we have been eating it for 3 now!!).  I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this one for children – it is too subtle in flavour and contains no chocolate!  For grown up afternoon tea it is just perfect.

You will need two 9 inch round loose-bottomed cake tins lined with greaseproof paper.

9 oz plain four

1 and a quarter teaspoons of baking powder with a pinch of salt

4 oz soft butter

7 oz caster sugar

3 and a half oz soft light brown sugar

2 eggs

Half teaspoon grated lemon rind

About 4 medium bananas

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 fl oz milk

3oz chopped walnuts or almonds

For the Icing

4 oz softened butter

1 lb icing sugar

1 tspn lemon rind

5 tablespoons lemon juice

Lemon rind curls to decorate, or edible flower or whatever you like

Pre-heat the oven to 180 c, 350 f, Gas 4.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl

Beat the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, beat in the eggs one at a time and stir in lemon rind.

Blitz the bananas with the vanilla and milk and then whiz in with the butter mixture alternating with the flour.  Stir in until blended and ad the nuts (or obviously you can leave them out in case of allergies).

Divide between the tins and bake for around 30 mins or until golden and a tooth pick should come out clean.  Leave for 5 minutes and then turn out on a wire rack.

Cream the butter until smooth (a hand whisk is best for this), then gradually beat in the icing sugar.  Stir in the lemon rind and enough of the lemon juice to make a spreadable consistency.  Sandwich the cooled cakes together, then spread the remaining icing over the top and sides and decorate.

Today we are having friends over for lunch – all of us have been away and have not seen one another for some weeks.  Also Mick’s mum is here visiting from Shropshire, and she knows them all too so we thought it would be fun.

It is the most amazing, warm February day and so I have set up the lunch table in the courtyard (I am mightily relieved otherwise I would have had to give the dining room a going over which I don’t feel like!).  I am making a simple lunch of grilled baby chickens (1 each!) marinated in pureed garlic, onions, wine, vinegar and lemon juice, roast potatoes and a huge salad with two dressings.  I like doing lunch on Saturdays as somehow people don’t expect a great big palaver of a meal, and just enjoy the getting together and avoiding going supermarket shopping!

Anyhow, for pud I decided to make an unfussy affair and dipped into my lovely Spooning with Rosie cookbook.  She always comes up trumps with delicious yet simple recipes that even if you don’t like cooking, will find easy and fun to make.

I trust her so much that I have broken my rule of never serving anything which I haven’t tried out on Mick first.  When I perused this recipe, I thought “that’s the one” as it is SO simple and also it is almond blossom time here and so has a nice seasonal feel to it.  She serves it with champagne or pots of tea; I am serving mine with strawberries and vanilla mascarpone to make it more dessert-like.

Pre heat the oven over to 160 or gas mark 2.

Take a 25 cm loose bottomed cake tin and line it with baking parchment.

6 medium eggs

300 g golden caster sugar (I didn’t have any and so just used ordinary sugar, not even caster!)

200 g ground almonds

1large juicy orange (which I picked from our tree)

2 tablespoons of water (I used orange blossom water)

Separate 3 of the eggs

Add the other 3 full eggs to the yolks and beat up with a fork.

Add to these the almonds and 200 g of the sugar. Grate in the orange zest, and keep the orange for juicing later.  Whisk the egg whites until stiff and carefully fold them into the almond mixture.  Poor the foamy mixture into the prepared cake tin and place in the oven for around 50-60mins.

Put the remaining 100g of sugar in a pan with the orange juice and a couple of tablespoons of water. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved and set aside.

Remove the cake from the oven and leave in the tin to cool.  Then prod with a toothpick all over and spoon over the syrup.  It seems a lot but I think this is supposed to have a kind of Middle Eastern type stickiness to it so really go for it.  Leave to cool completely.

Anyhow, mine as you can see has turned out quite nicely – I will let you know after lunch how it tastes!