Seville Orange Marmalade

Bitterness is viewed harshly in this overly sweet world. To be bitter is to be consumed with an intense animosity, lashed by the rawness of winter winds, suffering the distress of a galling shame. Yet bitter enemies, bitter rancor, bitter hatred create all the finest elements of great art, surely?

The man chooses bitter in winter, the bitter that is an English dark brown beer. Served at room temperature, which is a surprise to some like the young Spanish woman I saw at an airport bar who wanted to return the pint she’d just bought because it was warm and flat. The barman’s refusal made her bitter  (his explanation that is the way it is meant to be drunk left her confused).

In Brindisa the other day I asked whether their oranges were waxed or not, Spanish citrus being a particular highlight late into winter. Not these ones, the guy said, try this as he handed me a chunk of fresh bread with a generous dollop of marmalade. Amazing – bitter fruit, proper thick shreds of peel, intense jam – quite a mouthful. Being so good on bread not toast was such a surprise I told the man about it that night. He makes weekend breakfast that is always toast - marmalade for him and vegemite for me and coffee for us both. I went back to Brindisa and asked to buy a jar of their very fine marmalade. Ah no madam the nice man said, we sell the oranges and give you this and handed me a small slip of paper, which is how this week I came to make something I’d never done before.

Here is the recipe.

Seville Orange Marmalade

Marmalade can be made with all kinds of citrus and was, indeed, initially made in Portugal using quince but Seville oranges are particularly suited because of the high pectin levels in the pith and pips and, of course, their wonderful bitterness 

Makes about 5 kgs - you need a lot of jars

1.5kg Seville oranges - buy big ones, as it will cut the work down a bit

3 litres water

Juice of 2 lemons

3kg granulated sugar - the weight of sugar is always double that of the fruit

I found it easiest to set up a kind of work station before I started to reduce the amount of sticky mess I was guaranteed to make. You need a BIG preserving pan, mine is 25cm deep with a diameter of 30cm which holds vast amounts. Put the pan on the bench to your left. Next to it put your chopping board, knife and citrus juicer. On the right hand side put a large piece of muslim - at least 30 cm square - on top of a large flat plate. You put all the pips - and there's a LOT of them in Seville oranges - as well as the membrane from the juiced oranges into the muslin, then bring the corners together and tie up the bundle with string before you add it to the jam pan. It is the magic bag that means the marmalade will set when it's done.

Scrub all the fruit with warm water and a clean scourer, then cut each orange in half and squeeze out the juice, piling up the juiced orange halves as you go. Juice the two lemons and discard the shells -  use them to soften your elbows first! 

Tip all the juice into the pan. Pull any remaining membrane out of the oranges and add it to the muslin, along with all the pips.  Bring the edges of the muslin together and tie it tightly with kitchen string so nothing can escape into the pot. 

Slice the orange peel thinly to the size you like, making sure it's fairly consistent. Don't be tempted to remove the pith, it contains a lot of pectin to help the marmalade set.

Add the orange slices to the pan with the juice, the muslin bag containing all the pips and membrane, and the 3 litres of water. Put the pan onto a medium heat and bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat so it simmers gently. Let it bubble away for a couple of hours until the peel is soft and the liquid has reduced by about a third.

Take the pan off the heat and use some tongs to take the muslin bag out. Put it on a plate to cool a bit, then squeeze the bag back over the pan of liquid, catching all the  surprisingly thick juice. Discard the sad sack.

Add the sugar to the pan and, still off the heat, stir it until it is all dissolved.

Return the pan to the heat and bring it back to the boil over a fairly high heat. Boil the jam rapidly for about 15-20 minutes, until the setting point is reached. 

Setting point is what it sounds like, and the best way to test is with a sugar thermometer - when the temperature reaches 105C/220F you're good to go. You can also put a plate into the fridge and,  when the mixture has boiled for 15 minutes, spoon a little onto the cold plate and put it back into the fridge for a minute or two. If the jam then sets enough to wrinkle when you push it with your finger, you're good to go.

Take the pan off the heat, skim off any scum, and then all the marmalade to cool for about 15  minutes so that the peel floats rather than sinks.

Whilst it's cooling wash your jars and lids in warm soapy water then dry them on a tray in the oven at about 160C for five minutes.  Leave them on the tray to fill them, you'll have way less mess!

Fill the still warm jars with hot marmalade and put the lids on tightly immediately. Allow to cool before you label them. Eat with pleasure.

Lots of lovely advice here about how to enjoy the whole marmalade making process.

Spanish Food with José Pizarro

Friday night was utterly brilliant. Spent the evening with José Pizarro learning more about Spanish food and some of the finer points of how to make the most of this lovely produce.


There was an abundance of things to try including many things pig, the best of which is this meltingly fabulous Jamon Ibérico, the world's most highly prized ham. Made only from the Iberian pig - a blackhoofed, dark skinned breed descended from wild boars they forage freely in the grasses and the acorns in the dehesas of south west Spain. It's the acorns that are the secret!

I tossed that tortilla! I was really pleased this was on the menu - I love this rich egg and potato concoction but have never made one as good as the ones I've eaten at Brindisa. And I have certainly never successfully tipped a half cooked one out of the pan and flipped it over before returning it to the pan to finish cooking, certainly not without a lot of mess and a raggy finish. Instructed by the master I feel quite confident I can do it again next time I make one at home.

Held at La Cucina Caldesi we were joined by both Katie and her husband Giancarlo who were happy to be mucking in and learning a little too about the finer points of Spanish food and the difference to their own beloved Italian. Once the hot stock was added to the paella we were told to leave it absolutely untouched for 10 minutes to make a crust on the bottom as the rice absorbs the liquid - total antithesis to the constant stirring of risotto.

Steak cooked with piquillo peppers - I was interested to learn that the roughly chopped garlic goes in at the end to be an ingredient in its own right rather than flavouring the whole.

The dish I had most to do with was chorizo cooked in cider. Cider because it comes from a region of Spain with lots of apples, though it is apparently permissable to use any kind of alcohol, even beer or vodka at a stretch. You must rend a lot of the lovely spicy fat from the sausage at the very beginning and tip it away - or into a bowl for dipping crusty bread - before adding cider and stock and a sprig of fresh thyme and simmering for another ten minutes or so. Simple cooking showcasing great ingredients, one of the guiding principles of the whole evening.




I have never eaten a paella I enjoyed more than this one. It tasted as beautiful as it looks, truly extraordinary. And one I'm planning to make at home.



So a big thank you to José - warm and charming throughout it quickly became apparent that what he is first and foremost is a very serious chef. Every question was answered, every dish explained, every mouthful was gorgeous. I cooked a lot, I ate a lot, I learned a lot.I could not have asked for a better Friday.

White Bean Soup with Garlic, Parsley and Chorizo

It's the time of year when I decide soup is a necessity, that it simply matches the season in the way that salad goes so well with the warmth of summer. There are many obvious flaws with this - not least the expectation of warmth in an English summer or these days lots of cold in an English winter. I tend to eat salad all year round, soup less frequently but certainly not specifically in the winter.

In the spirit of this latest random culinary decision the week before last the man was ill and asked for chicken noodle soup. I used fresh egg noodles and stock from the freezer, chicken thighs crisped with garlic and ginger before the flesh was stripped off, finished with wilted spinach and fresh coriander - perfect sicky boy comfort.

.

Last week I found a recipe for cauliflower soup finished with yoghurt that took my fancy which was not bad. But not good enough to make again.

This week I needed a good one and the Moro Cookbook offered Sopa de habicuelas. In English it is white beans, chorizo, garlic, parsley and that combination of pork and beans in every form seriously does it for me. Joy of joy it was better in real life than I thought it would be.

.

The cooked beans are blended to the consistency of double cream and that's the base. Actually soaked them overnight Saturday and cooked and blended them Sunday then left them in the fridge till I needed them Wednesday. Easy. Could freeze them at this point too, if you wanted.

But the fabulousness derives from the deep flavour and little bursts of texture that come from the fried garlic and parsley. The final triumph is the crisped chorizo and the drizzle of its rendered fat.

White Bean Soup with Garlic, Parsley and Chorizo

375g dried cannellini, planchada or other white beans, soaked overnight in cold water

Bouquet garni of celery leaves, parsley, rosemary, thyme and bay tied in string for easy retrieval

800ml bean liquor or, if not enough, made up with water

6 tbspns olive oil

5 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1/2 tspn hot paprika

6 tbspns finely chopped flat leaf parsley

200g chorizo, preferably cooking, preferably spicy, diced into 1 cm cubes

Drain the beans and put them into a large saucepan. Add the bouquet garni and cover with cold water by 2 cm. Bring to the boil, skim all the white foam, then simmer very gently for about an hour, but check after 40 minutes and if softening, add about a tablespoon of salt. Continue to simmer till the beans are tender.

Discard the bouquet garni and blend the beans in their liquor with an electric stick till the beans are smooth and have the consistency of double (heavy) cream. If too thick, add a little water till you have the consistency you want.

At this point the beans can be decanted to a bowl and refrigerated for a few days till you want soup.

In a large saucepan, heat 5 tablespoons of the olive oil over a lowish heat. When the oil is hot add the garlic and quickly fry for maybe 30 seconds till it just begins to colour. Add 4 tablespoons of the chopped parsley, reduce the heat and stir till the garlic is golden brown and the parsley translucent dark green and the whole lot is wonderfully fragrant.

Stir in the paprika and then add the bean purée. Bring to a gentle simmer and season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, in a small frying pan on a high flame, heat the remaining olive oil and fry the chorizo until just slightly crisp.

Ladle the soup into deep bowls, add the crispy chorizo and chopped parsley. Swirl the paprika oil from the chorizo pan on top for an amazing bowl of soup.

Beautiful to look at, smells great, tastes amazing. I really liked this soup!

Catalan Meatballs

I can't say I really know what makes these balls Catalan, though it's possibly something to do with the spiced complexity of the sauce. The balls themselves are a mix of beef and pork, with serious quantities of garlic and parsley bound together with beaten eggs. So far so fabulous. Roll them in flour and fry them off in some oil and you have a plate of golden crusted juicy morsels. Mushrooms, tomatoes, fat green olives and lardon simmer in red wine with nutmeg and cinnamon and hot smoked paprika, then the balls go back in. An hour later you have a stunningly good autumn supper, the lovely balls afloat in a richly textured sauce made thick and glossy. It is the spicing that is the joy and the mystery though, and seriously the reason you should make this lovely dish.

This recipe comes from a website but I know not which. I copied it and omitted to add the URL and searching for it again on google got me nowhere. Which is unfortunate as there's probably other recipes there and, if this one is anything to go by, they'd be wonderful.

Catalan Meatballs

250 g beef mince
500 g pork mince
6 cloves garlic
2 shallots, chopped
8 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
2 eggs
2 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
6 tablespoon flour
4 tablespoon olive oil (to fry)

Sauce
150 g salt pork belly, diced
2 tbspns olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbspn plain flour

200g field mushrooms, sliced
500 ml full bodied red wine
400g tin tomatoes

1/2 tbspn hot smoked paprika
200 g pitted green olives, halved
1/2 tspn freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 tspn ground cinnamon

Crush the garlic cloves lightly, then chop with the parsley. Place in large mixing bowl with the meats and shallots. Beat the eggs lightly and add to the bowl; mix well, using your hands, and shape into oval balls, the size of a small egg. Roll these in flour, shaking off any excess.

Heat the oil in a large pan. Brown meatballs on all sides over moderately high heat, turning frequently. You might need to do them in batches if your pan isn't big enough to take them all in a single layer.

While they are cooking, cut the pork belly (or bacon) into small dice. Chop the onion finely.

When the meatballs are browned, (don't overdo this, they have yet to be cooked through), remove them from the oil and drain on kitchen towels.

Add the diced pork belly or bacon to the oil left after frying, and brown lightly all over. Sprinkle in a little more flour to absorb some of the fat, add the onion and mushrooms and cook until lightly browned, 15 or 20 minutes. Stir in wine, and continue stirring as the sauce comes to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes then season with pepper and a little salt, stir in the tomato, the spices and olives. Finally add the meatballs - the liquid should half cover them, but add water or a little more wine if necessary.

Simmer gently 45 minutes, turning the meatballs after the first 20 minutes cooking.

This made enough for 6 servings. We had it in deep bowls with rice Monday night, again for a quick supper Wednesday and there's one in the freezer for another time. Bliss.

Lentil and Piquillo Pepper Salad

Tuesday a friend from work who is currently on maternity leave was planning to come up for lunch. Because of the vast amount of stuff required to transport a sprog from the wilds of Essex to the terrors of Barbican, and also because it's a bad idea to take babies to pubs at lunch time or any time, we usually make something to have in the boardroom where we can all sit around and the offspring can gurgle to his hearts content. Though it has to be said last time they visited there was a meeting going on and the offspring screamed unrelievedly in the way that only babies can. Good as gold once lunch was served. But the offspring is now teething - have terrors at the tears that must be provoking - so lunch was postponed at the last minute. Only I had already started boiling eggs to make a nicoise. So I had 4 boiled eggs in need of a plan and it wasn't even 8 am.

I found a recipe on the Brindisa site for a lentil salad that included a garnish of boiled eggs and had tuna and piquillo peppers mixed in and I really liked the sound of it. And it would use a couple of the eggs. Piquillo peppers are one of the revelations of Borough. They are grown in Navarra, and have their own “Denominación de Origen” (D.O. Pimientos del Piquillo de Lodosa). These small red peppers are charred over wood charcoal / old vines, then peeled by hand, marinated in olive oil with herbs, and eventually eaten either alone or in a salad or stuffed. They are silky and sweet and like no other pepper I have ever eaten. They seriously enhance any meal that they are part of. Their sweetness here contrasted beautifully with the earthiness of the lentils.

Lentil & Piquillo Pepper Salad

200g green lentils or other favourite ones
1 small onion, peeld and cut into eighths
1 carrot, diced

1 small leek, sliced into thin rings
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf

2 eggs
100 g piquillo peppers strips
1 Ortiz bonito in olive oil 112g tin
1 red onion finely sliced
3 tbs Forum of cabernet sauvignon vinegar
4 tbs olive oil
Handful fresh herbs ( parsley, chervil and mint )
Salt and pepper

Heat 2 tbspns olive oil in a heavy pan then fry the onion, carrot, leek and garlic for five minutes till they just start to soften. Add the lentils and coat with the oil. Cover the lentils in plenty of water and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add about a tablespoon of salt and continue simmering until tender (approx 20 minutes). Drain.

Cook the eggs for 6 minutes in boiling water. Drain, cool, peel and quarter.

In a salad bowl mix the piquillo peppers, lentils, red onion and the tuna, and season.

Mix the oil and the vinegar, add them to the salad, and toss thoroughly.

Finish with the fresh herbs and the boiled egg.

Butter a little crusty bread and dinner is served!

Morcilla & Caremalised Apples

That was sensational! So said Vicki at being presented with some spanish blood pudding cooked with apples and cider. High praise indeed but she was not wrong.

I bought the morcilla at Brindisa on Saturday, wanting to do tapassy things Tuesday night for dinner as they are the kind of food that is hard to come by in the otherwise food fabulous Singapore. Was thinking I'd just fry thick slices till crispy and serve it up - quality ingredients simply done and all that. Then I had a sudden panic that perhaps the lovely Vicki doesn't eat such meaty delights, or perhaps not plain. A quick flick through the Moro Cookbook yielded this elegant sounding recipe which simply needed me to find some golden delicious apples. Which surprised me a little as I had thought they were just an eating apple rather than one to cook with. But hey, Sam & Sam know a lot more than me.

http://www.orangepippin.com/, a site that knows a lot about apples, says the variety was first discovered in the USA at the end of the 19th century, and is now planted in all the major warm apple growing areas of the world. From a grower's perspective Golden Delicious is an attractive proposition - heavy crops, and fruit which keeps in storage for a long time after harvest. This would be of little interest to consumers, but it does have some redeeming features ! The fruit (when fresh from the tree) is exceptionally sweet, almost like eating raw sugar cane. It can be used both for dessert and cooking purposes, and it also has an attractive appearance - which can indeed be golden if left to mature on the tree.

Being literal minded at times I searched through the ones on display at the Farringdon Fruit Shop and chose those closest to the notion of golden. They cooked up very well indeed, ending up a deep golden colour after about ten minutes in the pan. Frying them in butter resulted in exquisitely rich pieces of apple, not sweet at all but like pie almost, with a melting texture that contrasted beautifully with the dense pudding and all of it served on a bed of rocket fresh from our little garden.

Morcilla & Caremalised Apples

50g ghee or clarified butter

2 golden delicious apples, peeled, cored and cut into eighths

2 tbspoons olive oil

200g morcilla, cut into rounds about 1 cm thick

2 tbspns roughly chopped parsley

75ml medium-dry cider

Set a large frying pan over a medium heat and add the ghee. When it has melted add the apple slices and gently fry until golden brown on one side, then flip them over and do the same on the other side. Cook unitl the apple is soft and golden all over. This takes about 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Wash the pan.

When you are ready to serve the dish place the cleaned frying pan over a medium to high heat and add the oil. When it is hot add the morcilla and fry for a minute on each side until slightly crisped, turning carefully. Return the apple to the pan and add the parsley, then the cider, taking care as it might spit. Continue to fry for 30 seconds to burn off the alcohol, then taste for seasoning.

Sam and Sam Clark recommend serving on a bed of lightly dressed cress but rocket worked a treat.

How can you resist? Sensational!

Lamb, chickpeas and vegetable stew

I have been meaning to make a version of this for weeks - bought the lamb about a month ago and put it into the freezer and then, every week since, have thought ooooh I'll have that lamb stew this week. And then didn't. I had a vague idea of where I was going with it - sort of moorish (as well as moreish) with the addition of chickpeas for flavour and texture and some seasonal vegetables like aubergine and courgettes. I wanted it to be lighter than a winter dish and had just not entirely worked out what the final dish should taste like. Hence the hesitation.

Then, on the weekend, I made a particularly fine batch of roasted vegetables to go with rare roast beef and I had myself a eureka moment. If I salted and then added aubergine early in the process, added courgettes toward the end to retain some bite, and separately roasted peppers till they were sweet and charred to be included at the very end it would keep the flavour elements separate in the way that a good ratatoiulle is constructed. Worked a treat.

Braised Lamb, Chickpeas and Vegetables

125g chickpeas, soaked overnight with a tspn bicarb of soda
1 aubergine, cubed and salted
2 red peppers, cut into 1cm cubes
2 tbspns olive oil
2 onions, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
3 tbspns oil
500g diced lamb
1 tin tomatoes
1 tbspn tomato puree
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
1tspn smoked paprika
1 tbspn ground cumin
2 courgettes, cut into rounds the thickness of a pound coin

Drain, rinse and boil the chickpeas for 30 minutes.

Put the chopped peppers onto a baking sheet with the oil and roast in the oven at gas 4 for 40 minutes till soft and sweet and a little bit charred.

In a large pan, fry the onions with the 3 tbspns oil till soft and golden – 20 minutes. Add the chopped garlic, paprika and cumin and stir through for a minute.

Rinse the aubergines and gently squeeze out the moisture then fry with the onions for a few minutes.

Add the lamb and fry till sealed.

Drain the chickpeas.

Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, chickpeas, cinnamon and bay leaves with water to cover.

Season with plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Simmer gently, covered, for an hour.

Add the courgettes simmer, lid off, for another 20 minutes or so till the courgettes are cooked through. Stir the roasted peppers through for the last 5 minutes.

Serve with new potatoes or rice.

Though lamb is never going to be cheap this is a really lovely dish that makes the most of the flavour. The chickpeas helps it go a bit further - this makes six very satisfying servings.

Lentils with Chorizo and Morcilla

I've never eaten morcilla before this week though I am a fan of blood pudding - both the british and french versions. A trawl through my Moro cookbook offered a fairly lush sounding recipe stewing lentils with chorizo and tocino which in spanish is a kind of ham fat that I didn't have so replaced with smoked lardon but in the Philippines is a sweet cured pork dish traditionally served for breakfast with garlic fried rice and eggs which sounds like a fairly fabulous way to start the day. Might need to investigate.

Along with these essentially pork and bean things in my stew there was also morcilla a sausage that is properly thick - about 5 or 6 centimetres across and stuffed with pig’s blood, rice, onions and spices. During la matanza where family, friends and neighbours gather to celebrate the slaughter of the pig Spaniards make good use of just about every part of the pig from the trotters to the ears. The blood is quickly drained into a large pan and immediately taken to the kitchen where morcilla is made for the first part of the feast. What isn't eaten on the day is hung to be saved for another day. Proper nose to tail eating!

Lentils with Chorizo

4 tbspns olive oil - I used rendered pork fat from roasting crackling

2 sweet chorizo, each 10cm long, cut into 1/2cm rounds

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

2 carrots, peeled and diced

100g tocino - I used pancetta

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

2 bay leaves

2 dried noras peppers, seeds and stalks removed, broken into small pieces and soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes

250g brown or green lentils

2 small morcilla or half a big fat one, add the small ones whole, thick slices for a big one

2 tbspns roughly chopped parsley

Heat the oil or pork fat over a high heat till very hot then add the sliced chorizo and fry till crispy. Remove with a slotted spoons and set aside.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the onion, carrot, tocino or pancetta and a pinch of salt. Fry for about ten minutes until the vegetables are beginning to colour. Add the garlic, bay leaves and drained nora peppers and cook for 2 minutes more.

Return the chorizo to the pan and add the lentils and morcilla. Cover with 1 litre of water, bring to the boil then simmer gently for about half an hour till the lentils are tender, adding a little water if the liquid falls below the surface of the lentils.

Season with salt and pepper then stir through the parsley.

Serve in deep bowls with perhaps a drizzle of olive oil and definitely crusty bread.

Good cold next day for lunch.

Clams with sherry and white beans

Clams with White Beans

The longest-lived animal ever discovered is a clam that lived on the seabed in the frigid waters off Iceland's north coast. It managed to clock up 405 years - a seriously long time in icy waters, till a research team from Bangor University came along looking for clams and dragged it to the surface.



"Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it," said Al Wanamaker, a postdoctoral scientist on the university's Arctica team. "For our work it's a bonus, but it wasn't good for this particular animal." The joys of academic understatement.


We supped on decidedly younger clams on Saturday night. I have eaten them occasionally but never cooked them till recently when I tried a stirfry with mussels and thai basil and sort of swamped the delicacy of the flavour without creating a great dinner. Undeterred I bought some more on Saturday to make a Casa Moro dish with the softness of new season garlic and some pale cream sherry to bring out their sweetness. What a treat they turned out to be.


Clams with sherry and white beans

750g small clams
4 tbspns olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped or 5 or 6 new season cloves
150 ml manzanilla sherry or white wine
2 tbspns flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
200g cooked drained white beans that you like
30 threads saffron, infused in 3 tbspns boiling water
Lots of fresh ground black pepper


Wash the clams under cold running water, discarding any that are broken or open. In a large pan, heat the olive oil over a medium heat. When hot add the garlic and fry for a couple of seconds tillit just begins to colour. Add the sherry or wine and simmer till it is reduced by two thirds. Add the clams, half the parsley, the beans and the saffron water and mix thoroughly. Cover and simmer for 3 minutes until the clams are fully opened.


Taste for seasoning, add lashings of black pepper and the remaining parsley and serve immediately with a drizzle of olive oil acros the top and a chunk of crusty bread at the side.


Have to say the saffron I used was fairly old and dusty and probably didn't bring much to the dish - could be time to splash out on a few new threads. This would also be good with some chunks of pancetta and perhaps some smoked paprika.


All in all a great Saturday night special.

Paella de cerdo con chorizo y espinaca

Otherwise known as rice with pork, chorizo and spinach. I am having a bit of a spanish/moorish/possibly most specifically Moro-ish phase at the moment. I love the rich complexity of chorizo served any which way - anything from plain grilled, or sliced fresh and especially mixed into rice dishes like this one. It is one of those ingredients that somehow makes a dish greater than the sum of its parts.

I was googling the other week looking for stuff for a tapas style Saturday night special and came across this recipe from The Moro Cookbook. I was immediately taken with it because it says at the very beginning This rice is very Spanish in taste. A complex and comforting dish. And I thought - what is a very Spanish taste? I genuinely don't immediately know beyond a mix of rice and paprika which seems a bit too reductionist. Took me only a second to think jamon - the Spanish seriously love their ham and indeed all things pork (this could be one reason for my current fetish) and then to remember some of the best olive oil in the world comes from Spain. Perhaps I know a little more than nothing.

I made this Sunday night with the plan to have it for lunch Monday/Tuesday. It is seriously good - cooking the pork separately at the beginning and adding it back at the end with the wilted spinach made it stand out in the finished dish. I bought my noras peppers from Brindisa.


Paella de cerdo con chorizo y espinaca

7 tbsp olive oil
12oz/340g pork fillet, halved lengthways, then sliced across roughly into 7mm strips
4oz/110g mild cooking chorizo, cut into little pieces
2 large Spanish onions, finely chopped
1 large green pepper, halved, seeded and finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
8oz/225g calasparra (paella rice) or arborio rice
1 tsp sweet smoked Spanish paprika
2 ñoras peppers (or dried peppers, not too hot), soaked in hot water
1.75 pints/900ml hot chicken stock or water
1lb 2oz/500g spinach, washed and drained
Sea salt and black pepper

In a 30-40cm paella pan or frying pan, heat the olive oil over a high heat, stir-fry the pork for a few seconds so it is still a little undercooked. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and put to one side.

Turn down the heat to low, and fry the chorizo for a minute. Add the onion and green pepper and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the garlic, and continue cooking for a further 5-10 minutes. At this point, the mixture should have caramelised and taste sweet.

Stir the rice into the pan to coat in the mixture for a minute. Up to this point, everything can be cooked in advance. The next stage requires about 20 minutes' more cooking time.

While the garlic is cooking with the onions and peppers bring the stock to a simmer in a separate pan.

Now season the rice with salt and a little pepper. Add the paprika and noras peppers, drained of their water and chopped roughly, followed by the hot stock, and simmer for 15 minutes or until there is just a thin layer of liquid around the rice.

Meanwhile, briefly wilt the spinach with a little salt, either by braising or steaming, and put to one side with the pork fillet.

When the rice is done, evenly scatter the pork over it, followed by the spinach. With the back of a spoon, gently push the pork and spinach partially into the oily liquid that remains at the bottom of the pan.

Cover the paella tightly with foil and let it sit for 3-5 minutes.

It was indeed a comforting dish on a cold Sunday night and a lovely thing for lunch next day. If this is the taste of Spain I will happily eat a lot more of it.

It's not cheap initially - this cost about £8 and it is really special. We got six meals from it so in fact it's quite reasonable. Positively a bargain when it works out to be just over a pound per serving!

Roasted Vegetable and Lentil Salad

I had food chain this weekend and I'd already decided I'd like to make corn bread for the evening meal as it's a tasty treat. But it does need a little something to go with it. Last time I added simple egg salads with peppers - for some reason I find the combination of sweet corn and sweet peppers a perfect match, I just love the mix of those flavours in my mouth.

I've been eating lots of spanishy things of late so thought I might extrapolate that experience into my companion piece. The other obvious restriction is that it had to be frugal (which is different to cheap!) - the whole budget for the day is only £3.50 a head. I wondered about roasting peppers with lots of onions then realised I could bulk it out very cheaply with lentils for their lovely earthy flavour and then tie it all together with a little garlic, sherry and olive oil dressing. Rather than just head straight in on Sunday with salad for 65 I tested it at home Friday night as the salad to go with our spinach omelette and garlic bread. Pleased to say it was a total triumph - a really lovely thing to eat. The man was very impressed.

Roasted Vegetable and Lentil Salad

3 peppers, red and yellow, cored and cut into 2cm squares

1 large spanish onion, or a couple of smaller ones, peeled and cut into 1 cm cubes

200g green lentils

1 clove garlic, peeled and puréed with a little salt

5 tbspns olive oil + oil for roasting

1 tbspn sherry vinegar

2 tbspn chopped parsley

Pepper

Spread the chopped vegetables onto a baking tray that has very low sides - it means the moisture escapes as they cook rather than steaming them. Drizzle generously with olive oil and season with salt. Roast in a moderate oven, Gas 5, for 45 minutes to an hour, mixing half way through, till the vegetables have collapsed and are a tiny bit charred in places.

At the same time cook the lentils in plain, unsalted water for ten minutes, then add a tspn of salt and cook for another 10 minutes till just al dente. Drain.

Whisk the oil, vinegar and garlic together with a little ground pepper.

When the onions and peppers are cooked to your liking tip them, with their cooking oil, into a bowl along with the drained lentils and chopped parsley. Stir through the dressing and check the seasoning. Serve at room temperature.

Worked a treat on a large scale on Sunday too - and my kitchen assistants loved it!

For the domestic version the cost is about £1.50 - and it kept very well in the fridge for a salad treat Saturday.

Date & Parsnip Salad

Saturday night I wanted to do a series of tapassy type dishes for dinner as the original plan had been to meet up with David for tapas and sherry at a place he'd heard about in Borough. Except then he couldn't find it again and he'd consumed an excess of sherry elsewhere in the meantime and, after waking with a dreadful hangover, was subsequently less convinced he wanted to repeat the experience. So they came to us instead but I still fancied a Spanish theme to the evening.

We started with a lightly chilled manzanilla with hot padron peppers and marinated olives. Then I had a whole collection of dishes, mostly cold, except for some saffron potatoes and tiny lamb balls, which I made up as I went along. The array of salads largely came from Moro type recipes I found on the web, particularly an incredibly beautiful blood orange and chicory salad from Helen's Food Stories blog and a richly textured chick pea and butternut dish made luscious with tahini dressing.

The last one made, and I almost didn't, was date and parsnip salad from a very old article in the Guardian. I read the instructions, looking for how to cook the parsnips and realised - you don't. Just grate them and mix with everything else. And I doubted it deep inside, even though it was a recipe from Moro, from Sam and Sam Clark, and I love their food. It just didn't seem right. Their intro suggested it was half salad, half relish and that kind of put me off too. I love salad but I loathe relish - which half would triumph? And the man doesn't much like mint. It was Lebanese rather than Spanish. And I'd already made enough food to cover the table with jeweled plates.

But hey, what the hell. I had the ingredients, no cooking only chopping means it would be quick to make, disaster or no. Dinner should be an adventure. Good call - it turned out to be my favourite dish of the night. Savoury, sweet and decadently rich with a myriad of textures it really was the perfect accompaniment to the lamb and the rest of the vegetables.

Parsnip, yogurt and date salad

600g parsnips

10 dates, stoned and roughly chopped

2 tbsp fresh mint, roughly chopped

150g Greek yogurt with a squeeze of lemon, or any slightly sour yogurt

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp runny honey

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Sea salt and black pepper

Peel the parsnips, cut in quarters lengthways, and get rid of any woody centre. Grate coarsely and place in a bowl. Add the chopped dates and mint, followed by all the remaining ingredients. Season with salt and pepper, toss well and taste. Serve immediately.

Utterly divine. Suspect it would be even better with barbecue...

Padrón Peppers

Had lunch with my brother and the man a few weeks ago at the new Brindisa in Soho and the man, being an adventurous sort, ordered a plate of padrón peppers as one of the starter nibbles to go with a chilled glass of fino. I was expecting them to be roasted red piquillo but what turned up was a plate of little sweet chilli size green things, flecked with gold from a hot pan and dusted with flakes of salt. And they were amazing.

Horned shaped and about the size of a habanero pepper they are an heirloom pepper of Galicia in Spain and are very relished there as a tapas plate. Intending to go the tapas route for xmas eve supper I sought them out. Brindisa in Exmouth Market had sold out and - worse - were not expecting any till the New Year. I rushed back to the office and called Brindisa at Borough where a nice woman told me she had four packs left. She kindly put one of them aside for me and so I sent the man to collect them that very afternoon.

They were yummy - like a slightly sour sweet pepper, juicy and well matched with the salt. One in every ten peppers will be hot - not sure why - but it makes for a fun kind of culinary roulette. That first time in the restaurant we had nearly finished that shiny pile before I bit into one that was spectacularly hot. Wah! So far we've eaten about 20 of the xmas ones without incident. I'm thinking that means at least three of the last 10 are bound to be scorchers!

If you can find some do try this quick and easy treat - with a lightly chilled fino should you be so lucky.

Padrón Peppers

A dozen or so fresh padrón peppers

2 tablespoons of olive oil

Salt crystals

Wash the peppers and dry them on kitchen paper but otherwise leave them whole, stems attached.

In a heavy pan heat the oil over a medium heat - too hot and the flesh of the peppers will scorch. Add the peppers in a single layer and cook for a couple of minutes till very lightly blistered on one side then turn them over and do the other side.

Scoop them out onto a serving plate and sprinkle with salt.

Done!