My turn

Well I had to, didn't I? After all that delicious food in Spain, I had to have a crack at making it myself - partly for my own satisfaction and partly so my husband could try some of it.

It wasn't hard to decide what to make. Spinach and chickpeas are 2 of his favourite things, so the espinacas con garbanzos was a certainty. I made it sort of like this version - although it will be a cold day in hell before I weigh 1g of cumin or 3g of salt - adding a good bit of paprika and turmeric. It was OK. Needed a higher proportion of spinach to the beans, and I think it would have been better cooked in a large quantity for a long time, and then reheated later. That may sound a bit disgusting, but the way spinach melts to a puree and gradually turns a burnished bronze colour is one of my favourite things in dishes like palak paneer.

I'd been so won over by the garlicky dishes I'd tried - the pork and the rabbit cooked with many whole cloves - that I thought I would give that a try with joints of chicken. And then discovered of course that someone else got there first and called it pollo al ajillo. I read a bunch of recipes and then went slightly in my own direction. But in my opinion it maintained the spirit of the originals!

Pollo al Ajillo (the North London way)

Sprinkle a flat plate with 1tsp salt, put chicken thighs on the salt, sprinkle with another 1tsp salt and leave for about 10 minutes while you get everything else ready.

Pour a good slug of olive oil into a cold cast iron dish (starting from cold because I want the maximum garlickyness to infuse into the oil before it starts to singe).

Peel a head of garlic and chuck the cloves into the cold oil (both times I had this in Spain the skins were left on the garlic, so you could do that, but I don't like picking the papery bits out of my mouth). Put the pan of garlic and oil onto a low heat and allow to slowly come up to temperature. When the garlic starts to sizzle, wipe the salt and released juices off the chicken thighs with a paper towel and place skin side down in the oil. Brown thoroughly (and I mean brown - until it is becoming crisp, not just until it goes opaque), turning the garlic cloves over from time to time.

Add 2 bayleaves, lightly crushed, and a pinch of saffron threads. Pour on about a cup of dry sherry (I used manzanilla). Cover and place in a preheated oven at about 180C for about half an hour.

This made much more delicious sauce than we needed to eat with the chicken (there are days when I wish we ate more starches), so I have it stashed away in the freezer for the next time I make a risotto. It will be an excellent addition!

Oriental Slaw

Anne in Sweden blogged about Lime Jalapeno Slaw yesterday. Which struck me as a very good idea, and perfect for the really lovely piece of rump steak waiting in the fridge for dinner. And (almost inevitably) now that I come to look at the recipe again, what I did was almost completely different. But still from the same place of crispness, contrasts and really punchy flavours.

Oriental Slaw
Serves 2
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp dark muscovado sugar (in a perfect world I would have used palm sugar)
Juice of 1 lemon
1 good shake fish sauce
1 red chilli, seeded and chopped (don't know what sort - about the size of a cayenne chilli, quite hot but not ballistic)
2 big handfuls shredded cabbage
1 beautifully ripe avocado, cut in cubes
A few stems of coriander
Small handful of roasted peanuts

Combine the garlic, sugar, lemon juice and fish sauce in a salad bowl, and the rest of the ingredients, toss gently and serve almost instantly.

Yet more Spanish Food

We had to have a very much abbreviated siesta on the last afternoon. As well as doing the final dash to buy shoes and souvenirs, I had been promised seafood on the other side of the river in the Barrio de Triana (where apparently the Roman emperor Trajan was born).

I am quite a focussed shopper, so in not much time at all I had acquired an Indiana Jones hat from a famous equestrian shop for my husband, 2 pairs of wedge -heeled espadrilles and a pair of kitten -heeled sandals for me, as well as a handbag to match the kitten-heels and a couple of folding fans to use on the Tube in summer.

After a fairly long and not at all scenic walk, we were on the bridge to cross the river. A pause at a riverside bar to get a restoring beer, and then on to the 2 places that serve the best seafood around. At the first, we had a plate of chilled, steamed mussels and a lovely prawn salad. On Spanish menus they use different words for salads dressed with mayonnaise and salads dressed with oil and vinegar, so we knew that this was going to be a light, fresh, sharp salad.

Then on the other side of the plaza we went to a bar noted for their fried seafood. Tiny whole squid, none bigger than the first joint of my little finger, courgette fritters, more lovely cazon en adobo and some lovely merluza (hake) fillets fried and spread with a piquant salsa verde.

As well as seafood and Roman emperors, Triana is noted for flamenco. The real stuff, not shows put on by depressed Polish and Romanian girls for tourists. But since no one is likely to start dancing until after midnight, and we wanted to go out for a last breakfast before our taxi took us back to the station at 9, it didn't seem sensible. Next time!

More Spanish food

We knew the last day in Seville was going to be busy. So much more food to eat, so many shoes to buy. We walked to the Plaza de Espana - site of the 1929 Ibero -American Exposition. I'm afraid that it has to be said that it leaves the site of Brisbane's Expo '88 for dead.

Then a climb up the bell-tower of Seville's Cathedral. Used to be the minaret of a mosque and has a ramp instead of stairs because the Moorish prince who built it liked to ride his horse up, so I am told. The ramp makes for an easier climb, but descending in a half-crouch has led to very uncomfortable quadruceps. I like my ecclesiastical art and architecture a bit more austere and certainly less bloodthirsty. Do you actually need the severed trachea and vertebrae on your sculpture of John the Baptist's head? I think not, any more than we needed St Agatha holding her severed breast by the nipple in Segovia's alcazar chapel.

Clearly after that it was lunchtime. We made our penultimate visit to Bodega Santa Cruz Las Columnas - whose serviettes proudly proclaim "Especialidad en pringa tortillita de bacalao". Our light lunchtime snack consisted of berenjenas con miel (delicious slices of fried aubergine drizzled with honey), tiny clams in an oily, savoury sauce, rabbit cooked with garlic and sherry and a glass of gazpacho.

Spanish Food 4

The next stop was at Bar Europa - a spot that my friends had very fond memories of. It's a lovely space, tiled in blue and white which makes it very cool and relaxing. Unfortunately there seems to have been a less-than-successful change of management and the attitude from the spotty youth had my friend wild with rage. The things she'd been most keen to order were all unavailable, so we went with some different stuff.

The salad of soaked bacalao with romesco sauce wasn't very successful. The garnish of olive slices added nothing but an air of bad takeaway pizza, the fish was still very salty, the layer of lettuce didn't really work and the romesco needed a bit more of a vinegar punch. On the other hand, the scrambled eggs with wild garlic shoots were curdy, creamy and utterly delicious. I am delighted that my friend has actually pointed out a patch of wild garlic near my house, so I could go and forage.

After that, we needed to go somewhere where the food would be better and the service less rude. We fetched up at a bar just near the pink church (the Iglesia del Salvador) that my friends always go back to for the espinacas con garbanzos. Not only were they the best of the versions I tried (I think they had a bit of turmeric in as well as the other flavourings), the bartenders were very good-looking and charming. And when we asked for glasses of manzanilla, they offered a choice of 3 and looked terribly serious while we decided.

We finished the evening at another bar with a portion of torrijas. I'm told that we were lucky to get it, because a lot of places only serve it during Holy Week. The version we had was made with wine and eggs and then soaked in a spiced syrup and served at room temperature. The overall effect was like a boozy gulab jamun. Yum. It seems odd to me that something sweet, alcoholic and eggy would be a dominant feature of Holy Week - I guess Lent takes a back seat when something truly delicious is on offer.

Spanish Food 3

After a hard morning of wandering around the El Corte Ingles department store, trying on shoes (oh the shoes!) and having lunch in the sun, we needed a snack on the roof terrace of our apartment to fortify ourselves before an evening of bar-hopping. The view from the terrace was rather good, and for a girl coming out of a British winter, the sun was just amazing. I basked like a cat (or possibly like a walrus, given the amount of food we ate).

We picked up the components of our snack in the supermarket department of El Corte Ingles. Lovely sweet strawberries, a big wedge of torta del casar cheese, slices of jamon, slices of a sort of truffled pork brawn, some nashi, some crackers, a tin of spicy mussels in olive oil and sherry vinegar and a bottle of white rioja.

Then it was off to a local bar for our first stop of the evening. We had boquerones - the pickled white anchovies I mentioned before - on fingers of toast spread with salmorejo, and toasted sandwiches. The best of these was filled with pringa. Pringa is a sort of meat paste, with a shredded texture similar to rillettes. Apparently it is made from the leftovers from the Cocido but that hardly does it justice. The ones we had (we'd had it for breakfast the day before too) were quite highly seasoned with garlic and smoked paprika.

Spanish Food 2

Life looks better after breakfast. Especially when breakfast consists of a lovely toasted roll, filled with good sliced serrano ham and drizzled with olive oil. And quite a lot of coffee.

I was a bit perplexed by the hams at first. They are everywhere, hanging from the roof - trotters intact - but they all had funny plastic cones hanging from the bottom of them.
And then I asked and was informed that it is a drip catcher because the fat melts in hot weather and trickles down. Sounds most unhygenic and I can't imagine that it would be allowed in Britain but no matter, the ham was delicious!

But even on a solid breakfast, after some hours of wandering around Seville, it hits beer o'clock and thoughts turn again to food. My friends really wanted to go to one bar (just off the Plaza Alfalfa) but it seemed to be closed. So we stood at the bar at another place and had a quick beer and I turned down the snails. I've had snails before - Burgundy-style, smothered in garlic and parsley butter - but these were a bit too anatomically exact. They still had horns. And faces. I couldn't do it. So we went on to another bar, which previously wasn't very good apparently, but is now under new management.

Well. The new management seem to be kicking goals. We had most delicious cazon en adobo - marinated fried fish, really beautiful tortillitas de camarones - shrimp fritters, a fantastic dish of pork in garlic and sherry and I was introduced to the healthy and charming idea of ordering a plate of tomatoes to accompany rich fried fish. Simply dressed at the table with a little salt and olive oil, it was lovely, and set us up nicely for the next meal!