Spanish Food

I'm 3 days into a 5 day Spanish holiday and I am running out of mental space to remember the food! Hopefully when I upload my photos I'll remember more.

Had 2 nights in Segovia, where the roasting of meat is more than a passion. There are regulatory bodies and everything. First night roast suckling pig, second night roast baby lamb. Both amazing! I never thought that lamb skin could crackle as much as pork skin. Succulent, tender, simply seasoned and served absolutely plain, but they do this ceremonial carving of the suckling pig, carrying it to the centre of the room and chopping it into pieces with the side of a bread and butter plate. We had a couple of tapas; tasty but not that special. This one was a chicken mayonnaise topped with cubes of ham, roasted peppers and lightly caramelised onions.
I am being guided by a hard-core foody with a love for Spain, so I am eating things I probably wouldn't have ordered for myself, but I am loving. The pickled fish sandwich for breakfast being a case in point. Boquerones - fat white fresh anchovies - marinated in oil, garlic and a mild vinegar, are a common tapas dish here. But they also stuff them into crusty white rolls and eat them at breakfast. Delicious!

We're in Seville now. We've had lovely fat mussels, pork loin cooked in whisky in a bread roll, lovely cheese, a sort of ham made from tuna, more lovely cheese and an extraordinary sauce/dip sort of condiment called salmorejo, topped with shaved bacalao. And that was just lunch...
The tuna "ham" is the rectangular bits inthe middle of the pic. Delicious, but disconcerting to the semi-veggie with us.

Fish Pie and Syllabub

Well, that all went extremely well! Dinner was spread out over about 6 hours, because our guests were stuck in traffic, so we missed lunch, and then it was hailing too hard to pursue my plan to run up the road for a kebab.

So at about 3.30pm we sat in the conservatory eating the artichoke fritters and drinking the bubbly. It's always nice to surprise someone with English sparkling wine!

Then at about 8.30 we sat down to the fish pie - with purple sprouting brocoli and a lovely Sicilian viognier.
Fish Pie (after Rick Stein)

For the base:

1 tsp dried or 1 tbsp fresh herbs de provence
1 orange
3 anchovy fillets, chopped
¼ cup white wine
3 fennel, bulbs, outer leaves removed
1 large onion, chopped
2 fresh bay leaves, cut into thin strips or 2 dried bay leaves, crushed
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
50ml/2fl oz olive oil
1 tsp sugar

For the filling:

700g white fish fillets
225g scallops, cut in half
250g green prawns, shelled
1 can smoked oysters
1 lemon, sliced
peppercorns
2 bayleaves, extra
125ml dry white wine
250ml water
pinch saffron filaments
1tbs butter
1tbs plain flour

For the topping:

2 celeriac
1tbs crème fraiche
2tbs butter

Method
Peel the zest of the orange with a zester or peeler. Squeeze the juice from the orange. Reserve a couple of slices of onion and some of the frondy bit of the fennel. Put all the rest of the base ingredients (including the juice of the orange) in a heavy-based pan and cook gently, covered, for about 20 minutes or until the fennel is soft and all the liquid has evaporated. Spread into the bottom of a large casserole dish (I used a pyrex lasagna dish).

Put the water, white wine, lemon, peppercorns and extra bayleaves in a sauté pan with the reserved slices of onion and fennel frondy bits and bring to the boil. Slip the white fish fillets into the court bouillon. When it comes back to the boil add the prawns. As soon as they turn slightly pink, but before they are fully opaque add the scallops and turn off the heat. When the scallops are starting to turn opaque in the cooling liquid, remove the seafood from the court bouillon with a slotted spoon and reserve. Remove the lemon slices and discard. Add the saffron threads to the liquid and return to the heat. Reduce the liquid down to 250ml, strain and reserve.

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. When it froths, add the plain flour and stir until the flour is entirely lump-free and combined with the butter. Cook for a couple of minutes. Gradually add the reserved saffron-infused cooking liquid, stirring continuously, and cook until thick. Taste for seasoning and add salt and white pepper if required.

Flake the fish fillets over the base of fennel. Scatter the prawns and scallops evenly and then distribute the drained smoked oysters (if you don’t like them you can leave them out, but I always like a bit of smokiness in a fish pie and on this occasion I didn’t want the full-on smoke hit of smoked cod). Pour the saffron sauce evenly over the seafood.

Peel and cut the celeriac into chunks. Boil in salted water until tender and then blend with the crème fraiche and butter until smooth. Season to taste and spread over the fish (or buy a tub of good mashed potato if you don’t like celeriac or couldn’t be bothered). Bake in a 200C oven until the edges are bubbly and the peaks of the celeriac are golden brown. Serve with steamed greens.

Then we had a bit of a pause before the ginger syllabub. I didn't end up matching a wine to it, because we'd really had quite enough to drink already. I ended up making a few extra changes to the syllabub recipe, and it made masses so I think we'll be having it today for breakfast as well. Pity we haven't got any fruit in, it'd be wonderful with a fruit salad!

Ginger Syllabub (my way)

Serves 6

100g caster sugar
200ml green ginger wine
The finely grated zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
3 balls of very finely julienned stem ginger
500ml double cream
1 ½ ginger nut biscuits and 1tbs green ginger wine per person

Combine the sugar, ginger wine, lemon zest and juice in a bowl and stir well. And the cream and whip to soft peaks. Fold in the julienned ginger.

Break 1 ½ ginger nuts per person into wine glasses and drizzle about 1 tbs of green ginger wine over them. Spoon the syllabub into the wine glasses and refrigerate for an hour or so.

Refining my ideas

OK, so I have decided on the menu for Wednesday night - the gods of supermarkets being willing.
Artichoke fritters with Camel Valley bubbles to start (because these are dear and food-orientated friends, I don't mind them standing in the kitchen while I make the fritters)
My fish pie - fennel base, white fish, prawn and scallop saffron veloute filling with celeriac mash topping. Probably served with muscadet

Ginger syllabub for pudding. I've decided to combine Skye Gyngell's recipe with one from Delicious so I get a bit of a citrus note along with the ginger - basically I will use Skye's proportions, but using ginger wine instead of sherry and adding some crumbled gingernuts at the bottom for texture. No idea what to do about wine. This rather useful site teams a Pedro Ximenez sherry with a gingery dessert, which seems like a good idea. I'll have to see how expensive it is!

Amazing what you find when you google

We'll have houseguests for a couple of nights this week, so I have been quietly mulling over the perfect meal for them (I think I'll cook one night and we'll take them to the pub one night). It's a bit tricky, because he doesn't eat red meat (and reluctantly chicken) and they have been staying with his family (epic pastry cooks) for 2 weeks, so they may be about to OD on richness.

I started from a position of conviction that I would do the St Clement's Creams again for pudding. But then I conceived of a fish pie on a base of confit fennel. And then I realised that with the orangey fennel, I shouldn't really back up with an orange dessert, so I thought of pannacotta. And I was thinking of a bar of chocolate that a friend bought me in Venice last year, which was white with vanilla and saffron. So I thought white chocolate pannacotta infused with cardamom and saffron would be the goods.

I googled "white chocolate pannacotta" and lo! Not only did I discover that Alan Coxon got there before me, but also that there are about a million really fantastic, funny, informative food blogs out there that have recipes for a white chocolate pannacotta on them. I will particularly be bookmarking Anne's Food, A cat in the kitchen and the Sceptical Cook.

I still think a cardamom and saffron infused white chocolate pannacotta is a good idea, but I have decided that the saffron in this meal would make a much better appearance in a veloute sauce for my fish pie filling. It'll give colour and an edge. And using a veloute instead of a bechamel should leave some room for pudding. Haven't quite decided on the pudding, but I am edging towards a ginger syllabub.

Saving Myself

I'm going to be a bit quiet for the next week. I'm going to Spain on the 28th and in anticipation of much eating, drinking, and photo-worthy food, I thought I'd show some restraint. Which hasn't really worked, but I just won't be telling you about it!

"Mexican"

I love Mexican food. Even the "Mexican" that would have a Mexican person saying "Oh you English make such strange food". The doubtless inauthentic combinations of mince, beans, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream and avocado are so tasty that I don't really care if it is not quite how the Olmecs would have done it.

Last night it was rainy and miserable and perfect for seeing a film. We'd been told about a multiplex not too far from us that had a cheesy Mexican joint as part of the complex, which sounded just perfect.

We were really lucky with our timing. We were seated in a nice booth at 6.45, but within about 15 minutes the place was heaving with people being asked to wait in the bar with electronic beepers to alert them when a table was ready. The loud (and very infectious) soundtrack was a bit odd in a half-empty restaurant, but when it had filled up it gave a real party atmosphere. I had a bottle of Magners cider, but I think that on another occasion I would insist on a jug of Lynchburg Lemonade (Jack Daniels, triple sec and lemonade) and skip the movie.

We started with a favourite - green chillis stuffed with cream cheese, crumbed and fried. In a perfect world these are filled with goats cheese, or something a bit more flavourful, but these were excellent. Not at all greasy, very crisp and nicely filled with extremely hot cheese. A sweet chilli jelly for dipping them in was a good accompaniment.

I had quite a hard time choosing my main course. I was very tempted by the ribs and the bison burger, but I settled on prime steak fajitas. My husband had single-mindedly pursued enchiladas, but was thwarted. In his opinion enchiladas must be beef, and he couldn't be pursuaded by the chicken ones, so he had a burrito instead.

My fajitas were impressively presented, on a wooden board with built-in sizzling plate and terracotta tortilla dish (don't know how our perky, pint-size waitress managed to carry it - it was twice her size) but the sizzle didn't really add flavour to the meat, which looked like it had been cooked and sliced and then just put on top of the onions and peppers. It was a reasonable effort - the tortillas were very good and the meat was quite nice, but I do like the slightly sticky, smokey sauce that usually coats the meat, which was missing in this case.

I think my husband liked his burrito. He certainly went very quiet and ate very quickly.

The restaurant was so busy by this stage that my husband suggested that we order dessert to prevent them kicking us out too long before the movie. We shared a banana taquito - banana wrapped in a cinnamon tortilla, fried and served with icecream and caramel sauce. You certainly wouldn't want to eat one by yourself: it was a generous portion.

By the time we'd finished, managed to get the bill and pay, it was the perfect time to stroll into the cinema. A very good night out.

Offley good

I know it is not for everyone, but there is something about a dish of liver that is very comforting. I went to a funeral yesterday (lovely Pat Webb, rest in peace dear lady) and I just wanted something nourishing and comforting for tea last night. A hearty soup - pea and ham, mutton and barley, minestrone - would have done the job, but they all take quite a bit of time (and I end up eating them for a week).

So I decided that it was to be liver, bacon and onion gravy.

At my husband's insistance, I sliced an onion into fine half-moons. I would probably have diced it, but he was right. I cooked it very slowly in olive oil until it was entirely floppy and yellow and beginning to caramelise. Then I added some dried rosemary and cooked it a bit longer. Then I added dry-cured smoked bacon, cut into chunky lardons, and when that had browned and was about to crisp, I added 2cm pieces of lamb's liver. When that was cooked through (but before it could toughen) I added a slosh of dry sherry and some freshly ground white pepper. We had it with some M&S veg (asparagus, runner beans and broccoli; cauliflower cheese) and some extra onion gravy I'd had in the freezer. Perfect. A warming end to a sad day.