Bank Holiday, Some Lindeman Wine and a Roast, Spanish Style! - Pot Roast Spanish Chicken #capturethesunshine

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I didn't really rate bank holidays when I was younger; they became increasingly more appealing when as a student I could work them and get double time to keep myself in weird clothing and Victorian literature, but that was where their allure ended. Until now, that is. Bank Holidays are a little gift which says to you - yes, here is a day off to do what you want with, and the proceeding week is only a four day week so blink and it is Friday again. If only every week started with a Bank Holiday...

 

But, alas, Bank Holidays are all too few and far between and for that reason they must be made the most of, whether it is simply doing nothing because you can, going out and doing something completely different, or inviting a few people around, opening a bottle of wine and cooking something really tasty that fills the house with mouth watering smells. Which is why this weekend I cooked Pot Roast Spanish Chicken, accompanied by Lindeman's 95 Sauvignon Blanc, and filled the house with the chatter of people catching up with the gossip, the clatter of forks and spoons, and the clinking of glasses to toast what was a day of good mood and good food.

 

I adapted this recipe from my recently acquired 'Ginger Pig' Farmhouse cookbook which is full of alsorts of amazing recipes that I cannot wait to try. I cut down the chilli heat of the dish to factor in the fact that there were children around, so the sauce as a result gave a lazy warmth which went well with both the wine and the children. Because of my love of garlic, I mushed the slow cooked cloves of garlic into the winey, chickeny sauce to create something really rather unctuous and full flavoured.

 

I served this with roasties and lots of bon homie. Now, what to cook next Bank Holiday???

 

Pot Roasted Spanish Chicken, adapted from 'Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook' by Tim Wilson and Fran Warde.

 

Feeds Lola, Finn, Mum, Dad x 2 (8 people)

 

Ingredients:

 

3kg (6lb 8oz) good-quality chicken

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp sweet paprika

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

.

For the bed of vegetables

 

3 onions, peeled and cut into quarters

3 carrots, peeled and cut into quarters

3 large tomatoes, cut into quarters

2 red chillies, cut into quarters (I used one chilli and scraped the seeds out)

2 heads of garlic, cut in half horizontally (I used only one, but it was truly HUGE!!)

3 red peppers, deseeded and cut into chunks

2 bay leaves

2 sprigs of thyme

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

400ml (14fl oz) Lindeman's Sauvignon Blanc wine

300g (10½oz) black olives, stoned (I decided, reluctantly, to leave them out...)
Parsley, for scattering over

 

Method:

 

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

 

Put all the ingredients for the bed of vegetables into a large lidded casserole dish.(I actually used a large roasting tin which I then covered tightly with foil to create the steam).

 

Mix well.

 

Rub the chicken all over with the olive oil. Sprinkle with the paprika and seasoning and rub these into the chicken too.

 

Place the chicken in the dish on top of the vegetables and cover with a tight-fitting lid. (I refer you to how I cooked mine above.

 

Place in the oven for 1½ hours, then remove the lid and cook for a further 20 minutes to crisp up the skin. At this point I removed the chicken to a separate place to rest, whilst I reduced the sauce in the bottom of the roasting tin on top of the hob. Then, as described above, I squeezed the soft garlic out of its skin and mashed it into the sauce.

Serve the pot roast chicken immediately with rice or pasta....or roast potatoes and a glass or two of Lindeman's Sauvignon Blanc!

 

A (not so) Lonely Dinner for One - Hake Bilbaina

 

 

I suppose I should be sad when my better half goes away....and I am, honestly. He makes me cups of tea and usually makes me happy, so I do miss him when he is off galavanting at 'conferences'. But, you have to make the best of a bad lot and the way I do it is by eating the thing I love the most but can't really justify cooking when I have three 'fishyphobes' in the house - fish. Any fish. I am not fussy; just grateful.

So, on this auspicious occasion I give the kids what they really want (chicken nuggets and chips - yes, I am sorry, I am a poor mother...) and I prepare the recipe that I have picked out as soon as I know that Phill is going away. This time it was Cod Bilbaina from the lovely, love 'Modern Spanish Cooking' by Eddie and Sam Hart. As hake was on offer, and in my mind a little more Spanish, I went for that over cod and whilst I am sure it tastes equally as good with cod, the piquant sauce went really well with the more robust tasting hake. What's more, it was a cinch to make. If my brood ate more fish, then my life would be so much easier...

 

Cod (or Hake) Bilbiana, adapted from 'Modern Spanish Cooking' by Sam and Eddie Hart

 

The quantities below serve four - I halved it and had the leftovers the next day.

 

Ingredients

4 hake fillets – evenly sized and about 4 cm thick

1 tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper

For the tomato sauce

12 small plum tomatoes or cherry tomatoes

4 cloves of garlic

2 tbsp olive oil

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp sherry (Fino or Manzanilla)

2 tbsp sherry vinegar

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180 °C / 350 °F / Gas mark 4.

 

 

 

First make the sauce. Place a large frying pan over a medium heat and add the olive oil. Cut the tomatoes in half (lengthways), peel and thinly slice the garlic and place in the pan with the bay leaves. Cook for 3-4 minutes until just soft.

 

 

 

Add the sherry and sherry vinegar, season and allow to bubble for 2 minutes until reduced. Set aside but keep warm.

 

 

 

Heat a large, ovenproof frying pan over a medium heat and add the olive oil. Put the hake in the pan, skin side down, and fry for 4 minutes to crisp the skin.

Remove from the heat and place the pan in the oven for a further 4 minutes until the hake is just cooked through.

 

 

 

Serve the fish immediately with the warm tomato sauce.

More Delia dealings: Pork braised in Sherry with Tomatoes

 

 

I don't normally blog a recipe from the same source twice but, you know, I make the rules here and I'll break them, plus this is too good a meal not to blog about right now, quite frankly, for it is a thing of beauty - a vibrant, Spanish inspired one pot meal which hints at the idea of Summer evenings sat outside on the terrace with a glass full of Rioja, but is substantial enough for a drizzly, chilly early March evening, couped up inside, watching the opaque light fade to black, with a glass full of Rioja...

 

 

 

March is Delia month at Cook Like A Star, hosted by Zoe at Bake for Happy Kids, Baby Sumo from Eat your heart out and Mich from Piece of Cake. which reminds me, I can't believe I haven't posted this earlier...

 

Let's be havin' you indeed. Too much cooking sherry.

 

 

 

and it is also Tomatoes time at Little Thumbs up organised by Doreen at my little favourite DIY and Zoe, at Bake for Happy Kids, and I am submitting this recipe here too, as the recipe covers both bases. Helpful.

 

This is a very easy dish to make, a genuine one pot wonder which once assembled, looks after itself for a couple of hours or so whilst the robust flavours meld. I served this with some garlic bread. Delia suggests potatoes. Delia knows.

 

A word, or several, about olives. I love them, Phill loves them, Lola and Finn hate them. I put them in as instructed in the recipe below and then carefully served Lola and Finn a helping without olives, however, they did taint the sauce a little. The kids persevered, bless them, (the dunking of garlic bread helped enormously!) but if olives aren't your thing, leave them out.

 

Anyway, recipe time:

 

Pork Braised in Sherry with Tomatoes and Chorizo, adapted from Delia's website

 

My adaptations in red

 

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad (I mostly halved the quantities listed in the original recipe).

 

Ingredients:

 

1lb piece trimmed shoulder of pork

4 oz chorizo sausage (I used raw chorizo)

1 tablespoons olive oil

2 medium onions, thickly sliced

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 rounded tablespoon plain flour

A half tin of chopped tomatoes

5 floz dry sherry (I used fino)

1 1/2tbsp tablespoons sherry vinegar (I used white wine vinegar)

A few sprigs of fresh thyme

2 bay leaves

1 red peppers, de-seeded and cut into thick chunks (I used a Romano (pointy) pepper)

a handful mixed green and black olives, pitted (Just used black ones)

salt and freshly milled black pepper Method:

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 1, 275F, 140C. Start off by chopping the trimmed pork into largish cubes if you need to (mine was ready cubed) then remove the skin from the chorizo and slice it into thinnish rounds. Next heat one tablespoon of the oil in the casserole over a high heat and when it’s really hot add a few of the cubes of meat to brown well on all sides. Remove them to a plate then continue to brown the rest of the meat in small batches, adding a little more oil if required. Once the meat has been browned, add the chorizo to the pan and cook until it begins to render its red oil, then add the onions and cook for about five minutes until the onions have taken on a golden hue and are starting to brown.   Next, return the meat to the casserole and stir in the flour to soak up the juices, then add the chorizo followed by the tomatoes, sherry and sherry vinegar. Season with salt and pepper, sprinkle in the thyme and bay leaves then give everything a good stir. Lastly bring the casserole up to a gentle simmer, put the lid on and transfer it to the centre of the oven to cook for 1½ hours.   When the time is up, add the sliced peppers and the olives (left whole), give it all one good stir, cover again then leave it to carry on cooking for another ½ hour or until the peppers are tender. Serve with a sprinkling of parsley and some garlic bread, or potatoes, or rice maybe... As mentioned above, I am submitting this recipe to the 'Cook Like a Star' March blog hop. Please visit the other sites below for some of my friends' amazing Delia recipes. In addition, I am submitting this blog post to 'Little Thumbs Up' the featured ingredient this month being tomatoes.

 

 

A Spanish Quiche from a French Website. Confused? Don't be! Quiche Andalouse, or Andalusian Quiche

 

 

I have been weaning myself off buying cookbooks because it is becoming a worrying obsession which not only threatens to bankrupt me, but ultimately might result in my moving out to live in the garage because there is no room left in the house. We are not at the state of hoarding just yet but many more years of impulse purchasing and it will all end badly. It has to. You can get too much of a good thing. So, I have been getting my 'new' recipe fix from the Internet and I have become a fan of the French website, Marmiton, in which I can peruse thousands of yummy recipes, sat at the computer with a mug of tea and a sense of culinary adventure. The added bonus is that I get to practise my French as I translate the recipes into English, thus hopefully leaving me confidently chatty for when I buy my little corner of France with a garden of fruit trees, a veg plot, a light and airy kitchen, a Summer of blue skies and a pretty much constant stream of French wine from the local vineyard. I can live in hope, and there's always the lottery. Don't stop believing!

 

So, I like quiche. It's the thing I gravitate towards at buffets and I can eat far too much of it. You can keep your vol-au-vents, quiche is where it is at. I also find it a way of using up stuff and a way to cheat if needs be and that is what I did here. If I were anything close to a dedicated cook I would have made my own shortcrust but, yes readers, I bought it. (Good stuff actually - if you buy a good quality one it is like making it yourself but you can hurl together a meal in 10 minutes or so and slam it in the oven. Not bad for a school night tea)

 

I had (and always have) chorizo in the fridge because everybody in this house adores it, and it was after a rummage in the freezer that I discovered a bag of prepared peppers, covered in something resembling permafrost which would benefit greatly from being sauteed in the burnished oil left behind from cooking the chorizo. The original recipe says use ordinary peppers and skin them but, you know, life is sometimes far too short. I added an onion to the recipe too.

 

This is a lovely dish. The meaty, salty, richness of the chorizo is cut by the sweet, clean taste of the sauteed peppers, all enveloped in an unctuous creamy eggy custard. Yum.

 

Quiche Andalouse or Andalusian quiche translated and then adapted from the Marmiton website

 

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad twice

 

Ingredients

 

A block or packet of ready rolled good quality shortcrust pastry (I lined a 25cm flan tin with this and had some over to make another tart. Happy days! Freeze what you don't need.)
2 red peppers
1 green pepper (or a generous handful of ready prepped or frozen peppers)
20 slices of chorizo (I used a packet of cooking chorizo, sliced into rounds)

one onion, diced
6 eggs
300ml cream
Salt and pepper

Method:

Preheat the oven to 170c and put a baking sheet into the oven to heat up.

 

 

Prepare your flan tin and then line with the pastry.

If you need to, dip the peppers in boiling water for 5 minutes to peel more easily. Cut into thin strips.

 

Precook the sausage in boiling water a few minutes to degrease (optional, but I fried mine off a little to take the rawness away and decanted some of the oil).

 

Remove the chorizo from the pan and then fry the onion and the peppers in the residual oil until starting to soften a little. Remove and combine with the chorizo in a bowl.

 

 

Mix the eggs with the cream. salt and pepper. Stir in peppers and chorizo. Taste the mixture for seasoning.

Pour the custard mixture into the prepared tin and then carefully place into the oven, onto the baking sheet.

 

 

Bake for about 25 - 30 minutes

 

 

Leave to stand for about 10 minutes or so. A hot quiche can do untold damage to the roof of the mouth!

Half term and I am pretending I am in Mallorca - Tumbet

 

 

... I am imagining that in Mallorca it is shimmering hot with a periwinkle blue sky and a breeze that merely breathes through the branches of the soon to be abundant fruit trees whilst I sit on the veranda of an old Mallorcan house, sipping Palo and reading a good book, watching Lola and Finn splash about in the pool and Phill visibly begin to unwind and build up some laughter lines. I think it's safe to say that he needs this imaginary holiday more than me. Anyway, in my mind I am feeling pretty damn content after eating the joyously wonderful Tumbet in such imaginary surroundings - it is better than the harsh realism of being sat here in my conservatory staring out westwards watching the cloud...and the rain...and wondering if my washing will ever dry. 

 

I love these kind of dishes in which the whole is better than the sum of its parts. I mean, I do like all these things separately I suppose but there is something that happens, let's call it 'alchemy' for I like the word, that takes place when these ingredients come together. I don't know whether this particular alchemy will confer some kind of everlasting life and youth but what I do know is that it tastes wonderfully garlicky and glorious. And if you're of a mind to, dipping a bit of good bread into the flavourful olive oil once the Tumbet is no more is a total and utter must.

 

Once again, as I am attempting to escape to somewhere further south with this recipe so it seems apt that this recipe is from Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes, a book that has seen plenty of action in my kitchen, as its battered cover and corners will testify.  Stein makes reference to Sam and Eddie hart's Modern Spanish Cooking, which I also have, and my reason for mentioning it is not to give you some sort of glimpse into my cookbook addition, it's more to emphasise the extraordinarily good provenance of this dish.

 

It is a little bit of a faffy recipe with a few stages involving frying the various vegetables off, but don't let that put you off because it is worth it. Not unsurprisingly, Lola and Finn were not necessarily taken with aubergines. That's okay. Phill recommends this dish highly, and so do I, 'cos we loved all of it.

 

Tumbet: Oven Baked Potatoes, Peppers, Tomatoes and Onions, adapted from Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes

 

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad twice as a side dish

 

My adaptions are in red

 

Ingredients:

 

For the tumbet:

 

Two large aubergines, stalk ends removed

1 kg floury potatoes (I used Vivaldi, that I get from Sainsbury's)

About 10 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Two large red peppers (Though I confess to using one red and one yellow - I fancied colour)

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

 

For the tomato sauce:

 

14 plum tomatoes (Ever tried getting decent tomatoes around here? Impossible. So, I subbed two tins of plum tomatoes instead)

1 - 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 onion chopped (I used a full onion because it wasn't so big)

1 banana shallot or 3 ordinary shallots (I used ordinary)

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 large thyme sprig (I subbed 1/2 tsp dried thyme)

1 oregano sprig (I subbed 1/2 tsp dried oregano)

2 bay leaves

salt and pepper to taste

 

Method:

 

 

 

To make the tumbet - slice the aubergines into 1.5cm thick rounds ans lay them out on kitchen paper or a clean tea towel. Sprinkle with salt and allow the aubergine slices to degorge for about 20 minutes.

 

 

 

Peel the potatoes and slice into 5mm thick rounds. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan and fry the potato slices until they are golden and tender. You will have to do this in batches. Season.

 

 

 

Halve and core the peppers, then slice length ways into 1 cm strips. Heat some more oil in the frying pan and fry the peppers over a medium heat for about 20 - 25 minutes stirring occasionally. (I cooked mine for about 15 minutes and they were fine). Remove, season lightly and set aside.

 

On their way to golden!!!!

 

Meanwhile, pat the aubergines dry to remove the salt and juices. Place the slices in a frying pan with some more of the olive oil and fry until the slices are golden brown. You'll need to do this in batches and you will probably need to add more oil. Set aside.

 

For the tomato sauce. If you are using tomatoes you'll need to skin them, quarter them and remove the seeds. If you're using tinned, maybe pour yourself a glass of wine at this point.

 

Bit chunky - we like it this way. You might like to cut them smaller...)

 

Sweat the onion and shallot in the olive oil in a pan over a medium heat for about 10 minutes or so then add the garlic and bay leaves and cook for another five minutes approximately.

 

 

 

Add the tomatoes and thyme and oregano and some salt and pepper. Bring the mixture to a simmer and reduce slowly for 25 - 30 minutes until you have a thickish sauce. Remove any herbs you can (I'm thinking bay leaves if you used dried herbs like me) and then taste and season again if necessary to taste. You do need a sauce with flavour because it is going to 'season' the vegetables too.

 

Preheat the oven to 190c/Gas 5 and oil the base of an ovenproof dish.

 

 

Lay potato slices over the bottom and then cover with pepper strips, then aubergines (though for reasons I still don't understand I did aubergines first, then peppers). I had potato slices over so I topped the peppers with them.

 

 

 

Pour the tomato sauce over the top and bake for 25 - 30 minutes.

 

 

 

Serve with chicken or fish maybe. I had Merguez sausages and some sourdough bread and we ate like a king, a queen, a princess and a prince.