Spanish Week

As we can’t go abroad at the moment, we thought we do our best to bring abroad to us.

This week it’s Spanish week, which is basically an excuse to drink sherry at gin o’clock and eat olives and chorizo all week.

I’m using two books for our food, ‘The Food of Spain’ by Claudia Roden and ‘Cooking in Spain’ by Janet Mendel Searl. The latter must be over 25 years old, and I bought it in Fuengirola I think.

On Monday evening, we had a Paella-style dish. No prawns or fish just chicken, pork sausage balls and chorizo. Plus obviously red and green pepper, a table spoon of chopped tomatoes, garlic etc etc. I forgot to take a picture.

Last night ( Tuesday ) was good, Patatas a la Riojana ( Potatoes cooked with chorizo and onion ), esparragos y guisantes en salsa verde ( asparagus and peas with salsa verde ) and setas ( fried mushroons with a parsley and heavily garlicked mayonnaise ).

For lunch today (Wednesday), I made a soup. Menestra de primavera ( basically a spring green soup – Food of Spain ). Peas, broad beans, asparagus, spring onions, artichoke hearts and a bit of bacon. All served with some soda bread.

On Wednesday evening, we sat in the garden to catch the last of the warmth with some sherry, olives, crisps and Manzanilla. We also had the remains of the soda bread dipped into oil and ( my homemade ) sherry vinegar.

Later, we had ‘fideos en cazuela’ (without the rabbit, with the pork chops replaced by some pork meatballs, and the remainder of a bit of cooking chorizo). The best way to describe it is like a Paella with pasta. Nice though.

Looking forward to today ( Thursday ). It’s Lomo day today.

So, here it is. Bocadillo de Lomo. The pork loin has been marinading since Monday in garlic, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and, obviously, paprika.

Sliced thinly, fried in a bit of oil, and served in a home made roll with some lettuce (homegrown obviously) and a dollop of mayo. Yum!

So, Thursday evening’s meal. The recipe was Merluza en Salsa Verde con esparragus ( Hake in a salsa verde with asparagus – the Food of Spain ) but I didn’t have any hake so I used cod. The only problem with cod is that it tends to fall apart a bit.

With it, we tried ‘arros amb crosta’ (crusty rice, Alicante style – Cooking in Spain) . Very tasty but, once again, I didn’t have all of the correct ingredients. I don’t think this is important because I’m sure that all of these dishes are simply a record of what was available at the time. Maybe a bit less crusty than I’d have expected also. If there’s a next time, perhaps I’ll let it cook a bit drier so that the rice at the bottom gets a bit crusty.

I also roasted some tomatoes, some courgettes and some radishes with oil, salt, vinegar, balsamic glaze, pepper, fennel seeds etc.

Are you still here? It’s Sunday now and I’m wrapping up Spanish Week.

So, Friday night we had ‘Albondigas en salsa con picada de almendras’ ( meatballs in an almond sauce, tortilla and asparagus.

Saturday night was an opportunity to clear up some of the stuff that was left in the fridge from previous meals, so we had peppers stuffed with a tomato and garlic rice mix, setas, a couple of slices of lomo and the last of the asparagus. I didn’t follow a recipe so I can’t give a spanish name.

Finally, Sunday lunch was another fridge cleaner. It was an oven baked rice dish containing half a green pepper, half a red pepper, a small courgette, onion, tomatoes, a bit of chicken and the last of the lomo. It was really quite nice.

It’s always a little bit sad when you get back from your holidays, with nothing to look forward to for the next 6 months or so.

We’ve decided to try and combat that feeling by immediately popping off somewhere else for a week. Hmm, wonder where it’ll be?