Has anyone ever tried this? Looks amazing if it works. Will let you know!
marinated tuna brochettes
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This dish was inspired by a lovely tuna ventresca marinated in soya sauce and served with black olive paté that I had the other day at La Azotea, which somehow ended up as brochettes and I forgot the olive paté. Anyhow, they were delicious and super easy to make – can’t wait to try them on the barbeque!
Ingredients and instructions below…
chicken in spicy peanut sauce
I kind of just threw this together one day last week and have ended up making it three times since. It’s very satisfying and also low-carb, though my flatmate had it over basmati rice and said it was wonderful. I’d never made peanut sauce before so just used some crunchy peanut butter as a base and it turned out quite well. Measurements for the sauce are a bit slapdash, but it’s easy to just add and taste as you go along.
Ingredients and instructions below…
chicken pesto risotto with portobellos
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a risotto recipe (or for that matter – anything!). This one actually happened “by accident” when I was planning to make some chicken pesto with spaghetti for my friend and she informed me she’d had a rather pasta-heavy week. So I improvised and used the same ingredients in this risotto. It was really good!
Ingredients and instructions below…
potato “raclette” casserole
Just so you know, this has nothing to do with a proper raclette, nor does it use raclette cheese. But as it does involve mostly potatoes and melted cheese this is what came to mind as I was making it. It all started yesterday when I realised that the very special Swedish Vasterbottensost Cheese that my friend Karin had brought for me in October was about to reach its expiry date. I’d been saving it for a special occasion…
Anyhow, it was such a miserable wet and cold day that some comfort food was definitely required and, after trying a bit of the Vasterbottensost (delicious!) decided it needed to be eaten as simply as possible. And so I came up with this. It was a perfect rainy day meal … and also made for great leftovers!
Ingredients and instructions below…
triple grilled mac & cheese
Another fab recipe from guest contributor, fellow foodie & friend WeeRascal
(previous contribution was his angus beef & coriander casserole)
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What’s your favourite part of Mac and cheese? For me, a slightly burnt, crispy, extra cheesy top when it pops out of the oven is heaven. So I had an idea: why not make a Mac and cheese that has this sort of texture all the way through? The recipe is actually very similar to the way my grandmother used to make it. It’s not at all like the over-rich, creamy, liquid dish you’ll get from a tin, or from a restaurant – I find that a couple of mouthfuls of this “white lava” can be far too sickly.
On the other hand, because of the layering and grilling process used here, the cheese adheres to the pasta like iron filings to a magnet and it’s very addictive. From a culinary point of view, this is about as easy as it gets, but it’s not exactly healthy. It’s perfect for the odd comfort food fix and I will say from experience that it is a superb hangover cure – served cold. Incidentally, you may think that there’s far too much mustard power in this, but bear with me – it really does turbo charge the sharpness of the cheese.
Ingredients and instructions below…
kitchen sink curry
I haven’t done a curry here yet, so why not start with a whopper. This is all part of my flatmate Peter’s education in preparing hot meals for himself ahead of time, which can then be frozen in individual servings and reheated whenever desired. So food purists (like my friend WeeRascal) will probably object to the over-abundance of ingredients, and in self defense I have to say that I usually keep my curries much simpler.
But this was a bit of an experiment in making a whole whack of curry with lots of extra veg added to make it a healthy all-in-one meal option.
And it was actually quite delicious! Even though I “cheat” by using curry paste – in this case garam masala – which is a hot spicy curry with cinammon & ginger. Smells and tastes gorgeous. For the record, this curry turned out more “soupy/stewy” than my usual ones, which tend to be thicker and more like a sauce. But it was great served on rice or potatoes.
Recipe and instructions below…
paella
Well, it had to happen sooner or later, that I would get around to posting about what is probably Spain’s most emblematic dish. Truth is, I only started making paella a couple of years ago, once again using Janet Mendel’s fabulous Cooking in Spain as a guide. Here I’ve made a few small changes from her original and the result was very satisfying.
Recipe and instructions below the links.
bacony leek & potato bake
Yesterday I saw some lovely looking leeks at the market and bought them without any idea of what I’d end up doing with them. In the end this is what I came up with – something autumny that included bacon, garlic and cheese. It was very tasty and easy to make, and quite nice comfort food…
Recipe and instructions below the links.
salmon a la ribereña
My buddy raincoaster was recently asking around for a simple yet delicious way of preparing salmon steaks and I immediately thought of this fabulous dish from Janet Mendel’s Cooking In Spain – though at the time I was in Málaga and so had to send Rain the recipe from memory. It’s a recipe I have used a lot, especially for special meals like birthdays or New Year’s eve at home. I’ve always assumed Janet meant cooked ham not jamón serrano… and I have no idea if my version turns out the way it is meant to. For example, Janet suggests adding some fish broth to thin out the sauce if necessary but, as I seldom have fish broth kicking around, I just add more cava. Works for me!
Recipe and instructions below the links.
