Crispy Fried Salt Cod (Spanish Style)

I love salt cod but almost always make it into fritters and serve with loads of alioli. This recipe is based on the classic Basque dish bacalao al ajoarriero where the fish is usually flaked into the sauce. I like to keep the pieces whole and serve the sauce on the side. Make sure you get nice thick cod loin not the tail ends and remember to change the soaking water 3 - 4 times otherwise the fish will still be overly salty.
Serves 4
600g salt cod, cut into pieces and soaked for 24 hours
olive oil
1 red chilli, thinly sliced
2 - 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 lemon, cut into wedges
roughly chopped parsley

Cook the fish in a pan of boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain and pat dry.

Heat 2cm or so of olive oil in a large frying pan and cook the garlic and chilli for few seconds until golden. Tip into a bowl then quickly lift out the chilli and garlic with a fork and drain on kitchen paper. Spoon a tablespoon or two of the oil back into the hot pan (keep the rest of the chilli-garlic oil and use for frying eggs or whatever you like).

Fry the fish in the hot pan for 5 minutes or so on each side until crispy and golden. Fry the lemon wedges at the same time. Place the fish on plates, scatter with the garlic, chilli and parsley and serve with lemon wedges on the side.

Tomato and egg sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 tsp smoked paprika
4 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 eggs, beaten

Heat the oil in a small pan and cook the onion for a few minutes until softened. Add the paprika, cook for a minute more. Add the tomatoes and simmer together for 15 minutes or so until pulpy. Whizz with a hand blender until smooth then return to the heat and mix in the beaten eggs, stirring for a couple of minutes or so until the egg is cooked and the suace has a lovely velvety texture.

Paella

This is from a new Tapas book (out next year) I've been working on by the people from the restaurant El Parador. The method is still a bit of a work-in-progress but I like the way it's written.

Serves 6 as a main course
olive oil
4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
2 ] onions, finely sliced
2 large tomatoes, roughly chopped (you can seed and skin them if you wish, but it isn’t necessary)
2 large red peppers, finely sliced
1kg skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
225g squid, cleaned and cut into rings (
200g raw, shelled tiger prawns
400g fresh mussels in their shells
300g monkfish fillets, cut into thin medallions
Maldon sea salt and cracked black pepper, to taste
100ml white wine
1 tablespoon tomato purée
300g calasparra rice (or paella rice of your choice)
1.5 litres vegetable, fish or chicken stock (or water, depending on what you have available)
pinch of saffron strands, soaked in a cup of hot water [this sounds like a lot of water]
2 bay leaves
74g frozen garden peas, defrosted
4 lemon wedges, to serve

Heat 12 dashes of olive oil in a large frying pan (or large, shallow casserole pan) over a low to medium heat. Add the garlic, onions, tomatoes and peppers and stir-fry very gently for about 20 minutes, or until the onions and garlic are caramelized, and the peppers are soft. Remove everything from the pan with a slotted spoon and place in a dish on one side.
Return the pan to a medium heat, add the strips of chicken and stir-fry for a few minutes until light golden brown all over. Remove with a slotted spoon and place in a dish on one side.
Return the pan to a medium/high heat with 3 more dashes of olive oil. Add the squid, prawns, mussels, [Insert: monkfish?] and 2 pinches of salt and pepper. Pour in the wine, cover and cook until the mussels open. Remove the fish/seafood with a slotted spoon and place together in a dish on one side.
Keep the pan on the heat and stir in the tomato purée. You can now start putting the cooked ingredients back into the pan. The purpose of frying everything up separately first was to build up the flavour of the paella in layers – if you had put all the ingredients in at once, they would have ended up boiling, rather than frying, and then they wouldn’t have released as much flavour into the dish.
Put all the cooked ingredients, except for the [fish?/]seafood, back into the pan and stir well. Now add the rice and stir it around to coat it in the oil. Pour over the stock (or water) [should this be heated first?], and add 2 pinches of salt and one of pepper, [Insert: the saffron, along with its soaking water,] and the bay leaves. Bring everything to the boil, [Insert: give the rice one final stir, and then turn down the heat and simmer very gently for 20–30 minutes (or however long it says on the packet), or until the rice is just cooked and the liquid is absorbed. Halfway through cooking, give the pan a couple of gentle, circular shakes to ensure the rice isn’t sticking. Do not stir with a spoon. When the rice is cooked, take the pan off the heat and stir in the peas and the fish/seafood. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and then cover with a lid and leave to stand for 5 minutes. Serve with some lemon wedges on the side.

It's Called "Work", Apparently

Silvana's gone to Pamplona for some jolly-up job for Delicious. She sent this this morning. Looks nightmarish, doesn't it?

Fino

I love going out to lunch. So when it was my birthday on Friday, Robert and I both took the afternoon off and met for a date at Fino on Charlotte Street. It's hard to find and it turned out to be in a basement but from the second we stepped through the door, I knew I was going to love it. It was packed and lively, the service was friendly and speedy and the food was exactly what I was hoping for.
We had a selection of eight, all delicious, tapa (including Crisp belly pork, Pulpo a la Gallega, Piementos de Padron, Fino chips with Brava sauce, Donuts with Pedro Ximénez ice cream) and a couple of sherries and Cavas and it came to £101. It's not cheap but it's very very good.

Churros Con Chocolate

One of the best things Spain has to offer is without doubt, Churros paired with thick hot chocolate for dunking and drinking.
It was on the last day of our mini-holiday and a fairly early Sunday morning when we finally came across a proper Churreria on a dusty B-road. It had the lightest, crispiest and softest churros ever, ever, being made on the spot. A large spiral one and two glasses of chocolate was more than we three could manage and just three euros. So glad we didn't go home without tasting them.
In case you're wondering, on the last night, our holiday-neighbours had a party and their daughters got hold of Scrap and he emerged quite a while later complete with glittery lip gloss, fluffy hair clip and that pink nail varnish you can see in the picture. And very pretty he looked too.
Here's a recipe

To Moro! To Moro! I Love You, To (etcetc)

Maximo Park: Books From Boxes (Warp, 2007)

So we finished issue 51 and piled down to Moro (via Filthy's) to raise a glass and fill a fork in honour of our now ex-art director Keith who's gone and got himself a new job with Swanky & Swanky, designers to the stars.

I had a couple of Al Hambras, quite a lot of rather good vino collapso, padron peppers (one likes to go off-menu now and then, innit?) and the white pork which was so very, very good, it was like eating at home, only not having to wash up while listening to something improving on Radio 4 and eating bits of cheese straight from the fridge.

Later, we went to a bar cheeky enough to charge us a fiver to get in before turning the lights on and turfing us out 45 minutes later... Still, that's what you get for being drunkards.

Keith is now filling boxes with his accumulated blags, which makes this Maximo Park tune - one of his current favourites - spell-bindingly appropriate. Sort of.

Bye Keith! Don't be a stranger!

London's Finest: Rebato's

There are few - if any - things better in the world than having a night off from "childcare" (trans: watching TV while crunching pumpkin seeds) and actually go out of the house to eat something that only adults like.

Last night, we did this in Rebato's the finest place in London to actually go out and eat something only adults like. But why is it so good? Well, here are the facts:

1. It's on South Lambeth Road, possibly the greatest stretch of culinary wotsit in south London.
2. It is the one Spanish island in a brilliant sea of Portuguese fooderies. Like our old, old favourite, Bar Estrela.
3. The front bar is dark and tiled and lined with bull-fighting posters, old photographs and framed newspapers. There is not a hi-chair or a children's menu in sight.
4. The bar itself is long and highly polished wood. As soon as you sit at it a nice man pours you a cold dry sherry and offers you interesting things to eat.
5. Within minutes you are surrounded by said interesting things and a glass of fresh red wine appears at your elbow.
6. Everybody looks happy and unhurried and planning on drinking a little more than they normally would but not worrying about it too much.
7. The food - we had the croquettes, the stuffed chillies, the hot chorizo, the squid, the octopus and incredibly salty (and delicious) bread - arrives with amazing speed and is cleared away with a smile as soon as you merely catch someone's eye.
8. You cannot have a bad time in Rebato's. It is impossible.
9. But you might forget to take a picture. Which is why this plate of Pate de Negra comes from a bar Silvana and I ate in in Madrid about four years ago. Oh yes.

Anyway, we still got home in time to go to bed before 10. Well, there's no need to go mad, is there.

Brindisa

Myriam's visiting from Switzerland (for a Dolly Parton concert at the weekend) so we met up at Borough Market last night. I was early but at just 6 o'clock Brindisa was already completely packed. I put my name down for the next table of four (an hour and a half!) and went off to The George with my newspaper to wait for the others. I really like having a drink on my own while waiting, just one – that half hour of absolute peace.
Anyway, Brindisa was very nice but I don’t think worth the eventual two hours we waited or the £110 bill. Very nice but not spectacular, the £9 ham plate was miniscule and the spinach tortilla was straight from the fridge. But we had a lovely night and the Padron peppers, cava and sherry and the waiters were all great. Definitely want to go to Spain for our holiday soon and in the meantime need more trips to South Lambeth Road for Estrella and Rebato's

Chicken and chorizo rice

I know we’re not meant to prick sausages anymore but I nearly always do, especially fresh chorizo. I want all the lovely smokey juices to come out and mingle with the rest of the ingredients. For lunch today, I pricked the sausages Robert came home with yesterday and sat them in a big tin with six skin-on and bone-in chicken thighs and a few chunks of fresh tomato and roasted them for 25 minutes. While that was going on, I boiled the kettle and made up some chicken stock with a Kallo organic cube and a couple of teaspoons of smoked paprika. I tipped a couple of mugs full of basmati rice into the pan and then poured in enough stock to come about 1 – 2 cm above the rice then put it back in for about half an hour until the rice was fluffed. A quick squeeze of lemon juice and it was ready to eat.