Recipe CXLI - Judias Con Bacon y Zanahoria

In the long run, we come to a point where we need to ditch the rice. Today's recipe is a simple meal I was supposed to do with my daughter for a school assignment. But she, like all kids her age, have something against anything that may have once grown in a field. 

Unless it's called a potato. 

Anyway... it's such a simple thing to put together but makes it a pleasure to eat healthy, which is often the biggest problem with vegetables: they're often a very hard sell when you're not a dedicated vegan or vegetarian. 

Ingredients:

200g green beans, cut to your preferred size 

250g carrots, diced, sliced or cut into matchsticks 

150g bacon strips

1 large onion

6 cloves of garlic

A glass of white wine 

Olive oil 

Instructions:

Heat up the olive oil, add the onions and sweat for a couple of minutes. 

Add the beans and carrots, sweat some more.

Then the garlic, and put the lid on your pan on a low heat for 20 minutes. 

Add white wine if you want, just for a bit of sweetness.

I had mine with an Ibérico cutlet, but it's fine on its own as a starter.

(By the way, the kids had yesterday's spaghetti ragu from the fridge)

Enjoy!

Recipe CXL - Arroz con Secreto Ibérico

We have to talk about secreto ibérico. In English this translates as Iberian Secret, and its name is not ironic. Like a lot of Spanish food, it has been overshadowed by a small collection of more commercial fare to feed the masses on the Costas: gazpacho, tortilla española, paella... but these are the Spanish equivalent of a carbonara or a pizza: they're so popular it's easy to find places that make them incredibly badly.

Secreto ibérico is a cut of meat somewhere around the shoulder from the black pata negra pig. Not to be confused with the duroc sort, it has blackened feet (pata = animal foot, negra = black) and is usually dark in colour. The breed can be classed as indigenous, considering it is probably related to those brought over by early mercantile sailors from the Levant about 2700 years ago.

But what makes the pata negra pig so special is it has the most splendid life: it is a government-protected creature that is granted 5 acres of forest per animal to be allowed to wander the primeval oak forests eating acorns, mushrooms, and the wild vegetation found in these most rural parts of Spain. 

There are four designated areas where the true pata negra pig is raised: 

The town of Jabugo in Huelva province close to the Portuguese border;

Guijuelo, near Salamanca, also near the Portuguese border;

Valle de los Pedrochos, to the north of Cordoba; and

The region of Extremadura, right next to Portugal.

So due to its utterly idyllic existence giving it a supple muscle tone and a slightly nutty flavour, the meat for cooking has a marbled Wagyu-style fat arrangement that makes it supremely tender, and is therefore highly prized by any restaurant in Spain that doesn't cater to the masses. The ham from acorn-fed pigs is cured for up to four years, and they are hung up with their black trotters still attached to prove they are from pata negra pigs.

Ordinary pork is notoriously easy to overcook until it's as tough as a shoe sole, but secreto ibérico stays tender longer, allowing for it to be nicely browned on the outside, burnt even, and still retain its succulence on the inside, making it a barbecue essential. It goes well with many types of food, such as this delightful combination from a restaurant in Mestalla called El Rinconet (see the photo below), which I recommend very highly.

The cut of meat is generally a little like a beef flank steak and it's often cut into strips to make it easier to handle.

Secreto Ibérico from El Rinconet in Mestalla, central Valencia

But the recipe I have for you is another rice one - it's very similar to the last: I think I'm going through a rice phase. It is so simple and yet so delicious, you will travel for miles just to find some secreto ibérico for dinner every now and then!

Ingredients:

350g plain rice

450 g to 500 g of secreto ibérico, cut into strips against the fibres

1 large succulent onion

250 g shimeji mushrooms

6 to 8 cloves of garlic

1 litre of chicken stock

As many peas as you like

You are welcome to add diced carrots, green beans, or any other appropriate vegetable

Salt, ground black pepper to taste

Instructions:

Cut up your vegetables and slice the meat into strips against the grain of the muscles.

Fry the meat on a medium-high heat in some olive oil until they are sealed, adding salt and pepper. 

Remove them and place them on the side for a while.

Sweat the onion and mushrooms on a medium heat, add the garlic and whatever other vegetables you want, and mix them together well stirring all the time. Don't season with too much salt yet.

Add the rice, let it fry for a minute, stir continuously, then start pouring in the chicken stock. Once bubbling, turn the heat down and add more stock every now and then to keep the contents from drying up and burning.

After 5 or 6 minutes, put the secreto back in and mix all the ingredients well. 

From the moment the stock goes in, you will need between 12 and 15 minutes until ready to eat.

Recipe CXXXIX - Arroz Con Salchichas, Carne y Garbanzos

So I've rocked up in Spain. In August, we made the transition from Germany to Valencia and the chances of us returning north in the foreseeable future are pretty remote. What's more, I'd like to tell you about a theory of mine, based on this assumption: 

Spanish cuisine is head and shoulders above Italian. Why? Because it's been allowed to develop and adapt. And I think it's because of one very small but crucial difference - Italians name their food after either the place it was invented or the person who created it, and thus it is fixed in stone. Forever. There is no diversion from the recipe, or someone there will lose control and give your culo a good, hard schiaffeggio. 

In Spain, there are recipes named after places or people too, such as Paella Valenciana or Salmorejo Cordobés, but restaurant menus generally list items based on their ingredients, and for this sole reason, Spanish food has come on leaps and bounds in the twenty-first century, while Italian cuisine has painted itself into a corner, something the great Pellegrino Artusi would have definitely frowned upon.

Attempts at adapting recipes put most traditionalists (therefore most Italians) off - try adding some fresh sage in the ragù and watch them go nuts. Spanish restaurants not only offer a more diverse range of food, they are also much less pretentious. That isn't to say Italian food is bad; it's just a lot of it is underwhelming and rather outdated.

This recipe is one I adapted from a delightful dish I was served last week at the place round the corner from our office where we eat lunch three or four times a week. And this is the beauty of Spanish food - just choose the ingredients you want to add, which is why many of them below are optional.

Ingredients:

Four sliced longaniza sausages, or similar (thin pork sausages about 12cm long)

Two sliced black pudding sausages (optional)

350g diced veal

350g chick peas (optional - mine had some sliced truffles in)

3 diced carrots (optional)

Other diced vegetables, e.g. green peppers, peas, aubergine

1 large diced onion

2 to 4 cloves of garlic

350g traditional rice

1 litre meat broth

Olive oil for frying

A little salt and pepper

Some dried herbs (optional)

Some water (optional)

Instructions: 

Firstly, put your olive oil on medium heat and add your vegetables and garlic. 

Put a little salt and pepper in it and fry gently into a sofrito. Then add your sausages and meat and fry until they are sealed. 

Add your chick peas and the rice and start slowly pouring in your broth, letting it reduce before putting in some more. 

Keep this up for 15 to 20 minutes, then serve piping hot.

It should have a creamy and sticky texture.

¡Que aproveche!

Recipe CXXXVIII - Beef Wellington Made Simple

Yes, it's been a while since I posted... once I reached a hundred, I decided to relax a bit. Also, having three young kids and precious little time for such luxuries, means I'm more likely to spend my free time cutting the grass or repairing a leaking tap than I am writing recipes...

This was the meal I cooked on the last day of the festive season, and I was pleasantly surprised by the results. Take no notice of those who want you to be perfect with all the silly technical details - as long as you get the ingredients to your satisfaction, a Beef Wellington is actually less fiddly work than making a lasagne.

There are two adults and three small children in the house, so I didn't make a huge one, hence the final photo making it look like a pasty... I can assure you it was actually much bigger than that.

Ingredients:

Beef fillet

Olive oil

7 to 10 brown mushrooms

2 red onions

2 or 3 cloves of garlic

A small glass of dry white wine

A cube of butter

Fresh herbs - I used sage, as I love it, but thyme is the traditional one

6 or 7 slices of Prosciutto or Serrano ham

A roll or two of puff pastry

1 or 2 beaten egg yolks

An appropriate amount of clingfilm

A blender or a bowl and hand blender

Instructions:

Put the beef in the oven for 25 mins at 200°C. While this is going on, blend up the mushrooms, red onions, garlic, herbs, some olive oil to make a duxelle, then fry it gently in more olive oil, adding the wine to give it some extra flavour. When it's time, take the beef out and let it cool down: it shouldn't be too well-cooked.

Lay the pastry out flat and put it on some clingfilm, so you can remove the shop-made paper (it's sometimes sticky and can ruin your pastry).

Place the prosciutto on the middle of the pastry layer where your beef will eventually go, and put some duxelle on the prosciutto. Put the beef on top, and spread the rest of the duxelle on the beef until it is covered.

Wrap the pastry over the top, fold in the corners, and glaze the pastry with an egg, sealing all the joins. Make some incisions in the surface of the pastry with the back of your knife, making sure you don't make a hole.

Recommended but not obligatory: put it in the fridge for 20 minutes. Glaze the surface once again, place the whole thing in the oven for 25 minutes on 200°C.

Let it rest for a few minutes before carving, preferably using a sharpened knife. Enjoy!