Monthly Archives: July 2011

A cosy lamb stew

21 Thursday Jul 2011

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As you may have noticed, ‘summer’ is not really living up to it’s promises. When most people think of summer, they think of beaches, long, warm evenings, picnics and pimms. They do not think of drizzly, chilly days and the desire to curl up in front of a fire. Sadly this is what is presented to us this year. This sorry excuse for a July is not in my good books seeing as it has only left one summer-like trace. Do you know what that is? Hayfever, cronic bloody hayfever. Not amused. As a result of this, i’m not feeling particularly enticed by the usual fair-weather fare of salads and general light eating. On the good side, my friend Brekke is over from Norway for a visit, and down staying with me in the country. Whilst we were perusaling aorund Waitrose, we both decided that a bit of comfort food was needed, namely a stew. Now i know this is more of a wintery dish, but seriously, it’s kind of cold. With that in mind we decided lamb might be just the ticket, and maybe some chorizo and a little bit of rooty veg and before we knew it, we were off. I will say one thing though, if you’re tempted to make this dish, or indeed any lamb dish, please try and buy british lamb. We have some amazing lamb in this country, especially near me where there’s dorset lamb a plenty and yet so many people still insist on buying lamb flown all the way across the world from New Zealand. Absolute madness. Obviously if you’re reading this in New Zealand (i can be optimistic can’t I?) you might want to buy the lamb from there but you get the idea. So home we bounded with our arms full of goodies and after eating a quickly thrown together antipasti style lunch, consisting of rillette, cheese, bread and salad, we got down to the business of a stew. As we ate our stew, we talked about the joys of stews (yes, i’m strange but this is the benefits of having equally food-geeky friends). They’re a meal that requires you to put so little in and yet you get something so satifying at the end of it all. There really is no excuse to not cook when it’s this easy. And it’s cheap, so don’t go giving me that either, there’s really nothing stopping you when it’s this easy.
Right, let’s get going. This will serve 3-4 depending how hungry (and greedy) you are.

Lamb and Chorizo Stew with Celeriac and Chantenay Carrots

1 small shoulder of lamb on the bone
1 white onion
1 small celeriac
4-5 inches of chorizo, peeled of the casing and thinly sliced
2 handfuls of baby chantenay carrots
1 can peeled plum tomatoes

Chop the onions, don’t worry about making them small and neat dice, just a rough chop is fine, sweat them in a little olive oil along with the baby carrots. Chop the celeriac into 2 inch dice and add to the pot along with the sliced chorizo.

Whilst this is sweating away nicely, in a separate pan, heat a little oil and sear the lamb on all sides until it’s golden brown. Once thats done, pop it in the other pot, trying to make sure you have half the veggies on top and half underneath the lamb. Add the can of tomatoes and just enough water/ chicken stock to cover the lamb, season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 3 hours with the lid on. This is why this is great, you can wander off and do what you like for a few hours, catch up on some paperwork, have a nap, go for a walk. Personally we used the time to bake a cake and some brownies- more food, surprise surprise. Also, fear not if you totally forget about this bad boy blipping away, if it cooks for 4,5,6 hours, it’ll be none the worse for it. The desired effect is that the meat simply falls off the bone in shreds, once it does that, you’re good to go. Strain the liquid into another saucepan and reduce it by about half. Shread the lamb, discarding the bone and the fat and add it back into the sauce along with the veg. All that’s left for you to do is plonk the pot down on the table with a hunk of crusty bread and let everyone tuck in.

Now, as Brekke pointed out, this is far from being the sexiest plate of food, but a bowl of this and a nice glass of red wine and suddenly you won’t be so troubled by summer’s elusiveness. So if you’re finding yourself getting a little grumbly, try this and i promise you’ll suddenly feel a lot less whingy. I would reccomend that you don’t then eat a massive brownie though, there’s a bit of a food coma situation going on here right now.

A little spanish temptation

16 Saturday Jul 2011

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Ok, so i know it hasn’t technically been that long since i got back from Nassau’s sun-filled shores but England was grey and chilly and i was getting withrawl symptoms from the warmth, So when mum proposed a little trip to spain i jumped on it and soon enough i was filled with dreams of sun, sea and sangria. We had a little gander at flights and before we knew it, we were up at the crack of dawn and Marbella bound. After a couple of days relaxing by the pool and having dinner at home, we decided to venture out to our favourite little tapas bar,  La Taberna del Pintxo. Tucked up a little back street, slightly away from the busy, tourist-filled front line it’s the most charming little place. The outside tables are big old barrels surrounded by high stools and are a great place to sit and watch the world go by although i  must say, sometimes it gets a little ovewhelming with people bustling past all the time. It gets busy though, don’t be surprised if you sometimes have to wait for a table. I always think this is a good thing however, there’s nothing worse than an empty restaurant in terms of atmosphere and no one flocks to a bad place so i think it’s always a good sign.
This is maybe not the right place to go if you’re a picky eater, the whole premise of this place is that you just sit and relax with a drink and the friendly staff bring around plates of tapas. On the whole the staff speak some english although there is definitely some guesswork involved a lot of the time, but my advice would be to trust them, it’s almost unheard of for something to come out of their kitchen that is not utterly divine. Indeed, it’s the place i most look forward to going to every time i’m in Spain.

One of the first tapa to come around was the old favourite, tortilla. Basically it’s just onion, potato and egg but somehow the spanish manage to make it utterly delicious, i think vast quantites of scrummy local oil probably have a lot to do with it.

Next up, came something involving crab, we’re not entirely sure what it was but apparently it was very good.

There was also a delicious ham, cheese and oregano toast, to be honest i’m sold on pretty much anything with oregano but this was really moorish and surprisingly fresh tasting.

There was a chicken with a barbequey sauce, i didn’t try this one but was informed that it was very juicy with a really nice, tangy sauce

A seriously good little glass of gazpacho which is something i drink by the gallon anyway when i’m in Spain as it’s just so refreshing. This one was made even more special by the addition of little chunks of serrano ham and manchego.

A scrummy little croissant filled with cheese and something which i can no longer remember, i just remember that it was good and i wanted more but they’d run out!

Then there was the cutest little mini lasagna. Now i have to say, this is obviously not the most traditional tapa and i admit it wasn’t my facourite but i love the idea of it, i’m thinking it’s something i want to do myself so watch this space.

There were plenty of other tempting little morsels to be had as well but i forgot to take photos of them all. One of my favourites was the croquettes de jamon, creamy and fluffy and hammy. yum. Bite-sized hamburgers, quesadillas and tarts topped with quails eggs were also floating around and whilst i didn’t have any, they also do little puddings including a mini flan had by mum which definitely made me pretty jealous.
This is a great little place to go and relax of an evening, sit with a glass of wine and chill. The other great thing is that you can take as little or as long a time as you want, you can luxuriate for hours or be in and out within 15 minutes, eat what you like and then at the end of it all, the waiters simply count up your sticks and hand you the bill, which is usually lower than you’d expect for the amount of food you inevitably eat there.

A few days later we popped up to la canada, a shopping centre up the road and, after doing a little shopping for the boyfriend i decided i was in fact pretty starving and wanting some breakfast/brunch/lunch. There wasn’t a great selection of restaurants so i picked a little cafe and thought i’d make do. And was really pleasantly surprised. Usually any place that has pictures on the menu scares me a little but this may just be the exception that proves the rule. They had loads of pastries and ice creams as well as salads and pizzas, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. One page of the menu had what was simply called Spanish brunches. The first one was what caught my eye, a relatively simple combination of bread smeared with tomato and topped with serrano ham served with tortilla. It really exceeded my expectations, the kind of thing that would really only be good in spain as the ingredients were all so fresh and full of flavour. Definitely something i’ll be bearing in mind for future lunches.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, i have a bit of a thing for breakfasts, brunches and the like and this next one was no exception. It’s not somewhere i’ve ever been before, a sweet little place called Pasion Cafe in San Pedro but my friend Sophie used to work there and as i was having breakfast with her, she suggested we check it out. I slightly tweaked what was on the menu to make it more me and was glad i did, it made the whole thing a lot lighter and fresher than it would otherwise have been.

Scrambly egg with grilled bacon and tomato and some avocado on a seedy bagel. It was supposed to have cheese instead of avocado and poached egg instead of scrambled but i liked it this way, it made me feel a little less guilty as well which is always a good thing.

We had some other really good meals whilst we were there, including a very memorable paella in a flower filled square in Marbella which lasted about 3 hours but was such a gorgeous setting that it was worth every minute.

And a scrummy pepperoni and red onion pizza at the ever popular Picasso’s in the harbour in Puerto Banus. You always have to queue down the pavement as there’s a no booking policy but it’s worth it once you’re in there with the pizza that always arrives hot and fast and the friendly efficient staff. If you have room try the brownie sundae which will make you feel guilty as hell but i think you’ll find it’s worth it. For a more virtuous approach, the melon is really good, perfectly ripe and served with juicy strawberries, the perfect finish to a fairly unvirtuous meal.

Just a few little gems to try out if ever you’re in the area. One of my purchases whilst away was a giant paella pan and it’s making me want to rustle one up as well as some little tapas so if that sounds like something i might be able to tempt you with then keep checking back soon as i think it’s only a matter of time before the lure of it all draws me back in…