It’s all about the tapas

So, here we are in the last week of Spanish Tapas Month on Italian Kiwi, with Part IV!  I hope you’ve been enjoying the change of scenery for a month and had a look at  the salmorejo soup , the tiny fried fish and the roasted peppers. This bean salad is the last of the Spanish tapas that I’d like to introduce you to.  I love it as it’s very quick to make and keeps for at least 4 or 5 days in the fridge, so you can make a lot of it and eat it bit by bit over a number of days, or, if you misjudge how much of the bean salad you need to make for a party and end up with a whole lot of it left over (personal experience here!), then it keeps well so you can eat it over the next few days with no problems at all.

I’ve tried making this bean salad with canned beans and with dried beans and either way is great.  In fact, it’s almost better with the canned ones (so you don’t have to feel guilty about not cooking everything from scratch!) as they’re “juicier”, for want of a better word. I’ve also made the bean salad with pinto beans, and also with cannellini beans, and both worked marvelously.  As you can see, this bean salad is very versatile.

All about the village of Rhonda

This week, I’d like to show you a small town called Ronda: one of the many Pueblos Blancos in Andalucia.  It is famous for the huge bridge that was built in the 1700’s (and is called the “new bridge”!), which connects one part of Ronda to the other.  We didn’t have time to walk down to the bottom of the gorge, but apparently, it’s worth it (as long as it’s not 45 degrees C, of course),

The evening we were in Ronda there was lots of practice for an upcoming religious procession going on.  We bumped into these teenagers (in the photo below) doing a practice run in the early evening.  Soon after I took this photo, the people carrying the box banged into the guys in front of them and everyone fell over.  The leader with the banner then threw it on the ground and started jumping up and down on it.  I guess this group had a little bit more practice to do ……

Even the toddlers were getting in on the game.  We saw a few of these decorated cardboard boxes wandering around the main square.  Every now and then a tiny kid would pop out from under the box and run around in circles around it.

Where to go to eat in Rhonda

We had a fantastic dinner of tapas at the bar below called Camelot.  The name made us think that it might be a tourist trap, but it was far from it.  In fact, we were the only non-locals there.  The dishes were plentiful, delicious and cheap! If you go to Ronda, it’s not to be missed!

Where to stay in Rhonda

We stayed for the night in the nearby Arridah hotel.  It is a beautiful place in the countryside, run by an incredibly friendly and helpful  couple called Wilbert and John.  The hotel was outstanding!  It was difficult to tear ourselves away from it the next day.  We didn’t even have time to sip cocktails and eat tapas on their roof-top terrace overlooking the countryside!  This is a place that we definitely want to go back to again sometime.

By Lisa Watson

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Roasted Red Pepper and bean salad

This colourful and easy red pepper and dried bean salad will make a great addition to your table

Course Appetizer, Salad, Side Dish

Cuisine Spanish

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 45 minutes minutes

Total Time 50 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 480 g Dried (or canned) beans e.g. cannelini, borlotti, pinto 17oz, 2 cups cooked
• 2 Red peppers Capsicums
• 2 - 3 Spring onions
• 3 Tbsp Capers
• 4 Tbsp Olive oil
• 2 Tbsp Sherry vinegar
• Salt To taste

Instructions

• Roast the red peppers in a baking dish at 180°C (350°F) for 45 minutes.  Leave to cool.  The skins should peel off easily.  Also remove the seeds.  This step can be done a day or two before you make the salad. Just keep the peppers in an airtight container in the fridge until needed.
• Slice the peppers and finely chop the spring onions.
• Drain the beans.
• Put all the ingredients in a salad bowl and mix.  Add more vinegar and salt to taste.
• Chill the salad until needed.

What to do with all those zucchini

Zucchini, zucchini everywhere and not a recipe in sight……or is there? My kids and I grew zucchini plants from seed this year.  They’ve taken a while as the weather’s been all over the place, acting like a teenage girl who doesn’t know what to wear on a date: “Shall I go stormy and dark?  Shall I be light and sunny?  Or shall I give them a bit of both so that they don’t know what to expect?”.  Anyway, now, just a couple of days before we go on holiday, there are zucchini coming out our ears.  I’d been throwing them in pasta sauces, and putting them in places that they really have no place being (please don’t get smutty on me….I didn’t mean THAT!!), when I suddenly remembered that fritters are the way to the light.  They are so versatile that you can stick pretty much any vegetable in them and it comes out tasting great!

Fritters are very forgiving

So I set to work trying to remember the recipe my mother used to make when I was a kid and she made corn fritters.  It worked!  I also found some spring onions in the fridge that needed using up before we leave, so I minced them up and threw them in with the grated zucchini too. Fantastic!  Fritters can be seen as the seagulls of the fridge world.  They swallow up everything that you have left and are not sure what to do with.

Try not to go on holiday when the vegetables are ready

The worst of the whole vegetable garden thing this year is that I think our house-sitters are going to be the ones reaping the benefits while we’re away in Italy.  There are all types of tomatoes on the brink of ripening and even MORE zucchini bursting out like balloons that are all planning to be ready on the day after we leave.  I’m beginning to think that the vegetables do it on purpose as some sort of protest (we are in France, after all), as they didn’t get cared for enough in their younger months.

Travel photo of the week

Here’s something to get the travel bug working inside your head. This week I’m taking you to one of my favourite places in the world: Yosemite National Park in California. When we lived in California, we used to go there at least four times a year.  I miss it dreadfully still!

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 12 -15 fritters

Ingredients

• 150 g 1 cup All-purpose flour
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Salt
• 2 Eggs
• to taste Pepper
• 120 ml 1/2 cup Milk
• 2 medium size about 200g/7oz Zucchini
• 2 Spring Onions

Instructions

• Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
• Add the eggs and milk and mix in.
• Grate the zucchini. Blot it with a paper towel to get rid of excess moisture. Finely mince the spring onion.
• Add the vegetables to the batter and stir in.
• Heat a frying pan with a thin layer of oil in it.
• Pour tablespoons of the mixture into the pan once the oil is hot.
• Wait until one side browns and flip them over. Each fritter should take 3 - 5 minutes to cook.
• When the fritters are cooked, drain them on a plate with a paper towel on it.
• The fritters acan be eaten hot or cold.

Now for something completely different

Here’s a recipe for Pad Thai: not Italian at all, but made with noodles, so I guess it vaguely enters into the category of distant cousin to Italian cuisine. Pad Thai is an all-in-one dish from Thailand and Laos.

Noodles are eaten at many festive occasions in Asia to signify long life.  It is an absolute no-no to cut them, therefore shortening your life.  I wonder if this tradition is the unknown reason why the Italians have a large aversion to cutting spaghetti.  “Italian” noodles did originally come from China, after all!  In fact, all noodles all over the world are said to have originated from the Chinese ones.

Why pad thai is called pad thai

In Thailand and Laos rice noodles are used to make this delicious street-food called Pad Thai that is also eaten at festive occasions. The dish was imported from China by Thailand’s prime minister during the Second World War, and given a Thai twist with the signature flavours that identify Thai food; lime, coriander, and fish sauce.  It was also renamed Pad Thai to help Thai nationalism and stop people from eating so much rice so that Thailand could export more of it (and therefore make more money!). Amazingly, the strategy worked and Pad Thai has become a nationally recognized dish!

The secret to making a good pad thai

The making of Pad Thai is more of a description that a recipe.  It’s very difficult to quantify as it depends on the taste of the cook who is making it.  A Lao friend told me recently that when making this type of dish, you taste it all through the cooking process then adjust the ingredients to suit. I have tried to measure the ingredients here, but generally I do it by the “handful”. This is quite a foreign concept in Western cooking.

The first couple of times I made this I rushed around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to cook it as everything cooks so quickly.  Since then I’ve refined my technique a little and have everything pre-prepared and lined up on the bench next to the wok in the order they’ll go into the Pad Thai.

So, here’s a little something different from me. I look forward to hearing if anybody tries it, and how it goes!

By Lisa Watson

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pad thai

Learn to make pad thai at home

Course Main Course

Cuisine Asian

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 1 clove garlic chopped or crushed
• ½ block firm tofu cut into small cubes
• 150 g 5mm rice noodles 5.5oz
• 1 Egg
• 150 g prawns (or pre-cooked chicken) shrimp about ½ - ¾ cup
• ½ cup peanuts roughly ground
• Lime juice from 1 lime
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1 small bunch spring onions
• For the Sauce
• ¼ cup salty fish sauce
• ¼ cup sour Tamarind pulp
• 1 Tbsp white sugar or palm sugar
• Chili powder to taste

Instructions

• First prepare all the ingredients: chop the garlic, spring onions and tofu.  Have everything ready on the bench to be thrown into the wok.  I precook the shrimp as I can’t seem to get my wok hot enough.
• In a small pot, mix together the ingredients for the sauce and heat. Taste it to see if you like the salt/sweet sour combination.  Remember that the flavours will not be as strong when added to the Pad Thai.
• Soak the rice noodles in hot/boiling water for about 5 - 10 minutes.  When they’re ready to cook you should be able to wind them around your finger.
• Now, are you sure that everything’s ready?  The cooking goes fast, so there’s no time to prepare anything!  Right off we go then! Heat some vegetable oil in a wok until it’s very hot.  Throw in the garlic.  Let it sizzle for a couple of minutes, then throw in the tofu cubes.  Cook them, stirring constantly, until they are brown.
• Drain the noodles and add them.  Add half the sauce and stir until the noodles can be broken between your fingers….this may only take a couple of minutes.
• Push the noodles to the side and add the eggs.  Scramble them and then stir everything in together.
• Add the shrimp or chicken (precooked) and stir.
• Add more of the sauce all through this cooking period. Take off the heat.
• Add the beansprouts  and spring onions.  Add the lime juice. Stir.  Sprinkle with ground peanuts.
• Eat it hot!  After a couple of tries, it gets less nerve-wracking to make.  As long as everything is ready to go, it’s easier than pie! When you get confident, you can start throwing in handfuls of things: more or less of each ingredient, depending on your tastes.

The signs of Spring: flowers, tourists and fresh broad beans

“Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder  where the birdies is?” as the eminent writer Spike Milligan was said to have recited, and my Mum always used to say when I was a kid.  And indeed, Spring has finally come (boy, did it take its time to get here!).  There are tulips, irises and daffodils popping out in the garden, and, more tellingly for the area I live in, foreign tourists everywhere (though not in our garden).  It MUST be Spring! There are strawberries and asparagus appearing at the markets, and also fresh fava beans!  Fava beans are lots of work to prepare, which means that I don’t buy them as often as I should as I’m terribly lazy, but when I do decide to buy them and they don’t go rotten as I’ve taken too long to get around to actually using them…….then, they’re wonderful!

About using Pecorino cheese in the frittata

This frittata recipe is based on one from Tuscany.  It uses pecorino cheese which is a salty sheep cheese (try saying that fast 3 times in a row!) that you find in many, many different forms in Italy from Tuscany all the way to Sicily and over in the west to the island of Sardinia.  If you go to a market in Tuscany, you have a choice of 50 or so different types of pecorino, from hard and flaky, to soft and very delicately flavoured.  I love using the one in the photo below, called pecorino pepato, to make this frittata. Pecorino pepato actually comes from Sicily (yes, I had to find another way to sneak that place into a post again!).  It is filled with whole black peppercorns, which gives it quite a kick. The only problem with it is that my kids and husband like it so much that when I go to use it for cooking, it has often mysteriously “disappeared” from the fridge never to be seen again.

When to eat frittata

I’ve talked once before about the work  it takes to extract delicate green fava beans out of their prison.  It is totally worth it, which I realise each time I set my kids to opening them while I sit back with a cup of tea in hand and watch them. The frittata tastes like Spring, and that’s a wonderful reason to make it!  It’s great made the day before at eaten and room temperature as a first course, or as a light lunch with a green salad.

By Lisa Watson

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Broad bean and spring onion frittata

how to make broad bean (Fava Bean) And Spring Onion Frittata

Course Breakfast, buffet, entree, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 1 frittata

Ingredients

• 6 Eggs
• 200 g Fresh fava beans (broad beans) 1 cup - once taken out of their pods
• 2 Spring onions
• 6 Tbsp Pecorino cheese grated
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Italian parsley a small handful
• 2-3 stems Fresh oregano

Instructions

• Shell the fava beans and cook them in boiling water for about 1 minute.  Once they have cooled, squeeze them out of their skins and roughly chop them.
• Mince the white part of the spring onions, and chop the parsley and oregano. Grate the pecorino.
• In a bowl, whisk the eggs and salt and pepper together.
• Add the other ingredients and mix together.
• Heat olive oil in a frying pan on medium heat.  When the oil is hot, pour the egg mixture in.
• Cover and cook on medium-low until the frittata is set.
• Slide it out onto a plate.  If you want to brown the upper side, flip it over carefully and leave it to cook for 2 or 3 minutes.

Notes

This is great eaten at room temperature.