One Flame Spanish Dish

Though food in France and Indonesia have special places in my heart, of all the countries where I have travelled Spain is probably in culinary terms my favourite. A meal that consisted of a whole leg of lamb to myself, with a tiny salad and a few chips, served in a sign-less restaurant near Badalona; about half a pound of jamon de serrano on a warmed plate in Vitoria-Gasteiz;  percebes eaten very messily in a restaurant looking down on pre-Guggenheim Bilbao; suckling pig in Barcelona; innumerable tapas.

One dish that I came across several times in different regions of Spain, and that I have made for myself since, is perfect one flame cooking. I don't know what it should be called, memory failing me for that detail. Let's say spicy Spanish beans.

The ideal is to cook this in a flattish and flame-proof terracotta dish, and to serve it in the same. But as my flame-proof terracotta dishes never actually are, and last just months, a good deep frying pan serves. Chop a large onion into small pieces and fry it gently in olive oil until it starts to colour, then add plenty of thickish slices of chorizo (and again, anyone pronouncing that chor-itso should be ashamed) cut from a stick rather than wafer-thin jobbies from a packet, and allow them to char a little here and there. Add a drained tin of beans - butter, flageolet, borlotti or haricot, it doesn't really matter, a tin of chopped tomatoes, and cook until heated through, the tomato starting to bubble and reduce a little. Add a good teaspoon of smoked paprika, four cloves of garlic crushed brutally beneath the flat of a broad-bladed knife, and cook for five minutes longer. Check for seasoning and sweetness - if it isn't sweet to the tongue add a few splodges of ketchup or failing that a bit of white sugar. There should be paprika heat in it too, and it would not be wrong to add a chopped chili seeds and all when you have started to char the chorizo, if you have a nice chilli to hand and like a bit of fire in your belly.

This is pleasant enough as it is, but to make a full meal of the thing add halved hard-boiled eggs yolk-side up,  and/or a drained jar of white asparagus spears. Yes, a jar, they were always preserved when I had this in restaurants and hotels in Spain.

Served with the (cliche alert but it is right) best crusty bread you can lay your hands on it is a filler-upper and a treat. And it accounts for several of your five to seven a day depending on your conviction and purse.

Paella in Place of a Roast

We eat our evening meal (and breakfast) at the table nearly every day - an on-the-knee supper is a treat - but Sunday lunch is still special in food terms. It offers the chance to round off the week that's gone, and get ready for the coming one. Often the heart of our meal is a roast, ideally rib of beef but economically frequently a good chicken. Yesterday, however, we had a paella that cost about £7.00.

The sofrito was a carrot, red pepper, onion, and two sticks of celery all chopped into tiny dice and fried in oil until the onion was turning translucent. A half pack of paella rice was added and stirred about for a minute, then the usual routine of add stock, cook, add stock, cook until the rice is done. It was homemade stock from a chicken carcass cooked up with veg, to which when heated for the paella I added a few strands of saffron. Meanwhile four boneless chicken thighs were cooked in the oven, and at the end a handful of frozen peas, a pack of defrosted king prawns and (heresy but it works) fish sticks cut in two. The secret is plenty of salt and pepper, a teaspoon of smoked paprika, plus half-a-tin of chopped tomatoes which give it colour and depth. Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks, and tip them and their fat into the paella, and serve. 

I guess the other secret is having a proper pan: it is not needed to make the thing, a wide frying pan is fine, but the look of a wide two-handled paella pan makes it seem special. 

In my old career I travelled frequently to Barcelona, and several times was served paella in a customer's  directors' dining room. Always with Rioja (red). Conversation inevitably turned to how to cook the dish - the cook rather demotically used to eat with us - and it was clear that for the Spanish the paella is the equivalent of the British BBQ, i.e. a man thing. Walk round El Corte Ingles and you'll see gas-fired paella cookers for doing the dish outdoors. It was evident too that everybody has their own recipe: variations in the sofrito; use chorizo or ham; rabbit preferred over chicken; include clams (terrific if they are fresh, the shells look wonderful). As one of my contacts there said, even if it is eaten on a Sunday, paella is a Thursday meal - meaning you can pretty much add whatever you have at the end of the week, so long as the flavours don't clash.