Beef and Chorizo Stew with Roast Potatoes

Tucked into a corner of our kitchen is the door into the cellar.  Down there lives a number of spiders of varying size, my fluctuating wine collection, our sofa*, R's future stocks of Lego and our over-flow freezer.  There are days when retrieving food from the freezer can be like a trip into the Temple of Doom, fighting past toppling towers of timber and vaulting discarded furniture while trying not to be skewered on some tools that have not been put away properly.  Today, I gingerly made the trip into the cellar to retrieve a portion of leftover Beef and Chorizo Stew, for our evening meal.

I knew that the stew was down there because on the door in the kitchen, we have a blackboard which lists the freezers contents.  We are in the process of adding yet another blackboard to the kitchen but I'll get back to that later.  It transpires that I had originally cooked the stew to form the base of a Spanish inspired cottage pie.  I had forgotten this nugget of information otherwise I may have tried the same trick with the leftovers.

In the end I made a huge pile of roasties to serve with the stew.  The drawing in of the nights and the chill in the air made my mind up for me on that front.  The stew was delicious with the sweet, smoky Spanish spice flavours that I adore.  The roasted anya potatoes were that magical thing, both crispy and fluffy.  However, having now eaten the stew twice my quest for a Spanish cottage pie remains unfulfilled.

This is where the second backboard is going to come in.  We are going to have a blackboard of dreams.  The dishes I want to create, the challenges ahead, the ingredients untried.  All of these things will feature and hopefully, they will not stay on the wall for too long.

*we are decorating the living room and the furniture needed to go somewhere!

Paella

My Mum arrived today for a week's holiday.  She has come to see R, not me or Z, but I'm happy with that.  As she only arrived this afternoon, I didn't want to spend the night tied to the stove, so I decided the one pan wonder Paella was the way forward.

Once R was tucked up in bed I cracked on with some judicious chopping.  Onions, garlic, peppers, carrots, chorizo and turkey breast were all fried before rice, white wine and stock were added to the pan.  This was then left to simmer until the rice had absorbed all of the stock and was cooked through.  All that was left to do was to stir through some fresh parsley and serve.

As with most dishes, I am 100% certain that the way I cook paella is not authentic, but it works and it tastes good, so I'll keep doing it.

Chorizo and Bean Stew

For the second day running we have called upon the freezer to provide our evening meal.  We originally bought a second freezer so that we could cook and freeze gluts of vegetables from the allotment.  These days it is mainly used for cake and leftovers.  I just don't seem to be able to cook the right amount of food for two people, especially if it's a stew.

Back in February, after a great day out at Cornucopia, I cooked a chorizo and bean stew served with gurnard.  It was really nice, the fish was steamed over the stew, which added a richness to the dish and in turn the fish was perfectly cooked.

There was no fish left over from that meal, only the stew and it was still delicious.  Z had visited Dock Street Market during the day, to get a loaf of sour dough bread to have with the meal, and we still have a lawn of rocket in the garden so a side salad was easy to knock up.  I know it's reheated leftovers, but for a mid week meal that was fantastic.

Beef and Chorizo Stew

Well, the long weekend is over and Wednesday has turned into Monday, complete with the back to work blues.   As I'm still working late shifts, I decided to crack on with some cooking this morning, so that Z wouldn't have too much on her hands at the end of the day.  I had grand plans but only so many hours.

Using the remains of the roast beef from the weekend and rummaging around in the fridge, I came up with the wherewithal to make a beef and chorizo stew.  This was going to be the filling for a Spanish inspired cottage pie, with a saffron mashed potato top but I ran out of time before going to work.

In the end Z boiled some potatoes and reheated the stew in time for me to get home from work.  It wasn't quite the meal that I imagined but it was tasty never the less.  With a little more time and working with fresh ingredients, I will come back to the Spanish Cottage Pie one day.

Paella

The relaxation of the last few days continued today, all be it with a couple of hours at work thrown in for good measure.  There isn't much better than a sunny afternoon, spent in a beer garden, catching up with a mate who you haven't seen for ages.  While I was catching the rays and sinking a few suds Z went shopping for the ingredients for tonight's meal.

We had decided on Paella, mainly because we discovered that we had quite a lot of chorizo in the house*.  Back home, a little worse for wear, I tended to the paella while Z kept an eye on Eurovision.  I have a love hate relationship with Eurovision.  It takes itself far too seriously and the voting is always rigged but for a couple of hours a year it's a bit of a giggle, with this year's high/low-light being the Russian grannies.

The chorizo was cooked off to get some of the flavour into the pan before onion, garlic and a red pepper were added.  Once everything had begun to soften I added the rice and stock to the pan and left the paella to bubble away.  Right at the end of cooking I added a handful of frozen peas and the prawns that Z had bought earlier.  Washed down with a bottle of Cava, it was like we were back in Barcelona. We must go back soon.

*never a bad thing.

Weekend Away feat: Tapas and Pulled Pork

As I alluded to on Thursday, we have just returned home from a long weekend away.  Our journey south first took us to Windsor on Friday, to spend the night with Z's Mum and Step-Phil.  We set off after breakfast and broke the journey up with a service station lunch.  Z and R had a brace of sandwiches between them and I, in a fit of gay abandon, had what can only be described as a Double Whopper*.  We made Windsor in good time and Z's mum was able to get a decent grandson fix before we put him to bed.

Once R was safely tucked up in bed, Phil and I cracked on with the the evening meal; Tapas.  Z's Mum had looked out recipes and bought all of the ingredients, all that was left for us to do was follow them to the letter and all would be fine. We cooked; garlic prawns, patatas bravas, garlic chicken, tortillia, albondigas, and of course, chorizo cooked in white wine (only because there was no sherry) and butter beans in tomato sauce.  The meal was finished with a gorgeous and light crema catalana that Z's Mum had cooked in advance.

On Saturday we left Windsor behind and hot-footed it to Poole for my niece's 3rd birthday party.  I used to work in a children's centre and love kids but I will never have the energy, or bottle, to be a children's entertainer.  The woman at the party managed to keep dozens of 3 year olds happy for ages and left them with just enough energy to sit down for a party meal of sandwiches, savouries and cake. 

After the party, my brother and I went to the local to watch the FA Cup final and to have a good catch up.  A few light ales later it was time to go to our hotel and try to settle R in his new surroundings.  Luckily he was so exhausted from the party he went out like a light.  He slept so soundly that Z and I got room service and ate in the room.  We shared a meat platter, a portion of garlic bread and a bottle of red wine.  For the record, I'm definitely not reviewing the hotel or the restaurant.

The 3rd birthday party aside the main event, and the reason behind the mad mileage this weekend, was the Christening of my nephew.  Hatches, matches and dispatches are the events that pull families together regardless of distance.  After the ceremony, at which all of the children were well behaved, we went back to my brother's house for champers and pulled pork baps.  Two pork leg joints had been roasted in a low oven overnight.  The meat fell apart as soon as you looked at it so there was no need for carving.  Crackling, stuffing and apple sauce made for a brilliant celebration lunch.

Today, bank holiday Monday, we have had to brave the traffic.  I normally try to avoid driving whenever a mass-commute is in effect but working on Tuesday meant we had to get home today.  After a bottom numbing 6 hour drive**, we finally made it back to Leeds.  What I really wanted was a huge salad to try and redress the balance of excess that the weekend had delivered. 

Alas, we arrived home after the shops had closed so we were faced with the contents of the store cupboards.  Z worked her magic and soon a tuna and tomato pasta sauce was born.  A glass of wine and some garlic bread accompanied this meal too.

*this is because it was a Double Whopper. I'm not really a fan of BK or McD's but no matter how much work Heston and his cronies put into saving the service station's beleaguered reputation, the food on offer really isn't that great.  We need to start taking packed lunches and having A1 layby picnics.
**including a couple of comfort stops for Z and R.

Spanish Vegetable Stew

My posts on Tonight's Menu this week have been shorter than usual.  I'm sure there are some of you out there who are glad of this.  I am hoping that normal service will be resumed in the not too distant future.  The reason behind my brevity is that fact that I have been working late and Z has been doing all of the cooking.  Sometimes it's hard enough to write about what we have eaten but when I've not been involved in the process it is even harder.

To try to remedy this lack of physical involvement in the cooking process, I spent some time this morning podding broad beans for this evening's meal.  We decided last night that we would have a Spanish inspired vegetable stew.  It could have been a vegetarian stew if we had omitted the chorizo, but we like chorizo and we're not vegetarian.

Chorizo and Bean Stew

Until an hour ago I had no idea what I was going to write about this evening.  We still haven't managed to re-furnish our kitchen so the traditional big shop hasn't happened and we are surviving on reserves from the second* freezer.  While looking for something to eat this evening I discovered a completely unmarked container and my interest was piqued.

When we got back home from work the mystery meal still hadn't defrosted.  We started to wonder whether we needed rice, pasta, potatoes or cous cous but in the end we didn't have any of them.  What eventually came out of the tupperware was a chorizo and bean stew.

I honestly cannot remember when we cooked the original stew.  What I do know is that it contained lots of chorizo, butter beans, haricot beans and black eye peas.  The sauce was tomato based but my palette isn't well tuned enough to tell you what herbs and spices were used.  In the end we had a side salad and plenty of bread to mop up the stew.  It was really good but I think I'll make sure I label the leftovers a bit better in future.

*yes, we have two freezers!

Simple Paella

You may, or may not have noticed a couple of my favourite foods include anything Spanish and risotto.  The simple paella that I cooked for tonight's menu combines the two.

Start by frying finely chopped onions and celery in olive oil until soft then add your rice.  If you can get hold of some, use Spanish rice.  It is a short grain rice, like arborio, but it doesn't leach out as much starch during cooking so you end up with a much cleaner dish.  Once the rice is coated in the oil add chopped garlic and chorizo.  Stir this briefly so that the flavours start to mingle and the oils start to come out of the chorizo before adding peppers and stock.

So far this is very similar to how I make a risotto and it's where the two take separate paths.  With a risotto you stand over the pan, lovingly stirring and gradually adding more and more stock as each ladle-full is absorbed.  This is the secret to a really creamy risotto.  With paella you add all of the stock in one go and then leave the pan alone.  The next time you stir the paella will be moments before you serve it.

As with most dishes there are purists that will tell you that paella needs a raft of ingredients before it can truly be called a paella. These range from chicken, rabbit and snails to prawns, mussels and squid.  Personally, I'd be happy with any of the above but tonight I have none of them. Tonight I have good bread, good wine and good company.

Valentines Day - Tapas

Imagine my delight, a couple of weeks ago, when I asked Z what she would like cooking for her Valentines Day meal and she responded "Tapas".  We have an affinity with Spanish food.  Spain, actually Catalonia (really it's Barcelona) has been part of our life for years.

Our first trip abroad together was to Barcelona.  It was on that trip that I proposed on bended knee and Z said yes.  At the time I was keeping a small and under used journal.  Making notes on life and jotting down the odd musing.  That day I wrote the following:

How do you say...
This is the first holiday I've had where my lack of language has been frustrating.  All other trips to Spain have been with Spanish speakers or with family (Dad did the talking).  Should we have gone to France or Germany Z's knowledge would have rendered me speechless but secure in the knowledge that we would have got what we wanted.  
This time our 'pigeon Spanish' has not caused problems but extended uncomfortable silences between ourselves and various staff whose English is worse than mine.  
My own personal bug-bear has been "can I have the bill please?"  I can only presume my Scottish genes prevent me from offering to splash the cash however, now day 4, I'm getting the hang of "la cuenta, por favour" all though I still need to check every time.
The only other phrase I struggled with was "Will you marry me?".  I know this is easy to say and write but when you want the moment to be perfect the simple sentence can be v. difficult to spit out.  Fortunately the response was correct.

Since that day we have been back to Barcelona so often that the city now feels like an old pair of slippers, instantly comfortable and welcoming.  This is why tapas for Valentines Day is so apt.

Patatas Bravas, Pulpo and Gambas con Chorizo* were the stars of our meal, served with salad and bread.  We also had a cheeky bottle of Freixenet.  We actually prefer cava to champagne, but that's just us and possibly our affinity with Spain.

*Roast potatoes with a spicy tomato sauce, octopus in olive oil and prawns fried with chorizo.

Chorizo and Bean Stew with Gurnard

I decided not to write this until events fully unfolded.  As well as being enthusiastic about food, one of my other passions in life is sport.  I'm not adicted to the extent that I subscribe to the sports channels but if it there is any sport on terrestrial channels then, the chances are, I'll be tuning in.  There are certain things that I will actively seek out. 

I'm a Leeds United Fan, so the events of the last week have left a bad taste in the mouth.  Today's victory has, in my eyes, not justified the sacking of Simon Grayson.  This was not my match of the day.  Football aside, my favourite sport is Rugby Union.  I was brought up in a house where rugby was the most important sport.  It's not club rugby that I'm interested in but International rugby and today saw the start of this season's Six Nations.

Anybody that has read more than a handful of these posts will know where my allegiances lay in today's Calcutta Cup match between Scotland and England.  For anybody that's unsure, allow me to spell it out.  I'm the product of a Scottish Father and a Welsh Mother.  The 6 Nations (5 when I was growing up) was the only sporting event that brought all of the family around the telly.  Although my loyalties were split (Mum or Dad) there was always a common enemy, England.

This year's Calcutta Cup match did not go as planned.  A series of errors by the Scotland team, that wouldn't have been welcome at school level, and a gifted England try gave England the victory.  It's fair to say that I was in a mood as foul as the forecast snow-mageddon.

Fortunately we'd had a brilliantly foodie day in the run up to the start of the match.  We'd spent the afternoon at Cornucopia, an independent food fair at Leeds Corn Exchange. We had taken the decision to seek inspiration from the event and Kirkgate market for our evening meal and we found inspiration in abundance.

The real find was pumpkin oil.  I'd never seen or tasted it before and it is incredible but it's not on the menu tonight so I'll come back to it later.  For tonight we found Yorkshire Chorizo.  There were three varieties on offer and like a child in a sweet shop I bought one of each.  With our spicy Spanish sausage bought we started to pull a meal together.  A trip to the market for the final ingredient was hardly a chore at all.

I made the stew before the match kicked off so that I wasn't distracted.  Once we were ready for it all it took was reheating with the gurnard fillets on top to steam.  This gently cooks the fish and allows the flavours to mingle.  All a stew like this needs is a good hunk of bread.  We got ours from Cornucopia too, it's great what you can find in Leeds when you're looking for inspiration.