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Tapas inspiration from Seville

September 6, 2016 Leave a Comment Filed Under: Food, Recipes, Uncategorized

Go to Seville. It is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with amber lit streets shadowed by orange-scented trees at night, white horse-drawn carriages and walls covered with blazing pelargoniums during the day. Look up Shawn Hennessey who runs tapas tours. She will take you to some hidden gems, which you would be unlikely to find by yourself, little makeshift tapas restaurants in the back room of shops plus historic tapas bars. My favourite places to eat in Seville were:
  • El Rinconcillo: An old tiled bar with antique shop fittings, there since 1670 
  • El Bodeguita Antonio Romero: merely 75 years old, this place is run by tall dusky Andalucians with abundant dark curls in crisp white shirts. Ahem. 
  • Casa Moreno, where you eat at the back of the shop on rickety boards set up on crates of soft drinks. It’s chaotic and friendly. I ate montaditos (tiny bocadillos/sandwiches) with melted Cabrales, Spanish blue cheese.
  • Vineria San Telmo order La Serena (from Extremadura) sheeps cheese which comes with caramelised onions. 
  • Enrique Bercerra: Beautiful tiled exterior. Even the olives were great: crunchy, large, green, juicy, lemony. 

When ordering in Spain, remember that there are several sizes, tapas are smaller than raciones for instance.



Patatas Bravas Recipe

Patatas bravas pic: Keratin Rodgers/msmarmitelover.com

It’s so hard to get a decent version of this dish in tapas restaurants, the potatoes are either dry or stale or burnt, but so very easy to make it at home. Traditionally one makes a spicy tomato sauce to drape on top but here I’ve made a version of romesco sauce and added a little Tabasco.

1 kilo potatoes, peeled, chopped into 3cm squares
Sea salt
Olive oil

For the sauce:
3 large red peppers, grilled, deseeded and skinned
1 bulb of garlic
3 Nora peppers, soaked, seeded (can be replaced by mild Mexican chillis such as dried Anchos)
2 tomatoes, skinned, diced
100g salted almonds or ground almonds or hazelnuts or a combination
1 tsp smoked sweet paprika
50ml good olive oil
2 tbsp of sherry vinegar
A few drops of Tabasco
Salt to taste

Prepare the potatoes and leave in a colander sprinkled with sea salt for 15 minutes. Grill the red peppers and garlic with their skins on. Place the nora peppers in boiling water in a pyrex jug and leave to soak for ten minutes. Use this opportunity to skin the tomatoes by scoring a cross on top, then leaving them to soak in the same boiling water for a few minutes. Remove the tomatoes and peel back the skin. Dice.

Once the pepper skin is blistered and the garlic bulb soft, I remove to cool. Strip off the skins and deseed the peppers. Squeeze the garlic from the bulb.

Put the red peppers, the roasted garlic, nora peppers, diced tomatoes, the nuts, the paprika, olive oil and sherry vinegar in a powerful blender or food processor and blitz until it forms a smooth paste. This can also be done in a pestle and mortar if you don’t have any kitchen gadgets. Taste and add salt.

Take a large frying pan or a deep fat fryer, heat olive oil (at least 4cms deep) until 185cº and tip the potatoes in so that they cover one layer. If there are more do it in two batches. 

I don’t usually use olive oil for frying but for this dish I do. It’s worth the extra expense on oil. Fry the potatoes until golden brown, once cooked, lift into a bowl covered with kitchen paper to blot the oil. Then transfer into a bowl and serve with the sauce. 

Wine suggestion:
I’d drink Spanish red. ‘Crianza’ is part of the Spanish system of labelling wines by age – a ‘Crianza’ wine is under two years old. ‘Reserva’ means it has been aged for 3 years and ‘Gran Reserva’ has been aged for 5 years for reds and 4 years for whites.

Spinach with Chickpeas (Espinacas con garbanzos)

Spinach with Chickpeas (Espinacas con garbanzos)

Seriously, who knew such humble ingredients could be so magic? This was my favourite tapa in Seville, to the point that I ordered it in every bar to compare and contrast. They were all good. I’ve tried to approximate the dish with this recipe. It’s not quite right but it’s pretty damn good. Serve with fried bread and a chilled glass of white wine.

Serves 2

150g bunch of spinach, washed, chopped if big, left whole if baby spinach
300ml water
1 tsp sea salt
6 tbsp olive oil
3 whole garlic cloves, skinned
2 slices day-old bread
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
3 minced cloves garlic
200g cooked chickpeas (buy good quality Spanish garbanzos sold in jars which are softer than those in tins)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp vinegar
50ml water

Rinse and chop the spinach then, in a medium saucepan on a medium heat, containing 300ml of boiling water with salt and a tablespoon of the olive oil to keep it green. 

Once the spinach is tender, a minute or two, stir in the garbanzos and turn down to a very low heat. In a small frying pan on a medium heat, add the rest of the olive oil and sautée three whole cloves of garlic. Remove the garlic when browned then add the two slices of bread; fry on both sides until golden and crispy. 

Remove the fried bread and reserve in a mortar (or food processor) with the whole toasted garlic.

Returning to the frying pan, in the same hot oil, add the three cloves of minced garlic and the sweet smoked paprika, stirring them together quickly. Then add the oil, garlic and paprika to the saucepan with the spinach and chickpeas.

In a mortar or a food processor, grind/mash the garlic with the toasted bread, cumin, vinegar, and water (until you get a nice thick paste). Add this mixture to the pot, stir well and simmer over medium heat for ten or fifteen minutes to reduce broth.

Wine suggestion

People associate Rioja with red wine, but the whites must be tried. Great even as an aperitif with anchovy or lemon stuffed olives.

Deep Fried Blue Cheese Stuffed Green Olives Recipe

Deep Fried Blue Cheese Stuffed Green Olives Recipe

Spectacular and tasty canapé, perfect with cocktails, l’apero or any pre-dinner drinks. This recipe can easily be expanded depending on the size of your party. 
Ingredients:
20 pitted green olives 
100g blue cheese
100g plain flour
3 egg whites
175g breadcrumbs (make your own by grating 2 day old sourdough in a food processor)
Oil for frying (sunflower or rapeseed)
Method:
Roll the cheese into small (approx 5g each depending on the size of the olives) pellets that can easily be slotted into the green olives. If the olive opening is small, poke in the cheese with a cocktail stick.
Then set up a little production line:
  • A dish of flour
  • A dish of egg whites
  • A dish of breadcrumbs
Consecutively drip each olive into the flour, the egg whites then the breadcrumbs.
In the meantime, if using a deep fat fryer, preheat it to 180Cº or, if shallow frying, pour enough oil into a small saucepan, approximately 6-8 cms deep, to fry the olives.
Carefully, using a slotted spoon, place the breadcrumbed olives into the heated oil and fry for 3 minutes or until golden. 
Serve immediately with cocktail sticks. You don’t want everyone’s paws on the olives – as bad as double dipping.

Wine suggestion:

I’m a huge fan of sherry, thinking that sometimes it goes even better with food than wine. While it doesn’t contain ‘umami’ as Heston once claimed, it does bring out the 6th flavour in your food. When Fino is chilled and it’s a hot day, I could swig this throughout a Spanish meal. Perfect with tapas. Fino is a sophisticated taste, which takes a while to get used to if you are more familiar with the sweet thick fig-like sherries such as Pedro Ximenez, San Emilio, Lustau. Refer to the latter as ‘PX’ if you want to sound knowledgeable.

Deep Fried Blue Cheese Stuffed Green Olives Recipe

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

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Kerstin Rodgers/MsMarmiteLover
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Galette des Rois, made yesterday in 12th night. Mi Galette des Rois, made yesterday in 12th night. Minus Crown and king as I cannot find either. This one is made with Tonka bean. Plus homemade puff pastry (well worth the effort). According to ike delorenzo at The Atlantic:  The tonka bean, a flat, wrinkled legume from South America with an outsize flavor that the US government has declared illegal. Nonetheless, it proliferates on elite American menus. The tiniest shavings erupt in a Broceliande of transporting, mystical aromas.
The taste of the tonka bean is linked strongly to its scent. "Scents," I should say, as the tonka bean has many at once. I register the aromas of vanilla, cherry, almond, and something spicy—a bit like cinnamon. When served cold—say, in tonka bean ice cream—the taste is like a vanilla caramel with dark honey. When warm, perhaps shaved over scallops, it moves toward spiced vanilla. Additionally, the aroma of the tonka bean shavings (it's almost always shaved) is so affecting that it seems like an actual taste in the way that opium, which has no taste in the traditional sense, "tastes" like its rich, flowery smoke.  Here is the recipe: 

Tonka bean galette des rois

Serves 8
Ingredients
* 140 g caster sugar
* 125 g salted butter, softened
* 100 g ground almonds
* 2 eggs, medium
* 1 tonka bean, grated
* 2 packs ready made butter puff pastry on a roll
* 1 yolk for brushing the pastry
Instructions
* Preheat your oven to 200c.

* Blend the butter with the sugar then add the almonds. Make sure it’s well mixed. Add in the 2 eggs one at a time, then add the tonka bean.

* If using a block: divide the puff pastry into two and roll out to 5mm thick. 
* Make two circles about 15 cm’s each in diameter. Lay one circle on a silicone mat/parchment paper on a baking tray and fill with the almond cream leaving a 3 cm border around the edge. 
* Paint the border with the egg yolk. Then lay the other circle on top, sealing the edges with a fork. 
* You could then carve designs into the top. Make a little slit in the middle to let steam escape then brush the top with the egg yolk
Mapo tofu is probably my favourite Sichuan dish. T Mapo tofu is probably my favourite Sichuan dish. This is a vegan version. ***

Ingredients:
- 400 g box of soft tofu not silken
- 5 soaked dried shiitake mushrooms, diced, keep water
- 1 red bell pepper, finely sliced
- 400 g fresh shiitake mushroom, sliced thinly
- 400 ml vegetable stock
- 1 thumb fresh ginger, minced
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 4 tbsps groundnut or vegetable oil
- 3 tbsp fermented bean paste
- 1 or 2 small red chillies, minced or a spoonful of Chinese chilli paste
- 1 tsp heaped sichuan peppercorns, finely ground
- 2 tbsps soy or tamari sauce
- 2 tbsp cornflour in 3 tbsps water, mixed into a slurry
- 4 spring onions, finely sliced
- large pinch fresh coriander leaves

Prepare the tofu by cutting it into one inch cubes and soaking it in hot but not boiling salted water. Drain after 15 minutes.
Soak the dried shiitake mushrooms, covering them in boiling water. Leave until soft, then dice the mushrooms. Retain the mushroom soaking water and add to the vegetable stock water.
Prepare the other ingredients so they are ready to stir-fry: red bell pepper, fresh mushrooms, ginger, garlic.

Using a wok or deep frying pan, add the oil and heat to frying temperature. Add the bell peppers,fry for a couple of minutes, then add fermented bean paste, chilli paste or chillies, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sichuan pepper.
Add the mushroom/vegetable broth and simmer on high for a couple of minutes.
Carefully add the cubes of tofu, taking care not to break them too much.
Add the cornflour slurry, stirring for a couple of minutes.
Serve with rice or noodles, garnishing with spring onions or chives and or coriander leaves.  #veganuary #mapotofu #sichuanfood #tofu  #shitakemushrooms #supperclub #londonchef #msmarmitelover #ham&highcolumn #eatplants #lockdown3 #selfisolation #coronaloner #cooking #recipe #cookingfromscratch
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Happy new year from my bubble to yours! Keep holdi Happy new year from my bubble to yours! Keep holding on...
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Some of my Christmas food 🥘 lots of veg includi Some of my Christmas food 🥘 lots of veg including mashed swede with cheese and butter. I put pomegranate seeds with my sprouts, and cooked my carrots in marmalade ( worked v well), the mushroom wreath fell apart as I was transferring it to a tray 😤, roast potatoes and parsnips, then a cheese spread with fruit nuts, quince cheese (homemade), Chocs @lindtuk 😍 @guylian_uk @disaronno_official @baileysofficial @taylorsportwine and Brazil nuts. Plus a pavlova wreath ready to be topped with whipped cream and persimmons. 
#christmasdinner #vegetarianchristmas #vegetarianchristmasdinner #supperclub #londonchristmas #liqueurs #christmasspread #grazing #cheeseboard #port #pavlova
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Done some doorscaping, the latest trend in Christm Done some doorscaping, the latest trend in Christmas decorating. It might also cheer up passersby. #christmas #christmasdecor #doorscaping #doorsofinstagram #londonchristmas #doorwreath #doordecor #doorsoftheworld #doordecoration #exteriors #london #supperclub #covidchristmas
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