This well known book is a recent charity shop find and has already proved to be a useful purchase. My favourite type of cookery book as it not only lists recipes but the author’s love of Spain and all thing Spanish shines though her short stories of life, food and friends in the Spanish countryside. On a chilly wet evening there’s nothing like curling up on the sofa and reading about making sausages in the warmth of the sun. It really is a lovely read and I would recommend it to anyone who likes Mediterranean cooking and life.
I have a deep love of Spanish cooking, something about the colours, the flavours and the smells conjure up days of hard toil in the country and family togetherness. I dug this book out recently as a few weeks ago when we had an unseasonably sunny Sunday we hauled our little old faithful Webber BBQ (another boot sale find) and cooked Sizzling Prawns with Garlic in our new gigantic cazuela we bought back from our honeymoon in Majorca. Good fresh prawns were impossible to find at short notice but I managed to find really good, large shell-on frozen prawns in Sainsburys which worked well and managed to waft us back to Deia for a short while.
The Madrid Style Tripe Stew is delicious, soft and unctious in the mouth with the most wonderful flavours of Spain, although I do relish anything with the subtle smokiness of pimentón, a red tin of La Chinata is never very far away from the side of my cooker. For a lunch with friends one lazy weekend I cooked Pollo en Lata, or Chicken for a Crowd, which is one of those great dishes for entertaining. No slaving over a hot stove watching or endlessly stirring, you can leave it happily cooking away while you enjoy the company of your guests. Another easy chicken dish which was a winner is the Pollo con Tomate, or in the more boring English Chicken Sautéed With Fresh Tomato. The outcome is anything but boring and the relatively few ingredients make a comforting, flavour packed dish.
After the pumpkin flesh has been scooped out of its shell for Halloween this year there is a recipe for Pumpkin Sauté in the book which I am going to try and I will share with you.
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