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Making Tapas, and another lovely Fig Recipe



I am still enjoying cooking with figs, although our crop from the garden is nearly finished. I indulged in some shop-bought figs recently and tried this recipe from the Waitrose Magazine. I show you below the recipe from the Waitrose Magazine and my own version. I used soft goats’ cheese instead of taleggio on this occasion. I do love taleggio, but surprisingly had none in the fridge when I decided to make this as part of a selection of tapas last night. It was so good, and I shall certainly be making it again as a first course or on a big platter as canapes. There is something really satisfying about hot canapes.

Split Figs, stuffed with Taleggio, walnuts, thyme and honey

Split Figs, Stuffed with Cheese, Walnuts, Thyme and Honey

The other tapas I made were streaky bacon-wrapped halloumi and chilli crostini topped with finely chopped tomatoes, mixed with olive oil and fresh basil. In the picture you can also see my favourite sweet-pickled herrings and a dip made from Greek yoghurt, home-made mango chutney and smoked paprika.

A Selection of my style Tapas for Sunday evening
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Cooking in Sardinia – the first few days

First Dinner cooked at the Apartment in Lu Bagnu

 

 

I love cooking on holiday more than eating out. Those who know me well will know that I am ever amazed at the lack of vegetables in meals in Southern Europe on restaurant menus.

I look forward to cooking in  our self-catering accommodation, and spend a lot of time and money buying local produce. Admittedly we do tend to use the supermarkets more than the street markets. From a practical point of view, markets tend to be in cities, and so, apart from buying non-perishable goods and really firm fruit and vegetables, the question of how far it is to dash back to the villa to get the food into the fridge. This year we are having average daily temperatures of 85 degrees plus; no joke when you need to keep food fresh.

All of my recipes are a blend of Southern European, with a touch of Modern British and some Indian and Asian thrown in for good measure. The pictures above are of the first dinner I made in the apartment: Pasta with roughly sliced Italian sausages, canned tomatoes, fresh fennel, courgette, onions and garlic, with some white wine and fresh parsley and basil thrown in for good measure.

I also cannot resist making my version of Spanish tapas. Whether or not these are entirely authentic does not matter to me. I always think it is worth taking some good base ingredients, and a wonderful concept such as tapas, and creating a snack that you really enjoy. The other night we had a meal entirely composed of my tapas recipes. In the following pictures you see:

Tuna and Chick Pea Salad with Fennel and parsley, dressed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Olives with feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and some mushrooms from a jar, in olive oil

Egg Mayonnaise

Warm Ratatouille

Squid cooked with Chorizo and Hot smoked Paprika

We ate all of these with thin Italian bread, which is a speciality of Sardinia

I’ll be posting more holiday recipe ideas as we continue our jolly jaunt in Sardinia!

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The worst tapas bar in Salamanca….. (probably) (August 2014)

Possibly the worst tapas in Salamanca…

We are taking our usual long summer holiday this August and this time decided to head for Orgiva, in The Alpujarras in Southern Spain. The format of the holiday is to take a long drive and ferry trip. We are not keen on flying for various reasons, and Paul loves driving. So on the journey down we camped at various sites until reaching Orgiva after 6 days travelling. The journey also gave us an opportunity to visit some other great cities and regions of Spain.

Those of you who know me know that I love food. That is a big understatement but we’ll leave it at that for the moment! In fact really I prefer to cook than eat out, and fortunately Paul prefers my cooking to restaurant food. In the UK this is not only because of the quality but also the cost. So on holiday (as we are this year for 4 and a half weeks) we eat out more than we do in England for the rest of the year. When travelling this is inevitable; I do not actually cook when we are camping. What we did not have much of last time we were on holiday in Spain was tapas. We seemed to go to the wrong type of restaurants. And we were never offered free tapas with drinks. So on this holiday I have been delighted to encounter both free tapas and plenty to buy from menus.

I am not going to name this restaurant, but I shall just say that it is in Salamanca and was not a good experience. We arrived before 8:00pm and the dinner menu was not available until 8:30. So we decided to go for tapas, or rather raciones, which are bigger than tapas. We did get carried away and order 4 each, so 12 dishes for the 3 of us. Amongst those dishes were some repeats; Paul and Jess both chose Spanish Omlette, and Paul and I both opted for Patatas Bravas. For a start the portions were huge; I should maybe have looked more closely into exactly what a raciones is! It was not just that though. It was all so stodgy, with mainly carbohydrate-based dishes. My Russian Salad was indescribable! Awful dressing and slightly rancid-tasting vegetables. It was the Patatas Bravas which defeated us though. In fact we thought maybe he had brought us the Patatas with pink cocktail sauce by mistake, which was also listed on the menu. The bill listed it correctly though. As is traditional with this dish, the potatoes were cooked separately with the sauce dolloped on the top, but even Jess was not tempted by extra chips! So you should be able to see two plates of that in the picture, barely eaten.

On the positive side, I enjoyed my mussels and Paul enjoyed his potatoes cooked with chorizo. It did become a bit of a competition to compare who had actually managed to eat a complete dish of food. It reminded me of a lovely tapas bar in France last year, when we really challenged the chef by ordering everything on the menu!

On another positive note, it was a very cheap dinner, as they all tend to be in Spain!