TARTA DE NARANJA

Regular readers will know I cooked up a Spanish storm a couple of weeks ago. This is what we had for pudding, courtesy of Claudia Roden. It is a flourless cake made with eggs and ground almonds, then bathed in an orange syrup. You can make it the day before but as long as it has 4-6 hours to rest it's fine. Serve with cream or some lovely full fat Greek yoghurt. It is a lovely light zingy way to end a meal - and it is also a  very forgiving recipe....

Cake

4 eggs, separated
125g caster sugar
Grated zest of 1 orange
50g ground almonds
50g blanched almonds, finely chopped

Syrup

Juice of 3 oranges (about 300 ml)
75g sugar
Cinammon stick

Pre-heat the oven to 180, gas mark 4

Grease and flour a 20cm cake tin, preferably with removable sides - I use baking parchment too as the cake is quite sticky when it comes out of the oven.

Beat together the egg yolks with the sugar, orange zest and all the almonds until creamy. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them in. Pour mixture into the tin and bake for 45 minutes. Allow to cool then transfer to serving plate.

To make the syrup simmer together the orange juice with the sugar and cinammon stick until the sugar has dissolved. Prick the cake with a skewer all over then gradually pour over the syrup. I do it a little at a time to allow it to absorb - it takes a little while. Put the cinammon stick on top for decoration.

Leave to soak for as long as you can, then serve with cream or yoghurt.
 

LAMB WITH PEPPERS

I have been woefully neglectful of my blog for some time. You know how it is – work gets frantic, personal life take an unexpected turn, suddenly life is taking up far more time than it should do. But I think we’re over the worst now (fingers crossed) and I was delighted to have my mate Tony (aka The Skint Foodie) over for a Spanish-stylee dinner a couple of Saturdays ago.  

I turned to Rick Stein’s Spain and Claudia Roden’s new tome for inspiration. I didn’t want to do jamon, tortilla, albondigas and croquetas but something slightly different with maybe a couple of favourites thrown in.  The first dish I would like to share with you is inspired by Rick Stein’s Slow Braised Lamb with fresh and dried peppers  – we had this as a main course with a soupy vegetable dish of artichokes, peas and broad beans in a thickened chicken stock. There wasn’t much left, so it must have been alright. It is supposed to be quite a chilli hot dish so don’t spare the hot smoked paprika.

Slow Cooked Lamb with Peppers 

Serves 4 

1 kg neck fillet

1 tblsp hot smoked paprika

2 tblsp olive oil

2 medium onions sliced finely

4 garlic cloves finely sliced

1 tblsp hot smoked paprika

75g Serrano ham, finely chopped

Can of tinned tomatoes, chopped

1 tblsp fresh thyme leaves

4 bay leaves

2 large roasted skinned peppers from a jar (or DIY), chopped

1 tblsp. chopped flat  

Cut the lamb into bit sized chunks then toss in the sweet paprika and leave for an hour or so out of the fridge. Heat the oil then fry off the lamb in batches so that it gets a nice brown, slightly crispy, coat. Take out of the pan and put to one side. 

Add the onions and garlic to the oil and sauté slowly until soft and golden brown. Add the paprika and Serrano ham and cook gently for a further five minutes. Add the tomatoes, thyme, bay leaves and pepper. Bring to a simmer, add the lamb, and braise for 45 minutes.  

Add more hot smoked paprika if not hot enough for you, sprinkle with the parsley and serve. I served it with vegetables cooked in a chicken broth, which suited the dish very well.....

PIG CHEEKS WITH CHORIZO AND BUTTER BEANS

You must have realised by now that I am rather partial to pig cheeks. I love the way that the muscle and gristle melt into a lovely gelatinous nugget after long slow cooking, and the rich flavour of the pork can cope with all kinds of additional flavours.  There is a huge interest in Spanish cooking at the moment, heightened by the excitement of the lovely Jose Pizarro opening his first ‘proper’ restaurant in Bermondsey Street. I went to Andalucia several years ago and was bowled over by the food – tapas in bars in Seville, wandering from one to another…tiny deep fried octopi, melting jamon, unctuous crocqettas…and then there were the main courses. At one meal I had half a roast milk fed lamb. I should have felt guilty, as the kidney was the size of a teaspoon, but the flesh was incredibly tender and flavoursome. I ate it all. 

So, what to do with a pack of pig cheeks in my freezer?  I also had some cooking chorizo knocking about so it seemed obvious. The result was served with some long stem broccoli and a bit of bread to clean the dish – it was all very flavoursome…

Serves 2

1 tblsp. olive oil

I onion, finely sliced in half moons

Clove garlic crushed

500g pig cheeks, silvery sinew removed, cut into three

150g cooking chorizo, cut into chunks

1 tin butter beans, drained

500ml chicken stock

Splash of wine

Chopped parsley 

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan, add the garlic and onions and cook gently until golden. Add the pig cheeks, turn up the heat slightly and brown them off. They don’t have to be too brown, just have a little colour.  Add the chorizo and continue cooking until the chunks are a little crisp round the edges. 

Add the beans, chicken stock and wine. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2 hours.  You may need to remove the lid for the last 30 minutes to reduce the sauce down a little, and you can also crush a couple of beans into the sauce if you need to thicken it more. 

Spoon into 2 bowls, sprinkle over the parsley, serve with a green vegetable and some bread.