HAKE IN GREEN SAUCE - MERLUZA EN SALSA VERDE

Hake is 'the fish' in Spain and you can find it in every Spanish fishmonger. Good hake is flaky and has a subtle taste. It is very difficult to find it in British supermarkets, but you can get  it at fishmongers (including online ones) and its price is more or less as haddock's.

This dish comes from the North of Spain. The key is not to overcook the fish (this goes for any fish really)

You need:
- a portion of hake per person. We did it with a filet per person as we could not find sliced hake, but it is better (and more authentic) if you do a thick slice per person.
- olive oil (3 tablespoons)
- salt
- a handful of clams
- half a handful of chopped parsley
- one onion (chopped thinly)
- two cloves of garlic (chopped thinly)
- a glass of white wine
- a glass of water
- a tablespoon of flour

Put the olive oil in a pan and fry the onion and garlic under slow heat for 3-4 minutes.  Add the flour and mix well for a minute or so.  Add the wine. Wait for a minute and then add the chopped parsley, the bay leave and a little bit of salt. Then add the water and let it bubble for 2-3 minutes. Finally add salt the fish (on both sides) and add the fish to the pan. Let it all simmer for 5 minutes (do not turn the fish over or you will break it)

While the fish is cooking, heat a frying pan and add the clams. In less than a minute they will open up (discard the ones that do not). Add the clams to the pan with the fish.

You can also cook the sauce in advance, reheat it and cook the fish in it just before you are going to eat it.

GUACAMOLE

Despite I have been cooking with my children for more than three years now and have introduced them to more than 200 recipes and all sorts of food, during the last school parent's evening I had the humiliation of reading how my youngest son had said  (in writing!) that his favourite food is... Chili Doritos. On the basis of the principle that 'if you can't beat them, join them' I have showed  them how to make guacamole this weekend. Big success. The Doritos in the picture are Cheese ones as the Chili Doritos disappeared before we managed to take the picture.

You need:
- two ripe avocados
- salt
- juice of 1.5 limes
- half a chill deseeded and chopped very thinly
- 1 tomato - tope very thinly (use only the outside of the tomato, not the seeds)
- 1 spring onion - chopped thinly
- 2 tablespoons of sour cream (you can use 1.5 spoons of philadelphia if you do not have sour cream)
- a handful of coriander leaves, chopped

Peel the avocados. Mash them with the fork. Add the lime juice immediately so that the avocados do not loose their green colour. Add all other ingredients. Mix well. Open a bag of Doritos. Job done.

SPINACH LOAF

This works very well with a bowl of soup and it is easy for the children to help to prepare it.
You need:

- 150 g spinach (raw and chopped - pat dry them with a tea towel after you wash them)
- 175g self raising flower
- 3 eggs
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- two table spoons of yogurt
- two handfuls of walnuts or pine nuts (or both)
- salt

Preheat the oven at 175 degrees. Grease and line a loaf tin.
Mix all the ingredients. Cook for 35 to 40 minutes.

FROZEN STRAWBERRIES JAM

This is a really simple jam. It is much cheaper than fresh strawberry jam  - and you can do it with other frozen berries too. You need:

- 1Kg of frozen strawberries
- 1 Kg of sugar (jam sugar is best)
- juice of one lemon

Put the frozen strawberries and lemon juice in a big pan. Boil it over high heat for 10 minutes until the strawberries get mushy. My children like to find bits of strawberries in the jam, but not whole ones, so I mash the strawberries a bit at this point with a potato masher. Add the sugar and let it all boil for another 25 minutes (or 20 minutes if you are using jam sugar) It seems a long time, but since the frozen strawberries have a high water content it takes a while to get the jam to its setting point.

Once it is ready get rid of the scum with a spoon, let it rest for 15 minutes and put it into sterilised jars (easiest method to sterilise is to wet the jars with water and put them in the microwave for 2 minutes). If you use a jam funnel, you will not have any mess to clean afterwards. Cover the jam with a circle of waxed paper and close the lids. Put the jars upside down and let them cool overnight. It keeps for months.

ST VALENTINE's COOKIES

We spent St Valentine's lunch with a  large group of friends, so we prepared these for dessert.

You need:
- 200 gr plain flour
- 100 gr sugar
- 100 gr butter (room temperature)
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- a teaspoon of baking powered
- a pinch of salt

And for the icing:
-250 gr icing sugar
- 2-3 table spoons of boiling water
- red colouring paste

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees.

Beat the butter and sugar until they get a pale yellow colour.  Add the eggs, then the vanilla. Finally mix the flout, baking power and salt and add it to the mixture. You can do this all in a food processor. Wrap the cookie dough in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Put the mixture over a large rectangle of cling film. Cover it with another large rectangle and roll it until you get a pound-like thickness. Cut the cookies with a heart shape cutter and put them on a baking tray covered with a silicon mat or baking paper. Cook them for 13-14 minutes (you may meed to cook them in two batches). Get the cookies out of the oven and put them on a cooling rack so that they get cold before you ice them (this takes 10 minutes more or less)

For the icing: sift the icing sugar and add the water (a little bit each time) until you get a thick glossy paste. Do not make it too liquid. Add the red colouring, while reserving a bit of the white mixture for decorations. Cover the cookies with the red colouring using a spatula. Then put the white icing into a piping bag with a small nose and decorate the cookies. As you can see in the picture my sons do not have steady hands for decoration and mine are not any better (I did the white decorations with mixed results…) but that did not stop our friends eating them.

Needless to say you can use this recipe for any other kind of shape, colours, etc…

 

YOGURT SPHERIFICATIONS

One of my sons is taking the cooking rather seriously, so Santa brought him a small 'chef kit' for Christmas when we were in Spain. The kits are from HomeChef and they are great as they are both entertaining (it is like a chemistry experiment, really)  and cheap. The spherification is a technic that comes from the Spanish chef Ferran Adria. The yogurt spherification is probably the easiest one as it does not require any additional calcium.
You need:
- 100 g full fat yogurt
- optional: icing sugar  (to sweeten the yogurt to your taste- if you use a favoured yogurt you will not need any)
- 1 l of water
-7 g of sodium alginate (HomeChef does not seem to sell in the UK, but Amazon sells alginate for around £7)

Mix the water and alginate with a blender and wait for at least 20 minutes (even better if you wait overnight). Drop small spoonfuls of yogurt into the alginate mixture. You may need to discard the first ones as they make come in weird kidney-like shapes, but once you do two or three it is easy to get the hang of it. Wait for a couple of minutes and you will see that a thick membrane has formed on the outside of the yogurt. Remove the yogurt balls carefully from the alginate solution and 'clean them' by dropping them in a bowl with clean cold water. Remove them from the water and put them on kitchen paper to get rid of the excess moisture. That is all.

We decorated them with pomegranate, honey and mint. We are not really into 'nouvelle cuisine' but the result is interesting as the balls 'explode' in your mouth and whole thing looks like 'edible chemistry' to the kids, so it is fun to make.

You can also do this with fruit or vegetable purees (though you need to add calcium to the puree first) but we have not tried this yet…

SIMPLE FRIED CLAMS

The only problem for this recipe is that you need really good clams  - basically the rule is this: the worse the ingredient, the more you needs to process it, add to it and make the recipe  'full packed of flavours' as many chefs now say…but when you get hold of a really good ingredient the less you do to it the better.

You need:
- 750 g of good clams
- olive oil
- two cloves of garlic
No need to add salt.

Clean the clams either by hand or by putting them in a  big bowl of water and salt for at least two hours. Fry two cloves of garlic in three table spoons of live oil, when the garlic is soft, add the clams. As soon as they open up they are done. It should only take 3-4 minutes. Discard any clams that do not open up. Eat immediately.

The children find it interesting to see show the salty water makes the clam loose any sand, and also watching the clams open up.