PICADILLO - CHORIZO MINCE

Sorry for the long silence, but have spent most of the free time on the holiday writing the book. Have also made lots of progress on Inspiring Women, especially on trying to launch the campaign internationally  - with a bit of luck you will hear more on this in the next few weeks.

Anyway, back to food and to the blog: this is a recipe for picadillo, the meat that is used to make chorizo.

You need:

-       1 Kg pork shoulder and 50 gr pork belly (minced together – ask the butcher to mince them)

-       1.5 teaspoons of salt

-       1 clove of garlic (minced)

-       4 generous teaspoons pimenton (paprika)

-       3 teaspoons white wine

-       a pinch of cumin (powdered)

-       a teaspoon of oregano (dried)

Mix all the ingredients (use plastic gloves for this or you will smell of paprika for the rest of the day) and let them rest for 24 hours in the fridge covered with cling film. Fry it in a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil for 10 minutes until it starts getting a bit brown.

Serve with eggs or bread or on its own.

HUMMUS WITH PEPPERS

This recipe comes from the BBC food website, which apparently is a 'waste of resources' that makes the BBC 'imperialistic', according to some. One would have thought that cooking is a basic skill that deserves some public resources. In any case, bit cheap to criticise the BBC for this. Most countries would simply die for having anything equivalent to it. The most powerful diplomatic tool that this country has - by far (and I say that having spent many years working on foreign relations, including at the FCO itself)  Lack of vision does not even begin to cover how stupid it is to seek to damage it.

Now this is the recipe (which we have changed a little). You need:

- a can of chickpeas

- 3 table spoons of olive oil

- half a teaspoon of ground cumin

- half a teaspoon of ground coriander

- half a teaspoon of 'pimenton' (sweet paprika)

- juice of half a lemon 

- 5 'piquillo peppers'

- a pinch of coarse salt

Blend all the ingredients together. Before serving it drizzle a bit of olive oil on top. As simple as that. 

WATERMELON SALAD

We prepared this for the retirement party of a neighbourhood friend as it is really easy buffet summer food.

You need:

- a watermelon (if you are in the UK use a whole watermelon, but if you are in Spain, Italy or France use only half - British watermelons are half the size of Mediterranean ones, which is a bit bizarre as most of them are imported from the Mediterranean)
- one and a half packets of feta cheese
- three red onions
- 200 g of black olives
-  big bunch of parsley
 - 5 tablespoons of oil
- three and a half table spoons of vinegar
- salt

Cut the watermelon in bite size cubes. Cut the onions in half moons and put them on top of the watermelon. Crumble the feta cheese and add it to the salad. Finally sprinkle the parsley on top. Separately mix the oil, vinegar and salt and pour it over the salad. Toss it all together.

We were running really late for the party so I am afraid we took the picture of the salad in its foil container, which is convenient for the party but a bit ugly for the blog - on the bright side though it means you will not have to do any washing up.

GOURMET AWARD

This is the Elle Gourmet Award that we won earlier this week in Spain for our blog.
 My sons could not come to the awards as they are still at school for a couple of weeks, but they would have simply loved meeting Josep Roca from El Celler de Can Roca (the best restaurant in the world, Michelin Guide dixit) and Elena Arzac from Arzac, the first three Michelin stars restaurant I ever went to when I was in my twenties. 

Not bad, right? and as one of my son says, all this for something we do in our spare time!

COD WITH GARLIC MOUSSELINE

This is a way to prepare cod that became fashionable in Spanish restaurants a few years ago. It is very simple to make. You need:

- one fresh cod steak per person (this recipe is for four steaks) - the recipe is even better if you do it with salted cod,which is a great product, but for some inexplicable reason it is too difficult to find salted cod in the UK. 

- 2 eggs whites

- one egg yoke

- half a clove of garlic

- half a teaspoon of parsley

- 4 generous tablespoons of mayonnaise (shop bought is fine)

- salt

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees. 

Salt the cod steaks and put them on a roasting tray (if you want you can oil a bit the tray beforehand, but it is not really necessary).  Whisk the egg whites. Separately blend the mayonnaise, egg yoke, garlic and parsley (you can do this in a food processor or with a hand held blender). Mix carefully the mayonnaise mixture with the egg white and pour it over the steaks covering them completely (or just cover each steak if you want less sauce). Bake for 20 minutes.  

If your children do not like the garlic flavour you can do this without the garlic, but then add another egg yoke to the mayonnaise mixture.

Children can easily help with most of the preparation for this, but ask them to be careful when they mix the mayonnaise and the egg white as if they mix too energetically you will loose all the egg whites' air.

BANANA BAKE

Apparently bananas have a soothing effect, which is exactly what I need after we discovered yesterday that our system had been hacked. Just in the blog we got more than 2,600 hits from a single country (yes, that country). No point involving the police, since last time this happened (and despite my husband being in government at the time) they were so utterly hopeless that it was actually rather funny. Talking of funny, I am half-discussing with a couple of people about putting together some recipes with  funny anecdotes (not just about the police!!) that took place during the last five years. Not sure I will find the time to do this...but will definitely keep you posted.

For this recipe you need:
- two bananas
- half a lemon
- 4 table spoons of fromage frais or thick yogourt
- two table spoons of honey

Preheat the over at 175 degrees.
Mash the bananas (reserve three slices for decoration). Sprinkle the juice of the lemon on the bananas. Mix with the yogurt/fromage frais. Put it on a small baking dish or ramekin. Drizzle the honey on top. Bake for 20 minutes (we put it at the end for 1 minute under the grill to get a nice brown colour).

Unlike me, my children love both bananas and honey, so they like this for breakfast. It is really easy for them to do the whole recipe on their own provided you help with the oven.

PS - have you joined the Inspiring Women campaign? We have 16,500 women registered already (and if you are a man, you can join Inspiring the Future, which is the wider campaign)

PADDINGTON LOAF CAKE

This is a seriously easy cake.

You need:
- 275 g self-raising flour
- 2 eggs
- 120 g butter - melted
- 2 tablespoons of milk
- 100 g sugar
- a pinch of salt
- 3 tablespoons of marmalade (we used thick cut)
- a handful of 'perled sugar' (if you do not have this just used a coupe of tablespoons of demerara sugar)

Preheat the oven at 175 degrees.

Mix the flour, salt and sugar. Then separately mix the melted butter, beaten eggs and milk. Combine both sets of ingredients (just do this with a wooden spoon) Then add the marmalade. Put it all into a loaf tin (just lined, no need to grease it). Sprinkle the pearl sugar or demerara sugar on top and bake it for one hour (put a bit of foil on top of the cake after half an hour so that  the sugar does not get burnt).

According to my children this tastes particularly good with chocolate ice-cream.