SNACK NUTS

I am a bit of a nuts addict. If you put a bowl of nuts any closer than two meters from me the chances are that I will eat them all. It tested all my will power when I was working as a Middle East adviser, as at every single official meeting in any country from Morocco to Iran,  there were endless bowls of delicious pistachios and nuts. I can assure you that trying to take notes while picking at the nuts is not an easy task!

This is a great way to make any type of nut a little bit posher as a nibble for any drinks. You need:

-for three handfuls of nuts (any type)
- half a tablespoon of oil
- a pinch of sea salt (you can also do it with normal salt, but sea salt is nicer)
- a quarter of a teaspoon of rosemary leaves (chopped thinly)
- a quarter of a teaspoon of thyme leaves (chopped thinly)

You can alter all these quantities as much as you like. My middle son likes to add a pinch of paprika, which works well. And if you have a sweet tooth you can add a quarter of a teaspoon of brown sugar.

Warm the oil in a frying pan. Add the nuts and then the salt and herbs. Wait for a couple of minutes (stirring the nuts gently with a spoon so that they do not burn) until they start to get brown. Serve immediately, so that they are eaten warm.

It is just impossible to resist them…

BACON AND GOAT's CHEESE CAKE

This is great for lunch with a soup or a salad.

You need:

- 250 gr plain flour

- 150 ml sunflower oil

- 100 ml milk

- 50 ml of yogurt

- 4 eggs

- a teaspoon of baking powder

- 200 gr cubed bacon or pancetta

- 250 gr of goat's cheese (cubed)

- 6 basil leaves

- 2 handfuls of (raw) spinach

Preheat the oven at 185 degrees. Mix the oil, eggs, milk and yogurt. Then add the flour and baking powder. Fry the bacon lightly until it gets golden - get rid of the fat and add it to the mixture. Finally add the cheese, basil (cut it into stripes) and spinach ( also cut into stripes). Put it into a greased and lined loaf cake and bake for 45-50 minutes. let it cool down in the tin for 10 munites before you unmould it. 

THANK YOU AND HAKE 'A LA GALLEGA'

This is a gorgeous Spanish celebratory dish that I am sharing with you to thank all the women (and also a few men!) who have joined and enquired about Inspiring Women on the back of guest editing the Today programme. An interesting experience - and I managed to upset a junior minister and the conservative media, which only made it all that 'tiny little bit more fun' ;-)
 To top this up, another country interested in mirroring the campaign has been in touch: that makes 11 now. This will definitely be the year of the internationalisation of the campaign, isn't that great?

(If you are reading this and do not know what I am talking about, just click on http://www.inspiringthefuture.org/inspiring-women/ and register   It is only one hour per year, so everybody can do it)

Back to the dish. You need really fresh hake for this- if you cannot get it, then don't even try. It is also really important to do this with slices as opposed to steaks, don't ask me why. You need:
- a slice of hake per person
- a big potato per person (peeled)
- 4 bay leaves
- an onion
- 2 tablespoons of paprika (pimenton)
- 5 tablespoons of (good) olive oil
- water
- salt

Bring to the boil two litters of water, the bay leaves, salt and the onion (cut in half) in a big pan. Put in the potatoes (I also cut them in half) and boil them for 10-15 minutes until almost tender. Salt the fish stakes on both sides, put fthe ish in the pan, lower the heat and leave it in for 5 minutes ensuring the water does not boil (i.e. if you see any bubbles in the water take the pan off the heat - I know this sounds petty, but if the water boils the fish will get dry and you would have wasted your time and money…) After 5 minutes, get the pan off the heat and wait for another 5 minutes. Get the fish and potatoes off the water with a slotted spoon and put them on a plate. Mix the oil and paprika and one table spoon of the boiling liquid and pour it over the fish and potatoes. It is one of the best ways to eat hake.

Children can help with it all (and like to pour the pimenton oil over the fish) but be careful if they help to take the fish out of the pan as it can easily break.

MY MONT BLANC

I hope I am not being immodest if I tell you that this dessert - put together by yours truly- is divine. The combination of flavours comes from a dessert called Montblanc that they serve at Angelina's, a tea-room near the Louvre where elegant Parisian ladies used  to go for 'chocolat chaud' in the afternoons before the place was taken over by tourists.  But while Angelina's version is seriously rich, this is light as a feather. It is also really simple to make. I served this both in Spain and then in the UK for celebration dinners this year and it was 'wows'  and compliments all around.

You need:

- a packet of 'brik' pastry (some supermarkets have stopped stocking brik pastry, but you can still find it in some, and also in Amazon)
- chestnut puree (I prefer the unsweetened version)
- a couple of small meringues (either use our recipe, of just buy them in the shop)
- whipping cream
-icing sugar
- sunflower oil
- dark chocolate

Start by frying the pastry in sunflower oil (15 seconds on each side until it gets golden) . Brik pastry is normally sold in rounds. I cut the pastry into small rounds to do individual desserts, but you can also do a big dessert, which looks very spectacular, by just frying the brik rounds just as they come out of the packet. Put the fried pastry on kitchen paper so that you get rid of all the oil. I normally fry this in the morning if I am going to use it for dinner so that there is not oily moist at all.

Before your meal, sweeten the chestnut puree (you can do this to taste, but I use 30 gr of icing sugar for 100 gr of chestnut puree). Put the chestnut puree into a pipping bag and leave it in the fridge. Whip the cream and put it into another pipping bag.  Crumble the meringue. And grate 4 squares of dark chocolate.

Just before you are going to serve the dessert, put a round of pastry on each plate. Put three dots of chestnut puree and three dots of creme on top. Sprinkle the puree and cream with the meringue and then with the dark chocolate. Put another brik round on top and repeat what you have just done: chestnut puree and whipped cream dots followed by meringue and chocolate. Cover with another round and dust some icing sugar on top. Serve immediately.

If you have the puree and creme in pipping bags you can do this very quickly (I served it last for 11 people and it did not take more than 5 minutes to assemble the dessert). And if you do it with a big round for the family version of this dessert you can get this done in no time at all.

And this is the (bigger) family version:

LENTILS SALAD

New Year and five years doing our blog. We actually celebrated two New Years yesterday: one at 23.00 eating twelve grapes with the sound of the clock at Puerta del Sol in Madrid and then at 24.00 watching the fireworks in London. So hope that brings double good luck. Italians say that what brings good luck is lentils, so this is a lentils salad to go with meat (especially duck) or blue fish. You need:

- 200 gr of lentils, half an onion and a bay leaf. Or alternatively two tins of already cooked lentils.
- grated rind and juice of one and a half lemons.
- 3 tablespoons of olive oil
- salt
- a generous amount of a mixture of herbs: basil, mint, parsley and coriander, chopped as thinly or coarsely as you like.

Boil the lentils in water with the half onion, salt and bay leaf for 30 minutes. Drain them well.  Heat the oil in a pan and fry the lemon rind (just 20 seconds, but keep watching it as it burns very easily). Pour the lemony oil on the lentils. Add the lemon juice, more salt and sprinkle the herbs on top. Done.

CHOCOLATE NEMESIS

This is a flour less chocolate cake from the River Cafe (one of my favourite restaurants in London, very expensive but so wonderful) that we cooked for Christmas day. It is spectacularly gorgeous. You can get the recipe from the internet and the River Cafe has even put it on Youtube. You need:

- 5 eggs
-340 gr dark chocolate (preferably 75%)
- 225 gr butter
-210 gr sugar
- 100 ml of water


Preheat the oven at 120 degrees and grease and line a cake tin. Melt the chocolate and butter by putting them in a bowl over a pan with boiling water (the bowl should not touch the water). Meanwhile, beat the eggs (keep the egg shells for later) and 120 gr of sugar for a long time (its volume should increase 4 times).  While you are doing this, boil the remaining 70 gr of sugar with the water ( it should boil for 3 minutes). When the chocolate is melted, mix the sugar syrup in and then pour all this into the eggs' mixture. Put the mixture in the tin and put the tin into another tin filled with boiling water. Put the egg shells into the water so that you do not get any bubbles int he cake.  Bake for 50 minutes and then let it cook down completely within the water.

I did this with two of my sons and 5 more nieces and nephews (four of them under four). I do not have words to describe what a mess they made. They loved it though.

MY CHRISTMAS TURKEY

In Spain celebrate Christmas Eve with a big dinner. Due to the Hollywood influence, turkey has become the food of choice though luckily (this was a really clever move) we did not import the tradition of eating brussels-sprouts.  I have cooked this turkey recipe for as long as I can remember.

You need:

- a turkey, as big as possible, as the whole point of Christmas is to have as many people as you can fit  around the table.

- if you want to give the turkey a bath you need : a big (bigger than the turkey) bucket  full of water, two bay leaves, two mandarines, an onion, two oranges, one lemon, a big handful of parsley, a glass of port, a teaspoon of nutmeg, two cinnamon sticks a handful of coarse salt and a handful of sugar.

- 5 (big) cooking apples (peeled and quartered)
- two handfuls of raisins
- a handful of sultanas
- a handful of dried currants
- three handfuls of dried apricots
- 2 handfuls of dried figs
- three onions ( peeled and quartered)
- two handful of pine nuts
- 6 bay leaves
- 110 gr of butter (room temperature)
- a glass and a half of port

I normally give the turkey a 'bath' the night before the day I  cook it. To be perfectly honest, I am not sure it makes any difference to the taste, but it sort of gets everybody into the Christmas mood and the children, especially the little ones, love to throw the ingredients into the bucket. If you want to do this just get the turkey into the bucket, cover it with water and pour all the ingredients  (cut the onion, orange and lemon in quarters and squeeze them a bit as you are getting them into the bucket) into it. Leave the bucket (covered with a lid) in a cold place. One of my little nieces is absolutely convinced she has seen the turkey swim and actually move its legs in this bath - there you have the magic of Christmas!

The following day take the turkey our of the bath and pat dry it. Put it on a roasting tray (if you want a really moist turley then roast it in a clay roasting tray, as clay retains the water much better than metal trays). Salt the turley inside the cavities. Mix the dried fruit, apples, onions and pine nuts and stuff the turkey with them ( both the front and rear cavities). Put your hands between the breasts and the skin so that the skin becomes loose and massage the breasts (I know, just do not think about it!) with 80 gr of butter. Finally put the three bay leaves between each breast and the skin. Salt the turkey all around and cover with the rest of the butter. Put two glasses of water in the bottom of the tray together with the port. If you have any remaining stuffing add it to the roasting tray.

I do 50 minutes per kilo at 200 degrees and cover the turkey with foil after 50 minutes and then I uncover it for the last 20 minutes. I also let it rest for 20-30 minutes covered with foil before eating it. Eat it with roast potatoes and carrots or any other vegetable you like (as you may have gathered I detest brussels sprouts). It is a massive success year after year.