Spinach with Chikpeas

Because spinach is the world's healthiest food known for his nutritional, antioxidants and anti-cancer composition, I feel myself compelled to show you my recipe. I hope you like it.

Espinacas con Garbanzos/ Spinach with Chikpeas

Ingredients:

500 grams of spinach (baby leaves)

1 can of chickpeas ready to use

1 onion

1 garlic clove

1 table spoon Paprika

EVO oil

1 tabe spoon Cumin

Salt

Some bread

How to proceed:

1º In a large pan (I used a wok), put 2 table spoons of oil.

2º Clean and slice the onion, clean and dice the garlic clove, once you are ready rost them in the pan, add the bread, when the bread will be starting to get tosted take everything and pass them through the blender. Save ir for later.

3º Now, in the pan pur again 1 table spoon of oil, once it's warm pur the paprika, leave to fry to 1 minute and add the chickpeas that you have previously wash out.

4º It is the time to add the mix that you saved in the blender, Add salt and stir for a couple of minutes.

5º Wash the spinach leaves in a wringer with abundant water. Now, start by adding the leaves in little bunches at a time, stiring and mixing.

Until you have all of your spinach leaves in the pan, then , adjust salt and add 1 table spoon of cumin.

And now it your food is ready to be served. I have used it as a side for buttered fish. Enjoy!

Gardener's stew/ Ternera a la jardinera

As it is colder today, you feel like having something warm to eat when you arrive home. Here is how I make ternera a la jardinera:

Gardener's stew/ Ternera a la jardinera

Ingredients:

500 grams Beef

EVO oil

1/2 Fennel

1 Onion

2 Garlics

3 or 4 Cloves

2 Bay leaves

1 Glass of white wine (sherry)

Salt

Pepper

1 Large size carrot

1 Large size potatoe

200 grams Green peas

1 bag of powder Bovril

How to proceed:

1º Take a medium size pot and pour 4 or 5 table spoon of oil on it. Now clean and slice the onion and stir them in medium heat.

2º Meanwhile, cut the garlics and add them to the onion. 

3º Cut the beef meat in dices pour salt and pepper and add them in the pot with the onion. Stir them for few minutes until they are almost done. 

4º Add the bay leaves, the fennel, the cloves and the glass of wine and set the heat high, stir for 2 or 3 minutes.

5º Meanwhile, clean and cut the potatoe and the carrot. When you are finished, add them in the pot.

6º Pour more water until it covers the vegetables and add the bovril.

7º Leave the heat medium-high, and add the green peas. 

8º Adjust salt. Leave your stew boiling for 15 minutes. After that, you can serve it. Enjoy!

Green beans' nest

Green beans are one of my favorite vegetables. There are different ways of cooking them, but the one that I will show you today it is not only tasty but nice to be presentes as a meal if you have guests. It can be used as a side for meat.

Judías verdes en nido con huevo/ Green beans' nest

Ingredients:

450 grs fresh green beans

Eggs

2 garlics

EVO oil

Salt

How to prepare it:

 

 1º Take all the green beans out and start cutting them.










 2º How to cut them: Take one by obe the green pots, with a sharp knife cut the edges and then open un half (long side), now divide in two pieces. Your can put the edible part in a pot.

3º Once you have finish cutting them and you have them in a pot, cover it with salted water and leave boiling for 15 minutes. After that, you can wash them out and dry them.

 4º We are going to take a big pan and put 4 or 5 table spoons of olive oil, cut the 2 garlics and pour the in the pan. When they will be yellish, you can add the greean beans and stir for about 3 or 4 minutes. Adjust the salt.







5º It is time to add as many eggs as you want. (1 per person usually), pour a bit of salt over the yolks, and set the heat medium-low. You can cover the pan if you like. And leave it like that until the eggs will be ready.

It's done, and now you can serve it. I used them as a side for grilled chicken. Enjoy!

Patatas con calamares

Because we are busy people, I'm going to show a recipe that you can leave ready from the night before, ready to warm it up and eat it. It is easy peasy, you only need few ingredients, and only take few minutes to prepare it.

I would reccommend that we use fresh calamari for better taste, but I have to confess (mom, please, cover your ears) that I use the frozen ones. Just make sure to defrost them before cooking. Usually the night before I take them out of the freezer and put them on the fridge.

We actually use in Spain another type of calamari, that we call "choco" and that it would look slightly different from the squid. But in Canada i have only found the second one.

Calamar/ Squid

Choco o sepia

Patatas con Calamares (Potatoes with squid)

Ingredients:

2 squids (if fresh) or 450 grams if frozen

1/2 Green pepper

1/2 Onion

2 Garlics

3 or 4 medium potatoes

300 grams greenpeas

Salt

Pepper

1/2 cup cooking wine (sherry wine)

Parsley

How to prepare it:

1º Cut in half the onion and wash it, take the peel out of the garlic and cut it in half, and cut in half the greenpepper and wash it. Now, put them in a medium size pan.

2º Now peel the potatoes, and cut them in cubes. Add the potatoes, the squid rings, the green peas and the parsley in the pot with the resto of the igredients.


 

3º Add salt, ground black pepper and the cooking wine and pour water until you cover all the ingredients.

4º Leave it boiling for about 20 minutes. After that it will be ready to serve. Otherwise, you could consume it later, it only needs to be warmed up.

Adjust salt, and serve it. Enjoy!

Pasta with zucchini Pesto

Hi! Today I cooked something fast, easy and tasty. I took the recipe from an Italian recipe book but I will translate it for you.

Pasta with Zucchini Pesto Sauce

Ingredients:

3 Zucchini 

2 tbs ricotta

2 tbs pine seeds

1 tbs parmigiano 

How to proceed:

1° Wash and cut the edges of the Zucchini. Cut them in half, long side. 

2° On a pot,  put salted water to boil.  And then add the Zucchini,  leave it boiling for 15 minutes. 

3° Meanwhile,  take  other pot and put water to boil the pasta you like.  Usually for this kind of sauce you can use tortellini, I used this shells. 

4° When the Zucchini are ready,  pass them trough the blender, then pour in the puree salt, the parmigiano,  the pine seeds, and the ricotta.  Finish beating on the blender. 

5° Once you have your pasta ready, dry it and add ghe sauce. You can use one of the pots to mix the pasta with the sauce easily.  Then serve in a plate and decorate with some more pine seeds and parmigiano. ENJOY!  

Sopa de pollo (Puchero)

On winter I like to have chicken soup on cold days. It's very easy to prepare and you can have several servings. This is my own recipe, which is slightly different than the one I used in Spain because is difficult to find some of the meat cuts or pig bones that I used to use. But it's tasty the same, so don't worry about that.
You can have just the soup, the soup with the veggies and the chicken, or you can add some pasta or rice on it. I will show you later how to do it.
This time I didn`t have at home chcikpeas, but if you like you can open a can of chickpeas and add them at the same time as the veggies. Ready?

SOPA DE POLLO (CHICHEN SOUP) 

Ingredients:

1 or 2 Chicken thighs

1 Beef bone

1 Leek

 2 Celery

2 Medium size potatoes

2 Carrots

1/2 Fennel

Chickpeas (optional)

Eggs (depending on how many servings)

Salt

How to prepare it:

1º Take the chicken and and beef and clean it, maybe you like to take the peel out of the chicken.

2º Use a large pot to put the ingredientes.

3º Now wash the fennel and it in half if it's too big, just put half inside the pot. Then peel and clean the rest of the veggies and add everything together on the pot. Is the time to put the chickpeas if you like to add them. Finally put the eggs on top. You can either live the veggies as they are or cut them in half or even in 2 or 3 pieces. Don`t cut too smal the potatoes, otherwise they eill desappear if you boil it too many times.

4º Add enough water to cover everything up, and 1 or even 2 inches over the ingredients Put some salt. Leave it boiling medium heat for over 30 to 45 minutes at least.

5º At the time od the serving you can just eat the soup or add some pasta. If you would like to add pasta or rice, take a medium pan and put some of your chicken broth in the medium pan to boil, it's here where you are going to boil your pasta or rice. Adjust salt, and add water or broth if you need it.

6º On a plate serve some of the vegetables, the pasta or rice that you cooked and pour some broth from your large pot. You can take the eggs out of the pot and peel and slice them to serve in your plate. I like to add some fresh mint. ENJOY!

Tortilla de patatas rellena

Today we are going to learn how to prepare a Tortilla de patatas staffed with lettuce,onion,tuna and mayo.
This one here is a very typical tapa from any reguon of Spain, in some places they like to leave less cooked in the inside. I have yo say that the original ond is made of eggs, potatotes and oil. Some people like too fill it witb other ingredients like the most used is onion, maybe also greenpeppers or chorizo. My preferences? Almost raw from the inside and filled with onion and greenpeppers FYI.
And you can have  it anytime, breakfast, lunch, as a snack.

TORTILLA DE PATATAS RELLENA DE CEBOLLA, LECHUGA  Y ATUN

Ingredients:

4 potatotes,medium size

4 eggs

Evo oil 

1 can of tuna

Mayo

Lettuce, just 2 or 3 leaves

Salt

How to proceed:

1° Peel the potatotes, wash them and cut them in little cubes.

2° In a medium size frying pan pour oilve oil enough to deep fry. Start the heat medium-high and deep fry the potatoes. Don't  over cook them, as later they will be back on the heat.

3° Put the potatoes in a large bowl and add them salt.

4° In a small bowl, whisk the eggs. Then, add them to the potatoes and mix.

5° In a medium  frying pan, it is important that is a non stick one, put 2 tablespoons of oil and then pour the mix with the potatoes and the eggs. Low heat.  In less than 10 minutes it's  going to be done one side.

6° We are going to flip  it down, so take a dish, the same size as the pan, an put it on top of it like if you wanted to close it whit a lit. Now with one hand grab the handle and with the other hand place it on the middle of the  dish and turn it over. Now put what you have on the dish  onto the pan, to cook it both sides. Leave like 10 more minutes or until you see it's  already cooked.

7° Leave it cool down around 30 minutes. Meanwhile, wash and cut in little pieces thd lettuce and the onion, put them in a bowl, thenn add the tuna and the mayo.

8° Now take a thin and long  knife and open the tortilla in half. Fill it with the  mix of lettuce,onion,tuna and mayo.

You can cut them in triangles and you just did your Tapa de tortilla   

Empanada de atún

Today we are cooking a typical dish from the north east of Spain, careful with the gluten allergies as this may contain, just make sure you pick the proper ingredientes. We are going to do it the easier way, which is buying the dough from the market instead of making it from scratch.

Just to let you know, the dough you can find it at Wal-Mart, No Frills, Adonis... I'm sure you can even find it in other supermarkets too, just find "puff pastry dough", usually comes 1 or 2 sheets.

Empanada de atún:

1 green pepper

1 red pepper

1 onion

All purpose flour

2 cans of shanks tuna

2 sheets of puff pastry dough

2 fresh tomatoes

salt

paprika

3 eggs

evo oil

How to proceed:

1º Take 2 of the 3 eggs and boil them.

2º Clean the onion and slice it, clean the green and the red pepper and slice them too. Now in a large frying pan, pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil and set it medium heat. When it will be warm pour the onions until you see they are transparent, then add 1 tablespoon of paprika and the peppers. Put the heat even a bit lower.

3º Meanwhile wash and clean the tomatoes, and cut them in small cubes. Add them to the peppers in the frying pan, add also some salt. Leave it low heat for at least 15 minutes.

4º Now is the time to clean the working area, spread a bit of flour over it and take out the dough sheets. Take the first one out, place it on the table and with a rolling pin stretch the dough. In an over tray, cover it with baking paper and put this dough sheet on it. Now repeat the process with the other sheet.

5º Open both cans of tuna in shanks, I reccommend in olive oil, but you can also use the ones in water, and add them to the peppers and tomatoes. Stir for about 1 to 2 minutes and turn off the heat.

6º Take the eggs that we have previously boiled and cut them in small cubes, add them to the peppers, tomatoes and tuna, stir and mix. Adjust the salt.

7º Take the oven tray where you should have placed 1 of the dough sheets and start putting over it the mix of the peppers, tuna, tomatoes and eggs.

8º We are going to place the second sheet on top of that, and close all borders using our hands.

9º Scramble an egg and use it to paint the Empanada with a brush. With a fork we are going to make some holes and right in the middle we are going to open what it is called, a chimney, that is, a bigger hole, to make it breath in the oven.

9º Set the oven in 356 ºF and put the Empanada in the over for 45 minutes.

Ready to ENJOY!