A night in Spain

Missed holiday compensation.Sort of. 

I like to have a theme for a meal, and last night’s dinner was definitely Spanish themed. Albarino to drink, Spanish olive oil crisps as a snack to start with, followed by two recipes from Jose Pizarro’s Andalucia, which I bought as compensation for our cancelled holiday to Spain this year.

Very good Spanish crisps

Main course was chickpea and spinach stew with manchego toasts. I even managed to take some process photos for this one. Start by frying 50g of stale bread (for two) until lightly browned, then add cumin seeds, a generous handful of almonds, some peppercorns and a pinch of cayenne. Fry for a minute, then tip the whole lot into a food processor (or in my case, my trusty Kenwood mini chopper) with a ‘splash’ (I wish recipes would be a bit more precise sometimes) of water and blend to a paste. I’ve only ever come across this technique of blending bread in Spanish recipes – is it a peculiarly Spanish thing or have I just missed it elsewhere? I could have done with adding a bit more water to my blended bread – I had to add more later as a result, although that worked fine.

Slightly too dry bread and almond paste

Put some more oil into the pan, and fry half a sliced onion (red in this case, ‘cause that’s what I had) until softened. Then add crushed garlic and tomatoes. The recipe says fresh, ripe tomaotoes, but I used tinned as I had half a tin that needed using up, and I’m not sure English tomatoes ever reach the same state of ripeness as Spanish ones. Cook for 20 minutes, then add half a jar of chickpeas along with the liquid from the jar. The recipe specifies a jar of chickpeas, which is what I had, but I suspect it would also work with tinned. (Both the tomatoes and the chickpeas were left from a tomato, date and chickpea tagine – recipe in New Kitchen Basics, a book highly recommended by myself and Melinda).


Next add the bread paste and bring to the boil – this was where I added extra liquid, as it felt a bit dry. After it’s simmered for a few minutes, add the spinach, and stir until it wilts.

Spinach cooks whilst husband/sous chef makes toasts

At this point, the recipe says to keep the stew warm while you prepare the toasts (drizzle bread with oil, slightly toast on both sides, then add grated manchego and toast until lovely and melty), which would have worked fine, but my husband volunteered to make them while I was stirring in the spinach.  This was delicious. Judging by the picture in the book, the stew was thicker than it was meant to be, but I prefer thick to even slightly watery, so it worked for me. Definitely one to do again. I reckon cheddar would be fine for the toasts if you didn’t have manchego.

The final product: not the prettiest meal, but tasty.

For dessert, we had apricot sorbet from the same book. I made half the recipe amount (which equates to enough to serve four), so I used 500g apricots (just under 2 supermarket punnets) 150g caster sugar (eek at the amount of sugar, although at least I have finally been able to get caster sugar) and 175ml water. In a wide, deep frying pan, dissolve the sugar in the water over a low heat. Halve and stone the apricots, and place them cut side down in the pan (they just fitted!), bring the water to the boil and then simmer for fifteen minutes. I will add as a note here that sugar syrup which splashes out of the pan is very annoying to clean off your hob.


Leave to cool and then remove the skins from the apricots. The recipe says they will ‘slip off’. Hmm. Expect to end up with very sticky fingers. Then blend the apricots and their syrup to a puree. At this point, the recipe tells you to use an ice cream maker, which I do not possess, so I had to go down the manual route: pour the puree into a container, and place in freezer. After an hour or so, take out and whisk the puree. Do this 3-4 times as the sorbet freezes. This reminded me why it is that I don’t make sorbet more often, but the final result was delicious.

Sorbet, served with a chocolate chip biscuit, which I did not make.