Cooking club July, Anna Jones and all things Spanish !

[whatareyoueatingNOW]

Hi,

Hope it's okay that I've kicked off the new thread!

For anyone new- Welcome to cooking club. Here every month we chose a cuisine ( this month is Spanish) and a chef/ food writer , and then aim to cook and share recipes from those categories. Feel free to join in with recipe recommendations, reviews or just food chitchat

After the success of Greek Cypriot last month, I'm happy to stay in the med with Spanish , here are some good Spanish blogs/websites and food writers if anyone wants them

http://spanishsabores.com here is a blog which includes Spanish recipes that cover a lot of the regions

http://www.andalucia.org/en/recipes/ Traditional Andalusia recipes here

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/eivissa-the-ibiza-cookbook-recipes-a7156166.html%3famp this has some recipes from a brilliant baleriac cookbook elvissa

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/10/jose-pizarro-basque-country-recipes Here are some basque inspired recipes by Spanish food writer Jose pizzaro

Spain has so many regional dishes and areas that I could carry on listing recipes from all, so do search out what you fancy.

We are also covering http://annajones.co.uk/ Anna jones, who's vegetarian food is inspired. She's my absolute favourite vegetarian author and I can't wait to make more of her recipes. She has a website above, and her recipes are all over the net as well as her books so she should be easy to cover.
Anyone with her book , modern way to eat, should try the sweet potato dhal- it is THE BEST DHAL EVER and is now the only dhal I make.

[Pantah630]

Loving the sounds of some of these. We've been on camp all weekend so now back home I can cook again. The salt cod has arrived, I'm hoping to make croquettes with them. Seeing Myrtle mentioning Brindisa I had a look on amazon, £3.99 on kindle at the moment. I'd prefer a hard copy but at that price it was worth it. Looking forward to trying a few from there too.

[myrtleWilson]

Croquettes! Am so pleased that because of this thread I tried cooking something new!

[Pantah630]

Do they taste as good as they look Myrtle?

[myrtleWilson]

they were great Pantah - am converted... We're having homemade pizza tonight for the football so not Spanish nor AJ but will pick up AJ I think later this week...
Did you get Brindisa in the end?

[whatareyoueatingNOW]

I'm so glad you made croquettes myrtle! They look great.

I made AJs feta and lime burritos today- a real success, absolutely delicious

[everythingstaken123]

Ok. So don't laugh! I made the pink grapefruit cake with grapefruit curd and candied grapefruit from Eivissa by Anne Sijmonsbergen. As you can tell, I was a little heavy handed with the candied grapefruit slices! I've put a picture of what it should have looked like up so you don't have to hurt your eyes too long. I actually really enjoyed making this as I've never made curd let alone candied grapefruit so these were new experiences. The cake tasted delicious and was particularly light. I loved having curd instead of buttercream in a cake. This might be the way forwards for me now. As for the the candied grapefruit, no one really knew what to do with it but that's probably because there was too much of it. I found it really hard to slice thinly!

[whatareyoueatingNOW]

Everything- I made that too! It's lovely isn't it? My candied grapefruit was inedible to be honest. But the curd was amazing. Great recipe

[everythingstaken123]

I think you'd probably need a ham slicer to get the grapefruit thin enough to candy it properly. You've still managed to make yours look pretty though! I had to get my guests very drunk first.

[Pantah630]

Those cakes look great both of you. I had some pork loin steaks I'd defrosted so used them in pork loin skewers from Brindisa with courgettes, padron peppers and tomatoes with chips. A different taste to Greek kebabs but equally delicious.

[myrtleWilson]

Great cakes both of you! I'm not a natural baker by any stretch - perhaps if we have a cakes and biscuits theme one month I may unleash a hidden baker!
Pork skewers sound delicious pantah

[everythingstaken123]

I got a little bit enthusiastic at the market and bought a few too many tomatoes. So I made oven roasted tomatoes and put them into a jar with olive oil as per the Eivissa book recipe. Am really pleased these worked out so well. So simple yet not something I've done before or would necessarily have thought of doing. Will be lovely to add to salads over the summer and taste much nicer than the shop bought ones which can be a bit acidic.

[everythingstaken123]

Anna Jones' books are part of Prime Day deals today if you are interested.

[myrtleWilson]

I revisited AJ's tomato tarte tartin yesterday to improve on my first attempt (pastry issues) Using smaller tomatoes helped enormously as less liquid. Enjoyed it a lot! Out to the cinema tonight so not cooking but have picked up some broad beans and burrata to fashion something together tomorrow night. Am not usually a fan of broad beans but DH is so act of love AJ has some broad bean recipes so will have a look, or I could go Spanish decisions decisions....

[whatareyoueatingNOW]

As summer hols have hit, and it's disgustingly hot- I'm rarely cooking anything that's not picnics and bbq.

Does anyone want to do books/ theme for August or shall we skip to September? If we do cook through August- I'll suggest Caribbean as the cuisine, it's all I can consider fitting to the searing heat

Any ideas? Thoughts?

[myrtleWilson]

Tonight I did Anna Jones' turmeric and coconut baked aloo gobi - from A Modern Cook's year (but I got the recipe from a guardian article). Was a bit meh to be honest and not one I'll do again. It felt like it was messing with something in an unnecessary way. If I want a twist on aloo gobi I'll revert back to my trusted Leon Gobi in the future....

Re August - we could just leave this thread open but not restricted to AJ or Spain - so anyone could share a particular dish that they've tried that was worth a mention - I agree weather and holidays mean these are the quietest months. Then pick up again with new cookery writer and country in September?

[Pantah630]

I'm happy in the Med with this weather watermelon and feta in continuity, I agree we ought to leave this one open and reconvene in September

[myrtleWilson]

@Pantah360 @whatareyoueatingNOW @everythingstaken123 and of course anyone else! Are you up for a September Cooking Club?

[whatareyoueatingNOW]

I am always up for cooking club I've been away most of August, what ideas have you for September? The autumn months are the best for cooking

[everythingstaken123]

Yes please I'm definitely up for it! What theme are we going with?

[Pantah630]

Of course

[FishFingerPie]

Would be interested in having a go at this too. My cooking is a bit hit and miss though!

[myrtleWilson]

Am trying to remember what we've done recently!

Anna Jones/Spanish
Greek/Cypriot/Hairy Bikers
Mexican/Nigel Slater
Diana Henry/Italian
Middle Eastern/Mary Berry

Are the most recent pairings I think... obviously before that we'll have recycled lots!

Some ideas- bit random but have tried to think of ones different to the last few months!

Regions - Eastern Europe/France/Scandi/American South/Brazilian
Writers - H-F-W, Jack Monroe, Gordon Ramsay, Gizzi Erskine, Rick Stein

Any preferences??

[whatareyoueatingNOW]

I'm all for stein and Brazilian! But would happily cover any and all of your suggestions

[Pantah630]

Brazilian and RStein sounds good. I may have to pinch my DBs cachaca and Brazilian partner

[myrtleWilson]

Great! I'll start a thread and link back here....