Recipe: Patatas a lo Pobre

by ferdie
This is a classic dish, I've used sausage meat (and sausages) to give a real winter warmer feel to the flavour. It takes about 40 mins of chopping and stove work to prep it, then it's in to the oven at 180C for 25 mins and then 15 mins more at 220C to crisp up. Cracking served with garlic bread, which you can put in during the last 15 mins so everything is ready at the same time!

The tomato sauce base is tasty and very versatile, I use it in all sorts of things from a delicate oregano macaroni, spiced up with tortilla, simple with parmesan and spaghetti and a little basil.(ooh and don't forget pizzas too)

INGREDIENTS (Serves 4)
3 onions chopped,
1 red & 1 green pepper,
8 medium potatoes,
6 cloves garlic,
2 bay leaves,
1 bunch (40g) thyme,
1 bunch (40g) parsley
175g sausage meat
10 slices of salami (pave or a black pepper coated one - chopped)
8 good quality sausages
6 ripe tomatoes (coarsely chopped)
100ml EVO

METHOD
Pot 1 - The potatoes

Take 8 medium potatoes washed and sliced around 3/4 -1 cm thick. Then boil, skin on. When done check with a knife, smash them. This is adding a little extra virgin olive oil some salt and pepper and rough mixing them around the pan so a light potato fluff forms around them. This will give them a crispy outside when they're fried later which adds a great texture to the final dish.

Pot 2 - The tomato sauce
Put the EVO on high, hot, add 1 of the chopped onions, 1 clove of crushed garlic. After a minute or so add the tomatoes - they'll spit when they go in so be careful. Also add 1/2 a finely chopped chicken stock cube. Simmer for 10mins. Then mash with masher.

Pan 1 - Softening the veg
Slice 2 onions, 3 cloves of garlic add them to the pan, and sweat them off - cook them until the onions go clear (sweat then off) on a medium heat. While the onions cook, chop the peppers into eighths, removing the stalks and seeds. Next peel and slice 5 carrots. Peel them either lengthways or, a little easier first in half then diagonally about 1/2cm thick. Put the lid on and leave them all on a low heat to sweat. In the meantime, back at pan 2, err actually it's our first visit to pan 2!

Pan 2 - The stock and the sausages
Put 1/3 of a pack (around 175g) of sausage meat into the pan with a little oil and squash it flat into the pan with a spatula. Crumble 1 pork stock cube over it.
Chop up the salami and add it to the pan, break up the sausage meat with the spatula and cook through. You can add the sausages around the edge here to brown them off.

When sausage meat is cooked through remove sausages and put to one side. Add what should now be an almost crunchy mix to the veg in pan 1.
Put the potatoes in pan 2 with olive oil and crisp up adding the sausages to brown a little more if required. 


Remove sausages and halve them, add the potatoes to pan 1 and mix through. Add a dash of white wine to pan 2 to deglaze the sausage flavours and pour this into pan 1 too.
Spread the tomato sauce on the bottom of a baking dsh and add sticks of thyme liberally
(every inch) on top, pour pan 1 in, spreading it over the top and add halved sausages.
Bake 180C for 25mins then full 220C for another 15mins (add a garlic bread or 2 now!)

Tip 1 - The tomato sauce base made here is very coarse but it doesn't matter since it's going to sit at the base of the dish and get thicker adding flavour and texture to the dish. For a smoother sauce add about 1/3 of the volume again of boiling water once the tomatoes are soft blitz it with a stick blender, then sieve.

Recipe: Arroz al Horno (Baked Rice)

by ferdie, in partnership with Unearthed for Action Against Hunger

I was asked to do an event for Unearthed, who have a lovely range of food and recipes using their products. So I had a look to see what recipes were on their page, to avoid being entirely unoriginal, and to offer something that Unearthed could add to their recipe list.

As you might imagine, paella is the first thing on their list, which kinda suits me because I've done it a million times, and so has everybody else. Since paella is already on the recipe page, I thought this might be great alternative, plus it uses more of Unearthed's bits and pieces.

I think the first time I came across this dish was when both Marta (a work colleague at the time) and I were trying to avoid the mind numbing pin checking exercise of swapping a microprocessor in one of our products. Instead of doing that, she regaled me with her version of this dish. I've adapted it a little to my tastes and then again for Unearthed.

One of the nice things about this dish is that it's simple to make, it's a lot harder to screw up than a paella, and when it comes out of the oven and hits the table, it smells great! A real crowd pleaser!

We served it with a tomato sauce, green beans and asparagus.

So here goes . . .  Arroz al Horno / Baked Rice (Serves 28 small/med or 12 large portions)


INGREDIENTS

Fantastic ingredients! What a start : )

For the arroz al horno:
18 pork ribs
28 chipolatas
5 chillies (jalipeño)
14 cloves of garlic
4.5 tbsp cumin seeds
2.5 giant mushrooms
9 capsicum (long thin green peppers) chopped in rings
4.5 mug mixed rice (pudding Arborio 50/50)     - weight 500g
EVO (for frying off, base of pan and adding to rice)
750g potato (thinly sliced and baked w/ little olive oil) 200C/12mins turn once
48 tasty ripe cherry plum tomatoes (topping)   -  weight?
white wine
2 1/4 L chicken stock (2250ml + 7stock cubes)
salt and pepper

For the green beans & asparagus:
(par boil these then ice bath them so can be ready for service in seconds)
green beans (trimmed)
fine asparagus (trimmed and peeled at end) (if in season)

For the tomato sauce:
400g crushed chopped plum tomatoes
rock salt to taste
10g basil leaves
150ml white wine
50ml white wine vinegar (counter act the rice stojtastickness)
50ml extra virgin olive oil

METHOD
1. Pre heat oven to 200C
2. Slice potato into thick crisp cuts & put them in an oiled baking tray and into the oven coated in olive oil salt and pepper.
3. Fry up the meat, garlic & cumin until starting to brown put to one side
4. Once the potatoes are golden brown (about 10 mins), remove them from the oven. Remove them from the dish and put to one side. Add a touch more oil to coat the dish and return it to the oven to keep the oil sizzling hot. Turn oven down to 190C
5. Fry up everything else except the tomatoes.
6. Mix meat & veg in pan, remove the dish from the oven and add the mixture to it, it should sizzle as it hits the oil.
7. Pour the rice evenly over the mix, add the stock, put potatoes on top and then the tomatoes on top of that!  Phwoar! : ) 

This bad boy is now ready for the oven!

Bake 15 min 190C
Then 10 more at 70C
The rice should be cooked - check it and return for and extra 5-10mins if necessary.

1. For the tomato sauce, pour the wine into a preheated pan so it starts to boil off the alcohol straight away, add the vinegar too and reduce by a third.
2. In a separate pan bring the EVO up to almost smoking and then add the the chopped tomatoes, TAKE CARE this spits, put a lid on straight away!
3. Once the tomatoes have stopped spitting, stir the oil that hasn't emulsified into the tomatoes and add the wine/vinegar mix, and basil. Season to taste. Take off the heat until required

I like my tomato sauce to be fairly chunky, giving you bursts of tomato flavour amongst the other flavours. If you like a smooth sauce with a consistent flavour profile you can blend it and sieve it at this stage.

Serve the rice with steamed green beans, asparagus, and the tomato sauce, The greens and the sauce provide a light acidic complement to the baked rice. (I think we actually served this with some fried off, sliced, giant flat mushrooms with the greens and tomato sauce)

For me two of the flavours that define this dish are the mingling of the pepper from the saucisson sec and the pave (which is sooo good on it's own BTW) and the flavour of the cumin seeds, hmmmmm!

This is a version we did in partnership with  Unearthed for Action Against Hunger

Criminal! Sooo tasty!

We used Unearthed pave for pepper flavour, saucisson sec w/ herbs, catalan sausage, organic pancetta, cumin seeds.
You can find the whole 8 course menu we served here.

TIP: Remember meat mix should go into sizzling oiled tray - just like you do with roast potatoes to get that browning and crusting going straight away!

This one's also for you Luiz I meant to get this up before Christmas but as you know it's been a bit hectic!