Howard 19 May 2009 Spanish, cookshowandtell 17 Comments  Print This Post  Email This Post

This month’s theme is Spain.

Last month, we decided to get the es&t crew together once a month and try our hand at cooking different types of cuisines. Our first attempt was a random brunch, which turned into a dinner … or a lunchinner. Atleast this month, we had a theme to stick to which was Spanish.

As usual we cooked too much food, but as they say it is always better to have too much food than not enough food.

Say hi to Randy

Each of us takes turns to host a cook up, with the exception of Minh because her kitchen is about the size of a portaloo. Thanks to Teresa this month for offering her kitchen, I hope we didn’t make too much of a mess. Randy seemed to enjoy our company too. It’s the only dog I know which jumps with it’s two paws in the air when you say ” Pray Randy, Pray!”

To get things started ..

Parmesan sticks with spanish prosciutto

With all the cooking going on we needed a snack or two to tie us down until the main meal. This is simple but did the trick. Parmesan and garlic bread sticks served with spanish prosciutto and cream cheese. Not good for the diet conscious but it sure was tasty.

Finally we get to eat

The feast

It only took us 2 hours to cook everything and it was pretty hard having 8 people running around trying to steal a stove for their dish. We could have planned it better and prepared things at home before hand, but the truth of the matter is that all our plans never work anyway!

Truffle infused egg custards w/ crispy spanish prosciutto

This was my contribution for the feast and was adapted from a Thomas Keller recipe in The French Laundry Cookbook which I first saw on Whiteonricecouple’s blog. It is a rather simple recipe of an egg custard. I didn’t have actual truffle oil on me, so I used the oil from a jar of Tetsuya’s black truffle salsa which seemed to do the trick. The hardest part was probably cutting the eggs so I could serve the custard in them, it wasn’t neccessary but it was the novelty of it that made me cut out 8 eggs. I grilled cooked the prosciutto in a fry pan for a few minutes and then chucked them in the oven so they would get dry and crispy.

Seafood paella

Linda is on a bit of hiatus on the blog recently but she still gets really involved with cooking. She whipped up this seafood paella with plenty of fresh mussels, prawns, squid, and chorizo. She couldn’t find any short grain rice and had to use medium grain which seemed to work rather well anyway. Paella is perfect for winter, great comfort food.

Spanish meatballs in tomato sauce

Squishies and Abercrombie made sure we had some spanish meatballs as they are one of my favourite spanish dishes despite it’s simplicity. The sauce was rich, thick, sweet and chunky and complimented the tender beef meatballs perfectly.

Fish balls stuffed with brie cheese

Anything stuffed with cheese has me sold. Squishies and Abercrombie filled the fish balls with brie cheese and they were definately a little explosion of surprises. The brie was melted perfectly as well.

Sangria

Teresa whipped up three dishes including this wonderful sangria. There was enough alchohol in it to leave one of the eight diners a little tipsy, poor form on her behalf!

Spanish Garlic mushrooms (champiñones al ajillo)

These mushrooms were sauteed with garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, fresh parsley and garnished with some cracked pepper.

Spanish sardines

These were perfect when eaten with freshly our baked baguettes. As a kid I use to eat canned tomato sardines on toast and this dish reminded me of the good old days.

Stuffed squids

Another one of Teresa’s creations. I can’t remember exactly what was in these but they definately contained onions, tomato and mushrooms. These were a hit as the squid was cooked perfectly to ensure it wasn’t too chewy wheras the stuffing created a hearty sauce with all it’s juices.

Prawn crocquettes (Croquetas de gambas)

Bui made these and served them with some home made mayonnaise. The crocquettes were filled with sweet and fresh prawns and are great when eaten piping hot.

Spanish style mussels

A Spanish feast wouldn’t be complete without Minh’s Spanish style mussels. Fresh mussels were cooked mainly with tomato, onions and chorizo. The sauce was lapped up constantly with the fresh baguettes.

Dessert

Cinammon rice pudding

Helena has carved herself the dessert niche after her stellar effort last month with the coconut ice cream w/ saffron. This month she whipped up a cinammon rice pudding and Fresh Oranges with Spiced Red Wine Syrup (below). The pudding was great as it wasn’t too sweet nor tasteless.

Fresh Oranges with Spiced Red Wine Syrup

This was definately a hit, it had me begging for seconds and thirds. For the wine, she used a full bodied shiraz but any fruity/spicy equivelent will suffice. She pretty much followed the recipe but added in a peel of orange rind to give extra flavour and removed it when the wine was reduced to 1 cup but left the cinnamon stick in the wine so it could continue to add flavour when sitting in the fridge overnight. It’s such a simple recipe but the flavours were amazing.

Next month’s theme : French

As usual we had too much food but it was a pretty good effort as it was the first time for many of us cooking Spanish food. I’m loving these monthly cook-ups as it gives me the chance to try out a few things I wouldn’t have done at home , not to mention I am a beginner when it comes to cooking so this is a good opportunity to learn a few things too.

Next month’s theme is French which is going to be a real challenge. Stay tuned until next month!