Category Archives: Make and freeze

Arros caldos d’estiu (summer rice)

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This recipe is a lot like the typical Valencia paella, but instead of being cooked in a caldero until the liquid is completely evaporated, it is cooked in a saucepan until soupy.  It follows the same principles as Winter Rice, but uses different ingredients which are in season in summer.  Iaia always uses organic, free-range chicken, which needs to be boiled for about 20 minutes on its own before you put the beans in. If you are using a normal chook, you can put the veg in when you add the water.
The last time I was in Australia, I tried to find a butcher who would saw some chicken up into paella-sized pieces for me, but it was impossible (mutterings about cross-contamination), so I made it with 2 whole drumsticks and cut the wings into pieces myself.
The quantities here are for four people, calculating about 60 grams of rice per head. Adjust this and the amount of water as necessary, remembering that you want a soupy finish, not risotto-like creaminess.

What you need:ingredients
600 g chicken
250g flat green beans*
100g fresh navy beans *
1 prune tomato, grated
125ml olive oil
250g short-grain rice
1 tsp sweet paprika
saffron or food colouring**
1200ml water

*Iaia has some things to say about these ingredients:
The variegated flat beans are tastier and go green upon cooking, so if you can find them, all the better. Otherwise, plain flat green beans will have to do. French runner beans don’t taste nearly as good but will also have to do if there really isn’t anything else.
If you use bottled navy beans, add them about 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time, or they will collapse into a floury mess.
**See my note in Winter Rice about food colouring

What you do:
Heat the oil in a heavy-based saucepan that is big enough to hold everything and then chuck the seasoned chicken pieces in to brown. Once they are looking golden, add the grated tomato and fry for 3-4 minutes.  Just before you add the water, put the sweet paprika in and stir it around for just a few seconds, making sure it doesn’t burn and go bitter, then pour in all of the water and bring it to a boil. If you are using organic chicken, cover and let simmer for 20 minutes before adding the beans, otherwise put them in straight away, add the saffron/food colouring and another pinch of salt, cover and simmer everything for an hour or so. saucepans
As with Winter Rice, you can switch everything off at this point and leave it ready to be heated up when you want to eat it. About half an hour before you do want to serve it, bring your stock to a boil, check the seasoning and add the rice. Don’t overcook or evaporate all the liquid!
Ladle into bowls and then leave it to cool while you have a pre-lunch drink and some nibbles, it will taste better, and you won’t burn your tongue.IMG_2739

Serve with: your favourite red

Bunyols (pumpkin doughnuts)

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Easter weekend almost always includes buñuelos, or pumpkin doughnuts, for us. Oscar’s auntie Herminia is the resident expert, and it is her hands that you can see doing all the hard work in this recipe.
I am not a huge fan of the little orange balls; without sugar, they are a bit bland and biting into granulated sugar sets my teeth on edge. However, they are a very popular treat here and most certainly part of Iaia’s year in the kitchen!
This recipe made about 90 little doughnuts, which sounds like a barbaric amount, but isn’t, especially when served to a table full of Valencians. Short work was made of these little blobs of pumpkiny, sugary sweetness on Easter Monday.

What you need:ingredients
800g boiled and drained (or roast) pumpkin flesh
about 80g fresh yeast
1 egg
about 750g plain flour
the cooking liquid from the pumpkin (or warm water if you use roast pumpkin)
1½ litres sunflower oil for frying (most of which can be reused later)

What you do:
In a large (really large) bowl or bucket, hand mix the crumbled fresh yeast, pumpkin and beaten egg. Add about 300g of flour and start working it into the orange pulp with energy.  Once the first addition of flour is mixed in, keep adding bit by bit, alternating with small splashes of the cooking liquid until you have used about 750g of flour.mixing1The finished dough is really very soft, so you will end up adding quite a bit of liquid. There is no specific measurement, but the texture before the dough rises is similar to thick mud – the kind that squelches most beautifully between your toes. mixing2 Cover the bowl with a tea towel (Iaia has asked me to point out that hers is from the Australia pavilion at the 1992 Expo Seville, before Oscar had met me) and set it aside for a couple of hours. You will be amazed at how much the mixture rises, all bubbly and spongy with the yeast!leudar

And now comes the complicated bit…

Heat the oil in a large, deep pan. It can’t be too hot, or the doughnuts will burn on the outside and be gluggy in the middle, but it has to be hot enough to fry them quickly, so they don’t come out disgustingly oily. Herminia says that when you drop the test blob in, it should rise immediately to the surface and bubble satisfyingly without spitting. Easy to say – you’ll have to practice a bit to get it right!

To form the doughnuts, grab a fistful of lovely, squishy mix and squeeze it so that a walnut-sized blob spouts from between your thumb and forefinger.  With the two first fingers of your other hand, which you should wet slightly with the leftover cooking water (or any warm water) to avoid sticking, scoop the blob off and immediately plunge the thumb of the scooping hand into the middle of the ball to form the hole.forming nuts As you twist your wrist around, the mixture will threaten to drop off your fingers, but before it does, you will have deftly, and gently, spread your index and ring fingers and drop it into the hot oil. Repeat until the surface of your pan is full of bobbing buñuelos. You will get quicker as you practice.dropping in

Let the doughnuts brown for about 30 seconds before flipping them over. When they are evenly golden, they are ready to be removed from the oil with a slotted spoon and drained on kitchen paper. When draining, make sure you don’t pile them up on top of each other because they will stick and squish.frying

Once you’ve finished cooking (Herminia took about 20 minutes to do the whole batch), serve warm or cooled with a bowl of sugar for everyone to dip into. The cooked doughnuts can also be frozen in single layers and defrosted when needed. Microwave reheating is also possible if, unlike me, you have the technology.eating

Serve with: coffee

Arros d’hivern (winter rice)

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Winter is never very long or arduous in Valencia but there are some days when the cold gets right into your bones and hot, nourishing soupy rice is the only thing that will warm you up.  This is one of the first things I learnt to cook here and one of my favourite rice dishes. It is also incredibly easy!

The cardet (cardoon in English) is delicious but it may be a bit hard to find. If you can’t manage to get your hands on any, just leave it out – there is no need (and no way) to substitute it.

What you need:

Two meaty pork ribs cut into pieces (650g)
A medium-sized swedeingredients
A stick of cardoon
Sweet paprika
One pear tomato
A jar of white beans
A bunch of spinach.
8 small handfuls of white rice (250g)
Enough water to cook the rice and still be soupy
Saffron or turmeric powder*
Olive oil
Salt (season as you go and to your own taste).

 *People have a strange aversion to white rice here. They love to see it coloured yellow. Saffron is bloody expensive and gets lost in this dish, so I usually use turmeric. Otherwise, just leave it white.

What you do:

Peel and chop the swede into bite-sized chunks.  Strip the cardoon of any leaves and if the stringy fibres are particularly thick, strip some off. Chop into mouth-friendly lengths. Slice the tomato in half and grate it onto a plate, discarding the skin. Wash the spinach thoroughly and chop or tear it a bit, so you don’t get giant leaves on your spoon when it comes to eating.
Pour enough oil into a large saucepan to coat the bottom and heat (if your pork is especially fatty, use less olive oil).
Pop the pork into the pan to brown; the browner it gets, the tastier the rice – but don’t burn it!
Put a generous pinch (or a small teaspoon) of sweet paprika into the pan and stir quickly so that it doesn’t stick and burn. After about 30 seconds, add the grated tomato and stir to deglaze the pan.
Pour in enough water to cover the pork, then add the swede and cardoon and top the water up so that everything is generously covered. Bring to a boil.
Cover the saucepan and turn the heat down. Simmer for at least two hours or until the swede and cardoon are cooked through (there are two factors to take into account here; one is that the bigger the pieces, the longer they will take to cook, and the second – and more important – factor is that the longer it simmers, the better the stock will be so no half-hour skimping!).
When the veggies are cooked** and you are ready to eat, check your seasoning and if you are happy with it, turn the heat back up to get a rolling boil before putting the rice in. Stir it around a bit and cover again, so as little stock as possible evaporates. About 10 minutes before the rice is cooked (read the packet – every rice is different, here it takes about 20 minutes to cook through), add the spinach and white beans and give everything a gentle stir.
Ladle into bowls and let sit for five minutes before eating. If you are lucky, you will get a sort of skin over the top, which is proof of a fantastic arros d’hivern!

finished dish

 Serve with: a full-bodied red to help warm those wintery cockles.

 **I usually make a double quantity and at this point, before putting the rice, spinach and beans, take out half the stock, pork and veggies to freeze for another day. It means you will have this delicious rice in just 20 minutes next time!