C O N T E N T S

Introduction Spring

Spring vegetables, Cheese, Eggs, Preserved fi sh,

Lamb, Sweet and savoury pastries, Chocolate

Summer

Summer vegetables, Fresh fi sh, Summer fruits

Autumn

Mushrooms, Chestnuts, Pumpkins, Pimenton,

Seafood and shellfi sh, Beef, Rice, Saffron, Apples

and pears

Winter

Brassicas, Olives, Pulses, Pork and ham, Spanish

sausages, Offal, Poultry and game, Winter fruits

and nuts

Spanish wine and other drinks

Directory

Index

6

10

62

108

154

210

218

220

1

UK Specifi cationsPublication Date: October 09Format: 250x210mm; hb plcExtent: 224 pagesWord Count: 50,000 wordsPhotographs: over 200 colour photographsISBN; 978-1-85626-849-3Price: £19.99Rights: World, Kyle Cathie

US Specifi cationsPublication date: 2010Format: 9 inches x 8 ½ inches; clothISBN: 978-1-906868-09-3 Price: $32.95

Kyle Cathie Limited122 Arlington Road, London,NW1 7HPwww.kylecathie.com

Distributed by NBN Books4501 Forbes Blvd, Suite 200Lanham, MD 20706Phone: (301) 459 3366 www.nbninternational.com

Text copyright © 2009 José Pizarro and Vicky BennisonDesign copyright © 2009 Kyle Cathie Limited

(Dual measurements and terminology have been used in this blad, but there will be separate editions of the fi nal book for the UK and US.)

2 332

Season the kid with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a big casserole, add the kid and the peppers and fry until the joints are browned.

Remove the peppers and pound them in a pestle and mortar with the garlic cloves to make a paste. (If you are using paprika instead of the peppers, simply add this to the mortar with the garlic.) Mix the wine with this paste and stir it into the meat.

Add the bay leaves then cover the casserole with a close-fi tting lid and simmer slowly for about 1 hour, until the kid is tender. Add water or more wine from time to time to keep the meat moist.

KID STEWMy Mum’s Way

These days, cabrito or kid (young goat) is very diffi cult to get hold of in my village. My mother has to ask around about a week in advance of when she wants to cook this stew, which she likes to make for a family get-together or celebration. You should try sourcing it from farmers or butchers you trust; or, if you live in a big city like London or New York, check out your local Caribbean store. Failing that, lamb makes a good substitute.

Choricero peppers are medium-size peppers that have an intense sweet taste; they are always used dry, to add fl avours to stews or soups. If you cannot fi nd them, use mild smoked paprika.

SPRING

Serves 81 whole kid, (approx. 5kg/ 10lbs.), jointedsalt and freshly ground black pepper6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil4 choricero peppers, or 1 tablespoon pimentón dulce (mild smoked paprika)4 garlic cloves1 bottle dry white wine2 bay leaves

SERVE WITH

A GREEN SALAD

44 5

TOMATO SALADwith Pimentón de la Vera

The fi rst time I came to London, my dad and I visited Borough Market, where we bought some cherry tomato plants – something that we didn’t have in our village. Now they are a yearly feature in his vegetable garden. The best time to pick tomatoes is early in the morning, when they still smell earthy sweet.

This salad is great with grilled fi sh. In the Brindisa restaurants, we like to use different coloured tomatoes, which looks very pretty and of course tastes amazing.

500g/18oz. tomatoes, ripe but not soft1 garlic clove, fi nely chopped½ red onion, fi nely sliced1 teaspoon pimentón agridulce (bittersweet smoked paprika)4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil2 tablespoons cabernet sauvignon red wine vinegar1 sprig oregano, leaves strippedsalt and pepper, to taste

Slice the tomatoes and arrange the pieces artfully on a plate. Sprinkle the garlic and red onion over the tomatoes, followed by the pimentón.

Whisk the oil and vinegar and pour this dressing over the tomatoes. Finish off with some salt and pepper and a scattering of oregano leaves. Leave for 5 minutes to let the fl avours develop before serving.

MELON GAZPACHO

We’re all familiar with gazpacho made with tomato and cucumber; but in Spain the name covers lots of different chilled bread soups, all of them delicious. In my area of Extremadura, for example, we have our own version known either as gazpacho extremeño or en trozos, which means ‘in pieces’: the ingredients are chopped up instead of being whizzed in a processor, resulting in a chunky rather than a smooth soup. This is a fabulously refreshing soup made with melon, which isn’t so unusual when you think that tomatoes are fruit, too.

When making a chunky rather than a smooth gazpacho, it’s even more important than usual to use the most fl avoursome ingredients you can get hold of.

Serves 4½ small mild white onion, fi nely diced2 beefsteak tomatoes, deseeded and diced1 small melon, deseeded and diced1 long green (bell) pepper, deseeded and diced1 tablespoon caster (superfi ne) sugar5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil3 tablespoons sherry vinegar1 litre/4½ cups water100g/3½oz. white bread, in chunkssalt and pepper, to taste

Simply mix all the ingredients together in a glass bowl, cover, and chill for at least 4 hours – to let the fl avours develop and to ensure that the soup is properly cold.

SUMMER

76

Despite the countryside being fl ecked with fl owers from January onwards, I don’t think spring has arrived until I have picked my fi rst wild asparagus. It is a yearly reminder, after the store cupboard reliance of winter, how food tastes best when it’s in season and better still, freshly picked.

The hens start laying eggs again, right on cue to make a delicious asparagus revueltos, or scrambled eggs. And my Dad’s vegetable patch starts to produce baby broad beans and artichokes. These, simmered with asparagus and a little onion, make the best vegetable stew. Lent used to mean giving up meat and it is certainly no hardship with dishes like this.

Fresh goat and sheep cheeses start appearing, and it’s a reminder to me, a commit-ted meat eater, to look forward to kid and lamb; the tender fl esh is brilliant stewed, roasted, grilled – and barbequed. I can never decide which way I like it best. Well I can, I like it best when my mother cooks it.

Mushrooms * Chestnuts * Pumpkins * Onions and garlic * Pimentón de la Vera * Seafood and shellfish *

Beef * Rice * Saffron * Apples and pears

In Britain, the colours of autumn are browns, golds and reds. We get these colours in Spain, too, but whereas the UK fades beneath cloudy days, the sky in Spain returns to blue again after the heat-sapping white of summer. Appetites return, and recipes that I want to cook become more robust and warming.

Now is when the peppers used to make pimentón de la Vera are harvested and smoked in Extremadura, while over in La Mancha farmers pick the saffron

crocus. I cannot imagine cooking without these spices.

There is the gentle sport of looking for mushrooms, although some years this doesn’t happen if the weather has been too dry. The chestnuts, however, can always be relied upon, and they make a wonderful sweet earthy addition to stews and soups.

Shellfi sh, such as mussels and razor clams, come back into season, so I am a happy man as the nights draw in.

A U T U M N

8 9

Pimentón de la Vera is one of my favourite spices: just one whiff of its smoky sharpness and I feel hungry. Pimentón is the Spanish word for paprika, the vibrant, rust-red spice made by pulverising dried peppers. But Pimentón de la Vera is particularly special: it is smoked, and is made solely in La Vera valley, about an hour’s drive from my family home.

Peppers (pimientos) grow easily all over Spain, but the peppers from Extremadura are special, thanks to how they were introduced to the country. Spanish conquistadors (several of who came from Extremadura) brought them back from Mexico in the 16th century. The peppers, along with potatoes and tomatoes, were a gift for the king and queen of Spain. Of course, the monarchs never got their own hands dirty, and instead gave the new vegetables to the monasteries, which became the custodians – and cultivators – of such discoveries.

One such monastery was in Yuste, in La Vera valley, where the monks didn’t just cultivate the peppers, but also dried them and ground them into a powder, or pimentón. Eventually, the crop was adopted by local farmers, though it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that the farmers began growing their peppers on a large scale and processing them into paprika. This spice is now La Vera’s main source of income.

Dotted beside the pepper-growing fi elds in La Vera are little smokehouses. These two-storey buildings look normal on the outside, but inside the walls are totally black. In autumn, strings of fresh peppers are hung up in the rafters on the fi rst fl oor, and then smoked over smouldering

holm oak fi res lit on the ground fl oor below. The peppers remain in the smokehouse for around two weeks. As well as imbuing the fruit with a heavenly mellow fl avour, this smoking process almost completely dehydrates the peppers and ensures that they stay fi ery red rather than become a dull brown colour.

The peppers are then pulverised and ground to a soft powder. Most of the paprika is packed into large sacks destined for the sausage (embutido) and cured meats industry. Cooks buy the spice in pretty tins in varying sizes.

There are three versions of pimentón de la Vera – sweet and mild (dulce), bittersweet and medium-hot (agridulce), and hot (picante) – made from different varieties of pepper. It is up to you how to use them, but in Spain the hot version tends to be used in winter soups and spicy chorizos. The sweet version has an extraordinary affi nity with potatoes and fi rm-fl eshed white meat such as octopus, rabbit and chicken. The bittersweet pimentón, meanwhile, fi nds its way into game and bean stews.

PIMENTÓN DE LA VERA

AUTUMN

8

10

Use a big pan or casserole to heat the oil over a medium to high heat. Fry the garlic for about 3 minutes, until it turns golden, then add the tomatoes and cook until the juices have reduced.

If you are using large, fl at-capped fi eld mushrooms, take a teaspoon and scrape out the brown gills – they will colour the rice and make it look unappetising. Pink-gilled mushrooms don’t need this treatment. Slice the mushroom caps and stalks into 2cm/1-inch slices. Cut the sausages into 2cm/1-inch slices.

Stir in the mushrooms and sausage slices, and fry the mixture for another 3 minutes. Turn up the heat and add the rice, giving everything a good stir, then pour in the wine. The mixture will bubble nicely; let the alcohol evaporate before adding the stock.

Season with salt to taste, give everything another stir, then turn the heat down. Leave to simmer gently until the rice is cooked, about 18–20 minutes.

When the rice is very nearly done, add the langoustines. They’ll take about 5 minutes to cook, but remember they will continue to cook in the rice even after the pan has been taken off the heat.

Scatter the parsley over the rice and serve immediately.

ARROZ CALDOSORice with Mushrooms and Langoustines

If you’ve never made paella because it sounds a bit complicated, this arroz caldoso or soupy rice is for you – it’s very easy to do and tastes fantastic.

It is an adaptation of a caldoso that I came across in Catalonia, which featured lobster, the local fresh pork sausages called butifarra, and saffron milk cap mushrooms which are a pretty yellow colour and have a dense fl esh. If you can fi nd these ingredients that’s great! But if you’re heading to your local shops and not Barcelona, just make sure to source the best plain pork sausages (no herbs or spices, please), really good-quality stock, and meaty mushrooms. If you cannot fi nd Spanish paella rice, use risotto rice instead.

autumn

Serves 45 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil2 large garlic cloves, chopped400g/14oz. tinned chopped tomatoes200g fi eld mushrooms4 large free-range pork sausages 250g/1¼ cups paella rice, (preferably Calasparra)6 tablespoons dry white wine1 litre/4½ cups chicken or fi sh stock8 langoustines or jumbo prawns (shrimp), rawhandful of fl at-leaf parsley, chopppedsalt

11

12