Spanish Chicken, Lemon and Thyme

Spanish chicken recipes, delicious for the barbeque, cooked over hot coals chicken is up there with the best of the other usual suspects, skewered over a kebab, cooked in steaks, marinated, flame grilled and all those other recipes you might tend to experiment over the barbeque with. Like all meat marinades they need to pack a punch otherwise the flavour can be lost during cooking. Strong marinades using lemon, hot mustard and bossy herbs such as thyme hold their ground over the grill

Introduce a sharp knife, red peppers, serrano ham, butter, garlic, tomatoes and an army of cocktail sticks and you have the makings of a barbequed stuffed chicken breast which will separate the 'that was nice' to the 'that was damn tasty!' all with very little effort.

It always intrigues us that here in rural Spain expats actually go out of their way to find a supermarket which is an hours drive away and by pass the local village down the road which has its local butchers, fish shops, and green grocers all of which offer fresh produce - just seems odd! Each to their own I suppose but for us you can forget Mercadona, Lidl etc as our man 'JUAN JO' picks his own veg from his plot which we pass on the way to work every day, it has to be said you don't get fresher than than that and tomatoes are to die for... ugly as sin but sweet and aromatic like you can't even describe.

Anyway, back to barbequed chicken... Bit of  a French influence with this one as we used a generous few tablespoons of Dijon mustard given to us by a visiting friend from the Dordogne. Think its hot, its not!, mustard is a great one for the barbeque  - especially over chicken. Here's the recipe:

You will need:

1 whole chicken, separated into thighs, drummers, wings and breasts
250ml hot Dijon mustard
4 cloves garlic
Juice of 2 lemons
Bunch of thyme

How to cook:

1. Peel and crush the garlic and place in a terracotta cazuela, big enough to hold all of the chicken in one layer
2. Add the mustard, lemon juice and thyme, pulling off the leaves but putting the sticks in too.  Mix well
3. Season the chicken lightly with salt and add to the marinade, mix well to ensure all the meat is covered and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours, turning occasionally.
4. Remove the chicken  from the marinade, keeping the remainder handy for basting and cook on the BBQ for around 20-25 minutes until the chicken is done.  Every time you turn the chicken over, spoon some more marinade over the meat.

Serve with salad and minted boiled potatoes

Pan Fried Lamb Steaks with Rosemary

Very quick and easy recipe for lamb steaks with rosemary. Have your butcher cut a rear leg of lamb into inch thick steaks, the meat can then be marinated, pan fried or barbequed. This recipe is for a quick lamb lunch and only takes a few minutes once the marinade has worked its flavours into the steaks.

Ingredients: (serves 2)

2 Thick lamb steaks

2 Sprigs fresh rosemary

2 Garlic cloves

Sea salt

Cracked black pepper

Olive oil

How to cook:

1. Crush the garlic cloves and remove the leaves from the rosemary, add to a pestle with the salt, pepper and a good slug of olive oil. Bash and mix well.

2. Place the lamb steaks into a cazuela and pour over the marinade making sure the lamb is covered on both sides. Marinade for 30 minutes (or up to 4 hours)

3. Place the lamb steaks into a hot frying pan and fry for 6 minutes each side or until lamb is cooked to your preference.

4. Serve with fresh salad and boiled potatoes.

Warm Bean and Potato Salad

Spanish cuisine by its simplistic nature lends itself to a whole variety of dishes, tapas bars at this time of year during the holidays and tourist season are competing for business and during August the tapas do tend to get better (at least in our local village they do!)

Tapas bars are also a great source of inspiration for recipe ideas and in the name of a little bit of 'research' it does sometimes pay to have a few cold beers to discover what tapas turn up with them, always different every time this is half the fun of tapas as it is a mystery what food you will end up with next, the sense of anticipation... Bar hopping with friends can result in a large bowl of something being placed in the middle of the table, usually accompanied with bread and the required number of forks so everyone can dig in (Spanish meatballs are a classic example of this). Terracotta cazuelas are normally used as they keep the food hot and are also good for serving all sorts of other dishes including a warm bean and potato salad...

Ingredients:

3-4 Potatoes
300g Green beans
1 medium onion
olive oil
salt

How to Cook:

1. Peel the potatoes and chop into bite sized pieces, rinse in cold water.
2. Peel and roughly chop the onion into big chunks. 
3. Top and tail the beans and cut into lengths of about 4cms.
4. Place the onions, potatoes and beans into a large saucepan of salted water.  Bring to the boil and then lower the heat and cook gently for 15 minutes until the vegetables are tender.
5. Drain and place into a large serving bowl, season with salt and pepper and generously drizzle with olive oil.  Stir gently to evenly coat the vegetables and serve.

You can also add a hard boiled egg and tomato roughly chopped

Cuttlefish and Red Pepper Pinchos

Barbequed Cuttlefish Tapas

Cuttlefish or 'sepia' as its known in Spain is available from our local fishmonger every Tuesday and Friday, you buy the rings but we think the full cuttlefish is far better as you get the whole head - tentacles the lot which, when cooked look great in any dish.

Last weekend saw us come home with four big cuttlefish so it was time to light the barbeque and get cooking some tapas. The big late lunch was a Fideua, a paella with pasta instead of rice of which cuttlefish was going to be an ingredient but given the size of the monsters we had bought there was quite a bit left over so out came the kebab skewers and a red pepper.

Cuttlefish doesn't take very long to cook, perhaps a little more than squid but over hot brasa it takes no time at all, keeping things simple the cuttlefish was paired with red pepper and was seasoned before getting a grilling. The whole process from prep to plate - less than 10 minutes.

To add additional flavour to the kebabs a few splashes of 50 year old sherry vinegar were added and we have to say it did work very well indeed and an easy way to create some typically Spanish tapas before a main meal. a sherry vinegar balsamic glaze was also used to perk up the squid, both add a pleasant sharpness and compliment the good old molluscs very well indeed.