Roasted vegetables turn out great

Last night we made the roast vegetable dish recommended by Rosa, of El Corte Ingles, and it was delicious. (See article below “A real Spanish salad.”)

A large roasting tray was chosen and into it went a couple of purple and white striped aubergines, a large courgette, a red pepper, a green pepper and four fat tomatoes. The very tiniest bit of oil was spread across the bottom of the tray first to stop sticking.

A visit to the front garden produced fresh sage, rosemary and another herb that looks a bit like chives but is something else – must get it identified (see picture). These were chopped finely and scattered over and among the vegetables. The pan was put into the oven, uncovered, and roasted for about 45 minutes. About 20 minutes from the end a handful of button mushrooms was added.

The pan was removed from the oven and allowed to cool. Then the skin easily peeled off from the peppers and tomatoes. The flesh was scooped out from the aubergines and courgette. Everything was sliced and mixed together with a splodge of olive oil.

The vegetables were served with some home-made cheese quiche.

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©Phillip Bruce

Super suet makes a comeback

In days gone by British cookbooks were full of recipes featuring suet. Those were the type of cookbooks that never mentioned things like garlic, broccoli or strangely-coloured lettuce.

Doing a bit of reorganization in the Campo larder we found a couple of boxes of Atora light suet and went in search of recipes. Atora has its own excellent website, which can be found at www.atora.net. The larder search also produced a packet of Whitworths luxury mixed dried fruit soaked in rum. The fruit included sultanas, currants, seedless raisins, chopped pineapple, apricots, citrus peel, glace cherries and, of course, rum.

Putting the suet and the fruit together led to an idea for a traditional steamed pudding.

Ingredients, to serve six people: 150g or six ounces of self-raising flour, 75g or 3 ounces of Atora suet, 75g or three ounces of caster sugar, one beaten egg, milk to mix. 75g or three ounces of dried mixed fruit, or currants, or sultanas or raisins.

Get ready a big ovenproof bowl that can hold abut 750ml or one and a half pints, a sheet of greaseproof paper and kitchen aluminum foil.

Mix the flour, the suet and the sugar together. Put in the egg and mix up with a bit of milk to make soft dough. Then add the dried fruit.

Put the mix into the bowl and cover the surface with greaseproof paper. Put aluminum foil over the top of the bowl and tie around with string to stop the water getting in during cooking. Put the bowl into a large pan with water that comes about three quarters of the way up the bowl. Then bring to the boil, turn down a little, put the lid on the pan and steam for two hours.

Our pudding came out absolutely delicious and very light. Sharon said: “It was yummy, especially the cherries. The fruit was all soft and juicy and was spotted throughout the pudding. There was fruit in every spoonful.”

According to Atora, one the earliest mentions of suet is made in a recipe dated 1617. It was a key ingredient for “Cambridge Pudding” which was served to students in the famous university city. From the end of the 17th century suet puddings really became popular, often containing whole apples or other fruit. Meat puddings were also made using left-over minced meat, mixed with egg, milk and spices.

Suet is actually beef or mutton fat, especially the hard fat found around the loins and kidneys. It was complicated and time consuming to prepare but a Frenchman living in Manchester, Gabriel Hugon, set up the first factory to manufacture shredded suet. In 1893 he opened the Atora suet factory in Openshaw, Manchester. The new product was an immediate hit with cooks.

The word “Atora” is thought to come from the Spanish word for a bull, toro. And this may be true as Atora suet comes from beef cattle. Wagons carrying Atora traveled the country pulled by pairs of huge Hereford bullocks. Captain Scott took suet on his trek to the Antarctic in the 1900s. Today more than 2,300 tons of Atora is sold in Britain each year.

Normally, we use Atora to make delicious dumplings for stews and casseroles, popping them in about 20 minutes before the end of cooking. The 2,300 tons would make more than one million dumplings a day.

With the difficult economic times currently being experienced there is a big interest in traditional dishes. So get cooking with suet.

For our steamed suet pudding we used Atora Light, shredded vegetable suet, which has 30 per cent less fat than the traditional type. This is ideal for vegetarians as it is made from vegetable oils, wheat flour and pectin.

Next we are going to try making proper steak and kidney pudding.

A tip is that you should always top up the steaming pud pan with boiling water. If you use cold water the pudding will turn out heavy.

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©Phillip Bruce

Enjoying a leisurely lunch

Lunch should be long and leisurely not rushed. The people who live around the Mediterranean have always appreciated this and in Cartagena the long lunch is still thriving.

A few days ago we enjoyed a lunch at the Café Marin, in Calle Angel Bruno, where the cooking was great and the waitress, Catie, was so friendly that we felt as if we were eating in someone’s home. The Café Marin is in the Ensanche district, which was formerly the giant lagoon that protected the back of ancient Cartagena. This was filled in during the early 20th century and is now a popular residential area.

We arrived some time after 1pm and Catie pushed two tables on the pavement, or sidewalk, together so that there was plenty of room for Sharon in her wheelchair. Being virtuous, water, fizzy and still, was ordered rather than wine and the menu was explained. Waitresses and waiters in Cartagena have fantastic memories and they give details of everything on offer and answer all questions.

Sharon decided to have pollo asado, which is oven-roast chicken, and I chose albondigas, which is the traditional meatball dish of Spain. The world albondigas is derived from the Arabic word “bunduqah”, with “al” meaning “the.” Our friend Graham also had the meatballs and his wife, Liz, chose paella.

First to arrive was a huge salad, with lovely fresh tomatoes, lettuce and olives, together with a big basket of fresh bread. We tucked in.

Then the main courses arrived and they were all fantastic. Sharon´s chicken was mouth-wateringly tender and served with oven-roast potatoes and juices from the pan. The albondigas were delicious and served as a kind of stew dotted with little cubes of roast potato. The paella was rich with the colour of saffron and Catie brought a fresh lemon for Liz to squeeze over.

Full to bursting, we all agreed we could not eat any more. But, then Catie insisted that the inside of the café be inspected. In fact, Café Marin is not just a café, but a bakery and patisserie as well and the shop is full of fantastically tempting treats. We ordered a plate of small sweet delicacies, a couple of big glazed strawberry tarts and an apple flan, which were brought out to the table. Everything disappeared in a very short time. Another specialty of Café Marin is the take-away meals that are very popular with the locals who call in a constant stream to pick up something tasty for lunch or dinner.

We can´t remember what time we finished lunch, enjoying coffees, of course, after the desserts had disappeared. Who cares? That´s how lunch should be.

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A real Spanish salad

Sharon says: “Sometimes people ask me how I know so much about Spanish food. I have to say it is because the thing I am most famous for is talking. And I talk to just about anybody and everybody I meet.

“People who know me will know this.

“This morning I was in the great El Corte Ingles department store in Cartagena to pick up my bits and bobs. I like to go there because there disabled parking underground right next to the automatic door entrance. There is also a Post Office. And there is no siesta. The café is excellent and the staff is always very helpful. There are fantastic toilets and the place is always clean. Just like department stores should be.

“Anyway, I was in there this morning buying some stationery and I got talking to Rosa who was serving me. She is a food expert and loves the country food of Murcia. She is originally from Águilas which is down the Murcia coast to the south and is famous for its seafood.

“Rosa told me about a great way to make roasted vegetable salad. Take a big oven tray and fill it with aubergines, red and green peppers, tomatoes and plenty of chopped garlic. Roast it all in the oven, take out and let it all cool down. Take the skins off and arrange on a serving dish before sprinkling with olive oil.

“So, of course, I am all set to try this at the weekend. Bear in mind this could be served as a starter or a side dish with a main meal.”

What nice people you meet in El Corte Ingles.

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Beautiful bread

The baker in our village has been there for decades and he says it is the only place in Europe that proper bread can be baked. Go a few miles north or south and the weather and conditions are hopeless for good baking.

A big old oven is used and the loaves go in on special long-handled wooden shovels to be baked to perfection. The bread is sold all around the Campo by little vans but it was only on returning after our break that we found that the baker has opened a shop.

The place is beautifully decorated, with images of the tools of baking and the oven itself on the walls and when Sharon popped in for a look around today she found a steady stream of customers. As well as bread there were savoury pastries, or empanadas, and a selection of cream-filled treats.

On asking what round baked circles of pastry were, she was told that this was the same pastry that is folded over to make empanadas. Apparently, it is broken up with the fingers and eaten like crisps. “It´s great with cold beer,” said a lady customer.

Sharon chose a huge round loaf which was still warm from the oven and hunks went very well with our home-made chicken soup lunch.

“The other thing I treated myself to was a bagful of freshly-baked mini-croissants that are stuffed full of chocolate,” said Sharon. “They are delicious. What a treat.”

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©Phillip Bruce. www.sharonskitchenworld.blogspot.com

Where did apples come from?

Sharon continues to enjoy the apples from the little tree in her huerta, or kitchen garden. These apples, like all apples, are probably descended from the wild mountains of Tian Shan, or “Heavenly Mountains”, which straddle Kazakhstan and China.

That seems a very long way from Sharon´s small garden but Oxford University researchers claim that study of the DNA of British apples, such as Granny Smith and Cox´s Orange Pippins, confirms the theory that the first edible sweet apples on earth grew in the Tian Shan mountains, at heights of more than 6,000 feet, or 2,000 meters.

Biologist Barry Juniper, says that descendant trees of the “Garden of Eden” fruit are still growing on the high mountainsides, although they are threatened by modern development. Apparently, the DNA discovery has surprised the experts. They had thought that apples were hybrids of different fruits. Bears were thought to have assisted their spread as they love eating sweet, ripe fruit. The resulting waste products spread the seeds widely. The first cultivated fruit orchards were set up around the Persian Gulf and later soldiers of the Roman legions brought apples to Europe.

Cartagena was a Roman city for many hundreds of years and Sharon says she is now going to tell everyone that the ancestors of her little tree arrived with a legionnaire.

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Battered apples very tasty

The rain has swelled the apples in Sharon´s front garden. These apples grow on a small tree of unknown origin and although they don´t grow very big they are delicious.

We haven´t given the tree any fertilizer or sprayed it so the fruit counts as 100 per cent organic. The apples have to be shared with the birds and bugs but there are usually enough left for us to enjoy. With the heavy rain, many had fallen to the ground and when things dried up a bit we went out and scooped them up. Careful peeling and cutting was required but the end result was a pan of delicious stewed apples.

Delicious natural fruit doesn´t look like the perfect factory farm specimens in the supermarket but our apples are sweet and juicy. “I´m more than happy,” said Sharon as she tucked into a plate of the stewed apples with fat raisins.

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