The creature from the deep

After taking our golden Labrador Sam to the vet this morning for routine jabs we called in at a local café for some tapas.

We enjoyed seafood salad, boquerones (slightly pickled anchovies), tender York ham and a Murcian salad made with sliced onion, tinned tomatoes, tuna and quarters of boiled egg. With lots of fresh crusty bread, olives and frothy café con leche as well, of course.

On the counter was a special treat, all ready to be cut up. This was a big octopus measuring about two feet across and nicely roasted and brown. This is known in Spanish as “pulpo” and is greatly appreciated. When you order, the waiter takes a big pair of scissors and cuts off a piece of leg which he then further cuts into thin slices, each with suckers attached.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009

Sharon´s Boozy Cheer-Up Cake

Finding a bag of dried fruit on a shelf in the larder, the problem then arose of what to do with it. So we invented Sharon´s Boozy Cheer-Up Cake.

First the bag of dried fruit, which included things like apple rings, dried whole apricots and prunes, was soaked overnight and the water thrown away. The fruit swells up and becomes all juicy. In the days before fancy supermarkets dried fruit was a staple ingredient for sweet treats throughout the winter months.

Then the now-soft fruit was put into a tight-lidded container and just covered with sherry from our local bodega and left overnight again. The next day it was all whizzed in the food processor.

Now we turned to our 35-year-old New Zealand cookbook. We bought this when living in Wellington and it is a treasure-trove of ancient colonial recipes. Bet you don´t have recipes for Ladysmith Cake, Khaki Cake, Gruel or Mutton Broth.

Surprisingly, we had all nearly all the ingredients for the traditional Fruit Cake contained in the book.

Ingredients

Eight ounces of butter
Eight ounces of brown sugar (we only had white)
Two tablespoons of Golden Syrup (we used treacle instead)
One tablespoon of marmalade (we had some three-year old home-made)
Five eggs (three of which had to be borrowed from next door)
12 ounces of flour
Pinch of salt
One teaspoon of baking powder
One and a half pounds of mixed fruit (this is where we used our sherry-soaked fruit)
Two ounces of mixed peel
One teaspoon of mixed spice
Half a teaspoon of nutmeg.

Cream the butter and sugar together then add the golden syrup or treacle and the marmalade. Add the well-beaten eggs and the sifted dried ingredients. Then add the fruit and cook in a medium oven for about two and a half hours.

Our cake turned out a bit like a bread pudding, rather than airy-light concoction, but several volunteer samplers agreed that it tasted lovely.

It certainly cheered Sharon up – hence the name.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009.

Time to make a really traditional Christmas cake

“It´s that time of the year again,” says Sharon. “Time to make the Christmas cake. If you make it now there will be plenty of time for it to mature and become more delicious when you tuck into it at Christmas.

“My favourite recipe comes from my old friend, Dorrie, with whom I have sadly lost touch with over the past few years. Dorrie used to live in the Camp but moved to Los Alcázares on the shores of the Mar Menor. She is from England originally and must now be nearly 90.

This is Dorrie´s recipe that has been handed down from her great-grandmother. A bit of calculation suggests that the recipe dates back to the middle of the 19th century, so it is really authentic.

That´s about the time that Christmas, as we know it today, arrived in the United Kingdom. Charles Dickens´ story “A Christmas Carol” was massively popular. The young Queen Victoria married the German Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg in 1840 and it is thought that he introduced the Christmas Tree. Santa Claus is Germany´s patron saint of Children. However, the fat, happy chap that we know today as Father Christmas, with his white beard and red suit, made his first appearance as a Coca Cola advert. The first Christmas commercial Christmas card was printed in 1846 but cards didn´t really catch on until the 1870s. Dorrie´s great grandmother started making this cake when she was married.

The cake is easy to make so get cracking now.

Ingredients.

One and a half ounces of chopped almonds
Three ounces of ground almonds
Six ounces of plain flour and a pinch of salt
One teaspoon of mixed spice
Six ounces of butter
Six ounces of Brown sugar, Barbados is best
Five large eggs
One tablespoon of treacle
Nine ounces of Currants
Six ounces of sultanas
Six ounces of raisins
Three ounces of chopped mixed dried peel
Four ounces of glace cherries, or cherries in syrup
Two ounces of glace pineapple, chopped. If this cannot be found substitute more cherries.
One ounce of angelica (can be omitted)
Grated rind and juice of a large lemon
Juice of an orange
One tablespoon of brandy
One large apple, peeled, cored and finely grated.
One large carrot, finely grated

Mix everything together and cook in your oven, pre-heated to 100C, for more than four hours. When it is cool, wrap tightly in tinfoil and store in a cool place until Christmas so that the flavours can really develop.

“I love this cake. It is always so moist and the fruit is always nice and juicy,” says Sharon. “And it makes you feel as if it is Christmas, so it helps you to get into the festive spirit.”

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©Phillip Bruce 2009.

Keep an eye out for anise biscuits

One of the pleasures of shopping in Spain is that you find plenty of new things to enjoy. One thing worth looking out for is “Tortes de Aciete” which, misleadingly translates as oil tarts.

In fact these are crisp wafer thin biscuits about five inches across made with virgin olive oil, flour sugar, aromatic herbs, and anise. “They crumble as soon as you bite into them but they make an excellent snack with a cup of tea,” says Sharon.

The pack we bought in the supermarket was found with a selection of traditional baked items, such as tarts and dry pastries. The wording on the wrapper says: “Las legitimas y acreditadas tortas de aciete de Ines Rosales.”

Give them a try.

Herbalists have long valued anise, which is native to the Eastern Mediterranean and must not be confused with the Asian star anise. The plant grows to about three feet tall and is very aromatic with a licquorice-like flavour. It has also similar to fennel.

It is a firm favourite in European cookery, and can be found in treats such as Greek dolmas and English aniseed balls and humbug. It is drunk with hot water after meals in India as an aid to digestion. In fact, the herbalists cite it as an important digestive helper. It is also thought to be effective against parasites and to relieve toothache. Aromatherapists say it helps with colds and flues.

Anise is found in many strong alcoholic drinks, including Arab arak, French absinthe, anisette and pastis, Greek ouzou, Italian sambuca and Turks raki.

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© Phillip Bruce 2009.

Enjoying tapas and herbs

This morning we made a trip with friends Brian and Jackie to the town of Fuente Alamo to visit the vet with the papers for our golden Labrador, Sam, to make sure that he is up to date with all his jabs. Everything is fine we were pleased to hear.

Being in Fuente Alamo, of course we took the opportunity to visit a favourite café/bar for morning coffee and tapas. This is a long-established place in a back street with a well worn and comfortable air about it.

Sadly, Sharon was still too full of breakfast to eat anything but she enjoyed her coffee. The rest of us managed to force down a few morsels, including a delicious long thin baguette sliced and with a filling founded on freshly-grated tomatoes on top of which were layered plenty of anchovies and thick slices of goats´ cheese. Croquettes were also ordered, together with tostada con tomate, which is the local favourite of toasted bread served with a big bowl of more freshly grated tomatoes. Of course, we also ordered a dish of olives, the fresh green type that are just split and kept a few weeks in brine. These are quite sharp but have a bite that is appreciated by those who like such things. A basket of hunks of fresh bread completed the table, as did a flask of olive-oil to pour over anything that needed it.

On the way back home, we stopped at a Moroccan shop in La Aljorra that Jackie has discovered. “Have you got fresh coriander?” Jackie asked, the smiling owner looked towards the door and a man walked in carrying several baskets over-flowing with bunches of fresh-cut coriander and mint. The fat bunches were only 60 cents each. We also bought huge fresh oven-baked round loaves that are wonderfully soft.

Sharon said: “I´m going to use the coriander in a white sauce to have with baked potatoes for tonight’s dinner, she said. We´ll also have chopped ham on top and coleslaw on the side. So, a well-balanced and nourishing meal. Simply delicious.”

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©Phillip Bruce 2009.

The Power of Porridge

Today Sharon wore for the first time this year a light cardigan as she went out early. It wasn´t cold but “there was definitely a nip in the air,” she said.

What does colder weather mean? Porridge of course. We´ve recently found a new brand, or new to us at least, of porridge in our local Intermarche supermarket – Flahavan´s – which comes to the Mediterranean all the way from Ireland´s Kilmacthomas, on the River Mahon in County Waterford.

The porridge is lovely and smooth and the family-owned company is immensely proud of its product if the wording on the packet and its website is anything to go by. According to the website, www.flahavans.com, there has been an oat mill at Kilmacthomas since the late 1700s. The river Mahon, which flows from its source in the Comeragh Mountains to the sea at Bonmahon, provided the power to turn the great stone wheels that milled the oats.

Originally, the oatmeal that was produced by milling was heavier than that sold today. In 1935, the family added an oatflaking facility which produced a finer flake that is faster to cook. Now Flahavan´s Progress Oatlets is the leading brand of porridge oats in Ireland. The chairman of the company is a sixth-generation family member. The packet we found at Intermarche is labeled “Flahavan´s Irish Porridge Oats.”

“Flahavans porridge has a distinctive texture and taste because all of the oats used in the making of Flahavan´s are grown locally, chosen from a select panel of growers,” says the company. “The region of Kilmacthomas has its own micro-climate, nestling beneath the shelter of the Comeragh mountains while also being relatively close to the sea. This means that the area does not get very cold winters, which gives a better quality of oat grain.”

Sharon, who suffers from an English upbringing, prefers her porridge with milk and honey. This is sacrilege in the opinion of the Scots half of the household, which holds that it should only be eaten with salt. In the old days in Scotland, it was not unknown for the week´s porridge to be made on a Monday, poured into a drawer and left to set with chunks being cut out for breakfast each morning.

Apparently the tough Scots and Irish were eating the best possible breakfast as porridge has the highest protein content of any cereal. In more modern times that makes it ideal for people trying to lose weight. A diet rich in fibre is said to help prevent heart disease and porridge is good for this, as it reduces blood cholesterol by soaking up the bad stuff. Porridge can be relied on to keep your spirits up: “Eating porridge helps the brain to produce serotonin. Serotonin is a brain transmitter that helps keep our spirits up and our appetites down. Levels of serotonin dip when sunlight is low – i.e. during the winter months and can frequently lead to Seasonal Affective Disorder.”

According to Flahavan´s, famous people who eat porridge include Wallace and Gromit, Big Brother housemates, Nelson Mandela, Bill Gates, Demi Moore, Kate Moss, Calista Flockhart, Tim Henman and Jane Fonda.

Sharon ought to be added to that list as plenty of porridge will be consumed in the Campo in the months to come.

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©Phillip Bruce.

Chocolate biscuit discovery

Sharon has found a new type of chocolate biscuit which she is very keen on.

“They are absolutely yummy and they are smothered in dark chocolate, which is my favourite as opposed to milk chocolate. I am either white or black when it comes to my chocolate tastes.

“The biscuits are made by Fontaneda, and it says ´Digestive Noir Con Naranja´ on the box. They are flavoured with orange when you bite into them which goes wonderfully well with the black chocolate. They are my new favourite when having a nice cup of tea.”

And you can feel virtuous while eating these chocolate/orange treats as it says on the box that they are a good source of fibre and a new recipe contains 30 per cent less saturated fat than previously. Fontaneda has been making biscuits in Spain since 1881 and it says on the packet that it carries out more than 2.5 million quality controls every year to ensure the highest quality in its products.

So, you can have an extra biscuit if you like and it will be doing you good.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009