Cocina Española

Yesterday I met my friend Beccy for breakfast at Nama raw vegan foods restaurant in Notting Hill, to try something different. I had the ‘porridge,’ a mix of fresh mature coconut, dates, almonds, apples, vanilla and spices, topped with cocoa nibs, hemp seeds and blueberries, and served with coconut milk. Beccy had the savoury crepe, filled with marinated mushrooms, tomato relish, greens, caramelised onions, fennel and cashew cheese. The food was beautifully presented and tasted delicious and super healthy.

After a mooch around the London West Bank Gallery and local shops, we started to feel hungry again and were tempted into El Pirata Detapas, by their lunch deal of two tapas, bread and wine for a tenner each. I was concerned at first, thinking the restaurant was another branch of El Pirata of Mayfair, where I had an awful dining experience. We were there for a work Christmas party, so the tapas were bog standard and mass catered, and my salad starter came with some extra protein in the form of a bug. Luckily, this restaurant is not related, but is one of Gordon Ramsay’s favourite Spanish restaurants in the country. We shared mushroom croquettes, fried aubergine with honey, mackerel with a cheese sauce and roasted figs with cheese foam. The food was great but far too rich for my tastes now.

I cooked my own Spanish food earlier in the week, a seafood paella. I make this dish quite a lot using the simple recipe on the back of the paella rice packet. I vary the ingredients, almost always adding seafood and vegetables, often chicken and occasionally chorizo.

On the same night, my brother moved home from Madrid, where he had been living for the past 18 months. Before he lived there I had only visited Spain for cheap beach holidays and didn’t have a great opinion of the country, but since he’s been there I have been to Madrid three times, as well as Barcelona and Granada. I now have a much greater appreciation of Spain and would really like to see more of the country, particularly Valencia and Seville. The below photo is of my family in Granada, taken at Las Tomasas restaurant overlooking The Alhambra, which provided better views than food.

I don’t eat Spanish food a lot back home, but occasionally ate at average chain restaurant La Tasca or my preferred choice of Pix, a pintxos bar. I prefer to eat full meals than pick at food, so I don’t favour tapas, but visiting Spain opened my eyes to more authentic Spanish eating. On my first visit to Madrid I discovered that in most bars drinks are served with a tapa, a snack to enjoy with the drink. Larger portions of tapas are known as racions.

My favourites are tortilla, chorizo and garlic mushrooms. My main problem in Spain is that everything is served with bread, often even a tortilla is wedged inside a roll. There is also usually a lack of vegetables with main dishes or on tapas menus, though one traditional restaurant in Madrid, La Sanabresa, offered a wide range of vegetable dishes, though most were extremely garlicky, another key Spanish ingredient. That restaurant offered a ‘menu del dia’ which can often be found in restaurants in Spanish cities. These menus offer great value meals, usually three courses with bread and wine for less than €10. I do enjoy Spanish desserts, particularly crema Catalana and flan, but I never enjoy churros as much as expected and almost break my teeth when I try turron!

A special experience in Madrid was our visit to Botin, the oldest restaurant in the world (according to the Guinness World Records). The kitchen has rows of suckling pigs lined up on show, which are then roasted and served, head and all. This follows a starter of garlic soup and ice cream is served to finish. The restaurant has a great atmosphere and you can have a look around the old wine cellars too.

Following my enjoyment of Madrid, I went on a girls’ holiday to Barcelona. I discovered more types of Spanish culinary delights. As well as trying more common tapas style restaurants, we had two meals at Bilbao Berria, which offered pintxos style eating. A range of individual tapas are laid out on the counter and you can choose as many as you want, then pay per item at the end. One drawback is that again bread is a common theme, however it stops you having to decide what to share between the group if there are fussy eaters. The first Bilbao Berria branch outside of Spain has now been opened in London (Lower Regent Street) by Masterchef The Professionals winner Ash Mair. My favourite meal in Barcelona was at traditional restaurant Cal Boter, which served delicious Catalan food, juicy meats and creamy desserts, in a lovely local setting away form the hustle and bustle of the city centre. We also enjoyed our fair share of sangria. Although I’m not a fan of red wine, I am partial to sangria or a glass of tinto de verrano (essentially a red wine spritzer).

My most recent visit to Spain was a family holiday, collecting my brother from Madrid and going on to Granada, a beautiful city. Our first meal, at Seis Peniques, was probably my worst restaurant experience ever, with bland soup, gristly paella, tough meat and limp chips served by an extremely rude waiter. The fresh seafood at Noray and authentic racions at Ocana were much more enjoyable. However, the highlight was our exquisite meal at Carmen de San Miguel. A delightful walk through the back streets brought us to the restaurant with beautiful views over the city and Sierra Nevada. The tapas sounded amazing and lived up to our expectations. There was the surprising pairing of rabbit with lemon sorbet, fresh thinly sliced octopus carpaccio, creamy goats cheese with sweet marmalade and a modern twist on the traditional eggs, potato and chorizo dish.

Back in Madrid I had my first try of Senegalese food, a huge plate of tender lamb and vegetables, with sauce and rice for only €6 for two. Of course, there was more than just Spanish food on offer in all the cities, with great Italian food at A Gianni in Barcelona, Arabic meze packed with flavour at Shukran Casa Arabe and awesome burgers at Mad Café, both in Madrid. There were also delightful cakes on offer at cafes Mar de Cava in Barcelona and Los Porfiados in Madrid. I hope to do a road trip around Spain one day and take in more of the culture, sceneries and food that the country has to offer.

Deliciously different

I needed a fresh start this week to kick start some much needed weight loss. I’d been following food blogger Deliciously Ella on Instagram, after hearing about her through friends, and bought her new app last week. She uses a vegan whole foods diet to help with an illness. I’m not about to become vegan anytime soon but the recipes sound and look delicious. The app has a detox section and I thought I could use it for inspiration.

http://deliciouslyella.co.uk/

I don’t believe in detox diets as such, our livers do that job for us, but I wanted to shake things up a bit so I thought trying something different could help. The main changes to my usual way of eating were dairy free breakfasts, eating bigger morning meals and smaller dinners, and eating less meat. I did have to start adding in meat and fish here and there though and have a couple of protein bars, because I was still lifting weights and my protein count was too low. I favoured Quest bars that week, as they are my favourite higher protein pre-gym snack (20g for a 200 calorie bar).

My first DE recipe was before the ‘detox’ week began and was my Sunday night supper. I love porridge and have it a lot, not just for breakfast. I’d recently started seeing lots of recipes and photos of baked oatmeal, which I’d not previously tried, but it looked like a delicious treat, a cross between porridge and my favourite pudding, crumble. DE’s baked oatmeal was made with bananas and blueberries (I didn’t have raisins). To be honest, I was a little disappointed. It was a bit too dry for my tastes, not the creamy oatmeal I love. Plus as much as I adore blueberries, my new obsession, I don’t like them warm. Sticking to normal porridge in future, which is a lot quicker and easier to make luckily!

On the first morning, I had a smoothie for breakfast. I could never do a full on smoothie or juice diet but I was interested to see how I would cope on having one in the mornings. I expected to struggle a lot with hunger, even more so because I had to drink it at home and therefore was having breakfast an hour earlier than usual. I started with the healthiest sounding smoothie on the app, the apple, pear, avocado and spinach detox smoothie. It looked like the unappetising green sludge found on most health freak’s Instagram feeds but to be fair it was pretty delicious. Very sweet from the fruit and creamy from the avocado (I discovered the joy of avocados in smoothies in Marrakesh last year, where it was combined with dates and almonds). Did it ‘make me feel beautiful?’ No Ella, I enjoyed it but it left me ravenous and anxiously awaiting my next meal.

That next meal was a rainbow salad with houmous and sunflower seeds. This was not dissimilar to my usual lunches, as I tend to opt for salads, though it did make me think about the variety of vegetables I could add and I wouldn’t normally have houmous so that was a nice change. The seeds and red pepper added crunch against the soft spinach and creamy houmous and avocado, and made it more satisfying to eat.

For dinner I had the warm sweet potato, mushroom and spinach salad. This was delicious for a simple meal and a photographic winner. The spices and apple cider vinegar (a new purchase) added plenty of flavour but I was already getting in a panic about protein so I added some prawns. Just to note here, that I am not protein mad, but I do heavy weight lifting and therefore must aim for a target level in order to maintain and grow my muscle mass. I was only at around 30g from the other meals so needed a boost.

For two breakfasts I made almond and cashew yoghurt. The yoghurt was made by soaking and blending nuts with dates and water. I added a little too much water to mine and it wasn’t thick enough but it had a lovely sweet taste. I topped mine with blueberries and some dried fruit and seeds. On the second day I also added cocoa nibs, which I had impulse bought in Holland and Barretts. Yuk! On their own they were very bitter but the yoghurt covered up the taste. Again, I did find myself getting hungry before lunch but having eaten twice my normal breakfast calories. I am usually much more satisfied from a simple bowl of porridge without all the faff of preparing and blending.

     

For the rest of my lunches I just had usual salads, but carried on with DE recipes for breakfast and dinner. The next breakfast was a banana and blueberry smoothie. The addition of oats, flaxseed and chia seeds to the fruit, along with some almond butter, made this much more satisfying than the previous smoothie and even more delicious. It didn’t look quite as bright and vibrant as Ella’s though!

For dinner I made a butternut squash risotto, which was delicately spiced and wonderfully creamy. I wasn’t convinced it would work using brown rice rather than risotto rice but I honestly couldn’t tell the difference. The portion looked small in the middle of my dinner bowl but I made sure to eat it slowly and fully appreciate every mouthful, which made it more satisfying. I am experimenting more with risotto and will be trying another vegetarian version tomorrow, with beetroot and goats cheese. The DE risotto involved some more new ingredients and I bought some tahini which I will be getting creative with this week. I couldn’t find any nutritional yeast and still not sure what the hell it even is but the risotto seemed fine without it!

My last deliciously different dinner was roasted squash and pine nut quinoa, but I also added all the leftover veg in my fridge. Again this was very easy to make but a bit blander than the other recipes and I was hungry afterwards, though I think that was a build up of hunger over the week from eating less and exercising a lot.

My final detox breakfast was a banana , date and almond shake, which tasted more like a naughty milkshake than a healthy breakfast. As yummy as it was, it just reinforced my decision that porridge will always be the best breakfast for me!

After that week (well five days) of so called detoxing, I then had a girlie weekend away. Although I did relax and consume wine, chocolate, sweets, cheese and biscuits etc, I was more controlled than normal, determined not to undo my hard work. I was rewarded with a 1lb loss for the week (a great result for me). I will definitely be consulting my Deliciously Ella app for future recipe inspiration and incorporating at least one vegetarian dinner in every week. In fact, this week there will be two, with the risotto mentioned above and a DE carrot, lentil and raisin salad.