CHICKPEA "MEATBALLS"

This recipe is very easy to prepare and it is the perfect if you are tired of always cooking the same old meatball recipe. It is also perfect for vegetarians and vegans.

And best of all: a meal for 4 will cost you approximately 1€!

The ingredients are as follow:

- 1 chickpea jar from supermarket

- 2 carrots

- 1/2 onion

- a bit of leek, as much or as little as you would like

- 3 garlic cloves

- a bit of flour

- olive oil

- salt and pepper

- bread crumbs, finelly crumbed.

Remove the chickpeas from the jar and clean them. Place them in a bowl and mash them.

Grate the rest of the ingredients, as it will make easier to mix them and also will help to not find any chunks.

Mix together the chickpeas with the grated vegetables, and add a bit of flour to give consistency to the dough. Add also any salt or pepper that you would like.

With your hand form little balls, the size of a golf ball. Roll them onto the breacrumbs and then onto some flour.

Heat the olive oil in a deep pan and fry the balls until they are golden.

You can add any sauce of your liking, such as tomato sauce, or cream.

Delicioso!

CANNED GALICIAN OCTOPUS

Today I am going to tell you how to prepare one of the most delicious dishes of the Spanish cuisine: Pulpo a la Gallega – Galician Octopus.

However Pulpo (Octopus) can be a bit expensive, and it is not easy to cook it properly, so we are going to cheat a bit. We are going to cook Canned Galician Octopus.

Ingredients: Virgen extra olive oil, potatoes, salt, paprika and octopus or pota (another kind of cephalopods) tins.

We peel the potatoes, cut them in small squares and boil them in salted water (about 15 minutes). Once they are boiled we let them cool down. It takes about 5 minutes.

We put our boiled potatoes in a serving tray. We open the tins and put the contents on top of the potatoes (or on the side if we like it better), and we put some olive oil on top of the potatoes and pulpo so they don’t get dry. Then we sprinkle (generously) the paprika on top of all the ingredients.

You can serve it as a “ración” or as small tapas. Either way your friends are going to think that you have spent the whole day cooking. Easy, delicious and leaves your guests very impressed!

RICE WITH STUFF - MY TAKE ON PAELLA

Paella is one of our more traditional dishes being cooked in many Spanish households lon Sundays. The dish is originally form the Valencia region, and people from Valencia are quite protective of the original Paella, and get very upset when someone calls "Paella" to rice with stuff that doesn't have the typical ingredients they would use. Remember what happened with Jaimie Oliver and his Paella recipe, just because he added chorizo.

However, Paella is cooked everywhere in Spain, and the majority of us do not follow the original recipe (and everybody that I know adds chorizo too), so I am going to write here the recipe of my take on Paella.

Ingredients:

Olive oil, salt, rice, couple of carrots, 1 pepper, 1 onion, about 200 gr of peas, about 200 gr of prawns, couple of garlic cloves, chorizo (hehe), paprika and meat. Normally paella is made with chicken or rabbit, but I didn't have either so I used pork.

Regarding the prawns, you can use normal ones, king prawns, peeled, with shell, cooked, uncooked, totally up to you.

The color of the pepper up to you too.

If you are lucky enough to have saffron you can use a bit.

Regarding the salt, we will add a bit of salt to taste every time that we add and ingredient to the pan. We will have the heat at médium to high.

First we dice the garlic and the onion. Then we add olive oil into a pan plus the chopped onion a garlic.

  Once the onion is golden, we add the chopped carrots.

Then we add the chopped pepper.

Next, the chopped meat.

Followed by the chopped chorizo.

Then the frozen peas and prawns.

We leave all the ingredients cooking together for around 5 to 10 minutes, then we add the rice. I used 2 cups of rice. The secret about cooking rice is that you need to add exactly double amount of water than rice. So when the rice starts changing the color a bit to translucent we need to add in this case 4 cups of water.

In order to give the rice that special color we are going to use the paprika. If you have yellow food coloring you can use that instead, and you will achieve that vibrant color associated with paella. If you have saffron you can add a bit, but you need to bear in mind that saffron wont give the dish the yellow color the paella is so well known for, so do not add lots and lots, as it has quite an intense flavour.

Once the water starts to boil we leave it to cook for 20 minutes reducing the heat to minimum. If your pan is a lot bigger than your stove you may need to stir the rice every now and again to make sure all the rice is cooked evenly. If that is not the case you do not need to stir the rice.

After the 20 minutes the paella will be ready. Leave it to rest for about 10 minutes before plating.

Now it is time to enjoy! Your Paella will taste even better if you squeeze a bit of lemon juice and if you have nice glass of red wine with it.

I hope you like it!