Tapas excites me. There, I said it. What other eating style allows you to order half a dozen dishes each and survey them like a greedy child? A dizzying array of little terracotta pots sit before you, deep with spice, wine and aroma.
I had a craving for this the other day so boshed together a couple of tapas style dishes, a meaty, sweet meatball dish and some pokey, chewy patatas bravas.
Albondigas in almond sauce:
500g pork mince
½ nutmeg, grated
Parsley, roughly chopped
½ teaspoon paprika
Lemon zest, grated
Flour
1 onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
Chicken stock
2 tablespoons ground almonds
Combine the mince, nutmeg, paprika, lemon and half the parsley in a bowl. Wet your hands and form into small meatballs, about the size of a ping-pong ball. If you have time leave in the fridge for half an hour to firm up.
Roll the meatballs in a dusting of flour, and fry in butter until lightly browned all over and put to one side.
In the same pan fry the onion and garlic. When softened add the chicken stock and simmer briskly to reduce and thicken. Add the almonds and stir well.
Reduce the heat, add the meatballs back to the pan and continue to cook for a further ten minutes. Serve with parsley.
Patatas bravas:
1 large potato, diced
1 chorizo sausage, diced
1 tin tomatoes
Preheat the oven to 200°C. In a large baking tray add the chorizo and potato and cook for twenty minutes. At this point the chorizo will start to leak it’s peppery juice, so toss everything together well to coat.
Add the tomatoes and continue to cook for another twenty minutes until the potatoes are tender. Check for seasoning and garnish with parsley.
I have a “go to” Lancashire hot pot recipe that I like very much, cribbed from Rick Stein some years ago. It’s very tasty, but like many others I was bowled over with Nigel Haworth on the Great British Menu this year, who blew the competition away with his hot pot. (One word or two? I just don’t know. His recipe is here.
I’ve simplified it slightly for home cookery – cut down on the varieties of lamb and reduced it down to just the neck fillet. I also used a jar of pickled cabbage – I can’t better those results. No herbs either, which is a big surprise. I also worried about the lack of liquid in the meal so bunged together an easy gravy of roast vegetables deglazed with lamb stock.
It was very tasty, and I can see why it was such a winner. Rich, gamey lamb, sweet onions with a crunchy potato topping – what’s not to like? My only slight concern was that the recipe isn’t clear about when to use a new pan for frying off the different parts. I browned the lamb in the same pan as it eventually baked in, and it caught round the edges, making it black and sticky. These bits were nice but a touch over. Doing it again I’d use two pans for frying lamb and onions, then put the part cooked elements back into a separate casserole dish for baking. Starting off from cold it will have less chance to blacken. That said, it’s delightful. Pair it with pickled cabbage for a tart contrast.
Nigel Haworth’s Lancashire Hotpot:
500g lamb neck fillet
1 tablespoon flour, seasoned
1 large onion, sliced
25g butter
1 large potato, sliced into 2mm rounds
Preheat the oven to 160C.
Toss the lamb in seasoned flour and fry in a pan to brown all over.
Fry the onions in butter and a large pinch of salt until softened.
Toss the potato slices in a little olive oil with salt and pepper until well coated.
Lay the lamb in a casserole dish, put the onions on that and top with the potato slices. Bake in the oven for 2 hours.
After 2 hours, brush the potato top with melted butter and bake in the oven uncovered for a further 30 mins or until the potato is golden brown. Serve with pickled cabbage.
“Sweet sausage, in little pieces? And a layer of basil leaves right underneath the cheese? That’s Carmela’s lasagne.”
-Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano
I came to The Sopranos far too late. Early 2008 More4 ran every episode back-to-back and I devoured them all. I was utterly gripped by the boyish yet chilling Tony, the larger-than-life Paulie, sly yet affable Uncle June, the big mouth braggadocio Christopher, and the uneasy balance of family life with ‘mafia’ life. It’s easily one of the finest series every created, a masterpiece of character study and beautiful dialogue. If you haven’t tried it, I heartily recommend it.
And the food of the Sopranos is a thing unto itself. Whether’s it’s baked ziti, sfooyadell, cold cuts, Sunday gravy, moozadell, there’s barely a scene goes by without food being mentioned. I took the Sopranos bus tour while in New York, and ate onion rings at Holsten’s too 🙂
I also got given the Sopranos cookbooks for a birthday. It’s a little cheesy, part-written in character, but the heart and soul of Italian-American cookery is there, with it’s hearty and rib-sticking fare. As an existing fan of lasagne, I was keen to try the lasagne-with-layer-of-basil as mentioned in the show (it can be found in this volume).
In truth all the recipes are written by prolific author and cookbook writer Michele Scicolone. I can only imagine how much fun she must have had coming up with ‘authentic’ food as eaten by Tony Soprano. She has written over 20 books, won all sorts of awards for recipes and also lives in New York area so was an obvious choice to co-author this book. Even if the Sopranos stuff isn’t for you, they are solid recipes.
Like many Italian-American dishes, it requires a ‘gravy’ which is not the meat juice we might expect. I’ve simplified it down, veal is a pain to get hold of here and Italian sausage… sort of isn’t a thing here. Not in the way Americans mean. But sausages seasoned with fennel, and pork and beef mince hint in the right direction. Here it’s a meaty, tomatoey sauce that forms the base of lasagne. This gravy is the base for a lot of dishes, such as this lasagne and baked ziti.
“What, no f*!#ing ziti now?”
-Anthony “AJ” Soprano Jr
This takes a good couple of hours so it’s not a dish you can just bash out on a whim, because after that you’ve got lots of layers and another 45 minutes in the oven to finish it off. But it does have lots of hands-off time while it cooks so it’s a good one for a weekend.
The gravy is superb though, rich and flavoursome. I’ve kept some back for something else another day. And every time I use a ricotta instead of a white sauce I forget how good it is in a lasagne. And without the faff of a bechamel! The basil was nice though, a pleasing herbal aroma that carries through and it’s tender from cooking. Uncle June was right.
3sausagesif you can get them, Waitrose have incredible 'Italian' style sausages
400gmincebeef and pork
1oniondiced
3garlic clovesminced
1tablespoontomato puree
700mllitre passata
For the lasagne:
Lasagne sheets
A large bunch of basil
250gricotta
250gmozzarellasliced
25gparmesangrated
Instructions
To make the gravy, fry the onion and garlic until soft in a large pan with a little oil.
Skin the sausages and squish each into 3-4 hazelnut size pieces. Add these to the pan and brown a little on all sides over.
Add the mince and continue to cook until browned.
Add the puree and passata and bring to a simmer. Cook partially covered for 1½ - 2 hours until rich and thickened. At this point check for seasoning - plenty of pepper is welcome here.
Beat the ricotta with the parmesan, adding salt and pepper to taste (you may want to add a couple of tablespoons of milk to loosen it, as you're going to spread it in a minute). Preheat the oven to 180°C.
In a 6cm deep oven dish put a thin layer of meat sauce on the bottom. Cover with lasagne sheets, then another layer of meat sauce.
Top this with ricotta and some parmesan, then a layer of basil leaves. Top this with mozzrella, then lasagne. Start the layering all over again until you reach the top of the dish.
Make the top layer meat sauce, ricotta and mozzarella. Bung in the oven until you can push a knife through with little resistance, about 45 minutes - 1 hour. Cover with foil if it's starting to darken too quickly.
Leave the lasagna out for five minutes to allow it all to meld together - this makes it easier to cut up.
Video
Notes
The order you layer everything up in doesn't really matter. Just do what feels right.
This is the rice from the chicken tikka masala recipe. I’ve broken it out to it’s own page otherwise I have trouble finding it!
Aromatic rice:
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and bashed
1 cinnamon stick
3 cloves
4 cardamom pods
1 cupful rice per person
Fry the onion gently until softened, then add the garlic.
Add the spices and stir, allowing them to warm.
Add the rice and a generous sprinkle of salt, stir will to coat the rice in the spiced oil. Top up the pan with three times the amount of water to rice. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.
Cover the pan and allow to simmer for ten minutes – do not lift the lid.
Turn off the heat and leave for a further ten minutes, leaving the lid on.
Stir through with a fork and grind over plenty of black pepper. If you have any left over from the curry, throw in some parsley too.
