Category Archives: Lime

Spanish Tapas & Paella – Time for a Sangria

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I had some girlfriends coming over for dinner a couple of weekends ago… I love having people over for dinner so I can try cooking new things, and spend a day in my kitchen putting a meal together. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but I love it.

I wanted to try a new type of cuisine for the girls. I’ve been wanting to try some Spanish cooking for ages, so what better opportunity?! Plus, after a few weeks of dreary winter weather (this was before the beautiful spring days we’ve been having in Wellington), I decided we need some colour. So Spain seemed a good choice on both counts.

I don’t know about you, but my cooking background has mainly been a good grounding in ‘kiwi’ home cooking (which I see as based on British cooking, but a bit lighter, with some Asian flavours and a few unique dishes thrown in). Like most New Zealanders, I cook some South East Asian food at home, as well as Indian, a little Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Mexican (probably Tex Mex admittedly), and French and Italian.

But I’ve never really cooked Spanish food at home. Spanish cuisine, especially tapas, has had a resurgence in restaurants over the last few years, but the food, other than the odd paella, hasn’t made it as far as my home dining table. Am I alone in this?

The thing that I loved about putting a tapas menu together was I could pick lots of little dishes, and prepare most of them in advance. And because they were all new – if one flopped, no problem! I could pretend it never existed! Plenty more food to go round!

This was the menu for the evening:

Spanish Tapas & Paella Party

- White Sangria -
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- Home Made Catalan Tomato Bread -
- Garlic Prawns & Potatoes -
- Pork & Almond Meatballs with Tomato Dipping Sauce -
- Beef & Spinach Empanadas -
- Catalan Spinach -
- Spanish Salad with Smokey Dressing -
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- Paella with Chicken and Chorizo -
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- Tarta de Santiago (St. James’ Cake) -

Clearly, we needed to start the night off with a few drinks. A white sangria was in order.

There are thousands of sangria recipes out there. It would appear that every Spanish family has their own, and I imagine it’s one of those things that nobody makes quite right except your family. Like pav. I based my Sangria recipe on several I found at www.spain-recipes.com. It was gorgeous – I especially loved the apple juice ice cubes. Can’t wait to try it again in summer using my favourite Central Otago stonefruit. 

White Sangria

Apple juice, for ice cubes
1¼ cups water
1 bunch fresh mint
½ cup sugar
3 cinnamon sticks
3½ cups wine
1 pear, cut into chunks or slices
1 peach, pitted and sliced
2 nectarines, pitted and sliced
1 large orange, sliced crosswise
2 small lemons, sliced crosswise
1 lime, sliced crosswise 
3 cups sparkling apple cider

The day before…
Pour the apple juice into two ice cube trays and freeze.

Combine the water, half the bunch of mint leaves, the sugar and cinnamon sticks in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil over a medium heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to cool. Once the syrup is at room temperature, remove the mint leaves and cinnamon sticks and discard.

Pour the syrup into a large container – if you can fit your serving vessel (punch bowl or jug) in your fridge, then use that. I found it easier to use a big plastic container (needs to be able to hold 2-3 litres). Add the wine and prepared fruit. Mix well, cover and chill overnight. Get the apple cider in the fridge chilling, too.

Just before serving
Pour the syrup, wine and fruit mix into your punch bowl or serving jug(s), and mix in the (chilled) apple cider. Add your apple juice ice cubes and the remaining fresh mint leaves from yesterday. P.S., I like the way my fruit randomly arranged itself into a face on the side of the jug!

This mixture filled two big water jugs like this one – there’s a lot of fruit to fit in! For a starter drink at a dinner party, it serves about 8-10. I had some left over so I re-used the apple juice trick and froze sangria ice cubes. I think they’ll make a nice addition to a G&T. And I’m sure there’s a use for all that wine-soaked fruit once you’ve finished the sangria, if you’re into recycling.

By the way, this post has got me thinking about what other parts of the global food map are missing from my repertoire. I don’t really know any cooking from eastern Europe or Russia (except Beef Stroganoff and the less said about that, the better). And I don’t think I cook any South American food. I love making Moroccan dishes but that’s only a small part of the African continent… what other cuisines would you love to try cooking at home?

Marmalade Steamed Pudding

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I started getting really into steamed puddings a while ago. They seem a bit of a fiddle first time round, but actually they’re not hard, and they result in a yummy moist cakey dessert that you eat warm with sauce. Mmmmmmmmm. And I even like the anxious moment when the bowl is inverted… will it turn out? won’t it? will it? It did! Yusssssssssssssss.

I made this lime marmalade a few weeks ago and have been looking for new things to do with it. Steamed puddings made with jam or marmalade are nothing new, but I hadn’t made one before. You plonk all the marmalade in the bottom of the pudding steamer, and carefully add the pudding batter on top, so as the pudding steams the marmalade turns to a delicious syrup, and then when you turn it out the syrupy marmalade goodness soaks back into the pudding like a sauce. Genius.

This is a very basic steamed pudding recipe. Like most good basic recipes, it will serve you well and is reliable, but can also be adapted to suit your own tastes. I’d like to try making it with buttermilk sometime, and also to see if reduced-fat spread could replace at least some of the butter (although the recipe is actually relatively light already). Any flavour marmalade would work with this; why not try a grapefruit and orange pudding?

 

Marmalade Steamed Pudding
Serves 4

50g butter
¼ cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup self-raising flour
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
½ cup trim milk
½ cup marmalade (see here for my lime marmalade recipe)
yoghurt, cream or ice cream, to serve (I vote Greek yoghurt for this one)

Cream the butter and sugar, until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and lemon rind, and beat again. Stir in the sifted flour and milk. Grease a pudding basin (non-stick spray is your friend here), and spoon the marmalade into the bottom of the basin. Carefully spoon the pudding batter on top and cover the basin. My steamer has a clip on lid, but you could cover a basin with two layers of tin foil tied on tightly. In case you’re new to steaming, this is how I do it – I have a big stockpot that I set on the stove, and put an upturned ceramic heatproof saucer or dish in the bottom, which the pudding basin can sit on top of. Then I half-¾ fill it up with hot water and bring it to the boil while I’m mixing the pudding. Carefully place the pudding basin into the stockpot, on top of the saucer. This pudding is actually quite light so I had to put a plate on top of the pudding basin to weigh it down and stop it rolling around in the stockpot! Bring the water back to the boil, and steam the pudding for an hour.

Take the bowl out of the steamer and remove the lid. Place a plate across the bottom of the bowl and carefully invert the whole arrangement so the pudding turns out nicely. Serve hot or warm with yoghurt, cream or ice cream.

Lady Lime Marmalade

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I am a big fan of jam. I have to say the best jam I have ever tasted is my mum’s homemade raspberry jam. I don’t know that she even tests setting point, she seems to just know when it’s ready.  Mine never turns out as nice as hers, even if I use the same recipe and try to follow her instructions.  Sometimes your mum’s cooking is a bit like that, right?

But I can do marmalade, if I do say so myself. I’ve had this recipe for years, I have a sneaky feeling it was a Ray McVinnie one originally. It’s another good base recipe that you can really turn into whatever you want. You can use any mixture of citrus fruit you like. I usually make it with oranges, lemons and grapefruit – so yummy. And when it has orange, you can’t help but add a dash of whiskey. Also, check out Plum Kitchen’s and Pease Pudding’s recent marmalade recipe posts.

This week I wanted to try a fish casserole dish that had lime marmalade in it. And I hate buying shop jams, so I decided I would just have to make the marmalade myself. I hadn’t made marmalade entirely out of limes before, so it has been interesting. The recipe proved its reliability once again, and the marmalade is great on toast, but I think I just prefer a lemon and lime mix! What are your favourite marmalade flavours?

Trusty Marmalade
about 250g citrus fruit (lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit, whatever combination you like!)
300ml water
300g sugar

Chop or slice the fruit according to your preference. I like lots of slivers of peel in my marmalade, but if you’re not so much about the chewy, chunky stuff, invest more time with the knife and chopping board at the start. Put the chopped fruit in a saucepan and cover it with cold water (not the 300ml listed above, just extra water). Bring to the boil and simmer for 4 minutes. Drain well, and return the fruit to the pan. Add the 300ml water and sugar. Bring this to the boil – cook it slowly at the start and stir well to make sure the sugar dissolves. Boil gently for about 20 minutes, or until the slices of fruit are transparent, and the jam is at setting point (drop a small spoonful onto a saucer you’ve had in the freezer; when you push your finger through it gently and the mixture stays separated and wrinkles a little bit, that’s about ready). Remove from the heat and pour into sterilised jars.

This is good just on toast, or as mentioned above, you can use it in a fish casserole, of all things. To be honest, that dish was pretty forgettable, so the lime marmalade has been put out to pasture, spending the rest of its days happily smeared on my toast. It’s nice as a sponge filling too, or so cute as a gift. Before I entered the world of blogging, I made jars of marmalade and passionfruit curd as mother’s day presents and covered the jar lids with purple gingham fabric, and added lavender and lemon coloured soaps tied up with a purple ribbon. So wishing I had taken a photo now. Sigh. Nevermind! The lime marmalade will help ease the pain.