Beef curry with spinach

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This recipe would work equally well with lamb – the secret is to cook it slowly and for a long time so that the meat is tender.

INGREDIENTS:
1 onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 cloves
8 cardamom pods
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
300g stewing steak
300g frozen spinach
4 pots yoghut

Heat some oil in a casserole on the top of the stove and add the whole spices. Fry for a couple of seconds and then add the onion and garlic. Fry on a moderate heat until soft and then add the meat, cumin, coriander, chilli and season with salt and pepper. Brown the meat. Add the yoghurt slowly and bring back to the boil, adding a couple of yoghurt pots of water. Add the frozen spinach.
Put into a pre-heated oven (160ºC) and cook for 3 hours. Serve with basmati rice.

Kale with walnuts and garlic

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Large amount of kale, deribbed and cut into strips
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

Cook the kale in boiling, salted water for 6 minutes.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan or wok.
Add the walnuts and fry gently for about 5 minutes.
Add the garlic and stir fry for another couple of minutes.
Add the kale and toss until heated through, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Courgette Puff Pie

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This is a great recipe for when the courgettes are in season and you’re looking for recipes to use them up. The quantities are for 6 people. It’s delicious and well worth trying.

INGREDIENTS
675g courgettes, thinly sliced in a food processor
560g puff pastry
3 medium eggs
3 tablespoons crème frâiche
115g gruyère cheese, grated
4 cloves garlic, crushed
6 tablespoons chopped parsley
75g breadcrumbs
5 tablespoons olive oil

METHOD
Heat the oven to 200ºC. Put some foil on a baking sheet and add the courgettes. Drizzle over the oil and roast for about 10 minutes.

Roll out the pastry onto the baking sheet into a rectangle.

Beat two eggs in a bowl with the creème frâiche, half the cheese, parsley and garlic. Season with salt and pepper.

Put the courgettes down the middle third of the pastry. Pour over the egg mixture. Sprinkle with the rest of the cheese and breadcrumbs.

Roughly fold up and over the edges of the pastry. Chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Brush the edges of the pastry with the last egg. Bake for 30 minutes until the pastry is golden and the mixture is lightly set.

Cauliflower Rice

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This is Vicky’s recipe for cauliflower rice which works well with curry and uses up the supply of cauliflowers we have at this time. The snail spice mix is typically used in Spain for preparing snails.

1 large cauliflower, coarsely grated
3 heaped tablespoons snail spice mix (coriander, cumin, pepper, chilli)
4 cloves garlic, chopped

Fry the garlic and spices in olive oil for 2 minutes until the garlic is soft.

Add the grated cauliflower and season with salt and peper.

Stir-fry for 10 minutes. Serve with curry.

Space of the month (January 2011) – Carlos V rooms

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When Carlos V decided to take up permanent residence in the Alhambra, he commissioned the constuction of his living quarters with six new rooms around the Nasrid palaces to include bedrooms and his office. Years later in 1829, the North American author of Tales of the Alhambra, Washington Irving, would stay here.

The general visit to the Alhambra includes access to Carlos V’s chambers but during the month of January 2011, it will also be possible to visit the Salas de las Frutas (where Washington Irving stayed) .

These rooms can be visited during the month of January on Tuesday, Wednesday,  Thursday and Sunday between 8:30 and 18:00.

Olive press

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I was really excited to find an olive cooperative where they press the olives using traditional methods to make the oil. The oil has a fuller, fruitier taste than other virgin olive oils but is fantastic. We had taken most of our olives from this year’s harvest to the normal cooperative but just found this one in time so that we could take the last load of olives there. Because of the rain, we weren’t able to finish picking all the olives but hopefully they will still be on the trees next time we go up and we can take them here. Here are some pictures of the cooperative with a brief explanation:

You park on the right of the grid and pour your olives through it.

You then use a broom to sweep through  any that are stuck on the rungs.

The olives don’t need to be cleaned before they are put through and twigs and leaves are removed in the next stage.

The olives are taken up from the pit by the first conveyor belt and air is blown through them to remove the leaves and twigs.

The clean olives then travel on a second conveyor belt to a third which takes them up further and then drops them into the green weighing hopper. The ones in the picture are actually our olives – all picked by hand that day.

Unfortunately the day we went it had been raining so the weighing scales weren’t working as they should have been and our olives only weighed in at 1kg – a bit disappointing. However, having unloaded them by hand and put them through  again it was a relief to see the correct weight on the scales – 370kg.

The next stage of the process goes on inside the building where the olives are milled and pressed. During the milling, the olives are passed through three rotating millstones to produce a sludgy mixture. This is then “iced” thickly onto plastic raffia mats.

The mats are threaded onto a pole which is then inserted into a press. By means of a system of chains and pulleys, the press compresses the mats upwards and oil comes out through a tap at the bottom of the press.

The subsequent bottling process takes another six months. Our oil should be ready in June and I’m looking forward to trying it.

This blog is about SANTA CASILDA olive oil factory located between Darro and Diezma on the road between Granada and Guadix.