IAN & SPAIN

Meatballs are one of those fantastic dishes for large numbers. It is easy to make in a large batch, it freezes well and who doesn't like them? In Spain, they are normally served with a vegetable sauce and are frequently called  "Albondigas a la jardinera". They are one of my staple dishes at home and I thought I would share with you the classic Spanish recipe. Of course,  there are many variations and you can modify the recipe as you wish, but this is the standard version you will probably find on a "Menu del dia" most of the year. So, let's crack on...

Ingredients for 4 people

For the meatball mix: 

750 g. minced meat (pork, beef)
2 medium eggs
150 g. crustless sliced bread and 5 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley plus a little more for sprinkling
2 cloves of garlic
1 onion
Salt, nutmeg, and freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
Flour to coat the meatballs
Extra virgin olive oil

For the sauce:

1  onion
2 carrots
1/2 red pepper
100 g. peas
400 g. of potatoes
2 cloves of garlic
125 ml of white wine, 1/2 l of chicken broth and water (if necessary)
A few strands of saffron, salt, black pepper and 1 bay leaf
Mild extra virgin olive oil

When it comes to meatballs I always like to mix 50% pork and 50% beef mince. I like to buy my meat at the butcher's and then mince it at home, but any decent mince will do, to be honest. First, we are going to make the meatballs:

1. Season the minced meat, both veal and pork, in a large bowl. and mix together. Crack open the 2 eggs and add them together with the nutmeg, the fresh parsley and the slices of bread without the crust that we have previously soaked in milk for a few minutes. 
2. Let the mixture rest.
3. Laminate the garlic and finely chop the onion. Add some water to a pan and poach the onion and garlic for a few minutes. This will help the onion to soften and thus our meatballs will have a more homogeneous texture. It will also slightly reduce the strength of the garlic and the onion.
4. Once poached after a couple of minutes, drain and cool with cold water before adding it to the meat mixture, season with salt and pepper.
5.  Add a dessert spoon of extra virgin olive oil to the mixture and mix everything well with our hands until the ingredients are evenly mixed. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for an hour in the fridge.
6. . After the resting time, remove the meat from the refrigerator and start making small balls with the meat mix. If you keep your hands wet while you do this, the meat won't stick to your fingers. I normally have a finger bowl with water next to me when I make them.
6. Pour the flour onto a plate and then pass the meatballs through the flour so they have a thin coating all over.
7. Put the floured meatballs to one side on a clean plate. Shake them a little to remove excess flour.
8. Fry the meatballs in hot extra virgin olive oil, for about three minutes is enough. The idea is to seal them and lightly brown them, then put to one side. They don't need to be cooked all the way through at this stage.

Now for the sauce:

1. Wash and dice the onion. Laminate the garlic clove and place in a wide deep pan. Add a dash of virgin olive oil and poach the onion and garlic in a little water for about 3-5 minutes until it has almost evaporated completely.
2. Cut the carrots and the red pepper into small pieces. 
3. When the onion has gone transparent, add the rest of the carrots and red pepper and sauté them all together. 
4. After a minute or so,  add a heaped teaspoon of flour to the pan and toast the flour for a minute, stirring well.
5. Let the ingredients release all their liquids for about 5 minutes. When it has reduced, pour in the white wine and let it cook over high heat to cook off the alcohol and  until the wine has reduced a little - about 10 min
6. Now add the meatballs to the pan. Don't put them on top of each other. Try and use a wide pan so they all have their own space.
7. Add the saffron and the bay leaf.
8. Add the chicken stock and the peas and let them cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes. If the stock is too thick you can rectify by adding more water. Make sure the water is boiling so it doesn't stop cooking.
9. Once the sauce has reduced to the right consistency season and taste for salt.
10. Let the meatballs rest for about 5 minutes and serve with fried potato slices, chips, mashed potatoes or even white rice. Or you could just eat them as they are with some crusty bread.

Serve and enjoy!

Although Christmas Eve is probably the most lavish meal of the Christmas holidays in Spain, originally it was Christmas day, much as it is in the UK. It was a day for bringing together the entire family including grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins and any other family member that you may not have seen throughout the year. Depending on the family, each year it would move house and thus the hosting of this enormous event would be shared amongst the family members. Nowadays, still very much a family event though, Christmas Eve and Christmas day is now normally split between the parents and the in-laws, one day with each.  

Each region of Spain has its own tradition for the Christmas menu, which is determined mainly by local cuisine, for example on the coast seafood or fish is common and inland, meat plays a more important role such as roasted suckling lamb, however nowadays most regions tend to combine both, especially on Christmas Eve. However, Christmas day in the Valencian community is a day for enjoying a rather special typical dish called ‘Puchero de Nadal’ ó ‘Cocido Navideño’.  Effectively it is a stew with giant meatballs but it is enjoyed in two stages. It may seem very simple and rustic but it is a very long meal and takes time to digest. It contains almost everything you could possibly imagine putting in a stew. What makes this stew different from the rest of the stews in Spain is the use of local sausages and local vegetables. The Valencian community is well known for its vegetables and this is well portrayed in the Valencian ‘Puchero’.

As with most traditional recipes, there is nothing written in stone, except using a giant cauldron!  So grab the biggest pot you can find otherwise there is no way all the ingredients will fit in. Remember the stock, the meat and the vegetables can all be frozen afterwards so if you have a lot left over, you will, ration it out in Tupperware and freeze it for another day or use it for another recipe as mentioned later on.

For the stew you will need the following :

½ medium sized Chicken (approx. 1,25kg of meat)
2 large meatballs (recipe as follows)
1 piece of bone marrow
1 piece of knee bone
150 grams of beef 
1 Blanquet sausage 
1 Onion Morcilla sausage 
100 grams of pork fat
300 grams of chickpeas (soaked in water overnight)
Saffron
1 stick of Celery, 1 stick of Cardoon, 1 sweet potato, 1 white turnip, 1 yellow turnip, 1 parsnip, 3 potatoes, 3 carrots, 1 leek, 5 runner beans and ¼ cabbage. (As far as the vegetables go, you can chuck in whatever you have at hand, but this is the standard recipe in Valencia)

So, to make the stew it is as easy as cleaning and peeling the vegetables and placing them all in the pot with the meat and the meatballs, except for the carrots, potatoes, runner beans and the morcilla. These need to be held back for later as they cook more quickly. Cover with water and slowly bring to the boil then reduce the heat to low heat and let it simmer for 90 minutes. Remember to skim off the foam that rises to the top. After 90 minutes pop in the rest of the ingredients that were held back and then simmer for another 90 minutes. To make the meatballs all you will need are the following ingredients:

2 eggs.
150g lean minced beef
150g minced pork.
1 sausage (with skin removed)
200g Breadcrumbs
1 tbsp. Fresh chopped parsley 
50g Pine nuts
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon powder
10ml fresh Lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Stew net for binding
Cabbage leaves for wrapping up the meatballs.   

If you feel like saving some time you can always make the balls the day before. Mix the meat, salt, pepper, parsley, cinnamon, eggs and pine nuts to taste. Pour the breadcrumbs in and knead it all together until it forms a thick mass. Add the lemon juice and knead it all together again. Separate the meat mass into two parts and then roll it into two large balls. Once you have made the balls wrap each ball in cabbage leaves and then place them inside the stewing net and tie them up tight and add to the rest of the meat for the stew.

Once the stew is ready it is customary to first enjoy a bowl of soup from the stock cooked either with rice or noodles. Some may add a piece of the meatball to the soup and others may add a bit of everything and then move on to the rest of the meat and vegetables, the choice is yours. It would also be customary to make 'oven-baked rice' (arroz al horno) the following day with the leftovers. So there you have it, a very hearty meal from the heart of Valencia and ideal for this time of year, it may not look very sophisticated but it tastes incredible! 

    Enjoy!

'Aioli', ‘All-i-Oli’ or ‘Ajo Aceite’ in Castillian Spanish, is probably the simplest and one of the hardest recipes you will ever try to make. Simple, because traditionally it only has three ingredients, and hard because it will make you break out in a sweat, especially if you make it in summer!

All-i-Oli is often translated and served as garlic mayonnaise but in fact, it is not mayonnaise at all, it's not far off mayonnaise but it isn’t mayonnaise.

This is probably the recipe where your choice of olive oil is most important as it is the main ingredient and is pretty much 90% of the final product. So if you want to make it you need to find a very good quality extra virgin olive oil, which is fruity but not too bitter and not very pungent. The variety Arbequina is by far the best due to its high quantity of linoleic acid (an essential fatty acid) that favours the cohesion of emulsions and sauces. However, any good extra virgin will do. Cornicabra is very popular as is Serrana de Espadán here in Valencia. But if you can’t find these varieties look for an Extra Virgin ‘Suave’. I have read many recipes throughout the net suggesting sunflower oil and refined oils for this recipe. Please do not use these types of oils as they will definitely not give you the same result and are far less healthy.

The recipe I am going to share with you is the authentic one, the one passed on from generation to generation, not the popular garlic mayonnaises being offered around most of Spain (However I will also tell you how to make that towards the end of the post). It is a recipe that dates back thousands of years and has spread all over the Mediterranean so I can assure you it was never made with refined olive oil or sunflower oil. Basically, All-i-Oli is an emulsion of olive oil, garlic and salt, nothing else. The secret to the recipe is in the technique, which does take a bit of practice. This is not mayonnaise, a traditional recipe that originated from Mahon in Menorca, as it does not use egg yolk or lemon.  In the case of mayonnaise, it is the egg that acts as the emulsifying agent and with All-i-Oli, it is the garlic that has the emulsion-producing properties.

Ingredients

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Garlic

& Rock Salt

How do we make it the traditional way?

To start with we need a pestle and mortar, not a blender or a mixer, this is a traditional recipe and must be done by hand to achieve the best results.

For this recipe, we will use 100ml of olive oil and 3-4 large cloves of garlic. Depending on how strong you like it you can add more or fewer cloves to the recipe. As this involves a substantial amount of garlic it is a good idea to remove the roots of the cloves before starting. This means slicing it down the middle, and lengthways and taking out the core of the garlic, this will help reduce the characteristic bad breath and the taste of garlic coming back up throughout the day. It is the root of the garlic that our stomach finds so hard to digest and it just seems to linger around for most of the day!

 Once the garlic is peeled and the cores removed place them in the mortar with a pinch of rock salt and start grinding them. Once we have a lumpy paste we need to start adding the olive oil. It is very important not to add too much or too quickly. Patience is a virtue with this recipe. Start by adding the oil drop by drop and move the pestle in a circular action from left to right following the hands of the clock. Once you have started this action you should not stop until the Ali Oli is ready.

This is when it gets a bit tiring, as you need to apply force as well and keep the pestle moving at a constant speed to draw out the juice from the garlic. Slowly you start adding more olive oil, little by little but always waiting until the previous dose has blended with the emulsion. This continues until you end up with a thick sauce/paste or find the consistency that you prefer. The whole process can take up to 15 minutes. You will probably have problems along the way to achieve an emulsion, it takes practice and isn’t as easy as it sounds but it is really worth the effort! Here is a video that might help ...

For those of you who find it too difficult there are a couple of tricks that help to keep the garlic moist and facilitate the cohesion of the emulsion, one is adding 3 teaspoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice to the mortar at the same time you add the garlic and the salt. This will help you keep the emulsion stable and also reduce a little bit more the pungency of the garlic.

GARLIC MAYONNAISE.....and cheating

Finally, if you prefer garlic mayonnaise, which isn't as strong, the only thing you have to add is an egg yolk (no egg white) to the garlic with the lemon juice before you start adding the olive oil. Another trick which works with either recipe is making a little ball of dough from a loaf of sliced bread and wetting it with water. You add this dough ball when you add the egg or just before adding the oil and grind it into the mixture, this will help create the emulsion and stop it from separating!

No time? Don't mind cheating a little?....

Although this may be cheating I know dozens of restaurants on the Balearic islands which use this quick method for their popular 'Pan y All-i-Oli' (one of them told me about it) and it goes down a treat, I use it too and to be honest and I have grown to love it!. Sometimes I just find All-i-Oli too strong and this is just perfect. All you will need is the following:

1. Tub of fresh All-i-Oli from the supermarket

2. Hellman's Mayonnaise (Do not substitute for a different mayonnaise)

3. Finely ground Black Pepper

Quite simply add equal parts of Allioli and Hellman's mayonnaise to a bowl and sprinkle in some black pepper. Mix well until completely blended, sprinkle a little chopped parsley on top and serve with some crispy bread.

In Valencia, it is particularly common to eat All-i-Oli with anything from fried potatoes seasoned with paprika or Black rice which is a dish that uses the ink from squids. It is very versatile and fantastic with vegetables, fish and meats so use it to accompany anything you want.