summer recipe
LUCY’S PAELLA
This is a recipe from our community and friends. Thanks to the the lovely Lucy Byrnes for the permission to share and adapt a recipe that makes her feel festive and takes her to a happy place she wants to share with us.
Lucy’s recipe feeds 4-6. It helped us see how easy is it to make paella at home to share with loved ones at all times and particularly during festivities.
What:
- 6 chicken drumsticks & wings (around 500g)
- 75g chorizo, sliced
- 2 peppers, Lucy recommends yellow & red for the colours
- 2 medium onions, finely chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
- ½ -1 tsp smoked paprika
- 2-6 strands of saffron
- 2 pints or 1200 litre chicken or other stock (1 or 2 stock cubes depending on taste)
- 200g-250g paella rice
- 500-700g sea food you want (Lucy likes big prawns with the heads on and mussels. Use half and half)
- 2 Tbsp. olive oil
- Lemon to serve
- Salt for chicken
How:
- Get the mussels soaking for a few hours, scrub well to remove grit and pull the beards off.
- Season the chicken with generous amount of salt. Set aside whilst you prepare the veg.
- Prepare the hot stock, add the saffron, a couple of prawn heads and a mussel or two and set aside.
- Use a paella pan or shallow cast iron pan with a lid instead.
- Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in the pan and lightly brown the chicken both sides turning occasionally for about 5 minutes.
- Add the sliced chorizo. Cook for a further minute.
- Take the chicken and chorizo out and set aside making sure the fat stays in the pan.
- Add the chopped onion to the pan (no need for extra oil) and fry until it starts to caramelise. Add the sliced peppers and cook for a couple more minutes.
- Stir in the crushed garlic, a small amount of saffron and the rice and stir it well.
- Return the chicken and chorizo to the pan.
- Add the stock first bit at a time, then the rest of it after a couple of minutes. Stir well and simmer for about 15 minutes.
- At this point the rice probably needs between 5 and 10 minutes so you need to add the mussels.
- Cover and after 3-4 minutes add the big prawns.
- Then turn the heat off and let it sit with the lid on for 10 minutes so that the rice can soak up all the juices.
- Squeeze some lemon juice when you serve and a nice cold glass of white wine and you are sorted as Lucy says.
Lia’s Kitchen Notes
- If you have no paella rice, you can use risotto or pudding rice. Just wash once to clear some starch.
- You can add the paprika to the chicken to marinade.
- Stir fry the rice until it starts getting translucent before adding the stock.
- Once you add the stock, stir once and then cook uncovered for 15-18 min.
- In honour of the Valencian paella I like my rice slightly caramelised at the bottom. Only add the mussels in when you are sure most of the water had evaporated.
- The Spanish do not usually use chorizo but we love it as the dish It reminds us of the Creole Jambalaya, which uses long grain rice and spicy southern sausages.
- We used a ten centimetre deep pan around 25cm wide. It just about fit 3 drumsticks, 2 chicken thighs, 500g mussels and 200g prawns.
- We used chicken on the bone and with the skin on. I like crispy skin and the flavour the bone adds.
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Eggs in red sauce-Shakshuka and Strapatsada
Whether you call them huevos rancheros, shakshuka, menemen or,the very familiar to me, strapatsada, eggs in aromatic red tomato sauce are a popular breakfast and meal across the world. The basic principle is to precook a red sauce, most usually with fresh tomatoes, and then to either poach or scramble the eggs in it.
I have grown up with the Greek strapatsada as a summer dish or an easy dinner, in fact it is one of the first meals I ever cooked. Whilst strapatsada uses subtle flavours such as green peppers, pepper, basil or parsley and scrambles the eggs with feta cheese, shakshuka gains its distinctive flavour from spices such as (at least) cumin and turmeric, and requires that you poach the eggs towards the end of the cooking process.
You can play with this dish endlessly. Add chilli and serve with avocado for a Mexican twist, or use sumac for the scrambled Turkish menemen version. But today I am sharing a version of the dish, closest to shakshuka, which has allowed my Lia’s Kitchen recipe to reach new heights of flavour through the addition of honey mustard and fennel seeds. At the end of this blog entry, in my regular tips section, I give you instructions for a strapatsada in the hope that this will satisfy your Greek cuisine cravings.
Ingredients
Feeds 4 (two eggs each)
- 4 eggs
- 1 medium onion finely chopped
- 300g cherry tomatoes halved or 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
- 2 fresh bay leaves or one dry
- 1/2 t turmeric
- 1 t cumin seers
- 1/4 t fennel seeds
- 1/2 t dried thyme
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 T (honey) mustard
- 1 t sugar
- 1T finely chopped coriander
- Salt and pepper
- Olive oil
Preparation
30 minutes chopping and cooking
- Pick a pan wide enough to fit your four eggs when you poach them on top of the sauce.
- Sauté the onion in a couple of tablespoons of oil with a couple of tablespoons of salt and all the spices until translucent.
- Add the mustard and stir fry for a couple more minutes to release all the aromas. Add the tomatoes, another pinch of salt, the sugar.
- Stir, cover and cook on low heat for 10-15 minutes or until the juices are almost dry (more time needed for a tin of tomatoes). Break the four eggs carefully on top of the sauce.
- Lower the heat, cover and cook for 5 minutes or until the top of the eggs steam cooks to a light white.
- Sprinkle with the chopped coriander.
- Remove the eggs from heat immediately after you cook to stop the eggs from going firm or serve immediately.
Lia’s Tips:
- It’s not the end of the world if the eggs go firm but this dish is most wonderful with runny poached eggs.
- The more eggs you poach the wider your cooking pot should be.
- Serve on sourdough bread. You will not forget me once you have tried this!
- For a stapatsada include half or one green pepper and fry with the onions; don’t use any of the herbs or spices above, just salt and black pepper, and use parsley or basil to flavour the sauce (basil is traditionally used in some of the Greek islands); once the sauce is cooked scramble the eggs in, remove from heat when the are cooked and add crumbled feta cheese (about 100g) to finish
Tourlou!
Spring is here! I am writing to you from one of our local cafés. Its wide French doors are open to an outdoor terrace. It’s still light and warm and a soft breeze just brought in scents of blossom (and something delicious cooking in a kitchen).
I have chosen to share with you the recipe for Tourlou, a mixed vegetable dish that tastes like spring and summer to me. A fridge chilled portion of it with some crumbled feta (surprise, surprise!) is just as nice to eat as straight after cooking or cooled to room temperature. But I’d prefer the chilled version today because it makes me think of Vourvourou, my friend Maria and resting in the shade in her company sipping a chilled beer (sigh!).
Back to cooking! Tourlou is an easy recipe and great for using a medley of vegetable. It can be a light evening dinner on its own or served with rice, a delicious side dish or alternative to salad, and a fantastic tapa or meze. And apparently Tourlou is the same as briam only it’s cooked on a hob- here’s something new for food geeks like me.
Ingredients
Serves 2 for main and more as a meze or side
1 aubergine
2 courgette
2-3 potatoes
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped or crushed
1 pepper, chopped (optional)
1 carrot (optional)
200g ripe tomatoes, finely chopped or chopped in blender
OR
1 can chopped tomatoes (400g mixed weight)
Small bunch of parsley, finely chopped
1 tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
Pepper (to taste)
Olive oil
Preparation
Takes up to an hour
Wash all vegetable, peel the potatoes, and dice it all in five centimeter (large) chunks.
Sauté the onion and a pinch of salt in about two Tbsp olive oil for a couple of minutes.
Add one or two more Tbsp olive oil, the vegetable, toss and fry for about five minutes.
Add the garlic, let it fry for a minute without burning and add the tomatoes.
Add the sugar and also season with salt and pepper.
Stir well and cover.
Lower the heat and simmer for forty minutes or until the potatoes are soft.
Add the chopped parsley at the end or half way through the cooking.
Lia’s Notes:
- For a good Tourlou do not to stir during simmering to avoid breaking the vegetable as it softens.
- The tomatoes should have enough juice for all the vegetable to cook but halfway through cooking check if you need to add a couple of Tbsp of water to make sure the potatoes cook.
- Replace potatoes with other root vegetable such as parsnip if you like.
- I prefer cooking Tourlou with more aubergine and one courgette.
- Use any vegetable you like. Okra is fantastic in tourlou but might take a bit longer to cook.
- For Briam use the same ingredients, add a little bit of water and cover a baking tray with foil. Slow cook for about an hour in the oven.
Lia's Kitchen 
