Papas aliñadas / Simple Cadiz-style potato salad

This is one of those dishes that seem super simple but where the homemade version never quite measures up to the one served in restaurants (or in this case, bars). I stopped making this at home a few years ago because my efforts, while always perfectly good, fell disappointingly short of what I was aiming for.

Was there some missing ingredient? Some magic technique? Did the Spanish hospitality business have access to a mystery supply of a unique variety of potato?

Satisfyingly, I think I've cracked it. The key:  the right kind of potatoes (when Spanish recipes say 'new' they don't mean what we understand to be 'new potatoes' in English; they just mean ones that have been harvested relatively recently); cook the potatoes in their skins and peel them afterwards; use a lot of oil; add the onion and parsley just before serving.

Ingredients

700 g of white potatoes (Maris piper work well)

1 teaspoon of coarsely ground salt

100 ml of good quality olive oil

30 ml of sherry vinegar

100 g of mild onion

plenty of fresh parsley (about 2 tablespoons?)

Method

1. Steam or boil the potatoes in their skins until just done. Peel, chop into large chunks (about 2 cm).
2. Combine the potatoes, salt, oil and vinegar in a large bowl.
3. Roughly chop the onion (it's there for flavour, not to be eaten), finely chop the parsley and add to the potatoes just before you serve.

Sliced mushrooms with ginger dressing

This has been a staple of ours for a few years.  I usually make it as a salad to accompany a meal but it always seems to get eaten before the rest of the food is ready.

Ingredients
250g of sliced brown mushrooms
1 tsp minced ginger
2 tsps sesame oil
2 tsps sunflower oil
2 tsps light soy
handful of chopped coriander

Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl.  Leave to sit for at least 15 mins to give the mushrooms a chance to absorb the dressing before serving.

Cod's roe with tomato and green pepper (huevas aliñadas)

Huevas aliñadas or dressed roe is a standard cold tapa in Cádiz, and is a big favourite of Sammy's. There was some cod's roe in my Edinburgh fishmonger the other day, so I bought it and made this simple cod's roe salad for Sammy to welcome him back from his skiing trip with Grandma and Auntie Clara.

Ingredients
250g cooked cod´s roe
2 tomatoes
1/2 green pepper
2 spring onions
3 tbsps olive oil
1.5 tbsps vinegar
1/2 tsps salt
black pepper

Method
Cut the cod's roe into smallish pieces (about 2cm square), dice the tomatoes and green pepper, and slice the spring onions. Combine in a bowl, dress with the olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, mix well, and leave to sit for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Simple salad dressing

This is our standard salad dressing. Simply add iPod and serve.

Ingredients
1 tsp French mustard
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
8 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp salt

Method
Mix all of the ingredients in a jar. Put the lid on, and shake well to emulsify.

Oriental coleslaw

This is another recipe from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage Veg every day! I have tweaked it a little, including the addition of some fish sauce, which would have violated Hugh's strict "veg only" rule.

Ingredients
2 carrots
1 small white cabbage (proportions should be about 1 part carrot to 2 parts cabbage)
2 tbsps light soy sauce
2 tbsps fish sauce
1 tsp minced garlic
2 tsps minced ginger
2 tbsps rice vinegar
2 tbsps sesame oil
juice of 1 lime
2 tbsps chopped fresh coriander

Method

1. Julienne the carrots and slice the cabbage very fine, and put into a large bowl.
2. Mix together the soy sauce, fish sauce, garlic, ginger, vinegar, sesame oil and lime juice. Pour over the carrot and cabbage, toss thoroughly and leave to sit for at least 30 minutes.
3. Before serving, sprinkle with the fresh coriander. 

Honey and soy salad dressing

Carmela likes to put honey in her salad dressing, so I thought I should actually note down the ingredients rather than doing it on a trial and error basis each time. The combination of honey, soy sauce and sesame oil give it an oriental, almost sweet and sour feel.


Ingredients
1 teaspoon of honey
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of sesame oil
1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce
2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar

Method
Put your honey inb a small bowl and, unless it is very runny, heat for a few seconds in a microwave. Add the other ingredients, and whisk well with a fork. Pour over the salad just before serving and toss to mix. (I tend not to put salt into my dressings, but instead to add them direct to the salad before dressing.)

Warm Arbroath smokie, potato and bacon salad

When I got back from Amsterdam I was in the mood for more herring, and I nipped along to my fishmonger (Something Fishy, on Broughton Street in Edinburgh) expecting to find some nice fat herrings waiting for me. Unfortunately they had all gone, so I bought some Arbroath smokies instead. Smokies are hot-smoked, salted haddock which are a north-east of Scotland speciality, and bear no resemblance to herring, but I thought they would still go well in the warm potato and bacon salad I had planned for the herring. If you can't get hold of smokies then you could substitute them with fresh herring fillets, very lightly fried, or just about any other fish you fancy - mackerel, trout etc.


Ingredients
2 Arbroath smokies
750g new potatoes
6 rashers of smoked back bacon
3 pickled dill cucumbers, thickly sliced
dill
white wine vinegar
Dijon mustard
olive oil
Salt
Black pepper

Method

1. Place the smokies in a large saucepan (cut them in half crosswise if they won't fit), cover with boiling water, add a few sprigs of dill and about 50 ml of white wine vinegar, bring to the boil, turn off heat, cover and leave for 5 minutes. Transfer smokies from pan to a bowl, allow to cool and remove the flesh from the smokies with your fingers.
2. Steam the new potatoes in their skins, allow to cool and then cut into halves or quarters depending on size. Grill or fry the bacon until it is just done, remove from pan, allow to cool, and cut into strips.
3. Combine the fish, potatoes, bacon and pickled cucumbers in a serving bowl, sprinkle plenty of chopped dill over it.
4. Prepare a dressing with the olive oil, some wine vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper, and pour over the salad and mix gently.

Memory lapse
I often forget things when I am cooking, and when I was putting this together the pickled cucumbers slipped my mind, which is why you won't find them in the photo, however hard you search.

Honey and mustard salad dressing

One of the surprising things about eating out in Spain is how poor the salads are. (I was going to try to find a more upbeat way of putting this, but I can't.) They are usually dreadful, consisting of tasteless iceberg lettuce, large chunks of onion and, if you are lucky, some tomato and tinned tuna. The awfulness of the salads is matched by a truly unimaginative approach to 'dressing' them by dousing them in vinegar, trying to compensate with some oil, and then sprinkling a bit of salt on top.



The old saying which urges that the salad maker be a spendthrift with the oil, a miser with the vinegar, and a wise man with salt constitutes a good starting point for dressing the salad in the bowl. However, I am always struck by the fact that, when we have visitors over from the UK, they make the dressing separately and use a range of other ingredients. I always resolve to copy their effort and give up my sloppy Spanish practices.



The following is a basic dressing, emulsified using mustard, and with a bit of honey to offset the bitterness of the olive oil.

Ingredients

• English mustard
• wine or cider vinegar
• salt
• olive oil
• honey

Method

1. Put about a teaspoon of mustard in a bowl (more if you are dressing a large salad), add a couple of teaspoons of vinegar and about half a teaspoon of salt, and mix very well.
2. Gradually add plenty of olive oil, mixing well so that it forms an emulsion.
3. Add half a teaspoon or so of honey, and mix well.
4. Pour over the salad and toss just before you are about to serve.

Spicy cauliflower and green bean salad

Cauliflower really benefits from some spice, otherwise it can be a bit bland. It was also quite satisfying to be able to use my homemade minced ginger, minced chilli and garlic puree for this. (Fresh ginger and chilli are hard to come by in Cadiz, so when I find them I tend to bulk buy and then preserve.)



Ingredients1 cauliflower
500g of green beans
vegetable oil
2 teaspoons of chopped ginger
2 teaspoons of chopped garlic
1teaspoon of minced red chilli
3 tablespoons of fish sauce
water

Method

1. Chop the cauliflower into small pieces, top and tail the beans and chop into shortish sections.
2. In a large pan, heat a little oil with the ginger, garlic and chillies. Add the cauliflower and beans, mix well, add the fish sauce and a little water, bring to the boil, turn heat to minimum and cover. Cook slowly until the vegetables are tender. (About 15 minutes. I don't think this dish benefits from having 'crunchy' vegetables - they are better slightly overcooked.)

Thai courgette and beansprout salad

This is a very bastardised version of a recipe which appears in David Thompson’s Thai Food (Pavillion, 2002). This is a brilliant if slightly daunting book which I was given shortly after Carmela was born and, with two kids under the age of 2, I wasn’t really in the mood for adventures in the kitchen. (It was hard enough to empty the dishwasher without one of them crawling into it.) Now I’ve finally got round to using it, I love the way it really explains techniques and how things should look and taste. (He often ends a curry paste description with comments like “it should taste both hot and sour”. May sound vague, but when you’re cooking it, it makes sense.) It’s also not too pernickety about measurements – there are lots of ‘handfuls’ and ‘any two vegetables from the following list’.



Ingredients
3 medium-sized courgettes
200g of beansprouts
1 clove of garlic
pinch of salt
juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
2 teaspoons of chilli sauce
½ teaspoon of sugar

Method

1. Wash the courgettes, steam them whole until just done (about 10 minutes or so), allow to cool, then cut into thickish slices (about 1 cm thick). Steam the beansprouts for a minute or two until just done. Put the courgettes in a bowl and sprinkle the beansprouts on top.
2. Peel and squash the garlic clove, then mash it into a smooth paste with the salt using a pestle and mortar. Add the lemon juice, fish sauce, chilli sauce and sugar and mix. Pour the dressing over the courgettes and beansprouts, and mix well.