Pulpo and Tomatoes Salad

While my girlfriend is away on holiday I use the opportunity to eat the things she hates. Today a quick little octopus salad. The idea for this one is from my sister.

• 200g pulpo (octopus), boiled and cleaned
• 3 tomatoes 
• 1 small onion
• 1 lime
• pepper
• light soy sauce 
• sesame oil
• lots of fresh coriander

Cut the octopus and tomatoes into slices and small pieces. Slice onion. Add juice of lime, coriander, a little bit of soy sauce and sesame oil.  Pepper to taste.

The soy sauce and sesame oil is really optional, you can also use more lime and a bit of olive oil.

Gravlax

Simple gravlax recipe:

• two pieces of salmon with skin on
• dill (handful)
  
• sea salt (two tablespoon)
  
• crushed pepper corns (two tablespoon)
  
• sugar (one tablespoon)
  

cut dill, mix with salt and pepper. Put one piece of salmon skin down on large bit of cling-film. cover with the mix, put other salmon on top. wrap everything tight in cling-film. Off into the fridge and put something on top to weight it down.

Now the difficult bit: you have to wait at least one, better two days and turn it every once in a while.

Nice and easy snack for the summer.

Spaghetti with clams and aioli

New recipe for me, inspired by something I saw Rick Stein doing in some cookery show.

Put clams in a hot pan, add a cup of white wine. Cover and cook until they opened. Drain with a colander, but keep the liquid. Discard the clams which did not open.

Put some spaghetti or tagliatelle into a pot with boiling water and cook according to package instructions.

Meanwhile put one sliced onion and some sliced garlic into a pan with olive oil and fry them until soft. I added some small and medium peeled prawns and some leftover cod pieces. Then add the clams with shells and the white wine liquid you kept. Finally add some aioli. Season with salt pepper and herbs.

Reduce this a little bit. Add the pasta straight from the other pan and stir until it is covered.

The result should be creamy with not too much liquid.

Ingredients (for two really hungry people).

• 200g pasta
• clams (four handful)
  
• 1 cup of dry white whine
  
• 1 onion (sliced)
  
• 4 cloves of garlic (sliced)
• two table spoons of aioli
• some prawns or other white sea food
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• herbs
  

Paella

This is my recipe for paella. The picture was the most recent one I made. It was not perfect because it is my largest pan and it gets a bit difficult. I used two other recipes I found on-line and combined them.

• olive oil
• 2 chicken breasts cut in dices
• 2 onions diced
  
• 300 g paella rice
• 750 ml chicken stock
• saffron
• handful frozen peas
• 1/2 green pepper
• 1/2 red pepper
• mixed seafood: squid, prawns, octopus, mussels, shrimps, fish
  
• parsley
• dry white wine
• lemon

Heat a paella or other big flat pan. Add olive oil and fry chicken for 2-3 minutes. Push to the side of the pan, add onions and fry until golden. Season with salt and pepper, but not too much as the stock is probably seasoned too.

Push everything to the side and put rice in the middle and coat it with olive oil until all of the rice is coated. Add most of the chicken stock, mix everything and cook for 10 minutes. Add vegetables and seafood and mix again. Crush the saffron and add it to the remaining stock, this also goes into the pan. Leave to simmer and add wine and water if it gets to dry. Serve with lemons slices and parsley on top.

The whole thing takes maybe half an hour, but you have to make sure that the rice does not burn or get too soggy.

If you want to go fancy you can fry some chicken legs and fresh prawns or crayfish and put them on top at the end.