Category Archives: Main Courses

Turkey Meatballs & Chestnut Tagliatelle

18 Monday Sep 2023

Posted by in Main Courses, Sauces, Techniques

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What to do with half a kilo of minced Turkey given to me by friends who were going away?

I haven’t made chestnut pasta for a good while, which would go very well with the mild gaminess of some little turkey meatballs, nor had I shared the recipe for chestnut pasta with you as I’d thought, so now is the opportunity to do that.
The meatballs don’t need a heavy sauce or a lot of sauce, so a mushroom sauce lightly thickened with goats cheese would be perfect.

Serves 4

The meatballs

500 grams lean minced turkey

1/2 sweet onion – finely chopped

1 large or 2 small cloves of garlic – finely chopped

1 level teaspoon fennel seeds

salt and freshly ground black pepper

olive oil for frying

The sauce

1/2 sweet onion – finely chopped

1 clove garlic – finely chopped

olive oil for frying

100 grams mushrooms – I used oyster mushrooms, but any type of mushroom will be fine – cut into small dice

500 ml chicken or vegetable stock

50 grams creamy goats cheese

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Parmesan cheese to grate on when serving

The pasta

65 grams chestnut flour

35 grams wholemeal spelt flour

1 large egg

pinch of salt

Start by making the pasta.

Mix the flours and salt in a bowl or on a board.

Make a well in the centre and add the lightly beaten egg.

Mix to make a firm but pliable dough. If it’s too dry add a little egg white and if too wet add extra spelt flour.

Using either a pasta rolling machine or a rolling pin, roll the pasta into an oblong, then fold into three, turn it 90 degrees and repeat the rolling and folding following the instructions in my post – the Beginners Guide to Making Fresh Pasta. Then roll the pasta down to the desired thickness, it was number 5 on my pasta machine, and cut into tagliatelle.
Leave to rest on your board while you make the meatballs.


Put the meatball ingredients in a bowl and mix well squeezing the onion and garlic into the minced turkey.


Taking a small spoonful at a time, form the meat mix into balls about the size of a cherry, rolling them between your palms to push the meat into firm balls and lay them out on two trays. If you have lean meat the meatballs will hold together without the need for eggs or breadcrumbs, and you will have a lighter texture to the meatballs. It does mean that the balls are a little more delicate and one has to take care when turning them in the initial cooking.

Once you have all the meatballs ready heat some olive oil in a large frying pan and put in half the meatballs. When they are nicely browned on one side, gently turn them. Keep doing this until they are browned and sealed on all sides.
Remove the meatballs from the pan , and put into a dish on the side.

Add a little more oil to the pan and cook the other half of the meatballs in the same way. Remove these from the pan as well.

Add a little more oil to the pan and put in the onions and garlic for the sauce. Fry for a few minutes .

Add the mushrooms, stir to mix and fry to lightly brown them.

Add the stock and heat until the stock is boiling then add the meatballs, turn the heat down to a simmer and leave to cook through for about 7-10 minutes.

Meanwhile bring a pan of salted water to the boil and a cook the pasta for 5-7 minutes. Drain

Cut the goats cheese into small pieces and add to the meatballs to slightly thicken the sauce.

Check the seasoning adding salt and freshly ground black pepper as needed.

Serve the tagliatelle with the meatballs spooned over and grated Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy ❤️

Beef Kofta & a simple Turkish Summer Lunch

28 Friday Jul 2023

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It’s hot and humid down here in southern Spain, the manual jobs around the land are on hold, so it’s a good time for me to go through the culinary and travel diaries that I have jotted things down in over the years and create dishes that I have described. The first notebook I picked up has in it notes I made on a visit to Istanbul, including the food we ate and saw being eaten, this inspired me to have a Turkish theme to the lunch I was preparing for friends today.

Quite a lot of Turkish dishes are familiar to me as my father was from Sarajevo which was under Turkish rule for over 500 years, so his recipes passed down from his mother and taught to me and my siblings, were very much influenced by Turkish cuisine.


On my menu there was Beef Kofta, Bulgur Wheat Salad, Aubergine Salad with Yoghurt Dressing and Muhammara Red Pepper and Walnut Pate. The pate recipe I gave you in a previous post, so just search ‘red peppers’ to find it. Today I’ll give you the recipe for the Kofta as my grandmother Sofia would have made it, the salads will be in the next post.

BEEF KOFTA RECIPE

Before you start a couple of pointers, using lean mince means that the kofta will stick together when you cook them, so you won’t need to add an egg and breadcrumbs as suggested by some recipes, which I think makes the kofta less juicy. Also finely chopping the onion by hand rather than in a food processor, although a bit of work, will give the kofta a better texture too.

500 grams lean minced beef

1 medium onion – cut into small dice

3 cloves of garlic – finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon allspice berries

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

cinnamon quills – broken into pieces – roughly a teaspoons worth

1/2 teaspoon sumac

1/2 teaspoon salt

Put the mince in a large bowl with the onions and garlic and mix together with your hands.

Put the cumin seeds, allspice berries, peppercorns and cinnamon pieces in a heavy based frying pan on a low heat to toast. Shake the pan from time to time so that the spices are warmed on all sides. When you can smell their warm fragrance coming out of the pan, turn off the heat and leave to cool.

Once your spices are cool grind them to a powder either in a mortar with a pestle or in a little coffee grinder as I do.

Add to the mince mix together with the salt and sumac and work the spices evenly into the meat squeezing and mixing with your hands.

Form the meat into little flattened cakes on a floured plate, turning them so that they are evenly covered in flour.

Fry in olive oil on a medium heat until nicely browned, then turn over to cook the other side adding more oil as needed.

Marinated Bonito & Mixed Salad

18 Tuesday Jul 2023

Posted by in Fish, Food for One, Main Courses, salads, Starters

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Bonito is a medium sized fish related to tuna and mackerel which is in season in the Mediterranean Sea at this time of the year, so very reasonably priced. I bought a couple of thick steaks yesterday. I like to remove the skin and the little bones that divide the north, south, east and west of the steaks, so that I am left with four mini steaks from each slice of bonito. Two of these make a generous portion per person, so of my eight steaks, four went straight into the freezer, and four I cooked at lunchtime.

I fried them in olive oil together with two thinly sliced garlic cloves and had two of them for lunch with grilled vegetables. The other two I let cool and put in a small dish with the cooking juices of oil and garlic, then I put in enough white wine vinegar to come about half way up the fish. I covered the dish and left the fish to marinate in the fridge. Last night I turned the steaks over to ensure that the pickle was penetrating the fish all the way round.

So today I cut up the steaks and served them on a bed of salad using the marinade as a dressing.

The salad consists of a layer of lettuce and purslane from the vegetable garden, roughly diced tomatoes, avocado slices, the first padrón peppers and okra this season in the garden, thinly sliced radish and purple basil leaves. Yummy!

A Simple Curry of Poton

04 Saturday Feb 2023

Posted by in Fish, Main Courses

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This fish from the Cephalopod family which includes squid, octopus and cuttlefish, resembles squid in form but is generally much larger and less tender, needing longer slow cooking. Stewing it in a coconut sauce spiced with ginger, garlic and chilli is a simple and flavoursome way to prepare it.


The same sauce can be used to cook more tender fish, but will need to be simmered for 30 minutes for the flavours in it to develop before adding the fish.

For 2 portions

1 stick lemongrass

1 large clove of garlic

a thumb sized piece of ginger – or galangal if you can get it

1 large green chilli

bunch of fresh coriander leaves or green coriander seeds

250 ml coconut milk

500 grams Poton

1 tablespoon Nam Pla fish sauce

salt & freshly ground black pepper

Slice the tender part of the lemongrass into very fine rounds

Finely chop the garlic, chilli, ginger, and coriander leaves – save a few of these for garnishing

Put the chopped ingredients above in a pan with the coconut milk and bring to simmer.

After five minutes add the Poton and simmer gently for 30 – 40 minutes until the Poton is tender.

If you are using a more tender fish, or selection of fish, then simmer the sauce for 30 minutes for the flavours in it to develop before adding the fish and then cooking the 5 or ten minutes that the fish needs.

Season the curry with fish sauce, freshly ground black pepper and salt if needed.

Serve with plain rice or rice noodles, and stir fried vegetables. A great garnish are thinly sliced radish that have been steeped in sweetened rice vinegar.

Tortilla de Habas con Menta

20 Wednesday Apr 2022

Posted by in breakfast, Main Courses, Starters, Vegetable Dishes

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Broad bean spanish omlette with mint.

The Spanish tortilla made with potatoes is universally known, but tortillas are also regularly made with other vegetables, peas, green garlics, peppers and beans, as in this case. Really any flavoursome vegetable that is not to wet to hold the cake shape can make a tortilla, or a combination of vegetables of course.

The fresh broad beans from my huerta or vegetable garden are sweet and tender, perfect for this dish.

For 2 portions

220 grams broad beans

3 eggs

1 -2 tablespoons of olive oil

small bunch of mint – finely chopped

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Blanch the beans by pouring boiling water over them and leaving them to steep for five minutes. Drain.

Break the eggs into a bowl and beat lightly to mix.

Add the beans and mint. Season well with salt and pepper.

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a small non stick pan. When hot add the egg mix, turn the heat low and cover.

After about five minutes of cooking check how the omlette is cooking. With a spatula pull the egg slightly away from the sides and towards the middle.

Cover again and leave to cook for a few more minutes.

Once you can see that the tortilla is cooked at the edge, but not quite cooked through in the middle, its time to turn it over.

With a spatula make sure that the tortilla is loose from the pan. Put a plate over the pan and in one quick movement invert the pan over the plate.

Return the pan to the heat and add the other spoon of oil, slide the tortilla back into the pan to cook the second side. This will only take three to four minutes.

Turn the tortilla onto a plate and enjoy with a fresh salad….or two.

Patatas a lo Pobre – Poor Mans Potatoes – with Broken Eggs – con Huevos Rotos

17 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by in breakfast, Food for One, Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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This is a very common dish down here in Andalucia, especially at this time of year when, in the old days, the ingredients for it were pretty well all that was in the larder. Potatoes, good olive oil, onions, garlic and green peppers. It can then be fortified with whatever you have, chorizo, fresh sausages, a slice of pork, or my favourite, eggs, or if you are really hungry, all of those.
All sorts of other ingredients can be added to this basic recipe to vary it. Mushrooms work well, red peppers of course, olives for a different flavour.
Per person you want

150 grams more or less of waxy potatoes – scrubbed and cut into thickish slices

1/4 of a large onion – cut into slices

2 cloves of garlic – cut into thin slices

1 green horn shaped pepper – cut into bite sized pieces

extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper

one or two free range eggs

Traditionally the potatoes are fried with the rest of the ingredients from raw, but as you have to use a generous amount of olive oil to ensure that they don’t stick in the pan, I prefer to par boil them for five to seven minutes until half cooked, then I drain them and put them to one side while I cook the rest of the ingredients. You can do this or go the traditional method, the choice is yours.

Put two tablespoons of oil into a shallow pan, add the onions, garlic and green peppers. Fry on a low heat stirring regularly, until lightly browned at the edges.

Add the potatoes and continue frying and stirring, adding more oil if you think you need to.

Season well, and continue cooking until the potatoes are cooked.

Either poach or fry the eggs.

Serve the potatoes with the eggs on top cutting into the eggs so that the lovely warm yellow yolks dribble into them.

Enjoy!




Chickpea & Potato Cakes with Whole Spices

28 Sunday Nov 2021

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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These spicy cakes are so quick and easy to make and use only two main ingredients.

Per serving you need –

100 grams cooked chickpeas

medium potato

pinch fennel seeds

pinch cumin seeds

pinch coriander seeds

salt and freshly ground black pepper

olive oil for frying

Put the chickpeas in a bowl and mash them to a coarse paste.

Grate the potato into the chickpea mash and mix thoroughly.

Add all the seasonings and mix well.

Form into three cakes and fry for a few minutes each side, I turned mine twice, until they are golden brown and cooked through.

Serve with greek yoghurt and a spicy sauce.

Market Day Salad Nicoise

12 Tuesday Oct 2021

Posted by in Fish, Main Courses, salads, Shopping, Vegetable Dishes

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Sometimes when food shopping most of the elements of a great recipe just happen to appear before you. In this case, picked this morning french beans, bright green little gem lettuce and fresh from underneath the hen free range eggs. A salad Nicoise is asking to be made. There is no fresh tuna, which I would normally use, but lovely big prawns will do nicely for the fish element. Southern Spain is the land of the tomato, so super tasty tomatoes are always plentiful.

I prefer poached eggs to boiled, I like warm yolks to dribble over the salad, and a vinaigrette dressing to mayonnaise, so here is my version of Salade Nicoise.

Per person

lettuce leaves

1 or 2 tomatoes – chopped

French beans – top and tail them and cut them into about 3cm lengths, then blanch them in boiling water for two or three minutes. Drain and leave to cool.

1 tablespoon corn kernels

1 clove of garlic – chopped

olive oil

7 large prawns – peeled

2 large free range eggs

For the dressing

1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon white wine/cider vinegar

pinch of sugar

Firstly mix all the dressing ingredients together thoroughly. You can put them all in a little jar and give it a good shake. Put to one side while you assemble the salad.

Lay the lettuce leaves on a dinner plate to make a bed for the rest of the ingredients. Strew over the tomatoes, beans and corn.

Heat water in a small pan for poaching the eggs.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a small frying pan and add the chopped garlic, fry for a minute then add the prawns. Fry gently until just cooked through. Add to the salad with the cooking juices and garlic.

Poach the eggs, drain and lay on the salad.

Spoon over the dressing, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Serve with fresh crunchy bread.

Red Rice, Cauliflower & Green Bean Biryani

26 Wednesday May 2021

Posted by in Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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In the lockdown I got into ordering some of the food stuffs less easy to get hold of locally online, and that is where I found the red rice. I overcooked it the first time I used it, but now I’ve got it right. It’s all down to the soaking. This rice wants to be steeped in cold water for a couple of hours or so before it’s cooking.

For 4 portions

120 grams red rice

500 ml vegetable stock

50 grams raw cashew nuts

2-3 tablespoons olive or peanut oil

1/2 red onion – diced

3-4 cloves garlic – finely chopped

2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger

1 red chilli – finely chopped

Seeds from 10 green cardamoms

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1/2 medium courgette – cut into small cubes

1/2 cauliflower – just the florets cut small

150 grams french green beans – cut into 1/2 cm lengths

salt and freshly ground black pepper

At least two hours before you are going to cook, put the rice to soak in enough cold water to cover it generously.

Toast the cashews in a thick based pan over a low heat until golden brown. Put to one side.

Drain the rice from its soaking liquid. Heat the stock in a saucepan and once it is boiling add the rice and a pinch of salt. Leave to cook on a slow simmer for about ten minutes.

Heat the oil or butter in a wok or deep frying pan over a low heat and add the onion. Fry until translucent then add the garlic and ginger. Continue frying until the contents are lightly browned.

Add the spices and fry for a few minutes.

Add the courgettes and cauliflower florets. Cover the pan and continue cooking.

After the rice has had its ten minutes of cooking, throw in the green beans and cook for a further 3-4 minutes by which time most of the cooking liquid will have been absorbed.

Add the rice and beans to the rest of the vegetables and stir well to mix. Cook for a further five minutes for the flavours to mix and to dry the Biryani if it is a bit too liquid.

Check the seasonings adding salt and pepper as needed.

Lastly stir in the cashew nuts and serve.

Fish Cooked in Coconut Milk with Spices

25 Tuesday May 2021

Posted by in Fish, Main Courses, Sauces

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I made the sauce for this fish dish first, and then slowly poached the fish in it. I’ve used fillets of Mackerel as they are in season here right now, so superbly fresh and a good price, but any firm fleshed fish fillets can be used. I haven’t tried it, but it could be a good sauce to cook prawns in as well.

For 2 portions

500 grams fish fillets

1/2 red onion – sliced

2 cloves garlic – finely chopped or green garlic sliced

1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger

1/2 fresh red chilli – finely chopped

oil or butter for frying

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

200 ml coconut milk

1 teaspoon ground rice

juice of a small lime

salt and pepper

Heat the oil or butter in a deep frying pan or wok. Add the onions and cook on a low heat until starting to brown a little.

Add the garlic, ginger and chilli. Stir in and fry for a few minutes.

Add the mustard seeds and fry until they begin to pop, then add the turmeric and coconut milk.

Gently cook the sauce for five minutes.

If the sauce is thin, then thicken with the rice flour.

Add the fish and poach gently until the fillets are just cooked.

Season with salt, pepper and the lime juice.

Serve with rice. I made a Red Rice, Cauliflower and Green Bean Biryani, which went very well. I’ll post the recipe for that next.