Category Archives: cooking

vegging up

14 Wednesday Dec 2022

Posted by in casa azahar, cooking, homecooking

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veggies

I have to say that I have never met a vegetable I didn’t like. And while I may not always fit in Five A Day my diet is pretty balanced veg-wise (not so much with fruit, but that’s another story). However, I have been getting into a bit of a rut with my vegetable dishes, in part because since flatmate Peter moved back in (I do the cooking – he cleans) I’m a bit more limited because he won’t eat this or that veg. Well that’s all about to change because recently we both had our annual check ups and both of us have issues with cholesterol and BP, and our blood sugar is “borderline”.

So it’s time to switch up and start focusing on getting more veg in our lives. And although I love salads and veggie stir-fries, omg it takes so much time to wash and chop and prep everything. So my plan is to come up with veggie dishes I can make “in bulk” (enough to last 2-3 days) and just have them on hand in the fridge ready to either heat up or eat cold. This way I can get more variety (not just one veg as a side dish) and it will also be fun. And since it’s winter, rather than salads, these will probably be marinated, sautéed or roasted veggies. If you have a favourite recipe I’m all ears.

garlic galore

26 Friday Aug 2022

Posted by in casa azahar, cooking, homecooking, sevilla

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garlic galore (1)

Tried roasting whole garlics in the STORMCOOKER™️ the other day and all I can say is… wow! Of course this can also be done in a regular oven but I am so enjoying not having had to use my oven since getting the air fryer. Saves heating up the entire kitchen in summer and, more importantly, with soaring energy costs (last electricity bill was double that for the same month and consumption last year!) this should help a little. And every little bit helps.

Anyhow, slice off the end of the garlic bulb, drizzle with some olive oil, season with salt and pepper, wrap it in foil and cook at 190ºC for 20-25 minutes (be careful of hot steam coming out when unwrapping). Then have fun squishing the soft sweet cloves out of their papery casing. So easy and so delicious.

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tomato season

16 Tuesday Aug 2022

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tomato season (1)

Probably my favourite seasonal vegetable (after asparagus) are tomatoes, and possibly my favourite tomato is the ‘bombón colorao’ from Los Palacios, a town about an hour from Sevilla. But when I saw these beauties at the market I decided to get a few, which were eaten over the next couple of days in a greek(ish) salad and my weekly BLT. However, I’d forgotten to take note of the type of tomato I’d bought and so later on, with the help of my friend Janet @mykitcheninspain, we deduced that it was a variety of RAF tomato. Some wiki info…

The name Raf derives from the fact that it is resistant to a fungus called Fusarium oxysporum lycopersici (in Spanish, “resistente al Fusarium”). This was one of the causes of its popularization in greenhouse cultivation. Raf is the product of a selection of traditional tomatoes so it is not a hybrid tomato.

If you’d like to learn more about Spanish tomatoes have a look at Janet’s excellent blog post where she takes us through a tomato tasting…

Searching For The Best Tomato

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air fryers – yay or nay?

03 Friday Jun 2022

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air fryer

I’ve been eye-balling these gizmos for the past year or so and am still not convinced they are worth either the price or the shelf space. And are they a total pain to clean? I mean, I like the idea (a lot!) that you can get nice crispy food without using lots of oil, but it almost seems like they are too good to be true. Also, why are they all so bulky and shiny black and ugly? Quite liked the look of this one in El Corte Inglés today. Anyhow, any advice?