Marys Saint Clements pudding and almond blossom

When you are surrounded by citrus trees and love to cook you are always looking for ways to make use of a wonderful free resource. The lemons from the garden are in almost daily use, on fish salads, paella etc.
I do love a good pud though, so heres a recipe I put together the other day, it was yummy.

You will need.

3 lemons squeezed for juice, take off the zest first to use
2 oranges squeezed and zested too. ( free from our lovely neighbour Serafino)
200 grams of whipping cream
150 grams of yogurt ( I used a vanilla probiotic one from Lidl but a good Greek one would work)
2 tablespoons of caster sugar
3 sheets of gelatine
1/2 pkt of digestive biscuits crushed
100grams melted butter

first mix melted butter and crushed biscuit then press into a shallow container lined with kitchen foil, a flan dish is perfect. Put into fridge to set. mix lemon and orange juice
Put gelatine sheets on small plate cover in water, when it soft squeeze of the excess water then put in small bowl and cover with about half a cup of a the citrus juice set aside
put sugar in to remaining juice and warm until sugar melts, no need to boil. leave to cool
Whip the cream till very stiff fold in yogurt

warm gelatine in microwave, till it melts let it cool a little

mix the cream mixture, juice/sugar and gelatine and zest together

pour onto biscuit base and leave in fridge for 4 to 5 hours


try to kid yourself its really good for you because of all the fruit juice!


and as a foot note the almonds tree are in bloom now, a magical sight for sure.

Food Glorious Food

It was Becs birthday on Saturday and Jochin made us all a meal. I am telling you his Paella is just second to none. He was taught to cook this famous Spanish dish by an elderly lady many years ago. Jochin prefers to cook the traditional dish over a wood fire, but however he does it its a real treat. Sitting in one of the house's cave rooms in front of an open fire made the occasion a birthday not to be forgotten.
We all seem to get even more interested in food when the weather cools down, guess you don't really feel like eating so much when the temperatures 40 degrees. Well its not 40 degrees now so as I said in an earlier post we do love our soup. I also like the fact that you can get lentils, chickpeas and all sorts of beans precooked in jars, very convenient and not expensive. We always get ours from Inter Marche now as their prices are best. Of course fresh vegetables come from the street market. At our house we have whats called our Wednesday soup. That's when I try to use up any remaining vegetables before the market the next day. So here's the basic recipe you can adapt to use any veg as necessary. The only vegetable I would say is essential are onions, you can manage with leeks at a pinch, if you only have them and not the afore mentioned.
Dice all your vegetables. Typically I would use the following
Onions,courgettes,aubergine,leeks,carrots,turnip,parsnip,tomatoes.You not not need masses of any particular type.
Saute the onions, do not brown, add the rest of your ingredients in order of hardness. For example, from this list carrots and other root veg next ending with courgettes, then tomatoes. You do not let the veg brown at all just "sweat" untill they are quite soft. Now you add fresh or dried chili to taste, (when my sisters here its big chili time!) You now add cartons or tins of tomato frito. You can get away with other tomato products but we like the intensity of the fried tomato puree. If I have a good large pan full I would use two 350-400 gram containers of frito. You need enough room in the pan to add stock or water of roughly half the volume of the mixture. Bring to boil, then turn down and simmer, by the time the soup has reduced to a nice thickness it will be ready. You can liquidise for a smooth soup if you prefer. Season to taste, eat or cool and freeze. By the way if you have an apple or two languishing in the fruit bowl, core and chop and add at the sauteing stage. Remember chili gets hotter if you are reheating. This is a good basic recipe that can be changed by omitting the chilli and adding Basil or lots of garlic. You can add lentils or chickpeas or any kind of bean for a really hearty meal. It can also be further reduced, poured over pasta or used in a Lasagna.

Market Time

It does not seem to matter what time of year, there always seems to be a great variety of fruit and vegetables at good prices on the Rojales market, we find now that we manage to buy enough to last us the whole week for no more than 10 Euros. Our favourite stall is always busy with people from many different countries. The staff on the stall have no problem communicating and are always ready for a laugh and a joke.