Tapas and Rosè

If summer won't come to England we're just going to have to pretend, and what better way to pretend than to eat tapas and drink chilled rosè?

It has been a dreadful summer so far. Grey skies, low light levels, floods and only a brief break in the clouds once in a while. I almost hold myself responsible. I bought a barbeque back in early June and I think it's rained ever since.

Well, we finally had enough and decided to just pretend that it's summer and decided to go Spanish with a few tapas inspired dishes.

Patatas Bravas - simple but effective. The missus (A) found a great recipe from the 'perfect' Felicity Cloake. The potatoes are roasted rather than fried. We've been having a lot of roasted new potatoes recently, by themselves with a gargantuan amount of salt they are insanely delicious. With a smoky tomato sauce and a creamy garlic mayo they are equally moreish and more suited to a tapas style tea. They were tremendous.

Another tapas staple - Padron Peppers. There can't be many things easier to cook. Put padron peppers into hot oil, cook until they blister, sprinkle over sea salt in obscene amounts, eat.

Squid is another favourite. We had some delicious cuttlefish recently at Bravas, a cool little tapas bar just off Whiteladies Road but which would not look out of place in Barcelona's back streets. The Spanish waiter lending it an even more authentic feel. We couldn't get our hands on cuttlefish, but did get some baby squid from the fishmongers on Gloucester Road. Simple seems to be the way with tapas so we just fried the squid and then squeezed over a load of lemon juice.

Our fourth dish wasn't strictly speaking tapas, but we simply had to include chorizo in some way and this chorizo and chicken liver salad from Tom Parker-Bowles seemed like a very nice way to do that. We get great chorizos rosario from Murray's on Gloucester Road. They release a fabulous oil when fried in a hot pan. When cooked, remove the sliced chorizos and add the chicken livers which have been dusted in seasoned flour. 3-4 minutes in the pan and the livers are done, crispy on the outside, smooth in the middle. We added them, the chorizos and some chopped mange tout to some salad leaves. The salad alone would make a great meal.

To complete the meal we went for a spanish rosè or rosado - Marques des Rojas from Averys. Made from Syrah (Shiraz) grapes it has a hint of spice which goes nicely with the chorizo. It's a deep pink, and could probably pass for a Pinot Noir in colour, and retains plenty of body so it pairs nicely with a range of food. It complemented all of our dishes - patatas bravas, squid, padron peppers and the chorizo salad. Versatility like that is really unusual, and would be hard to find in anything other than a rosado.

A salad of nectarine, feta, mint and seeds

Talk about hot off the press, I'm writing this straight after having eaten this fantastic salad, whilst waiting for my missus to cook our main course of gnocchi with sage butter. We're keeping things simple tonight!

This salad is very, very tasty and can be made in minutes. For 2 people I used:

2 Nectarines
A bit less than half a block of feta (DOP of course)
A few leaves of fresh mint, finely chopped
Some freshly toasted sunflower seeds
A good drizzle of lemon juice
Same again of olive oil

Take the flesh off the nectarine as neatly as possible, if you want to plate up something that looks attractive at least. Arrange the slices on a small plate. Sprinkle over a little freshly chopped mint. Crumble over some feta, don't be shy, the dish needs the salty taste for balance.

Then drizzle over some lemon juice and olive oil, I'd use more olive oil to help make things savoury. If your nectarines are really ripe they're going to be very sharp and sweet so the feta and olive oil are really important.

Finally, scatter over some toasted sunflower seeds, hopefully whilst they're still warm, and serve.

The mint works really nicely with the nectarine and seems to calm any flavours which might be too sharp. Both the mint and the nectarine contrast nicely with the feta and olive oil. The seeds give a satisfying nutty crunch.

There we go, job done. Just in time as well - dinner is served!

Pear and beetroot salad with feta and parma ham

To most people, including me, pear and beetroot salad doesn't sound that enticing. But the flavours in this salad are great. Me and my partner have eaten this 3 times a week some weeks! If you're cooking for 2 you'll probably end up having it twice to make sure you don't throw half a block of feta away. Not a bad thing.

The original recipe, in Cook with Jamie, uses a mix of raw beetroot. We've used pre-cooked beetroot and it's still very tasty. It's simple to make as well.

Peel and core your pears then slice thinly, a pear per person will do. Do the same with your beetroot and mix with the sliced pears. Crumble over half a block of feta then pour over a dressing of olive oil and lemon juice and season. The original recipe uses mint but we prefer to use thyme to make the taste a bit more savoury. You could leave it at that, but parma ham works really, really well in the salad and seems to make it more of a meal.

That's it. From start to satisfied in about half an hour. Make it once and I guarantee you'll make it again and again.