Egg mayonnaise

This always-popular starter is simplicity itself. For a special occasion, use home-made mayonnaise. (See Recipe)

Serves 2

 

2 eggs

4 tbsp mayonnaise

paprika or cracked black pepper

Method:

• Prick the wide end of each egg with the tine of a fork. Put them into a pan of cold water and bring to the boil.
• Turn down the heat and boil gently for 6 minutes.
• Drop the eggs in a basin of cold (sea)water to cool them and stop them cooking further. This also reduces the chance of the whites going grey.
• When they’re cool enough to handle, peel the eggs and cut them in half, lengthways.
• Arrange each egg, cut side down on a plate. Spoon mayonnaise over. Sprinkle with a little paprika or cracked black pepper, if you like, to garnish.

If you have any lettuce, or spinach, the eggs look attractive arranged on some roughly-shredded leaves.

Stuffed eggs

These make a delicious lunch, with some bread and a salad.  However, when arranged attractively on a plate, they also make an excellent snack with drinks, or a starter.

Serves 2

2 hard-boiled eggs

1 tsp curry paste

1 tsp mayonnaise

Method:

• When the eggs are cold, peel them and slice them in half, lengthwise.
• Using a teaspoon, carefully remove the yolk and put it into a bowl.
• Add the curry paste and mayonnaise to the yolks and combine them to make the stuffing.
• Pile the stuffing back into the egg whites.

Variations:

• Use yoghurt instead of mayonnaise.
• Leave out the curry paste and use tomato purée instead. Season with salt and pepper.
• Leave out the curry paste and chop fresh herbs and mix these in with the mayonnaise, egg yolks and salt and pepper.
• Instead of curry paste, use hot sauce and a little extra mayonnaise or yoghurt.

Tortilla (Spanish Omelette)

In Spain, they sell slices of tortilla to take away and eat as a snack or for a quick lunch. It also makes a lovely and unusual starter, especially before a lighter main course. I should like to offer a vegan version of this, but so far am still struggling to find a decent recipe, and I don't want to use a processed product such as "Just Eggs", even assuming I could find it.  I am very unconvinced that a gram flour 'white sauce' is a substitute for beaten eggs.

Serves 4 as a starter, 2 for a light lunch

 

2 potatoes

2 onions

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper

4 eggs

Method:

• Slice the potatoes and onions and chop the garlic.
• Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the vegetables. Cover and cook over a medium heat for about ten minutes, stirring every few minutes to ensure that everything gets cooked. When the potatoes are completely cooked, arrange all the vegetables in an even layer in the pan.
• Season generously with salt and pepper.
• Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them gently – just enough to amalgamate the yolks and the whites. Then pour the eggs over the potatoes and onions and tilt the pan to ensure that they’re evenly distributed.
• Cover, lower the heat and cook for a further 10 minutes or until the eggs are set.

Tortilla is generally eaten lukewarm, but is delicious hot, for lunch.

Pakora

These little, crisp savoury fritters make a delicious starter to an Indian-style meal. They can also be served as a snack or with drinks.

 

Serves 4 for a starter

 

1/4 cup gram flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp coriander

1/8 tsp turmeric

1/4 tsp garam masala

1/8 tsp chilli flakes

1/4 tsp methi (dried fenugreek leaves)

1/4 cup water

a few drops hot sauce

2 onions

oil for frying

Method: 

• Mix the flour, salt and baking powder together. If the flour is a little bit lumpy, use a mini whisk. Stir in the cumin, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, chilli flakes and methi.
• Now add the water and mix to make a smooth paste. Add the hot sauce.
• Dice the onion and separate it into pieces. Add these to the batter and mix very thoroughly so that all the onion pieces are coated in batter.
• Heat a few tbsp oil in a small saucepan, wok or frying pan.
• When the oil is hot, test it by dropping in 1/2 tsp batter. This should instantly puff up and float on the surface.
• When this happens, drop in tablespoonfuls of onion-and-batter. They should be cooking so quickly that you will be lucky to handle more than 3 at any one time. Put one in, turn the second over, take the third one out using tongs or a perforated spoon.
• Put on kitchen paper on a plate and keep warm. Eat them as soon as the final one is cooked.

Serve with a little yoghurt, seasoned with mint or spices, or with Indian pickle or chutney.

Variation:

• Try other vegetables, such as green pepper, courgette, spinach, or lightly-cooked potato. Or use plantain.

Fried peppers

In much of southern Spain, you can buy long, thin peppers, which look like an overgrown chilli. In fact they are ‘sweet’ and the locals tend to cook them on a plancha, which is essentially a sheet of well-seasoned steel, that's placed at one end of the barbecue. Hot coals are swept under it and the metal gets extremely hot. When the peppers are cooked like this, the skins char and the core and seeds cook to a delectable softness and do in fact, taste positively sweet. They’re unbelievably good with lots of coarse salt ground over them. Occasionally, one of the peppers is spicy hot, which causes much amusement, when the greedy diner has bitten a huge chunk off the end. Lacking a large barbecue and plancha, I suggest cooking them in a more mundane frying pan.  They are sublime as a starter, because you just have the peppers alone and can really appreicate the flavours.  The long, thing ones (sometimes sold as Romano) are full of scalding hot juice - be careful! - which is totally delicious and can be mopped up with bread.

Although they’re common in both Spain and South America, these slender peppers are not easy to find elsewhere. However, ordinary peppers make a good second best, although the seeds don’t cook the same way and aren't usually worth eating. You can also find miniature peppers which taste equally appetising when cooked this way - seeds and all.

Roast peppers have become very popular recently, and many people cook them over the barbecue. Nothing, however, quite matches the searing heat of a hot plancha or frying pan. 

Serves 4 as a starter 

 

12 Spanish peppers or 4 peppers

olive oil

coarse sea salt

 

Method:

• Wipe the peppers.  If using ordinary perppers, quarter them and remove the seeds.
• Heat the oil to smoking hot in a heavy frying pan. Put in the (pieces of) pepper(s) and toss them in the oil. If you think you're going to overload the pan, cook them in batches.
• Using tongs, keep them moving so that most of the skin gets burnt and almost blackened. The inside should soften at the same time.
• Remove the cooked peppers and keep hot. Add more to the pan (with extra oil, if necessary) and repeat the process until such time as all the peppers are cooked.
• If you’ve nowhere to keep them hot, chuck them all back into the pan, after the last ones are cooked, so that they’re reheated.
• Serve with plenty of salt and some fresh bread to mop up the oil and juices.

Stuffed tomatoes

If you can get the really big tomatoes sometimes (incomprehensibly) known as ‘beef’ tomatoes’, they make a gorgeous starter when stuffed with a savoury filling. There are, of course, countless ways of making these, but I will give one example and a couple of variations. Experiment as you wish.

I use bulgur wheat rather than breadcrumbs, for making the stuffing, but either gives excellent results.

Serves 2

 

2 tbsp bulgur wheat

1/4 cup boiling water

2 large tomatoes

1 small onion

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp olive oil

1/4 tsp basil

1/4 tsp thyme

salt and pepper

 

Method:

• Put the bulgur wheat into a small bowl and pour the boiling water over it.
• Cut a thin slice off the top of each tomato and put to one side.
• Scoop out the insides with a teaspoon. You won’t need these for this recipe, but will undoubtedly find a use for them. (If you’re worried about it going mouldy, heat to boiling with a little hot water and put in a vacuum flask until you can use it the following day.)
• Put a little salt on the insides of the tomatoes to draw out excess juice. Turn them upside down to drain.
• Dice the onion and garlic and fry them in the oil until golden.
• When the bulgur wheat is softened, add the onion/garlic and the basil and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Be generous with the pepper.
• Place the tomatoes in the pressure cooker’s vegetable separator and put half the stuffing in each. Cover each tomato with its top.
• Put the trivet in the pressure cooker together with 1/2 cup water. Put the stuffed tomatoes on top. Bring up to pressure. Cook for 1 minute and allow the pressure to reduce naturally.
• Carefully lift out the tomatoes and serve hot.

Variations:

• Add 2 tbsp pine nuts to the filling, to make them even more special.
• Serve with rice (and wild rice) for a main course.
• Leave out the onion and the herbs and mix in 1/2 cup grated cheese with the bulgur wheat.
• Use 1/4 tsp dried, minced garlic with the bulgur rather than frying the garlic.