Galicia beckons

As I said last week, we are eating our way through our cooking books and around the world, and this week we were in Galicia in Spain with Rick Stein.  It's the bit at the top left bordering on Portugal.  It's coastal, so we had seafood.  We started with mussels in tomato vinaigrette which was a wonderful way to eat mussels.  Eat more mussels - they are quick and easy to prepare, they are so cheap and they are quite filling.
We followed the mussels with a simple terakihi fillet with caramelised garlic. I have this nifty little app on my phone for choosing sustainable fish.  It's called Best Fish Guide & is produced by Forest & Bird.  You type in the fish the recipe suggests & the app tells you if it is a good choice and if not what to choose instead.  It also includes recipes!  The garlic is something you can do a good batch of and keep in the fridge for a few weeks.  Put 125g roughly chopped garlic cloves & 90ml olive oil into a small pan & cook over a very gentle heat for 20 minutes until it is soft & sweet.  Stir occasionally & bash it with a potato masher after about 15 mins to help it soften down.  Season with salt & refrigerate what you don't use.  We had this with what was described as a classic Spanish mixed salad and seemed like a version of a classic Salad Nicoise.  You can buy white asparagus in jars at Moore Wilson & they're not terribly expensive.  Nothing like the price of fresh in the season.
In the spirit of Spain, if not exactly Spanish, we had a salad of pumpkin, ricotta & Serrano ham served on a bed of baby spinach.  It was Hugh's side dish salad expanded into an entire meal. 
However we did not entirely leave last week's British theme behind.  I was looking at cooking books in the library - don't ask why  - I know we have too many on our shelves which is why we started this regional culinary journey.  However there we were at the library and there it was - The Great British Farmhouse Cookbook. I recommend a trip to your local library to borrow a copy for yourself.  If you are in Wellington wait a couple of weeks because we still have it. I would like to cook my way through the book.  For now we have tried Warm lamb salad with pea, mint & feta dressing.  This is a kind of deconstructed Sunday lunch without the potatoes.  You could serve it with a dish of sauteed or roasted potatoes if you wanted the carbohydrate. I plan to make this again.  The leftovers went well in our weekday lunches.
The book got another outing when Peter whipped up the Roasted squash, red onion, green leaf & cheese tart. We need to eat pumpkin every week to maintain my sideboard autumn display  - we eat & replace so they are not wasted.  We need to eat chard because it keeps growing.  So a recipe that uses both pumpkin and chard is very welcome.  You'll be hearing a lot more about this book.
If you have not yet visited Ombra on Cuba St, do so soon.  It describes itself as a Venetian Bacara.  The food is outstanding.  There is a bit of a wait for a table but you can have a drink and start eating at the bar.  The staff are really friendly and helpful.  You will have a great night out.  We took Phoebe on Friday and we were not disappointed. Phoebe's favourite was the potato & emmental crochetta, mine was the pork meatballs.  Next time I'm going to try the sardines.  Reminds me of a great trip I took to Portugal with a very good friend in 1982/83 where we ate sardines nearly every lunchtime.  It was my introduction to the joy of grilled sardines.