While you guys have been feasting your eyes and hopefully bellies on a plethora of my delicious recipes from the past year, I have been finding time between Estrella guzzling, and beach sleeping to cook up some local ingredients in Spain.
The huge variety that supermarkets offer these days means that you will be able to find much the same in Carrefour as you might a big Tesco and vice-versa, but the biggest difference is that different ingredients are cheaper and more readily available depending on the country you're in, and the type of dishes you cook alters thus.
In the coastal supermarkets just south of Alicante, the seafood counters are something to behold, and I therefore ended up cooking considerably more fish than I normally would. With seafood being in plentiful supply locally, it is also very cheap. The squid used in this dish for four people cost a mere 2.40Euros.
Of course you might pay a little more for it here, but squid is readily available in the UK, and is a gentle introduction into seafood for a shell-phobic food-lover. Cooking with powerful flavours like chilli and garlic helps counter the squid's strong taste of the sea, bringing out the best of its flavour without overpowering it.
Because of the strength of flavours going on here, it really needs to be served with some nice green salad, and simple, crispy potato wedges.
Ingredients (serves 4)
500g fresh squid rings
1 red chilli
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
A generous glug of olive oil
1 Lemon
Salt/pepper
Salad to serve
Directions
Place Squid on some kitchen towel to dry it out a little.
Chop chilli and crush garlic and stir into a big glug of olive oil.
Put the squid in a bowl and pour over chilli and garlic mix. Season with salt and pepper and leave in the fridge for an hour to marinate.
Heat a frying pan or wok until smoking and toss in the squid and any excess marinade. Fry on a very high heat for 5mins. Any longer and the squid will become tough.
Finish off with a big squeeze of lemon and serve immediately.