Tienes hambre? Muy bien!!

Spanish influenced food certainly isn’t anything new but it nonetheless remains very popular and with new modern takes on their dishes and flavours appearing over and over it’s no wonder it remains so popular.

Having been lucky enough to have had two very recent trips to spain (well one was Southern france bordering spain) I have managed to over indulge on some of their simple favourites. Padron peppers simply simply fried and dusted with a generous helping of rock salt to serve. Having recently purchased some from waitrose I’ll be trying that at home this weekend. Other popular tapas were manchego cheese not to mention their fantastic selection of hams. Again super simple with only excellent ingredients to be important.

A great aperitif stolen from my sister in law is again simple and yet Spanish influenced. Chorizo roll mixing the famous sausage with some lemon and herbs and baking in pastry to make a fantastic pre dinner offering.

So if you want to introduce the Spanish influence to your food chorizo is definitely a key addition. I made a one pot dish for dinner called Spanish chicken which fries chicken thighs together with chorizo as well as garlic, a lemon, some peppers, tomatoes from the garden ;) with some baby of potatoes. Served with a glass of chilled Rioja either red or white and you could almost be sitting on the terrace of your villa under the October Spanish sun.

With more and more UK producers creating their own version of this spanish delice its easier to get hold of good product, and eat local!!