A while
back, I think in early November, my friends C. and E. suggested a dinner
exchange between the three of us. The idea is to take turns cooking a mid-week
dinner for the other two; just sharing a meal and a couple of hours of an
evening as regularly as we have time for.
Having
dinner with friends in the middle of the week is something I would really
recommend. Why leave socialising for the weekend? Spending a couple of hours
with friends on a Monday means, at least to me, that Tuesday is just a tad bit
more fun. It is also interesting how the topics discussed over a dinner after
work often has more to do with our day-to-day lives, while weekend dinner
parties (with wine) more often go off in a more philosophical direction.
There are
some restrictions in the diets of my two friends, meaning that meals tend to
have to be vegetarian. I keep an eye out for new ideas, because although I was
pescetarian (on a limited budget) for many years I have in my new omnivore diet
a craving for more advanced vegetarian dishes than those I used to make. The main
dish I plan to serve my friends next time I host the reciprocal dinner is a
combination of two different dishes, both from Observer Food Monthly magazine.
The theme of the 19 January issue was budget eating, something that suits me
very well. Apart from a shockingly bad OFM cover (a closeup of plump,
lipsticked lips and some chips of the fancier type), I liked the look of many
of the recipes. I was especially caught by the vegetarian chickpea, pumpkin, spinach and walnut estofado by José Pizarro, and
the savoury cobbler by Miss South. The idea for estofado del zapatero –
my pidgin Spanish translation of estofado cobbler – was born. I should maybe
point out that zapatero means cobbler as in the profession rather than the
American favourite dessert. Hispanic friends, please forgive me this.
¡Mira el estofado del zapatero! Photo: Helene Frössling |
Estofado
del zapatero for four
Estofado:
1 small
onion
6 garlic
cloves
1 stick
celery
1 can (400
g) chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can
(400g) of cannelloni beans
1 medium butternut
squash, peeled and cut into 1.5 cm chunks (around 700g of flesh)
600 ml
vegetable stock
2 tsp ras-el-hanout
(spice mix, can be found in good supermarkets and Middle Eastern shops)
1 tsp
ground cumin
60g of
fresh spinach leaves
Zapatero:
300g plain flour
100g
porridge oats
4 tsp
baking powder
2 tsp mustard
powder
4 tsp oil
300 ml yoghurt,
plain
Turn on the
oven at 200C.
First make
a sofrito. Chop the onion and celery into small pieces, and fry over a low heat
to soften. Add the crushed garlic towards the end, and let cook without burning
for a minute or two. Add the can of tomatoes, making sure to mash any bigger
chunks to make a smoother sofrito, and cook on until the juices have
disappeared and the sofrito is quite dense. Add the chunks of butternut squash,
the spices and the stock, and cook until the squash is tender. Up until this
point you can prepare up to a couple of days in advance, and store in an
airtight container in the fridge before reheating. You need the dish to be hot
before the next step!
The next
stage is to add the beans and let them heat through. Add the spinach and put
the lid on to let the spinach wilt into the rest of the estofado. Check the seasoning.
The cobbler
dough can be made while the butternut squash is cooking. In a large bowl mix
the dry ingredients. Stir in the yoghurt and oil to create a dough. The dough
should be soft and smooth, not sticky. Flatten out the dough on a lightly
floured surface to no more than 1 cm thickness, and using for example a small
glass or a cookie cutter make dough discs.
Transfer
the estofado into an oven dish; mine measures roughly 25x25x5cm. Smooth out.
Cover the top with the dough discs. Bake in the middle of the oven for around
25 minutes or until the discs have risen and are golden brown. Allow the dish
to cool slightly for a few minutes before serving with a dressed green salad.
Tip: If you
have any dough discs left when the estofado is covered, bake them on a small
tray alongside the estofado to make a savoury scone – perfect with wintery
soups!
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