Little Foodies Spain and the annual Jamon

If the in-laws are coming over from Spain and it's near Christmas they usually bring a leg of jamon serrano (mountain ham). Not wishing to bleat on but having been in bed I hadn't seen this years and not willing to negotiate the war zone that is our utility room floor this is all that I can see of it (at the moment). It's also all that you can see of it too. Now that I'm up and about (yippeee!) with only sciatic pain for company (still yippeee - drugs are marvellous!) I can't wait to start doing things with it. I have tasted it, the other day while in bed, hubby brought me a plate of it ever so thinly sliced. It was delicious!

At the moment the jamon is placed on top of the tumble drier which is on top of the washing maching. It makes the room quite warm if either one is switched on, and exceptionally hot if they're both on at the same time, so I do hope someone remembers to remove it before either appliance is next used. It would be a real shame to have to sit and eat the lot in one go. That would be too much even for us.

You have various grades or should I say quality of jamon serrano from the cheap, actually it's never cheap but shall we say more reasonable (which can leave a nasty after taste!) to the very expensive (which leaves the sort of taste in your mouth you'd possibly kill for!). This Christmas just gone you could have purchased some beautiful Jamon from Brindisa in London, starting at £165.oo up to £850.00.

You can click here to read a bit more about jamon. The best and my favourite jamon serrano has always been eaten in Andalucia, (Ssh! don't tell the in-laws). If you've never tried it, then do if you get the chance as it's seriously good stuff!

Little Foodies Veg Patch First Harvest

What better veg could you have than freshly picked from the garden. Cooked straight away and served.

This was our rather poor harvest of broad beans. I did have grand plans for what we would do with our broad beans but as the sum total gave us about 8 beans each, those plans were canned! The slugs had been having a field day, literally over night, despite our best efforts to keep them at bay. There wasn't enough for one meal let alone to feed a family of four. However, that said, the beauty of watching my husband and the boys pick them was unmissable. They brought them into the kitchen, where we shelled them together. My husband then lightly steamed them for a couple of minutes. We devoured our 8 broad beans each. They were delicious and next year we know to plant more and to stay well ahead of the slugs. Our beer traps will be a lot more elaborate and sneeky, we will outsmart those beasties!

This is our rather paltry entry for this month's Heart of the Matter event, which is vegetables. Heart of the Matter is a great blog which Joanna at Joanna's Food and Ilva at Lucullian Delights began. It has lots of heart healthy recipes and is worth a look even if you don't have any heart issues. Heart healthy food is good for a lot of things, including watching your weight... Go and take a look...

Another great dish using Broad Beans is Broad Bean Soup
(This would serve 2 adults and 2 small children or 4 adults as a tiny snack in cups.)
500g of Broad Beans
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
One pint of boiling hot vegetable stock
Half a pint of skimmed milk
1 Tablespoon of olive or sunflower oil

Lightly fry the onion and garlic in a tbspn of sunflower or olive oil or less oil if you have a good non-stick pan which we don't.
Add the broad beans and a little of the stock and cook on a high heat for 2 minutes.
Add the rest of the stock and the skimmed milk and cook for 5-10 minutes.
Blitz with a hand held stick blender to the consistency that you prefer and serve.
It may need seasoning with pepper only to make it heart healthy.

Broad Beans are also great cooked with some chunks of Jamon Serrano (Spanish Ham like Italian Parma Ham) . But I don't think that's really heart healthy... Infact I know it's not, as my father in law had a major heart issue a couple of years back and he shouldn't eat it. But he does!