What are you eating tonight?

Notwithstanding my comment regarding pizza in the guilty pleasures thread, I've just munched a proper pizza from the Italian place down the road with rucola, parma ham in spades, fresh tomatoes and grated mozzarella (not melted) on the top, which was lovely. Plus a lovely juice mix involving fresh oranges and strawberries. Really good. Tonight will be home made gazpacho from la hotmetalina.
 
Tonight will be home made gazpacho from la hotmetalina.
Nice one - I love gazpacho - but have never managed to make it properly outside Spain - it was palatable granted, but remained just cold tomato soup - nothing more and not a patch on the real thing - which is so much more than the sum of the ingredients. I suppose sometimes it is hard to separate the food from the experience - it's 40 in the shade in Cordoba and you collapse into a bar and order a big glass of gazpacho with ice cubes - life preserving god food - versus, it's 20 and you are in Glasgow. The biggest problem though - in my opinion - is the quality of the ingredients you get here as opposed to there. If you wander about your average market in Spain - the majority of the vegetables are lumpy, misshapen, oddly coloured but they are properly ripe - not picked immature so they can be shipped around Europe. Most of the stuff wouldn't make it onto the shelf of a British supermarket for cosmetic reasons - but they burst with flavour. If you are going to make gazpacho you pick tomatoes that are about to split they are so ripe. The stale bread is another thing - most British bread is Chorleywood process shit - as opposed to proper pan. The simplest things are the hardest to make well. Have you ever tried salmorejo? Basically the same as gazpacho but with half the water - ideal for spreading on bread or tostadas. Sopa de ajo blanco is another favourite for me when in Andalucia. If you have a secret to making gazpacho at home - I'd like to know it. :) - saludos cordiales amigo - I.
 
Nice one Iain. I haven't had salmorejo, will have to see if I can find a recipe and try it. For putting on bread or toast, we normally do pan tomaca, which isn't really a recipe, you just rub or smush a tomato onto the bread or toast, and drizzle olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Here we tend to use baguette or sourdough.

Her gazpacho is good - especially as it's a heatwave down here at the moment with 30°C indoors. But as you say, the simplest dishes are the hardest to get right, and with UK supermarket produce, very difficult. How on earth did they convince us that appearance was more important than flavour? We rarely manage to get it to taste as good as in Spain because of the UK tomatoes, although if we can find those big ones in a proper market we use those.

When we were still able to travel back and forth to Spain before Covid she used to bring back olive oil! You can of course get Spanish olive oil here but not the one she liked. Although she says most olive oil sold as "Italian" at a premium was actually produced in Spain and bottled in Italy.
 
tonight is , BBQ Chicken breast, I found the best way to get it to cook evenly is to cut the breast in half straight down the middle , wrap each piece in cling film and hit it with the rolling pin until its all the same thickness. Marinate for half an hour in secret sauce in the fridge.:) 4 mins each side on the Barbie. Serve with Salad and BBQ'd Romano peppers, drizzled with lemon juice and plenty of salt and pepper, along with some French bread . I sometimes have them on French bread with watercress and Peri Peri sauce, - really great :)
 
Greek Chicken flatbreads tonight, these are hit every time, butterfly the breasts and score, marinade in olive oil, lemon juice, dill salt and pepper.
Slam them onto a red hot bbq and leave for appox 3mins, turn so the charlines run accross leave for another 3mins and flip over and do the same again on the other side , thermo pen them to 165 and ant spare marinade coat while turning.

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An early dinner today, takeout Chicken Pad Thai with rice and 'Crab Delight' (pot sticker things with crab-cream cheese inside). Then later, with our DVD movie from the library, we'll skip right to the vanilla ice cream-caramel sauce-cashews treat.
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