Paella dinner party

It was a bonny evening and we had some bonny folk coming over, the back yarden didn’t look like total hell anymore (the green octopus is still spraypainted on the wall though :-/), so we embarked on an evening of food that we could enjoy outside and wasn’t too much of ballache to prepare – because it’s no fun spending all your time in the kitchen when there’s people over and wine to be drunk.

For starters, or more just something to pick at, we had

Shallow fried chickpeas with chilli & lime and

Home made hummous with pitta.

Yes, we like chickpeas a lot. We then had a seriously tasty and pretty simple to make paella with fresh prawns and chorizo. The recipe is a bit of a mash up between Joe’s recounting of his own recipe at 4am Liverpool airport, and some studying of the swish paella recipes from Moro cookbook who use some more exotic ingredients such as black rice and monkfish, the clever sods. I like the recipe we’ve listed here, I think it’s a good classic one that isn’t too tricky to get your head around if you’re not too nifty round the kitchen. Like me.

We ended on fridge set banana cheesecake taken from the Hummingbird recipe book (when I say ‘ended’, I’m not including the part of the evening when we begged the Italian restaurant next door to sell us some booze. We were, unfortunately, denied). Anyway, I really like the Hummingbird Bakery, How could you not?It’s just so pretty so even if you’re a bit of a crap cake maker, it’ll look good on your kitchen shelf. The only thing I find with it, is that it seems to rely on you having all sorts of kitchen wizzadry tools, a lot of which I don’t possess. Luckily, in all my cooking and baking endeavours, I’m being taught to adapt, overcome and improvise. Thus I did.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHAT I WORE

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHAT WE LISTENED TO

homemade hummus

To make the first, I drained two tins of chickpeas then added them to some extremely hot vegetable oil. They take a wee while to do, but if you take a few out with a slotted spoon, they should taste crunch when they’re done. Once they’ve rested on some kitchen towel to absorb the oil, season them with some very finely chopped fresh red chilli pepper, a squeeze of lime juice and some salt.

To make your own homemade hummus, whizz some (more) tinned chickpeas in a food processor (ASK JOE FOR THE REST OF THIS RECIPE

Paella with king prawns & chorizo recipe

inspired by Joe’s Mum in Spain and paella recipes from Moro

Ingredients:
2 cups Arborio rice
1 dried chorizo sausage
About 16 fresh prawns
2 small red onions
2 large peppers (I like to use red and green), diced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ teaspoon paprika
I tsp saffron or turmeric
I lemon to garnish
Bunch of fresh coriander
Chicken or veg stock

Peel your sausage (if it needs it, not all of them have skin) and dice it or slice it into bite size pieces, or however you prefer it. Brown the pieces in plenty of olive oil for a few minutes until the oil goes a nice spicy colour, then remove the chorizo with a slotted spoon and lay to one side for later.
In the same pan, brown your finely chopped onion. After a few minutes, when it’s brown ,add your crushed garlic and diced peppers. Cook until good and soft, this is an important part to the dish! Add your dry rice, I tsp paprika, I tsp saffron (or ½ tsp turmeric), then make sure all the rice is coated in oil.
Add about 1 litre of stock to this bit by bit, then bring to the boil, stirring as it needs it
(WHAT DO WE DO WITH PRAWNS??)

Fridge-set banana cheesecake

From Hummingbird bakery book

Ingredients:

6 leaves gelatine

200g peeled bananas, mashed plus extra to decorate

70ml orange juice

300g cream cheese

110g caster sugar

3 egg yolks

250ml double cream

base

200g digestive biscuits

150g unsalted butter, melted

a 23cm round springform cake tin, greased and base lined with greaseproof paper

For the base (in the place Lon-don):

Roughly break up the digestive biscuits and put them in a food processor. (If you don’t have a food processor, just do it by hand like I did, it’ll be slightly lumpy bumpy but that’s ok) Process until finely ground. Slowly pour the melted butter into the processor while the motor is running. Press the mixture into the base of the prepared cake tin, using the ball of your hand or a tablespoon to flatten and compress it (I think using fingers is best!) Refrigerate while you make the topping.

Put the gelatine leaves in a small jug of barely tepid water and soak according to manufacturer’s instructions.

(This was confusing. The supermarket didn’t have gelatine leaves so I used Dr.Oetker sachets which didn’t really correlate with the recipe so I guessed one sachet and that seemed to be ok)

Put the mashed bananas and orange juice in a saucepan and heat over medium heat until the bananas are cooked through. Set aside to cool slightly ( I squeezed the juice from one big jaffa orange)

Put the cream cheese, sugar and egg yolks in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (I just used a hand whisk) and beat on a slow speed until you get a very smooth, thick mixture.

In a separate bowl, using a handheld electric whisk (again, I used a handheld one. Upper arms beginning to resemble that of SJP or Madonna), whip the cream until thick but not stiff.Gently fold the cream cheese mixture by hand, set aside

Take the gelatine and put it into the warm banana and orange juice mixture – Hummingbird say to make sure the mixture isn’t too hot or it will destroy the gelatine. There was no danger of that with mine, I don’t know why, it just really wasn’t that hot. Didn’t seem to make too much difference)

Stir well until all the gelatine has completely melted away and is evenly dispersed. Spoon a little of the cream cheese mixture into the banana mixture and stir to mix, then add a little more,until well combined and smooth.

Spoon the mixture onto the cold cheesecake base and leave to cool completely. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, or overnight if poss and decorate. I did a wee cluster of banana slices in the middle then grated some orange zest over (left over from earlier) and scattered with edible gold stars. I was given the stars as a gift earlier in the week and subsequently, they have been put in pretty much everything. Do not put them in your gin and tonic, they will turn it yellow. We learnt the hard way

What did you wear for tea last night?

Well, I done a Drexa.

Drexa: “Lacking inspiration for styling oneself, one resorts to doing a ‘Drexa’; dressing oneself in the style of Alexa Chung.”

This term was one of the many determioned as we played our first game of ‘Frabble’; similar to Scrabble, you are not allowed to use real words, only words you have made up yourself. They must be spelt semi-sensibly and your description must be approved by the rest of your players.

So anyway, I have my leg in plaster cast up to the knee at the moment, so I am doing my best to utilise all the shorts in my wardrobe. Not enough. Whilst ever envious of af0rementioned Chungs’ endless pins, I found some vintage Levis cut off shorts for £25 on ebay, pretty good as they’re selling similar on the Levis website for around £75. Wore with a sheer black bib fronted shirt purchased from Rokit, the London store long ago, has become a much loved item. Was also excited to sport new Agent Provocateur pink and black bra, purchased that day. God bless the sales!(Sign up to the AP mailing list, you get exclusive dibs on when the sales starts and promo evenings etc)

Finally, I teamed my Drexa look with my new, love of my life, Kurt Geiger boots (just on the left foot obv). After surviving a lengthy panic attack on the day Kurt Geiger when into sale and the website crashed, I gritted my teeth, persevered, and after months of perving over them, the Saturn boots are mine. Tiny slight heel, tassles (don’t be scared) on the side zip, and distressed but not in a scary Dolce & Gabbana ripped jeans kindof way. And if I stop eating banana cheesecake and the like, maybe one day I may possess pins like Alexa.*sigh*….

What did you listen to for tea last night?

My life has been immeasurably enhanced since I discovered the benefits of having a stiff rusty window, that many musical receptacles can be propped high up between said window, thus resulting in al fresco listening (Hey neighbours, you’re welcome!)

I think dinner music is important, unless you have a seriously slick ipod collection or are so rich you can have different iopds for different occasions, I would never subject anyone to my ipod on shuffle (I have deleted the Phil Spector Christmas album SO many times.It still plays!In July!)

In the 4.6 hours pf playtime, we had the Fanfarlo Resevoir album which is perfect Summertime listen. I think it sounds a bit like Arcade Fire but that’s no bad thing. I like their new track ‘The suburbs’. Also still playing a lot of ‘She & Him’ 2nd album, picked Abbey road to go on the playlist, favourite Beatles album at the moment and then had a big random selection of Jimi Hendrix (Valleys of Neptune) David Bowie (Cat people) and some equally classic Hall & Oates