Thursday: Spanish

Last night I did a couple vegetable recipes from La Cocina de Mama and a dish of ground meat on puff pastry that was inspired by Casa's meatball recipes.

For the vegetables I did spinach cooked with raisins and pine nuts (more or less following the recipe) and then green beans with garlic and vinegar (I skipped the egg and crouton garnishes, boiled the beans in plain salted water, and added some thinly sliced red pepper and onion just before serving).

For the meat dish, which turned out very nicely:
Cook a few cloves of thinly sliced garlic in olive oil until they start to turn golden. Pour off the oil and reserve it.
Add ~100g finely chopped smoked bacon and ~300g ground beef to the pan along with a good pinch of salt. Cook, stirring infrequently, until the meat browns a bit.
Add a goodly quantity of sherry, a couple grinds of white pepper, and some smoked pimenton. Cook until the sherry is reduced away, then let sit.

Make a "box" out of puff pastry and bake it at 200C until it starts to brown.
Fill the box with the meat mixture from above and top with thinly sliced onion and red pepper.
Bake until the pepper wilts, the meat is heated through, and the box is a happy color.

We ate all this goodness with some basmati rice and a green salad. It was a very nice meal.