Jottage from Lancaster - Tupperware Mexican Chorizo

I am surprised, amazed even, that I haven't written a blog about this before as I'm sure this was one of the first recipes I cooked from River Cottage Everyday - it's probably one I have made the most often. I have made it up for guests coming as well as just a weeknight tea and it was the recipe that introduced me to smoked paprika. It's so very versatile and easy to make. I would say that you can't really go wrong - but I nearly always do as I forget that 1 tablespoon of smoked paprika makes it far too hot to eat. A couple of times I have had to add extra meat - a LOT of extra meat - to make it edible. 


Hugh does tell you to break a bit off and cook it so that you can taste it as you go along so that you can add more seasoning if you need to - but he doesn't say how to adjust for LESS. This time I used just a teaspoon of the hot stuff and cooked a marble-sized piece which I have just eaten and established that the seasoning is just about right. 

Meatballs gently frying

Tin of tomatoes for the sauce

Pasta simmering

I am going to make meatballs with half the quantity and we will have that with pasta tonight using a tin of tomatoes reduced for the sauce, then I will make some pizza dough tomorrow morning and we will have the rest tomorrow night on home made pizzas.

The finished meal

Easy, tasty, cheap, and with enough leftovers for another meal!

Jottage from Lancaster - Porotos Granados

I put Porotos Granados through Google Translate and it came up with 'Pomegranate Beans'. I'm not sure that that is entirely correct, but nevertheless, even though it sounds rather dubious as a meal, the fact that there were no pomegranates in it (I don't have any here) meant that I could make it for tonight. 


Alas, although I had all the ingredients, tonight wasn't a good night to have it as Hugh says it's better made the day before, so as a compromise I have made it early and put it in the slow cooker to cook in the hope that will give the flavours a chance to develop.


This meal has a bit of a checkered history as it started out as a beef casserole with lots of swede and carrot in it. As there was quite a lot of the stuff I fished out as much of the beef as I could with some veg as well as the juice and we had that for 2 nights. It still left a substantial amount of veg/juice which I put in the fridge thinking I would whizz it up as soup. But today after a couple of days it's still there. As the Porotos Granados needed some squash I thought that swede/carrot in beef-y gravy would form a good basis so I have followed the recipe from River Cottage Veg then added my left-overs.


I hoped that the substantial amount of smoked paprika added to the whole thing would infuse the whole of the dish and make it seem as if it really is Porotos Granados rather than something cooked up with leftovers.


After slow cooking for a couple of hours I tasted it and it was rather nice, but I had the thought that it might go down well in a tortilla. But I didn't have any tortillas. In the spirit of using up what I already had, I tracked down some Staffordshire oatcakes in the freezer, wrapped up some of the Porotos Granados in them, sprinkled on some grated cheese and popped them into a hot oven.


Overall, it's nearly as far from the original Porotos Granados as Pomegranate Beans but in fact it was very successful. There's enough for tomorrow night too - so that would work out well. Hugh's advice to make it the day before eating will be fulfilled and we will have the joy of eating leftover leftovers!