The English Meal…!!

You may remember that I was set the challenge by my supervisor to cook a traditional English savoury dish….

I racked my brains (yes I know that didn’t take long!!) and came up with a few ideas. However the challenge seems easy, but this is cooking a traditional English meal in a foreign country which does not sell English ingredients so had to make a trip to the supermarket….”Hipercor” to see what was available.

The weekend before…
Dictionary in hand I set off for Hipercor (not far from here) and is the Spanish equivalent to Waitrose I suppose or so I have been told..!! I was particularly looking for fillets of smoked fish as was considering making kedgeree… I had already ruled out the possibility of finding English sausages to do sausage and mash as suggested to me… not sure chorizo would have been quite the same!! However to my surprise it was not possible to find fillets of smoked fish, instead they have it in slices but not fillets…

There were many strange ingredients I found several of which I did not dare to look up in the dictionary and others were easy to see and or translate such as lambs head…. (brains etc..). Anyway after a very long and exasperating trip around the supermarket I settled on cooking fish pie…!

A surf of Delia on line revealed an appropriate recipe for me to at least be able to show the residents as I must admit I did not follow it, I did the usual make it up as I go along…!!

The day before the class….
Another job then is to find all the utensils as there are minimal resources in the kitchen, (much to the disappointment of a few of the English residents!) I made a list for both ingredients and utensils and made for the kitchen in the basement armed again with my dictionary…!!

This trip involved me donning a very thick coat and heading into the walk in freezer – thankfully I didn’t get stuck in there, and came out with all that I needed for the recipe bacalau (cod) salmon (salmon!) gambas (prawns). Then the other ingredients… perjil (parsley) patatas (potatoes) mantequilla (butter) harina (flour) vino blanco (white wine) sel (salt) pimiento (pepper) yogur (yoghurt). I explained to Maria the type of dish I needed to cook it in and that a masher (for mashed potato) would be useful both of which she said she would bring from home…!!

The day of cooking..!
Maria came to work proudly sporting a dish which was perfect for cooking the fish pie in, however for the masher, was brought a mortar and pestle…. Bit tricky for mashed potato… but this is a typical incidence of how things get confused here and muddled at times in translation….. Anyway, in the end, we used a fork or 3…..!!

Many residents came to cookery (more than usual) which caused its own issue as there is only a very small space..!! I had to describe to all in Spanish and English what I was doing each step of the way (which was “interesting” as I didn’t know all the Spanish terms but the residents helped particularly a lovely very talented Norwegian lady who is at least tri-lingual! Of course my supervisor also helped but sometimes she went to get things I had forgotten or didn’t have). We always appoint a sous chef (one of the English residents in this case) who was to peel the potatoes however seemed unable to do so without a potato peeler.. its funny how we come to rely on some things these days… Anyway all in all it went very well, the Spanish were amazed that I fastidiously removed the veins from the backs of all the prawns (not something they bother with..!!). After preparation there was some debate as to when we would eat the fish pie… as it then had to go to the oven. It was decided that it would be today that we would eat the pie so it went to the fridge overnight with a big sign NO TOCAR (no touch!).

The day of tasting..!
Today the pie was cooked and distributed to those who attended the class at lunchtime today… it was enjoyed by all including the chefs here in the kitchen who have asked for the recipe to be able to cook it for the residents in the future…!!! It was even favourably received by a Spanish resident who when I asked did you enjoy the fish pie? She said …”no I don’t like fish I didn’t have any…” However, when the physio (Anna) asked her “did you like the food I gave you that we cooked yesterday in cookery (fish pie)?” ….she said ..”yes very much…!!”