Seared Duck Leg with Baked White Beans

duck with baked beans

This is a fairly simple way of turning ordinary white beans into something very special. I normally use navy (haricot) beans, which are the type used with tomatoes to produced baked beans. Here I cooked the beans with a duck leg, but most kinds of meat (and even fish) are good – I’ve previously used pork steaks, sausages, chicken breasts and hake with similar tasty results.

Navy beans originally came from the Americas. The beans became popular in Spain and were probably spread through Europe by the Jews expelled from Iberia. It is thought that the bean returned to the Americas in long slow cooked dishes, like cholent, which is probably the origin of cassoulet in France and baked beans in the United States.  If using dry beans like me, do make sure you soak and cook them beforehand. Obviously beans from a jar or tin are ready to use.

duck with piri piri

Seared Duck and White Beans recipe:

1 duck leg per person
1 medium to large onion (chopped)
6 pieces garlic (finely chopped)
500g white beans (cooked weight)
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
piri piri seasoning (optional)
a splash sherry vinegar
1/8th pint chicken stock
1/8th pint cooking water from the beans
sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil

I rubbed the duck leg with piri piri seasoning, an hour or so before cooking. This allows the seasoning to permeate the meat. If using dry beans, they need to be cooked ahead of time. I use a pressure cooker, therefore the beans only needed a 60 minute soak in boiling water and 12 minutes pressure cooking. Do reserve some of the bean cooking water for later. If using tinned, use the liquid that the beans come in.

caramelised onion

In an oven proof casserole, caramelise the onion in olive oil, over a low flame, until it goes soft and sticky. Add the chopped garlic towards the end of this process or it will burn.

beans and stock

Mix in the cooked beans, stock, bean cooking liquid, 2 bay leaves, thyme leaves (removed from a couple of sprigs), a splash of sherry vinegar and seasoning to taste. The consistency should be soupy.

starchy

Put the casserole, uncovered, into a preheated oven at 180º C for about 40 minutes. The starch in the beans will thicken the dish and a skin will form on top, like a rice pudding.

skin down

When the beans have started to brown on top, scorch the skin side of the duck in a hot frying pan.

crispy duck

Brown the duck, so that the skin becomes crispy – 2 or 3 minutes of sizzling. Do not cook the underneath!

baked beans

Take the beans out of the oven and place the duck, uncooked side, on top of the beans. There wasn’t a great deal of fat left in the pan, so I drizzled what there was on top of the duck. If it had been a fatty bird, I would have kept the fat for a rainy day (or cross channel swim). Return the duck and beans to the oven for 30 minutes. The juices from the duck will leach out during the cooking and add fantastic flavour to the sticky beans.

Serve with a mixed salad and a glass of Zuazo Gastón Vendimi, from the Rioja region in Spain.

Pheasant Filé Gumbo

faisan gumbo

A friend of mine brought me back some andouille and gumbo filé from New Orleans last week. My first thought was to make a rabbit gumbo, but the lovely Pheasant Girl has taken to saving me her best brace of pheasants each week, so I changed my mind to favour the fowl.

Gumbo is a type of stew which originated in Louisiana around the early part of the eighteenth century and comes from a mixture of cultures. The name itself comes from the African word for okra – ngombo or quingombo (used to thicken the stew), but a filé gumbo contains ground sassafras leaves instead, also a thickener and flavouring (originally used by the indigenous Choctaw Indians).

Gumbos can be made with most meats, (especially wild ones) including alligator, chicken, duck, rabbit, squirrel, turkey, veal, or, seafood like crab, crawfish, oysters, shrimp, etc. Meat combinations and seafood combinations are common, but it’s unusual to have meat and seafood mixed together. However, both should contain andouille, originally a French smoked pork sausage, that was adapted and remade by German settlers to Louisiana. If you can’t find an American andouille in the UK, smoked Polish sausage (from most supermarkets) would be the best alternative.

Gumbo should start with a roux – normally fat and or oil cooked with flour to create a thickener in traditional French cuisine, but in Louisiana this is cooked further until it takes a toasted chocolate colour. Okra and filé can be added later for flavour and thickness – some combine the two but most use either or. There’s also some debate over which oil or fat to use, any of the following are acceptable: butter, lard, chicken fat, goose fat, olive oil, groundnut oil, etc.

To complicate things, there are two types of cooking in Louisiana – Creole (from the original French and Spanish colonists in New Orleans), containing tomatoes and Cajun (from the Cajun people of South Louisiana who were originally French colonists of Canada, expelled by the British), without tomatoes. Both Cajun and Creole styles of cooking use a trinity of celery, onions and sweet peppers, when garlic is used, it becomes a  holy trinity.

rubbed pheasant

Faisan Filé Gumbo recipe (serves 4):

1 large pheasant (jointed)
1 lb andouille sausage (sliced)
1 large onion (chopped)
1 red pepper (chopped)
1 stick of celery (chopped)
5 tomatoes (grated)
6 pieces of garlic (finely chopped)
1 heaped teaspoon goose fat
1 cup of olive oil (or other oil/fat)
1 cup of plain flour
1/2 pint of pheasant stock
2 dessertspoonfuls Cajun seasoning: 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, 1 teaspoon of onion powder, 1 teaspoon dried oregano and 2 teaspoons pimentón de la Vera (picante) mixed together
3 bay leaves
1 dessertspoon parsley (finely chopped)
2 teaspoonfuls of cayenne pepper
2 dessertspoonfuls of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
2 or 3 teaspoonfuls of Tabasco Sauce
A splash of red wine vinegar

to serve:

1 cup brown basmati rice per person (or your preferred rice)
1 teaspoon filé powder per person

First of all, rub the jointed pheasant with Cajun Seasoning and 2 additional teaspoons of cayenne pepper. Cover the bird and leave in the fridge overnight so the spices permeate the meat.

brunissement

The next day – take the pheasant out of the fridge 2 hours before cooking, so that it comes to room temperature. Using a large cast iron casserole, brown the pheasant in some of the olive oil. Do this in stages rather than crowding the meat. Remove the browned bird to a plate.

andouille

Next brown the sliced andouille and reserve.

roux

Once the meat is done, add the remaining oil and a teaspoon of goose fat to the pan. Stir the flour into the hot oil – to make a good Cajun style roux, you will need to keep stirring or it will burn. If it burns you’ll need to throw it away and start again! I do this on a hot flame and stir furiously for about 20 minutes. Initially, there’s very little change in colour, but when it does go, it can be quite quick – I am inclined to turn the heat down a little when this happens, to slow things down. After a minute or two the flame goes back up again. This stage is hard work and requires a good arm and lots of concentration. For anyone interested, a chocolate brown roux tastes biscuity, a bit like well cooked pastry.

sainte trinité

Once you have achieved a roux of the desired colour, turn down the heat and stir in a holy trinity of onion, celery, pepper and garlic and cook for a few minutes.

tomate

I went Creole here, by grating in 5 tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes in half and grate the wet side until you are left with a disk of tomato skin in your hand. Dispose of the skin or save it for stock.

bouillon

Turn the heat up, pour in the cold pheasant stock and when it starts to bubble add the Worcestershire Sauce, red wine vinegar and bay leaves.

alligators endormis

Sink the browned pheasant pieces into the gumbo, like alligators sleeping in a swamp. Put the lid on the dish and remove to a preheated oven at 150º C for 90 minutes. Stir occasionally.

cuit lentement

When the 90 minutes are up, remove the pheasant, take off the skin and extract the bones. Chop the meat into bite sized pieces.

andouille et faisan

Return the pheasant to the pot, along with the andouille and a couple of splashes of Tabasco sauce. Taste the gumbo and adjust the seasoning as you see fit. Cover and cook in the oven for a further 90 minutes.

zatarain’s gumbo filé

Gumbo filé comes from grinding the leaves of the sassafras tree. The powdered leaves thicken and flavour a gumbo, but should be added at the end of cooking because over time (with heat), the texture becomes stringy. The French word filé actually means yarn or thready.

filé

So, if you expect to have gumbo leftovers, sprinkle a teaspoon into the bottom of your serving bowls (not the cooking vessel) and let the gumbo stand for a minute or two before eating. That way you achieve flavour and thickness without string. For the uninitiated, filé imparts a subtle sweet and flowery taste.

faisan filé gumbo

Gumbo is considered to be an economical dish which can easily be stretched to feed an unexpected dinner guest or two – serving it with rice certainly makes it go further and it can be extended with additional stock. It’s often an accompaniment to Louisiana dance parties known as fais-do-do (French for go to sleep). Outside of New Orleans, in Arcadiana, Cajuns hold a gumbo hunt (courir de Mardi Gras) on Shrove Tuesday – participants go from house to house asking for gumbo ingredients which are cooked as a group feast at the end of the day.

While I knew that European settlers imported pheasant to America (as long ago as the 17th Century), I had no expectation of finding Louisiana gumbo recipes with pheasant – so I didn’t look for them. Having made up, cooked and photographed my recipe, I was writing this and looked up pheasant gumbo on a whim, expecting to find nothing. Instead, I came across Prejan’s Restaurant, who famously cook gallons of pheasant gumbo at the New Orleans Jazz Festival. On top of that, a search pointed me to numerous pheasant shoots in Louisianan – a phrase made famous by Fat Freddy’s Cat, springs to mind!

As suggested above, serve with a  couple of spoonfuls of rice, chopped parsley and a Dixie beer …or even a Sazerac. The rice, among other things arrived in New Orleans (originally) with the Spanish.

Suggested listening and viewing: The Big Easy soundtrack, an Anthony Bourdain programme on Cajun cuisine, plus a BBC Radio 4 Food Programme special on gumbo.

Other pheasant posts

Pickled Chillies

chillies

I went to see a friend on Monday who was picking the last of her summer vegetables – chilli peppers, capsicum peppers and green tomatoes. I came home with a handful of small green and red chillies, which look to me like cayenne or guindilla peppers. I took a bite out of a small one and it had quite a nice kick. There was a clean jar sitting on my windowsill (leftover from housing olives) and within a couple of hours, this jam jar nagged me into pickling some chillis.

It’s thought that the pickling of cucumbers dates back to 2400 BC in North West India. The reason for pickling is to preserve vegetables, particularly over the winter, using vinegar, salt/brine or oil. These methods of preservation were well know to the Greeks, Romans and Phoenicians. Preserving cheese, olives and capers in olive oil, fish, meat and vegetables in oil and vinegar (escabeche) and fish, meat and vegetables with salt were all common practices across the Mediterranean. These processes were absolutely essential at a time before refrigeration, but have remained popular because they impart additional flavours during the preservation process.

chilli peppers

Pickled Chilli Pepper recipe:

15 small chillies (or however many you can fit in the jar)
150ml white wine vinegar (at least 5% acetic acid)
150ml water
1 small carrot julienned
4 pieces of garlic (slightly bashed and peeled)
2 bay leaves
a pinch crushed chilli (optional)
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/4 teaspoon mustard seeds
10 black peppercorns
1 dessertspoon extra virgin olive oil

First of all, work out how much liquid you need to fill the jar and adjust the liquid measures (above) to fit. Next, sterilise a suitable jar and lid in boiling water for 10 minutes. In the meantime mix all the ingredients, except the chillies and olive oil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Wash the chillies and prick them a couple of times. When the pickle mixture and sterilisation are about done, blanch the chilles in boiling water for a couple of minutes. Push all the chillies down into the sterile jar and pour on the pickle liquid. If necessary (due to evaporation), top up the jar with vinegar and add a dessertspoon or so, of extra virgin olive oil as a final layer to the very top of the jar – this helps to protect the pickles from the air. Allow the jar to cool and refrigerate. Buy a good book, perhaps, “Como Agua Para Chocolate” and sit by the fridge for a week…

All sorts of flavours can be added to pickles, such as dill, turmeric, celery salt, cloves, oregano, etc.  Sugar or honey is a very popular addition (often in a similar proportions to salt), though personally I can do without. You can pickle most, if not all fresh vegetables and if you can them afterwards, by boiling the full jar under pressure, they will last for a year or more without refrigeration.

pickles

A cold beer goes well with pickles …and perhaps some sliced ham and sausage. In particular, I recommend drinking a Mexican beer, such as Bohemia or Tecate.

Health and Safety: This is a Fridge Pickle, there’s no fermentation or canning involved – these pickled peppers will be ready in a week and keep in the fridge for a month. The acidity of the vinegar kills any germs and most importantly botulism. It’s important to use a mixture of vinegar and water, where the ratio of water is 50% or less of the total liquid. Some recipes with a high salt content and more water would also be safe – salt kills germs too. It’s necessary to use a vinegar where the acetic acid level is at least 5% – it will normally tell you on the bottle (mine was 6%). Water from the vegetables will dilute the vinegar over time, hence the importance of the 5% acid level by liquid volume. Pickling in neat vinegar will preserve food, such as onions and eggs for a long time, but the vinegar taste is quite strong.

Pork and Chickpea Stew

estofado de cerdo y garbanzos

I had some leftover roast pork and started to cook a stew with chickpeas. I’ve cooked this kind of dish lots of times and went to check my recipe post …but there was nothing! I thought I’d better write one, so if nothing else, I can look it up the next time.

I’m a big fan of beans and pulses. Chickpeas (also known as garbanzos) are one of my favourites. Chickpeas are an Old World pulse, farmed as long ago as 3500 BC in Greece, Jericho and Turkey. Traces of wild (gathered) chickpeas have been found in French caves dating back to 6790 BC (give or take 90 years either way). Garbanzos can be dried and stored for months (if not years). They can be rehydrated and used in cooking or ground into a flour. Chickpeas are the main ingredient in hummus, falafel, farinata, the batter for pakora and as an important addition to many salads, soups and stews throughout the Mediterranean, Africa, India and Asia.

To reconstitute dried chickpeas they must be soaked overnight and cooked the next day for up to an hour depending on size and age. To speed the process up, garbanzos can be soaked in boiling water for an hour and cooked in a pressure cooker for 25 minutes. Chickpeas are available, ready to eat or cook with, in cans and jars, though I find these to be a little waterlogged and of course, they contain preservatives.

Pork and Chickpea Stew recipe (serves 2 – 3)

1lb leftover roast pork (cubed)
3 slices streaky bacon (chopped)
1 large onion (chopped)
6 pieces garlic (finely chopped)
5 medium tomatoes (grated)
1 large carrot (chopped)
2 sticks celery (chopped)
9 close capped mushrooms (chopped)
1lb chickpeas (pre-prepared)
1 pint stock (pork or chicken)
a splash or two of sherry vinegar (to taste)
1 dessertspoon tomato purée
a squirt anchovy paste
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon pimentón de la Vera picante
1/2 teaspoon pimentón de la Vera dulce
1 level teaspoon cumin seeds, a pinch of sea salt and 6 black peppercorns ground with a mortar and pestle (warm the cumin in a frying pan before grinding)
a pinch ground chilli
extra virgin olive oil

garbanzos

Fry the onion in a generous splash of extra virgin olive oil. Add the bacon when the onion turns translucent, along with a pinch of ground chilli. Stir in the carrot, celery and garlic, when the streaky has taken some colour. Mix the mushrooms in next, cut the tomatoes in half and grate the wet side into the dish – you should be left with flat disks of tomato skin which can be discarded or used in stock.

estofado

All the remaining ingredients can go in now – dryer ones first and liquids last. Give it a good stir, bring to a simmer and cover with a lid or foil. Cook on top of the stove, at a low setting, for about an hour, with a little agitation at 20 minute intervals so it doesn’t stick.

laurel

Check the seasoning, then cook uncovered for a final 20 – 30 minutes to allow the liquid to reduce and thicken.

Serve with rice or mashed potato and a glass of Spanish red wine, such as Els Vinyerons Saltamartí Negre.

Pheasant with Celery and Pimentón

pheasant with celery

I was inspired by a Jane Grigson recipe for Braised Pheasant with Celery, from her book English Food. This book contains traditional English recipes and in most cases details where they came from – sadly not this one. Nevertheless, I found a few variations on the theme (with an internet search), including cider, fennel, madeira and port. When I came across a recipe by Rowley Leigh which contained pimentón, I knew which direction my version was going in.

Pheasant were probably introduced to Britain by the Romans and were definitely well established by the time of the Normans. It should be relatively easy to buy pheasant from a decent butcher during the shooting season, October 1st to February 1st and from December onwards they should be the size of a small chicken. I recommend hanging pheasant (intact), in a cool dry place, for at least 3 days and up to 10 days to improve the flavour. Once plucked and gutted a pheasant should be refrigerated and eaten within a couple of days. A good sized pheasant will feed 2 people (even greedy ones like me).

browned pheasant

Braised Pheasant with Celery and Pimentón recipe (serves 2):

1 large pheasant
1 head of celery (sliced length ways)
6 shallots
6 pieces garlic (bruised and peeled)
400ml game or chicken stock
a small glass of dry vermouth
a couple of good slugs of white wine vinegar (to taste)
12 inches anchovy paste (or to taste)
150ml double cream
a large knob of butter (20g)
20g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon pimentón de la Vera picante
1/2 teaspoon pimentón de la Vera dulce
2 dessertspoons chopped parsley
2 bay leaves
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and cracked black pepper

Heat some olive oil in a cast iron casserole and brown the pheasant all over, sprinkle on some salt and pepper while you do so.

stock

Turn the pheasant breast down and pour 400ml game stock (chicken stock would be a good substitute) over the top along with a small glass of extra dry vermouth. Bring this to a simmer, put the lid on and remove to a preheated oven at 180ºC for 30 minutes.

celery and shallots

In the meantime, cut the top and bottom off a whole head of celery and slice each branch in half length ways. Peel the shallots, which is easily done if you put them in a bowl and pour boiling water on them, leaving to stand for 5 minutes. Take the pheasant out of the oven an put it on a plate for a minute, stir in the pimentón and a 3 inch squirt of anchovy paste (or a couple of chopped anchovies). Add the bay leaves, a dessertspoon of parsley, the shallots, garlic and a layer of celery. Put some celery inside the pheasant (off cuts from the top are ideal) and return it breast up to the pot. Arrange the remaining celery around the bird.

braised

Cook in the oven for a further 30 minutes with the lid on. Remove the celery and shallots to a warm serving dish along with the jointed pheasant. Cover with foil to keep the meat and vegetables warm. Taste the stock and adjust the seasoning. I added a couple of slugs of white wine vinegar, black pepper and about a 9 inch squirt of anchovy paste (this should be done a little at a time, with tasting in between) – the flavour of the stock had been diluted considerably by the water in the celery. When you are happy with the stock, strain into jug.

sauce

In a saucepan, make a roux with the butter and flour. Stir the double cream in slowly over a gentle heat. Mix in the stock and the other dessertspoon of parsley, until you have a thick sauce.

pheasant and celery

Pour the sauce around the pheasant and celery, sprinkle on some black pepper and serve with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. In spite of the hot smokey pimentón, the flavour was gamey but delicately so – the braised celery was mild and quite delicious.

I recommend drinking a glass or two of Albariño with this dish.

Other pheasant posts

Teal

teal

Teal is a small dabbling duck (not quite as big as a partridge) which has the flavour of a mallard and the delicacy of a snipe or woodcock. There are permanent groups of teal in Britain, which breed over the summer, but larger migratory flocks arrive here from Eurasia each winter.  They like to eat grasses, seeds, insects, molluscs, worms, etc. Teal are somewhat ungainly on dry land, but when in flight, they can, “corkscrew through the air at 50mph.” The shooting season is the same as for duck and goes from September 1st to 31st January.

On Sunday, the Pheasant Girl had about 10 of these little ducks beside the pheasant and partridge – I didn’t have to think twice about it and she popped the plumpest bird into my bag, along with a brace of wood pigeon. I’ve eaten teal before, but it’s a rare occasion so I wanted to do it justice. I thought about cooking a suitably majestic dish to go with the bird and when I read that the first ever mention of pommes à la dauphinoise (12th July 1788), “was served with ortolans at a dinner given by Charles-Henri, Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre and Lieutenant-general of the Dauphiné,” my mind was made up!

Pommes à la Dauphinoise recipe (serves 2):
750g of Desirée potatoes (or other waxy/fluffy potatoes)
6 pieces of garlic
200 ml crème fraiche (or double cream)
200 ml milk
150 g mature cheddar (grated)
50g Grana Padano (grated)
a squirt of anchovy paste
sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste
a little grated nutmeg
butter

Cooking the teal is quite quick, whereas the potatoes need a couple of hours in the oven, so I’ll deal with them first. Rub an oven dish with some butter – I save empty butter wrappers for this job. Peel the potatoes and slice them about 2 mm thick (ideally with a mandoline). Don’t wash the potatoes, you want the starch to thicken the sauce.

sauce

Warm the milk and stir in all the ingredients, apart from the cheese and potatoes.

garlic

I used a mortar and pestle on the garlic so that it would infuse better in the sauce. Felicity Cloake mentions that the addition of anchovies in dauphinoise potatoes, gives them a little savoury kick, so I used a squirt of anchovy paste – it was a top tip!

cheese and potatoes

Put a layer of potatoes in the bottom of an oven dish, pour on a little sauce and sprinkle on some mixed, grated cheese. Make three or more layers like this (depending on the size of your dish) and sprinkle a little cracked black pepper on top.

pommes à la dauphinoise

Put the dauphinoise potatoes into a preheated oven at 160ºC for about 2 hours. They are done when nicely browned and yield to a fork. Pommes à la dauphinoise is quite versatile when cooked – it can be prepared ahead of time and reheated when necessary. I’ve noticed dauphinoise potatoes on sale, by the kilo, at the delicatessen counter in many of the best Catalan markets. I took the potatoes out of the oven while the teal cooked and then put them back in for 10 minutes while the bird was resting.

roasted

Teal, like mallard should be cooked quickly in a very hot oven or they go tough. Stuff the bird with 2 bruised, pieces of garlic, a sprig of rosemary, a knob of butter and a little sea salt and cracked black pepper. Prick it all over with a knife to release the fat, sprinkle on more salt and black pepper, then roast on a rack at the hottest temperature your oven will go (probably about 250ºC). Teal take between 12 – 15 minutes to roast – mine was large, so I gave it the full fifteen. 10 minutes upright and 5 minutes facing down to allow the juices to go to the breast. The bird is done to perfection, when it reaches 57ºC internally. Don’t be tempted to cook a bird this size for longer, because it will become tough! Rest for 10 minutes in a foil tent, breast down, while you make a jus.

port jus

Using the cooking juices, and a little olive oil, fry some chopped garlic and pour on some game or chicken stock with a splash of port. Thicken the sauce with a knob of butter.

The teal was absolutely perfect – pink inside, but not bloody. The flesh was stunningly tender.

Serve with seasonal vegetables (such as Brussels sprouts) and a glass of Cantos de Valpiedra, a Rioja made with Tempranillo grapes.

Cazuela de Pollo y Chorizo

chicken and chorizo casserole

I had some leftover roast chicken and combined it with other ingredients languishing in the fridge to produce a warming chicken and chorizo casserole – something to ward off the autumn cold. I cooked this in a Spanish terracotta cazuela with lid, but a cast iron casserole would work equally well.

Cazuela de Pollo y Chorizo receta (serves 3):

1lb leftover roast chicken (chopped)
1/2 hot chorizo ring (chopped)
1 large onion (chopped)
6 pieces garlic (finely chopped)
1 large carrot (chopped)
1 stick of celery (chopped)
1 small red pepper (chopped)
1 small yellow pepper (chopped)
4 medium ripe tomatoes (grated)
a small bunch of parsley (finely chopped)
1/2 teaspoon pimentón de la vera picante (hot)
1/2 teaspoon pimentón de la vera dulce (sweet/mild)
1/4 pint chicken stock
a splash sherry vinegar
2 bay leaves
a pinch of crushed chilli
a dessertspoon tomato purée
a squirt anchovy paste
a generous slug of extra virgin olive oil for frying

First brown the chorizo in a little olive oil and remove to a plate. Using the same oil, caramelise the onion on a low flame – keep stirring so it doesn’t burn. These first two steps will create considerable depth of flavour in the dish.

perejil

When the onion is nice and soft, add the celery, carrot and garlic. Give these a few minutes of cooking before mixing in the chopped peppers. Cut the tomatoes in half and grate the wet side into the cazuela – you should end up with a disk of tomato skin in your hand which can be discarded or used in stock. The chicken can go in now too and sprinkle the chopped parsley on top.

pimentón

Stir in the pimentón de la Vera and add all the remaining ingredients. The pimentón will give the casserole a vibrant red colour.

casseroled

Put the lid on and place the cazuela in a preheated oven at 160ºC for an hour.

cazuela de pollo y chorizo

When the hour is up, check the seasoning and remove the lid before returning the cazuela to the oven for about 20 minutes. This will thicken up the casserole and create a slightly sticky layer on top.

Serve with mashed potatoes and a glass or two of Era Costana, Rioja Crianza (a Spanish red).