Seafood Paella, Spiced Beetroot, Blue Cheese, Orange and Mint Salad & Churros with Chilli Chocolate Sauce

The theme of this months cooking club was Spanish as one of the girls had recently done a Spanish cooking class.

The Paella was a seafood and chorizo paella and we used fish, mussels and prawns. The fish we used was cod which unfortunately disintegrated during the cooking process so there were no chunks of fish but I guess it added a nice flavour to the whole dish! To make this paella you fry some chorizo until nice and golden. You then fry some onion and garlic. Next you add the rice and some saffron which has been infused in warm water for 20 minutes and stock (chicken or fish). Cook the rice for 10 minutes then add more stock, sliced roasted capsicum, diced roma tomatoes (skins removed), parsley, mint, peas and white wine if you wish (we forgot the wine as we had had a glass of champagne by then!) and the seafood (steam the mussels first). Serve with lemon wedges if desired. I generally don't like tomato based seafood dishes but I did enjoy this and didn't find it too fishy. I would make it again.

The salad was delicious, colourful and very refereshing with the orange segments. It seemed a strange thing to have with paella but worked well. You could serve it with any meat. To make it you cooked, peeled and chopped some fresh beetroot and tossed it with rocket, mint, orange segments and blue cheese (you could also use goat's cheese). The salad was dressed with red wine vinegar, diced garlic, olive oil, roasted cumin seeds, salt, white pepper and a little orange juice. YUM!

We enjoyed a glass of Sangria with our lunch which completed the Spanish feast well. A basic Sangria is made with red wine, brandy, oranges, lemons, sugar and soda water.

For dessert we made Churros which are basically a Spanish doughnut. To make the dough you heat milk, butter and sugar until boiling and then stir in flour and salt. The dough is cooked for 3-5 minutes whilst being constantly stirred. The dough is then placed in an electric mixer with a paddle along with some eggs and mixed until smooth. We used a bread maker for this step.

To cook the Churros you use a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe lengths of dough into hot oil (we used rice bran oil). It took a while to get the oil at the correct temperature and to work out the best technique of laying the dough into the oil but after a few failed attempts the final result was pretty good. The Churros are dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar and served with a chilli chocolate sauce made from cream, cinnamon, chilli powder, sherry, vanilla pod seeds, orange zest and dark chocolate. The sauce was very rich and had a very strong flavour. The chilli gave a definte after hit and I think would take some getting used to. You certainly didn't need a lot of the sauce and I couldn't quite decide if I liked it or not. The Churros were very more-ish and I know the kids would love them!

Overall a successful cooking club get together and a chance to make some dishes we may never have tried otherwise.