The meal Rachel and participants will be knocking up is a very old, traditional Spanish dish called escabeche. Escabeche was originally a way for people to conserve meat or fish by cooking it in vinegar but it’s so good that the Spanish still eat it.
There’s much lively debate about the origins of escabeche but a general consensus remains that the word comes from the Persian sikbaj, meaning ‘cooked in vinegar’. You might say that escabeche is in fact an old fashioned fusion food.
The modern recipes for the dish still call for vinegar but it’s used to add a piquant taste as opposed to preserving it. You can eat your escabeche as soon as you’ve made it and any leftovers cold the day after.
If you eat escabeche in Spain they will serve it cold although for foreigners they’re happy to heat it up!
The twitter cook-a-along starts at 7pm on Wednesday so grab your laptop and head for the kitchen.
You’ll find all the instructions by following @catalan_cooking on twitter. Cook-a-long participants can also ask questions, make comments, share pictures and suggest wine recommendations by adding the #cookalong hash tag to their tweets.
Even if you’re not on twitter you can go to
twitter.com/catalan_cooking
Follow the instructions there making sure to refresh the page every 5 minutes or so for updated instructions.
The ingredients you’ll need for the twitter cook-a-long are:
4 quarters of chicken
1 large white onion
2 stalks of celery
2 medium carrots
2 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
Thyme
1 clove
A few black peppercorns (around 5 or 6)
Salt
250 ml of olive oil
125 ml red wine vinegar (or Sherry vinegar)
150ml of sherry (fino)
Optional extras for the aperitivo during cooking time are:
Olives,
Cheese,
Iberico ham,
Fuet,
Salted almonds
Anchovies
Bread, olive oil and tomato.
A glass of sherry or wine