Grilled Lapas (Portugal)

The big bag o'fresh mussels

Apparently, Lapas is Portugese for mussels. There's your new fact for the day! 

So, this is an incredibly easy recipe for grilled mussels.  Since the mussels need to be fresh, this is another dish we opted to cook in France. The mussels are topped with a herb butter before being grilled so I was hoping that this recipe changed my mind about mussels.  

Soph and dad were both really excited about this recipe because both of them are very fond of mussels.  I'm less keen.  I don't find the taste too bad but the texture is just not something I like. 

Since mum and dad are more experienced when it comes to cooking mussels, they were instrumental in this recipe.  Mum started by going through the bag of mussels and binning any that were already open.  

Mum using Soph's newly
acquired garlic pealer

The next step in the recipe is to fry the mussels, which Dad kindly agreed to do for me.  It is very important at this stage not to let them cook; you just want them to open enough for you to split the shells.  Once dad had completed this part of the recipe and it was time to put in the herb butter that my mum had compiled while dad was cooking.    

It was at this point that we realised Allegra probably had larger mussels in mind for this recipe.  The ones we had were rather small which made this job a little fiddly but we managed ok nonetheless.  

When each mussel has some herb butter on it, they are grilled for 4-5 minutes and, once cooked, they're ready to eat.  All in all, the recipe takes about 15 minutes to make so it was really quick - great for a quick snack for the hungry.  

As expected I wasnt really a fan but they were ok. The herby butter made them taste great but I still don't like the texture. Soph, mum, and dad all liked them though. They especially liked how easy they were to make and how flavourful they were.  The baby even liked them so I'd say it was a success for the most part.  
Soph said they tasted so excellent considering they were so simple and quick that she'll make mussels like this from now on.  

Snail & Spinach Quiche (South Africa)

I think this is one of the recipes that most people would think a challenge for me. However, I actually don't mind snails. I've had them before in restaurants and formed the opinion that they basically just taste like whatever they're cooked in.  Looking at this recipe, we decided to make it in France, although the recipe calls for tinned snails. These were surprisingly hard to find in France.  We saw lots of packs of snails in their shells but no tinned snails.  Eventually, after our third mission looking for them, my sister-in-law spotted a tin of snails cooked in a red sauce.  Deciding that this was likely the best I would do, I bought these and rinsed the sauce off. 

The kitchen all set up ready to
get to work

Along with the snails, Soph was not looking forward to this recipe at all because she hates quiche.  I, on the other hand, love quiche. I've made plenty of quiches in the past but none like this, so I was rather looking forward to giving it a go.  

Usually, I make quiche with puff pastry, since this is how it was made by the French family I lived with in Montpellier, but the pastry for this dish was different.  It was not hard to knock up but the fiddly part came after it had rested in the freezer.  Allegra recommends  grating it and pressing the grated pastry into the quiche dish.  I didn't really see the point of this but I did it anyway, just to see what the difference was. 

Once the dish was greased and the pastry case was in the oven browning, it was time to make the filling.  The snails, garlic and spinach smelled amazing with the cheese.  

As it turned out, the tart tin I used was a little small because I couldn't fit all of the filling in. But I just cut down on the filling and egg and back into the oven it went. 


When it was cooked it looked and smelled delicious.  

Unfortunately, it did not taste delicious.  It was a very odd dish actually.  None of us particularlly liked it. I would say that the filling would probably be better as a pasty. I think it took up too much room in the quiche dish and it led to more of a layered effect than quiches are meant to have, in my opinion.  I much prefer quiches done in the Laurainne style since their ingredients tend to float up more and mix with the egg better.  

A bonus to this dish though was that I learned a new pastry recipe.  It was great! It's a little awkward grating it though so I would probably roll it next time, which Allegra says works as well. It had a light and soft texture but not as flaky as puff pastry so it doesn't dry out as much. 

As a recipe I'd say it was a part win - at least we got a new pastry recipe out of it.

Tequila Ceviche (Mexico)

Anyone who has been following this blog and knows what ceviche is, will not be at all surprised to hear of my fear of this recipe.  For those of you who don't know what it is, ceviche is a mexican delicacy of chopped, raw white fish. White fish isn't a problem for me at all, but raw fish (of any kind) definitely is.  I do not eat raw fish - a fact of which anyone who's been to a sushi restaurant with me is well aware. 

I did see a small hope in this recipe though - tequila.  I do like tequila - as anyone who's ever been to a country-western bar with me will know.  

The recipe suggests using very fresh fish (for obvious reasons). So Soph and I saved this recipe to make while we were on holiday in France (again, for obvious reasons). Allegra recommends using bass, or a cod-like fish that's white - but not a flat fish.  So off we went to the hypermarche.  Although I am fluent in French, I did not have the sense to look up what bass is in French before heading off to the shops, and the woman on the fish counter looked at us as though we were crazy for suggesting that she might know the English  word bass.  So away we went with Dos de Cabillaud, which is cod, and called it a win. 

The next step is to thinly slice the meat - a task to which my dad was more suited so I called him into action. He decided the best bet was to slice with the grain but quickly realised that was  not true and before long had thinly sliced all of the cod. 

Now I have been a little misleading up until now in that the fish isn't technically raw at the time you eat it - it's cooked to a degree by being soaked in a mixture of tequila, salt, and lime, in the fridge for about 20 minutes.  To me, however, this still counts as raw. Since my parents don't own shot glasses (go figure), I guessed on the measurement but feel confident that I poured between 35ml and 45ml of tequilla into the dish - so let's call it a large shot.  

After it's sat in the fridge for 20 minutes, you then top it with another of my favourites - you guessed it - chopped chillis.  So for anyone keeping a tally of the main ingredients - that's 2-1 against me. Obviously, I wasn't about to chop up chillis so Soph stepped in and expertly chopped and scattered the final touches on the tequila ceviche. 

It was then time to serve up this delicacy to Soph and my dad who love fish, and my brother who is quite the adventurous eater.  My mum and sister-in-law opted out, so there were only 4 tasters on this one.  

As a recipe, it's incredibly simple and quick to make. Taste-wise, however, I am definitely not a fan.  As expected, it was too chewy for me and very hard to bring myself to swallow.  The other tasters, however, were very impressed by it. They all said that the chilli and lime worked very well with the white fish. The tequilla was very interesting because, as you can see in the pictures, it clearly did go some way towards cooking the fish, but you couldn't taste it at all in the flavour of the dish. In the space of 20 minutes in the fridge, the fish went from being transleucent to being cloudy - settling the fears of some of the tasters that they would be eating raw fish.  

There was also a very intersting texture contrast between the fish and the chilli.  Since the chillies weren't particularly hot, they weren't so much of a problem but all of the flavours and textures together didn't work for me.  

While it's not something that I would eat again, everyone else said they would enjoy it and likely order it in a restaurant if it were on the menu.  

Pappardelle con Coniglio / sulla Lepre (Italy)

This dish has been renamed by my family to the much more pronouncable Rabbit Pasta (although you can also use hare if you prefer).  This may surprise you, but I actually like rabbit.  I lived in Montpellier for a while and my host family would regularly make rabbit casseroles, my favourite being one made in a creamy white wine sauce. When I left France I was heading back to the UK and rabbit wasn't a common sight in the supermarkets so I didn't ask for the recipe, an oversight which I now kick myself for. 

When it came to deciding whether to use rabbit or hare, Soph and I thought it best to use rabbit and make this dish when we were on holiday in France. We'd both eaten hare stew before in Wales and weren't too fond so that made the decision for us really.  

Although none of the ingredients involved in this recipe were daunting for me, I did (for some unknown reason) decide to buy a whole rabbit in the supermarket, and not one pre-jointed.  So step one, before even beginning the actual recipe, was jointing the rabbit.  Well, step one was watching a YouTube video on how to joint a rabbit, step two was jointing.  

Soph did all of the hard work years before when we'd been given a fresh hare in Wales so it was my turn to take the lead this time.  Soph did, however, valiently step up and cut the head off, and then stood back and stared in amazement at my willingness to actually joint the rabbit.  You see, I'm usually a very odd cook in that I don't like to get my hands dirty at all. I don't like touching meat. I don't even like to touch salt. So she and my brother were quite shocked to see me wielding a knife and preparing the rabbit. I have to say, I didn't mind it as much as I thought I would.  I was not particularly keen when it came to dealing with the organs and they went straight into the bin, even though Allegra suggests adding them to the stew.  Anyway, before too long, the rabbit was jointed and ready to cook.  

Anyone who's cooked rabbit or hare will know that it's only really any good if you stew it for long enough for the meat to fall right away from the bone. In this case, that took about an hour and a half.  

Once it's stewed, you take out the rabbit and shred it so as to easily remove all of the bones.  The stew is then thickened to serve as a sauce, mixed in with the pasta and shredded rabbit, and with the last minute additions of pine nuts and grapes.  

The recipe says to use Pappardelle pasta but we couldn't find this so we used some fancy-looking ribbon pasta instead and it worked perfectly. 

In serving this dish to my family, it received absoutely rave reviews.  Everyone loved it. My brother even said that he would pay for this dish in a restaurant.   Soph isn't a huge fan of pasta but she did say that she enjoyed the rabbit pasta and thought that the flavours worked very well together.  


Personally I would have added a note in the book that said to use seedless grapes, since they were a bit of an annoyance for me, but other than that I think it's a marvelous recipe.  The pine nuts were great, especially since half were cooked and half added right at the end (as the recipe said), which added a lovely contrast of textures. 

It's definitely a dish we'll repeat, although probably with chicken or a different meat instead of rabbit since they're a little tricky to get hold of here and a lot more work than other meats.