Fideos En Cazuela.

So, this is pasta with peas, chicken and pork chops.  In fact, it has sausages in it as well and basically used the amount of meat we might buy in a typical week all in one meal!!!

For this month's Random Recipes, Dom gave us something of a free-reign.  I decided to randomly choose a recipe from the beautiful book - The Food Of Spain by Claudia Roden.  I got the book for Christmas from my lovely husband but hadn't actually managed to make anything from it yet.

I may not have chosen this recipe if I hadn't picked it for Random Recipes.  I don't generally do pasta and meat unless it spag bol.  I'm just not entirely tempted by it.  We did manage to make it last two nights but, even then, it really was a big dent out of our food budget with the sheer amount of meat in it.  You can use rabbit instead of the chicken and I would certainly do this next time I found rabbit available in the butcher - I think the rabbit flavour would complement it perfectly.

You basically cook half a ton of meat then add it to the pasta and peas with a sauce of onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic and chicken stock.  At the end you stir through a picada - paste made with hazelnuts, garlic, parsley and saffron.  Certainly there was LOADS of flavour in this meal to go with the huge amounts of meat and the kids loved it because it was pasta.  I did like it but I think I am going to have to adapt a bit to suit my tastes and budget a little better.  I loved the flavours in it but I wonder if I might prefer it made with rice or another carbohydrate rather than the pasta.  I will certainly use the picada for something else - it was very tasty.

Hmmm, I wonder if I might need to stop posting pics of my kids now they are at school? This might be the last pic of my wee ones on here. I might need to be more like Little Macaroon who shows The Boss in pictures but keeps her partially hidden.  Probably sensible.