BUSH HALL DINING ROOMS

Last year while we had our house refurbed we stayed with friends just off Uxbridge Road and I found what is now one of my favourite pubs for food. However there was another place on Uxbridge Road that I walked past quite often that looked really good, and that was Bush Hall Dining Rooms which had only opened a couple of months before, and is part of the iconic music venue, Bush Hall, next door. Fast forward nearly a year and I finally got round to going there. Now I've discovered it I've actually booked it for my birthday meal next month as that's how much we liked it.

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EATING IN SEVILLE

A couple of weeks ago the boy and I took ourselves off to Andalucia for a well earned break. In fact, I had won a weekend at a 5* hotel near Estepona back in Autumn last year, via Quintessentially Travel, so had booked another 7 days on top of that via AirBnb, firstly in Seville then on to Cadiz, before the weekend at the hotel. More on both the hotel and Cadiz in my next few posts, but here I want to tell you about Seville.

I spent a year living in Seville in 2004. I have wonderful memories of lots of good food, interesting tapas bars and great places to drink. Although structurally Seville hasn't changed too much (apart from the addition of trams and tubes!) pretty much everything else seems to have been replaced or upgraded. Yes, there were still a few places I knew and recognised, but the food scene in particular, seems to have taken off in a big way. Gone are many of the small, traditional tapas bars, having been replaced by fusion restaurants, sushi bars and all sorts I would've never expected to see in Seville. 

We set off, armed with various emails and blog links that recommended places to eat, and print offs from Lizzie's blog, Hollow Legs, including her really helpful spreadsheet she compiled from a Seville/Cadiz visit, ready to go. However, on arriving in Seville, I began to realise just how much has changed, even since Lizzie's visit 2 years ago. We hung on to all recommendations, and visited a few of them, but were thrilled to bump into an old acquantance of the boy's and mine, the very talented grafitti artist Seleka, who now runs the wonderful DeLimbo gallery in the centre of Seville, and had a whole load of recommendations of the newest and best places we should go to eat.

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SQUID INK, SPINACH, PESTO & SEA BASS

I wasn't actually going to post this recipe up on my blog - it was just something I threw together for a weekday supper for me and the boy, and the title of it's a bit long winded. But the photo I posted on Instagram of our meal went down a treat, so I thought I'd put the recipe up here in case any of you want to make it.

You can substitute any ingredients you don't have for what you do have - my recipe was influenced by the contents of my fridge!

Serves 2:

150g squid ink spaghetti
50g spinach pasta

Handful frozen peas
2 tbsp pesto - I used Pisco pesto (I think that's what it's called, although can't find any info online about them), which was a homemade brand I picked up at Battersea car boot sale at the weekend
Packet of spinach
Lemon juice
Black pepper

2 fillets of sea bass

Get 2 pans of water on to boil - 1 large for the pasta, one smaller for the peas. 

Add salt to the larger pan once boiling and add your pasta. This needs to boil for 10 minutes. In the meantime, add the peas to the small pan, and boil for 1 minute, then drain and leave to one side. 

Heat a frying pan until hot, rub the sea bass fillets with olive oil and season. Place in the frying pan, skin side down and cook for a couple of minutes, until the skin is golden and crispy, and the fish is cooking through. Flip the fillets and cook for 1 more minute. Remove from the pan and leave to one side.

When the pasta is cooked (taste to check it's to your liking), drain, leaving a tiny amount of the cooking water, and return to the heat. Turn the heat right down and add the bag of spinach, stirring it through the pasta until it has wilted. Add 2 tablespoons of pesto and the peas and continue to stir. I drizzled some really nice olive oil through the pasta at this point as well; just to loosen the whole thing up a bit.

Put the pasta in shallow bowls and the fillet of fish on top. Squeeze a nice amount of lemon juice over the whole thing, and serve. A perfect, quick weekday dinner for 2!

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SQUID WITH VERDE POTATOES & GUACAMOLE

Squid is a very easy fish to cook. It takes minutes and as long as you ask your fishmonger to clean it for you, it is very easy to prepare. This is a nice light dish.

For 2 people

Half a bag of baby new potatoes
2 avocados
3 garlic cloves
Half a red onion
Handful of coriander
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil
Bunch of parsley
Bunch of coriander
Handful of capers
3 squid
1 red chilli
Lemon zest

Put a pan of water on to boil for your potatoes. Clean small baby new potatoes. Add to the pan of water as soon as it starts to boil.

In a mixing bowl, squish the avocados, and  mix with 1 crushed garlic, finely chopped red onion, a chopped bunch of coriander, the juice of half a lemon, a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Take a jam jar and fill up to a quarter with olive oil. Add chopped parsley, coriander, a handful of capers and 2 crushed cloves of garlic. Put the lid on and shake vigorously. This is to drizzle over your warm baby potatoes once they're cooked.

Chop the squid into cm thick strips along the body and add the tentacles to the squid rings. Rinse all the squid and pat dry. 

Add crushed garlic, a thinly sliced red chilli and lemon zest of 1 lemon to olive oil in a frying pan and bring up to hot. Once sizzling, add all of the squid rings and tentacles. Stir fry for 1 minute, or until the rings have turned white rather than opaque. Remove from the heat, add a little chopped parsley, and serve with the verde potatoes, guacamole and a big squeeze of lemon.

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