Roasted Pepper And Leek Salad With King Prawns And Quails Eggs

Quite often when you research information into the various cultures and cuisines that make up countries it is quite possible to find a common theme common name for the food of that country. Such as Indian Food, Chinese Food but when you refer to Spain or to put it possibly more accurately food and recipes that originate from the Country of Spain it is not that straightforward.

The reason for this is that Spain is an amalgam of its constituent parts that is to say it could be described as a political construct which is made up of disparate groups with their own languages, cultures, cuisines etc. The various autonomous regions that comprise Spain have been slowly pulled together through a variety of different processes some by force, some by choice but they all have one thing in common and that is they have kept their own individual features.

The 17th autonomous regions that constitute the modern-day Spain may all have their own distinctive variations of the same language and in several cases different national sub languages but as well as this would have their own individual cultures and most definitely cuisines. One such extremely distinctive autonomous region is Galicia which is Spain's most north-western province.

Spain's most westerly autonomous region it is surrounded on two sides by the Atlantic Ocean and as you can imagine for a region that has so much rugged coastline a lot of Galician cuisine is very much based on seafood and seafood based recipes. That having said not all of Galician cuisine is all seafood based and the region can lay claim to some quite gorgeous recipes and provincial dishes and are all well worth trying out.

Enough of all of the chat and lets get down to the serious business of food!

For this particular dish we are going to collect enough ingredients to serve four people and as such for the salad we will need the following ingredients:

Sunflower oil for frying
2 medium leeks trimmed and cut into the finest julienne if at all possible
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 quail’s eggs
1 280g jar of red bell peppers roasted and peeled.
12 cooked King Prawns peeled and deveined
1 tablespoon of roughly chopped fresh flat leaf parsley.

To start with we need to pour the sunflower oil to a depth of about 3 inches into a small deep saucepan until possible. In this saucepan we need to heat the oil and when the oil is reached the "bubble and fizz" stage when you add a few leek shreds we then know that it’s ready to proceed. We need to cook the leaks a handful at a time frying them for between two to three minutes or until the leeks are crispy. At this stage we need to remove the leaks from the oil and dry them well with kitchen paper sprinkle with salt and pepper and reserve.

The next stage in the process is that we need to cook the quail’s eggs. This is best done in the saucepan of boiling water for about two minutes and 15 seconds or two minutes and enough time to fill a bowl with really cold water! Once you've boiled quail's eggs put them into a bowl of cold water to stop them cooking. The yolks of the aches will remain a wonderful almost canary like yellow. If you overcook them they will turn into a much less inspiring powdery grey hue. Once the eggs are cold and that you can hold them safely then remove the shells from the eggs and cut the eggs in half.

Next we move on to the dressing for the salad. For this we will need the following ingredients:

5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar
1 garlic clove crushed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

This stage of the procedure probably has to be the most unscientific, non-technical but most potentially pleasing part of the process. Basically you take all the ingredients for the dressing (according to your taste i.e. if you love garlic go heavy on it if you don't, don’t etc). What you do is take all the ingredients you are given into a screw top jar any fool or any sealable mixing dish and give them a damn good shake.

Finally take the pieces of red pepper and put them onto individual plates and drizzle with plenty of the dressing. On top of this add the crispy leeks; arrange the prawns and the quail’s eggs on top of that. Then add the surplus dressing that you have, drizzle over the top and sprinkle with a fresh parsley.

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