Pimentón de la Vera, an artisanal slow-smoked Spanish paprika, is a temptress of the kitchen. It beguiled me with this hearty stew, imbuing it with unlikely nuance and depth of flavour.
What to cook for a Saturday supper when your budget is suddenly decimated by a TV conking out? Well, once you've been to Makro and bought a really lekker Google brand and got your son-in-law to install it, you head for the supermarket and buy some cheap meat. That's what you do.
Like beef shin. In chunky slices. Quite what you do with it will have to wait until you've watched a couple of episodes of Little House on the Prairie, the new version of which is really good by the way. The remake (or, rather, new version based on the classic American novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder) is pleasingly honest and old-school, with no attempt to modernise the old tales. Refreshingly real. Loving it.
But I still made time to cook. In fact, I decided to take 45 minutes out to get a stew on the go while we watched a few more episodes. So this is a perfect Saturday recipe.
I remembered that I'd bought a classy little tin of La Chineta de la Vera pimentón, a version of Spanish paprika that is slow-smoked in oak in the De la Vera region. There are three variations of smoked...
