Andorra - home cooking

Steve cooked: Trinxat with Catalan spinach salad

When we set out on this mission of visiting restaurants around London for every country in the world, we were well aware of the fact that we are in one of the best cities in the world to do such a thing. Surely there must be some kind of culinary representation for every single country in the world?

But then, when you dig a little deeper, you come to realise how small some of the world's countries are. Sao Tome & Prinicpe. San Marino. Lesoto. Andorra.

We did some digging around to see if we could find any restaurant that would serve Andorran food. Ridiculously I considered Mediterranean restaurants before releasing how how landlocked this tiny nation was, on the Spanish-French border. Eventually we realised it was time for Plan B. Time to get into the kitchen

Well actually, that's not strictly true. It was time to consult our good friend Google to discover just what Andorrans eat. And not being big fans of seafood, this was no mean feat. But time and time again, one dish cropped up and became an obvious option. Trinxat. A national dish consisting of potatoes, cabbage and bacon.

The method didn't look too complicated, and in all honesty the result didn't look like it would be all that interesting, so we also opted for the side dish of Catalan spinach salad to go with it.

It was my (Steve's) duty to don the apron and get to work on the meals, which I duly did on chilly Saturday evening in March.

The ingredients for the trinxat were as follows (to serve 4, or the two of us): 1 green cabbage, 1 lb of ptoatoes, 3 strips of thick bacon, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp of fresh chopped parsley, olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

Peel and quarter the potatoes, and core and quarter the cabbage. Crush the garlic. Add them to a large pot of salted water and boil them until soft. Drain the pot and return to a low heat to allow the vegetables to stream dry a little. Roughly mash the cabbage and potatoes with the crushed garlic.

Dice the bacon into small cubes and fry it until fairly crispy. Turn up the heat and add the potato, cabbage and garlic mix on top of the bacon. Press into the pan to make a flat cake. Cook a little more under the bottom is browned. If you have a blow torch (seriously)... fire the top of it to brown that too.

Turn over onto a plate, bacon side up, and serve.

Now, when I cook, I start to sweat and swear a little when I have more than two things on the go on the hobs at the same time. This was one of those times, as I had to make the Catalan spinach salad at the same time.

For that, you need a good bit of spinach, olive oil, one garlic clove, a handful of raisins and a handful of pine nuts. Larger hands mean larger portions.

Wash, chop and blanch the spinach (I had to Google that). Heat up the oil and fry the garlic (sliced) until golden, then at the raisins and nuts until the raisins are plump. Place the spinach in a large bowl and top with the raisin/garlic/nut mixture and stir it a little until the spinach wilts a little.

And there you have it. It was actually much more interesting to taste than I originally thought. The trinxat was a really satisifying, tasty meal and the spinach salad was a great accompaniment. Much better than seafood anyway.