PENCAS

This is a really old recipe that my grandmother, who was a very good cook, taught to my mum. It’s sort of like a sandwich, but made up of vegetables, Tetilla (a Galician cow’s cheese), and a little bit of air-dried meat. Making it is a long process but it’s so worth it when you eat it.

FOR 4–6

800g Swiss chard

2 teaspoons chilli oil (see here)

1 tablespoon ajillo (see here)

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

400g Tetilla cheese

200g cecina (dried beef), thinly sliced

200g plain flour

4 eggs, whisked

250g panko breadcrumbs

rapeseed or sunflower oil, for shallow-frying

Separate the white stalks of the chard from the green leaves. Remove any stringy bits from the stalks. Blanch the green leaves in boiling salted water until very soft, then remove to iced water. Next, blanch the white stalks until very soft. Chop the stalks into little rectangles around 6cm x 4cm. Chop the green leaves finely.

Add the chilli oil and ajillo to the chopped greens, season with salt and pepper and mix together.

Cut the cheese into ½cm thick slices the same size as the chard stalks.

Add some chopped greens to a square of white chard stalk. Top with a thin slice of cecina, then a slice of cheese, then another slice of cecina, then more greens, then another piece of chard stalk.

Squish together, then coat in flour, egg and panko.

Put a couple of centimetres of oil into a high-sided pan or sauté pan on a medium-low heat and shallow-fry – you don’t want to colour the pencas too much, but you want to cook them until the cheese melts.

Drain on kitchen paper, then cut in half diagonally, so you can see all the layers, and season.