Lemonade - when wife gives you lemons...

Madrid is so damn hot these days so you're constantly looking for ways to refresh yourself... and I think that with this lemonade I've found the formula. I went and bought the best sun-ripened lemons I could find and then went home and made this refreshing lemonade. There're no tricks really. It's lemons, brown sugar and water. That's it. Well, of course there are always a few tricks, but this is really straight forward.

Ingredients:

6 sun-ripened lemons, the sweeter the better

3-6 tbsp brown sugar (muscovado for example). Really, you need to "add to taste"

Water to taste

Ice cubes when you want it really fresh

Press and roll the lemons with the palm of your hand before squeezing them. This makes the process easier.

Pour the lemon juice through a strainer into a jar or a bottle. Add the brown the sugar.

Shake well until all the sugar is dissolved.

Crush some ice and dilute the lemonade with water to taste. Ahh... refreshing!!!

Fried Zucchini Flowers

Summer time and the zucchinis are in full bloom. I'm so lucky that my girlfriend's parents are zucchini fanatics. Not so much because I like zucchinis (which, to be honest, I find a mildly boring vegetable), but because I have access to all the zucchini flowers I can pick. Zucchinis have two types of flowers: those which have a thick stem and which will turn into zucchinis, and those with a thin stem which are the "male" flowers and are only good for pollination... almost! Because you can also eat these. It's apparently a big thing in Italy, where apart from just frying them like I did, they also stuff them with cheese and herbs. Try it for yourself:

some 12-20 zucchini flowers

1 egg

1 dl. of water

1 dl. flour

pinch of salt

pinch of cayenne

Some neutral oil for frying

Start by mixing the batter (all the ingredients apart from the flowers). Leave it to rest in the fridge while preparing the flowers.

You can either wash them and leave them to dry if you aren't sure how clean they are. I picked mine directly from their organic garden so I just brushed off any small insect I might come across. Then gently open the flowers and remove the stamen as it's quite bitter (I've read). It snaps off easily. Trim the stem back to a centimeter and break off those green leafs from the base of the flower.

Heat up a good amount of neutral oil on a non-stick frying pan. Dip the dry flowers in the batter and place them directly into the hot oil.

Fry them for a minute on one side then or until they look golden and crispy, then turn them.

Place on a paper towel to absorb the excess oil. Eat while warm and crispy.

Rabbit's Liver Snack

I bought a rabbit recently to use in a Paella and it came with these two good-looking chunks of liver which I thought would be a shame to throw away. So I decide to make a small tapas to start the meal. Here's how:

Ingredients:

Rabbit's Liver

1 -2 tbsp Lemon Juice

Pinch of thyme

Salt, pepper

Olive oil

Baguette

First, marinate the livers in lemon juice, thyme and a pinch of salt for about 20 minutes. Then slice them.

Heat up the oil in a frying pan until it's very hot (when you start to see the first whisk of smoke), and then just fry them very fast. Add freshly chopped parsley and be generous with the black pepper. You might also want to add a little flaky sea salt. Slice the bread, place the liver on top and drizzle with the oil from the frying pan. Absolutely delicious...