This recipe has the wow factor, it’s delicate, it’s elegant and refined, yet all can be made in just 10 minutes!

The Basque region has brought to us the best Spanish chefs, restaurants, and a whole range of innovative cooking techniques. This fish dish, though, is as traditional as it gets.

n autumn, I love foraging for mushrooms and there is never a year when I don’t go to look for them on a few walks. As well no year goes by when I don’t enjoy a good mushroom mellow rice made with mushrooms stock. The reason is that I like to feel the earthy special flavour mushrooms have that sometimes gets lost in between other ingredients. I love a good risotto but unfortunately they abuse so much of the Parmesan and butter that mushrooms get behind those bold flavours. I like my mushroom dishes to taste very pure as if I was tasting and smelling the forest.

Slow roasting lamb milk-fed lamb and suckling pig is a very traditional thing to do. It’s a dish for special occasions, when we get together as a family for Christmas, it’s a celebratory dish.

At home we sometimes make large bowls of salads so filling that are the only dish in a meal. This is an intense tasting salad, full of strong flavours combining meat, pulses, fish and veg. A made the most of the last warm day of the year and brave to use the barbecue but of course you can always use your pan to make it.

We don’t only tin tuna in Spain, we have an array of recipes for it. This is one of the recipes my mother cooks at home all the time. She makes a very tasty sauce but, with all respect to my mum, she overcooks the fish to death in a very old fashioned way. I don’t blame her, that is just as how she learnt to cook it! This is my fresher and lighter version of this home classic, which I will cook for her soon; let’s see what she thinks.

These pot-roasted lamb shank with artichokes take a while to cook but are in fact very easy to prepare. This is one to make when you feel you deserve a treat – it definitely does the job. Prepare yourself for mellow, fall-off-the-bone lamb. If lamb is not your thing, you can always use shin of beef.

An icon of Spanish gastronomy, Morcilla de Burgos is made with rice and spices. I have eaten tons of this stuff as my mum is from Burgos and there was always a few visits every year with it’s compulsory shopping of flavours from her childhood, which as well is now mine. This is a very popular tapa throughout Spain though and serve with piquillo peppers is the most common way to find it, just like in my restaurants. This combo with the apples makes it a very rounded fine dish.

I have easily tasted around 100 different crème caramels in my life but I have never tasted one as good as the one my mum makes, which originally is a recipe from my great-grandfather who was the Master baker in Burgos most renowned bakery. The earliest memory of my life was my mum cooking this very dessert and as it couldn’t be another way it then became the first ever dish I cooked myself as a 5 years old kid. As you have probably worked out by now, this “flan” is very close to my heart and I hope everyone of you who bakes it finds it as delicious and delicate as I do.

This dish is from the Navarra region of Spain, where some of the best – if not the best – vegetables in Spain are grown and they are the masters of preserving vegetables. Particularly famous are their Piquillo peppers and white asparagus although the list is endless. A great cod dish made with a rich tomatoey sauce.

A great seasonal treat anywhere between June and September. I get excited when I see them in the market for the first time when they arrive (you are probably thinking, “wow, he gets excited easily”).

Clams, garlic, paprika, jamón and wine… what could be more irresistible? One of the very few dishes that takes longer in eating it than to cook it. And don’t forget the bread!

This chilled almond soup from the Malaga region is a phenomenal way to start a meal on a hot summer day. And, as with all cold Spanish soups, it’s about as healthy as it gets. Don’t be put off by its unusual nature.

As you probably know by now, in Spain we love our garlic. We love a good chicken too – perhaps this is why this is one of the most popular dishes on any tapas bar menu. It’s also very popular done with rabbit – if rabbit is available, I recommend you give it a try.

Salmorejo is traditional from Cordoba, and it is not a soup as many believe, it’s a dip. You will not believe how this humble, common ingredients, can go that far!

This dish was commonly found in northern Spain and was always cooked in the spring with the new lamb season. It’s one of those ugly brown but very tasty slow-cooked stews Spain is famous for.

We also use other meats for this dish, such as goat or chicken.

Today you hardly ever find it in restaurants and only makes it as a family meal cooked mainly by grandmas.