Recently, my wife’s friend Sari, brought home for her birthday the best Basque baked cheesecake I have ever tried. It was so good it inspired me, I thought I needed to make one as good or better and discovered on social media that there is a real competition on making the best cheesecake in Spain

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to a dish to die for – Madrid-style beef tripe stew. I’m not joking: I’ve seen people fighting for the last plate of this incredible stew. Be aware – you need to have a taste for gelatinous types of food, as this dish is all about that. As you will have gathered by now, in Spain turning the ugly parts of the animal into something beautiful. The hardest part will be shopping for the ingredients; the preparation itself is very simple.

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.

There is flavours that quite simply belong together, and these three are a great example of one of those matches. The beauty of paellas compared with other internationally famous rice dishes such as biryani, risotto… is that it accepts every ingredient you can think of. In Valencia they say there is a paella for each day of the year, I think that sums it all up quite nicely.

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.

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”).

This simple recipe carries an explosion of flavor. It makes a great tapa or starter when you are entertaining friends or family as you can leave it hot in the oven until you need it.

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!

In Spain we eat a lot of chickpeas and pulses in general, it’s an important part of our diet. I always have a few tins in my cupboard to rustle up a quick dinner, it saves you a good couple of hours of simmering. This recipe is super healthy and very traditional, you normally find them as a tapa by themselves but today I needed to make a larger meal for us at home so I added a beautiful fillets of plaice which have turned them into a fantastic “plato principal”. It is more common to find this recipe made with spinach but as I have the spring greens on season and it is one of those ingredients not many people knows how to use I thought I would explain how to cook with them really easily. Enjoy!

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.

I have grown up eating salads at least once a day if not twice. Most often than not it was just a mix of lettuce leaves and ingredients that we had at that particular moment in time. From all those years of mixing and matching I came out with endless combinations, but this is one that I always come back for. Refreshing, summery and super healthy.