In my family we eat this dish of braised red cabbage with apples as a starter on Christmas Eve. I’m a born and bred Madrileño and this is a very traditional Christmas dish; in fact I can’t recall a Christmas without it. My great aunty Tere is always in charge of this dish but I am the one she gives it first to try, to check if it’s missing something. I have learned from the best.

Even though these are traditionally Christmas biscuits, that has never stopped me from making them all year round. They are not too sweet and, of course, I love anything with almonds in...

Let’s talk about Christmas. In England you have lots of traditions that include clothes, Christmas songs, food, mulled drinks and sweets. Who doesn’t eat mince pies over the Christmas season?

On the 26th of December, it is a tradition in Catalonia to get together with the family and feast on Canelones.

This tapa is truly a Spaniard’s favorite. You will find these plump marinated anchovies on the counters in tapas bars throughout Spain.

As we get deep into the Autumn the variety of mushrooms you can find in markets multiply and as well the first Jerusalem artichokes start appearing on restaurant menus.

This super quick dish relies on fresh clams and monkfish and little more as this is how fishermen would cook them while out on the boat. But it’s just as popular on land!

You’ll find this dish in pretty much every tapas bar in every coastal town in Spain, as well as in all the major cities. We love our fish and shellfish so much that the capital Madrid (which is in the middle of mainland Spain) is a major fresh fish importer, second only to Japan.

What a simple thing this is and what a success it has had in Spain. We have this for breakfast, as an accompaniment for charcuteries, we serve it just to nibble on the table and we dress in the same way our sandwiches (in other countries people use butter). Remember garlic wants to be your friend, don’t forget to love him back.

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.

When trying to cook with a bit more flavour it is inevitable in lots of different dishes the need to resource to a home-made rich and flavoursome stock. In some dishes it is fundamental to use them as water just doesn’t quite cut it. At times we all resort to the quick and ready stock cube, but if you want to eat a more natural diet or have restaurant tasting dishes that are incredibly satisfying when you serve them at the table then there is no way around it as to make your own. The difference will make you proud and your chicken paellas will taste better than ever.

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.