Cocido madrileño

Step 1: Put the 1 ⅛ lb beef shin or brisket, 2 chicken legs, 5 ½ oz pork belly or tocino, 5 ½ oz ham bone or ham end and 2 beef marrow bones in your largest pot (at least 8 litres) with the 16 ¾ cups cold water. Bring slowly to the boil over a medium heat, about 20 minutes.

Step 2: Skim off all the grey foam as it rises, for 5 minutes, until the surface is fairly clean. Clear broth starts here.

Step 3: Drain the soaked 14 oz dried chickpeas, put them in a mesh bag or tie them loosely in muslin, and lower them into the boiling pot. Never add cold water to the chickpeas from here on: it makes them hard. Top up only with boiling water.

Step 4: Turn the heat down to a gentle simmer, partly cover and cook for 2 hours. Common mistake: letting the pot boil hard. A rolling boil makes the broth cloudy and the meat stringy; you want a lazy bubble or two.

Step 5: After 1 hour 30 minutes, add the 3 carrots and 1 leek. After 1 hour 40 minutes, add the 4 potatoes and the 1 ½ tsp salt.

Step 6: Meanwhile, put the 2 cooking chorizo and 1 morcilla (Spanish blood sausage) in a separate pan with water to cover and simmer for 20 minutes. In another pan of boiling salted water, cook the ½ Savoy or white cabbage for 15 minutes until tender, then drain well.

Step 7: Heat the 3 tbsp olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat, fry the 2 cloves garlic for 1 minute until pale gold, then add the drained cabbage and toss for 3 minutes.

Step 8: Check the pot: the chickpeas should be creamy and soft, the beef tender when pierced, and the chicken falling from the bone and at least 165°F/165 °F at the thickest part with clear juices.

Step 9: Ladle about 1.5 litres of the broth through a sieve into a saucepan. Bring to the boil, add the 4 oz fine vermicelli noodles (fideos) and cook for 3–4 minutes until tender. This is the first vuelco: serve it as soup.

Step 10: For the second vuelco, lift out the chickpeas, potatoes, carrots and cabbage and serve them on a warm platter with a drizzle of the garlic oil. For the third, slice the meats, chorizo and morcilla and serve them on a separate platter. Keep both warm in a low oven while you eat the soup.

Step 11: Leftover broth makes excellent soup: cool it quickly, refrigerate within 2 hours and use within 3 days, or freeze it. Leftover chickpeas and meat are the start of ropa vieja or arroz al horno.