Simple Spanish Food

Sources in the U.S.A. for cordero lechal (milk-fed lamb)?

José, a reader of Simple Spanish Food, has asked if we know of any U.S. sources for cordero lechal, milk-fed lamb (a.k.a. suckling lamb, baby lamb, spring lamb).

According to the Spanish food site Directo al Paladar, a cordero lechal is a lamb that has been slaughtered at around one month old. It weighs around 13 pounds (6 kilograms) and has consumed nothing but ewe's milk .   

Cordero lechal is prized in Spain because it is delicate in flavor and has none of the "gamey" taste of older lamb or mutton. Cordero lechal is also low in fat and very tender. In the picture above (credit to the article "Lechazo asado" from Wikipedia en español), you can see in the foreground uncooked sides of cordero lechal. Notice the light color of the meat. This light color is also typical of cordero lechal.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post on grilled lamb chops, whole roasted baby lamb, cordero lechal asado, is traditionally served on Christmas Eve in Spain, but it may also be served on any special occasion.  

In Spain there is also cordero recental, lamb slaughtered at around 30 pounds (15 kilos). Cordero recental has consumed grass and feed as well as milk.  It has a stronger flavor, higher fat content, and slightly darker meat, but it is still mild, low in fat, and tender by U.S. lamb standards.

Cordero pascual is lamb slaughtered between 4 to 12 months of age.   Cordero pascual has red meat, high fat content, and a pronounced "lamb" taste.

Almost all of the lamb available in the U.S. would be classified as cordero pascual in Spain.  Because there is such a big difference between cordero lechal and cordero pascual, one can't really substitute for the other.

Back to José's question: is there a source for cordero lechal here in the U.S.?

To my knowledge, no.

According to Wikipedia's article on lamb and mutton, milk-fed lamb is almost never available in the U.S. or the U.K.  It is considered to be uneconomical.  I have searched for cordero lechal with no luck.

I suspect it would be necessary to go directly to someone who raises lamb to obtain cordero lechal here in the U.S.  Baby goat, cabrito, may be easier to find. It's probably the best substitute. 

I will keep searching. If anyone knows a source in the U.S.A. for cordero lechal, please let us know.

Until then, cordero lechal asado is yet another reason to visit Spain. 

 

 

 

 

Grilled Lamb Chops for the Holidays? ¡Qué Va! (Chuletas de cordero a la brasa, o a la parrilla)

Whole roasted lamb (cordero asado) is a typical Christmas Eve dish in much of Spain.  If there aren't too many people eating,  half a lamb (split longways, nose to tail) may be roasted instead.  Unfortunately, I have not had a chance to cook a whole lamb, or even half of one, so I made lamb chops instead.

When Esperanza, my mother-in-law, sees this post,  she's going say, <<¡Qué va! ¡Eso es de cada dia!>> ("Get out of here! That's everyday food!")

True, lamb chops are ordinary fare in Spain, but I wanted to do a post on grilled lamb chops anyway. They're simple, easy, and very Spanish.  For a future holiday season I will roast the whole lamb. For now, it's lamb chops, chuletas de cordero.

You can cook these in a heavy skillet (I like cast iron), in which case your chops would be a la parrilla. Or you can grill them. Either way, they're great.

For this post I did them on a kamado (Big Green Egg).

 

When I grill or pan-fry chops, I turn them a total of 4 times.  In other words,  I quickly cook the chops twice  on each side. This ensures the chops are cooked evenly.

The chops are then allowed to rest for 8 to 10 minutes on a warmed plate.  During this time the chops are still cooking inside, so the rest is essential.

These cooking times are for chops about 1 inch thick.  

Here's how to do it:

Put however many lamb chops you want on a plate. Sprinkle them with coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper. If you're cooking them in a skillet, rub them down with a little olive oil.

Preheat your grill or your pan to medium-high, about 450 degrees.

 When the grill or pan is hot, put on the lamb chops.

Let them cook 2 minutes.

Turn the chops, and let them cook 2 minutes more.

Turn the chops again, and cook them--you guessed it--2 minutes.

Turn the chops one last time, and let them cook 2 minutes.

Got it? That's four turns, two minutes per turn, for a total of eight minutes cooking time.  This is for medium rare lamb chops.  If you like your chops well done, you might add 30 seconds extra per turn, for a total cooking time of 10 minutes.

Now remove the lamb chops from the grill or pan and place them in a warmed cazuela or plate. Cover them with foil and let them rest for 10 minutes.  

When the ten minutes are up, your lamb chops are ready to eat.

 

 

 

Anna de Codorníu Brut Cava: Is it as good as they say?

I've been reading about Anna de Codorníu for years now, and a few weeks back I finally had a chance to try it.  This is the cava that's supposed to have some of the complexity and body of a good French champagne because it is made with a traditional champagne grape--chardonnay--rather than the usual Catalan trio of parellada, macabeo and xarel-lo. Anna de Codorníu does contain some parellada, but most of it--70%--is chardonnay.

The wine writer Oz Clarke gives Anna a star and calls it "especially good" for a Codorníu. He goes on to say that all Codorníu sparklers are "better than the cava average."

Anna de Codorníu has a clean "biscuity" taste. Though dry, it has a faint sweet note. It has none of the cider-like flavor (often described as "baked apple") that some cavas have to excess. 

In other words, Anna de Codorníu is  much like Codorníu Brut Original.  The chardonnay does not make much difference.

Is Anna de Codorníu as good as they say? No, it's just a good basic cava, better than most, but nothing really exceptional.

That said, Anna de Codorníu costs about $15 a bottle.  As I've said before (and will say again), you could easily spend several times that price on a sparkler from France or California and wind up with an inferior wine.   

 

 

 

 

 

Ten Spanish Ways to Enjoy the Holidays #8: Fish & Shellfish (pescado y marisco)

Spaniards serve fish and shellfish, pescado y mariscos, on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and just about any other chance they get. True, for an elaborate Christmas Eve banquet  there may be a main dish of  roasted lamb (often an entire baby lamb roasted whole) or (in Galicia) kid goat, or some other special meat dish, but there will almost always be a fish course, and often seafood will be the focus of the entire meal. As I explain in my post "Scenes from Spanish Fish Markets," most Spaniards adore seafood.

Many types of seafood are served over the holidays, but on Christmas and New Year's Eve Spaniards often splurge. A luxury seafood meal might include centollas (huge crabs), angulas (baby eels)---La Tienda sells angulas tinned in olive oil if you're interested in giving them a try---and percebes (goose barnacles).  All of these are expensive. In the picture below, the angulas are near the center (they look a little like spaghetti) and the percebes are the black shellfish to the lower right.

Pulpo (octopus) used to be a humble food of Galicia. Now it's becoming expensive, if not quite a luxury item, and so it's served on special occasions like Christmas Eve. (See my post on Pulpo a la Gallega, Galician Style Octopus for a recipe).  Besugo (sea bream) is also a popular holiday fish.

For Christmas and New Year's Eve, Esperanza, my mother-in-law, often serves langostinos (prawns) or bogavante (lobster). See  my post "Esperanza Cooks Bogavante" for the recipe.

Andrés, my father-in-law, loved merluza (hake) over the holidays. He usually had it with a Galician sauce of olive oil,  garlic, and pimentón.

In short, for a Spanish-style holiday dinner, almost any sort of seafood you like would be appropriate.  Here in the U.S. we often have clams (see my recipe for almejas a la marinera).

We love a good fresh local fish like pompano when we can find one. When we can't, we have grilled shrimp:

Oysters would be great (and authentic) but I rarely get to eat them because Ana doesn't like them.

See the seafood category here at Simple Spanish Food for more ideas and recipes.

Ten Spanish Ways to Enjoy the Holidays #7: Christmas Gift Baskets (cestas de Navidad)

In Spain one of the most popular Christmas gifts is a basket (or sometimes a box) filled with really good food, sweets, and wine. Companies give cestas de Navidad to their employees. Business people give a Christmas basket to their best clients as well as to their more valuable colleagues.   Residents of a building will often give a small basket to the doorman.

A typical cesta de Navidad usually includes Spanish ham--jamón serrano, jamón iberico, or even pricy jamón de bellota . . .

as well as other types of Spanish cured meats and sausages--chorizos, salchichón, lomo, etc.

Cestas de Navidad almost always have one or more  nice cheeses (quesos)  . . .

and a bottle or two of good wine, sherry, cava or champagne, as well as whisky or liqueur.

An exceptional olive oil would not be out of place in a cesta de Navidad.

This one, infused with truffles, was luxurious--and really good drizzled on French fries.

Top-quality tinned seafood is prized in Spain and often found in cestas de navidad too.

Spanish sweets are an all-but obligatory component of a proper cesta de navidad. They range from chocolate-covered almonds or hazelnuts . . .

to all sorts of  traditional Spanish Christmas cookies, such as polvorones

and, always,  turrones

Check out La Teinda's selection of gift baskets, or create your own. 

See the dessert category here at Simple Spanish Food for lots of recipes for traditional Spanish sweets and cookies. They make great Christmas gifts too.

 

 

An Easy Compote of Dried Fruits and Nuts in Sweet Sherry (compota de frutas secas con Pedro Ximénez)

Compotes (compotas) of dried fruits and nuts (frutos secos)  simmered in sweet wine are an easy, and very traditional, Spanish dessert.  They're especially appropriate during late fall and winter.

For this recipe I've used a Pedro Ximénez--a thick, super-sweet sherry. In fact Pedro Ximénez is so sweet it's not necessary to add sugar to this compote. This recipe is also a little different because I don't add the wine until the end. If there's anything in this world that doesn't need reducing, it's Pedro Ximénez.  The average Pedro Ximénez is thick and sweet enough already. 

You do want just an average Pedo Ximenez for this.  It would be a shame to use a fine one for a compote. Save the good stuff for sipping, and use an ordinary, simple one like this Pedro Ximénez from Osborne.

If you don't have Pedro Ximénez, try another type of sweet wine. Many sweet moscatels (muscat, moscato, etc) would work nicely. 

Feel free to experiment with the fruits and nuts too.  I used dried apricots, prunes, raisins,  dates, dried figs, even some dried cranberries (not a traditional Spanish ingredient), along with walnuts and pine nuts.  But you could use fewer varieties--or more. Whatever you like.

You can also add slices of fresh pear, apple, or even banana to your compote. Just make sure to time the cooking so that dried fruits and fresh fruits are all done at the same time. Depending on the thickness of the slices, I would add fresh fruit during the last five minutes or so of simmering.

Here's the recipe

 (serves two)

Ingredients:

A cup or more of dried fruits of your choice--dates, raisins, dried apricots, prunes, dried figs, etc.

A quarter cup of  raw nuts of your choice--walnuts and pine nuts are traditional but use whatever you like. Macadamias would be great.

Two slices of orange with peel, plus more slices for garnish

water

a glass of Pedro Ximenez

Put the dried fruits and orange slices in a small saucepan. Cover them with water. Bring them to a boil and let them simmer.  After 15 minutes, test them with a fork. If they're getting tender, add the nuts. If the dried fruits are still tough, add a little more water if necessary and keep simmering them until they're tender.

The dried fruits will absorb much of the water. When the fruits are soft, add a glass of Pedro Ximenez. Bring the compote back to a simmer, turn off the heat, and let the mixture rest for an hour or more. 

Usually compote is served at room temperature but I like it warm too--especially if we have it over ice cream or even yogurt.

 

 

 

 

Ten Spanish Ways to Enjoy the Holidays #6: Twelve Grapes on New Year's Eve (doce uvas por nochevieja)

Eating twelve grapes (doce uvas) as the clock strikes midnight is a New Year's Eve tradition all over Spain.  But as I explain in my post on Twelve Grapes (doce uvas), you must follow the rules to ensure good luck.  The grapes should be green. You should eat one grape with each chime of the clock. It's especially important to have the twelfth and last grape in your mouth the second it turns midnight.  You may also wish to observe other elaborations to the ritual, such as standing on your right foot as you eat the grapes. (That way you'll enter the new year on the right foot).  Again, see Twelve Grapes (doce uvas) for more information.

It's best to use seedless grapes for obvious reasons.  You may also want to peel the grapes, which makes it easier to gobble  twelve in a row in less than half a minute.

 In  Spain, the clock everyone watches is in the Puerta del Sol  in Madrid.

You can watch the Puerta del Sol party live on-line at Rtve.es la 1 en directo. Of course the problem is the broadcast won't be at midnight outside of Spain's time zone. (The Puerta del Sol celebration comes on at six in the afternoon here in Florida, Eastern Standard Time).  So we watch the big ball in Times Square, which creates some timing challenges because  the countdown is done by seconds, not chimes.

We, like many Spaniards,  usually have some tapas while waiting for midnight, and we toast the New Year with cava or champagne

 

Ten Spanish Ways to Enjoy the Holidays #5: lombarda

It is a Castillian tradition on Christmas Eve (Nochebuena) to serve red cabbage (lombarda), usually alongside a main dish of lamb (cordero)--the subject of a post in the near future. However, the family of Esperanza, my mother-in-law, used to serve lombarda with capon for Christmas Eve.

The old way to prepare lombarda involves lengthy (sometimes too lengthy) simmering, often with pork fat, but lighter, fresher, and quicker versions are becoming more popular.  

See my post on Easy Stir-fried Red Cabbage, Lombarda (pictured above) for a recipe adapted from José Pizarro's  Seasonal Spanish Food.

You may also want to check out my vegetarian version of Lombarda San Quintín,  red cabbage with roasted apples and potatoes.

 

 

 

Ten Spanish Ways to Enjoy the Holidays #4: Cava or Champagne

 Both cava and champagne are enjoyed throughout the holidays in Spain, but they're especially popular on New Year's Eve.

Cava is Spanish sparkling wine. Almost all of it is produced in Catalonia. It's made by the champagne method (no artificial fizz), but with traditional Spanish grapes, though some types, like the Codorníu Anna pictured above, are made with traditional champagne grapes like chardonnay.

In Spain cava is usually treated as a relaxed and inexpensive alternative to champagne (though there are some high-end cavas with champagne-like complexity and a price to match.) My father-in-law  Andrés would open a bottle of good cava for most celebrations, but when a really special occasion came up he would still splurge on a bottle of champagne. 

This is not to say champagne is always better.  The wine writer Oz Clarke put it this way: "Champagne can be the best, but often isn't."  A $10 bottle of cava will often be as good as, or better than, a forty dollar bottle of champagne.

Some cavas are exceptionally good.  Not so long ago in the Wine Spectator, Matt Kramer (one of my favorite wine writers, and ordinarily no cava fan) praised Torre Oria Brut cava, made with 100% macabeo, as an extraordinary sparkler.  He was also pretty impressed with the price (just less than $8).

In addition to Freixenet Cordon Negro (the stuff in the opaque black bottles sold everywhere) you are likely to come across lots of cavas with pretty names and labels you've never seen before.  These are true cavas, but usually bottled especially for the American market.

In my experience there's rarely anything wrong with these. Again they're "good basic stuff," though one often tastes just like another.

I like  Codorníu Brut Original and especially Segura Viudas Brut Reserva better. Both are hard to beat in the basic cava category (and both cost less than $10 a bottle).

 

 

 

The Wall Street Journal Praises Galician Sardines

For a recent article called "Tin Tin!",  Katherine Cancila and her colleagues at The Wall Street Journal tried  "dozens" of different brands of tinned sardines, including Pacific and Atlantic varieties, "preserved in everything from Scandinavian dill-flecked mustard to fiery Portuguese piri-piri sauce."

Six brands were standouts. Two of these were from Galicia, the region in the northwest of Spain, and two more were from neighboring Portugal. (The other two were from Brittany and Norway).

Of the six, small Galician sardines, or sardinillas, received the highest praise of all. While the other types of sardines are recommended for pasta, sandwiches, and fritters, Cancila suggests serving the Gallician sardinillas  just as they are "to best appreciate their clean, pure taste."

Check out my post on Spanish Tinned Sardines for more information.

The on-line Spanish food store La Tienda carries both tinned Galician  sardines and sardinillas.