Simple Spanish Food

Calçots, cebolletas a la barbacoa: Grilled Green Onions

Ana found a good video in the Spanish newspaper ABC on how to make this Catalan specialty. (If you don't understand Spanish, don't worry: the images make the process, which is simple, clear.)

Basically you just grill the biggest green onions you can find until they're charred on the outside. Take them off the grill,  wrap them up in paper or foil and let them steam five or ten minutes, then peel off the charred outer layer and enjoy them dipped in a good olive oil or romesco sauce (my easy romesco works well). The hot taste of the onion becomes sweet and rich during the cooking, and the texture is tender.

At the end of the video there is an example of the traditional way to eat these grilled onions (not with a knife and fork!)

 

Empanada de vieiras, a scallop empanada

 

Many of the best Galician empanadas are made with exotic seafood ingredients, such as fresh berberechos (cockles) or congrio (eel) that are difficult if not impossible to find in the U.S. Empanada de vieiras (scallops) is an exception.  It's delicate, rich, almost buttery (though there is no butter in it), and yet can be made with the previously frozen scallops available in most supermarkets. It tastes like the best seafood empanadas of  Galicia, and it's easy to make. 

Ingredients:

For the crust

2 cups of flour

1 egg

1/4 cup of olive oil

1/4 cup of water

 salt

For the filling

1 onion, chopped

1/2 red bell pepper, sliced

1/3 cup of olive oil

1/2 pound of scallops

saffron

salt

First  mix the ingredients for the dough in a large bowl.

Knead the dough until it forms a ball. Let it rest an hour or so.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 525. 

Saute the onion and pepper in the olive oil. When the onion is soft and translucent, add a pinch of saffron and a pinch of salt.

Divide the dough evenly in two. Roll out each piece into a round or rectangular shape until the dough is the thickness of a coin. 

Place one sheet of the dough on a baking pan.

Spread the onion and pepper mixture evenly onto the dough. Slice the scallops 1/4 thick and arrange them on top.

Put the other piece of dough on the top. Crimp the edges. Cut some vents.

Bake the empanada for 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Cut the empanada as you would a pizza and serve it as main course or as a tapa.

Grilled Scallops with Watercress, vieiras a la parrilla con berros

Ingredients:

scallops

olive oil

salt

pepper

watercress salad (see my recipe for simple watercress salad, ensalada de berros)

Sprinkle the scallops with salt and black pepper. Rub them with olive oil.

Grill them over hot coals, a minute or two per side, depending on the size of the scallops.  (Or, if you don't have a grill, cook them in a hot iron skillet.)   Be sure not to overcook them. They only need searing. They will continue to cook when you take them off the grill.

Arrange the grilled scallops on a bed of watercress salad for an elegant tapa or first course.

Pincho Moruno: A Spanish Shish Kebab

Pincho Moruno, a sort of Spanish shish kabob, is another tapa that can be found in tapas bars all over Spain, though it can also be enjoyed as a main course (as in the picture above).  Basically a pincho moruno is a lomo adobado that has been cut into bite-sized pieces, stuck on a skewer, and grilled.  So this is an easy way to create variety with the same meat and marinade. You can roast some of the lomo adobado for dinner, and use the rest to make pincho moruno another day.

Here's how to do it:

Ingredients:

One boneless pork loin, or use pork tenderloins

One batch of adobo marinade (click here to see recipe)

Cut  the pork into bite-sized pieces.  Put the pork  in the adobo and let it marinade for several hours, and up to several days.

Preheat the grill to 425.   Put the pieces of pork on skewers.

Put the skewers on the grill.

Pork loin is lean, so the key is to avoid overcooking.  You're aiming for an internal temperature of 145 degrees.  The meat should have a faint rose color at the center. I cooked these pinchos morunos a little less than 2 minutes per side, about 3  1/2 minutes total.

 

Put the pinchos morunos on a warmed plate and let them rest for a few minutes. Serve with a slice of good bread as a tapa, or as a main course.

Trout with Orange Sauce, trucha a la naranja

In Five Spanish Ways to Enjoy Oranges and Tangerines, I promised to post about trout with orange sauce, trucha a la naranja.  Here it is. 

This is a classic Spanish dish, and there are many different ways to prepare it.  This recipe is the best I've found. It's closely based on one by the popular Spanish television chef, Karlos Arguiñano. It's one of my favorite ways to prepare whole trout, especially farm-raised trout.

Don't worry about the trout tasting too orange-y. The oranges add a sweet-and-sour note, but their flavor is subtle, just as in an another Spanish fish-and-orange pairing, Flounder with Orange Sauce.

Ingredients:

One medium trout

1/2 cup of bread crumbs.

1/2 cup of almond slivers

2 oranges

Olive oil

salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 425.

Clean the trout, but leave it whole. Sprinkle it with salt and pepper. Rub it down with olive oil. Place it in a cazuela or a casserole dish.

Now cover the fish with bread crumbs and almond slivers.

Drizzle olive oil over the top (about 1/4 cup or so).  Cut two pretty slices from the oranges and reserve them. Squeeze the rest of the oranges over the trout. Place the orange slices on top.

 

Place the trout in the oven.  I used our kamado (Big Green Egg), which is basically a small wood-burning oven. It adds a nice fire-roasted flavor, but any oven will do.

Roast the trout for 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of the trout).

Remove the trout from the oven and serve.

 

 

Roasted Red Snapper and Shrimp

As I mentioned in a recent post, fish and shellfish (pescado y marisco) are extremely popular over the holidays in Spain.  Generally, the better the quality of the fish, the simpler the preparation should be. It would be a shame to overwhelm the flavor of a fine fish with strong sauces or spices.

So when Ana found a whole red snapper with a nice bright orange eye and some fresh shrimp with the heads still attached at the fish market, I prepared the fish in much the same way Esperanza, my  mother-in-law, does fresh lubina (sea bass) in Spain. This is one of the simplest ways to prepare whole fish that I know. 

This technique would work well with many types of mild-flavored fish.  (I would really like to try it with a fresh pompano). The important thing is that the fish is absolutely fresh.  

Here's how to do it:

Ingredients:

a whole red snapper, or some other mild fresh fish of your choice

fresh shrimp

olive oil

parsley

wedges of onion

wedges of tomato

Kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

 

First prepare the fish. (The shrimp are cooked at the last minute).

Preheat the oven to 500.

Scale and gut the fish. Season it with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, including inside the cavity.  Rub it down with olive oil.  Place the fish in a cazuela or a casserole dish. Surround  the fish with wedges of onion and tomato. Sprinkle chopped parsely on top.

Put the cazuela in the oven.  I used our Kamado (Big  Green Egg), basically a small wood burning oven (not an ordinary grill). It gives a great fire roasted taste, but any oven will do.

How long should the fish cook? It depends on how big it is.  I use the "ten minutes per inch rule."  This is to say, I  measure the fish's thickness at its thickest point (right behind the head), and I cook it for ten minutes per inch of thickness.

If  my snapper had been two inches thick, I would have roasted it for twenty minutes. However it was a small snapper, only one and a half inches thick, so I cooked it fifteen minutes.

While the fish is roasting, prepare the shrimp. This  is easy. Don't shell them. Don't pull the heads off.  They will have much more flavor if you leave them as they are. Just rub them with some kosher salt, black pepper, and a little olive oil.

When the fish needs to roast only five minutes more, put the shrimp in the cazuela with it.

Close the oven again. Let the fish and shrimp roast for five minutes. Check them. The shrimp should turn pink. They should smell wonderful. If the shrimp haven't turned completely pink yet, leave them in the oven 2 minutes more. Be careful not to overcook them.

Now remove the cazuela from the oven. Serve your fish and shrimp with good bread and  a glass of white wine.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Spanish-style Grilled Vegetables, verduras a la parrilla, o verduras a la brasa

While in Granada, Ana and I had a wonderful appetizer of grilled vegetables at the restaurant and bar, Taberna Salinas. Ever since I've been grilling lots of vegetables at home in the same style. Nothing could be simpler. You need only good olive oil, salt, and the best vegetables you can find.   I usually grill the vegetables over a slow fire of lump charcoal, but you can also cook them griddle-style on a heavy cast iron skillet or grill pan.

Eggplant, zucchini, onions, scallions, leeks, mushroom (fresh oyster and shiitake are especially good), red and green peppers, tomatoes,  asparagus, artichoke hearts are all authentic and  great for this dish.

Here's how to do it

Slice an eggplant into 3/8 inch thick rounds

Cut a zucchini longways into 1/4 inch thick  slices

Slice an onion into 3/8 inch thick  rounds

If using smaller mushrooms, put them on a skewer.

If you're using peppers, prepare them first according to my recipe for flame roasted peppers. If you're grilling asparagus, prepare them according to my recipe for grilled asparagus. Green onions and leeks can be grilled in the same way as asparagus.

Fire up the grill (or heat a large iron skillet on medium).  You don't want a very hot fire.  350  degrees or even 325 is perfect.

While the coals are burning down (or the skillet is heating up),  rub down the vegetables with  olive oil. When working with the eggplant and mushrooms, be careful:  these vegetables soak up oil like sponges. Apply a light coat evenly and quickly.

Sprinkle all of the vegetables with coarse salt.

Grill the vegetables slowly, 6 to 8 minutes per side, depending on the temperature of your fire, until tender. If you're grilling lots of vegetables, work in batches.

It's as simple as that.

To me the best possible dressing for grilled vegetables is a light drizzle of buttery hojiblanca olive oil. 

Another good dressing is a Spanish-style herbed vinaigrette:  5 parts olive oil, one part vinegar,  a pinch of thyme, and fresh crushed garlic, salt and black pepper to taste.

A classic Catalan sauce (or dip) for grilled vegetables is romesco, which seems to be very much in fashion these days. This will be the subject of an upcoming post.

 

 

 

A Word about Paella, and a Recipe for Seafood Paella (paella de mariscos, arroz a la marinera, o arroz pescador, et cetera)

In his mammoth travel book Iberia, James Michener complained that even after regularly traveling in Spain for forty years, he'd never had a great paella.  (He also said he'd never seen decent Flamenco or a good bullfight.)  While I can't say I've never had good paella, I do admit: a good paella is hard to find, even in Spain.

Many non-Spaniards seem to think paella is the "national dish" of Spain. It isn't.  Originally, paella was very much a regional dish (from Valencia).  Andrés, my father-in-law, who was from Galicia (nearly the opposite side of the country from Valencia) regarded paella--and Valencian rice dishes in general--as an odd kind of food from the south, much as in the U.S. a  New Englander might view grits.

That said, there is something like a pan-Spanish or national version of the paella,  the "mixed paella"--a relatively recent invention, I suspect. This is the bright yellow-orange (usually artificially colored) rice dish cooked with chicken, chorizo, and shellfish, in a wide, shallow pan, and decorated with pimientos.  According to Penelope Casas' Paella! Spectacular Rice Dishes from Spain, this "mixed paella" is not an authentic Valencian dish at all. A true Valencian, she says, keeps his paella much simpler--just seafood and rice, or just rabbit and rice, or snails and rice, and so on.

When Ana and I are in Madrid, the main places I see "mixed paella" are in restaurants at the Plaza Mayor and at the airport.  This is to say, mixed paella is for tourists, and serious food people often sneer at it much the way they do at sangria.  

If you want authentic Valencian (or Murcian, or Cordobés) rice dishes, it's usually necessary to go to a restaurant specializing in them, where,  most likely, they will not be called "paella" at all but simply arroz (rice):  arroz con calamares (rice with squid),  arroz con calabacines (rice with summer squash), and so on. The rice may be cooked in a wide flat paella pan or in a deeper pan that looks a little like a flat-bottomed wok, or even in a pot.  The rice may be light and fluffy or moist, risotto style, or something in between. There is a very wide variety of Spanish rice dishes.

I have nothing against the mixed paella. I can understand why it has become something of a symbol.  It's pretty and festive. The colors are not only bright, they suggest the Spanish flag. The chorizo is not on my low-cholesterol diet, but I still hope to post a recipe on a good mixed paella in the future.

My main problem with paellas, authentic and not, is that the seafood in them is almost always overcooked. The traditional way of cooking paella--cooking fish and shellfish together with the rice--is to blame.  Spanish rice takes twenty minutes to cook, and it then needs a ten minute rest before serving.  So any fish or shellfish you add will cook at least half an hour. In most cases this is way, way too long.

My brother-in-law Antonio once told me that a true paella aficionado would not care about overcooked shellfish. For him, it's the flavor of the rice that matters.   Personally, I would much rather cook the paella in such a way that both the rice and the seafood come out just right, even if it means resorting to less-than-authentic techniques.

My approach to seafood paella is simple. I simmer clams, mussels, shrimp, and other shellfish separately until each is just barely done. (The one exception is the squid, which needs longer cooking anyway, and so is cooked with the rice). I reserve the simmering liquid as the broth base for the paella. When the rice is cooked, I decorate it with the seafood. The ten minute "rest" after cooking is a good time to do this.  The heat of the rice warms the shellfish through.

This way, the rice comes out flavorful, and the shellfish and fish  are cooked perfectly.  

A Recipe for Seafood Paella (arroz a la marinera, o arroz pescador)

 Ingredients:

1 cup of Spanish rice (Calasparra, Bomba, a paella rice such as La Marjal, or Italian arborio)

***Note: the rice is important! Read my posts on Spanish rice dishes for more info on rice)***

1/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon of pimentón  (see my post on pimentón)

a dozen shrimp (for this post, I used Florida rock shrimp), with shells on. With heads on, they're even better

a dozen littleneck clams

a dozen mussels

2 medium squid, sliced into 1/4" thick rings

a small pinch of saffron, ground with a little salt in a mortar

1 onion, chopped

1 medium tomato, chopped

1/2 cup of English peas

2 cloves of garlic

3-4 cups of water

chopped parsley

1/4 cup of flame-roasted red peppers, cut into slivers (see my post on flame-roasted red peppers), or piquillo peppers

2 bay leaves

a slice of lemon with peel

a dozen peppercorns

Clean the shellfish. Soak the clams in water for an hour or two. Scrub them.  Scrub the mussels and pluck out the beards with tweezers.

Meanwhile, heat up about 3 cups of water in a large pot. Add the bay leaves, whole peppercorns, and the lemon slice. Let the spices barely simmer in the water while you're cleaning the shellfish.

To cook the shellfish, work in batches. I like to start with the clams because they add salt to the broth (and usually all the salt that's needed for the paella). Add the clams to the simmering liquid and cover the pot. Check on them after five minutes. Remove any that have opened and put them on a plate. Continue steaming 3 to 4 minutes more until all the clams have opened. Throw away any that don't.

Steam the mussels in the exactly the same way, removing them from the pot as they open. 

Now steam the shrimp.  For medium-large shrimp, this usually only takes 3-4 minutes. Don't overcook them.

Strain the broth through several layers of cheesecloth and reserve.

Reserve all the steamed shellfish.

In a large heavy skillet or a small paella pan, fry the chopped onion in the olive oil until it's soft and translucent.  Add the chopped tomato, chopped garlic, and about a tablespoon of chopped parsley.  Add the sliced squid. Cook for three of four minutes, stirring.

Add the  saffron.  Add the pimentón.

Add the rice and stir. Let the rice "fry" three or four minutes. Keep stirring.

Add the peas and the strained broth. Give the paella another stir, but don't stir any more after that.

Let the paella simmer, uncovered, over medium heat, for 20 minutes. Around the fifteenth minute, you may want to check the rice at the bottom of the pan to make sure it isn't burning. Just insert a wooden spoon and peek.  You want a crust to form on the bottom, but if it looks like it may burn, add a little more broth or water.

After twenty minutes, remove the paella from the burner and let it rest ten minutes. While it's resting, decorate the top with the steamed seafood, flame roasted peppers, and fresh chopped parsley.

 

 

 

 

 

Simple Spanish Grilled Asparagus (espárragos a la brasa)

When Ana and I were in Granada last year, one of our favorite  dishes was the grilled vegetables at Taberna Salinas.  Ever since I've been grilling vegetables at home much more than I used to. One of our favorite grilled vegetables at Taberna Salinas--and at home--is asparagus.  Nothing could be simpler. All you need is good fresh asparagus, olive oil, coarse salt and black pepper.

Grilled asparagus are great with all sorts of grilled fish (see my post on Spanish grilled trout), or with grilled loin of venison. You could also serve grilled asparagus as a side with empanadas or with paella or some other Spanish rice dish.  I usually prepare grilled asparagus when asparagus is in season and when I'm lighting up the grill anyway. 

Here's how to do it.

Light the grill.

Wash the asparagus well and clip off the tough parts of the stems.

Toss the spears with olive oil.

Heat the grill to medium--about 425.

Grill the asparagus 7-10 minutes, turning them occasionally, so that they brown evenly.

Remove the asparagus from the grill. Toss them with a little fresh virgin olive oil, coarse salt, and ground black pepper to taste.