Simple Spanish Food

Grating Tomatoes (tomate rallado): a Basic Spanish Technique

Grated tomato (tomate rallado) is used in many different Spanish dishes.  In Andalusia it is smeared on toast and drizzled with fruity olive oil for breakfast. In Valencia grated tomato is a main ingredient in sofrito, which is used to make, among other things, paella. You can use grated tomato in pisto, an old fashioned gazpacho (the texture is quite different than when made in the blender), or as a base for tuna in tomato sauce (bonito y tomate). In fact  you can substitute fresh grated tomatoes just about anywhere you would use canned tomatoes.  It's a great alternative for people on low-salt diets, since tinned tomatoes usually have a lot of sodium.

If you've never grated a tomato before, you'll probably be surprised by how easy and quick it is.  Just rub the tomato against a grater over a bowl.

The flesh, juice and seeds go into the bowl, but most of the peel stays in your hand. When you've finished grating, discard the peel or use it for making stock. 

Grated tomato is not quite as refined as tomatoes run through a food mill, but it is quite different too from tomatoes finely chopped.  

I will be honest: for a long time whenever a recipe called for "tomate rallado" I just chopped the tomatoes instead.  When on a whim I tried grating tomatoes, I realized it really does make a difference in flavor and texture, and just makes Spanish dishes more Spanish. And it really isn't any more difficult or time consuming than chopping. 

 

A Spanish Spice Blend

This mix of typically Spanish spices--thyme (tomillo), cumin (comino), smoked paprika (pimentón) and a little hot pepper (guindilla)--often serves as a base for adobo, but it can also be used in many other ways, basically anywhere you would use pimentón. It is especially useful for adding depth and complexity to the flavor of many vegan, vegetarian, and low-salt dishes.   

You can substitute this spice blend for the same amount of straight pimentón when making  hot soups or patatas bravas sauce or paella and other Spanish rice dishes. You can sprinkle it on boiled potatoes, boiled eggs,  fried garbanzos, and much more.

To make the blend, just mix two teaspoons pimentón, one teaspoon ground cumin, 1/2 teaspoon of thyme, and 1/4 teaspoon (or more) cayenne pepper. 

 

José Andrés Demonstrates the Spanish Way to Fry an Egg

In a recent article in the New York Times, the Spanish chef José Andrés discusses the Spanish way to fry an egg.  Basically, Spaniards fry their eggs in hot olive oil so that the whites get slightly caramelized and crispy.  I much prefer them cooked this way to the simmering them in butter.

The article includes a slide show with step-by-step instructions on how to fry an egg the Spanish way. 

José Pizarro's Seasonal Spanish Food: 125 Simple Recipes to Bring Home the Flavors of Spain also covers the basics of Spanish-style egg frying.

Serve the fried eggs over patatas fritas (Spanish-style French fries) and you have a famous Spanish dish, huevos estrellados.

 

 

Spiced Olive Oil (aceite desahumado): a Secret Ingredient to Traditional Spanish Pastries, Cakes, and Desserts

This is an old Spanish technique of spicing olive oil for use in fried pastries (such as pestiños), sweet breads (such as roscón de Reyes), cakes, and other traditional sweets. 

You just quick-fry a bit of citrus zest and  spices in the oil and let the mixture  cool.  This not only removes the flavor of the olive oil (which is unwanted in most desserts) but replaces it with a perfume of lemon and anise, or orange and cloves or cinnamon--whatever best compliments the dessert you're making.

Here's how to do it:

For this post I used orange peel and cloves. Lemon peel and anise is probably more traditional. In the past I have also used cinnamon sticks, cardamon, and even lime zest--not very traditional at all.  Experiment, but keep in mind that whatever you use is going to both perfume and flavor the dessert.

Ingredients:

One half cup of olive oil (any basic olive oil will do)

a few strips of orange zest

two cloves

Heat the oil in a small pan. Add the orange peel. Let it fry for a few seconds.

Remove the pan from the heat. Add two cloves to the oil and let it cool.

When the oil is cool, remove the orange zest and cloves, and it's  ready to use.

Esperanza's Escabeche

This escabeche is tangy, spicy, and even slightly smoky, as it contains pimentón picante de La Vera. It's a great way to turn leftover fish into something special.  When I see good fresh fish on sale (see my last post about the Spanish way to select fish) I will often buy a little extra just so I can make this escabeche.  It keeps in the refrigerator for several days, and, unusually for fish, the flavor will only improve.  

Esperanza, my mother-in-law, uses mainly "blue" fish for this escabeche, such as mackerel or sardines. But you can use any fish you like, including freshwater fish, also traditionally used in escabeche.   Even catfish would work. For this post I used trout.

Here's how to do it:

Ingredients:

a pound (or so) of fried or sauteed fish (leftover from dinner is perfect)

6 tablespoons of virgin olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

1 teaspoon  pimentón picante de La Vera (please see my post on pimentón de La Vera).

1 bay leaf

3  tablespoons of vinegar

Kosher salt to taste

Saute the garlic and bay leaf in one tablespoon of the oil. Remove the pan from the heat before the garlic takes on color. Wait for the oil to cool slightly. Add the pimentón. Stir. Add the rest of the oil and vinegar. Add salt to taste. (Keep in mind the fish may already have salt.) 

Place the fish in a non-reactive container.   Pour the sauce over it. Cover. Let the fish marinade in the fridge for 1-2 days, spooning the marinade over the fish now and then.

Serve at room temperature.

Escabeche is great with bread and a salad.  For this post we had it with a veggie paella

 

The Simple Spanish Way to Buy Fish

Spaniards take fish seriously.   Go to a fish market in just about any major Spanish city and you will likely see more variety of fish and shellfish than anywhere in the world outside of Tokyo. As a rule, the quality is outstanding. (See my post "Scenes from Spanish Fish Markets").

 

In Spanish fish markets the majority of fresh fish are sold whole.  The reason for this is simple:  it is next to impossible to tell if a fish is truly fresh unless the head, skin, and scales are still on it.

Fish fillets, on the other hand, can look fresh when they are not. They can also be dyed, deodorized, or otherwise doctored.  For this reason, in a Spanish market you won't see many fillets on the ice.  You pick the fish you want, then ask to have it filleted, or cut into steaks, or whatever you want.   It's done right in front of you, so you are sure you're getting the same fish you asked for. This keeps the standards of freshness extremely high.

Here in the U.S. it's  a different story. I once bought some salmon fillets at a neighborhood supermarket. (There was very  little to else to choose from).  They looked perfect (bright salmon-orange) and had almost no smell (not even the "sweet" smell fresh fish should have). I cooked one for dinner and found it all but inedible. Despite the impeccable appearance of the fillets, the salmon was not fresh. I was going to throw the remaining fillets away, but I had to take an unexpected trip the next day and forgot. For over a week the salmon fillets sat in the refrigerator.  I expected to find a smelly mess when I returned home, but I discovered something far worse. When I opened the fridge, I found the salmon fillets looked exactly the same as when I bought them.  They were still orange. They still had no smell.  They could have easily passed for fresh, even though they were far from fresh even a week before when I bought them.  There was no telling how old those salmon fillets were. They seemed to have been embalmed.

Had the salmon been whole, I would have seen that it wasn’t fresh and known better than to buy it.  No one has figured out yet how to make a whole fish look fresh when it isn't.  After a couple of days on ice, the eyes of a whole fish begin to look cloudy. The scales lose their shine. The fish begins to smell, and no one wants to buy it anymore. This is one of the reasons why most U.S. supermarkets and even fish markets prefer to display the fish already filleted.  It keeps the customer in the dark, and lets them go on selling less-than-fresh (and sometimes downright spoiled) fish.

If you want to eat fish the Spanish way, the first step is to buy fish in the Spanish way—whole. Look for a bright eye, shiny skin, a sweet smell. All are reliable signs of freshness.   

Below is a picture of a pompano I found the other day at a little seafood market here in Central Florida. It was a truly beautiful fish and it tasted just as good as it looked. It’s bright eye and shiny silver skin were true indicators of its freshness.   

The pompano was so fresh because it had been caught on the beaches just across the road from the seafood shop.  

This brings me to another Spanish technique of buying fish:  look for local varieties. When in Galicia, eat the Galician specialties—merluza (hake), percebes (goose barnacles), fresh sardines, and many, many others.   When in Andalusia, try pescaito frito—an assortment of small Mediterranean fish fried in olive oil, or beautiful little clams called coquinas. . .  There are dozens of choices just about anywhere you go in the country. In Spain there is a tremendous variety of seafood available because Spaniards appreciate this variety.

A variety of fish creates a variety of prices. This makes it possible to find outstanding bargains.  The pompano was the least expensive fish in the shop (even thought it was probably the best fish in the shop) at least in part because it was (sadly) a little unusual.  All the other fish on the ice were the typical overfished and way-overused grouper, snapper, tuna, and swordfish.

Unfortunately the pompano was the exception in other ways too.  It was the only fish in the shop displayed whole. (All the others were filleted, so it was impossible to tell if they were fresh or not.)  The pompano was the only fish that was truly local, too. (Right beside it was a previously frozen mahi mahi fillet imported from Costa Rica)

By asking for the whole, fresh, local, and (sadly) somewhat unusual pompano, I was buying fish in the Spanish way.

There is one last Spanish technique for buying fish I would like to mention: Be vocal. Follow the example of Spanish housewives.  Tell the  people behind the fish counter what you want. Tell them that you want a whole fish with a bright eye and shiny scales.  Tell them you are dissatisfied with all the usual fillets. Tell them that you want more variety and that you are so, so tired of the grouper-snapper-shrimp norm.  Tell them you want a local fish. 

If enough people here in the U.S. would buy fish the Spanish way, maybe the sorry state of our fish markets would improve.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

How to keep no-knead bread dough at 70 degrees during the long (18 hour) rise

Most of the bread recipes I write about here at Simple Spanish Food are variations on Mark Bittman's/Jim Lahey's no-knead bread.  This method of making bread is easy, simple, and it produces really good bread, very much like the best breads we've had in Spain.

But to succeed with no-knead bread, it is essential to keep the temperature of the dough at (or at least near) 70 degrees during the long, 18-hour rise.   This can be difficult in hot climates (like ours) or in an overheated kitchen.

Here's a variation of a trick I learned from Julia Child's recipe for French bread in her classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  (Home beer brewers use a similar technique). Basically you place the bowl in which the dough is rising into a larger container partially filled with cool water and you keep the water cool, by replacing it or adding ice of some kind.  You're basically improvising a makeshift cellar.

I use a large inexpensive stock pot.

To keep the water cool, I drop in freez paks or blue ice. (Small plastic bottles partially filled with water and frozen would work too).

I put 3-4  inches of water in the stockpot, along with the bowl that contains the dough (covered with plastic wrap), 2 or 3 freez paks, and a thermometer.

I usually replace the ice packs about 3 times during the 18-hour rise.  (I always keep a bunch of freez paks in the freezer).

Click HERE to see my recipes for Spanish style breads.

 

 

Escabeche: a Simple Spanish Way to Prepare Fish (and a great tapa)

Escabeche is cooked fish marinated in a vinaigrette, with varying degrees of spice, and served as a main course or (my favorite) as a tapa.

Escabeche a great way to use leftover fish.  In fact escabeche is so good we often buy a little more fish than we need so that we will be sure to have enough to make an escabeche.  We eat fresh fish the day we buy it, when it's at its best,  and we eat the escabeche two days later, when it's reached its peak of flavor from the marinade.  In this way we have two good dinners, each quite different from the other, with only one trip to the fish market. 

You can use almost any type of fish to make escabeche. Oily fish--mackerel, bluefish, fresh sardines, etc.--are especially  practical. Oily fish doesn't freeze well. It does, however, make outstanding escabeche. It would be a shame to put extra blue fish in the freezer and ruin its flavor and texture when you could make an escabeche instead and turn it into something special. 

Salmon is popular. For this post, I used trout. But non-oily fish can work well too. 

I'll give two recipes for marinades. The first is from Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spainby Penelope Casas. It's a straightforward vinaigrette, fairly mild.  The second, a spicier version,  is from Esperanza, my mother-in- law.

First, cook the fish. For this recipe I steamed a trout, but you could use leftover fried or grilled fish too.

If you've cooked the fish whole, remove skin and bones.

Recipe # 1, for Mild Escabeche

Ingredients:

1 small onion

1/2 pound of cooked fish of your choice

1 carrot, julienned

6 tablespoons of virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons of white wine vinegar

Kosher salt to taste

freshly ground black pepper

Bake the onion in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes and cut it into slivers. (Or, you could slice the onion and saute it in a little oil).

Place the fish in a casserole dish or cazuela. Sprinkle the onions and carrots over it.  Whisk together the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and pour this mixture over the fish.  Cover with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 8 hours. Turn the fish or spoon some of the marinade over it now and then.  Serve at room temperature. (See serving suggestions for escabeche below).

Recipe #2,  for a spicy escabeche:

1/2 pound of cooked fish

6 tablespoons of virgin olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

1 teaspoon (or more) pimentón picante de La Vera (please see my post on pimentón de La Vera).

1 bay leaf

3-6 tablespoons of vinegar

Kosher salt to taste

Saute the garlic and bay leaf in one tablespoon of the oil. Remove the pan from the heat before the garlic takes on color. Wait for the oil to cool slightly. Add the pimentón. Stir. Add the rest of the oil and vinegar.  Andrés, my father-in-law, always liked his escabeche quite vinegary, so Esperanza would use equal amounts of oil and vinegar, but you can use less if you like. Add salt to taste.

Place the fish in a cazuela. Pour the dressing over it. Cover with plastic wrap. Let the fish marinade in the fridge for 1-2 days, spooning the marinade over the fish now and then. Serve at room temperature.

Escabeche is great served simply with bread and a salad. Because of the vinegar, this is not the time for an elegant wine.  A young, inexpensive red or white rioja, or a vinho verde would go well with escabeche. A cold lager would work too.

But my all-time favorite way to eat escabeche is on garlic toast, alone or with roasted peppers, or--and this is fantastic--Cantabrian anchovy fillets. (Please see my post on Cantabrian anchovy fillets packed in olive oil)

 

Flame-Roasted Pepper Salad

One of the things I like most to eat in Spain are simple salads. In the U.S. complicated "composed" salads, sometimes with dozens of ingredients, are the norm, but in Spain the best salads are made of one thing, and one thing only, done perfectly. They are dressed with good olive oil and salt, and maybe vinegar. Flame roasted pepper salad is one of my favorites. It is elegant enough to be served in the best restaurants, yet common enough to be served as part of an ordinary comida at home.  In Spain, and increasingly elsewhere, the famous piquillo peppers are prized, but any sweet red pepper can be used. I often use red bells, or red cubanelles. If you have access to fresh pimiento peppers or marconi peppers, try those. Thick walled peppers will be easier to work with.

Preparing the peppers is easy. Just broil them over a flame until the skin blackens.  If you don't have a grill, you can do this under the broiler of your oven. I do it on our Kamado (Big Green Egg).

They should look quite burnt. Ideally the fire should be hot enough to char them fairly quickly.

Put the peppers in a plastic bag and seal it. Wait ten minutes or so. The bag should inflate slightly with steam. Remove the peppers from the bag and allow them to cool. The charred skin should now be easy to peel away.

Cut the pepper in half. Remove the stems and seeds. Slice into strips. Toss with good virgin olive oil and salt to taste.

Unlike most salads, this one keeps well. If you have left overs, there are all sorts of things you can do with them--toss them with pasta, use them to garnish a paella, or use them to make tapas (the subject of tomorrow's post). I often roast enough peppers to last for several days.