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!)

 

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 Split Pea Soup, sopa de guisantes amarillos

This is an easy Spanish style soup that doesn't take too long to make. 

1 lb bag of yellow split peas

1 carrot, peeled and cut into 2 inch pieces

1 bay leaf

2 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup olive oil

2-3 teaspoons Spanish spice blend

fresh parsley and, if you like, cilantro

salt to taste (one teaspoon or less)

Pour the split peas into a large pot.  Look them over, pushing them around, and remove any bits of stones or dirt. Rinse the peas 2 or 3 times.

Add enough water to the pot so that the peas are covered by 2 to 3 inches of water.  Bring them to a boil. Simmer for half an hour. When the peas begin to soften, add the bay leaf and carrot and continue simmering.

Meanwhile, saute the garlic in the olive oil. Remove the pan from the heat and let the oil cool some. Add the Spanish spice blend. Stir. Add this mixture to the simmering peas.

Let the soup simmer until the peas are quite soft. Add salt to taste (It doesn't need much, thanks to the spices, making this a good soup for people on a low-sodium diet).  Just before serving, add handfuls of fresh chopped parsley and--for an Extremaduran or Canary Island touch--a handful of coarsely chopped cilantro.

 

A Glimpse of a Madrid Fruit & Vegetable Stand in Winter

 I love the tiny fruit and vegetable shops that can be found in every neighborhood of Madrid.   The produce in most of them is top notch, even in winter (when these photos were taken)  and always arranged beautifully out front, enticing you to come inside.

Here's a display of thick white asparagus, all sorts of gorgeous wild mushrooms, chestnuts . . .

And yet more wild mushrooms, setas.  Late fall is the season for them in Spain. (See my posts on grilled stuffed mushrooms and a spicy mushroom empanada.)

Here's a fruit stand, frutería, which is somewhat famous in Madrid because the royal family shops there.  The fruits tend to be so perfect at this place they don't look quite real.

¡Batatas! Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Spanish Street Food

In his recent article in the New York Times, Mark Bittman praises the sweet potato. He says, among other things, that roasted sweet potatoes make perfect street food.  Spaniards already know this. Walk around just about any Spanish city in late fall and winter and you will find castañeras roasting not only chestnuts and corn on the cob over fires,  but also batatas--sweet potatoes. Like a bagful of hot roasted chestnuts, a roasted sweet potato not only tastes great, it keeps your hands warm when it's cold.

To enjoy roasted sweet potatoes at home, just wash a sweet potato, poke it with a fork a few times, put it in a pan (lining the pan with foil makes washing up easier) and roast it in a 375 degree oven for two hours.   You can eat it with butter, but it's wonderful just the way it is.

Green Salad with Fatty Tuna (Tuna Belly): ensalada con ventresca de atún o bonito

This is very easy and elegant. If you've never had ventresca, it's like premium tuna fish, but buttery and tender--one of my favorites.  La Tienda sells ventresca bonito del norte, fatty albacore, which in Spain is considered to be the best. You can sometimes find tins of ventresca de atún claro, regular fatty tuna, at gourmet food stores, such as at World Market. Both types are fantastic. 

Ingredients

Salad greens of your choice, carefully washed and dried

good olive oil

a tin of ventresca bonito del norte, or ventresca de atún packed in olive oil

salt

Toss the greens with a little good olive oil until just coated.  Add a pinch of salt and toss again.  Place the strips of ventresca over the greens and drizzle the olive oil from the tin over the salad.

Check out my post on ventresca with tomatoes, piquillo peppers, and thyme.

 

 

Caldo Gallego in Thirty Minutes

I've posted before on a vegetarian or vegan caldo gallego. Here's another version you can make in just half an hour.  I used chicken broth for this, but you can use vegetable broth if you want to make your caldo vegetarian or vegan. If you prefer your caldo gallego with meat, just add slices of chorizo during the last ten minutes of simmering.

Ingredients

1 small bunch of kale or collards, washed and chopped

1 can of white beans, drained and rinsed

2 cans of chicken broth or vegetable broth

1 potato, diced

a few cloves of garlic, chopped

1/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon of pimentón de La Vera

In a medium pot, fry the garlic in the olive oil. Remove the pot from the heat and let the oil cool some. Add the pimentón. Stir.

Add the broth, the potatoes, the greens, and the beans. Bring the soup to a simmer. After fifteen minutes, test one of the potatoes with a fork. If it's soft, the caldo is ready.

Serve in small cups for a tapa, or in soup plates for an easy one-pot meal.

 

 

 

 

 

Seven Spanish Ways to Enjoy Spinach

Looking for Spanish recipes for spinach? Here are seven options. 

Rice, chickpeas, and eggplant (arroz, garbanzos, y berenjena)

A classic Catalan dish of spinach with raisin and pine nuts (espinacas con pasas y piñones)

One of my favorites: a spinach empanada

Spinach en adobo

Substitute spinach for chard in a dish of greens, sesame seeds and apples.

A hearty vegetarian one-pot meal of tomatoes, chickpeas, mushrooms and spinach

Or top fresh spinach with a compote of dried fruits, nuts, and Pedro Ximenez

Easy One-Pot Meal: Judías verdes con patatas, Green Beans & Potatoes

This is another dish that my mother-in-law, Esperanza, often makes for us when we're in Madrid.  It takes about half an hour to make. It's vegetarian (vegan, if you omit the eggs.) It's also authentic--though not something you typically find in Spanish cookbooks.

Here's how to do it.

Ingredients

1 lb "Italian" or wide green beans, fresh or frozen

1lb potatoes

2 or 3 cloves of garlic, sliced

1 teaspoon Pimentón, plus more for sprinkling

Salt

1/4 olive oil

a good olive oil for drizzling at the table

boiled eggs

Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil.  While it's heating, wash the potatoes. Peel them if you like (I never bother).  Cut the potatoes into large chunks and put them in the pot. 

If you're using fresh green beans, wash them, trim them, break them into bite-sized pieces.  Or just rinse some frozen green beans, which work well for this. After the potatoes have boiled 8-10 minutes, add the beans to the pot. Boil the potatoes and beans 10 minutes more. At this point the potatoes and beans both should be tender.  If the potatoes get done before the beans,  just fish them out.

Reserve one cup of the cooking liquid.

Drain the potatoes and beans and leave them in the colander.   Using the same pot, fry the garlic in 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Remove the pot from the burner and let the oil cool some. Add the pimentón.  Stir in the reserved liquid. Add the potatoes and beans. Bring them to a simmer.

Serve with boiled eggs,  good bread,  a good olive oil for drizzling at the table, and pimentón for sprinkling.

 

Garbanzos Fritos, Fried Chickpeas: An Easy Tapa

Fried garbanzos are a relaxed tapa, the sort of thing you munch while drinking a beer.  In Spain, you can buy them already prepared at dried fruit and nut shops (see my post on tiendas de frutos secos y variantes) where several different versions of fried and toasted garbanzos are usually available. They are often combined with toasted corn--kikos--nuts, and other fried beans in Spanish-style cocktail snack mixes. 

But fried garbanzos are easy to make at home. All you need is a can of garbanzos, a 1/2 a cup or so of olive oil for frying, and, if you like, some spices. 

Open the can. Rinse the garbanzos.  Dry them (I usually toss them in a hot wok for a few minutes) and put them in hot olive oil.  Be careful. Frying garbanzos tend to pop. I usually fry them outside on a propane burner.  Inside, I use a screen over the frying pan to reduce splatter. 

Stir the garbanzos now and then. When they turn golden--usually after 4 or 5 minutes--I usually throw in a chopped garlic clove and a little cumin. When the garlic is toasted and the garbanzos are crisp, remove the garbanzos from the oil, drain them, and sprinkle them with ground red pepper or pimentón, which adds a nice smoky flavor.  You can salt them too, but I usually don't because canned garbanzos are already salted.