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Last night the stars aligned and the music of the spheres played just for me. Sort of. It went a little something like this. I came home from a lovely and unexpected walk along the river (who knew Madrid had a river?) made some glorious cheesey pasta and then decided to listen to a little NPR streaming live. Low and behold, my good friend Kai Ryssdal was just about to do the numbers. I am still pissed about the Euro/Dollar situation (down to $1.44 to the Euro, just so you know) and it seems like the country's financial woes are just gaining momentum. The slowing housing market aside, I got to hear Mr. Ryssdal say "let's do the numbers." I love that. It is a perfect expression. Like "library stacks" "fiscal nightmare" and "rapier-like wit" they are words that come together to evoke more than the sum of their parts. Kind of like pasta, broccoli, cheese and butter, each ingredient is pretty nice on its own, but together they are simply divine!!
Cheese-y Broccoli-y Pasta
1/2 lb pasta
2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup milk
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 medium head broccoli cut in small florets
splash of white wine (optional)
salt and pepper
extra cheese for serving (optional, but barely)
Boil pasta in a large pot of boiling water. As the great Mark Bittman tells us, unless you have direct doctor's orders to limit your sodium intake, salt the crap out of the water. Go crazy, more than you think is necessary. This will make it great! When pasta is done, drain it and toss it with a little olive oil.
In a medium skillet heat a little olive oil and saute garlic until nice and fragrant. Add broccoli, a splash of white wine or water and a little salt. Cook until crisp tender and brilliant, Irish countryside in spring green. Put broccoli on a plate and tell it to "sit tight" for a few minutes (I strongly recommend talking to your food, seriously).
In the same skillet (you don't even have to clean it, just make sure it is empty,) heat butter until it bubbles. Sprinkle in flour and mix it up with a wooden spoon or whisk until lumps disappear. Start adding milk while stirring and then let the gooey, bubbly deliciousness do its thing on low heat for about 5 minutes, giving it pretty constant stirs. If the sauce is too thick, add a little milk, or better yet, few splashes of the pasta cooking water. As any Italian grandmother will tell you, the pasta water can do wonders for a sauce.
Just before serving, add cheese and broccoli to sauce and taste for salt. You will probably need a pinch or two. Toss sauce with pasta and a little extra cheese. Try not to eat so much you have to unbutton your pants...
I love making pancakes. I love eating pancakes. I love thinking about pancakes. I love them with jam or syrup or fruit or with a fork or even with a spork... This weekend I decided to make pancakes Spanish style, which esentially meant guessing at the measurements (no cup measures in the metric union/European Union) and calling them tortitas. Further concession had to made in terms of toppings. While most anything will do, I have a particular love for maple syrup (as I guess most of us do). After scoping out Canada's chief export only to discover wickedly expensive bottles of the stuff at a local "health food store," (these places really peddle massive amounts of diet pills, Aruyvedic shampoo and sea kelp cellulite reducer) I decided to make some apple sauce to sweeten the pancake deal. YUM! Pancakes really heal all wounds. As I was feeling a little homesick, the whole-wheat cinammonyness was the perfect taste of home. The apple sauce (just cooked apples, really) came together while the pancakes cooked and was a great use for a slightly mushy apple I had forgotten about in the fridge.
Pancakes
Makes 8 biggies
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cups milk
1 egg
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 apple finely chopped
1 teaspoon cinnamon
In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients. In a separate vessel, mix wet ingredients. Combine. When mixture comes together (do not over-mix...we want light, wheaty morsels) add apples and walnuts and give a quick mix-up.
Heat a skillet with a little butter and cook pancakes until bubbley, then flip. As they come out of the pan, keep them in a warmed oven (preferably directly on the rack so they don't go mushy. The out of sight, out of mind, oven storage method also makes it harder to eat them all before they make it to the table. A good solution to this craving is to make a small one in the first batch. Think of this as the "taster." We musn't poison our loved ones).
Apple Sauce
1-2 medium apples thinly sliced
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup raisins
pinch of salt
In a small pan heat all ingredients to a slow simmer. Let cook for 10-20 minutes until soft and saucey. Great with pancakes, served over ice cream or eaten with a spoon!
The kitchen still smells like burnt toast. Not just kinda burnt. Not the sort of burnt you can scrape off with a butter knife. We are talking charcoal burnt. Note: Do not check your email while making a grilled cheese sandwich at 1:00am. You probably already know this (I know this too) but I just wanted to share a little hard won wisdom. The idea of the grilled cheese itself was good enough, but the execution was definetly lacking.
I decided on a grilled cheese while doing a little bit of stumbling home last night. What I really wanted was a giant slice of pizza from the giant slice of pizza purveyors who normally cater to people who are stumbling out for the night. But I thought to myself "No, I have cheese and bread at home" (one chunk of semi-soft goat with a squishy mold rind and a gorgeously burnt orange on the outside, bone-white on the inside wedge of paprika rubbed goat-y deliciousness). I am trying to avoid late-night impulse purchases and practice general thriftiness, especially since the dollar has plummeted to $1.42 to the Euro!!!! Can anyone do something about this? A lunch date with Greenspan, anything?!?!
There have been some recent sandwich successes however. The most successful being an autumnal feast for the sandwich senses, (good adjective, huh?) a pear and brie baguette. I was invited to a new friend's baby shower and wanted to bring something extr
a yummy for the afternoon tea-party. Very civilized. I cooked down some pears in white wine, butter and cinnamon and sprinkled some chopped walnuts into the gooey mixture. Then I spread a thick layer of brie on the bottom half a baguette and layered the cooled pear mixture on top. Cut into little slices, secured with a toothpick, they were a big hit.
The baby shower was very much a cross cultural event. The shower-ee is Australian and her husband is Spanish. Both parents were there causing much UN style translating. The food was a special blend of High Tea and tapas, crustless cucumber sandwiches next to plates of jamon and queso. The baby names conversation was particularly lively, focusing on how people in Australia would pronounce the uber-Basque top name contender, Aitor. I guess we will know soon enough (our new little friend was born a few days after the shower and was crowned Aitor!)
A few weeks ago, a new friend gave me a beautiful edition of the seminal work on Spanish cuisine, 1080 Recetas de Cocina. For several generations of Spanish housewives, recent college graduates and pretty much everyone who eats food in Spain, Simone Ortega's book has been the essential road map and culinary companion. It is pretty much the Joy of Cooking with 30 recipes for salt cod. I have been reading it page by page. Yesterday I made it to the fish and seafood section. I had to grab a dictionary as I could'nt tell the difference between merluza (hake) and lenguada (still not sure). All this fish talk got me pretty hungry.
I set out midday to try out my new fish vocab at the local pescaderia. Great chunks of tuna, brilliant orange center-cut salmon fillets and millions of tiny, scrubbed clams glistened on trays of shaved ice. This was a littl
e overwhelming.
The one-eyed fish monger was hacking away at a massive hunk of bacalao (salt cod) and I wasn't sure how to get his attention. A minute latter a woman in bright blue eye-shadow and long white smock asked me what I wanted. I wasn't sure, I panicked a little, my voice cracked, and I just pointed at whatever was closest and asked for half a kilo. The next thing I knew, I was the proud owner of a white parcel with some very heavy cod fillets. Even fresh cod is a little on the fishy side, so I decided to wander through the market and wait for inspiration.
My first stop was the watermelon lady. She sells a lot of stuff other than water melon, but I always wind up leaving her stand with a giant hunk of melon (and singing to myself... hunka, hunka, hunka burnin' melon, or something). We have our routine worked out. I get a little of this and a little of that and ask about where this or that comes from and then she says "y sandia..." (and water melon.) I am so predictable. She told me this would be it for the season, so I picked a hulking 2 kilo piece and stuffed everything in my shopping bag. I now had 4 pounds of water melon, some clementines, a few onions, a huge head of broccoli and a bunch o' cod. Turning the corner, I spotted some beautiful green frying peppers and had a small, lunch epiphany. Fish soup! Fry up the peppers with some onions and garlic, and make a rich tomato broth studded with potatoes, carrots and my cod fillets! All I needed was some bread to soak up the yumminess. My contacts in the Ecuadorian bakery business came through with a perfectly crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside loaf of bread, still warm from the oven.
Friday Afternoon Fish Stew
1 large onion finely chopped
1 large green bell pepper finely chopped
3 cloves garlic roughly chopped
2 medium carrots roughly chopped
1 large potato cut in small chunks (the smaller the piece, the faster it cooks)
3 large tomatoes roughly chopped
2 teaspoons smoked paprika (or regular)
1 cup white wine
2 cups water
3 tablespoons capers
3/4 firm white fleshed fish fillets (skin and bones removed, preferably by one-eyed fish monger)
juice of half a lemon
large handful chopped fresh parsley
small handful chopped fresh basil (optional)
salt and pepper
1. In a large pot, heat olive oil and saute onions with a little salt until soft and translucent. Add garlic, peppers, carrots and 1 teaspoon salt and cook until beginning to soften (about 5 minutes). Splash in 1/2 cup of wine and let bubble and reduce for a few minutes. Sprinkle in paprika and 1/4 of parsley. Add tomatoes and bring mixture to a simmer. Pour in water and remaining wine and let simmer for about 20 minutes (until veggies are fork tender, may take longer)
2. In a wide skillet heat a little olive oil. Carefully add fish and sprinkle with salt. Let cook about 3 minutes on high heat until starting to brown. Flip fish and add capers. Let cook a few more minutes until mostly cooked (Fish will finish cooking in soup, don't worry, no sushi!)
3. When veggies are mostly cooked, flake fish with a fork and add to soup (including any juices and capers). Stir in remaining herbs, lemon juice and taste for salt and pepper, let cook about 10 more minutes until everything in spoon-worthy and groovy. Serve with plenty of crusty bread and white wine (or not).
One of the most fun and most stomach churning parts of food shopping in Spain are the chicken butchers. Great expanses of chicken await the poultry patron; whole birds with feet and heads included, viscera, eggs, chicken parts and everything in between. As a conscientious carnivore (an expression I just made up,) I like to think of myself as person who engages with the reality of meat eating (it comes from an animal) and embraces the fullness of the meat-eating experience. This is of course a lie I tell myself. I am out of my mind at these places, I just try and keep an ever mounting sense of panic and distress at bay. But I really love the chicken breast fillets. I suffer minor carnage-induced panic attacks to watch a
bloody-fingered carnicero fillet a chicken breast into super-thin morsels of delciousness. I take them home and make everything from Thai basil stir fry to mustard breaded cutlets. Yum. A little nausea is a small price to pay for something great, plus a reminder of where food really comes from.
Mustard Breaded Chicken With Pesto and Vegetable Pasta
Serves 4
4 super thin chicken fillets (cut thin or pounded flat)
1 egg1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
a little ground pepper
Beat egg and mustard in a wide bowl
Mix flour, oregano, cheese, salt and pepper in another wide bowl.
Heat a large skillet and a generous glug of olive oil (enough to cover bottom of pan). Dip fillet in egg mixture and then pass through flour mixture, shaking off excess. Cook 2 minutes on each side. Serve with fettuccine tossed with pesto and sauteed green beans and tomatoes.
For pesto recipe, please email my mom!
Ok so I am obsessed with this market. Completely smitten. There is even a bathroom with toilet paper AND soap in the basement. And a Norwegian fish stand (no wood, but much lutefisk!). And more deliciousness than you can shake the proverbial leg of jamon at.
This weekend I spent a dizzy hour wandering through corridors of plump veggies, shiny fruit and meat parts galore. I put together a fun meal of Vietnamese summer rolls and rice noodles with chicken and vegetable. The basil, rice noodles, fish sauce were easy enough to come by, but the rice paper wrappers were a bit of a challenge. After talking to several proprietors of various food stands, I got a couple of good leads on rice paper wrappers. We wound up in a funky smelling Chinese grocery store underneath Plaza de Espana. You read right, there is a Chinese grocery store, a travel agency and noodle counter in the corridor between a giant underground parking lot and a meandering stairway to the fairly majestic, Cervantes sculpture laden Plaza extraordinaire.
Rollitos Vietnamitas
(Vietnamese Summer Rolls)
makes 12
2 small cucumbers, peeled and sliced into long strips
2 large carrots shredded or shaved with a vegetable peeler
big handful basil roughly chopped
big handful cilantro roughly chopped
small bag baby lettuce
1 package firm tofu
1 lime
1 package rice paper wrappers (you will use 12, or more if you like. The don't keep super well for more than a few hours, so keep that in mind)
1. In a large skillet, heat a nice glug of oil and saute tofu until brown and crispy, about five minutes per side. This will take a few batches, you don't want to crowd the pan. Drain tofu on a plate lined with paper towels and sprinkle with salt. When cool enough to handle, cut each slice in half lengthwise
2. arrange all veggies and herbs on a large platter so they are all easy to access and sprinkle with lime juice and salt. Fill a large bowl with warm water and soak a few papers until softened, about 30 seconds (make sure rice paper wrappers can lay flat in the water). On a cutting board or counter covered with a clean, damp kitchen towel, lay one wrapper. About a 1/2 inch from the bottom of the wrapper, mound a few carrot, cucumber and lettuce leaves and cover with a nice sprinkling a herbs and one tofu slice. Tightly wrap ingredients in paper, burrito style, closing the side around the filling and rolling strait to the top. Place seem side down on a large tray. Try not to eat them all before your friends come over (i mean you can if you want to, but then you'll have to make something else...)
Serve with peanut sauce or jarred sweet chili sauce.
easy peanut sauce:
in a small sauce pan heat about 4 Tablespoons water to a simmer. Stir in 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1-2 tablespoons brown sugar, juice of 1/2 a lime, 2 tablespoons soy sauce and a shot of fish sauce (optional). Wish gently until creamy and delicious. Taste for sugar and lime juice. If too think, add a little more water.
Two things having little to do with deliciousness:
This morning I was reading the New York Times online, the style section, and there was a little article and sideshow about a certain fashion forward subway stop. The author was talking about the eye candy and promenading prowess of the underground fashionistas. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/fashion/04SUBWAY.html?ref=fashion
This got me thinking about my fellow commuters on the Madrid metro. Some examples you might like... This afternoon on the platform across from me, I noticed a young woman in black patent leather wedges, hot pink floral and black lace edged knee highs, a black mini skirt and a hot pink sweater. Written out, the outfit doesn't sound like much, I think it was the way the knee socks said "trashy school girl chic" that really made the whole thing pretty amazing. Transferring metro lines, a woman pushed past me and I was momentarily blinded by her neon green poncho. The poncho was sensibly paired with purple old-school Keds, neon green ankle socks, purple leggings and a green and red tartan skirt. The icing on the cake (as it were) was the hair. A reddish dyed mop of recently shaved curls with one lone dreadlock falling just below her shoulder. I love the dreadlock mullet, the people of Spain take this look to it's obvious apex and beyond! This is really just the tip of the iceberg...
If hot pink knee socks and eye curdling ponchos weren't enough, I had one of those cross cultural moments that lays open the assumptions and nuances of our divided world. Leaving my job at the aforementioned monogrammed china filled apartment, I started talking to the other woman working in the apartment this afternoon. I teach the little ones English and she does the ironing. In the elevator, we compared notes on our hours with the family and other jobs throughout the day. Once on the street she asked me if I was Spanish. I said "No, American" and then she literally stopped in the street and looked at me and said "But isn't there lots of work in the United States?!?" I wasn't quite sure where to go with that. So I just said "si." And then she told me about how she left 4 kids in Panama and is working for three different families to make money to send home. So there you have i
t.
So what's for dinner after a day like today? Tortilla, of course. This is really just a souped up, skillet-sized omlete. The beauty is in the flip. The technique is simple, invert the mostly cooked omlette onto a plate and slide the uncooked side back into the pan and cook a few more minutes. Delicioso!
**A little Spanish lesson to go along with the recipe. The tortilla was so delicious that my dining companion declared it "una tortilla como dios manda" or "a tortilla as god intended it to be." Insert anything made just as it should be into the space tortilla currently occupies, and you have a lovely little idiom to bust out as you see fit!
Tortilla Como Dios Manda
2-3 dinner sized servings
5 eggs
splash of milk
4 slices smoked salmon roughly chopped or a small piece broken up into bits
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 bunch spinach finely chopped or half bunch of swiss chard finely chopped
salt and pepper
lots of crunchy bread
Beat eggs, milk and salt and pepper to taste. In a medium non-stick skillet, heat a nice glug of olive oil and saute garlic until soft and fragrant. Add greens and cook until just wilted and bright green. Pour in egg mixture and cook over medium-low heat until eggs are set. You can move the mixture around a bit to get everybody cooking. Once eggs look pretty done (3-5 minutes), loosen the edges with a small knife. Put a plate on top of the pan and flip the omelet onto the plate. Slide the eggs back into the pan and cook a few more minutes until firm to the touch. Serve in wedges with plenty of yummy bread.
This is great for breakfast, lunch, or dinner (or all three...)
Yesterday it rained a lot. A lot. I spent the day dodging umbrella spokes and discussing the troubling nature of English phonetics. My job as an English teacher means spending lots of time on the metro commuting between the offices and homes where my students not so eagerly await my arrival. It is pretty brutal. Many of the students have been told by their bosses to learn English or else... This leads to a certain anger/fear/hatred of the imperial language of international business.
Then there are the stories of my young charges whose parents want to get a leg up on this process by turning their little ones into lean, mean, bilingual machines, seemingly at any cost. There is something truly unnerving about sitting in a formal dining room, replete with gold edged, monogrammed china with an eight year old and her mother. Especially when the woman looks as though she has eaten little apart from Lucky Strikes, strong coffee and the occasional bite of romaine. Even more so when this stiletto and sweater-set clad woman is shouting about how her daughter is so lazy that she can't remember her spelling words then turns around and flounces out of the room, slamming the mahogany and bronze sliding doors behind her. It's a good thing I can say "please don't cry" in several languages...
All this rain and linguistic angst made me think of soup. When I finally made it back to my neighborhood at 8:30/20.30 (military time still eludes me), the regular market and grocery stores were closed. I stopped into a little fruteria (a fruit store) to by soup ingredients. With a large bag filled with tomatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage, lemons, carrots and parsley, I made one final stop at the Ecuadorian run bakery. I am working on a little project with this bakery in which I am systematically tasting everything they make. These woman know how to rumble carbohydrates, jeez! I decided on one sunflower seed studded baguette and a piece of something that looked a little like bread pudding. There is very little a big pot of soup and some yummy bread can't fix. Especially when something that looks like bread pudding is for dessert!
Everything's Better with Soup
Makes enough for dinner or lunch for a few days...
1 large onion finely chopped
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
splash of nice vinegar, wine, or beer
3 small to medium sized carrots roughly chopped1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped into small pieces
1 medium zucchini roughly chopped
4 small tomatoes roughly chopped or one small can of chopped tomatoes
1 can garbanzo beans, drained
half a medium sized savoy or other fun cabbage or green thing cut into fine ribbons
parsley/oregano/rosemary, whatever you've got
water
salt and pepper
In a large pot, heat a nice glug of olive oil. Saute onions with about a teaspoon of salt until transparent and starting to brown. Add garlic and cook a few minutes more until fragrant and smooshy. Throw in carrots and sweet potatoes and cook for a few minutes. Add chopped tomatoes and let cook until tomatoes break down, about 5 minutes at high heat. Splash in vinegar and cover veggie mixture with water. Bring to a low boil, then turn heat down and cover and simmer until mostly softened, About 15-20 minutes.
Add garbanzos, some kind of fun herb (a few teaspoons), cabbage and zucchini another teaspoon of salt and cook for another 10 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper and veggie squishiness. You might need to let it cook a few more minutes. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve drizzled with a little olive oil and some nice bread. A little goat cheese wouldn't hurt either.
