Spain – Caldo Gallego

Caldo Gallego, especially this recipe is a staple in our household.  I wasn’t planning to use it for the Spanish dinner because that just seemed like cheating (not that I have anything against cheating), but there is a grocery by our house that makes the best Caldo Gallego soup which I no longer buy because it’s $7 a quart vs under $7 for a potful when I make it myself.  I talked to the owner one day and he told me the secret was using “unto” (needless to say, it wasn’t something sold at the grocery).  It wasn’t even something I could google because I didn’t know what it was and unto is such a generic word.  In one of those serendipitous moments it just so happened that we were picking somebody up on the other side of town and I saw a different Spanish grocery, ran inside and found unto (which turns out to be salted lard). But when I was cooking the Caldo Gallego with unto instead of bacon, it just didn’t taste as good to me.  Unto gave a smooth but bland flavor and I ended up throwing in some paprika and vinegar in an attempt to improve it.  How can something with chorizo end up bland? Or is it only that I am comparing it to a less authentic, but improved version (to my tastebuds).

Caldo Gallego

• 1/4 pound thickly sliced pancetta or slab bacon, cut into 1/4-inch dice – I used unto but didn’t like it as much as when I’ve made it with bacon
• 1 14-ounce can white beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 medium onion, cut into 1/2-inch dice
• 1 large baking potato, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
• 1 large turnip, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
• 1/4 pound Spanish chorizo, casings removed and sliced 1/4 inch thick
• 1/2 pound turnip greens (or other dark leafy green, such as kale or spinach), stemmed and coarsely chopped

Saute the bacon, don’t use the unto – or maybe use unto and bacon.  When the bacon is cooked and all the fat is rendered, add the potato and turnip and cover with water.

When the potato and turnip are cooked (about 15 minutes) add the beans, greens, and chorizo and simmer until the greens are done (another 5 minutes).  Salt and pepper to taste. If you are not preparing the full blown Spanish dinner, it will be a complete meal in itself.

For my niece who doesn’t eat pork but bookmarks my recipes – use a bunch of salted butter in place of the bacon.  Instead of the chorizo throw in cumin, vinegar, and smoked paprika.  It won’t taste anything like the recipe but it will be good, especially with some hot sauce.

Spain – “Huevos rellenos” or Deviled Eggs

Deviled eggs with shrimp – original recipe here

12 hard-boiled large eggs – I used the 8 I hard boiled for the stuffed tomatoes recipe

4-5 pitted green olives (I used pimento-stuffed)

3/4 lb. medium-size shrimp, boiled and peeled

4-5 Tbsp tomato sauce – I used romesco sauce

Mayonnaise – I used the paprika aioli that was left in the blender from the cod fritters

salt and pepper to taste

Spanish sweet paprika for garnish.

Once again I don’t have a picture, but this time it was just because we were very lazy about taking pictures this dinner.  Since I am very behind on the blog posts, I can promise that after this meal we have pictures of everything.

I had shrimp in my freezer but they were the 20-25 good quality shrimp and I sauteed them in olive oil.  Recently a chef told me never to cook in extra virgin olive oil because it damages the oil, however, I don’t know many people who keep more than 1 type of olive oil on hand and I’m no exception.

As I mashed and chopped everything together (in my blender – I try to take the lazy way whenever possible) it all turned this interesting shade of salmon color.  If it was a lipstick, it would have been called coral (or with marketing the way it is, the lipstick may have been called electric bikini).

Since I just finished making the aioli and was reusing the blender without washing it, I don’t have exact measurements, but the mixture was too thin to pipe out and I kind of spooned it in as best as possible and wiped all the excess off with a towel afterward.  In retrospect I should have at least mixed the ingredients together by hand rather than the blender.

The flavor was good enough that even served next to the cod fritters, all the eggs were eaten.  A lot of them may have been eaten by me.

Spain – Spanish Stuffed Tomatoes

Stuffed Tomatoes 

If you notice, there are no pictures from this recipe.  That’s because the tomatoes fell apart when I tried to seed them!  I’m calling this recipe an utter failure but since I already had the eggs boiled, I did a quick substitution and made deviled eggs, which will follow in the next blog post.

Spain – Spanish Romesco Sauce and Tomato Water

Before and after – the home depot bucket came filled with tomatoes.

Romesco sauce (recipe link)

Normally, I wouldn’t do a post on an ingredient rather than a whole recipe, however this was an accidental add on to the meal because my friend Carol brought over a five gallon bucket of tomatoes.  I made this first and then found recipes that had Romesco sauce.

The Moroccan meal had taught me how easy it was to peel tomatoes (blanch, shock them in ice water, and let the skins peel off). The Moroccan used about 10 lbs of tomatoes, peeled separately for each recipe and thus I was blindsided by the amount of time needed to peel five gallons of tomatoes, many that were the size of those tiny hot Hungarian peppers. (a little over 4 hours, thanks for asking).  So here’s the additional lesson for the homeschool kids.  If a #10 can of San Marzano tomatoes costs $3.79 at Costco, and five gallons of Ruskin’s finest (or maybe not their finest but certainly the last of the season) tomatoes come out to around 2 cans worth after they are peeled and seeded, is it worth making tomato sauce or should you make Romesco sauce which is rather expensive to buy (and no, it has not occurred to me that you can make Romesco sauce out of canned tomatoes because that would mean that I spent over 4 hours peeling tomatoes and all day cooking for nothing).   My actual recipe (I tried to scale up the recipe I provided to five gallons) was as follows:

5 gallons tomatoes peeled and seeded

½ liter olive oil

½ lb sliced almonds

About 2 heads garlic (the rest of my bag of peeled garlic)

1 24 oz can of roasted red peppers

3 T salt

2 heaping T hot smoked paprika

and, 2 heaping T sweet paprika

here’s a different brand that sells a combo pack for much less

¼ cup red wine vinegar

I followed the recipe directions, but since I didn’t have bread in the recipe it never got quite as chunky as the original picture.  I kept it in the oven for about 3 hours but stirred every half hour (every 15 minutes for the last hour). I would have left it in longer, but I got tired of stirring.

 

I also made tomato water (click here for the original recipe) from the seeds I squeezed out of the tomatoes–this has nothing to do with Spain, but there is a restaurant in California called the French Laundry that served it back in the 90’s and I had a vision in my head of people sipping the water and astonishing (a real word, not something I made up) at the clear liquid that tasted just like a tomato. Truthfully it tastes exactly like a clear tomato juice – nothing special. Maybe you have to pay several hundred dollars for it to taste extraordinary.

Spain – Spanish Cod Fritters

Cod fritters – proof that anything tastes great when it’s deep fried

To me, the cod fritters were missing something.  I don’t use gluten free flour although I use rice flour because I feel like rice flour is a natural ingredient that has been used by many Asian countries for a very long time while gluten free flour is a laboratory concoction. (and no, I’m not consistent about this) For the cod fritters I broke down and used gluten free flour because I thought having the correct texture was very important.  It didn’t work and I used extra eggs to keep the batter together.  Despite my misgivings the cod fritters turned out to be the big hit of the evening.

I brought in my camping stove to deep fry because I’m sure the directions on the camp stove that mentioned only using it outdoors were  joking.   It turned out to be a tragedy when I realized that my camp stove did a much better job than the large burner on my 1958 GE.

The GE stove is very special.  When we bought our house it didn’t have a kitchen (the people who lived here before us would take their pots to the outside cement sink and wash them with a hose). We were given the stove by a friend because it was the same age as our house and I designed my kitchen around it.  Now I can’t afford to replace it because 40 inch stoves are very expensive (one artistic soul who obviously knew a lot about stoves let me know that they didn’t exist and I must have measured my stove incorrectly – since he was so sure he was correct, I like to think of my stove as a figment of my imagination).   But I digress…

Spanish Cod Fritters http://leitesculinaria.com/51785/writings-spanish-cod-fritters.html
10 ounces salt cod (I used a pound)
1 small onion, peeled and quartered (I used large)
1 bay leaf
1 medium Yukon Gold potato (about 8 ounces), diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup all-purpose flour (I used gluten free)
2 large eggs

Follow the directions except that the initial boil of the salt cod should really be outdoors according to my sister in law

Paprika aioli – http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2010/03/no-fail-homemade-mayo.html

2 egg yolks

1 T lemon juice

½ t salt

1 c canola oil, divided

½ c olive oil in which you’ve toasted 5 garlic cloves and cooled to room temperature

2 t smoked paprika

I’m linking to the recipe that I almost totally changed, but I made mine in a variable speed blender.  Aioli seems to be almost exactly like mayonnaise with the addition of garlic and olive oil.  I didn’t have non extra virgin olive oil so I used canola that I purchased in order to deep fry the cod fritters.  After the canola was in, I added the olive oil with garlic and paprika. I would also recommend that anybody who has a middle eastern grocery not too far away get avocado oil for making mayonnaise, it’s really good and $10 buys a full liter (as opposed to $10/cup at whole foods)

Spain – Spanish culture resources

Don’t forget the map link in the introductory post.

General

• Wikipedia – Spain
• U.S. Department of State – Spain
• All About Spain

Music

• Flamenco

Kids

• TIME For Kids, Around the World – Spain
• Kids Konnect – Spain
• WartGames – Spain

Moroccan Endnotes – Food for Thought

I’m a little disappointed about the lack of preserved lemons in the recipes.  It’s one of the Moroccan staples according to Wikipedia and I happen to have a huge jar of preserved lemons in the refrigerator from when Will & Lynn brought me a grocery bag of Myer lemons off their tree.

I used tomatoes that were on sale for 49 cents a lb.  I think the flavor would have been better if I had used canned San Marzano tomatoes that Costco sells for $3.79 a huge can.  I also think the guy at the Middle Eastern grocery, the one who grabbed my shopping list and walked around the store tossing things in my cart gave me the wrong fava beans.  As a general rule, I think I would have been a lot better off buying stuff from Costco, sometimes buying local doesn’t seem to be the best policy.

The  Middle Eastern grocer kept telling that the most expensive food was the best, and the thickest, plainest teacups were the best quality.  I had the feeling that he considered me a stupid American and was laughing at my pathetic ignorance.   He also rang up prices higher than the list, so even though he was giving me a 25% discount, it came out even but I was too much of a wuss to say anything. Other men walked into the store. All of them looked American but talked in Arabic. One had long white hair and looked like a homeless ex-hippie, but said Salem-Aleichem and started talking in Arabic like everyone else, which I took as a lesson to not judge people even though I am completely and totally judging the store clerk.

A few weeks ago, I met an Iranian woman in the Kabob house as we searched every Middle Eastern store in the area looking for a tajine.  She sent me to one grocery with strict instructions to bargain and let him know that his prices were way too expensive.  I take that to mean that bargaining is essential in the Middle East, even in grocery stores.  It’s entirely possible that they are judging me for not bargaining and finding me wanting.

As a side note that has nothing to do with anything, she is looking for a nice girl for her son.  He’s 34 and evidently quite handsome (being happily married, I didn’t notice) .

Back to tajine – I found a clay pot at the Chinese grocery for $9.  They sell the same one on Amazon for $25.  You have to soak it in water before use and use a diffuser if you have an electric stove like I do.

By the way, another good lesson about Moroccan cooking, ground lamb will not even begin to defrost in 2 days if you keep it in your cheese drawer.

It is very strange that cilantro is used in both Middle Eastern and Mexican food even though they are at opposite ends of the earth (refer to Wikipedia—Coriander). However, cilantro is indigenous to the Middle East and tomatoes which originated in South America seem to be ubiquitous to Middle Eastern cooking (refer to Wikipedia—Tomato).

Although the Muslim culture in Morocco discourages drinking alcohol, I felt entirely justified in declaring Sangria as the official drink of Morocco because we had a gallon left over from the surprise adoption party.  Sangria is Spanish, and there was paprika in almost every Moroccan recipe, so obviously the two countries are closely related.

AND, I cannot stress this enough—don’t add a cup of rice as a substitute for a cup of vermicelli.

Morocco – Gluten-Free Dosai

Dosai – Gluten Free

Dosai – Jill’s Journey to Discovering a Delicious Gluten-Free Recipe

I don’t think there is any good gluten free substitute for pita bread.  This was the pita substitute for our Moroccan cuisine meal adventure.

I used to live in an apartment complex that was next to a tech center.  I would say that it was probably about half Indian, and the ones I met were from the Tamil region of India.  I traded American cooking lessons for Indian cooking lessons with my friend Ashwini, and one of the staples was a bean and rice crepe that was used as a utensil for eating.

I looked up a lot of dosai recipes on the web and none of them keep the rice and dal separate like mine.  Ashwini learned to cook shortly before she got married and still called her mom for cooking advice. But this was the same recipe that my upstairs neighbor Varoom used except for the addition of a pinch of fenugreek that she ground with the rice and Varoom was so traditional that she met her husband on their wedding day.

1 part urad dal (split) also known as black garam (search on Amazon)
4 parts idly rice (Idly Rice 4lb on Amazon);  or, ponni rice (search on Amazon)
1 tablespoon salt, or to “the right smell”
——————–

1/2 cup as my part
Keep the rice and the dal separate. Rinse the rice and the dal several times in water until the water is clear, and then soak them separately for about 8 hours.  Grind the rice in your blender with some of the rice water until it feels creamy instead of gritty.  If you don’t have a Vitamix, this can take up to 10 minutes.  Ashwini told me to use as little water as possible, but now I use enough so that it comes out to the consistency of cream.

Now empty the rice water into a bowl.  Put the dal into the blender with enough water to make it blend smoothly and blend it the same amount of time.  Mix the dal and the rice together and add salt.  Make sure the bowl is big enough for the batter to triple in size.  Loosely cover and let it ferment until it doubles or triples in size. Then, I’m serious about this, if you don’t have a friend that makes dosai, watch a YouTube video on how to cook them.  I’m not going to suggest using high heat like the Indian’s do, when I had my heat as high as Varoom, I consistently set off the fire alarm.  I use medium heat and don’t try to get those burnt edges. Really, the best way to learn to make dosai is to look for a girl wearing traditional Indian clothes or in jeans with a husband and baby at the grocery store, introduce yourself, and ask them to teach you.

Dosai is well worth learning how to make because it can be used as a pizza base as well as a sandwich wrap and leftover batter refrigerates well (not to mention that it is really good as a morning taco shell filled with egg and cheese.

Morocco – Stuffed Dates Dessert & Mint Tea

Moroccan Stuffed Dates and Mint Tea

Dates Stuffed with Almond Paste and Served with Moroccan Mint Tea (recipe at About.com)

A traditional Moroccan dessert that is best served with Moroccan Mint Tea (see Moroccan Tea Culture at Wikipedia).

Morocco – Fouscous/Couscous – Gluten Free

Fouscous/Couscous – Gluten Free

Fouscous/Couscous (recipe at The Clothes Make the Girl) I don’t know what happened to this dish.  I made an advanced batch the night before just to try it out and it was incredible.  The night of the party it was just okay.  I don’t know if I got the proportions wrong or if it just didn’t taste great in relation to the rest of the food. Anyway, we still enjoyed the Fouscous with our Moroccan dinner.

 Jill’s Additions: 1-2 teaspoons salt and 1-2 tsp ginger and turmeric.