1. Best Trip of ‘09

What was your best trip in 2009?

To Philadelphia, in mid April, for a month, to visit a dear friend, help remodel a house, and play with children.

The best time I’ve had in years.  All sorts of things were done, seen, eaten, drunk, experienced…

Hamburger, microwaved

Sometimes you really, really, don’t feel like cooking.  But perhaps a microwaved hamburger is going too far?  I did eat one of these; plasti-cheese, mysterious-meat, deadly-bun.

Pretending to spruce it up with the addition of ketchup (Heinz), onions, tomato and lettuce does not make it any less shameful a snack.

I’ve been trying out a lot of different burgers recently and my excuse here is that I needed to try the bottom of the scale to appreciate the wide range of alternatives out there.

The Bus

I travel around mostly by bus; as in… going back and forth to Madrid from the beach.  It’s a good 550 kilometers [350 miles]. Luckily medium and long-distance buses in Spain can be very comfortable.

They usually have TVs (see picture, above) and show movies on longer trips, there is a washroom of course, several music stations to choose from, individual air controls, and reading lights.  It’s somewhat like air travel.  There is no galley and that is not a stewardess¹ you see in the photo. Since there’s no food service (or smoking) they stop every 2 or 3 hours for a break at a bus station or highway rest area; it’s also to give the driver a rest.

All in all not a bad way to travel and it’s ecologically responsible too.

¹ I live in Europe, on the continent, and I knowingly and happily use “politically incorrect” terminology.   Note: the term flight attendant would hardly be appropriate here, would it? 

Limes

Was in the next village over a couple of weeks back (a lovely November day).

They planted lime trees in the streets.    This one looks ripe.

I wonder what the protocol is about plucking one.   I know the rules for oranges are that you may take one (or several) for immediate personal consumption.   You are supposed to leave the rinds on the ground where you picked it to show that the orange was consumed. 

That’s less likely with limes.

Uitsmijter : Fried egg on toast

That’s Dutch, not Spanish. It means “to throw out”.

The name is traditionally said to come from the other meaning of uitsmijter which is “bouncer” (as in nightclubs). This being eaten/served as a late-night/early-morning snack at a cafe or club just before everyone gets kicked out at closing.

• Toasted white bread
• A slice of cheese
• 1 egg; sunny side up (fried in 1 T of good olive oil)
• ham under the egg (optional)
• tomato slices under the cheese(opt)
• salt & pepper
• mustard (opt) (not horrid yellow mustard though)

This has been my favorite quick snack these days. Use fresh eggs (the yolks are more shapely) and keep the yolk runny.

There has been no actual “cooking” going on around here for months. This is the closest I’ve come recently so I’m tagging it as a “recipe”.

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Palms and the Rain

A few weeks back we had a day where a 6-months quota of rain fell in a day (a night and a day really). It was a mess around here. The whole lower zone below the highway was closed off due to the flooding; I couldn’t get out of the house for all the water in the streets. We’ve recovered now and the damage was not completely out of hand.

What happen though was that some spots got good solid pools of water on them for hours at a time and the ground sucked it all up. Consequently there was mud everywhere, up to 10-15 cm in some spots [4-6”]. What surprised me was that some supposedly dead and blasted, worthless, palm trunks suddenly started sprouting new tops. These two had been looking dry and dead for years. Now there is hope. Goes to show how important water is.

Then 5 days later the smaller one already looked like this (night time shot):

Creamed Carrots: Crema de Zanahoria

Another easy one; to make with stuff from the veggie bin in the fridge.

I like mine on the thick side. You may make it more soupy.

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Crema de Zanahoria : Creamed Carrots

Serves: 5

Ingredients

• 700 gr carrots, peeled & chopped [1 1/2 #]
• 1 onion, diced (maybe a shallot or 2 if you’ve got some)
• 2 leeks, white part, chopped fine (or 1, or 3, or none)
• olive oil
• 1/2 t cumin
• salt
• pepper
• 1/2 C dry white wine (I used cava)
• 1 C cream
• 1/2 C milk
• 1/2 C carrot water

Procedure

1. Oil into a sauté pan
2. Sauté the onions and leeks slowly, not browning
3. Meanwhile, boil the carrots in water just barely not covering
   • Until they’re 1/2 cooked, just getting softer
   • Reserve the carrot-water when draining the carrots
4. Carrots go into the pan with the onions and sauté lightly until tender
• Add a tablespoon of carrot-water if things threaten to get burnt/toasty
5. Set carrots and onion etc aside
6. Deglaze the sauté pan with white wine, reduce by 1/2 or 2/3rds
7. Put carrots, onions, leeks, & pan juices into a container and run the whole mess through a vegetable mill, or use a stick blender or a mixer of some sort
• Get it as fine as can be. Add some carrot-water if it’s too thick to process properly.
8. Put this goop into a pot on the stove and add the cream
9. Heat and stir – do not boil
10. Add 3 T olive oil, stir
11. Season with the cumin, add salt and pepper
    • Taste it before continuing
12. Add the milk – watch out for the thickness
13. As required, add carrot-water to obtain a syrupy consistency
14. Heat and stir – and taste
15. When you feel it’s about right that means that you’re done

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Smoked Salmon Salad

It doesn’t get much easier than this.

Sure, it’s best if you smoke your own salmon and pick the greens fresh from your garden but I just popped down to the local grocer’s instead.

The only thing “made” here is the tartare sauce [tartar in the U.S.] which in this case is a continental version so we can be snobby and call it a remoulade. With either name it amounts to mayonnaise plus pickles and other stuff.

I used an off-the-shelf olive-oil mayonnaise since my mayonnaise-making fails at least half the time and I didn’t want the hassle.

It’s simple really; take a cup of the good-quality mayo, finely chop 2 Tablespoons each (when chopped) of

• shallots (really really fine)
• gherkin pickles (the tiny ones)

1 T of chopped

• capers (not at all fine because they turn to mush; just so they’re not whole)

and stir it into the mayo. Add a squeeze of lime juice (1/4 lime or there about).

Taste, add more of whichever thing it needs. Add some pickle juice or caper juice if it’s a real thick sauce; it ought to flow somewhat (see the picture with a puddle of sauce).

The salad is just some greens, a thin layer of the sauce, more greens, then the smoked salmon on top. This was done in one of those little circular forms to give it some structure. And extra sauce on the side.

If this was a real remoulade you’d add some fresh chopped tarragon, chervil and parley; chervil’s the key ingredient there.

Anyway… that’s it. Simple, fast, pleasing. What more could one ask?

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Tortilla Española, Estilo Nuevo : Spanish Tortilla, New Style : Deconstructed

A deconstructed Tortilla Española (Spanish Tortilla).

Quite different than this normal looking tortilla:

See also a post at Tortilla de Cebolla

Taking a page from Ferran Adrià (chef & sort of mad scientist) and his recipe for a modern tortilla; having three components: caramelized onions, a simple sabayon (egg) and potato foam (yes, that’s foamed potatoes.

Instead of mixing all the ingredients together they are separated and layered over each other. Taste them individually or dig through to the bottom and have all three together.

The following is what I actually did – with slight variance from his original recipe. It’s quite a bit easier than it might look at first glance.

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Deconstructed Tortilla Española

Serves: 2

Ingredients

Caramelized Onions

• 1/2 medium onion – julienned, finely sliced
• 4 shallots – julienned, finely sliced (equal in amount to the onion)
• 60 ml olive oil [1/4 C]
• 1 T butter (or a little less)
• 100 ml water [1/2 C]
• salt

Sabayon

• 2 egg yolks
• 2 T boiling water
• salt

Potato Foam

• 150 gr potatoes [1/3 #] (that’s about 1 potato)
• 75 ml cream (heavy/whipping cream) [1/2 C]
• 2 T olive oil
• salt

Procedure

Caramelized Onions

1. Oil into a sauté pan, then the butter
2. Sauté the onions and shallots slowly, until browning
   • takes about 20 minutes
   • stirring regularly or, if you have the patience, continuously
3. Drain off any excess oil
4. Add 1 T of water, stir, and continue until the water evaporates
   • repeat: water, stirring, cooking until the water’s gone (this could go for another 20 minutes)
   • You’re going for a jam consistency and golden brown color
5. Salt to taste

Sabayon

1. In a pan, whisk the egg yolks until creamy and consistent
   • getting air in the mix is just fine
2. Add the boiling water in a drizzle and keep on whisking
3. Whisk with enthusiasm over medium heat, maybe use a double boiler, until it’s emulsified
   • Don’t stop whisking or you might end up with scrambled eggs
   • When it’s ready it will just barely drip from the whisk and be really full of small bubbles
   • If you have an instant thermometer it would be 80 C [180F]
4. Salt to taste (do not omit this step)

Potato Foam

1. Peel, chunk and cook the potatoes until soft
   • Start the potatoes in cold, lightly salted water, just enough to cover
   • They’re ready when a knife goes in easily and slips out equally so
2. Drain over a bowl, saving the cooking water
3. Puree/blend the potatoes, with 3 T of the potato-water, and drizzle in the cream
4. Then drizzle in the oil, pureeing the whole while
   • Until it’s smooth
5. Salt to taste (don’t leave out this salt either)

You can stop now and resume later (see notes) or carry on right away.

Now comes the sort of complicated bit; you need a stainless steel whipped cream maker (1/2 liter [quart] size) (or see notes for a possible alternative)

1. Strain the creamed potato into the whipper
2. Charge (2 cartridges) the whipper
3. Set in a pan of hot water, you can put the sabayon there too

Construction

1. 1 T (heaping) caramelized onions in the bottom of a tapered glass
2. Spoon in sabayon to cover
3. Shake thrice and invert the whipper with the potato foam and spurt in a goodly quantity of potato. At least as deep as the other two layers
4. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil on top

Done

Notes

1. I made everything well in advance and stashed it in the fridge
2. The sabayon firmed up quite a bit from the liquidy form it had when I finished making it. That didn’t matter since it was going between two other layers
3. Warming the caramelized onions up in a sauté pan
4. Warming the sabayon in a bain marie of hot water (just a biggish pot really)
5. Warming the creamed potato in a pot, adding a touch (2 T?) of potato-water to make up for absorbed or evaporated liquid
6. And then straining and charging the whipper with it and stashing it the bain maire
7. The caramelized onions are quite thick and jammy. Don’t put too much in the glass. I probably overdid it.
8. In the event that you don’t have a whipper/foamer I imagine you could whip up the creamed potatoes really well and end up with something sort of conceptually similar. Whip in large bowl with and electric whip and whip at the edge of the mixture to incorporate a lot of air. Cover half the top of the bowl with plastic film to avoid a huge mess.

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Crème Brûlée without an oven

I wanted to make this classic, simple, dessert so I could use my kitchen blowtorch again. The challenge in this case is that at my current place I don’t have a regular oven (only a microwave) and this dish is normally cooked in the oven.

The solution: create a Bain Marie on the stovetop with a frying pan. The capacity of this setup is rather limited, two at a time in this big frying pan, but it did work quite nicely.

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Crème Brûlée

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• 1 C heavy cream
• 1 vanilla bean
  
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 T sugar

Procedure

1. Split the vanilla bean and scrape the inside goop
2. Heat the cream in a pan with the bean and its scrapings
• just to when it starts to bubble
• set aside for an hour or two to infuse the flavour of the vanilla
3. In a bowl mix the egg yolks and sugar
• Until it forms something like a ribbon when dripping off the whisk
• Avoid getting it all foamy
4. Reheat the cream to just bubbling
• Remove the bean pod
5. Add cream to the egg mixture
• very slowly (to avoid cooking the egg with the hot cream)
6. Strain the mixture (in case of any little lumps of cooked egg)
7. Pour into some little dishes
8. Place a few layers of kitchen paper in the frying pan
• Splash in a bit of water to make things less slippy
9. Put the molds in the pan
10. Fill with hot water most of the way up the molds
11. Keep the water just on the simmer
• Add more hot water if the level drops much below 1/2 way on the molds (keep an eye on it – check every 15 minutes or so)
12. Cook for an hour
• Until the entire top of the custards are cooked over (it will be wiggly)
• Most of the contents of the mold will still be liquid (not to worry)
13. Chill a good 4 hours (or a day)
• Cover once they’re cool
14. Just before serving sprinkle sugar on the tops and toast with your blowtorch

Done

Notes

1. Or cook in a medium oven and a pan of hot water for 35-45 minutes
2. Mess with the sugar amount if you like it more or less sweet (I doubt honey would work in this recipe but it’s worth a shot)
3. The recipe is halved in this case but you can easily halve, double or quintuple it.  It works well at almost any volume
4. If they’re still liquidy after cooling you can redo the “cooking in a bain marie” process until you’re sure they’re done.  Give it two hours if you have to (but it won’t be)

Short version

1. Infuse flavor into cream by cooking the cream and the flavour component (in this case, vanilla)
2. Mix eggs and sugar together
3. Add reheated cream to egg mixture, slowly, and strain to remove lumps (if any)
4. Cook in a bain marie until the top is set; then chill (the custards)
5. Decorate with toasted sugar

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Platanos : Banana Tree

One of the neighbours has a couple of banana trees in their front yard; one of which has branches hanging over the wall.  The end of the stalk has a weird  man eating looking flower which drips (blood?) onto the sidewalk.

The bananas looked almost ripe the other day.

Alas, they’re too high off the ground to check them out. 

Chipirones en su tinta : Cuttlefish in ink sauce

You might not have ever eaten black food.  This is a good place to start.  It’s a very typical dish; a very small squid, the body stuffed with tentacles and the sauce made using the squid ink. Usually served with white rice - - for the contrast I guess.  I had it a while ago in a restaurant in town.

 

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Chipirones en su tinta : Cuttlefish in ink sauce

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 12 or so chipirones (little squid, cuttlefish) cleaned; 1kg [2#]
• olive oil
• 2 onions, chopped fine
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 1/4 C parsely, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1/2 C white wine
• 1/4 C tomato sauce
• 1 package squid ink

Procedure

1. Clean the chipirones; see notes
• chop
2. Oil in a pan
3. Onion in the pan, soften
4. Add 1 of the garlic cloves
5. Add the tentacles
6. Sauté 5 minutes; just to color
7. Add the parsely, stir
8. Stuff into the bodies of the squid; seal the open ends (toothpicks?)
9. In that same pan, more oil, fry the squid for color – set aside
10. In that same pan, put the other onion - soften
11. Add the other garlic clove
12. Add the green pepper
13. And the wine and tomato sauce
14. Dilute the ink in a bit of wine and add that
15. Add the rest of the wine
16. Cook a good while (15 min)
17. Puree the sauce; maybe with a stick mixer
18. Add the squid to the sauce; bring to a boil and simmer 20 minutes
19. Remove the toothpicks

Done

Notes

1. Clean chipirones by removing the tentacles, eyes, beak and bone.  Keep the tentacles and the pouch
2. If there’s not enough sauce when you add the squid to at least 1/2 cover then then use more wine or some fish stock

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Had a bit of a fire the other day

The fire in the hills to the south-west eventually burned 14,000 acres.

made for some picturesque sunsets

and resulted in a lot of ash on the patios.

Il Pomodoro: Pizza Mexicano

The Pomodoro chiringuito (beach bar) and pizzería at Vera-Playa, Andalucía, Spain; at the right (south) end of the naturist zone (El Playazo beach).

A very nice pizza – I enjoyed it. 12 €. Tomato sauce, mozzarella, minced beef, onion, and hot sauce on a thin artisanal crust; nice and picante.

Good char too from their wood burning oven.

It had a little too much salt and I’m sure there could be a better quality mozzarella cheese. For those trying this at home remember that spicy foods require less salt than usual to bring out the flavor; the spiciness perks it up instead.

I’ll be back - to try the margherita pizza so that I can check out the tomato and cheese quality without the distraction of all the extra stuff.

After lunch you can take a walk on the beach to burn those extra calories; or have a siesta on a lounge under one of the sun umbrellas in front of the bar.

View from the Pomodoro

Click for panorama shot

The view from the pizzería on the beach a couple of hundred yards from my place. More about that later.