Most Brits associate mincemeat with Christmas – its intoxicating mix of fruit, spices, booze, nuts and mixed peel provide Pavlovian stimuli, stirring memories of cherubic choirs a-caroling, roasted poultry, and the Queen’s speech – whereas I associate it with Easter, because it was always around then that we finally ran out of mince pies. I use the term “ran out” quite deliberately, as mince pies were the kind of thing that, growing up, were considered within the realm of “supplies”, so numerous were they. Every year in early December, my industrious mother would make at least six, but often as many as ten, dozen individual mince pies, fashioned lovingly from homemade mincemeat she had prepared several months in advance.

These seasonal confections then proceeded to appear on the table each and every mealtime, during tea breaks, whenever we had company over and any other time people were sat sitting and might be persuaded to have a smackerel of something, until everyone was thoroughly sick of the sight of them. Towards the end of March, the sight of the poor, battered-looking stragglers, that had been taken in and out their box so many times that their pastry shells were all dented and crumbly, was particularly sad.

The derivation of the word mincemeat, which today contains no minced meat, is Medieval, from a time shortly after Marco Polo had returned from the East, and every cook worth his salt was finding new ways to disguise and preserve rotten provisions with the spices he popularized. Adding cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to ground meat, dried fruits, candied peel and chopped nuts before soaking the whole lot in high octane liquor must have been a hit at the time, which probably speaks more to the concurrent lack of fresh meat than to whether this was, in fact, a delicious preparation. Either way, it caught the imagination of a nation, and though the ground meat has largely been dropped, the tradition of using these spices to perfume pie filling continues strongly.

Another reason mincemeat was such a hit way back when is because once made, it can be expected to keep, unrefrigerated for as long as 2 years – something my mother bore in mind, as she often made hers over the first weekend of the New Year giving it ample time to “improve” over the next 12 months. Throughout the year, she would occasionally rouse it from its slumbers, turning it over and adding a touch more brown sugar or booze as she deemed necessary. Suffice it to say that by the time Easter came around, and the last mince pies were served, their mincemeat contents was nearing its second birthday, and was so highly perfumed that to inhale deeply close to a warmed mincer was to risk singed nose hairs.

Following my mother’s established tradition, I was well prepared, having put together my mincemeat last January, and fed it occasionally throughout 2011, so that it was rich and boozy by the time the Holidays arrived. Unfortunately, the energetic screams of our firstborn put paid to any intentions I may have had of making batches of personal mince pies before Christmas, so I had plenty of mincemeat leftover to ring in the New Year with. Inspired by a desire to produce something that people would actually eat before the next Christian festival hove into view, I quickly prepared this mincemeat stuffed quince. You could quite equally pair it with a vanilla custard/creme anglaise or, as I prefer, a whisky-laced whipped cream, but I lost my dander somewhere along the way and just shook some powdered sugar over it to evoke the wintry season instead.

I could have used apples in this recipe, but opted for quince largely because it’s one of those fruits that was, coincidentally, first popularized in the UK during Elizabethan times and has, rather sadly, since fallen out of favor. Brought originally from Asia and sometimes known by the moniker “love apple”, quince isn’t dissimilar in taste and texture to the apple — to which it is botanically related and which would make a fine substitute here — but when you’ve got the strains of “Good King Wencelas” with its frosty and feudal lyrics echoing in your mind, quince just feels right. [For more on quince, check out our friend Rachel Eats.]

Oven-baked quince are really, really good: rich, almost custardy in flavor and not overly sweet. A perfect dessert for the Holiday period, providing enough time is taken between courses. It’s probably not worth making a batch of mincemeat just for this purpose, but they are they dead easy and quick to pull together, and will be eaten in no time, allowing you and your family to leave Yuletide flavors safely behind you before the end of January.

While Queens may have the reputation for being the most ethnically diverse area in the United States, our very own borough of Brooklyn is certainly not bereft of global flavors. From the side-by-side Mexican and Chinese neighborhoods of Sunset Park to the century-old Italian areas of Carroll Gardens and Bay Ridge, to the more recently established Caribbean community of Crown Heights, there is rather more than a smattering of diverse flavors available to the curious epicure. Even gentrified Park Slope and Prospect Heights reflect the enduring presence of their Puerto Rican and Dominican populations with a wide selection of places offering “Spanish food”, a phenomenon which took me a while to decipher as it certainly isn’t Spanish in the European sense.

Dishes typical of Spanish-speaking countries, especially those ringing the Caribbean, but which also may be derived from actual Iberian cooking — known predominantly on the east coast as Spanish, or Spanish American — it’s basically a catch-all term that to me connotes delicious, often with tropical ingredients, but always complex and filling food. We’ve made mention of several of these neighborhood eateries in several previous posts – El Viejo Yayo, Los Pollitos, Bogota among them – but our most recent crush is on the wonderful Windsor Terrace institution, Elora’s.

Serving Mexican and Spanish food, whereby you can select from the greatest hits of Mexico as well as these Spanish-speaking Caribbean classics, Elora’s serves all these in such volume that one dish could easily feed a hungry family of four. And it is perhaps because of this, and their consequently narrow profit margins, that our regular server at Elora’s should, by rights, be enjoying the benefits of a comfortable retirement.

Pushing 80 years old, Don Nicolas is without doubt the oldest but also the most charming and interesting waiter we have ever had the good fortune to be served by. Born to Sicilian immigrant parents in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and trained as a tango and opera singer, it is his daughter for whom the restaurant is named. His musical career spanned several decades and took him the length and breadth of the Americas, before he retired from singing, settled in Brooklyn and went into the restaurant business with his marital family.

On our most recent visit while we waited for our heavily-laden plates to arrive, Don Nicolas was explaining to us the secret of his youthfulness – “if I stop moving, I become stiff and I might not get started again! When you are young you don’t think about these things and spend all your time on the couch!” Indeed, many less energetic thirty somethings might have struggled with the amount of food he was charged with lugging from the kitchen. But manage he did, depositing immoderate orders of pernil, bistec encebollado and chicharrones de pollo on our table before returning spritely with sides of beans, rice, and tostones. Still not done, he surveyed the table and in a trice was back with a deep bowl of raw garlic in oil. “Prefieren un poco de salsa de ajo por su tostones, no?” (you’d like a little garlic sauce for your plantains, right?), he asked.

When we congratulated Don Nicolas on his fitness and asked if his health is reflection of his restaurant’s hearty fare, he responded diplomatically that he enjoyed the beans and rice and the pollo guisado (stewed chicken) most weeks, but found the Mexican dishes to be too hot for his Argentine tastes. “No tenemos alimento picante en Argentina,” (we don’t have spicy food where I come from.) he explained.

In fact, chicharrones de pollo, deep fried chicken, or more accurately translated as chicken cracklins’, are a popular Dominican dish, sometimes also claimed by Puerto Ricans as their own — we’ll leave it to them to fight over where it truly originated — in which chunks of chicken are marinaded for a lengthy period in adobe, lime juice, rum and either soy sauce or worcestershire sauce before being lightly dusted in corn starch and tossed into hot oil. If you like fried chicken (and those who don’t must ask themselves some searching questions) then you should try this recipe. It goes perfectly well with the tostones we had at Elora’s or the beans and rice we prepared more recently, but it is just as good on its own with a jigger of hot sauce and a cold bottle of Presidente Dominican beer. And, sure, it won’t necessarily help you live well into your 80s, but it will make the next couple of hours more enjoyable.

Though a resident of Singapore, then a part of Malaysia, during the early 1950s, I doubt very much if my father ever had much of an opportunity to experience its astonishing variety of cuisines. Confined mostly to the Changi district (now better known for its international airport) and the company of other expatriate British military families, his diet hardly differed from that of his older brother, Roger, who stayed in England at boarding school throughout the family’s four year sojourn in the east.

A child of the gastronomic wasteland of post-WWII rationing, when food was extracted from a can and then boiled to the point of annihilation, my Dad is still a picky eater, ever-ready to pull a face if served something strongly flavored. In the broader context of his early years, these culinary proclivities aren’t so surprising. Well into the 1990s (by which time rationing had been over for more than forty years), I remember visiting my paternal grandparents and noticing that their oven was spotless in spite of being nearly twenty years old, having been used exclusively as extra storage space for canned goods.

Widely read, well traveled and knowledgeable about many things, gastronomy is one of the few areas of which my Dad is entirely ignorant. Exposure, at such a tender age, to such perfumed and harmonious dishes as Singapore and Malaysia offer in abundance could have had a profoundly transformative influence on his tastebuds. Instead, the insipid and farty flavors of boiled beef and cabbage became the signature flavors of his youth.

All of which, to me at least, is a great shame since the laksas, curries, stir-fries, biryanis and sambals – culled from an ethnic and religious make-up as varied as any nation – that he could have tasted, are the signatures of a country that for milennia has been the regional cross-roads and melting-pot.

Book Review:
Susheela Raghavan’s family, on the other hand, embraced this tantalizing concoction, and in her new book, The Flavors of Malaysia: A Journey Through Time, Tastes and Traditions, she draws together a collection of recipes from across the full range her country’s diversity into a harmonious whole that is as interesting and educational to read as it is jam-packed with deliciousness. From opening chapters that place her and her family at the heart of Malaysia’s ethnic variety, to much-needed ethnographic and geographic explanations of how it all came to be, to charming anecdotes of recollections and family stories, The Flavors of Malaysia really is a cook book you can read and learn from. In fact, as you read, what you really notice is what a tour de force Raghavan has performed in creating something coherent and comprehensive out of such marvelous diversity.

The Malay fragrant rice that accompanies the lamb peratil (a sort of dry curry) above perfectly encapsulates the depth and complexity of Malaysian cooking (which is why we chose to make it). Using the predominantly Indian spice blend almost as a tea to perfume the cooking liquid, the addition of garlic, ginger, sugar and soy sauce to the rice makes for as cross-cultural a dish as any I can think of. The lamb, on the other hand, is representative of the profound influence south Indian cooking has on Malaysian cuisine, demonstrating that although mixing and borrowing takes place, the country’s resident non-Malay groups have maintained their own traditions too.

If the recipes we made sound exotic, then they should. The food of Malaysia is perhaps the world’s most pungent, combining the abundant spices of Indian cuisine, the fragrance of Thai and Vietnamese herbs and rhizomes, the simplicity of local Malay techniques, the incorporation of Portuguese ingredients and Dutch or British implements, and rounding it out with the balance of sweet, salty, sour and spicy native to Chinese cooking. That this has become a fascinating and unique brew and not a toxic hodgepodge speaks to the generally harmonious philosophy of a country whose moderate Malay Muslim majority lives cheek by jowl with Indian Muslims, Indian Hindus, Eurasian Christians, Chinese and Thai Buddhists and native animist groups.

It would be easy to be intimidated by this exoticism, and certainly, it’s unlikely the average pantry will contain even half the required items – some spice mixes reading like an apothecary’s top shelf – but the spectacular results make it worth persevering. To be fair, though the recipes are remarkably easy to follow, this isn’t really the kind of tome the owner of an average pantry would seek out. One needs to be prepared for an experience quite unlike anything one may have tasted before, and while I would love to suggest this book will fly off the shelves, my feeling is that only the adventurous will seek it out. The fact that not all dishes are pictured convinces me of this (150 recipes, 16 pages of color photographs), as a leap of faith is necessary in making something you have no clue what it looks like. If there were a large Malaysian community in America where one could get accustomed to this kind of food things might be different. For those of us looking for something tantalizingly new for our taste buds though, I can heartily recommend this book. Not only will your house be filled with fascinating aromas, and your stomach filled with astonishing dishes, but your intellect will be stimulated by a country and people of marvelous history, culture and depth.

As Odysseus was nearly drawn to his destruction on the rocks by the enchanting song of the sirens, so your hardy WANF voyagers were almost powerless to resist breaking themselves on the plentiful tables of Uruguay. However, unlike Homer’s hero, for whom women were the main weakness throughout his epic peregrinations, during our recent travels in South America, we found that grilled organs, specifically sweetbreads, are the likely source of our eventual ruin.

A comparatively short (by Odysseian standards) three-hour Buquebus ferry ride from Buenos Aires across the Mar del Plata – the enormously wide and constantly brown estuary of the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) – lies Uruguay’s capital and largest city, Montevideo. Arriving by water feels delightfully old-fashioned, and it allows the visitor to get a sense of the lie of the land in a way that a plane ride cannot. Rather than the confusing meander through a city’s outskirts on the way in from the airport, the city slowly revealed itself to us as we approached it by sea, face-first, so that we could see the way it had been built, outwards from the port.

Centered on the port is Montevideo’s cuidad vieja (old town), which with its faded colonial glory and salty night-time reputation, is immediately charming to the visitor. Only the giant ultra-modern cruise ship towering over everything prevented us from wondering if the ferry hadn’t also been a time machine. The hub of the old town is the Mercado del Puerto, a magnificent Victorian-era market with a skylit roof supported by wrought iron pillars, where the air is thick with the thwack of cleaver on meat, the cries of competing vendors and the sooty warblings of its resident pigeons. It no longer serves as a venue for trading fresh produce, a fact that might be sad if it weren’t now a giant parilla (grill/barbecue) serving all manner of traditional Uruguayan meaty preparations.

More accurately, there are actually a bunch of different parillas within the mercado all in friendly and typically laid-back Uruguayan-style competition with one another for the title of best in the city. We spent a good fifteen minutes cagily circling the mercado trying to figure out some way of discerning which might be leading this contest. After inspecting rack upon similar rack of sizzling meats, we decided to let demographics be our guide and plumped for Estancia del Puerto, the place with the fewest available seats (2), and the most drunken dudes with guitars serenading the patrons (1).

We had left Buenos Aires on a very early morning ferry and, having eaten nothing on the journey, arrived in Montevideo in a terrible, bleary-eyed state of hunger. The only way out of which seemed to be robust servings of charred beast. Happily then, the menu was the most extensive of its kind we have ever seen, containing more than eight choices of steak, five of sausage, 3 or 4 matambres (stuffed beef rolls), chicken, pork, and an intimidating selection of organ meats, not to mention a full range of pasta, salads and sides, in both full or half portions. Understanding, by this point in our carnivorous odyssey, that servings tended to be of a generous nature in this part of the world, we ordered half portions of mollejones (sweetbreads), morcilla (blood sausage), lechon (suckling pig), the potentially gruesome chotos/chinchulines (guts), and a bottle of typically Uruguayan tannat (red wine), in the hope that this might save room for further sampling of the menu.

Since, like all good grills, only certain sections of this parilla were used to actually cook meat, with others functioning as warming areas for ready-to-serve meats, we were presented with our choices within seconds, and what a presentation! No garnish, no sides of vegetables, no wasted real estate at all, just meat on plates and silverware wrapped in a paper napkin, with deep, communal tubs of chimichurri and salsa criolla scattered around the bar. We dived in recklessly.

The star of the show was the lechon, or milk-fed baby pig, which was heavenly. So good in fact, that were it not for the perfectly crispy skin overlying a thin-layer of incredibly sweet fat, and the moist, almost milky-tasting, flesh of unweaned piglet, it would truly be a barbaric dish. But our pause for reflection on the plight of young pork was brief as we tore into the golden beauty of the sweetbreads, the complex spices of the morcilla, and the (surprisingly) wonderful crunchy texture and minerally-tasting joy of the chinchulines. It all tasted to us like no meat had before, even the condiments had a singular tang and freshness to them that we found a step-up from those we’d had earlier in the week. And it seems we were not alone in this.

Glancing up at our surroundings and fellow diners as we approached fullness, it was comforting to see that everyone else was head-down and going full-bore into their lunches too. And who could blame them? Like the irresistible song of the sirens, the evocative combination of wood-smokey atmosphere, beautiful Victorian architecture, and the surround-sound effect of wall-to-wall sizzling would surely stir the soul of any meat-lover and be ruinous to the anti-meat resolve of even the most hardcore vegetarian.

Mercado del Puerto
Rambla 25 Agosto de 1825 y Perez Castellano,
Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, Uruguay
Mercado del Puerto online

The first time I ate pulpo a la gallega was at a very disreputable-looking food stand not far from the Estadio Balaídos in Vigo, Spain, before watching a soccer match between Celta de Vigo and Racing Santander (it finished 2-2). It was served on a slightly wilted plastic plate with a toothpick that looked suspiciously blunt at one end, as if it had already been used. I was absolutely sure I was going to have raging diarrhea because of this lack of hygiene, but ate the whole plate anyway. Sure enough, two hours after the end of the match, I rushed back to the hotel holding on to my bowels for dear life.

The second time, things improved considerably, reclining, as we were, in some old oak chairs in a tapas bar in Madrid earlier this year after a morning in El Museo del Prado. The only unpleasant feeling came from our sadness when the generous racione was finished. While pondering these feelings, Amy and I came to the conclusion that it’s one of the world’s greatest snack foods. Chewy, salty, sweet and filling, healthy and satisfying, pulpo a la gallega is simply chopped boiled octopus in the Galician style – dressed with sea salt, olive oil and sweet pimenton – and in Galician pulperias is commonly served on a wooden board with toothpicks. Like so many tapas, and Spanish dishes generally, it is achingly simple, and yet unbelievably good. Add anything to it and it becomes something else, take something away and it’s missing a key element.

That said, this, the signature dish of the region, is sometimes made with potatoes and when it is, is normally cooked on a hot plate and referred to as pulpo a la plancha. Another variation, pulpo a la feria, or pulpo a la feira in Gallego (the local dialect that sits somewhere between Spanish and Portuguese) is traditionally cooked in a copper kettle which gives the purple (when cooked) octopus a more orangey color and interesting minerally-taste. When such traditional vessels are unavailable (like virtually everywhere), a copper coin is often tossed in to the boiling water.

In an effort to do it all in one dish, as we only had one octopus – we boiled the ‘pus with a copper coin and boiled some potatoes separately, then combined them on the plate with the salt, pimenton and olive oil. It was delicious. The texture of octopus might be off-putting for some, as it’s kind of chewy on the outside and “crunchy” on the inside, but I love it, and when cut into inch-long chunks it makes a fantastic finger-food, if your guests are adventurous enough to try it. Not only that, but it’s easy to prepare and octopus is pretty reasonably priced.

Pulpo a la Gallega

Ingredients

1 pre-frozen medium octopus – around 1lb, pre-cooked (if not pre-frozen, freeze it for 24 hours)

2 quarts/ (roughly) 2 liters water, boiling

1 bay leaf, 1/2 onion, 1/4 cup vinegar (optional)

2 medium waxy potatoes, peeled and balled (using a melon-baller)

2-3oz extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp pimenton dulce/sweet paprika

1/2 tsp coarse sea salt

Recipe

Gently boil octopus in 2 quarts/2 liters salted water, remembering to add a copper penny, for 1 hr. (Some recipes call for bay leaf, onion, and vinegar, some not, in the water. Our experience tells us adding a 1/4 cup of white vinegar helps to tenderize the ‘pus a little)

Allow to cool before slicing into 1inch/2cm chunks.

Dress with olive oil, and sprinkle generously with pimenton and salt.

Serve with lots of crusty bread and a bottle of something cool and white, perhaps a Galician Albarino, Ribeiro, or a Portugese vinho verde.

Note: our friend CanaryGirl has also made Pulpo a la Gallega and her technique for boiling the octopus is rather different from ours. Check her out and feel free to tell us which you think worked best.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• Truffled Butter: A Prince Among Ideas
• Pernil (Roasted Pork Shoulder): Low and Slow
• Grilled Rainbow Trout with a Romesco-esque Sauce
• Jamaican Jerk Chicken

When you think of Brazil what do you think of? Is it the lazy sway of coconut palms, golden beaches, beautiful, bronzed people, a back-drop of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and soundtrack of relaxing bossa nova? Is it a throbbing samba rhythm, huge, garish paper-mache heads, and crowds of people dancing at carnival? Is it the magnificent graceful style of Brazilian soccer players, shimmying around in their famous yellow jerseys? Is it swampy, vibrant, old-growth rainforest echoing with bird and monkey calls, and the slow, muddy peregrinations of the worlds’ longest river? Or is it, perhaps, scenes of horrific murders and kidnappings, grinding poverty and deprivation?

It could well be all of the above. Brazil is the world’s fifth largest country in geographical area and in population, and has staggering diversity in environment, culture, ethnicity, and geography, as well as staggering economic disparity. In fact, some would argue that perhaps the only things that all Brazilians can agree on are the national soccer team and cachaça (pronounced, more or less, Ka-shass-a).

The former represents the country more famously than perhaps any thing else, as Brazil has won the World Cup 5 times - more than any other nation. But, even more famous than their success is their style of play. The free-flowing, wonderfully skillful, attacking game has endeared a Seleçåo not just to their own people but to millions around the world too. The latter, cachaça, the national drink of Brazil, is less widely known to non-Brazilians, but it’s fame too, is increasing through the successful export of the most popular drink made with it, the caipirinha.

And, for me, it’s the style of the drink that I find so attractive. The rawness of the cachaça, the sharp tang of lime, the sweetness of the sugar, the muddling it all together – all these different flavors and textures speak to me of a vibrant, diverse culture that retains a sharp bite. Meaning (literally) “little hillbilly” (the diminutive form of caipira, or redneck), the caipirinha is Brazil’s most popular cocktail, and is drunk on virtually every occasion in bars, restaurants, and in the home. Of course, there are several other ways to enjoy cachaça, which we’ll get on to shortly.

A Little History

But, before that, let’s learn more about cachaça itself. Basically, it’s a spirit distilled from the cane sugar for which “The Brazils” were primary producers of during Portuguese colonialism, being first produced in the town of Sao Vicente in the state of Minas Gerais (north-west of Rio de Janeiro) in the mid-1500s. The name is derived from the word cagaça, a kind of sour ‘beer’ made from fermented cane juice, first brewed by African slaves brought to work on Brazil’s plantations.

By the seventeenth century, its popularity had grown so much and there were so many distilleries in Brazil, that cachaça was officially banned in order that it not compete with imported Portuguese bagaceira, or grappa. However, in 1755, following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Lisbon, the Portuguese decided to legalise it and tax it, and in fact, much of Lisbon was rebuilt with this cachaça tax.

While cachaça was widely popular, it was not considered to be refined enough for consumption by any but the lowest classes, including slaves, peasants and urban working class. However, these days that has changed dramatically and all classes of Brazilian society consume cachaça with a passion some might call reckless abandon. Indeed, the average annual consumption in Brazil is around 8 liters. That’s 8 liters of forty head-splitting percent alcohol. Of course, there are different grades of cachaca, in the same way that there are better or worse cognacs or whiskeys, and while there are several large producers (Pitu, Cachaça 51) there are many hundreds of artisanal producers also making all kinds of interesting versions that are either mixed with flavorful botanics or aged in barrels made from exotic tropical woods. Much of the former kind is drunk as a caipirinha or one of several other mixed drinks, whereas the artisanal versions are sipped in the same was as scotch or cognac.

Heady Concoctions

Other than the hugely popular caipirinha, other liver-busting cocktails can also be made with cachaça, including: the bombeirinho combining it with red gooseberry syrup in a popular beverage; the caipifruta mixes cachaça with muddled fresh fruits, condensed milk and crushed ice into a refreshing milkshake-type cocktail; and the capeta or capetåo, meaning “devil”, which is a mix of cachaça, vodka, grape or strawberry juice, cinnamon, red wine and sugar, and is usually served hot. The fumes coming of this latter drink must be intense. The name tells you everything you need to know, I guess.

What does cachaça taste like?

Well, since it’s more or less a colorless rum, it tastes like what it is, and even then it doesn’t really have a massive amount of it’s own flavor. Like vodka in that respect really, although perhaps a little sweeter. However, the aged varieties are allegedly as good as a fine brandy and can be enjoyed as a great digestivo after a meal. That said, artisanal cachaça is hard to find in the United States so you’re much more likely to only be able to find the mass-produced brands mentioned above. Do not despair, as these are pretty good in their own right, and given that they are best drunk diluted with lots of lime juice, sugar and, occasionally, soda water, you don’t need to worry about the taste too much. And, if you’re not looking for a drink that’s as cocktail-ish as a caipirinha, then I would also encourage you to try the confusingly-named rabo de galo, (literally tail of cock), which despite its name is just a mixture or equal parts of cachaça and sweet vermouth. This feels like more of an aperitivo and a little less “hectic”.  

Even the name cachaça is exotic and cool-sounding – just rolling it around in your mouth, like most words in Brazilian Portuguese - it sounds soothing and somehow sexy.  Drinking a caipirinha is a similar experience, and they are as much fun to make and pronounce as they are to drink! Saude!

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our 3 weeks in Italy last summer. Maybe it’s the pick-me-up you need to? Oh, and I need to give a huge “shout out” to my blog-o-sphere friend Sarah from The Real Potato who has been kind enough to answer some of my annoying WordPress questions when we were having some difficulties getting our new URL up and running… THANK YOU! Also, below the pics I have answered an older Meme I was tagged for by the awesome and lovely Nuria at Spanish Recipes.

***MEME – Some Answers from Amy (Jonny’s Not Gonna Play This Time)**

Time to play now:

What were you doing 10 years ago?

I was drinking cheap beer and wine 6 days a week and getting sad that I was graduating college soon and being forced into “the real world”. I opted instead to skip that for a few years in exchange for 2 years playing in the snow in Breckenridge, Colorado.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
I was a stressed out, grumpy graduate student – finishing my thesis, working 3 days a week for free (internship) and planning my Tuscan wedding from a small apartment in Brooklyn. I wouldn’t have been doing meme tags, let’s just say that. I barely saw my husband!!

Five snacks you enjoy

1. Hummus and pita chips
2. french fries (I can’t enjoy them as much as I’d LOVE to)
3. Butter Snaps (Pretzels)
4. Bites of Leftovers
5. Anything dipped in cream cheese or peanut butter

5 Things you would do if you were a millionaire

1. Buy an apartment in my neighborhood in Brooklyn where’s we’ve been living for 4 years but will never be able to afford.
2. Buy a place in Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Bologna, Paris and London. (I think I need more money already!)
3. Buy a leg of Jamon Iberico for my kitchen in each apartment.
4. Travel and not worry about having to take off work – wait, I won’t have to work! YAY!
5. Volunteer in all different capacities all over the world.

5 bad habits

1. I bite my nails.
2. I don’t have any nails left (and never have) so I bit skin (please don’t stop reading my food blog b/c you know this… PLEASE!!!)
3. I throw my clothes on the floor still and then pick them all up and put them away on the weekend. My husband hates this.
4. I lick bowls and plates clean – sometimes even when no one is looking in certain restaurants.
5. I burp, loudly. This is something I’ve been very proud of since being a little girl but now I only save them for special people. ***should I be ashamed? am I loosing readers?

5 things you like doing

1. Anything outdoors – I love to hike, bike and especially do anything at the beach.
2. COOKING, EATING, DRINKING, DRINKING… duh.
3. Helping others – Which I’m finally doing for a living.
4. Exploring – I could be traveling to anohter country, another state or just another neighborhood in Brooklyn. I’ve always been very curious.
5. Seeing live music – I used to follow bands up until recently. NO I was not a groupie.

5 things I would never wear again

1. Lee Press-On nails. Oh, wait, I just wore them for my wedding, but NEVER again.
2. Acid-Washed anything.
3. Bangs/Fringe cut by my mother – looks like she cut it with a knife and a fork and this lasted till I was 11!
4. A training bra. If you met me, you’d know why this is impossible.
5. Iridescent Lipstick. (**Can you tell I’m a child of the 80′s?)

5 favorite toys

1. My Le Cruset that was too expensive for me to purchase myself – it was a wedding gift.
2. My food processor, Kitchen Aid bad-ass mixer w/ pasta attachment.
3. This blog. Ok, that doesn’t count… my i-pod.
4. My camera (same, Nuria!)
5. My frequent flier miles – I need to travel again soon!

That was actually quite fun!! THANKS NURIA FOR ASKING ME TO PLAY!

To read more posts about Spain, check out:

• The REAL Cocido of Spain
• Jamon, Jamon
• Fabada: A Mortal and Corporal Sin – But Worth It!
• Unusual Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Tame Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Cabrales Cheese: It’s a Bit of an Animal
• Vermut (Vermouth): Rediscovering an Old Classic
• CHORIZO, CHICKPEA AND POTATO SOUP

But today’s post is not about the bizarre foods we ate in Madrid – it’s about the tame ones. Even some of the ‘weird’ ones we ate became tame in my mind after we ate them. Everything in Madrid is just so damn delicious. I’ll start with the crowning jewel of Spanish tapas – the Tortilla Espanola. This is the quintessential tapas and you will find it all over the country (unlike some of the regional tapas you only find in specific areas). According to Penelope Casas (author of the excellent The Food and Wines of Spain), the tortilla is “a way of life in Spain and loved by all”. She also explains the meaning of the word, which many confuse with the Mexican “tortilla”. The only thing these two things have in common is it’s shape which comes from the Latin torte, meaning a round cake. Tortilla Espanola is one of those meals that you think should be easy to prepare – it’s a freaking omelet, right? WRONG. The key to this delicious and simple treat is how it’s cooked. It takes time, folks. It has simple ingredients, but is not as simple to prepare as you may have though. This should not scare you off! But do what we did – make a big one on a Saturday morning and eat small slices for the next day or two (make sure you cover it!). It makes for not only a great snack, but pair it with some bread and a simple salad and you’ve got a meal. See end of post for our recipe for Tortilla Espanola.

Moving on, some of the other safe, but fabulous tapas we ate in Madrid was Patatas Bravas. Yes, fry anything and top with a nice sauce (see my cowballs comment above) and I’ve got a smile on my face! Patatas Bravas are simply fried potato wedges (or squares) topped with a spicy pimenton (pimento) sauce. They are eaten with toothpics and are the perfect tapa, or snack, to eat with a refreshing Mahou beer. We almost ate at the supposed birthplace of the patatas bravas, but was turned off when we walked by, saw it and also realized it was a chain-restaurant. There are many tapas places to eat in NYC (none I’ve found to be anything like the ones I’ve eaten at in Barcelona, Basque Spain or Madrid) and most of them will serve the bravas.

Next up, albondigas. Another famous, in-every-single-tapas-bar-in-NYC-tapa. BUT, the one we ate in Madrid beat every albondigas I have eaten anywhere else. The sauce that came with these tiny meatballs tasted like a sweet tomato/pimenton sauce. I’ve had it with a brown sauce, with an onion gravy and with a chunky tomato sauce. This did not taste just like tomatoes. Regardless, it was heavenly and I ‘shwooped’ up all the sauce with the bread provided to us.

Now, another shining star of the tapas world – chorizo. OHHHH BABY. I shiver with happiness when I think of eating this – especially the way we ate it in Madrid in the above picture, Chorizo al Vino Tinto (chorizo in red wine). The chorizo we often buy in the store in America is the Goya-brand chorizo. It is hard and cured. Although it’s got all the right ingredients (pork, chunks of pork fat, pimenton), it is just completely different in look, texture and flavor from the soft, fresh chorizo sausage we ate in Spain. This tapas came out sizzling in it’s own juices and fat with a hint of red wine. Believe me, we used that bread for some serious dipping. I felt like I was dripping in fat when it was done, and, damn it, was it worth it.

Finally, another famous tapa/raciones eaten in Madrid is any seafood a la plancha, translating to grilled on a metal plate or cast iron skillet. It’s all about the dry heat cooking the food. You will see gambas a la plancha, camarones a la plancha or filetes a la plancha as well as numerous other dishes cooked a la plancha in Spain. But the sepia (cuttlefish) a la plancha we ate our first day in Spain stole our hearts. It was grilled to perfection and meaty with just the taste of the sea, fresh Spanish olive oil and some lemon juice accenting it’s flavor. Of course I didn’t mind the aioli dipping sauce on the side. Sepia tastes a bit like calamari, but I think it’s much more robust and thicker/meatier. It was heavenly. I wish it was more widely available to make in my ‘hood.

Now, I hope you will consider making your own Tortilla Espanola for breakfast, lunch or even dinner… possibly a snack, too? We added some leeks to ours, but traditionally it should only include some onions and potatoes. For brunch, we had a slice with some chorizo, bread and a fried tomato. I hope you enjoy!

TORTILLA ESPANOLA (adaption of Penelope Casas’ recipe)

Ingredients:

• 4 potatoes, thinly sliced (use a mandolin to get the perfect thinness)
• 5 eggs
• 1 spanish onion, thinly sliced (again, use a mandolin if you have one)
• 1 leek, sliced lengthwise (optional)
• salt
• olive oil

What to do:

1. Make sure your potatoes and onions are thinly sliced – I’m talking about 1/8 of an inch.
2. In a hot, round skillet or pan, heat olive oil and add a layer of sliced potatoes to cover the bottom of the pan. Lower the heat to medium or medium low (depending on your stove) because you want to cook the potatoes slightly but you do not want to brown them. This is key. They will only cook for about 3-4 minutes on each side.
3. Flip over all your potatoes to get the other side cooked. Remove all these potatoes and allow to drain on some paper towels. Sprinkle with some salt. Repeat this method with the rest of the slices of potato.
4. After the potatoes are completed, saute the thin onions and leeks. This should not take very long since they are so thinly cut – maybe about 3-4 minutes.
5. While onions/leeks are cooking, whisk your eggs. Do not add anything else but some kosher salt. Throw the cooked potatoes into the whisked eggs and allow to settle in until you’re ready to cook the tortilla.
6. Remove onions and leeks and throw those into the egg mixture as well. Heat your skillet/pan to high heat to make sure it’s very hot. Add a good amount of olive oil and turn your pan so that it covers the sides as well.
7. Add your egg/potato/onion/leeks mixture to the hot pan and quickly spread out the potatoes and onions so they cover the circumference of the pan. Turn heat down to medium-low and allow your tortilla to cook. Shake the pan after a minute to aid in the cooking process. I used a fork to “poke” it a few times and ran it around the sides a bit to allow some of the egg to disperse. Do not worry about the tortilla like I did. As long as the pan is hot enough, it will cook evenly.
8. After about 4 to 5 minutes, you will notice that most of the egg on the top will be cooked – some will not – it will still look like raw, whisked egg. Still, you will take a plate, cover the pan (it must fully and tightly cover it!), and with your hand on the top of the plate, flip the pan to the tortilla ends up on the plate.
9. Add a little bit more olive oil to the pan and then slide the other, uncooked side of the tortilla back into the pan to finish cooking. My tip is to hold back the cooked part until all the uncooked egg is in the pan first. Then quickly add the thicker, cooked part.
10. Allow this to cook for 3-5 minutes shaking the pan again. Traditionally, you should flip it again 2 or 3 times to ‘shape’ it perfectly, but I was too hungry to do so!! ENJOY!

Check out another post with a few other tapas recipes:

• CLAMS WITH WHITE WINE AND CHORIZO
• SQUID WITH GOLDEN POTATOES

Check out other posts about Spain:

• The REAL Cocido of Spain
• Jamon, Jamon
• Pictures of Madrid
• Unusual Tapas We Ate in Madrid
• Cabrales Cheese: It’s a Bit of an Animal
• Vermut (Vermouth): Rediscovering an Old Classic
• CHORIZO, CHICKPEA AND POTATO SOUP

Many, many moons ago, I published my recipe for pernil, the delicious Puerto Rican roasted pork butt/shoulder. Recently, I had a whole Saturday afternoon to try a longer and slower cooking method for my bone-in pork butt. I have to tell you, if you have the time I would advise cooking it this way as you will have meat absolutely dripping moist and falling off the bone. The quicker method in my earlier recipe is a very good way of cooking the pork if you don’t have 8-9 hours to kill waiting to tear into the pernil. But, if you do remember to put your pork in by 11AM, you will not be disappointed by the results of low and slow cooking.

I am cutting and pasting the old pernil recipe here and adding my alternative “Low and Slow” cooking time. I hope you’ll give it a shot – and let me know what you think! Remember to allow your pernil to marinate overnight for the best results!!