The Gingerbread Michigan

Speaking of going global. This is a shot of the gingerbread cookies that I recently prepared using my only cookie cutters, which as you can see, are in the shape of the great state of Michigan - upper AND lower peninsula. Unfortunately the lower peninsulas kept snapping in half.
As you can imagine, they caused almost as much of a stir among locals as when I brought a tray of paper cup Jello shots to a "BBQ" here so many years ago that turned out to be a fancy cocktail party for the Spanish upper crust. Which is not to say that there wasn't any grilling going on, only that the burgers flipped by a staff of white-glove wearing butlers.

If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you!
 (and thank you J, L, L and K)

Forbidden Pleasure Goes Global

 

When you own a restaurant and do all the cooking, you get to the point where you would rather eat just about anything but the food that you yourself prepare there on a daily basis. Instead of making myself one of the healthy salads or other dishes on the menu, I would think of everything in terms of "ugh! If I eat that, I will just have to make more of it later".  The only days that I truly stuffed myself while working were Sundays, when we brought the miracle of Sunday brunch to the center of Madrid...and with it, the forbidden pleasure: smoky bacon dipped in maple syrup. This treat was stuffed into our mouths at a feverish rate while passing through the kitchen - and often washed down with a Bloody Mary. My business partner B was the first to give it this name, a term that we later introduced to many a regular client, "So, Juan, have I told you about the Forbidden Pleasure?".
Well, it seems that many years later this treat (or a slight variation of it) has finally made it to the realm of Spanish "Avant-garde" tapas, as illustrated in this article/recipe that came out yesterday in Gastronomía y Cia. They don't seem to know that it's forbidden, however...

Eating American

I´m back from my travels in the USA, land of sensual ribs so tender that the meat slides off the bone; jalapeño burgers slathered in cheddar cheese with jaunty American flags waving out of the top buns; spicy tamales with soft yielding corn meal, salsa prepared at the table with a stone mortar and pestle; bison burgers, bison steaks, bison bourguignon; corn on the cob, husked on the back porch and finished on the grill; ghost chili chimichurri slathered on roasted pork belly; scallop-tilapia ceviche with tostones and hearts of palm; frijoles antioqueños, dripping in lime, cilantro and roasted tomatoes with scallions; clam chowder whipped into a frenzy by the August wind of San Fransisco Bay; coffees as big as your head; Chicago hot dogs, topped with shockingly green relish; Prince Edward Island mussels and happy hour; my brother's homemade jerky, sausages, kimchi and pickles; fried chicken and waffles; polenta with sauteed kale and blue cheese; lemon meringue pie; Enrique's celebrated gnocchi, the best I've ever tasted them; jalapeño-cheddar Cheetos, toxic-orange stained fingers; American breakfast! grits, biscuits, bacon, Hollandaise, the inevitable bison sausage, burritos; the elusive Vietnamese pho, that still haunts me with a craving; micro-beer in every flavor and color; wine from every state; cappuccino from an ancient machine that still only my parent's know the secrets to; bagels with vegetable cream cheese, lox and capers; champagne on the top of Chicago; seltzer in a mason jar; pan-fried lake perch; bourbon; eating crisp yellow squash and digging purple potatoes from my parent's garden; lemonade stands; ice tea...
Thank you everyone, it was glorious!

photo: roasted pork belly, tostones, kimchi and homegrown purple potatoes

Sigüenza

I just spent a weekend in Sigüenza, a charming medeival town in northern Castilla La Mancha surrounded by incredible countryside and beautiful trails, not that the town´s tourist office has ever heard of them. There is also an incredibly restored castle that has been turned into a four star Parador, a national, publicly owned chain of hotels located in restored monasteries and other historic monuments. Unfortunately, the hotel staff at Sigüenza´s Parador had the personality of monuments - just as stiff and just as cold.
Fortunately, there were other more agreeable and delicious places to dine in Sigüenza, including Gurugú de la Plazuela, a lovely, family-owned restaurant that occupies a beautiful stone building on a corner overlooking a plaza, with the green hills of La Mancha just beyond. A specialty here are the wild mushrooms, of which there is an ample selection of around ten differnet varieties, each prepared in a way that best suits their individual characteristics, but mostly just sauteed with a little olive oil and garlic or onion. If you are less than fungally savvy, there is an option of trying three different kinds of mushrooms, selected by the friendly waiter´s aunt and uncle depending on the season. Another specialty is the rabo de toro, bull´s tail that is slowly cooked into a tender stew with red wine, carrots, onions, garlic and cloves, among other things. Unfortunately, I kept forgetting to take photos of my food before eating, all I ended up with was a photo of a plate with a pile of bones, a poor example of the deliciousness that was the dish.

Gurugú de la Plazuela
Travesaña Alta, 17 (Plazuela de la Cárcel)
19250 Siguenza
+34 949390134

Parad-rice (insert groan)

There is some debate as to whether this delectableness was actually paella or arroz a banda, as the authentic Valencian rice-maker Boris would have us believe (similar to paella but only cooked with all of the delicious things, which are then removed before serving).
This debate became heated in nature only in that it took place under a hot Ibiza sun, and drawn out only by the copious glasses of wine and full bellies that had caused our brains to gloriously dim. As far as this article is concerned, I preferred to willingly accept the arroz a banda assertion, given that its author had just produced one of the most delicious rices that I have ever tasted.
The journey began on a surreal note when the DHL delivery man showed up with the perfect sized paella pan for 14 people. It seems they take their rices very seriously here.
Boris then spent the next hour sitting on a dusty driveway in front of an old stone shed, scrubbing out the pan with lemon juice while the occasional lagartito gracefully scurried past. The pan was finally positioned just right over a gas grill, which was moved, and then moved again, until ending up out of breeze's reach at the top of a staircase so that the gas flames would lick the pan uniformly and the rice cook evenly. I believe I was in the swimming pool while this went on, but please don´t tell the chef that.
The first step is to make the sofrito, sauteeing a head of garlic with some grated tomato, fresh diced sepia (squid), and whole, unpeeled langostinos (or shrimp if available). Then add the fish stock and a bit of sweet paprika (which shouldn't be burned or it turns bitter), saffron (either in threads or powder), and ñora, a type of pepper that has been dried in the sun. It must first be soaked and then opened, and the soft insides scraped away from the hard outer shell.
Then finally add the short-grained paella rice, which Boris poured in the form of a cross before spreading it out in all directions so as to achieve even disbursement. I have never had much of a hand with rice, either using too much or too little water, or making way to much or little for the quantity of hungry people, but he seems to be blessed with the opposite skills, and when the rice was cooked he served it to all 14 people, one at a time, and completely fearlessly - a Robin Hood of rice if you will. He tried to share some of this wisdom with me, and even told me how to measure the proportions, but I can't even trust myself to do the math. All I know is that 4 liters of stock and 2 kilos of rice, will serve 14 people the most delicious arroz a banda they have likely ever tried, especially when Boris is making it. The flavor was at once rich and delicate, the texture of the rice perfect, the chef delightfully calm, and the servings more than generous although I imagine we all would have gladly eaten more.
Serve with alioli, freshly squeezed lemons, and a beautiful wooden table, surrounded by lovely people and buganvilla - preferably in Ibiza.

(gracias a Juan por las fotos)

Roasted Sea Bass in Ibiza

This week is special meal Ibiza edition. I can sit at the very edge of the garden and steal internet from across the way, while looking out over a rocky cove and lazily crashing waves. Not that I´m showing off.
Dinner last night was thanks to María. Beautiful whole sea bass or lubina, cleaned of guts and such and laid over a bed of peeled thinly sliced potatoes, tomatoes, green peppers and onions (not for me). Roasted whole in the somewhat iffy oven for about 35-40 minutes and covered with slices of lemons and crushed garlic. According to María, the objective is for the potatoes to cook through without the garlic burning too much, but I confess that the crunchy brown garlic goodness was so darn delicious. Easy and tasty, particularly when accompanied by an almost full moon and soft wave soundtrack.

Happy Birthday Gran Vía, We got you PIPAS!!

BEFORE and AFTER

This weekend, Madrid's emblematic boulevard Gran Vía celebrated its 100 year anniversary. Not actually on the real anniversary, this celebration kind of seemed like a silly waste of money, but anyway. I love Gran Vía, it is a beautiful street and deserves every bit of recognition that we give it, but whoever had the genius idea of carpeting the entire street in blue carpeting (ahem, Telefonica) and then encouraging thousands of people to trample on it all night long, obviously doesn't understand the true volume of the nation's addiction to eating PIPAS (sunflower seeds)! Pipas are obviously a national pastime. Go to a futbol match and your feet will be swimming in the shells long before halftime. In a bar, the park, on a train...but you just can't grasp the quantity until you see these shells highlighted against a ridiculously blue carpet that covers Madrid's main thoroughfare - uniformly, perfectly spaced out EVERYWHERE - and this was at the beginning of the night's activities.
According to the program issued by Madrid's city hall, this massive carpet is going to be reused for the White Night event in September. Hope they get an army of squirrels in to clean it first.

Fried Egg + Avocado = Breakfast

This is my current breakfast of choice. I love it so much that I couldn't wait until after the photo to take a bite. I assume that it is a great way to start the day because it more or less keeps me going until lunch which isn't until 2 or 3 in the afternoon here. Our next door neighbors gave us a whole bag of avocados from the trees around their house, which I believe is near Granada. I would put avocado on my list of top five favorite foods in the world - as in raw materials. Here, the avocado is sliced or smushed directly onto the toasted bread and then sprinkled with rock salt, which I can find a use for on just about anything. The fried egg makes me think of my mom, although on a side note, egg yolks are a different color here than they are in the States. In Spain they are a deeper more golden-orange yellow, and in the USA much paler and more lemon colored. Oh, and by the way, I recently read somewhere that the thing about keeping the seed in the avocado so that it doesn't turn brown is totally bunk. Just cover it tightly with plastic and/or a bit of lemon juice. Or just eat the whole thing in one sitting. For other uses for that leftover piece of avocado, please see the Aquodka post from July 2007 (where does the time go?).

Seriously, do not make this

But let's just throw another photo up because it is so very pretty.

(ps. thanks for this plate Myra)

Do Not Make This TUNA

We're not eating blue fin tuna, or is it yellow fin? Ack! I don't remember, but I do know that we're not eating it because of the overfishing (sobre pesca in Spanish, overfishing just sounds weird) issue and the fact that I would actually prefer that this majestic fish survive. I haven't made my favorite tuna tataki with a black toasted sesame seed and rock salt crust (my brother's recipe) in at least two years, and so when I waltzed into Carrefour of all places early last Saturday morning and saw the amazing fish selection, and more specifically the glistening tuna steaks at 2,50 euros each, I couldn't resist - nay, something came over me. I didn't have sesame seeds at home, so ended up making the crust with crushed dry red pepper corns and rock salt. Basically, just rinse the fish in cold water, dip in the mixture of crushed pepper or sesame and sal gorda, and then sear on each side. Make sure that the pan is hot, and use a drop of either olive oil or sesame oil. Hold for about 1-3 minutes on each side (depending on how raw you like your tataki and how thick it is), and if you are unsure, there is nothing shameful about cutting into it and checking. When it's finished, slice the tuna into 1 cm slices and throw in the fridge for a few minutes to chill, or you can eat warm, whatever floats your boat. In any case, the inside should be raw and cool. My brother drizzles the tuna with spicy sesame oil before serving, and sprinkles it with thinly diced scallions, which I am allergic to. I'd like to think that he wouldn't do that if I were eating over.
This time I made a little dipping sauce from equal parts soy sauce and lime juice, about a teaspoon of sugar and some sliced fresh ginger, and served with steamed asparagus and roasted sweet potato.
It's heaven, but please don't make this dish. Just think of those poor tuna.