I'll be returning the cookbook to the library soon (though I may well check it out again come the spring, or buy it for myself when I'm a bit more flush with cash). Here are a few of the dishes I've made from it in the last week:
- Winter vegetable medley (menestra de invierno, Asturias): Somewhat disappointing, but that was really my fault. The recipe calls for "3 slices of jamón serrano, prosciutto, or bacon," but it was only when I started cooking that I realized that the bacon I was counting on had gone bad. The Little One, however, liked it, and kept eating the leftovers for lunches.
- Roast pork with baked apples (cerdo con manzanas, Asturias), served with red cabbage with applies, raisins and pine nuts (lombarda a la madrileña, Madrid): This would have been heavenly if I had made it with pork belly, as the recipe called for, but for reasons familial and logistical I opted for some bacon-wrapped pork chops instead. It was still delicious. The red cabbage preparation was also delicious, and is still furnishing tasty leftovers.
- Roast chicken with apples and grapes (pollo con manzanas y uvas, Asturias: This was amazing, and incredibly easy, too. Just stuff the chicken with one of the apples, cut into quarters, baste with a half a cup of freshly pressed grape juice at the beginning of the roast, and then another half cup when you turn it over midway through. The juice comes from a pound of green seedless grapes, run through a food processor and pressed through a strainer. (In fall, when Concord grapes come in season, using them would be even better.) Then you just caramelize another four apples and another pound of grapes in a heaping quantity of butter and olive oil to serve as a side.
- Chicken cooked in cider with potatoes and peas (pitu a la sidra con patatinas y guisantes, Asturias): While Asturian sidra is still, I found that the Harpoon hard cider, though fizzy, worked nicely nontheless. This is a simple dish that any home cook could prepare in about an hour if using frozen peas. If you insist on waiting until the spring and using fresh peas, budget some time for shelling them.
- Tolosa red bean stew (alubias rojas a la tolosana, Basque Country): Slow simmer the beans with onions and garlic. Simmer the meats (country-style spareribs, slab bacon, semi-cured chorizo, and morcilla--blood sausage) in a separate pot. Combine them at the end, and serve with boiled cabbage. The resulting smells in my house were reminiscent of two Maine classics: baked beans and "boiled dinner." I was somewhat hampered in this by the fact that I could not find blood sausage of any kind, anywhere in or around Portland. The meat counter guy at Rosemont Bakery said that he would love to make it, but cannot find a source for fresh pig blood. So I made do with just the spareribs, bacon and chorizo. Interestingly, I had better results with the cheap package of Goya chorizo that I picked up at the Bodega Latina, than I did later in the week using the fancy Spanish chorizo purchased at Rosemont. I think the key is, "semi-cured"--I think the Spanish one at Rosemont is fully cured, and thus did not hold up well to simmering. But I'm getting ahead of myself, racing to the masterpiece:
- Boiled meats and chickpeas with vegetables (Cocido madrileño, Madrid): Again, no blood sausage, alas. For this one I used fresh pork belly instead of slab bacon. I had the marrow bones, and thus the marrow spread on a piece of toasted bread, but no beef, as neither of the butchers I had time to get to had any shank available. Little One discovered that she likes marrow, and had two helpings of the broth with broken vermicelli (fideos). It was the perfect meal for the first seriously snowy day of the season. The leftover chicken, pork belly and vegetables may well end up in that most downeast of all breakfasts: A hash. The leftover chickpeas will serve nicely in hummus (which, considering that they were cooked with pork, seems somehow transgressive).
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