Tapas Menu - Take 3 (Montaditos)

I'm melting, my pretties, meeeelting! A heat wave has yet again taken hold of Barcelona and environs and I'm doing my best to remain corporeally intact while the thermometer grazes 35 degrees Celsius.

Actually, the heat broke a little today and, after a sprinkling of rain, the city once again feels a little less like the surface of the sun and a little more like a planet with an atmosphere that allows for seasons other than hell.

The kind of heat that settles on Spain in the summers calls for minimal cooking and lighter meals than usual. Even Felipe, who can usually put away three times as much as I can, feels a little wan when faced with the prospect of eating a large meal these days. So, we've resorted to montaditos on some of our evenings in.

A staple of most tapas bars, montaditos are small, open-faced sandwiches. Really, they're canapés with a better name, one that doesn't make you feel like you're dining with society matrons.

At a tapas bar, you're likely to be faced with an abundance of choice. Some sell montaditos as pinchos, small tapas skewered with toothpicks that you retain on your plate and count at the end of the night to determine the bill. Others, tired of the boors who conveniently lose toothpicks to benefit their wallets, let you point and choose, but don't leave it to you to keep count.

As delightful as montaditos are to sample in a tapas bar, nothing could be simpler than making your own at home. All you need is a loaf of bread, preferably a baguette, though a small ciabatta will also do, and a variety of toppings. I prefer the bread sliced relatively thinly (about a quarter inch thick) and lightly toasted, but there's no real need to toast if the bread is of good quality and fresh. If you do decide to toast, you can pop the bread slices under your oven's grill for 2 minutes (until slightly golden) and brush with olive oil once you've removed them.

The sky's the limit in terms of toppings. The ones shown in the photo above are a mixture of classics and "lo que hay" (what there is), i.e. what was available based on the contents of our fridge. Clockwise from left:

(1) Fresh goat cheese topped with sweet pepper chutney and walnuts - the sweet pepper chutney can be replaced with a tomato confit, port jelly or honey.

(2) Tuna with lemon, capers and mayonnaise - the tuna should be oil packed and of high quality; I added a tablespoon of mayonnaise to a small (50g) can, a teaspoon of chopped capers, and half a teaspoon of grated lemon rind as well as a teaspoon of lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste; you can also toss in a teaspoon of chopped, fresh flat leaf parsley.

(3) Pan con tomate (see The Tapas Episode) topped with sliced embutidos (charcuterie) - in this case, I used fuet (a peppery cured pork sausage), but chorizo, lomo (cured pork loin), and jamón (ibérico or serrano ham) are also popular choices.

(4) Roasted eggplant (see The Charred and the Seedless) with tahini and fresh cilantro - this eggplant was really an impromptu babaganoush; I took a small roasted eggplant, removed the skin and chopped the flesh, added about a teaspoon of lemon (to taste), one and a half tablespoons of tahini, a finely grated small clove of garlic and salt to taste; I topped the eggplant with chopped fresh cilantro.

(5) Roasted peppers (see The Charred and the Seedless) on pan con tomate (see The Tapas Episode), topped with anchovies and green olives - the higher quality the anchovies and olives the better; in particular, you want to stay away from anchovies that are overly salty.

Other ideas, some inspired by my favourite Barcelona bars, are (6) smoked salmon over cream cheese or thick yogurt topped with capers and lemon rind (inspired by Quimet i Quimet, see Tapas - Basic - Part 1); (7) paté or foie gras topped with caramelized onions (Quimet i Quimet, see Tapas - Basic - Part 1); (8) slices of tortilla (see The Tapas Episode) on pan con tomate (see The Tapas Episode) sprinkled with sea salt and finely chopped parsley; (9) sauteed mushrooms (see Tapas Menu - Take 2) with thyme topped with gruyere and broiled in the oven; (10) smoked mackrel or trout topped with a green olive tapenade and quartered cherry tomatoes; (11) white bean dip (see Dipping into White Beans) sprinkled with chopped spring onions; (12) grilled chorizo over thinly sliced green apple drizzled with maple syrup; (13) manchego cheese topped with sliced fresh figs and drizzled with honey; (14) grilled peach quarters or apricot halves wrapped in jamón serrano and drizzled with maple syrup; (15) tomato slices topped with fresh mozarella, salt, a dollop of pesto and a basil leaf; (16) skewers of 2-3 shelled fresh prawns, salted, brushed with oil and grilled (1 minute or so on each side) served over toasted bread smeared with a dollop of allioli (inspired by Cerveseria Catalana, see Tapas - Basic - Part 2).

Tapas Menu - Take 2

Remember that nice post I wrote last month about A Picnic in Heaven? The one where cumuli were bobbing on periwinkle skies and everyone was writing in to say how pretty it made them feel? Well, those days are over, punks. It's bloody hell over here in Barcelona. Bloody, smoking, firey pits of hell with an incongruous humidity level of nearly 100%, probably from the blood, sweat and tears of all the condemned souls toiling in the devil's pits of tar and brimstone.

It's the kind of sticky cesspool of sweatiness that makes you want to pull your neighbour from his nicely air conditioned home and punch him repeatedly in the stomach, just for playing that infernal rock'n'roll music, the kind that makes all the small town kids fornicate in the crumb strewn back seats of their parents' sedans. Oh, the devil's work is never done.

It's precisely why crime levels soar in the summer months. If you don't believe me, just ask the New York Times about why I'm feeling my murder-meter rise apace with the raging heat.

Fortunately for the rest of you, my law abiding Canadian roots don't allow me to give free rein to my heat-driven bloodlust other than in recipe form. So, as my lone outlet for this summer's carnage fantasy, I'm making my next tapas menu blood based.

Tapas Menu - Take 2

Morcilla
Pimientos escalivados (roast peppers)
Setas a la plancha (grilled mushrooms)
Pan con tomate (see The Tapas Episode)

My bloody meat of choice is morcilla, a.k.a. blood sausage. I first sampled it on the impromptu trip around Spain with Mike Tkaczuk, the Canadian importer of jamón ibérico, and friends. We were in central Spain at the time, where the preferred variety of morcilla is rice based. Mike was so enamoured of morcilla, which you can't currently get in, or import to, Canada, that he ordered some whenever possible. While I'm generally not a lover of blood based foods (I'm still scarred by my Polish grandmother's duck's blood soup, a delicacy once beloved by my father), the taste for morcilla has stuck with me since that trip.

The best varieties are made with iberico pig blood mixed with rendered fat. Here, in Catalunya, onion is usually added and the sausage is often referred to as butifarra negra (black butifarra); in the centre and south, it's rice that's added, which gives the sausage a sweeter, more delicate flavour, one which I far prefer. The former is available at any charcutería in Barcelona; the latter, I've usually picked up at the Boquería, where one stall identifies it as morcilla de Burgos.

Because it's a substantial sausage, morcilla is a great (and adequately bloody) anchor for a meal of tapas. In the centre of Spain, it's frequently found in tapas bars removed from its casing and mixed in with huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs), sometimes with raisins; it's difficult to imagine if you haven't had it served this way, but it's actually indescribably good. The simplest way to serve it, though, is to slice it thickly and grill it in a lightly oiled pan for 1-2 minutes on each side--you have to be careful not to overcook or let it stick, which it is wont to do.

When we order it at the tapas bar in our local market, we usually also get a side of peppers escalivada (roasted red or green peppers). These are easily prepared at home by placing halved peppers, seeds removed and skin side up, on a lightly oiled baking sheet in a 220 C oven for about 25-30 minutes, until the skin begins to brown and puff up. You can let them cool and remove the skin before slicing into strips, seasoning with a little salt and pepper and drizzling with a little bit of good quality olive oil. If you'd like to go all out and make a more elaborate escalivada, which would also fit in well with this menu, have a look at the post titled The Charred and the Seedless.

As a final touch, mushrooms are nice. The chanterelles pictured are not in season yet, but this menu is well suited to late summer and early fall when they start to flood stores. For now, you can replace them with another type of mushroom--almost whatever is available will do; shitake, for example, though not particularly big in Barcelona, would make a great substitution. To prepare, you'll need to remove loose dirt first. I use a slightly damp paper towel, trying not to wet the mushrooms too much. I then sautee them for 4-5 minutes (until soft) in a little bit of olive oil (a tablespoon or two for 300-400 grams of mushrooms; you can add more if your pan starts to dry). The trick is not to salt them until the very end so that they don't start to release water. Just before you remove them from the heat, you can add a finely chopped teaspoon of flat leaf parsley mixed with a clove of very finely chopped garlic and stir for about thirty seconds. Drizzle with a good quality olive oil to serve.

Tapas Menu -Take 1

It's a summer Saturday. Heat ripples the air, there's barely a breeze, and you're still slightly smarting from the revelry of the night before. You'd crawl into your hammock, if you had one, and spend the rest of the day sipping cool, life-giving water through a bendy straw under the shade of the lone tree in your back yard. If only you could. As it happens, you're expecting your in-laws for lunch.

This is a scenario that clearly calls for Tapas Menu Number 1:

Navajas a la plancha (grilled razor clams)
Langostinos a la plancha (grilled prawns)
Surtido de quesos y embutidos (selection of cheeses and cured meats)
Pan y aceitunas (bread and olives)

Assuming you have access to a good market, you're set. If you spend more than twenty minutes in the kitchen, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

To assemble this mini-feast, you should start by soaking the razor clams (you'll want at least 3 or 4 of these per person)...they're sandy and need to sit in warm water for about 10 minutes before you put them on the grill. You can also give the prawns (about 3/4 kilo or more, depending on how hungry you expect your in-laws to be) a rinse and shake them off in a colander.

For best results, you should get everything ready and on the table before you cook the seafood so that you can bring out the steaming platters of shrimp and clams as the crowning pièce de résistance. You should put out the olives and sliced bread along with a good extra virgin olive oil and salt. The cheese can go out sliced or whole, in the latter case with its own knife.

There's an enormous selection of Spanish cheese. One of the most popular varieties is manchego (pictured), a hard sheep's milk cheese from central Spain, which comes in fresco, semi-curado, curado y viejo varieties, a scale from youngest (softest and mildest) to oldest (hardest and sharpest). Another favourite is idiazabal, a yellow sheep's milk cheese from the Basque country. Other delicious goat, cow and sheep's milk cheeses abound in Spain and each region usually has a specialty or two. You should ask at your cheese shop about the different varieties and don't feel the need to limit yourself to just one.

The cured meats should go out sliced. Jamón iberico (pictured) or the much less expensive jamón serrano should be sliced paper thin at the shop. Embutidos (sausages) such as chorizo, fuet, longaniza or morcón (pictured) can be hand sliced at home. Chorizo and morcón (a larger, more coarsely cut version of chorizo) are flavoured with paprika and may be purchased in mild to spicy versions. They provide a nice counterpoint to the slightly sweet jamón iberico. Fuet and longaniza are also good choices--they have a subtle, slightly peppery flavour.

Now that the cured meats and cheeses have been taken care of, you can turn your mind to the seafood. Remove the clams from the warm water in which they've been soaking and give them another rinse under cold water. Set aside to wait with the shrimp.

Heat about a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a large frying pan, preferably one with a lid. Once the oil is hot, add a few slivers of garlic for flavour, stir for a moment and add the prawns. Sautee on medium high heat for a 3-4 minutes until the prawns have just turned a bright pink on all sides and not a second longer. (For more about cooking prawns, see The Tapas Episode.) Remove to a warm plate, clean out any obvious shell residue with a paper towel, add a little more oil to the pan and the razor clams. Cover with the lid. The clams only need about two to three minutes on the grill at medium-high heat, but you should turn them once (with tongs is easiest). Be careful of the sputtering oil and water combination. I might also have garnished the razor clams pictured above with a teaspoon of finely chopped thyme and about the same quantity of chopped, sauteed garlic, but this is absolutely not necessary--if you want to, though, you can throw these ingredients into the frying pan for a few seconds before you put in the razor clams. The clams should be completely open when you serve them. Feel free to serve with a little lemon on the side, but, again, absolutely not necessary when you have good, fresh seafood.

Bring the mouthwatering plates of seafood out with the appropriate pomp and ceremony and pour some cava (Catalan sparkling wine) all around. Your work is done.

The Charred and the Seedless (Escalivada)

By way of adding to your tapas repertoire, I'm going to tell you about escalivada. And, yes, this too is inspired by Jordi and Deirdre's calçotada, which featured deliciousness far beyond mere calçots.

The word escalivada comes from the Catalan verb escalivar, which means to roast over hot embers or, in the approximate language of today's world, char grill. A true escalivada, which has peasant and country roots, involves placing whole unwashed vegetables (generally, eggplants, peppers and tomatoes) into an open fire (or, better yet, hot ashes) to roast--as in the photo above--, then peeling and serving them with a sprinkling of oil and salt. This of course requires access to an open fire, which I will assume most of the readers of this blog don't readily have.

Fortunately, an open fire is not absolutely necessary to make a slightly less authentic version of the beloved salad, a version that is easy peasy and open to fiddling and interpretation. I, for one, often dispense with everything but the eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and salt (particularly when I'm feeling an excess of weight in the thigh region) and use quantities of vegetables that reflect what's readily available in my fridge rather than exact amounts. Please use what follows more as a spiritual guide than as biblical escalivada truth.

Ingredients

2 large or 4 small eggplants
4 red peppers
4 tomatoes
1 onion (optional)
2 cloves of garlic (optional)
1 tsp finely chopped parsley (optional)
olive oil, salt and pepper (to taste)

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Slice the eggplants in half and set aside for half an hour sprinkled with salt to remove the bitter juices. In the meantime, cut the peppers in half, remove seeds and place cut side down on a baking sheet lined with oiled aluminum foil. If you are using onion (I don't), place it--sliced in half, drizzled with olive oil and wrapped in aluminum foil--in the oven with the peppers. Roast for about 30 minutes or until the skin of the peppers has blackened and is coming away from the surface. Remove and set aside. Roast the eggplant in the same way once you have rinsed off the salt and dried each piece. Slice the tomatoes in half and roast for about 15-20 minutes--if you have room, you can slide the tomatoes in with the eggplant about 10-15 minutes into the eggplant's roasting time. Remove the skin from the roasted vegetables, slice into strips and combine in a serving bowl, being sure to include the juices. Dress with salt and pepper, the minced garlic and a little olive oil. (Leave out the garlic and oil for a lighter salad and, if so inclined, sprinkle in some finely chopped parsley.)

As for final touches, I often top escalivada with a soft Catalan goat cheese. I place the escalivada in an oven proof container, cover with large slices of goat cheese and brown under the broiler for a couple of minutes or until the cheese is golden. This version--as well as the cheeseless one--is delicious as part of a meal of tapas or alongside any meat dish.

Another common way to serve is on toasted bread topped with good quality anchovies and, if you like, olives.

Come to think of it, the always packed Cerveceria Catalana (c/ Mallorca 236 (Eixample), 93 216 0368) has terrific examples of both versions for those who'd rather forego the cooking altogether.

Salsa Romesco

It's rare that I deliver on my gratuitous on-line promises, but today is an exception. I've had the recipe for an unbelievable salsa romesco on my hands for some time and it seems a profound transgression not to share it. Not only is it straight from Tarragona--cradle of the romesco sauce and charming Roman town just an hour outside of Barcelona--, it's also a tried and true family recipe, courtesy of Mrs. Fernández Roig, a.k.a. Jordi's mom, who prepared it for a crowd of hungry calçot eaters earlier this spring. See the Calçotada post for details.

You may not know a lot about salsa romesco; it doesn't have the international caché of an allioli or a bernaise, but it does have the chops and is a Catalan favourite. It's sweet, it's savoury, it's smooth, it's crunchy and, while it goes with almost anything (I was spreading it liberally on toasted bread recently), it's most commonly served with roasted vegetables, including calçots, as well as fish and seafood.

The base, in addition to ground nuts and olive oil, contains a type of pepper that is difficult to find outside of Spain. The traditional peppers used are often referred to as "romesco peppers" and can easily be found in Catalunya; they are distinct from ñora peppers which are often also used. These peppers are smaller than your average red pepper and have a richness that a regular capsicum does not. Outside of Spain, red bell peppers can be substituted, but I'm afraid the substitution, if not exactly second rate, makes the salsa more of a romesco "lite".

Now, here is the recipe, just as it was provided to me--with translation and some explanation. I must say I had to guess regarding the quantities of pimentón, olive oil, and vinegar, but that is the beauty of a family recipe.

Ingredients

125 gr toasted almonds
125 gr toasted hazelnuts
50 gr pine nuts
2 walnuts
1 onion
8 tomatoes
1/2 head garlic
5 dried "romesco" peppers
a tiny bit of raw garlic, pressed (to taste)
a tiny bit of sugar (to taste)
1 tsp spicy pimentón (or hot paprika)
about a cup of olive oil
about half a cup of red wine vinegar
salt (to taste)
cayenne pepper (to taste; optional and not part of Jordi's mom's recipe)

Preparation

Char grill the onion, tomatoes, garlic and blanch the peppers (if using fresh peppers, char grill these too). (If you are Jordi's mom, you will do the char grilling over a wood fire in the outdoor brick oven in your backyard; if you are not, you will likely have to do with your home oven at about 220 degrees C for 30 minutes or so.) Once the vegetables have cooled sufficiently, remove the skin. You will now have to use a food processor unless you have freakishly strong arms and a giant mortar and pestle. Start with the nuts; add the vegetables and seasonings next; and finish things off with the olive oil, added slowly in a thin stream to ensure the sauce holds together (some add a bit of toasted bread to the mix to help with the consistency). Process until well mixed but not completely smooth. Add vinegar and salt to taste at the very end.

By the way, to be completely authentic, you should buy your olive oil and hazelnuts in Constanti, the town where Jordi's mom was born.

This recipe will serve ten, so prepare to share.

Days of Almond and Potato

Remember last year at about this time? I know, it's asking a lot. I hardly remember it myself. I have the archives for this very reason...to aid memory.

My archives tell me that at this very time last year I was writing about Cookies for Saints and Dead People, otherwise known as panellets.

As I recall, I stiffed you on the recipe. You can't blame me, this blog doesn't really pay. However, the Globe & Mail does. So, this year, I developed a recipe for them. Here is a link to the story: All Saints' Day cookies are an almond delight. You are welcome to try the recipe. The photo above is of the finished product.

By the way, my friend Trish tested the Globe recipe out of the goodness of her heart and palate. Click on the link to check out her delicious website, The Seasonal Gourmet.

Cooking for the Financial Crisis

A few weeks ago now, my sister informed me that the world was in a financial crisis. I can't blame her for assuming that I had been in a partial vegetative state since my arrival in Barcelona and therefore unable to access communication media or converse with other humans, it hasn't been a particularly productive year for me after all. However, I managed to put her mind at ease by letting her know that I was on top of the crisis thing-a-magiggy and will now go even further by offering my thoughts on crisis management...food-wise.

Luckily, this is a topic I know much about as I have been trying to keep the lid on a personal financial crisis for, well, about a year and a half now. No one's turned off my lights or, God forbid, blocked my internet access, so I do believe I boast about as much success as the US Treasury Department. Perhaps more.

My secret to creative crisis management: the chicken carcass. You'd be surprised the excellent return you can get on a mere skeleton with a few scraps of meat hanging off it. At 50 euro cents a pop, it's really all economic upside.

Actually, it's all about strategically combining the carcass and seasonal vegetables. This week: the pumpkin at 1.50 euros a kilo at the farmers' stalls outside the Boqueria market.

So, to the management. Well, basically, the carcass (two carcasses, preferably) goes into a pot with a good four litres of water and a selection of stock vegetables. (See the Chicken Soup post for additional thoughts on chicken soup--while that post deals with an already cooked carcass and this one with raw carcasses, the technique is largely similar.) This week I used 2 carrots, 1 parsnip, half a turnip, a couple of leaves of cabbage, 1 rib of celery, a leek and some parsley. The whole thing cooks and cooks until it becomes delicious chicken stock--you'll have to skim a little scum off the top when the soup first boils, but once you've reduced the heat to simmer and salted the whole thing well, there's little more to do but wait for the flavour to take. I usually pick the meat off the carcasses and throw it back in along with the carrots and parsnips (chopped up) for a home style chicken soup. I also put the soup in the fridge overnight so that I can skim off the fat the next day, but you can do as you like. If you leave things here, your investment has been approximately 2 euros ($3) and about an hour to an hour and a half of time. Your return: four very healthy and delicious meals for two.

But you can really take crisis management to the next level with the pumpkin and just one litre of the clear stock (i.e. just the liquid, none of the bits). For this, you'll need the following:

1kg pumpkin
1 litre chicken stock
2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
3 tbsp maple syrup
1 400ml can coconut milk
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
cilantro and roasted pumpkin seeds to garnish (optional but delicious)

You first cook the pumpkin, seeds and goo removed, in the microwave for 5-6 minutes to soften so that you can remove the skin more easily and chop it up. Once chopped (coarsely), you toss it into a soup pot with the stock and cook until soft enough to easily mash. You mash (or puree with a hand blender for a smoother soup), add the peanut butter (dissolved in a little of the hot liquid first so that it doesn't clump), maple syrup and coconut milk. Season with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with a little chopped cilantro and roasted pumpkin seeds.

By the way, I found great instructions for roasting pumpkin seeds and general pumpkin manipulation at this site: www.pumpkinpatchesandmore.org. I tossed my seeds with a little bit of olive oil and salt before roasting and they came out a treat.

Should you be wondering, your additional investment is 2.50 euros ($3.75) or so and you get two to three additional meals for two...well, you reduce the meals with the chicken stock by one or two, but you gain some variety and deliciousness so it's all net profit in the world of nutritional accounting (it's a little Enron-like, the nutritional accounting, you see).

Anyway, that's up to six meals for two for the price of 4.50 euros ($6.75) by my count and don't even get me started on how you can vary, stretch or even freeze the chicken stock--it's a world of infinite possibilities.

I will now sit back and wait for my Nobel Prize in Economics, thank you very much.

The Fishies

I wonder sometimes what it would like to be a fishmonger. Spending your days in the pungent world of fish, crustaceans and mollusks. Gutting. Scaling. Filleting. Removing ink sacks. Slicing and dicing. And god knows what other manner of deft knife work. It's a trip to see it all live at a Barcelona market, where fish and their cousins are available at their freshest and only the unworthy open on Mondays. (Everybody knows that there's no Sunday catch to sell so whatever shows up at the market (or on most restaurant menus) on Monday is usually already past its prime.)

I use a two pronged method to choose market seafood: price and lack of overall scariness. Lobster (bogavante) and crayfish (cigalas) generally fall off the list based on the first criterion. Eels (anguilas) and their fanged friends based on the second.

Doradas (gilthead breams) have been reflecting the light off their pale silver scales with an intensity that can only be termed provocative of late. They're a firm fleshed white fish from Atlantic waters and popular choice with Catalans...and, what, they're just 9 euros a kilo (and half that price at the Boqueria market)? A veritable bargain. A healthier, better value lunch or dinner one could not find. (Should you wish further information about this or any other fish (including species vulnerability), check out www.fishbase.org.)

The other day, I asked my fishmonger to clean a couple of doradas inside and out and took the little beasts of the ocean home to stuff and roast. Felipe eats the insides of their heads--it's a little Hannibal Lector, I know, but, to amuse us both, I asked that the heads be kept intact. It's not a popular choice, I'm afraid. I personally relish the drama of the intact noggin for presentation purposes (as do most Spaniards), but I have friends who would run screaming after one look at those blank fish eyes. So, follow my example at your own risk.

I turned the oven on to about 200C and made a little stuffing. I grated a carrot and about half a medium onion. I chopped a handful of parsley and another handful of hazelnuts. I mixed it all together with the juice of half a lemon (plus a little of its rind), a tablespoon and a half of olive oil, and pepper and salt to taste. Then after greasing the doradas inside and out with oil and sprinkling them with salt, I stuffed them with my carrot mixture, hollowing them out a little more than the fishmonger had in the process. I baked them in the preheated oven on olive oil greased aluminium foil for about 20 minutes and served with mashed potatoes and tomatoes sprinkled with sugar that I had roasted along with the doradas and dressed with basil, black olives, olive oil, pepper and salt.

My little dorada friends were a smashing success. And I scored a few points when I let Felipe have my dorada's head. I must say, it was no skin off my dorada.

(For a variation on the stuffing, try a handful of chopped pineapple, a handful of chopped cilantro, a handful of chopped tomato and some chopped peanuts mixed with lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper (in the quantities suggested above).)

Whatever Became of the Palacios Chorizo Challenges?

My musings on ice cream may have lead you to wonder how I'm doing with my fridge full of sausage. Believe it or not, I am almost all the way through the Palacios chorizo. However, as I recently received another shipment of samples (of Hungarian origin this time), the fridge still remains practically full of cured meat.

How did I manage to use up my remaining chorizo friends? A variety of ways. I was not above slicing the chorizo into sandwiches of fresh baguette, tomato, basil and manchego cheese. I also served much of it as part of a cured meat tapa dish (alongside good Seville olives and slabs of tortilla--see the Tapas Episode). My favourite use, however, continued to be a chorizo based paella (see First Challenge), which I returned to again and again, particularly in times of ingredient scarcity.

Another impromptu invention, albeit one requiring more ingredient planning and therefore less frequently attempted and still requiring some perfecting, was the chorizo tart (pictured). While the tart does require a few things that you may not normally keep in your fridge (e.g. puff pastry), it is in fact ridiculously easy to make. Here is as far as I got with my experiments:

Ingredients:
1 sheet of pre-prepared puff pastry
2 small chorizo sausages, quartered length wise
10 small rounds of young goat cheese (about 1 cm thick)
1 handfull of asparagus (trimmed) or 1 cup of red pepper (roasted in 200C oven for 1/2 hour), sliced
4 cups of whole milk (you can substitute 2 cups of creme fraiche for the same quantity of milk for more deliciousness)
2 large eggs
salt and pepper, to taste

Press the puff pastry into a greased 9 inch pie pan. Precook according to package directions. While the pastry is baking, beat together the eggs and milk; season with salt and pepper to taste. Once the pastry is out of the oven, place the rounds of goat cheese evenly across the bottom of the pastry. Top with milk and egg mixture. Lie the chorizo and the asparagus (or peppers) evenly across the top of the tart; they should be only partly submerged in the egg mixture. (To convert this into a vegetarian friendly delicacy, simply omit the chorizo.) Bake in a 180C oven for approximately 20-25 minutes or until the tart is set.

Accompany with a crisp white wine, perhaps an albariño.

Dipping into White Beans

I have always loved dips: guacamole, hummus, babaganoush, tzatziki, taramasolata, raita, olive tapenade, black bean, artichoke, roasted red pepper, spinach (my mother's). A veritable pageant of freshly melding colour and flavour.

I have taken many a dip from stumbling beginnings to pinnacles of perfection...if only to later use it wantonly in antipasto platters.

The one that has always eluded me, however, is the white bean. I kept trying to coax it out of its shell for years, with little success. I persisted because I could see its potential. But, despite Herculean efforts, things always turned out deathly dull with the same ineluctable end: awkward efforts to eat through as much of the bowl as possible after everything else has disappeared and the resigned scraping of the remains into the garbage after all the guests have left.

But something happened in Barcelona. Maybe I changed. Maybe he did. Maybe both. It doesn't really matter. What's important is that we finally, finally, finally connected. The white bean has landed, it has blossomed and it is living the prime of its beany life. Both of us are smitten.

Here is what I can tell you about the how:

1 cup of canned white beans (rinsed)
1-2 tablespoons of minced fresh dill (or basil)
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon of freshly grated lemon zest
half a medium clove of garlic, finely grated or crushed
1 tablespoon of olive oil
a splash of cold water to loosen a little if necessary (no more than a tablespoon or so)
sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper to taste (I used about 1/2 a teaspoon of the former and 1/4 of the latter)

Mash everything together with a potato masher or fork. (Don't mix in a food processor as it'll ruin the texture--you want it to be mashed to the point where it holds together, but with a few pieces of bean still discernible.)

The perfect summer tickle, particularly delicious paired with crisp steamed green beans or on olive oil slathered crostini.

Port in Porto

There are many lovely things about Portugal. The ubiquity of port wine is one and the fact that many bodegas in Porto will give you a free tasting (Croft and Noval among them) is another.

A type of port that is rarely available in Canada and that I first came to try at Noval in Porto is a white. Unlike ruby or tawny ports, which are typically served as digestifs (though tawny, technically, can be served as an aperitif as well), white port is usually served chilled as a delicious and relatively inexpensive aperitif. It varies in sweetness: a regular white is the driest, a fine white is sweet, and a lagrima is sweeter still. The LCBO in Ontario appears to stock a few brands of fine white, though I expect that you might have to hunt for them.

When we checked into the stately Pestana Palace Hotel, overlooking the Duoro River in Porto, the staff served us a fantastically refreshing mixture of white port (approx. 1 part) and tonic (approx. 2 to 3 parts)--over ice and garnished with a lemon slice. Search the LCBOs, find the white port and make this your new summer drink.

The Palacios Chorizo Challenges - First Challenge

So, to the Palacios Chorizo Challenges.

You may not be as familiar with Palacios Chorizo as you are with Louis Vuitton. The simple explanation is that Palacios is a large industrial producer of various embutidos (sausages) and prepared foods. One of the largest in Spain, if not the largest. Chorizo, in turn, is a spicy Spanish sausage flavoured with paprika, from which it gets its distinctive reddish hue.

As it happens, I currently have more than one girl's fair share of Palacios chorizo sausage in my fridge. A year's supply? Maybe slightly more. Who's to say? It occupies an entire shelf and comprises well over a dozen sausage links. Whether that makes a year's supply all depends on how much you like sausage, I suppose.

In any event, there's a perfectly simple explanation. And, no, it does not involve a bottle of tequila and a 24 hour grocery store...although, in other circumstances, it might have.

About a month ago, I went on a road trip with Mike Tkachuk, the CEO of the Canadian Serrano Imports, his good natured sales manager Art and Derek Bendig, the chef de cuisine of Toronto's Pangaea restaurant. The product of this trip was the Hog Heaven article that I've reproduced under the More Ham title below. As you can imagine, we spent much time touring the farm and production facility of the family owned Embutidos Fermin, the exporter of jamon iberico to Canada. We also stopped at the much larger Palacios, the exporter of chorizo to Canada.

At the end of our Palacios tour, we were kindly offered a box of Palacios samples. Due to some language barriers and our failure to understand what the size of a box of Palacio samples might actually be, upon leaving the factory, we were presented with four enormous boxes (one for each of us), each about the size of two cases of wine, neatly stacked at the back of our van. Reluctant to offend and even more reluctant to have our diminutive hostess carry three of the giant boxes back with her, we smiled politely and thanked Palacios for the kind gift. The boxes barely fit into the back of the van.

The kicker is that all this food was of course destined for my place because all three of my companions were flying out in a day or two and there was no question of them being able to take anything back. And so I found myself with a fridge full of sausage.

The logical resolution of this state of events was to set myself a challenge: I challenged myself to eat all of that chorizo this year--if I do, I may well buy myself a Louis Vuitton bag.

Just to make things a bit more interesting for you, I'm going to create new Palacios chorizo recipes as I go. The first one is a simple but delicious paella:

1 medium tomato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, slivered
2 small Palacios chorizo sausage links, sliced (about 1 cup)
3-4 tbsp olive oil
2 cups rice
4 cups chicken stock
pinch of saffron
1 cup chickpeas
1 bunch asparagus, chopped into 1 inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste

Sautee the garlic and onion in the oil until soft. Add the chorizo and brown on all sides. Mix in the rice, coat thoroughly with the oil. Add the chicken stock all at once and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, add the saffron and distribute the rice evenly in the plan. After 10 minutes, mix in the chickpeas and adjust the seasoning. Spread the asparagus spears on top. When all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is al dente, turn off the heat and let rest for 5 minutes or so. Enjoy with a fine glass of rioja and Louis Vuitton catalogue by your side.

Artichokes

Barcelona really feels like spring lately. Even though most of the winter here is warmer than a Canadian May, there is a marked difference between the seasons. The first signs of change are in the light and the air and the sound of the birds. And the artichokes.

Artichokes originated in the Mediterranean, of course, and were brought by Spanish settlers to America, where they've firmly taken hold. Why, even Marilyn Monroe was once crowned Artichoke Queen by Castroville, California. Perhaps not her greatest claim to fame.

For the past couple of weeks, artichokes have been available in Barcelona markets for next to nothing. Normally, I'm a little loath to take the plunge with artichokes because of all the trimming and fussing that's involved, but Yukiko set me straight. Because these artichokes are young and beautifully tender, trimming is easier and you don't need to worry about the choke (the thistly interior).

This week, on Yukiko's recommendation, I bought a few. Then I incorporated them into a Spanish-style rice. Here's more or less how to recreate it:

Ingredients

3-4 young artichokes
1/2 lemon
1/2 pound of mushrooms, quartered
1 onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, slivered
6 tbsp olive oil
2 cups Spanish short grain rice
small handful of chopped fresh thyme, parsley or oregano (optional)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp sweet paprika
4+ cups chicken or pork stock (I confess I used an oxo cube and didn't overly regret it; veggies, feel free to substitute a meatless stock)
salt and pepper to taste

Trim the base off the artichokes, remove the bottom 3-4 layers of tough leaves, and slice off the tops. Cut each artichoke into eight wedges and rub all over with the lemon to prevent browning, squeezing the juice into the artichokes as you go. (You can remove the choke by scraping it out, but I didn't bother.)

In a paella pan or large frying pan, sautee the onion and garlic in hot oil until golden (about 5 minutes). Add the artichokes and mushrooms and sautee for a further 3-5 minutes, browning the vegetables slightly. Season with salt and pepper and add the rice and herbs to the pan, combining well with the vegetables. Cover the mixture all at once with hot stock and leave to simmer, uncovered, for approximately 20 minutes until all the stock is absorbed. Taste and adjust the seasoning as you go. You may need to add more stock (feel free to use water) as the rice cooks if the stock is evaporating too quickly. Do not stir. Once all the stock is absorbed (the bottom should be lightly browned and just beginning to get crispy), turn off the heat, remove the bay leaves and let sit for a few minutes before serving.

Try it with a crisp white wine like a Spanish Rueda and a dish for discarding any tough artichoke bits that remain. I promise you'll feel the imminence of spring even though you may still be stuck in drifts of snow.

Lent Lunch

So, I decided to try it out. You know, Cuaresma. Why not? I can abstain with the best of them (for short periods and when large quantities of food are available).

I bought a book: La Cocina de Cuaresma (The Cuisine of Lent), Raquel F. Moran. It's from the same series as The Cuisine of the Nuns, if you must know: a little murky on the details, but altogether a fine source of ideas.

This Friday, I invited Yukiko, an accomplished cook in her own right, to try my Lenten creations. The imagined menu was a salad of some sort to start (I had an eggplant in my fridge so it was going to feature); Arroz de Cuaresma (Lenten Rice); a seafood item; Judias Verdes con Pimientos (Green Beans with Peppers); and, for dessert, Bollos de Semana Santa (Easter Rolls), a traditional Lenten sweet containing no less than half a litre of olive oil.

Predictably, and despite my best intentions, the last two items were dropped due to time contraints. Let's face it, the beans would have been excessive. And we were really much better off going for a coffee and buñuelos at Forn de Sant Jaume (Rambla Catalunya, just south of Arago), one of my favourite places for fresh buñuelos (bunyols, in Catalan) and outdoor people watching. Buñuelos, by the way, are delicious balls of fried and sugar coated dough and are also typical of Lent.

The on-the-fly eggplant salad went a little something like this: on a bed of mizuna, a.k.a. Japanese mustard greens (could have been arugula), I arranged three slices of eggplant (brushed with olive oil and roasted the night before in a 220 C oven for half an hour, flipped once), a piece of fresh goat cheese (could have have been ricotta, queso fresco or another mild, soft cheese), and the honeyed walnuts I had purchased at the Santa Maria del Pi market a few weeks ago. I drizzled the whole thing with balsamic cream, which is easily found here, but which could substituted by a good balsamic reduction where it's not available. And presto: simple, beautiful, scrumptious.

In contrast, the arroz (think of it as a vegetarian paella) was complicated. But I decided to follow the recipe to the letter this time--more or less. Here's the tweaked version.

Ingredients:

For the stock:
1/2 kilo sardines
2 onions
2 bay leaves
6 cups of water
salt

For the rice:
1 large red pepper
1 medium onion
3 tomatoes
1 green pepper
3/4 cup fresh or frozen peas
2 cups short grain rice
6 tbsp of oil
pinch of saffron
1 finely chopped garlic clove
handful of chopped parsley
salt and pepper

First, prepare the fish stock (caldo)--The recipe doesn't give instruc- tions, but I used sardines (any cheap and flavourful fish will do--Spanish markets have inexpensive "pescado de sopa" or "pescado de roca" which will remind you a bit of the fish you used to have in your aquarium, but which are perfect for stock), quartered onions, bay leaves and salt (as above) covered with about 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil then simmer slowly for 30-40 minutes. Strain out the solids and keep warm. (Actually, I give you permission to use a pre-packaged stock--fish, chicken or vegetable--if you want to save yourself the hassle and your home the smell of boiled sardines.)

While the fish stock is simmering, roast a large, red pepper (I halved it and left it skin side up in a 220 C oven for 30 minutes). Remove from the oven, peel and slice into thin strips. (If you don't want to fuss with the roasting, just slice the red pepper and add it at the same time as the green pepper.)

Also by way of preparation, finely chop the onion; peel and chop the tomatoes (score them on top and immerse in boiling water for 30 seconds to peel); cook the peas; and slice the green pepper into strips.

Once everything is ready, heat two table spoons of oil in a large paella pan or wide bottomed, high sided frying pan. Add the onion and sautee until soft (about five minutes). Add the chopped tomatoes and cook until they start to take on a sauce like consistency. At this point, remove from the heat and, according to the recipe, puree the whole thing and set aside. (I pureed half because I have a crappy manual press and it was proving too frustrating a process. I believe the rice would be just as good if you didn't puree at all.)

Add another 3-4 tbsp. of olive oil to the pan and sautee the green pepper until soft. Add the rice and tomato puree. Shuffle the whole thing around in the pan for a bit then pat down evenly and add the stock along with a bit of salt and pinch of saffron. You'll need about twice as much stock as rice (you can play with the rice and stock quantities and add more stock through the cooking process if it's evaporating too quickly). Allow to simmer for about 20-25 minutes until the stock is fully absorbed by the rice. Do not cover. And be careful with the heat: it needs to be high enough to keep the pan simmering, but not so high that it burns the bottom of the rice (my perennial mistake).

Do not stir. This is not risotto.

About 10 minutes in, add the roasted red pepper, peas, and the parsley and garlic moistened with 2 tbsp. of warm stock. Now you can stir. When everything is incorporated, distribute the rice evenly around the pan again and pat down. If you need to add more stock, this is a good time to do so. It's also a good time to check the seasoning and add more salt if necessary.

Cook on low heat until all the stock is absorbed. When done, set aside to rest for a few minutes and take the opportunity to make the chipirones (baby squid).

I picked up the chipirones the day before at the Boqueria and cleaned them ahead of time by rinsing under cold water and pulling out the crystalline spines.

I had no particular recipe so I sauteed a finely chopped garlic clove in 2 tbsp of hot olive oil for a minute or so, tossed in the chipirones (about 1/2 to 3/4 pound) for 2-3 minutes (until just firm) and sprinkled with half a handful of fresh, chopped tarragon and some salt about a minute before I turned off the heat. The tarragon gives them a delicate sweetness and they are great alongside the rice. They're also a quick and easy tapa.

You can serve all of this with cava (Catalan sparkling wine, comparable to champagne), as I did, or maybe sauvignon blanc (I like the ones from New Zealand).

And, if you're not as much abstaining as indulging, no one will be the wiser.

Nuns Cook

Nuns cook. I mean, if you're signing on to keep yourself forever free of sin, you have to keep a little something under your habit to put a smile on your face every once in a while. So nuns cook. They cook things like Flan de Santa Teresa and Tortilla Maravilla (Marvel Omelette) and Sopa del Obispo (Bishop's Soup). They make jams and use up day old bread and they really seem to love sweets, especially the Augustines.

The Benedictines make a rice pudding that sounds pretty tasty. They heat 1 litre of whole milk in a saucepan with several pieces of lemon peel. When the milk starts to boil, they add 75 grams of rice (previously washed in cold water), lower the heat and let it cook for 1 hour, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. After about half an hour, they incorporate 125 grams of sugar into the rice. Once the full hour has elapsed, they remove the lemon peel, put the rice into a serving bowl and sprinkle with cinnamon. They let it cool and serve.

The Cistercienses make a Nuns' Soup (Sopa de las Monjas). They heat 6 tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan and brown a finely diced medium onion along with 4 finely chopped cloves of garlic. They add about a 1/2 a pound of thinly sliced day old bread (chiabatta is best) and brown it along with the onion and garlic. They place the whole mixture in a clay pot, add one peeled and ground tomato, a touch of paprika and 1 1/2 litres of water. They bring the whole thing to a boil and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes. They season to taste with salt and pepper and serve hot. (Don't be afraid to substitute a diced unpeeled tomato for the peeled ground one and to add a little tomato concentrate (3-4 tbsp.) and chicken stock in place of water (or an oxo cube) for additional flavour, even though the nuns would probably abstain. It's also just fine to make the whole thing in a high sided frying pan and forget about the clay pot altogether, charming as it is. It would, however, be a deadly sin to skimp on the olive oil or the bread so don't even think about it.)

I know these things because I bought a book. It's called La Cocina de las Monjas (Cuisine of the Nuns) by Luis San Valentin. If it came out in English, it would be called something like Divine Cuisine or Convent Kitchen Secrets or Godly Food, but in Spain, it's just Cuisine of the Nuns. The recipes are stripped down and require some divine guidance to make up for the lack of precision (e.g. cook at a sufficient heat for a sufficient time until it looks sufficiently done), but they do give one a sense that convent life isn't entirely about deprivation. Apparently, there's also a lot of eating.

What's more, I've been frequenting Caelum in the Barrio Gotico (pictured above, c/ Palla 8, near Santa Maria del Pi, 93 302 6993). Caelum is part shop, part tea room. They sell and serve items made exclusively by French and Spanish nuns: preserves, biscuits, cheeses, olive oils and honeys. (I say little prayers of thanks for their tomato confit and walnut bread with goat cheese.) They make good coffee and pretty decent tea and you can snack on delicious nun made sweets and savouries to your heart's content. It's the ideal spot for a merienda (afternoon tea). It's no convent, but it does have a peaceful, contemplative feeling about it...even if all you're contemplating is whether you can manage another macaroon.

Birthday (2) - Breakfast

First thing in the morning, a birthday phone call from someone close woke me. The best start.

Coming to slowly, breakfast setting waiting, I made myself French toast. I soaked dry chiabatta bread in milk, then coated it in egg and finally browned it in a little butter. I topped it with the honeyed walnuts, the Cape gooseberries (apparently also known as physalis or ground cherries) and (indispensably) maple syrup (luckily, the visiting Canadians of the past 6 months had supplied me with virtually infinite quantities). I served red currants and yogurt with strawberry sauce on the side. And I brewed Cream of Avalon tea, also from Canada, an orange, vanilla and bergamot flavoured black tea that my dear friend Shuli introduced me to a couple of years ago and which I brought back with me on my last trip.

It was a lovely and nostalgic breakfast and, once it was done, I felt no compunction about going back to bed for a couple of hours to start Ian McEwan’s last novel, On Chesil Beach. I allowed myself this in English, lifting (for the day) my six month long ban on English language reading. On Chesil Beach, conveniently, is little more than 160 pages and an easy day’s indulgence.

(To be continued in the next post.)

Alex Cobb's Biscuits

It is 11am on a grey Toronto Sunday morning some weeks ago and I'm invited to the Cobbs' for brunch. The entire rear end of the Cobb house is these days swathed in construction plastic and the kitchen has been relegated to the dining room in a state that can best be described as ramshackle. Alex Cobb, barely greeting me as I enter, seems impervious to all this and I believe could exist amid construction chaos in perpetuity. With the foresight of a hardened pessimist, he's timed brunch precisely to coincide with my half hour late arrival.

What I have to hand to Alex, besides the claim to a first name that is next to impossible to say without tacking on the surname Cobb, is that (and I'm sorry for being compelled to say so, Ronni*) he's a sexy cook. You know, in the way men can be. It's in his slowness about the task. I mean, he's wearing wool socks and sandals, is hunch shouldered, sleepy eyed and laconic as all hell. But somehow it works for him in the kitchen.

It doesn't hurt that the results of his efforts are pretty darn exciting. On this day, he's created a gourmet Egg McMuffin: a piping hot homemade biscuit layered with a poached egg of the perfect consistency (outside firm but tender, middle slightly oozy), cambozola (substituted by cheddar for the kids) and prosciutto. The combination is fantastic, but the indubitable star of the sandwich is the biscuit. Salty, moist, crumbly biscuit. (I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of you, biscuit. You would have been well worth displaying on the web. Well worth.) We can't resist seconds and fleetingly fantasize about thirds, but eventually content ourselves with strawberries and cream for dessert. Even the kids approve.

Pleased with himself, and rightly so, Alex Cobb provided me with this biscuit recipe should you care to replicate the McCobb (as I like to call it):

3 cups all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1-2 tsp salt
(No sugar, but if you insist on sugar, reduce the salt and add 1 tbsp.)
3/4 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 cup butter (cold)
1 1/4 cup buttermilk

Mix the dry ingredients. Grate or cut in cold butter and mix with a fork or pastry cutter until the whole resembles coarse bread crumbs. Pour buttermilk into a well in the centre of the crumbly mixture. Stir until curds form. Mash down with your fists (Alex Cobb demonstrated this with vehemence; apparently, it brought him some satisfaction). Empty out onto a wooden surface. Knead until the dough holds together but is still sticky. Don't overdo it. Roll out to 1/2 to 3/4 inches of thickness. Cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter, the top of a glass, a compass, what have you. Bake on a non-stick baking sheet for 12 minutes in a 450 F oven. After cooling just a little, set on the table in a covered bamboo steamer or some other porous and mysterious container to tantalize your guests while you take care of the rest of the fixings. Keep an eye on the guests to ensure the biscuits are not compromised.

Try to enjoy while grimacing to complete the experience and make Alex Cobb proud.

*Ronni is Alex Cobb's wife. She's sexy in and out of the kitchen.

The Tapas Episode

My friend Stephen is in town. He's an old friend and I love him a lot. When he visits and I make dinner, we do a cooking show in my kitchen. He's the host and I'm the guest chef. We're really good. Stephen points the fake microphone like nobody's business and his banter is super frothy. I, on the other hand, know my ingredients and am handy with a knife. I can't believe we haven't been snapped up by Food Television.

Today's show was about tapas. We started it off with a trip to the market. Wide angle shots of teeming aisles and close ups of fish on ice. Cutaway to the two of us feeling fruit at one of the stalls. (That's actually not allowed, but they'll let you do anything when you have a camera crew in tow.) Ingredient selection is key to tapas preparation, I tell Stephen while groping some tomatoes. Freshness and quality are crucial. Our goal at the market is to choose wisely and be inspired.

And inspired we are. Montage of us pointing at fresh prawns, pimientos de padron, tomatoes, potatoes, garlic, onions, eggs, anchovy stuffed olives and a baguette, then walking out smiling, bags in hand. Fade out. Commercial break.

Welcome back. We're in the kitchen and ready to cook. Stephen kicks us off while I'm peeling the potatoes and putting a pot of salted water on to boil. Today we're going to show you how to put together a meal of traditional Spanish tapas. And it's going to be easy peasy. Food Girl, tell us what you're going to cook for us. Well, we're going to start off with a traditional Spanish tortilla. Is that anything like a Mexican tortilla? Not at all, Stephen. A Spanish tortilla is actually an egg and potato omelette. Very interesting. What else? We're also going to make pimientos de padron. What are pimatos de padron? Pimientos. Right, pimatos. Pi-mien-tos. Pi-mien-tos, what are they? Pimientos de padron are small green peppers. Most are mild, but every batch has a few that are extremely hot. The surprise is part of the fun. Ooh, can't wait! What else? We're also going to do pan con tomate, which is a Catalan version of bruschetta, and langostinos con ajo, or garlic prawns. Sounds fantastic! Doesn't it?

Let's start with the tortilla. We'll need 4 large potatoes. We've already peeled and quartered them and have thrown them into a pot of salted water to boil until just tender. Cutaway to shot of potatoes cooking. Cutback to me. While the potatoes are cooking, we're going to prepare the eggs. We'll need six. I break the eggs into a bowl and whisk them efficiently. The eggs should be well seasoned with salt and pepper. I use about a teaspoon of salt and a little ground pepper. You can use your discretion here. We set the egg mixture aside for now and sautee the onion. I pour two tablespoons or so of olive oil into a medium sized frying pan and let it heat while I chop a large onion. Don't cry, Food Girl, don't cry. Don't worry, Stephen, I put the onion in the fridge to prevent it from releasing its juices. Great trick! I swirl the oil so that it covers the bottom of the pan and slides up the sides. I toss in the onion and give it stir. Stephen, can you check on the potatoes? Almost ready. Once those are done, can you drain and slice them? Done and done. How thinly do you want them sliced? We want them as thin as possible, but we don't want them falling apart. It's a fine line. Stephen slices a piece a little less than a quarter inch thick. Perfect. Stephen puts the potato slices into a large bowl. I continue stirring the onion. When Stephen is finished slicing, I slide the now browned onions into the potatoes and pour the egg mixture over top. I stir gently. Then I carefully pour the whole mixture back into the frying pan from whence came the onion. I lower the heat to medium low. Now we wait. Fade out and commercial break.

We're back. While the tortilla is cooking, let's prepare the other tapas. Stephen, I'm going to get you to help me with the pan con tomate. I'm yours. It couldn't be simpler. The truth is that, in most tapas places, pan con tomate is just a piece of sliced bread, neither toasted nor dried, rubbed with a bit of fresh tomato. It often comes out soggy and tasteless. So, what we're going to do is start by toasting the baguette. Cutaway to shot of baguette popping out of toaster. Cutback to me. Once the baguette is toasted, we rub it with a little garlic (the cut side of half a clove) and drizzle with olive oil. Then we cut a tomato in half crosswise, and rub it firmly on the bread so that the flesh and juice soak into the bread. And that's it. We can season it with a bit of salt to taste. It's so simple, even I can handle it, says Stephen, taking over the pan con tomate preparation.

The pimientos de padron are also extremely simple to prepare, I say pouring two or three tablespoons of olive oil into a large frying pan and putting the pan over a high flame. Once the oil is hot, we throw the whole pimientos de padron into the pan and make sure to stir them frequently so that they soften and brown evenly. They take 3-5 minutes to cook and can burn quickly if left unattended. Stephen, can you keep an eye on these while I check on the tortilla.

The tortilla has firmed up nicely on the sides and bottom and comes away easily from the sides of the pan. I slide a spatula around the tortilla to ensure it's not stuck anywhere. It isn't. It is ready to be flipped, I say. The top and middle are still a bit runny, but that's to be expected. In fact, we want it runny now; if it isn't, the finished product will be too dry. Flipping is the toughest part of the tortilla process, I continue, sweating it. In order to flip the tortilla we need a large plate or a flat pot lid large enough to hold the whole tortilla. I prefer to use a pot lid because the handle on top makes it easier to manoeuvre. I place the pot lid over the tortilla and hold my breath. It flips out easily onto the lid. As soon as it's out, I slide it back into the same pan, bottom up. Now we need just a minute or two to cook the other side.

I think the pimientos de padron are done, says Stephen. And so they are. I grind in an ample amount of rock salt and give them a last stir around. I set them aside and keep warm.

I go back to the tortilla. Contrary to your instincts, the ideal way to serve a tortilla is at room temperature after it's had a chance to sit and cool. I turn off the heat under the tortilla in the frying pan and pull out a plate with a perfectly formed, already cooked tortilla. This is one that we made yesterday. Today, it's going to be perfect. I cut two wedges out of the tortilla and place them on a large plate with the pan con tomate that Stephen has just finished preparing.

And now for the final dish, langostinos con ajo. We have a clove of garlic, already chopped that we're going to drop into tablespoon of olive oil mixed with a tablespoon of butter that we've heated in a large flat bottomed frying pan. We stir that for 30 seconds and throw in the langostinos (about half a pound). They've been washed, but we've kept them in their shells for maximum tenderness and flavour. We sautee them for 3 to 4 minutes. You know they're ready when they curl up and turn entirely pink.

We slide the langostinos onto the plate with the pan con tomate and tortilla. We arrange the pimientos de padron on the other side of the same plate. In the middle, we make a little pile of olives stuffed with anchovies because they're delicious and we just can't help ourselves. Cutaway to overhead shot of the plate (pictured above). And there you have it, quick and easy tapas.

I carry the plate to the table, while Stephen opens a bottle of Rioja. Stephen and I dig into the food with approving grunts and murmurs. The credits roll.

[P.S. For more on tapas, check out June Is Tapas Month.]

The Return of the Radish

In Canada, I used to stay up nights wondering what ever happened to the radish. It had disappeared from supermar-ket shelves seemingly overnight and even my local fruit and vegetable place barely stocked it.

Not that I had done a lot to keep it hanging around, mind you. I had passed it over for other vegetables plenty of times. It barely even made it into my salads anymore.

To tell you the truth, the radish had had a crush on me since grade school. You know, one that was good for my self esteem, but never one that was going to translate into a relationship. It would always hang around my house with its cousin, the turnip, and I wouldn't give either of them a second look. The radish was always a little bit of an afterthought in my life. Until it was gone.

When the radish disappeared, I started thinking about all the good times we'd had: my mother's summer salads with radishes and buttermilk dressing, lazy mornings biting into radishes stirred into creamy yogurt cheese and sometimes afternoon snacks of radishes and salt. Those were the days. Bygone days.

Imagine my excitement when, passing a vegetable vendor the other day, I caught sight of the radish, looking very fine. All of a sudden the radish was all fresh, crispy, antibacterial, cancer fighting, just 20 calories a cup and not at all bitter. Something to think about.

I took the radish home with me. For lunch, I cleaned it up, chopped it into quarters and tossed it over mache (which just as easily could have been arugula) with some chickpeas and fresh mandarin orange pieces (grapefruit would have been delicious too). Then I dressed it with a French dessing: three tablespoons of good red wine vinegar, four of extra virgin olive oil, half a crushed clove of garlic and a teaspoon of dijon mustard, shaken together in a jar and seasoned with salt and pepper. I sprinkled a little over the salad and refrigerated the rest. If I'd had chives, I would have sprinkled those over too.

I devoured the salad with a mixture of nostalgia and discovery. Then I made a date with the radish for dinner and the next day's lunch. And I promised not to underestimate it again.

Chicken Soup

The evenings in Barcelona have become a little cool. A sweater isn't always enough. A girl sometimes needs warming up when she gets home. In other words, it's soup weather.

My favourite soup is plain old chicken. But, I confess, I'm a lazy cook. Lazy, but demanding. Or, at least, unwilling to give up the idea of cooking from scratch. The combination makes me an enthusiastic user of shortcuts.

I have two shortcuts for chicken soup, one of which presented itself to me in Barcelona. The first shortcut--known by cafeteria ladies the world over--is dispensing with a raw chicken. You can't do this if you need a pure chicken stock to use as a base for another dish--for that, you should stick with a classic stock recipe. But, if all you want is a little soup to eat all by your lonesome in your cozy Barcelona apartment, dispense away. I tend to use a partially intact chicken carcass that I've either roasted and half eaten the night before or bought at my local rotisserie and half eaten the night before. The three main advantages of this strategy are that there's no skimming or rinsing, both yucky jobs; that the precise flavour of the soup is always a bit of a surprise, being largely dependent on the way the roast chicken was originally spiced; and that you essentially get two meals from one bird.

The other shortcut is particular to Barcelona, as far as I know. It is a ready made package of herbs and vegetables sufficent for one pot of chicken soup. These packages invariably contain 2 or 3 large carrots, 2 or 3 ribs of celery (leaves intact), and 1 leek; usually a handful of parsely; and sometimes a parsnip, a turnip or a small piece of cabbage. The variety is part of the fun. And you don't have to comb the store for all the required ingredients. Laziness, the mother of invention.

So, here's what I do with my roast chicken and my package of vegetables. I peel the vegetables that need peeling, chop into 2-3 inch chunks and toss into a stock pot with the remainders of the roast chicken. I cover all this with cold water, throw in a tablespoon or so of salt, 3 or 4 whole peppercorns (if I feel like it) and sometimes a bay leaf. I might also add a quartered onion or two, although with the leek, it's not strictly necessary. I bring all this to a boil, reduce the heat and leave to simmer, partially covered, for about an hour and a half. If I remember, I check on it occasionally and season to taste as I go. If I don't remember, the water evaporates, the solids incinerate and the fire department has to be called in. In any case, when done, I cool the soup (when I don't, the next part of the process tends to burn a little), strain the liquid into a clean pot and proceed to pick out the still edible vegetables (i.e. the carrots, parsnips, turnips and cabbage, all the rest having more or less disintegrated) and the chicken. The chicken I shred, discarding bones and skin; the vegetables I chop into bite sized pieces. All this I throw into the pot with the stock. I check for seasoning one last time. Then I eat. Actually, I usually can't wait that long and tend to make myself a mini-bowl before I've gone through the cooling and straining process, but you can do as you like.

One of the things I love about chicken soup is that, like the missionary position, you can riff on it to your heart's content. I'm a big fan of cutting in a piece of fennel along with the other vegetables, which gives the final product a faint taste of anise. I also sometimes o.d. on parsnips, which makes the soup almost sugary sweet. When I'm feeling a little like Asian and if the stock is fairly pure to start with, I garnish with bird's eye chiles (one or two), beansprouts and chopped cilantro. Oh, and if I have them, I sometimes throw in a few fresh or frozen peas once the soup is ready. You can, of course, add noodles or rice or tomatoes or any number of fetish items. But you don't need to. The soup is delicious just as it is.