THE CABBAGE IS ON A ROLL

When a cold wind whips through the olive trees, I start to think of cabbage. Cabbage seems an antidote to chill. Heart-warming, stick-to-the-ribs. I pulled up a recipe for cabbage rolls, Sevilla style, that I hadn’t made for years. The moment had arrived. 

These cabbage rolls with a meat and olive stuffing are breaded and fried.

Cabbage leaves are rolled around a meat stuffing. Olives in the stuffing. “Seville” olives—green manzanillas, black ones or stuffed with red pimiento—make this dish sevillano style. 

The rolled packets are first breaded and fried. They can be served just like that, crisp and golden, with an accompanying sauce, or added to a tomato sauce to cook until very tender. I enjoyed them both ways. I served a few hot out of the frying oil with a spicy brava sauce for dipping. Then I simmered the rest of the rolls in tomato sauce for another meal.

Serve the fried rolls hot with a spicy sauce for dipping.

Or, simmer the cabbage rolls in tomato sauce.

Cabbage Roll-Ups, Sevilla Style
Liadillos Sevillanos

Dipping the head of cabbage in boiling water loosens the leaves making it easy to remove them. Ground beef or chicken can replace the ground pork in the stuffing for the rolls.

Serves 4.

Grated nutmeg in the stuffing.

1 medium cabbage (2 ½ -3 pounds)
2 tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup finely chopped onion
2 cloves chopped garlic
12 ounces ground pork
2 ounces chopped bacon and/or serrano ham
1/8 teaspoon cumin seed
Grated fresh nutmeg
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
½ cup pitted olives, halved
Flour
1 large egg, beaten
¾ cup fine dry bread crumbs
Olive oil for frying
For tomato sauce:
1 (14-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
½ cup water
1 teaspoon pimentón (paprika)
2 cloves garlic
Oregano
Parsley and olives to garnish

Brava sauce to serve (optional), recipe below

Cut around core, then boil to loosen leaves.

Bring salted water to a boil in a deep pot. Discard any damaged exterior leaves from the head of cabbage. Cut deeply all around the core. Submerge the whole cabbage in the boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes. Turn it over and boil another 1 minute. Very carefully remove the cabbage and let it drain until cool enough to handle. Reserve the pot of water.

Remove 12 to 14 leaves from the cabbage. (Reserve inner part of cabbage for another use.) Return them to the boiling water and cook just until the leaves are limp, about 3 minutes. Do not overcook, or the leaves will tear. Drain well and refresh the leaves in cold water. Drain again.

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a skillet and sauté the onion and garlic until softened, 2 minutes. On medium-high heat, add the ground pork. Fry without stirring until it begins to brown. Break up the meat and turn it, cooking until it loses pink color, about 5 minutes. Add the bacon and/or ham and cook 2 minutes more. Season with cumin, nutmeg, ½ teaspoon salt, pepper and parsley. Stir in the olives.

Place spoonful of meat stuffing mixture in center of leaf.

Fold sides over the filling, then roll up from the stem end.

Place a kitchen towel on a work surface. Spread open a cabbage leaf. Cut out the thick end of the stem. Place a heaping spoonful of the meat mixture in the center. Fold the sides of the leaf over it. Starting from the stem end, roll the leaf up. Secure it with a toothpick or kitchen twine. (Leave a tail on the twine to make it easier to find and remove it after frying.) Use the meat filling to roll 12 leaves. Use the extra leaves to patch any leaves that tear by overlapping pieces with the leaf. 

It's a wrap. Cabbage leaves are rolled and tied, ready to be breaded and fried.

When all of the leaves have been filled and rolled, place the flour in a shallow bowl, beaten egg in another shallow bowl. Place half of the bread crumbs in a shallow pan. Roll the cabbage rolls first in flour, patting off excess. Dip them into beaten egg then roll them in the crumbs. Add more crumbs as needed. Place on a baking sheet as they are breaded. (They can be allowed to dry at room temperature for up to 1 hour.)

In a deep frying pan place oil to a depth of 1 inch. Heat until it is shimmering, but not smoking. Fry the cabbage rolls, a few at a time, turning them to brown all sides. Remove when they are golden and drain on paper towels.

Serve the cabbage rolls immediately accompanied by the sauce, if desired.

If preferred, cook them further in tomato sauce.

Place canned tomatoes, water, pimentón, whole crushed garlics and a sprig of oregano in a saucepan large enough to hold the cabbage rolls in one layer. Season with salt and pepper. Bring the tomatoes to a boil, then lower heat and cook 3 minutes.

Place the cabbage rolls in the tomato sauce. Cover and cook gently 20 minutes. Turn the rolls and cook 20 minutes more.

Serve the cabbage rolls and tomato sauce hot, garnished with chopped parsley and a few sliced olives.

Cabbage rolls cook very tender in tomato sauce.

Spicy “Brava” Sauce
Salsa Brava

Hot and sweet pimentón add spice to this sauce.

This version of the famous tapa sauce, typically served with cubes of fried potatoes, doesn’t start with tomato sauce. Sweet and hot pimentón (paprika) give it color. Use some smoked pimentón if you like the flavor. If hot pimentón is not available, use cayenne, but decrease the quantity.

¼ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, peeled
¼ cup flour
2 teaspoons sweet pimentón (paprika), smoked or unsmoked
2 teaspoons hot pimentón, smoked or unsmoked
½ teaspoon cumin
1 ¼ cups + water
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
Salt

Heat the oil in a saucepan. Sauté the onion and garlic 2 minutes. Stir in the flour. Cook the flour, stirring, for 2 minutes. Stir in the two kinds of pimentón and cumin. Add the water and vinegar. Add ½ teaspoon salt.

Cook the sauce, stirring constantly, until it is thickened. Cook 4 minutes.

Puree the sauce with an immersion blender, adding enough additional water (about 2 tablespoons) so that the sauce is the consistency of thick cream as it cools to room temperature.

 

More recipes with cabbage:

Stuffed Cabbage.

Mallorcan "Dry" Soup with Cabbage.

Navarra Pork and Vegetable Soup.

Madrid Style Boiled Dinner with Cabbage (Cocido).

Fried Potatoes with Spicy Sauce (Patatas Bravas).

Everything you need to know about pimentón.

A SHRIMP BY ANY OTHER NAME--

Rather than sheepishly apologize for cooking with frozen, imported shrimp (oh, gosh, the pre-Christmas oferta was too good to pass up), I’m using my crustacean stash to make  a dish that’s traditional, but not very common—garbanzos con langostinos—chickpeas with shrimp.

Made with shrimp, this potaje with chickpeas is not as heavy as with pork and sausage. Squash and chard are optional vegetables.

This is a typical potaje, much like the cold-weather soup-stews with legumes and laden with pork and sausages. With shrimp in place of meat, this potaje is suitable for Lenten meals (Lent begins February 14). In ports where fresh shrimp once was plentiful and cheap, it used to be a common dish made by fishermen’s families to use up the catch that didn’t sell.

I do buy fresh, wild, local shrimp (gambas) for making sizzled shrimp al ajillo, for adding to paella, for my favorite creole gumbo. Rarely do I buy Spanish langostinos (big shrimp) because they are so expensive. The most famous are those of Sanlucar de Barrameda (Cádiz), where the Guadalquivir River flows into the Atlantic, and Vinaròs (Castellón), near the delta of the River Ebro where it flows into the Mediterranean.

Langostinos in the market at Sanlucar de Barrameda (Cádiz). These are exquisite cooked a la plancha, on a hot griddle.

Part of my cache of frozen langostinos, these imported from fish farms in Venezuela. I couldn't resist the price---

I call them “shrimp;” but maybe you say “prawn.” The restaurant menu calls them “scampi.”  When is it a gamba and when is it a langostino? Does it matter?

The Brits tend to call any of the species (which belongs to the decapoda, or 10-legged family) “prawns.” Americans call them “shrimp. But sometimes the English call tiny ones “shrimp,” and, on the Pacific coast of the US, Americans have taken to calling one variety of shrimp, “prawn.”

In Spanish, gamba refers to the smallish common pink or white shrimp. Langostinos (which are not the same thing that the French call “langoustine”) are big prawns or jumbo shrimp, measuring up to 8 inches (22 cm). Stripy ones are “tiger shrimp.” 

True scampi are not shrimp. (Cigala in Spanish.)

Scampi is the plural of scampo, which in Italian refers to a Dublin Bay prawn, which is not a prawn or a shrimp. It’s also called “Norway lobster,” “sea crayfish,” “cigala” in Spanish, “langoustine” in French. It looks like a miniature lobster with pink-tipped claws. When you find scampi on a restaurant menu, it usually refers to a dish made with big shrimp, not real scampi.

Use any shrimp, prawn or scampi in this recipe.

This potaje with shrimp reminds me so much of one of my favorites, berza, a sturdy  Andalusian stew with chickpeas, vegetables, pork, chorizo and blood sausage. So, on a whim, I decided to make a black seafood sausage to add to the shrimp. I used frozen cuttlefish ink to make the white fish sausage look like black blood sausage.

A traditional dish of chickpeas and shrimp, with the addition of non-traditional black seafood sausage.

Chickpeas with Shrimp
Garbanzos con Langostinos

Put the chickpeas to soak a day before cooking the stew. If your tap water is hard, add a pinch of baking soda to the soaking water or use low-mineral bottled water. (Hard water prevents chickpeas from cooking up soft.)

Heads and shells for flavor.

A simple stock made with shrimp heads and shells gives the chickpea stew a lot of flavor. Notice the coral roe in the heads--huge flavor. The shrimp stock can be made in advance. Refrigerate the peeled shrimp until ready to use. If using peeled shrimp instead of whole ones, either allow an extra ¼ pound to make stock or else substitute prepared fish stock or clam broth.

Serves 4.

2 cups dry chickpeas
Warm water
1 pound whole shrimp (with heads)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 ½ cups chopped onion
1/3 cup white wine or dry Sherry
8 cups water
3 cups hot water
1 bay leaf
Salt
3 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons pimentón (paprika, not smoked)
¾ cup grated tomato pulp or crushed tomatoes
1 cup diced butternut squash (optional)
1 cup (or more) chopped chard (optional)
Black seafood sausage, optional
¼ cup chopped parsley
½ teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts

Soak the chickpeas in warm water to cover for at least 8 hours.

Peel the shrimp. Refrigerate the bodies until ready to cook them. Use the heads and shells to make shrimp stock.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a soup pot. Add the shrimp shells and heads and ½ cup of the chopped onion. Sauté on medium-high heat until the shells turn pink. Add the bay leaf and wine. When alcohol is cooked off, add 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook 30 minutes. Don’t add salt to the stock.

Strain the stock, pressing on the solids to extract flavor. Discard shells.

Drain the soaked chickpeas. Put them in a soup pot or cazuela with the 3 cups of hot water. Bring to a boil, Skim off any froth that rises to the top. Cook the chickpeas 15 minutes.

Add 4 cups of the strained shrimp stock to the chickpeas. Bring again to a boil and cook, covered, 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare a sofrito. In a skillet with remaining 2 tablespoons of oil, sauté the remaining 1 cup of chopped onion with 2 cloves of chopped garlic for 5 minutes. Don’t let the onions brown. Stir in the pimentón and immediately add the tomato pulp. Fry on medium-high until tomatoes lose their juice.

Puré the sofrito in a blender with ½ cup liquid from the chickpeas. (Add some of the chickpeas too to slightly thicken the stew.) Stir the purée mixture into the soup pot with the chickpeas. Add 1 teaspoon salt. Cook until the chickpeas are nearly tender, about 45 minutes more.

Add the squash and chard, if using. Taste again for salt. Cook just until chickpeas and vegetables are tender.

Add the shrimp to the chickpeas and cook until they turn pink and begin to curl, about 5 minutes. Add sliced seafood sausage, if using.

Chop the remaining 1 clove of garlic finely. Combine it with the parsley, lemon zest and pine nuts. Either stir this mixture into the chickpeas immediately  before serving or sprinkle it on top of individual servings.

Add chopped parsley, garlic and pine nuts to the finished dish.

Add caption

Black Seafood Sausage
“Morcilla” de Pescado

Black fish sausage resembles blood sausage used in other potajes with meat.

Little packets of frozen squid or cuttlefish ink can be purchased from some fish sellers and in frozen foods sections of specialty markets. 

Use any white fish for this sausage--cod, hake, whiting, sole. I used corvina.

Use a food processor to make the sausage mix. Chill the bowl and blade before starting. The sausages are then rolled in plastic wrap instead of sausage casings.

The black fish paste can be prepared in advance and refrigerated. Then roll the sausages and poach them immediately. Let them cool slightly before unwrapping and slicing. Reheat the sausages in the stew or in a skillet with a little oil.

Makes 6 (3-inch) sausages.

10 ounces white fish fillets
2 egg whites
1 tablespoon chopped scallions
1 tablespoon fine, dry breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon smoked pimentón (paprika)
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup chilled cream
2 (4-gram) sachets frozen squid or cuttlefish  ink

Cut the fish into pieces and place in a food processor with the egg whites. Process until fairly smooth. Add the scallions, breadcrumbs, parsley, allspice, pimentón and salt. Process again. Add the cream and process to make a smooth paste. Squeeze the contents of the sachets of squid ink into the paste and process until combined.

Cover the fish paste and refrigerate at least two hours.

Log of black fish paste on plastic wrap.

Lay a 12-inch piece of plastic wrap on a work surface. Spoon 1/3 of the fish paste across one end. With wet hands, quickly mold it into a compact log about 1 ¼ inch in diameter. Roll the log up in the plastic wrap. Twist the ends and tie them with kitchen twine. Tie the roll again in the middle, making two sausages. Repeat with remaining fish paste. 

Rolled in plastic wrap, these fish sausages are ready to be poached.

 

Poach the sausages in simmering water (180ºF) until they are firm, 12 minutes. Remove the sausages with a slotted spoon and allow them to cool slightly before unwrapping them from the plastic and slicing.

Unwrap the sausage links and slice.

More recipes for potaje soup-stews with legumes:

Andalusian Vegetable and Sausage Stew (Berza).

Chickpeas with Spinach and Salt Cod Dumplings.

Potage with Kale and Beans.

Fennel Soup with Chickpeas, Wheat and Sausage.

Canary Islands Vegetable Pot with Corn.

More recipes with shrimp:

Shrimp Sizzled with Garlic (al Ajillo).

Pasta with Sizzling Shrimp.

Zucchini Tubs with Shrimp Stuffing.

Rice with Shrimp and Mango.

Sauté of Asparagus, Morels and Shrimp.

GARLIC SOUP IS COMFORT FOOD

By the time the clouds cleared, the snow covering the mountaintops had washed away. But, hoo boy, was it ever cold! I definitely needed some comforting hot soup. What’s better than garlic soup to chase the chill of a January day?

Comforting soup for a winter day. This Andalusian garlic soup has egg and strips of ham added to the slices of fried bread and garlicky broth.  Oranges, green onions and olives accompany the soup.

This is maimones, the Andalusian version of garlic soup. At its most basic, it consists of frying garlic in olive oil, adding a quantity of stale bread, water and salt. Boiled a few minutes until the bread begins to soak up the liquid, the thick soup warms the body and fills the belly.

This is poor folk's food, a way to feed a family or a gang of jornaleros, day laborers, working in the olive groves, vineyards or wheat fields. Before there were packaged baby foods, maimones was an infant’s first solid food, easy to mash to a pap.

Basics for garlic soup: virgin olive oil, dense-crumbed country bread, garlic and eggs.

The garlic soup belongs to a category of poor-folk’s soups in which the principal ingredients are bread and olive oil. There are dozens of variations on the theme, some with wild asparagus or the addition of a tomato sofrito, a spoonful of pimentón (paprika), a squeeze of sour orange juice, crushed almonds or pieces of salt cod. Eggs and chopped ham are typical additions.

My rendition is a souped-up version—I’ve used home-made chicken stock instead of water. But, the flavor and substance come from good virgin olive oil (I finished the olive picking with 55 liters of oil!) and lots of garlic.

Day-old country bread with a dense crumb is best. Use whole-grain, if you like. The sliced bread is first fried in oil, then added to the soup to soak up some of the liquid. The eggs are stirred into the hot soup creating lacy strands. Alternatively, one egg per person can be poached in the soup and ladled out with a slotted spoon and placed on top of the fried bread in individual soup bowls.

Campesino-style, maimones is accompanied by oranges, olives and green onions. In the summer, peeled cucumber sticks, melon or grapes are the sides. You slurp up some soup, then take a bite of the accompaniment. Or, you could make an orange-onion-olive salad to go with the soup.

Hot soup with egg is ladled over the strips of fried bread. Alternatively, the bread is added right to the soup pot. The bread sops up some of the savory soup.

Alternate spoonfuls of soup with a bite of green onion or orange.

Soup is nourishing, comforting.

Andalusian Garlic Soup
Maimones

If you don't use well-seasoned chicken stock or ham-bone broth, be sure to add plenty of salt to the water. Pepper or hot chile is not customary, but who's to say it wouldn't amp up the flavor of plain water?

Serves 4.

8 ounces firm country bread (6-8 slices)
½ cup olive oil
1 ½ ounces thinly sliced serrano ham
4 cloves garlic, sliced crosswise
¼ cup finely chopped onion
8 cups chicken stock, ham-bone broth or water
Salt
2 eggs
Sprigs of mint
Oranges, olives, green onions to accompany

Fry strips of bread.

Cut the bread into strips, removing crusts, if desired. Heat half the oil in a skillet and fry the bread in two batches, turning to brown both sides. Add additional oil as needed. Reserve the fried bread.

Add remaining oil to the skillet. Put in the sliced ham. Turn the slices once, but don’t let them crisp. Remove and slice into strips. Reserve.

Fry sliced garlic till golden.

Add the sliced garlic and fry it until lightly golden. Skim it out and reserve. Add the chopped onion and sauté until softened, without browning, 4 minutes.

Place the stock, broth or water in a soup pot and bring to a boil. Add most of the garlic to the pot (save a few slices to garnish the soup) with the onions and oil from the skillet. Season with salt to taste. Cook 15 minutes.

Divide the strips of fried bread between four soup bowls or place it all in a tureen.

Stir the eggs together in a small bowl. Bring the soup to a rolling boil, then remove it from the heat. Stir the eggs into the hot soup. Immediately ladle the soup over the fried bread in the bowls. Garnish the soup with reserved strips of fried ham and reserved slices of fried garlic. Add a sprig of mint immediately before serving. Serve the soup accompanied by wedges of orange, olives and onions.

Variation: add spinach to the soup and poach an egg in the hot broth.

More rustic peasant soups, based on bread and olive oil:

Hot Gazpacho.

Castillian Garlic Soup.

Mallorcan "Dry" Soup with Cabbage.

Peasant Soup with Asparagus.

Fish Soup with Sour Orange.

And, some more comforting soups for wintry days:

Tomato Soup with Bacon and Cheese Flan.

Pork and Vegetable Soup.

Pinto Beans with Garlic Sauce.

Lentils with Sausage.

An accompaniment to the maimones:

Orange, Olive, Onion Salad. 

FROM CATALUÑA, WITH LOVE

I received a lovely gift from my friend Charlotte, who’s just returned from a week in Barcelona. Knowing my interest in all things gastronomic, she selected several Catalan cheeses and sausages to bring me. So, coincidentally, I am featuring the food of Cataluña for the second week in a row. But, no politics this time!

Clockwise from top left: Garrotxa goat's milk cheese; Formatge Neu, bull blanc, a type of butifarra sausage, butifarra de huevo, a pork and egg sausage, and, in the center, mató, a soft, creamy cheese. Hazelnuts also come from Cataluña.

There are three cheeses, Garrotxa, a goat’s milk cheese; Formatge Neu, a soft cow’s milk cheese, and mató, a creamy fresh cheese, and two types of sausage, botifarra d’ou or butifarra de huevo, and bull blanc. Both are cooked pork sausages that can be consumed without additional cooking, though they are best grilled. (A must alongside fire-roasted calçots, green onions.)  The bull blanc differs from regular white butifarra in that it is stuffed in a larger casing, while the one with eggs has a yellowish color.

Catalan sausages can be found in shops everywhere in Spain. However, the cheeses are not so widely distributed. Artisanal cheese making in Cataluña had almost disappeared until the early 1980s, when back-to-the-farm "hippies" began experimenting with traditional methods. Both the Garrotxa and Neu date from that renaissance. Garrotxa (a town north of Barcelona in Girona province) is firm, creamy, nutty (hazelnut) with a slight tang. Ripened for two months, the cheese forms a grey mold on the rind. The cheese is delicious on its own, with wine, diced into salad, grilled, melted. The Neu is soft, somewhat like Brie, and has a white mold rind. The mató is like solid whipped cream. An unsalted fresh cheese, it is usually served as dessert.

Here are some of the dishes I made using these ingredients.

Coca--a flatbread with toppings. This one has sautéed onions and three kinds of mushrooms and sliced bull blanc, a version of butifarra sausage.

Salad with black-eyed peas, green beans and diced Garrotxa cheese.

Spiced pears in cava with mató fresh cheese and hazelnuts.

Catalan Flatbread with Mushrooms and Butifarra Sausage
Coca de Recapte amb Botifarra

Make it a meal or call it a snack, flatbread with mushroom and sausage topping is sure to be a hit.

Unlike pizza, coca doesn't have melted cheese on it. Serve it hot out of the oven or room temperature.

The coca (plural is coques in Catalan or cocas in Spanish) is sort of a cross between pizza and focaccia. Made from bread dough, the coca is usually served room temperature, rather than hot from the oven. Barcelona bake shops sell it in huge slabs or in tiny, individual coques. Unlike pizza, coca rarely has cheese. The toppings can be a simple as a few strips of red pepper and olives or as replete as the coca de recapte, provisioned with “everything in the cupboard”. Sliced butifarra sausage is a traditional addition.

Use two or more varieties of mushrooms for the topping of this coca, wild ones if they are available. Some give off a lot of moisture, so take longer cooking than ordinary white mushrooms. I used white mushrooms, portobellos and oyster.

Bull blanc is a cooked pork sausage.

Any type of butifarra sausage works. I used the bull blanc.

Use any ready-to-bake pizza dough, home-made or store-bought. (A recipe for coca dough is here.)

Dough for 1 pizza
3 tablespoons olive oil + more for drizzling on top
1 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped red bell pepper
3 cloves garlic, chopped
5 cups sliced mushrooms (about 1 pound)
Salt and pepper
Sprigs of thyme
6 ounces butifarra sausage, sliced

Roll or press out dough to make a rough rectangle (about 14 X 9 inches). Place on a lightly oiled sheet pan.

Preheat oven to 400ºF (200ºC).

Heat the oil in a skillet and sauté the onion slowly until it begins to brown, about 10 minutes. Add the red pepper, garlic and mushrooms and sauté until mushrooms are cooked, 10 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and thyme.

Spread the onion-mushroom mixture on top of the pizza dough. Tuck the slices of sausage into the topping.

Bake until the edges of the dough are browned, 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve hot or room temperature.

Bean, Black-Eyed Pea and Garrotxa Cheese Salad
Amanida de Mongets i Formatage Garrotxa

If possible, use a Catalan Arbequina variety olive oil to dress this salad.

Serves 4

Garrotxa--smooth, mild goat cheese.

½ cup cooked and drained black-eyed peas
1 cup cooked green beans, cut in short lengths
¼ cup chopped radish
¼ cup chopped celery
¼ cup chopped scallions
6 ounces Garroxta cheese, diced (1 1/3 cups)
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley or carrot tops
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
Salad greens such as cress or rucola
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

In a bowl combine the black-eyed peas, beans, radish, celery, scallions and cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Add parsley, oil, and vinegar.

Serve the salad with salad greens. Top with pine nuts.

Honey with Fresh Cheese
Mel i Mató

Classic way to serve mató fresh cheese--with honey and walnuts.

Place a dollop of mató fresh cheese on a plate, bowl or in a glass. Top with a spoonful of honey. Add walnuts.

Pears in Cava with Fresh Cheese
Peres amb Cava i Mató

Pears spiced with cinnamon and cardomom are cooked in cava (sparkling wine).

Cava is sparkling wine made by the traditional Champenoise method. Cataluña is not the only region where cava is produced, but it is the most extensive. The Catalan grape varieties, Macabeo, Parellada and Xarel•lo, give this bubbly a lovely flowery scent that combines nicely with sweet spices and fruit.

These poached pears can be made with “flat” cava, as the bubbles will cook away in any case. If you use a semi-seco cava, you will not need to add additional sugar. Use white wine if cava is not available. Cook pears until they are soft, but not falling apart, anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes.

Serves 4.

2-3 large firm-ripe pears (1 ¾ pounds)
Lemon juice
2-3 cups cava
Strip of orange zest
2-inch cinnamon stick
4 cardamom pods
2 tablespoons sugar
Mató fresh cheese
Toasted hazelnuts, coarsely chopped

Peel and core the pears. Cut them in quarters or sixths, depending on their size. Place in a bowl and sprinkle with lemon juice.

Place the cava in a pan with the zest, cinnamon, cardamom and sugar. Bring to a boil, then let the syrup bubble 5 minutes. Add the pears and cook until they can be easily pierced with a skewer.

Remove the pears with a slotted spoon. Cook the remaining syrup 5 minutes more. Let it cool before pouring over the pears.

Serve the pears with the mató fresh cheese and sprinkled with hazelnuts.

More about Catalan foods:

Barcelona Alimentaria.

Sausage-Potato Cakes (Trinxat)

Catalan Flatbreads with Two Toppings (Coques).