THE FLIP SIDE OF SOUP IS—SALAD!

A soup transmogrified to a summer salad! White beans, pasta, fennel and smoked ham make a salad bowl fit for a party on the terrace.

I´ve just replenished the pantry with jars of legumes, having used the last of them last week with a tasty garbanzo salad. While I’m on to a good thing, why not keep it going? 

The “good thing” being salads or cold dishes based around legumes and lots of vegetables. This week I took inspiration from soup! Spain has so many terrific soups and soupy-stews, one-pot meals packed with flavor, nutrients and, yep, calories. Not the sort of food you want to cook—or eat—on a hot summer’s day.

But swap out ready-to-eat canned beans for the slow-cooked dried ones. Substitute raw vegetables for some of the stewed ones. And, in about 30 minutes, you’ve got a hot-weather meal or a side dish fit for a party.

The soup I picked to flip to summer guise is a potaje from Almería and the highland Alpujarra region of Granada. It’s usually cooked with wheat berries, beans or chickpeas, and wild fennel shoots as well as pork belly, ham and sausage. The fennel adds a subtle sweet anisette flavor that translates nicely to a salad when made with raw cultivated fennel.

Smoked ham or turkey from the deli takes the place of the fatty porky bits. For a vegetarian version, just skip the ham. (Smoked tofu would be a nice addition here.)

No fennel? Use chopped celery for a similar crunch and add a herb such as fresh oregano or mint to take up the flavor slack. You could use diced carrots in place of the butternut squash; green pepper instead of green beans.

Instead of chewy wheat berries, which take forever to cook, I’ve used a toasty, round semolina pasta called fregola. Other quick substitutes for the wheat berries are brown or white rice, Israeli cous cous, orzo pasta or bulgur.

Any type of canned white beans can be used or black-eyed peas or chickpeas.

The vegetables improve with a few hours to macerate in the dressing.

This big salad is packed with vegetables, raw and cooked. Serve it alongside grilled foods at your next party.

Sprigs of green fennel and a dusting of smoked pimentón are the final touch to the salad.

Salad with Fennel and Beans

Ensalada con Hinojo y Alubias

Salad ingredients, clockwise from the top:  diced butternut squash, diced potatoes, fregola pasta, chopped fennel bulb, sliced green beans, halved cherry tomatoes, diced smoked ham, canned white beans and chopped onions.

Serves 8-10 as part of a meal.

Chopped fennel.

2 cups drained cooked or canned white beans
1 cup uncooked fregola or other pasta or grain
1 ½ cups (8 ounces) diced potato
1 cup diced butternut squash
1 cup sliced green beans
1 cup diced smoked ham (6 ounces)
1 cup chopped raw fennel
½ cup finely chopped onion
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon smoked pimentón (paprika) 
1/8 teaspoon cumin
1 ½ teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons Sherry vinegar
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Pinch hot pimentón or dash of Tabasco
Sprigs of fennel to garnish

Place the beans in a large salad bowl.

Cook the fregola in boiling salted water until al dente, 10-12 minutes. (One cup raw pasta makes 2 cups cooked.)

Cook the diced potato in boiling salted water until just tender. Drain and rinse in cold water. Cook the squash in boiling salted water until firm-tender, 5-6 minutes. Cook the beans until crisp-tender. Drain and cool the vegetables and add them to the bowl with the white beans. Add the diced ham, fennel, onion and tomatoes.

Mix gently so beans don't break up.

In a small bowl, combine the garlic, pimentón, cumin and salt. Stir in the vinegar. Whisk in the olive oil until dressing is emulsified. Season to taste with hot pimentón or a dash of Tabasco. Pour the dressing over the vegetables in the bowl. Use a large wooden spoon to very gently combine. Taste the vegetables and add more salt, oil or vinegar if needed.


Allow the salad to macerate at least 30 minutes or, covered and refrigerated, up to 12 hours. Stir it again gently before serving. Sprinkle the top with additional pimentón. Garnish with green fennel sprigs.

The first day of summer marked the end of the "state of emergency." All of Spain has now transitioned from pandemic lockdown to what is designated "the new normal." The first tourists have arrived in Mallorca! Shops, bars and restaurants are reopening. We wear masks while on the street, in the market, in offices and other places of work. We can even have a party in our homes and get together with friends! I'm not actually having a party--but this salad would certainly serve a crowd! 

More recipes with fennel:
Fennel Soup with Chickpeas, Wheat and Sausage.
Lenten Fennel Soup with Beans.
Bean Pot with Fennel and Pork Belly.
Orange, Avocado and Fennel Salad.
Pear and Fennel Salad with Walnuts.

LEGUMES ARE SO COOL!

I’m not about to cook up a pot of beans, now that summer is here. Don’t need a steamy kitchen, nor a hot and hearty meal. But, I’m not rejecting legumes. Now’s the time to turn to those jars of beans, chickpeas and lentils, ready-to-hand in the cupboard. 

Legumes turn a light salad into a main dish. They make the centerpiece for a vegetarian Buddha bowl. A jar of chickpeas becomes hummus in the whirl of a blender. Marinated beans or lentils make a great side with summer’s foods from the grill. Legumes are so cool!

"Cobblestone" salad with round chickpeas and olives and chopped vegetables. Light, but a filling lunch dish.

This legume salad is called empedrado (empedrat in Catalan), cobblestones, because the round chickpeas and chopped vegetables supposedly resemble paving stones. It was invented to use up cooked chickpeas leftover from a big, slow-cooked cocido, but is even easier made with a jar or can of chickpeas.

Vary the salad to suit your tastes and what’s on-hand in the pantry. Some suggestions for optionals and extras: guindilla chilies; corn kernels; chopped asparagus; peas; minced garlic; cubes of queso fresco (goat’s cheese) or feta; chopped basil, cilantro or mint; diced raw zucchini or cucumber; chopped nuts, butifarra sausage or bacalao (dry salt cod that is de-salted and lightly cooked) in place of tuna.

Serve with salad greens or not--

Here, the salad has a sprig of cilantro and a squiggle of guindilla, mild-hot chile.

Perfect side dish with foods from the grill. For a party, serve it in a big bowl or--

or, serve the salads in individual cups.

Cobblestone Salad with Chickpeas

Empedrado de Garbanzos

Albacore tuna in olive oil.

I’ve used a jar of bonito del norte, albacore tuna in olive oil, for the salad. Drain the tuna and cut into chunks before combining it with the vegetables. I've added diced raw zucchini to the vegetable mix.

Diced zucchini, optional addition.

 ½ cup drained cooked or canned chickpeas
¼ cup diced green pepper
¼ cup diced red bell pepper
½ cup drained, pitted black and/or green olives
¼ cup diced raw zucchini or cucumber 
1 cup drained, chunked canned tuna (5 ounces)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice or Sherry vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 cup diced tomatoes
1-2 hard-cooked eggs
Salad greens, if desired

Dice green peppers for salad.

Tip: It's easier to dice green peppers if you place them skin-side down on the cutting board. 

In a bowl, combine the chickpeas, green and red pepper, olives, zucchini and tuna. Season with salt (about 1 teaspoon) and pepper. Add the oil and lemon juice or vinegar. Cover and refrigerate the salad until ready to serve.

Chickpeas and chopped vegetables make colorful mix.

Don't add the chopped tomatoes and parsley until immediately before serving. That way they don't lose their freshness. 

Either chop the egg and add to the salad or quarter the eggs and use them to garnish the salad plates. Serve the salad with greens, if desired.

Another recipe for “cobblestones:”

Rice with Salt Cod and Beans.

TRAWLING THE FISH MARKETS

Sad to say, my village market no longer has a fish vendor. One stall, in the same family for the 50 years that I have lived here, closed more than a year ago when the owner retired. Now, following a death in the family, the second one has shuttered. I´ve been forced to experiment with frozen fish and, finally, to trawl in deeper waters.

Tuesdays are the best for buying fresh fish. Traditionally, on Mondays fish markets are closed, because the fishermen don’t go out on Sundays. Even now, when much fish comes in from more distant seas, the best of the catch comes in on Tuesdays.

Astonishingly, even during these weeks of quarantine, my favorite hipermercado has had a fantastic selection of fresh fish. I dithered over the variety—wild-caught sea bass as well as farmed bass; line-caught hake, several kinds of sea breams, including the farmed dorada, gilthead. I finally settled on a 3-pound urta (sometimes indexed as hurta), red-banded sea bream. Expensive.

First thing on Tuesday morning at the fish market--a line-up of red-banded sea bream.

Urta is fished off the coast of Cádiz, on the Atlantic side of the Straits of Gibraltar. It’s especially well known in the town of Rota. Rota is a port near Cádiz (Andalusia), within the Sherry triangle. Incidentally, there is a U.S. naval base there. Quite a few Americans received their introduction to Spanish food and to flamenco while stationed at Naval Station Rota.

In Rota, the traditional preparation for urta a la roteña is cooked in a cazuela with onions, peppers, tomatoes and Sherry. The sauce is somewhere between a sofrito and a pisto, or vegetable melange. While once it would be simmered on top of a fire, fishermen’s style, now it is usually cooked in an oven. Rota celebrates Fiestas de la Urta de Rota in early August.

Fillets of bream bake on top of a vegetable-based sauce with Sherry.

Serve the fish from the oven dish or plate it in the kitchen.

Serve the baked fish on top of the juicy vegetables. Potatoes are traditional as a side.

Bream is a firm and flaky white fish.

Good substitutes for the red-banded bream are gilthead, grouper or snapper. Use either a whole fish or fillets.

I started with a whole fish, weighing about 3 pounds. The fish monger removed the scales and guts and separated the head. She removed the lomos, “loins,” the two fillets, and trimmed off the bony fins at the top. I saved the head and all the trimmings to make stock. After cooking, it was easy to pick all the dollops of flesh from them for another meal (chowder!).

This red-banded bream (urta) has been gutted and scaled. The head has been separated and the two fillets removed from the spine. I cut each fillet in half to make four servings. Head, bones and trimmings for making stock.

Sea Bream with Sherry Sauce, Rota Style
Urta a la Roteña

Serves 4.

4 (6-ounce) sea bream fillets
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
6 plum tomatoes (about 1 ¾ pounds)
1 ½ onions
3 Italian frying peppers
3 tablespoons olive oil plus more for drizzling on fish
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 bay leaves
½ cup fino Sherry or manzanilla
1 tablespoon brandy de Jerez (optional)
Chopped parsley to garnish

Season fish with salt and pepper and let it come to room temperature.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Have ready a bowl of ice water. Cut an X in each of the tomatoes and drop them into the boiling water for 30 seconds. Use a slotted spoon to lift them out and into the ice water. Discard hot water.

Slip skins off tomatoes.

When tomatoes are cooled, slip off the skins. Cut them in half and scoop out seeds. Chop the tomatoes. You should have about 3 cups.

Slice the onions thinly in julienne, from stem to root end. Remove stem and seeds from the peppers. Cut them in half lengthwise and slice them crosswise into strips.

Cut peppers into strips.

 Heat the oil in a cazuela or deep skillet. Add the onions, peppers and garlic. Sauté them on medium heat until softened, 8 minutes. Add the tomatoes and bay leaves. Season with 1 teaspoon salt and freshly ground black pepper. Continue cooking until tomatoes give up their juice, 5 minutes. Add the Sherry and brandy, if using. Cook the vegetables until most of the liquid is cooked away, 5 minutes. Vegetables should be quite soft.

Sauce is a melange of onions, peppers and tomatoes cooked with Sherry. 

Place fish fillets on a bed of the cooked vegetables and drizzle with olive oil before baking.

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Spread the vegetables in a cazuela or baking dish just large enough to hold the fish fillets in one layer. Place the fillets on top, skin side up, and drizzle a little oil over them. Bake the fish until it just flakes, 15-20 minutes, depending on thickness of the fillets. If desired, place them under the broiler for another minute to crisp the skin.

Discard the bay leaves.Serve the fish and vegetables, in the baking dish or plated, sprinkled with parsley.

Serve manzanilla or fino Sherry with the fish. 

More recipes for cooking fresh sea breams:
Fish Baked in Salt.
Baked Fish with Potatoes.
Grilled Fish with Caper Dressing.

SERENDIPITY SHOPPING

I’m lucky. My son Ben does my grocery shopping for me so I don’t have to brave the queues outside the door of the hipermercado. He’s a good shopper, gets what’s on the list and is home much faster than I could do it. 

This week, I asked for “Meat—whatever you want to eat.” He brought two ibérico pork tenderloins, the choicest possible meat. At the same time, grandson Leo arrived with a big bag of juice oranges that he had picked at his other grandmother’s finca. The juice made a great sauce for the pork.

Roasted tenderloin of ibérico pork--super tender.

Juice oranges are incredibly sweet at the end of the season. 

I got really lucky when Ben offered to cook the meat too. He would roast it and, as long as the oven was on, make some patatas panaderas, bakery potatoes, and a nectarine crisp with the last of the fruit from our garden. A serendipitous supper.

Sliced pork tenderloin with baked potatoes panaderas.

Pass the orange sauce, please!

Orange sauce complements the pork.

Meat, potatoes and dessert in the oven at once (and I didn't cook)!

Meat is roasted to medium, still pink, so it stays juicy.

Potatoes bake with onions, garlic and olive oil. (See a recipe here.)

Pork Tenderloin with Orange Sauce
Solomillo de Cerdo con Salsa de Naranja

Ibérico pork is usually marbled with fat, that’s why it’s so much more juicy and delicious than regular pork. But, the tenderloin is the leanest cut. When cooking tenderloin, whether ibérico or regular pork, take care not to overcook it or the meat can be dry. (In Spain, ibérico pork is usually served medium-rare.)

Juice oranges, extra sweet.

Serves 4-6.

2 pork tenderloins, each 14-16 ounces
3 cloves garlic
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ teaspoon black peppercorns
½ teaspoon smoked pimentón (paprika)
Sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup lager beer

For the sauce:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
¼ cup diced carrot
1 ¼ cups fresh orange juice
¼ cup water
Sprig of rosemary
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cornstarch (optional)

Crush garlic for marinade.

Place the tenderloins on a sheet of plastic wrap. Crush the garlic, salt and peppercorns in a mortar. Mix in the pimentón. Spread the garlic paste on both sides of the meat. Lay a few sprigs of rosemary on top and roll them tightly in the wrap. Place in a covered container and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours. 

Preheat broiler. Bring meat to room temperature.

Unroll the meat into a shallow roasting pan. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of oil. Place the tenderloins under the broiler until browned on top, 4-5 minutes. Watch closely so meat doesn’t burn. Turn and brown reverse side, 4-5 minutes. 

Set oven temperature to 400ºF. Pour the beer over the meat and roast the meat until medium, 145ºF internal temperature, about 15 minutes more.

Remove the tenderloins to a cutting board. Save the drippings in the pan.  Have the sauce ready.

For the sauce, heat the oil in a heavy saucepan and sauté the onion and carrot 5 minutes. Add the orange juice, water and rosemary. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover the pan. Cook until onions and carrots are very soft, 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat. Discard the sprig of rosemary. Use an immersion blender to puree the vegetables. Add all drippings and juices from the roasting pan to the sauce and blend again.

Return the sauce to the saucepan. Cook, uncovered, until reduced by about a third, 5 minutes. (If desired, thicken the sauce by combining the cornstarch with a little water and stirring into the sauce. Cook, stirring, until thickened.)

Slice the tenderloins and serve them with the orange sauce.

Dessert baked at the same time as meat and potatoes. Nectarine crisp, using the last of the fruit from the garden with a topping of crumbly oats and nuts. (See the recipe for fruit crisp here.)

More recipes for pork tenderloin:

Pork Tenderloin with Whisky Sauce.

Pork Tenderloin with Mushrooms.

Pork Tenderloin in Adobo with Cherry Ketchup.

Pork Tenderloin with Plum Sauce.

Pork Tenderloin with Pomegranate Sauce.