WHEN YOU HAVEN’T GOT AN EEL

 

All-i-pebre means "garlic and pepper." It's a Valencian fish stew usually made with eel. This version is with monkfish.

Writing about the foods of València recently, I was reminded of my visit to the great Mercat Central de València where, amongst other fabulous produce, seafood and meats, I saw tanks of live eels. 

Eels are fished in the nearby Albufera, wetlands where rice is grown, not far from València capital. At Restaurante Matandeta in Alfafar, while waiting for our paella to cook, I sampled a dish of eels, prepared all-i-pebre. 

“All” means “garlic” in Valencian lingo and pebre is “pepper,” in this case, specifically dried red peppers that are ground to powder—pimentón. Pimentón here is the same as sweet paprika, not smoked pimentón de la Vera. 

Eel is anguila, a fish that spawns in the Sargasso Sea between Bermuda and the Azores. The larvae migrate with the Gulf Stream to estuaries on the European continent. Tiny elvers, netted at this stage, are called angulas and are prized catch. The ones that escape capture make their way up rivers and spend the next 10 years growing into full-sized eels. 

Where I live, eel does not turn up in the local markets. But this simple fishermen’s stew can be made with almost any seafood. Monkfish (angler or, in Spanish, rape) is a firm-fleshed fish that is perfect. Rosada would also be a good substitute for eel.

Pimentón gives the ruddy color to the stew of fish and potatoes. A little hot chile adds pungency.

Monkfish with Garlic and Pimentón

All-i-Pebre de Rap

Vary the amount of garlic and pimentón to suit your tastes. This is one dish in which a dose of hot chile—guindilla—is used. Again, to taste.

Monkfish instead of eel.

1 pound 14 ounces boneless monkfish 

Salt

6 cloves garlic

Parsley leaves

1 teaspoon coarse salt

2 pounds potatoes 

½ cup olive oil

Crushed dry red chile (to taste)

2 tablespoons pimentón (paprika)

4 cups water or fish stock

Chopped parsley to garnish

Cut the fish fillets crosswise into 2 ½-inch chunks. Sprinkle them with salt and allow to come to room temperature.

Peel the cloves of garlic, chop them coarsely and place in a mortar with a few leaves of parsley and the coarse salt. Crush the garlic to a paste.

Add pimentón to potatoes.

Peel and snap the potatoes into, roughly, 1- to 1 ½- inch pieces. Heat the oil in an earthenware cazuela or deep pan on medium heat. Fry the potatoes slowly, turning frequently, 5 minutes. The potatoes shouldn’t brown. Scrape the crushed garlic into the pan with the potatoes. Stir and fry 5 minutes more.

Add the crushed chile and pimentón to the potatoes. Add the water or stock. Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce heat and cook 5 minutes. Add the chunks of fish and cook, turning the fish once, until it is cooked through and potatoes are tender, 10 to 15 minutes.  Let rest 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with chopped parsley.

More foods from Valencia here.

A YIN-YANG SALAD

 

Black sesame seeds.

An open packet of black sesame seeds reminded me of gomasio, a sesame-salt condiment that I used to make, way back in my hippy days (late 1960s), when we dabbled in Macrobiotics. 

Some of the expats in the Spanish village where I still live came round with a book called You Are All Sanpaku by George Ohsawa (translated by William Dufty). Sanpaku is a Japanese term meaning “the whites of your eyes are showing beneath the pupils”—a sure sign of physical and spiritual imbalance, according to the book. 

We checked each other out. If the whites were showing, you were told, “Hey, man, your Yin and Yang are out of whack.” The cure was a Macrobiotic diet, consisting of whole grains, organic and seasonal vegetables, little meat and fat, absolutely no sugar at all.  That may sound like an ideal diet for the whole world, but it had some severe restrictions. It was almost the antithesis of the Mediterranean diet and here we were, living in sight of the Med. 

For instance, tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes were to be completely avoided, because they were the most yin of vegetables.  Poison to the system. Fruit, too, was yin. An occasional apple might be acceptable, if it was baked to increase its yang properties. But citrus? No way. Maybe one orange a year. And we lived in an orange grove. Salads and raw vegetables were yin. Adios, gazpacho. Yeast was yin, so macrobiotic bread, as produced by local practitioners, was as dense as lead weights.

Nevertheless, we gave it a try, beginning with the 10-day brown rice fasting diet, which was supposed to sort out the body´s balance. At the end of which, I had gained weight. You were supposed to restrict fluid intake so you only peed once a day. I never drank a drop and still peed six or seven times. I was perpetually yinned-out.

But, I picked-up some new habits during my macrobiotic period. One was to eat slowly, chew 100 times, to reduce the grain to liquid before swallowing. Not that I count anymore. In a little macrobiotic cookbook, I found a really great recipe for roasted brown rice with vegetables that I still make. And, in this white-bread nation, Spain, I got hooked on whole grains. I also acquired a real fondness for that yang condiment, gomasio, toasted sesame seed ground with sea salt.

This week, once I had made a batch of gomasio, I experimented a bit, sprinkling it over some very yin-ful strawberries. Add some olive oil dressing, call it salad. I make no claims that this salad balances yin and yang elements. In fact, I imagine it bends strongly toward yin. But it is gorgeous and, with the contrasts in flavors and textures, quite delicious.

Sliced strawberries with vinaigrette, balls of goat cheese and a few rose petals amongst the salad greens. The salad is speckled with toasted black sesame-salt.

Strawberry Salad with Goat Cheese and Sesame Salt

Ensalada de Fresas con Queso de Cabra y Sal de Sésamo

Use either black or tan sesame seed (called ajonjolí or sésamo in Spanish) for the gomasio. The cheese balls, with two kinds of goat cheese, might be replaced with cubes of mozzarella, feta or any queso fresco. Because the roses in my garden are fabulous right now, I’ve added (optional) rose petals to the salad. Black olives or blueberries make a visual contrast with the red strawberries. If you have a choice, go for the briny olives. Blueberries are pretty, but insipid.

For the sesame salt (gomasio):

3 tablespoon black or tan sesame seeds

1 ½ teaspoons coarse sea salt

Crushed sesame and salt.

Toast the sesame seeds in a heavy skillet on medium heat until they are lightly toasted and fragrant. (It may be difficult to judge the color for the black seeds.) Add the salt to the sesame seeds and toast a few seconds so the mixture is completely dry.

Remove the skillet from the heat and empty the sesame seeds into a bowl. Let them cool. Working in small batches, crush the sesame seeds and salt in a mortar. Store the sesame salt in a jar with a tight lid.

Fresh goat cheese.

For the cheese balls (bolitas de queso):

Makes about 2-dozen (1-inch) balls.

3 ½ ounces goat cheese log (½ cup diced), room temperature

3 ½ ounces fresh goat cheese (½ cup diced), room temperature 

Milk or plain yogurt to thin the cheese

Olive oil for shaping

Place the two kinds of diced cheese in a mini-processor. Process until smooth and creamy, adding milk or yogurt a teaspoon at a time if mixture is too stiff to process. 

Oil a flat container. Oil the hands. Shape the cheese mixture into marble-sized balls. Place them in the container and chill them, covered, until ready to assemble the salad.

For the dressing (aliño para ensalada):

Makes more dressing than is needed for the strawberry salad

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

½ teaspoon pimentón de la Vera (smoked pimentón)

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon brine from a jar of olives or capers

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Whisk together the mustard, pimentón, salt and vinegar. Stir in the brine. Whisk in the oil until dressing is emulsified. 

For the salad:

Serves 4 to 6.

12 ounces strawberries (2 cups sliced)

¼ cup pitted black olives (or blueberries)

3 tablespoons salad dressing (above)

1 to 2 cups mesclun, microgreens, rucula, red endive or baby spinach 

Rose petals (optional)

Cheese balls (recipe above)

Pea shoots (optional)

Basil leaves

Sesame salt (recipe above)

Wash the strawberries, remove hulls and slice or quarter them. Place them in a bowl with the olives or blueberries and add 2 tablespoons of the prepared dressing. 

Place the mesclun or other salad greens in a small bowl and toss them lightly with 1 tablespoon of the dressing. 

Arrange mesclun/greens on a platter or individual salad plates with the rose petals, if using. Spread the strawberries on the greens. Add the balls of cheese. Garnish with pea shoots, if using, and basil. Sprinkle the strawberries and cheese balls with sesame salt.

More recipes with strawberries:

Strawberries with Custard Pudding (Natillas) and Meringue.

Instant Strawberry Shortcake.

Strawberries with Sponge Cake.

Strawberries with Orange-Blossom Sauce.

LAMB—THE 2ND, 3RD, 4TH AND 5TH TIME AROUND

 

A five-pound leg of lamb for dinner and only two people to eat it--a lot of leftovers to look forward to. (Link to the recipe for Roast Lamb with Spring Herbs is below.)

We were three for Easter dinner and one was vegetarian. Nevertheless, I wanted roast leg of lamb, roasted with lots of herbs. To start, we had asparagus grilled on the plancha, with sour orange mayonnaise. I served the lamb with browned potatoes on the side, a taboulleh salad (made with cous cous, not bulgur), eggplant pisto and a vegetable terrine. Strawberries with almond cookies for dessert.

From a five-pound leg of lamb, now I have a week’s worth of leftover lamb! 

Leftovers for two

1st day—sliced lamb reheated with pan juices, embellished with preserved lemon and chopped dates. I dithered, almost deciding to serve the lamb cold with a mojo verde (green chile sauce, somewhat like chimichurri), but I wanted to reheat the lamb to melt the fat. 

2nd day--cous cous with lamb, vegetables and chickpeas.

Leftovers from Easter dinner become a whole new meal--cous cous, eggplant pisto and roast lamb are recycled, with the addition of Moroccan spices, canned chickpeas, fresh carrots and zucchini.

3rd day: Lamb with spinach, Indian spices.

My favorite recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery (BBC Books; 1994), Lamb with Spinach (Dilli ka saag gosht). Made with spinach from a bag and pieces of roast lamb, it is quick to prepare. 

4th day: Stuffed Eggplant, Turkish style.

Scraps of cooked lamb are folded in with onions and tomatoes and stuffed into eggplants. (Recipe below.) Served with rice pilaf and cucumbers with dill on the side. 

5th day: Bone broth and vegetable soup

Lamb bone broth becomes spring vegetable soup.

Bonus: Lamb Shank. I separated the shank before roasting the lamb, carved the meat off the bone and saved the bone for the soup pot. The meat cut into pieces made a quick sauté for one—me—with garlic and rosemary, served with a little homemade chutney. 

Stuffed Eggplant (Karniyarik)

Berenjena Rellena

I first sampled this stuffed eggplant dish at a cooking workshop in Istanbul given by Selin Rozanes of Turkish Flavors. There we made it with raw ground beef. In this version, I have used the last scraps of roast lamb, cut off the bones. The lamb needs only a few minutes to cook with the onions and tomatoes. 

Long, thin eggplants are best for this recipe. The technique calls for peeling the eggplants in stripes, slow-frying the whole eggplants in oil, then “splitting their bellies” and stuffing. The eggplants finish in the oven. Delicious served with rice pilaf. 

Turkish pepper sauce.

You will need Turkish pepper sauce, a mildly hot condiment. It’s easily made by blending roasted red bell peppers (or drained ones from a jar or can) with a spoonful of hot pimentón, Aleppo pepper or red pepper flakes; lemon juice and salt.  

The following recipe is for two servings, but the recipe is easily doubled or tripled.

Chopped lamb for stuffing eggplants.

2 medium eggplant (each about 10 ounces)

Olive oil

3 ounces cooked lamb (about 1 cup, chopped)

¾ cup grated or finely chopped onion

1 clove garlic

½ cup crushed tomato

1 tablespoon Turkish pepper sauce (directions above)

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

¼ cup chopped parsley

Sliced tomato, for topping

Sliced green pepper, for topping

1/3 cup hot water

Peel off strips of eggplant skin.

Trim the eggplants’ stems but don’t remove them. Use a vegetable peeler to remove three lengthwise strips of the skin, striping the peel. Heat enough oil to cover the bottom of a skillet. Fry the whole eggplants gently until they are golden on all sides and beginning to soften. Remove them and place in an oiled baking dish with the flatter sides up. 

Slit eggplants, spread them open.

With a knife, slit open the eggplant from top to bottom, without cutting them all the way through.  Use the fingers to gently spread open the slit, making a place for the filling.

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Chop or shred the cooked lamb and set aside.

Add more oil to the skillet, if needed. Sauté the onion and garlic on medium heat until softened, 5 minutes. Add the crushed tomato and pepper sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Cook until sauce is thick, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the cooked lamb and heat. Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in the parsley.

Eggplants ready to bake.

Divide the lamb mixture between the two eggplants, pressing it into the slits and mounding it slightly. (If there is too much stuffing mixture, spread it around the eggplants in the baking dish.) Top with sliced tomato and green pepper. Pour the hot water into the baking dish. 

Bake until the eggplants are bubbling hot and the pepper slices are cooked, about 30 minutes. Serve hot.

Cous Cous with Leftover Lamb

Cuscus con Cordero Asado

Instant cous cous (pictured top right) was presented the first time round as taboulleh, a salad with herbs, olive oil and lemon juice. After reheating in the microwave, I added raisins and almonds.

Eggplant pisto (top, left), a vegetable stew with peppers, onions and tomato, makes the basis of the cooking sauce for the carrots and zucchini.

Ras el hanout spice blend (center) gives authentic Moroccan flavor to this quickie meal with leftovers. If you don't have ras el hanout, combine a spoonful each of ground cumin and coriander with a half-teaspoon of turmeric, powdered ginger, cinnamon, black pepper and a pinch of cloves. 

Add canned chickpeas, well drained, and some water or lamb bone broth to the pan. Cook until carrots and zucchini are tender. Add chunks of leftover roast lamb. Serve the lamb and vegetables around a heap of cous cous. Garnish with fresh cilantro.

Lamb Bone Broth

Caldo de Cordero

Bones, skin and trimmings from the roast lamb and the uncooked shank are cooked with aromatics to make a flavorful broth. Once strained, the broth is chilled overnight. Then the congealed fat can be skimmed off.  

For the vegetable soup, sauté chopped onions, garlic, celery, carrots and peppers in olive oil. Add cut-up vegetables--I've used chard, zucchini, potatoes and, for a touch of spring, fresh fava beans.  

Peel the fava beans? 

I don't usually peel the favas but I liked their bright green color when the outer skins are removed. They only need a few minutes to cook when the other vegetables are ready. The rest of the jar of chickpeas finish the soup. It's seasoned with cumin and thyme. 

Indian Spiced Lamb with Spinach 

Cordero con Espinacas Estilo India

Toast the spices and aromatics--peppercorns, cloves, cardamom, onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, chile--add spinach (from a bag) and yogurt. Stir in chunks of already-cooked lamb at the end. Serve with rice.

Eggplant pisto

Eggplant pisto--served as a side with the roast lamb; recycled as the cooking sauce for the cous cous. The recipe for basic pisto is here.

Taboulleh with cous cous.

Cous cous taboulleh salad with fresh herbs, served as a side dish for the Easter dinner. The recipe for this version of taboulleh is here.

Recipe for Roast Lamb with Spring Herbs.

Recipe for the Vegetable Terrine.

A CROSS-CULTURAL COOKIE

 This week three religious holidays converge—the Christian Semana Santa and Pascua de Resurrección (Holy Week and Easter), the Jewish Passover or Pesach (Pascua Judía) and the Muslim Ramadan. 

Once upon a time, before the Reconquest and the Expulsion (1492), Spain was a land of convivencia, where Christians, Muslims (known as the “Moors”) and Sephardic Jews inhabited the same towns and villages. 

Here’s a cookie of convivencia, one that might have been prepared by all three of those communities. Almendrados are a sweet treat for Easter dinner, for the Passover table when no wheat flour or leavening is permitted, or for iftar, the meal that ends the Ramadan fasting at sundown. 

Almond cookies are a sweet treat for spring holiday meals.

Pair almendrados with seasonal fruit such as strawberries and nísperos, loquats.

Almendrados with fruit cup of sliced berries and loquats. Whipped cream is optional.

The cookies are nutty and chewy.

The recipe comes from Repostería Monacal de las Hermanas Clarisas (Ardatz y S.P.A.M., San Sebastian; 1999), a collection of dessert and pastry recipes from Clarisa convents across Spain. This recipe was contributed by the nuns of the Monasterio de la Ascension de Nuestro Señor in Lerma (Burgos). It differs from other almendrado recipes (including those in Sephardic cookbooks) in that the eggs are separated and the whites beaten stiff, producing a cookie with a lighter texture. 

I decreased the proportion of sugar called for in the original recipe (1 kilo almonds and 1 kilo sugar). You could decrease the quantity even more. In fact, next time I make almendrados, I’m going to try them sugar-free. 

Grind almonds to flour.

Use store-bought unsweetened ground almond flour, if you can get it. Otherwise, use a food processor to grind blanched and skinned almonds to flour. If you’re starting with natural almonds, they need to be blanched in boiling water and skinned before toasting and grinding them. 

I used three large eggs for this recipe and found that, because the almond dough was fairly soft, the cookies flattened out considerably in baking. That’s why I’m suggesting in the recipe that you use medium-sized eggs. 

Line the cookie sheets with baking parchment. The cookies while still hot from the oven are likely to break if you try to remove them from the sheet. Slide the sheet of parchment with the cookies onto cooling racks. Allow the cookies to cool before lifting them off the parchment.  

The cookies are good served with coffee or tea. They pair nicely with spring fruit desserts. Depending on your religious proclivities: add liqueur or fruit juice to the fruit. Finish with a dollop of whipped cream or keep it dairy-free. 

Almond Cookies

Almendrados

Makes about 40 cookies.

16 ounces blanched almonds or unsweetened almond flour 

1 ½ cups sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoons grated lemon zest

1/8 teaspoon salt

3 medium eggs, separated

40 almonds to decorate the cookies

Preheat oven to 400ºF.

Spread the almonds (or almond flour) in a rimmed sheet pan. Place in the oven, stirring once, until they are very lightly golden, 8-10 minutes. Watch carefully so that the almonds don’t burn. (Almond flour will toast even faster.) (If toasting the almonds in advance of making the cookies, turn the oven off. If continuing with the cookies, reduce heat to 350ºF.)

Allow the almonds to cool, then grind them in a food processor as coarse or fine as you like. Place the ground almonds in a mixing bowl. Combine the sugar in a small bowl with the cinnamon, zest and salt. Rub the sugar between the fingers to thoroughly mix the zest with the sugar. Add to the bowl with the ground almonds. 

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Stir the yolks to blend, then fold them into the whites. Add the eggs in two parts to the almonds and sugar. Fold the eggs in as lightly as possible. 

Set oven temperature to 350ºF. Line cookie sheets with baking parchment. 

Ready to bake.

Using fingers or two spoons, take up a piece of the almond mixture and shape into a ball about the size of a walnut. If dough seems sticky, dip hands or spoons in cold water. Place the balls on the cookie sheets, spacing them 2 inches apart, as they will spread in baking. Press an almond into the center of each ball.

Slide the sheet of parchment with cookies onto cooling rack.

Bake the cookies until they are lightly golden, 15 to 18 minutes. Remove the sheets from the oven and slide the whole sheet of parchment onto a cooling rack. Do not try to remove the cookies from the parchment until they are completely cool. 

The cookies keep well, stored in an air-tight container. 

More almond cookies: 

Almond Puffs (Suspiros).

Almond Ring Cookies (Melindres).

More about loquats here.

Wishing you a sweet and blessed holiday/springtime. 

THE ITERATIONS OF A COD SALAD

 

A Catalan springtime salad with salt cod, tuna, olives and a romesco dressing.

And, suddenly, it is spring! I’ve moved from soup to salad in the space of a week. Because it’s also the start of Semana Santa, Holy Week leading to the Easter festival, I am having my annual bacalao fest. 

Bacalao is dry salt cod. This year I have simplified prep by purchasing a package of bacalao desalado y desmigado—salt cod that has already been desalted and separated into small pieces. (See below for how-to proceed if you’re starting out with whole pieces of salt cod.) I looked to Catalonia for the salad inspiration.

Following are three salad recipes that all include cod. You can make each one separately or you can make a double portion of the first, simple, iteration and morph it into the more complex salads. 

The first iteration: esqueixada is shredded cod with chopped tomatoes and spring onions, studded with olives, dressed with extra virgin olive oil.

Ringing the changes: this is empedrat, meaning "cobblestones," so called because the salad is studded with cobbles of beans, olives, diced cod. 

Add chunks of tuna and strips of anchovies to the basic cod salad and serve it on a bed of escarole with a dressing of romesco sauce. This is xató, the same salad pictured at the top of the page.

Shredded Cod Salad

Esqueixada de Bacalao

Esqueixada looks a little like “exquisite,” but in fact means “shredded”—what you do to the salt cod after it has been desalted by soaking. 

Scraps of desalted cod for salad.

In theory, desalted cod does not need cooking, but I prefer to simmer it briefly to soften it and to eliminate any off-flavors. Add the desalted cod to simmering water for 1 minute. After draining well, pick through the scraps of cod to make sure there are no bits of bones remaining. 

If good salad tomatoes are not available this early in the season, try using cherry tomatoes in this salad. 

To emphasize the Catalan flavor, use Catalan Arbequina olive oil and olives and a Penedès (or cava) white wine vinegar.

Serves 4 as a starter.

1 (packed) cup pieces of desalted cod (8 ounces)

1 large tomato

1 or 2 spring onions or several scallions (½ cup chopped)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

½ tablespoon white wine vinegar

Salt to taste

½ cup pitted black olives

First variation:

¼ cup diced green bell pepper

¼ cup diced red bell pepper

Bring a pan of water to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Add the cod and simmer 1 minute. Drain the cod, refresh in cold water and let it drain well in a colander. Pick through the pieces of cod, removing any bits of skin or bone and pull the flesh into bite-size pieces.

Peel tomatoes for salad.

Peel the tomato and cut it into small dice. Place the tomato in a bowl. Slice or dice the onions or scallions and add to the tomatoes. Add the shredded cod, saving a few larger pieces to garnish the salad. Add the oil, vinegar and salt to taste. Mix in the olives. Chill the salad.

To serve, spread the salad on a platter. Place a few larger pieces of cod on top. 

Same salad with added green and red peppers.

The first variation of the salad calls for the addition of diced green and red pepper to the tomatoes and spring onion mix. They add color and crunch.

“Cobblestone” Salad with Cod and Beans

Empedrat

Add cooked white beans and hard-cooked eggs to the original cod salad for a substantial lunch dish.

In Catalonia, this would be made with small white beans called mongetes. Any white beans or black-eyed peas can be used. If using canned beans, drain and rinse them before dressing with oil and vinegar. Make the esqueixada salad, above, with the olives. Add it to the beans and garnish with hard-boiled eggs. A new iteration. This would make a good lunch salad.

Serves 4.

2 cups cooked and drained white beans

1 clove garlic, minced

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Finely chopped parsley

2 cups of esqueixada cod and tomato salad (recipe above)

2 hard-boiled eggs

Place the beans in a bowl. Add the garlic, oil and vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper. 

Immediately before serving, add 1 tablespoon parsley to the beans. Spread the beans on a platter. Spoon the esqueixada (cod, tomatoes, onions, olives) over the beans. Cut the eggs in half and garnish the platter. Sprinkle with additional parsley.

Cod and Tuna Salad with Romesco Dressing

Xató

This salad includes some of the same ingredients as the original esqueixada—cod, tomatoes, olives—with the addition of tuna and anchovies. They are spread on a bed of escarole and dressed with romesco sauce. 

Romesco dressing for the xató salad.

For the romesco dressing:

Make this sauce with all almonds or, if you like hazelnuts, use part almonds, part hazelnuts. It’s customary to toast them lightly, giving them depth of flavor and making them easier to grind in a mortar. (I quit on the mortar and switched to the food processor.) 

The basic recipe makes a thick, heavy sauce. To make it easier to mix with salad ingredients, thin the romesco with water. (The un-thinned sauce makes a sensational dip, for chips or celery sticks.)

Ñoras are a dried, bittersweet pepper (not hot). Reconstitute them by cooking/soaking, then scraping the pulp from inside the peppers. If ñoras aren’t available, use a heaping tablespoon of pimentón (sweet paprika) stirred to a paste in 2 tablespoons of water. 

The romesco dressing can be made in advance and kept at room temperature for 1 day. If to be stored longer, refrigerate, covered, but bring to room temperature before using.

Almonds and ñora peppers.

2 ñoras (see above for substitution)

½ cup almonds and hazelnuts

1 slice baguette

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

2 cloves garlic

½ teaspoon salt

Pinch of cayenne

Pinch of dried mint

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

¼ to ½ cup ñora liquid or water, to thin the sauce

Scrape pulp from ñoras.

Remove stems and seeds from the ñoras. Place them in a small pan with water, bring to a boil and simmer 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and allow the ñoras to soak 1 hour.

Skim the ñoras out, saving the liquid. Spread the ñoras open on a cutting board. Scrape the pulp from the shells. Discard the skins. Chop the pulp.

Lightly toast the almonds and hazelnuts in a small skillet. Place the slice of bread in a small bowl and add the vinegar. Soak the bread until it is softened. Squeeze it out and discard the vinegar.

Grind the almonds/hazelnuts in a mortar or food processor. Add the pulp from the ñoras (or the pimentón paste), the garlic, salt, cayenne and mint. Process until smooth. Add the oil and process until emulsified. Add enough liquid to thin the sauce to the consistency of heavy cream.

For the xató salad:

You can use the Esqueixada salad (recipe above) with its cod, tomatoes and olives. Use a slotted spoon to add it to the greens so the excess dressing doesn’t thin the romesco.Otherwise, start with pieces of cod and add tomatoes and olives.

Escarole or other salad greens

1 cup esqueixada or pieces of desalted cod

½ cup drained chunks of light tuna

Anchovy fillets

Black olives

Sliced tomatoes

Romesco dressing

Spread the escarole on a platter. Scatter the pieces of cod and tuna on top. Add strips of anchovies, olives and tomatoes.  Top with spoonfuls of romesco dressing or serve the dressing separately for each person to mix with the salad.

Mix the romesco dressing with the greens and pieces of fish.

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A whole split of bacalao--dry salt cod.

To prepare bacalao from scratch:

Start desalting the salt cod one to three days before you intend to use it (less time for smaller pieces). Scrape off surface salt and wash the fish in running water. Put it in a bowl and cover with water. Soak the bacalao, covered and refrigerated, 24 to 48 hours, changing the water three times a day. Each time you change the water, wash the fish under running water, squeeze it gently and wash out the container.

After soaking, place the pieces of bacalao on a clean towel and cover with another to soak up excess water. Remove scales and bones. The skin may be required for some dishes, as its gelatinous quality thickens the sauce. Big chunks are usually cooked whole, but scraps can be cooked, de-boned and used in fritters, fish balls and salads.

More recipes with romesco:

Artichoke Salad with Romesco.

Grilled Onions with Romesco (Calçotada).

Another "cobblestones" recipe (plus links to eight more bacalao recipes):

Rice with Salt Cod and Beans.

Another salad with salt cod:

Andalusian Orange and Cod Salad.