THE SECOND LIFE OF BREAD

 I wound up with a whole loaf of bread and nobody to eat it.  Often, I save chunks of stale bread in the freezer for adding to gazpacho. Bread emulsifies the olive oil, making a thick and creamy soup. But, it’s many, many months until gazpacho season. Migas, another good use for stale bread, is really meant for a big family gathering. Not what to cook for one.

Having recently signed on to the Sin Desperdicios (No Waste) movement, I thought I’d better come up with some good use for this bread. I turned the whole loaf into fried bread crisps that—if I don’t keep munching on them—will last up to a week. The crisps are perfect for adding to soups, crumbling into salads, or using as dippers. Sprinkled with sugar or drizzled with honey, fried bread makes a satisfying breakfast. You can even dunk the crunchy bread into coffee. 

Thinly sliced bread fried in olive oil makes crispy toasts that will keep for days. 

Fried bread for breakfast, with sugar or honey, fruit and jam. Dunk it in the coffee or hot chocolate.

Better than crackers! Serve fried bread with soups of all kinds. Here bread crisps are shown with Fish Soup with Sour Orange (Cachorreñas). More about bitter oranges and a recipe for the soup are here.

Crunchy fried bread goes with salad.

Fried bread is the base for store-bought partridge pâté with pickled onions, olives and red wine.

Ladle garlic soup over slices of fried bread, top with a poached egg and strips of ham. Recipe for garlic soup (maimones) is here.

Crispy Fried Bread

Pan Frito Crujiente

Barra loaf makes 24 slices.

Make fried bread with any type or shape of bread, sandwich loaf or baguette, a big, round hogaza or a bollo (crusty roll). Cut into dice, fried bread becomes croutons (costrones). In strips, they might be called picatostes. This version is made with slices,  Slice the bread thinly (¼ inch), with or without crusts. The fried bread can be seasoned with herbs or spices, if desired. Salt or sugar for savory or sweet.  Extra virgin olive oil is the essential ingredient.

24 slices day-old bread

½ to ¾ cup olive oil

Salt (optional)

Sugar (optional)

Place oil to a depth of ¼ inch in a skillet. Heat the oil on medium-high. Add a crust of bread to the pan. When the crust begins to sizzle and brown, the oil is hot enough to fry the slices. Place them in the oil in a single layer and fry until golden-brown on one side, about 30 seconds. Flip the bread and fry the reverse sides. 

Fry bread in olive oil.

Remove the slices with a spatula, letting them drain briefly. Place in paper towels to absorb excess oil. Continue frying remaining slices, adding more oil as needed. Sprinkle with salt or dust with sugar while still warm. 

When crisps are completely cool, store them in an air-tight container or plastic bag.

More ways with fried bread:

Sweet and Crunchy Fried Bread (Picatostes).

Fried Bread Crumbs (Migas).

SAN ANTÓN AND THE MUTATION OF A STEW

 

(Photo by Mijas Comunicación)

How did a hermit-saint who consumed nothing but bread and water come to be associated with lusty stews replete with pig’s trotters, ears, tripe and belly? Such is the commemoration of the day of San Antón Abad (January 17). Many towns, including Madrid, mark the saint’s day with mass and festivities, often including giant stew pots of pork and garbanzo stew. 

San Antón was known as the protector of all animals, so, in many locales, the priest concludes the mass with blessings for household pets brought to the shrine by villagers. 

San Antón, whose torments by wild beasts have been depicted by artists from Hieronymus Bosch to Salvador Dalí, is often shown accompanied by a pig. The pig in the picture derives from a legend that a wild sow approached the hermit in the desert with her blind boarlets. The saint cured their blindness and, henceforth, the sow accompanied him, fending off all threats. 

The stew, called Olla de San Antón in the Granada and Almería region, contains chickpeas and/or beans and/or dried fava beans, wheat berries, wild fennel, and pig’s ears, trotters, ribs, bacon, plus morcilla, blood sausage. 

  

Interestingly, a recipe for a similar stew, with chickpeas and wheat berries, appears in a 13th century cookbook written by an anonymous Moorish cook—made with beef instead of pig parts! That recipe has survived to the present day in the Sephardic Moroccan-Jewish recipe for oriza, a stew with chickpeas and wheat cooked with beef. 

No pig parts in this stew! It is a Sephardic recipe, similar to the San Antón stew, but with beef instead of pork, chickpeas and wheat kernels.

Wheat berries.

Wheat berries are the whole wheat kernels without husk. Soak them overnight before cooking. Even with slow cooking, they remain quite chewy. Whole-grain rice or pearl barley could be used instead of the wheat.

Wild fennel shoots.

In Granada, it is customary to pick the first tender green shoots of wild fennel to cook with this stew. As most city folk will not have that ingredient, use chopped cultivated fennel bulb. 

Pork and Wheat Stew with Fennel, Granada Style

Olla de San Antón, Estilo Granadino

Pork belly and blood sausage go into this stew with chickpeas, wheat berries and vegetables. The authentic version would also include pig trotters and ears! 

 

If wild fennel shoots are not available, use a bulb of cultivated fennel.

1 cup wheat berries

4 ounces pancetta or bacon

1 cup chopped wild fennel stems or fennel bulb

1 carrot, sliced

2 teaspoons salt

8 ounces morcilla de cebolla (blood sausage with onion)

2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas

2-3 potatoes, cut in pieces

1 thick slice bread

1 tablespoon vinegar

3 cloves garlic

½ teaspoon pimentón (paprika)

Fennel leaves for garnish

Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the wheat berries and let them soak for 12 hours.

Drain the wheat and add to a soup pot with the pancetta, fennel, carrot and salt. Add 6 cups of water.  Bring to a boil, skim off froth that rises. Lower heat and simmer 30 minutes.

Add the morcilla, cooked chickpeas, and potatoes. Simmer 30 minutes more, skimming off excess fat occasionally.

Place the bread in a bowl and sprinkle it with the vinegar. Let it set until vinegar is absorbed. Place the bread in a mortar or blender with the garlic and pimentón. Ladle in enough of the liquid from the soup pot to soften the bread. Blend until smooth.

Stir the mixture from the blender into the soup and cook another 15 minutes. Remove the piece of pancetta and the morcilla from the soup. Use kitchen scissors to cut them into pieces. Return to the soup.

Allow the soup to settle for 10 minutes before serving. Garnish with chopped fennel leaves.

Boiled Beef with Wheat Berries

Olla de Trigo con Añojo (Oriza)

This Sephardic stew with beef often has sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes.

Smash cooked garlic on toasts.

Use stewing beef such as shin, brisket, chuck, cheeks, or breast for this recipe. Both the wheat berries and the chickpeas need to be soaked overnight before cooking.

A whole head of garlic cooked with the meat flavors the broth. After cooking, the softened cloves of garlic can be served spread on toasted bread with olive oil to accompany the stew. 

A net bag is useful for cooking the chickpeas, so they can easily be removed from the cookpot. Also, you can cook double the amount of chickpeas and save some for another use.

1 cup wheat berries (6 ounces)

1 ¼ cups dry chickpeas (8 ounces)

Hot water

1 pound boneless stewing beef

1 onion

3 cloves

2 carrots

1 sweet potato, cut into pieces

1 whole head of garlic

1 bay leaf

10 peppercorns

1 teaspoon pimentón (paprika)

1 tablespoon salt

Fennel or mint sprigs to garnish

Day before cooking the boiled beef: Put the wheat berries in a small pan with water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook gently for 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. Put a lid on it and wrap the pan in a kitchen towel. Let the wheat soak 12 hours.

Place the chickpeas in a bowl. Add hot water to cover them by 3 inches. Allow the chickpeas to soak 12 hours. 

When ready to cook: Drain the chickpeas and the wheat. Cut the beef into three or four chunks. Place 10 cups of fresh water in a large soup pot and bring to a boil. Stick the onion with the cloves and add to the pot with the peeled carrots. Slice the top off the head of garlic and add to the pot. When the water begins to bubble, add the pieces of beef, the wheat berries and the chickpeas. As the water comes to a boil, skim off the skum that rises to the top. Add the bay leaf, peppercorns, pimentón, and salt. Lower the heat to a gentle simmer, cover the pot, and let it cook 60 minutes. 

Taste for salt and add more, if needed. Add the sweet potatoes and cook until meat and chickpeas are very tender, 30 minutes more. 

Skim out the chunks of beef. Cut them into bite-size pieces and return to the pot. Skim out the carrots, slice them and return to the pot. Discard the bay leaf. Skim out the head of garlic to serve separately. 

Remove the pot from the heat and allow the contents to settle 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with sprigs of fennel or mint.

Pictured at left, one of several pots of Potaje de San Antón as made in my pueblo, Mijas. It contains chickpeas, tripe and blood sausage, but not wheat berries.

More photos and a recipe for San Antón Day: The Saint and the Pig. 

WINGING IT

 

These wings were "fried" in a convection oven. 

So, I did not get an air fryer for Christmas. Having read raves from Facebook friends about what a useful appliance is the air fryer, I’ve been wanting to try one.  Then I read that an air fryer is basically the same thing as a convection oven. And, I’ve got a convection oven that I rarely use. Time to put it through its paces.

An air fryer (freidora de aire or freidora sin aceite, without oil) works by producing heat and circulating the heated air by means of a fan. The ingredients to be “fried” are placed in a basket or on a slatted tray so that the heat can circulate under as well as over the pieces of food, allowing them to crisp on the outside while becoming tender on the inside. 

An oven with convection capabilities works similarly. However, my (European) oven doesn’t have a “convection” setting. Rather, it is designated as “true fan cooking,” or, in Spanish, “turbo”.  

To use a convection oven in the same way as an air fryer you need a rack, grid or basket that allows heated air to flow under the food. I placed heat-safe cooling racks on the oven’s rimmed sheet pan. 

I’m starting with basics—chicken wings, potato wedges and roast cauliflower. I was able to lay out 15 wings on the rack at one time, a quantity that would probably have to be done in two batches in an air fryer. Although I can’t compare the results with a true air fryer, I must say, these are pretty good wings! Although, for delicious, nothing can match batter-dipped wings fried in olive oil. 

To go with the wings, air-fried potato wedges and cauliflower and a blue cheese dipping sauce.

Just like the promotions say--crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside.

To dip or not to dip?

Air-Fried Chicken Wings

Alitas en Freidora de Aire

Use all drumettes (the thick section of the wing) or drumettes and flats. (Save the wing tips for the stock pot.)

Use a spoon rather than fingers to sprinkle the spice mixture on the wings, so that, if some of the spice is left, it can be saved for another use without contamination from fingers.

Palette of spices for the wings.

1 ½ pounds chicken wings

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon crushed dried oregano

1 teaspoon pimentón de la Vera dulce (smoked sweet paprika)

¼ teaspoon pimentón de la Vera picante (smoked hot paprika)

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon celery seeds

1 tablespoon olive oil

Rack allows hot air to circulate.

Divide the wings into segments (drumette and flat) and dry them very well. In a bowl combine the salt, oregano, two kinds of pimentón, pepper, cumin, garlic, and celery seeds. Drizzle or spray the chicken pieces with oil. Sprinkle the wings with the spices. 

Preheat oven with fan to 375ºF. Line a rimmed sheet pan with foil to catch drips (I forgot this step). Place rack, grid or basket on the sheet pan. Arrange the wings in a single layer so they are not touching on the rack. 

Roast the wings 5 minutes. Use tongs to turn the wings and roast 5 minutes more. Turn up the oven temperature to 400ºF. Roast 5 minutes and turn again. Roast 5 minutes more or until the wings are browned and crisped. Remove. 

Air-Fried Potatoes and Cauliflower

Patatas y Coliflor Fritas

Potatoes and cauliflower were air fried as well.

Cut potatoes in wedges. Cut cauliflower crosswise through the stem in slabs about 1 inch thick. Toss potatoes and cauliflower with olive oil, salt, pepper and chopped rosemary. Arrange the pieces on rack positioned over a baking sheet. Roast in preheated oven with fan at 400ºF. Turn the pieces with tongs after 5 minutes. Roast them until browned, 10 minutes more.

Blue Cheese Dipping Sauce

Salsa de Queso Azul para Dipear

This quick sauce can accompany the chicken wings, the potatoes, the cauliflower, or dippers such as endive leaves and celery sticks.

1/3 cup coarsely chopped green onions

5 ounces blue cheese (1 cup crumbled)

½ cup Greek yogurt

2 tablespoons dry Sherry

Salt, to taste

Pimentón picante (hot paprika) to garnish

Place the green onions in a mini food processor and chop them finely. Add the blue cheese, yogurt, and Sherry. Process until the mixture is smooth. Add salt to taste. Chill the sauce, covered. Serve sprinkled with pimentón. 

Another recipe for fried wings:

Crispy Fried Chicken Wings with Green Chile Sauce.

Everything you need to know about pimentón/paprika here.

ONE MORE FEAST DAY!

 

The Reyes Magos bearing gifts, on their way to Bethlehem, as depicted in the Belén, or nativity scene, of the parish church in the village of Mijas. 

Today (January 6) is the last day of the holidays, el Día de los Reyes Magos, also known as Three Kings or Epiphany, when the Kings amble into the village aboard camels or whirl in on helicopters, bringing toys and goodies to children and, if the TV advertising is any indication, perfume to the men and women. One more feast to go.

Traditional for the day is roscón de reyes, made with an egg-rich brioche dough with butter and quite a lot of sugar, flavored with dark rum, grated orange zest and orange blossom water. My roscón, however, is a little fishy. Literally fishy. Instead of a cake, it’s a fish mousse made in a ring mold. 

A savory version of the roscón de reyes, made with minced fish.

Cream makes a rich mousse of two kinds of fish.

The fish mousse can be served hot or cold, garnished as desired.

Salmon Mousse 

Roscón de Salmon 

I used half salmon and half rosada, a mild, white fish. Other fish that could be used are hake, cod, whiting, sole, halibut, snapper. Or, omit the salmon and use white fish plus chopped shrimp for the mousse. Cream adds richness and distinguishes this mousse from your ordinary salmon loaf. 

Season the mousse mixture with a good pinch of a favorite dry herb. I used wild fennel pollen, but you could opt for thyme, tarragon, basil or oregano. If you’re unsure about whether you’ve used enough salt and seasoning, cook a spoonful of the mixture in a small skillet and taste it. 

The recipe as given will fill a 6-cup ring mold or loaf pan. As I didn’t have a ring mold that size, I used a 4-cup ring mold plus 8 (¼-cup) muffin cups. Use a silicone ring mold if you have one. If using an ordinary metal mold, oil the ring mold and line it with plastic wrap, leaving enough to hang over the edges of the mold. 

If you want to get fancy, place lemon slices, strips of pimiento, olives, etc., in the bottom of the mold before ladling the fish-egg mixture into it. When the mousse is unmolded the garnishes will stud the top. 

Or, after unmolding the mousse, garnish it as desired with lemon, olives, capers, chives, strips of piquillo peppers, etc. It’s good hot or cold with sauce, as desired. Hollandaise for super richness. Tartare, piquillo mayonnaise or a simple yogurt-caper mixture. 

Salmon plus white fish for the mousse.

1 pound skinless fillets of white fish

1 pound skinless fillets of salmon

¼ cup parsley

3 tablespoons fine dry breadcrumbs

2 teaspoons salt

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup finely chopped sweet onion or leeks

¼ teaspoon smoked pimentón

2 tablespoons white wine

1 cup cream

5 eggs

1 tablespoon water

Freshly ground black pepper

1 cooked carrot, diced

Pinch of crumbled herbs

Chopped lettuce, lemon slices, strips of red pepper, chives, etc., to garnish

Chop fish in food processor.

Cut both kinds of fish into 1-inch pieces. Place the parsley in a food processor and process until it is chopped. Add the pieces of fish, breadcrumbs and 1 teaspoon of the salt. Process until the fish is coarsely ground. 

Heat the oil in a small skillet and sauté the onions on medium heat until softened, 5 minutes. Stir in the pimentón. Add the wine and cook 2 minutes to cook off the alcohol. Add the cream and bring to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat.

In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with 1 tablespoon of water and the remaining 1 teaspoon of salt and the pepper. Stir in the onion and cream from the pan. Add the diced carrot and herbs. Add all of the ground fish mixture. Combine well.

Bake in ring mold.

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Spoon the fish mixture into the ring mold(s). Fold the plastic wrap, if using, over the top of the mold. Place the mold in a larger oven-safe pan. Add boiling water to half the depth of the mold. 

Bake 10 minutes. Lower oven temperature to 300ºF. Bake until the mousse is set and a thin skewer inserted comes out clean, 45-50 minutes. Cool the mold on a rack for 10 minutes.

Unmold mousse and garnish.

With a thin knife, loosen the edges around the mousse. Place a serving platter on top of the ring. Using a dry towel to protect the hands from heat, carefully invert the mold on top of the platter. Peel off the plastic wrap and discard. Garnish the mousse as desired. 

Or, bake mousse in muffin cups.

Yogurt-Caper Sauce

Salsa de Yogur con Alcaparras

Quick to mix up, this sauce with a little tang goes with the fish mousse whether served hot or cold.

½ cup Greek yogurt

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Grated lemon zest

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Salt to taste

2 tablespoons capers

1 tablespoon chopped scallions or chives

Mix all the ingredients. Serve the sauce at room temperature.

Recipe for a not-quite-traditional roscón de reyes is here.

A recipe for Fish Terrine with Rockfish.

More about the white fish called rosada.