RECIPES FROM AL-ANDALUS

 

La Baltasara, Antonio Gala museum.

A tasting of foods from al-Andalus in a lush garden that might have delighted a Moorish prince. Such was the evening I enjoyed recently—Cocina Andalusí en la Baltasara—presented by cookbook author Ana Abellán—in Alhaurín el Grande (Málaga). 

La Baltasara was the country home and literary retreat of Antonio Gala, Spanish poet, playwright and novelist. Now converted to a museum containing Gala’s personal effects and library, La Baltasara serves as a cultural center for the town of Alhaurín. It was an evocative setting for a tasting of dishes that might have been served in medieval al-Andalus. 

Al-Andalus was Moorish Spain, Islamic Spain. It encompassed much of the Iberian Peninsula between 711 and 1492. The cuisine of the era—before the discovery of the Americas and the introduction of tomatoes—is still reflected in modern-day cooking.

Cookbook author Ana Abellán (center) serves tastings of anchovy escabeche assisted by Chef Lutz Petry and María Eloy, poet and member of the editorial board of ColandCol publishers.

Ana Abellán, whose book, Berza y Pringá, las Recetas de Málaga Pueblo a Pueblo (ColandCol Ediciones; 2023), features recipes from every pueblo in the province of Málaga, planned the tasting to showcase local produce such as the oranges of the Guadalhorce Valley and the Aloreña olives and olive oil of the area. 

Eggplant tortillita.

The dishes that Ana demo-ed: Porra de naranja con bacalao ahumado, a thick, cold soup related to gazpacho, with oranges instead of tomatoes.

Tortillitas de berenjenas, eggplant omelets, adapted from a recipe found in an Andalusí-Arabic cookbook from the 13th century written by Ibn Razin al-Tujībī.

Escabeche de boquerones, fresh anchovies in an escabeche marinade, and 

Rosquillas de cítricos, citrus-flavored fried doughnuts.

The porra de naranja—which I translate as “Orange Gazpacho Cream”—is a dish with peasant origins. Field hands made it for their midday meal, mashing bread, garlic and olive oil in a wooden bowl then gathering around to dip chunks of bread into the tasty mash.

Porra—which is a close cousin of Córdoba’s salmorejo—is easily made in a blender or food processor. The classic version is served with chopped cooked egg and chunks of canned tuna. In a reference to another Málaga dish, a salad of oranges, olives and salt cod, Ana Abellán served her version with chopped smoked cod. Brilliant. 

Orange Gazpacho Cream

Porra de Naranja

Porra, like salmorejo, is a thick cream usually served cold. The classic version is made with tomatoes, but this one has orange juice in the mix. Serve it as a thick soup or as a dip.

Three large oranges make 1 cup of juice. Use blood oranges if you want a cream with deeper color. Use a dense-crumbed country-style bread. The bread is easier to pulp in a food processor than in a blender. Removing crusts helps to soften the bread. Add water as needed to run the processor, but keep the porra as thick as possible.

Serve the porra with spoons or with crackers or breadsticks for dipping. It makes a good merienda, afternoon snack, or can be served as a starter for dinner. 

Serves 4-6.

The porra is topped with pieces of salt cod and olives---

5 ounces day-old bread

1 cup fresh orange juice

½ teaspoon grated orange peel

1 clove garlic, chopped

2 teaspoons Sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

Water, as needed

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil + additional to finish

Toppings (choose 1 or 2):

Flaked salt cod or strips of smoked cod

Canned tuna, well drained

Hard-boiled egg, chopped

Chopped serrano ham

Cooked shrimp

Strips of smoked salmon

Green or black pitted olives

Chopped orange segments

Chopped scallions or chives

Crackers or bread  to serve

Break up the bread into pieces and place them in a bowl. Pour over the orange juice. Stir in the orange peel, garlic and salt. Allow to set until the bread begins to soften, 15 minutes. 

---or chopped egg---

Place the mixture in a food processor container and process until the bread is reduced to a smooth paste. Add 1 to 4 tablespoons of water as needed. With the motor running, slowly add the olive oil to the mixture until it is absorbed and emulsified. The result should be a thick, smooth cream. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Serve the porra in small shallow bowls. Add toppings of your choice. Drizzle with additional oil. Serve accompanied with crackers or bread for dipping.

--or with shrimp, pieces of orange, red onion and chopped chives.

Ana fries tiny eggplant omelets, a recipe from a 13th century cookbook.

Sundown in the gardens of La Baltasara.

More about Ana Abellán and Entre Berza y Pringá.

Ana Abellán blogs at Me Sabe a Málaga . Her book is available from Amazon and from the publisher Col and Col.

About La Baltasara.

More versions of porra;

Mango-Tomato Gazpacho Cream.

Salmorejo with Tomatoes.

Fava Bean Cream.

Cold Almond Cream.

PAELLA: BUILDING FLAVOR

 

Arroz de carabineros. (Photo: Josh Elliott)

I´ve eaten a lot of paellas in my time, from the classic València version, with rabbit and snails, cooked on a wood fire in the rice fields of the Albufera, to a rustic Andalusian campo one where we picked the fava beans and peas from the nearby huerta to add to the rice with chicken and shrimp. I’ve made my share of paellas too, some pretty good.  

But the best paella rice I’ve ever eaten was at a beach restaurant on the Costa del Sol, a glorified chiringuito. We ordered arroz de carabineros, rice cooked in paella (the typical flat pan is called “paella” as is the rice cooked in it) with jumbo red shrimp. It contained almost no protein matter. The shrimp had been reduced to essence giving the perfectly cooked rice intense flavor. The arroz was served topped with a few pieces of the barely cooked carabineros plus their heads, for sucking. No baroque garnishes. No sauce. No lemons. Arroz in its purest form.

I vowed to try to make rice that good. Because it’s World Paella Day (September 20), today I took up the challenge. 

My arroz--rice in paella with shrimp. Flavor is fantastic, texture pretty good. I served cosas, accompaniments, as side dishes. 

What I learned about building flavor can be applied to any rice cooked in paella, including more elaborate ones with chicken, squid, clams, shrimp, artichokes, beans, etc. There are three steps—a sofrito, the foundation for building flavor; a fish/shellfish stock, and the cooking of the rice. 

Sofrito, first step in building flavor.

Sofrito 

This is where flavor begins so make the sofrito as intense as possible. If possible, cook shrimp heads, small crabs, squid bits, etc., with the vegetables, puré the sofrito, shells and all, then push the thick sauce through a fine sieve. Lacking crustaceans, add a few canned anchovies to contribute umami to the basic sauce. This recipe makes enough sofrito for three or four paellas. It can be prepared in advance of cooking the rice and refrigerated or stored in the freezer.

Makes about 2 ¼ cups sofrito.

2 ¼ pounds ripe tomatoes

Olive oil

2 cups chopped onions

½ to 1 cup chopped green peppers

4 cloves chopped garlic

¼ cup white wine

2-3 anchovy fillets, chopped (optional)

2 teaspoons smoked pimentón (paprika)

Sprig of thyme

1 bay leaf

Sprig of parsley

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Heat oven to 400ºF.

Place the tomatoes on a rimmed sheet pan, drizzle them with oil and roast them until very soft, about 30 minutes. (Alternatively, drop the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water until the skins begin to split. Drain.) When tomatoes are cool enough to handle, cut out cores and slip off the skins. You should have approximately 3 cups of tomatoes.

Heat ¼ cup of oil in a pan. Sauté the onions on medium-high until they begin to brown around the edges, 5 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of water and continue sautéing until the water cooks away and onions begin to sizzle again. Add the peppers and garlic and sauté 5 minutes more. Add the anchovies, if using. Add the wine and cook 1 minute to cook off the alcohol. 

Use kitchen scissors to cut the tomatoes into pieces. Add them to the pan with the thyme, bay, parsley, salt and pepper. Fry the tomatoes on high heat 2 minutes. Lower the heat and cook the sofrito, covered, 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover the pan and cook 10 to 15 minutes more until the sofrito is quite thick. Discard the bay leaf and parsley.

Puré the sofrito with a hand-held blender. Set aside ¾ cup of sofrito for use in the paella. Divide the remainder in half and store in the refrigerator or freezer for future use.

Fish Stock

Caldo de Pescado

Fish head for the stock pot.

Along with sofrito, a flavorful fish stock is essential for this rice dish. This can be freely varied, depending on what shellfish and fish trimmings are available. I lucked out, my local fish vendor gave me a whole mero (grouper) head that was lurking in her deep freeze. I made the stock with just the head, no shrimp shells. You can also use clam broth or store-bought stock. Use wine, lemon, herbs, aromatics and sufficient salt. Reduce the stock somewhat so that it’s a powerful cooking medium for the rice. Here’s a basic recipe for Fish Stock.

Rice with Shrimp in Paella

Arroz al Marinero

Unlike traditional paella, this arroz starts on top of the stove and is finished in the oven. If you want socarrat, the crunchy rice on the bottom, you will need to return the pan to the stove-top after the oven.

Size matters. I used a 34-centimeter (13.3-inches) paella pan for 2 cups of rice (400 grams/ 14 ounces), serving 6. This size fits on a large burner of an induction stove and into a normal oven. The cooked rice reached a depth of 1 ½ inches. The restaurant version was made in a similar size pan, but with half the quantity of rice and liquid, changing the timing, the texture of the rice and the yield. I’ll try that method next time, using a thinner layer of rice for the same pan diameter, and see how it changes the rice. 

Use a medium-short grain rice, sometimes called “round rice,” for paella. València varieties include Bahia, Senia, Marisma and Bomba. They are similar to Italian risotto rice, but, unlike risotto, paella rice is never stirred during cooking. 

Serves 6.

1 pound heads-on shrimp

¼ cup olive oil + additional if needed

¾ cup sofrito

½ teaspoon saffron threads

2 cups medium-short-grain rice

4 ½ cup fish or shellfish stock, heated (see note below)

Salt if needed

Finely chopped parsley

Cooked romano green beans (optional)

Alioli garlic sauce to accompany (recipe follows)

Shell the shrimp. Save the heads (clip off the antennae) and tails in a covered container. Save the shrimp bodies in another container. Refrigerate them until ready to cook.

Heat the oil in a skillet and add 1 cup (or more) of shrimp heads and tails. Fry them until they start to brown, crushing the shells with a wooden paddle to extract all the flavorful juices. Remove the pan from the heat, tip it so that the oil drains to one side and scoop out the shells and discard them. (If you do this step in advance of preparing the rice, the fried shrimp heads can be added to the fish trimmings to make the stock.)

Preheat oven to 425ºF.

Taste the cooking liquid for salt. 

Place the shrimp oil in the paella pan. Add additional oil to make 2 tablespoons. Heat on medium and stir in the sofrito. Cook it until it begins to darken slightly. Sprinkle the saffron into the pan. Add the rice and mix it until coated with the sofrito.

Bring the stock to a full boil and carefully pour it into the rice. Stir thoroughly. Taste the liquid and add more salt as needed. 

Cook the rice on medium-high for 5 minutes.

Very carefully transfer the rice to the oven for 10 minutes. 

While rice is in the oven, sauté the shrimp bodies in the skillet just until they turn pink. Remove from pan and sprinkle them with chopped parsley.

Taste the rice. It should be al-dente tender, with just a little kernel of resistance in the center. Remove the pan from the oven. (If you want socarrat, place the pan on medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes.) Scatter some of the shrimp on top. Scatter the beans, if using, on the surface. Let the rice set at least 5 minutes before serving.

Lettuce hearts with garlic.

How to serve paella rice. Arroz might be served in its pristine glory, as a primer plato, a starter, to be followed by a main  course of fish, meat or chicken. Or it can be preceded by an assortment of salads and shellfish para picar, to be shared amongst diners at the table. 

I chose to accompany the rice with side dishes to be eaten alongside the rice— sautéed shrimp, fried fillets of gallineta, red rockfish; tiny calamaritos; green beans, sliced tomatoes, and lettuce hearts with fried garlic, piquillo peppers and serrano ham. And, why not? a garlicky alioli sauce. 

Rice is minimally garnished, with side dishes.

Garlic Sauce

Alioli

This is not a true alioli, which is made with only crushed garlic and olive oil. It’s a simple blender mayonnaise with garlic added. Use an immersion blender with a narrow container. (This recipe calls for raw egg.)

1 medium egg, room temperature

½ teaspoon smoked pimentón (paprika)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 clove garlic

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup extra virgin olive oil

Wash the egg. Break it into the blender container. Add the pimentón, lemon juice, garlic and salt. Add the oil. Insert the blender blade to the bottom of the container and run the blender on high speed without lifting it until the egg and oil thicken. Then lift the blade to incorporate any oil on the top and move the blender up and down briefly until it is completely incorporated. If desired, thin the alioli with a little warm water. 

Store the sauce refrigerated and use within 3 days.

Finalists in the World Paella Day competition, which takes place annually on September 20 (time of rice harvest) in València with participants from all over the globe, came from Puerto Rico, Colombia, Japan, Romania, Mexico and China. The winner was Joe Padilla from Puerto Rico.

Where we ate the superb rice: Parador Playa, Benalmadena Costa (Málaga).

Where to get all kinds and sizes of paella pans in the U.S.: La Tienda.

LOVE THE FISH YOU’RE WITH

 

Sorropotún is a Cantabrian fishermen's stew of albacore tuna and potatoes.

Summer is the season for fresh albacore tuna, in Spanish known as bonito del norte or atún blanco, white tuna. Fished off the Cantabrian coast (northern Spain), albacore is commercially important for the canning industry.

I love albacore for sashimi (raw), for grilling and for fish stews. But here it is, almost fall, and somehow I kept missing the albacore (Thunnus alalunga) in local markets. I will just have to go with what I’ve got, love the fish I’m with. I’ve got some big pieces of listado, skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis), in the freezer in anticipation of sashimi. I marinated bonito (Sarda sarda, not the same as bonito del norte) for a cold escabeche salad. Today I found a smaller fish of the same family, melva, or frigate mackerel, to make the fishermen’s stew. 

Like bluefin tuna, melva is dark red.

Unlike albacore which is very light-fleshed, these alternative fish, like atún rojo, bluefin (Thunnus thynnus), are dark, bloody red. To lighten them Spanish cooks usually soak the fish in ice water with salt and vinegar before cooking . 

This Cantabrian stew of albacore and potatoes, called sorropotún or marmita, was traditionally made on board fishing vessels with simple ingredients—chunks of fish, potatoes, wine, olive oil, dry choricero peppers. You can embellish it as you like—fish stock instead of water, herbs, spices. 

Choricero and ñora are two kinds of bittersweet (not hot) dry peppers. After the peppers have cooked awhile, their flesh is scraped from the insides and incorporated in the stew. Pimentón (paprika) is a simple substitute or else puree roasted red bell peppers or piquillos in a blender to make a red paste. 

The preferred technique for cutting up the potatoes is called chascar. Instead of slicing or dicing them with a knife, you snap off irregular-sized pieces that release starch that thickens the stew in cooking. Use the knife to cut into a potato, then bend it towards you to break off the chunk of potato. 

The stew traditionally was served with strips of stale bread on top to soak up the juices. A very tasty way to do this is to top the servings with croutons of fried bread or croutons that have been crushed to crunchy crumbs.

Potatoes, green peppers, onions and red pepper paste are the basis of the stew. Add pieces of fish once the potatoes are tender. 

Crunchy crumbs of fried bread top a serving of the stew.

Cantabrian Fishermen’s Stew

Sorropotún

After soaking, fish is not so dark red.

1 pound filleted and skinned fresh albacore tuna or substitute

1 teaspoon vinegar (optional)

Salt 

3 tablespoons olive oil

½ cup finely chopped onion

½ cup green pepper cut in strips

¼ cup roasted red peppers or piquillo peppers or 2 tablespoons choricero pulp

1 teaspoon pimentón (paprika, not smoked)

¼ cup white wine

1 pound potatoes

1 bay leaf

Fennel, thyme or oregano (optional)

3 cups fish stock or water

Freshly ground black pepper

Chopped parsley

Strips of bread or crunchy croutons (optional)

Cut the tuna into bite-size pieces. If desired, place it in a bowl, cover with cold water. Add vinegar and ½ teaspoon salt. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes. Drain well before cooking.

Cook potatoes in water or stock.

Heat the oil in a cazuela or deep skillet. Sauté the onions on medium heat until softened, 3 minutes. Add the green pepper and sauté 2 minutes more.

Puree the red or piquillo peppers in a blender with the pimentón and wine. Stir into the pan and cook 2 minutes. 

Peel the potatoes and snap them into bite-size pieces. Add potatoes to the pan with the bay leaf, herbs if using and fish stock or water. If using water, add 1 teaspoon of salt. Add the pepper. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are tender, 25 to 30 minutes. Add the drained tuna and cook until it loses its pink color, 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to stand 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with chopped parsley. If desired, serve the stew topped with strips of bread or croutons.

More recipes for types of tuna:

Pot-Roasted Tuna.

Fish Cakes with Bonito.

Poke Bowl with Bonito.

Basque Tuna-Potato Stew (Marmitako).

Grilled Tuna with Onion Confit.

Marinated Bonito with Olives.

FRIDGE FORAGE

 Everyone cleared out and left me to my own devices. In cleaning out two fridges I found all sorts of foods that needed to be consumed or pitched. Unopened bags of Padrón peppers someone had bought when we were already inundated with green peppers from the garden. Three kinds of chorizo. Some cooked pasta. Half a jar of chickpeas. Leftovers from a photo shoot: carrot salad, meatballs and stale bread. Several egg whites left over from ice cream making. 

Too much chorizo.

The crisper was the most alarming. Besides those Padrón peppers, a carton of radishes and half a cabbage, still extant, vegetables from the garden were piling up. Zucchini, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers. 

The selection suggested my favorite summer vegetable dish, pisto, a medley of sautéd vegetables. Pisto, also known as fritada (Aragón), samfaina (Catalonia), tumbet (Mallorca), and ratatouille (France), can be freely varied, vegetarian or with meat or fish. I made a big panful of pisto, then turned it into four different meals. 

Pisto ingredients.

Pisto Plus. Chop and sauté in olive oil onions, garlic, green and red peppers, eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes. Add other vegetables, raw or cooked—squash, carrots, greens, mushrooms, potatoes and a large etcetera. How about those radishes? I added some quartered radishes to the mix. Nope. Once radishes lose their red color and their bite, they are pretty dull. 

Carrot salad with raisins.

Variations on the variations: Instead of chopped tomatoes, use tomato sauce or even leftover gazpacho. Choose your favorite herb: oregano, basil, parsley, mint, cilantro. Add chopped serrano ham or bacon to the basic pisto.   I threw in a cupful of  Carrot Salad with Raisins and Pine Nuts which were a real plus in this pisto mélange.  

1. Pisto with Meatballs (Pisto con Albóndigas)

I just happened to have 72 fried meatballs in a Tupper in the fridge. I added a few to the pisto. The rest will freeze to see another day. 

Reheat leftover cooked meatballs in the pisto. Season with favorite hot sauce. Serve with chopped parsley or cilantro. Or, add soy sauce, ginger, vinegar and Sherry to the pisto and make the dish sort-of Asian.

Basic pisto vegetables + carrot-raisin-pine nuts + meatballs.

2. Pasta with Pisto and Chorizo.

Leftover pasta gets resuscitated, served with pisto plus chorizo.

Best way to rejuvenate cooked pasta: put it in a heatproof bowl and add boiling water to cover. Soak 5 minutes and drain. Fry chopped chorizo, add pisto to the pan and heat. Serve over pasta and grate cheese on top.

Pasta, pisto and chorizo. Finish with fresh basil.

3. Eggs Scrambled with Pisto (Huevos Revueltos con Pisto)

Scramble eggs and pisto.

Heat pisto in a skillet. Stir in 2 eggs (or 1 egg and 2 egg whites). Cook on medium while mixing the egg into the vegetables. Serve hot with fried bread. 

Egg and vegetable scramble.

That leftover stale bread? Turn it into picatostes--croutons or strips of bread fried in olive oil. Once fried they keep well. Serve fried bread with eggs, with vegetables or as dippers with cheese dips. Transform the croutons into crumbs in a mini food processor and use the crispy crumbs as topping for vegetables or pasta.  

4. Pisto with Chickpeas (Pisto/Alboronía con Garbanzos)

This is an actual dish called alboronía that, besides the sautéd vegetables, often includes pear or apple. Reheat the cooked pisto with the chopped fruit and drained and rinsed cooked chickpeas. Season with cumin, smoked pimentón (paprika) and a dash of vinegar. Serve it with pine nuts and, if desired, quartered hard-boiled egg. 

Peppers tipo Padrón (same variety as the famed Galician peppers, but not grown in Padrón)--Remove stems and seeds, place on a tray and freeze, then bag them and store in freezer. They're ready for frying or adding to soups and stews. 

More interpretations of pisto:

Pork and Vegetable Stew.

Pan-Fried Hake Fillets with Pisto.

Vegetable and Mackerel Dish.

Pisto with Lamb and Couscous.

Recipes with leftovers:
Fried Bread Crisps.

"Old Clothes" Hash (Ropa Vieja).

Bone Broth and Vegetable Soup.

Chicken, Orange and Olive Salad.