FEEDING THE HUNGRY BLOG

How does my blog get done, week after week? Or, as someone asked me, how do I keep finding new stuff to write about? 

Early in the week I start thinking about it: what do I want to eat (that I haven’t already covered on the blog)? I try to choose Spanish recipes or, at least, make dishes using iconic Spanish ingredients.

What’s fresh and seasonal, in the market or in my garden? What new ingredient have I found? What have I seen to inspire me in one of the hundreds of Spanish cookbooks in my collection or on Facebook/Instagram/Foodgawker/NewYorkTimesCooking/other folks’ blogs? Where have I recently travelled and what have I eaten outside my own kitchen? What’s in the news that has a possible food angle (e.g., Trump's tariffs on Spanish black olives)?

By midweek, I have a plan. I shop and cook. I cook in the daylight hours, so that I can photograph the food with natural light. Having been a writer/journalist all my life, I find that writing is the easy part. Cooking is the fun part. Photography is what’s hard.

Not the stuffed mushrooms I intended to blog about. This last-minute dish is cabbage from the garden, sausages, potatoes and carrots, topped with a pine nut picada with garlic and parsley.

This week I was inspired by finding enormous (at least 5-inch) portobello mushrooms in my local market. I planned to stuff them two ways. But, by Friday, even with a special order, no more giant mushrooms were to be had.

Serendipity kicked in. I pulled up a cabbage from my vegetable plot (you will recall, this is the “year of the cabbage”) and found some chorizo criollo in the freezer. Potatoes and carrots. A pine nut picada to give it extra oomph. Take the beauty shot. Dinner plus blog, done.

Picada is a Catalan preparation or sauce, a little like gremolata, that is stirred into a dish or spread on top of it at the end of cooking.  This version uses pine nuts instead of the more usual hazelnuts or almonds. They can be pounded in a mortar, finely chopped or, easiest, ground in a mini food processor.

I like chorizo criollo. It is flavored with garlic and pimentón like cured Spanish chorizo, but this is a raw sausage. It's especially juicy for cooking. Use any fresh pork sausage in this dish. Sausage stays juicier if cooked whole. Use kitchen scissors to cut it into bite-size pieces immediately before serving.

The garlicky picada topping gives pop to braised cabbage and juicy sausage.

The dish is juicy, not soupy.

Cabbage and Sausage with Pine Nut Picada

Guiso de Coles y Salchichas con Picada de Piñones

Serves 4.

Cabbage from the garden.

1 medium cabbage (1 ½ pounds)
1 carrot, sliced
3-4 medium potatoes (1 pound), peeled and cut in pieces
Thick slice of onion
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3-4 cups water
14 ounces fresh pork sausage, such as chorizo criollo
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons pine nuts (1 ounce)
3 cloves garlic, peeled
Pinch of cumin seed (optional)
¼ cup parsley, finely chopped

Discard tough outer leaves of the cabbage. Cut it in quarters and cut away the core. Slice the cabbage. Place it in a medium stew pot with the carrot, potatoes and slice of onion. Season with 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper. Add enough water to almost cover the cabbage. Tuck the whole sausage links into the vegetables.

Cook just until vegetables are tender.

Bring to a boil, cover and simmer until the cabbage and potatoes are tender, 10-15 minutes.

Fry pine nuts and garlic.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a small skillet. Fry the pine nuts, whole cloves of garlic and cumin seed, if using, until pine nuts are golden. Remove from heat. When slightly cooled, place the contents of the skillet and ½ teaspoon salt in a mini food processor and process until finely chopped. (If desired, save out a few pine nuts to garnish the finished dish.) Stir in 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquid from the cabbage pot. Immediately before serving, stir in the chopped parsley.

Use a slotted spoon to remove cabbage, potatoes, carrots and sausages from the pot. Cut the sausages into chunks. Add only enough of the cooking liquid to keep the cabbage juicy, not soupy. Spoon the pine nut picada over the cabbage. Serve hot.

More recipes with picada:

Surf and Turf with Picada of Almonds and Chocolate.

Fishermen's Soup (Suquet).

Seafood Operetta with Hazelnut Picada (Zarzuela).

Links to lots more recipes with cabbage here.

Recipes from the black olive trade war here.