SUNSET IN A GLASS (AND STUFFED SQUID)

 

“Picture yourself on Bajo de Guía beach at the western edge of Sanlúcar de Barrameda right at sunset”. You’ve got a half-bottle of chilled Manzanilla and a plate of grilled langostinos, fresh tiger shrimp. As the sun slowly sinks, it reflects and refracts through your Sherry glass. 

The sea breeze, the color-streaked sky, the taste of those shrimp and the cool wine.  That´s the evocative opening of Sunset in a Glass, a book by Gerry Dawes, self-described “food and wine road warrior in Spain.” (Sunset in a Glass, enhanced photography edition, is available here.)

Sunset in a Glass is not quite a memoir, definitely not a guidebook. It´s a collection of very personal stories about life, food, wine and people in Spain. Gerry easily switches from evocative (that sunset on the beach, ravishing landscapes) to provocative (would he pay $180 for a bottle of Vega Sicilia wine?), but always with good humor.

I first knew Gerry Dawes early in his adventures in Spain when he and his then-wife, Diana, lived in Mijas, the village in southern Spain where I still live. Our paths have crossed a number of times in the subsequent years—stomping around olive groves on press tours in Spain sponsored by the International Olive Oil Council (on one of those jaunts, in Gerry´s company, I first tasted the famed Vega Sicilia wine at a restaurant in Córdoba); tagging along as he made the rounds at Madrid Fusión, the grand annual food fest (Gerry knows absolutely everybody in Spain’s food world); fellow moderators at symposiums about Spanish food at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, CA., and the San Antonio, TX., Culinaria Week;  

 

Although he tells how he first came to Spain (1968, stationed at Rota Naval Base) and his early forays into Sevilla and its barrios and flamenco, Gerry follows no real chronology in the book, but backs and forths between regions and characters at will. As Chef José Andrés writes in the book's foreword, “I am amazed at his reach.” Gerry promises more to come, with three more volumes of Sunset in a Glass to follow.

Quim Márquez (Photo by Gerry Dawes)

My favorite tales are the ones about amazing cooks and memorable meals. A visit to Barcelona´s vibrant La Boquería market includes a “second breakfast” at the stall of Quím (Márquez) de la Boquería—steaming cockles, grilled asparagus, fried artichoke hearts, sizzling shrimp, small white beans with butifarra sausage and alioli, foie gras with crispy leeks—all prepared in a miniscule kitchen at the market stall. A meal washed down with Cava rosat—pink sparkling wine.

In Castile, Gerry meets up with an old friend, Ambrosio Molinos, a cheesemaker and a  trencherman like himself, for an extraordinary meal at De Galo in Covarrubias, (Burgos)   The meal begins with a cold dish, sea bream escabeche, served with coarse Castilian bread for mopping up the sauce. This is followed by a local specialty, red Ibeas beans, cooked with chorizo, served with grilled morcilla and guindillas (piquant peppers), “a must with bean dishes.” The main course is baby lamb chops (with their kidneys) grilled over vine cuttings, roasted potatoes, and pimientos de piquillo, the slightly spicy little red peppers that are one of the great delicacies of Spain. 

Gerry relates a different sort of meal that´s as much a delight for the setting and the group of friends, all taking a break from the frenzy of the San Fermines festival in Pamplona, as for the simple, rustic food. Following in the footsteps of James Michener, as related in Iberia, each year “we, too, made the pilgrimage to this historic little valley in the pass that is haunted by the ghost of brave Roland and by the spirits of generations of pilgrims who passed this way…on… the Camino de Santiago.”

It´s a hard-to-find spot on a steep road that climbs up to a pilgrim’s sanctuary at the top of the pass. “We unloaded the luncheon bounty from our cars. The men helped Alicia down the steep grassy slope to the green mossy banks of the stream… Diana, who had recruited some of the women to collect the food at the Pamplona Mercado Municipal that morning, laid out our splendid repast: salty anchovies cured in oil; roasted red pimientos; streaky pink slices of jamón; garlicky red-orange chorizo; white Parmesan-like Roncal from the Pyrenees east of Roncesvalles and smoky Idiazábal ewes’ milk cheeses from a town south of San Sebastián; olives cured with rosemary, thyme and garlic; crusty, country bread; and fruits—blushing ripe peaches, big black picota cherries,and honeydew melons. I put a dozen bottles of Las Campanas Navarra Rosado (the same rosé wine Hemingway carried in his car around Spain following the bullfights) and the melons in the cold rushing little rivulet to cool, then dispatched a detail of volunteers for dry firewood to build a small fire.”

Chef Ferran Adrià (left) with Gerry Dawes. (Photo by Soler)

From the rustic to the sublime—Gerry recounts several meals he sampled at elBullí, the restaurant of Ferran Adrià in Roses (Catalonia) which, for awhile, was billed as the best restaurant in the world (the restaurant has since closed its doors). According to him, his story about elBullí that appeared in Food Arts magazine in 1997 was the first and seminal article published in America about rising star Ferran Adrià and his elBulli restaurant. 

I can´t resist quoting from the book as Gerry relates what he ate at that first meal at elBulli (menus evolved over the years, with fewer of the “foams” that once seemed so far-out). The meal began with “snacks” in the kitchen. “Nothing too weird so far,” Gerry opined. Then, to the table.

“Served by very serious young wait people dressed in funereal black Nehruesque jackets and pants, began the parade of unbelievably inventive, undoubtedly weird, and sometimes downright delicious Adrià concoctions, complete with verbal instructions on how and when to eat it.” 

There were Parmesan-flavored ice cream sandwiches between Parmesan wafers; guacamole mousse with crunchy toasted corn; a “caramelized” quail’s egg yolk; and then the first espuma, a smoked meat-flavored wisp of foam. Next came a biscuit glacé (very salty ice cream with hazelnuts”); a tepid, exotic eggplant “soup with Fisherman” that included yogurt-filled raviolis, pine nuts and  little chips of minty, balsamic-flavored Fisherman's Friend throat lozenges. 

A cold dish followed, mejillones de roca con frambuesa (little rock mussels with a dot of raspberry puree on top, surrounded by a gelatin of mussel juices flavored with julienned ginger. Zamburiñas a la gallega were traditionally flavored tiny sea scallops in their shells with paprika, thin quick-fried scallion rings, and crunchy bits of sautéed garlic. 

“I headed into the home stretch, where Ferran Adrià really hit his stride. The espuma de bacalao con cebollitas was followed by a tortilla de alcachofas, a spoonful of two pieces of crunchy, deep-fried artichoke leaves in a creamy, egg yolk sauce; Paquetitos de sepia y coco al jengibre (ravioli-type packets made from sepia squid bodies and filled with a ginger-soy sauce (‘Don’t break the packets, put them in your mouth and let them explode,’ instructed my waiter.)"

 Next, chop suey de almejas, cold clams in a warm sauce with corn, diced zucchini, button mushrooms, and braised endive. The next to the last dish was merluza con calabaza y tomate al perifollo, grilled hake served with spaghetti squash and gelatinous, seed-studded tomato “hearts,” topped by a shard of caramelized pumpkin and chervil. The finale, lamb brains with sea cucumbers, mushrooms, and grilled meat-flavored oil. 

Javier Hidalgo, Sanlúcar (Photo Dawes)

But, back to that sunset on the beach at Sanlúcar. After the sun has gone down and the bottle or two of Manzanilla has been finished, it´s time to head to one of the famed beach restaurants, such as Casa Bigote, a taberna marinera, for local specialties such as delicias de pescado frito, mixed fried fish with small whole hake, cazón en adobo (marinated  dogfish shark); boquerones (fresh anchovies), acedias  (baby sole) and calamares (squid). There’s Bigote’s superb arroz marinero (seafood rice), cazuela marinera con huevo (monkfish and shrimp with an egg poached in a bubbling Manzanilla sauce. 

Gerry writes movingly about meals shared with his good friend, Javier Hidalgo, of Bodegas Hidalgo in Sanlúcar, where manzanilla comes from. One lunch, at a rustic place in the Marismas near Doñana, begins with tortillitas de camarones, fritters of tiny shrimp, and, of course copitas of manzanilla.

Although he´s included no recipes in the book (with the exception of José Andrés’s gin-tonic), Gerry relates ingredients and methods for a number of dishes as told to him by his culinary fellow-travellers. One, from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, for calamares rellenos con huevas de merluza (squid stuffed with hake roe), Gerry says is an example of great folk dishes of southern Spain—originally simple fishermen´s fare—that is “a delicacy worthy of the most exalted gourmet.”  I was inspired to re-create the dish in my kitchen. Without the beach and the sunset, but absolutely with a copa of manzanilla. 

(The photos above are from the book Sunset in a Glass by Gerry Dawes and are used with permission. The photos below are taken by me in my kitchen.)

Whole squid is stuffed with shrimp and fish roe. After poaching, the squid are sliced and served with a parsley vinaigrette and seasoned mayonnaise. 

Stuffed squid makes an elegant starter with copitas of manzanilla.

Accompany the squid with two sauces, a parsley-spring onion vinaigrette and a pimentón-spiked mayonnaise.

Squid Stuffed with Hake Roe, Sanlúcar Style

Calamares Rellenos con Huevas de Merluza a la Sanluqueña

Lobes of hake roe.

Early spring is the season for fresh hake roe (fish eggs, huevas). The “packets” or lobes of fresh roe can be poached, sliced and served with vinaigrette. In this recipe from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, as described in Sunset in a Glass, roe is used along with shrimp and, if available, huevos de choco, milt from cuttlefish, as a stuffing for squid. Sliced and served cold with a piquant parsley-onion sauce and seasoned mayonnaise, the squid makes quite an elegant starter. 

The delicate packets of roe are easier to handle if they are first blanched. Add them to simmering, salted water for 5 seconds, skim out and drain well. Then use scissors to cut away any dark-colored veins, but don´t remove the thin membrane that encloses the tiny eggs. Cut the lobes into three or four pieces. Handle them very gently, so as not to break up the delicate roe. 

If available, use real langostinos, tiger shrimp, from Sanlúcar. Otherwise, use any small shrimp. Eight ounces of shrimp with heads and shells will make about 4 ounces peeled. Use the heads and shells to make stock (6 cups water, salt, bay leaf and onion, cooked 40 minutes) in which to poach the stuffed squid. 

After poaching, chill the squid at least 2 hours or overnight to allow the stuffing to firm-up. Use a very sharp knife to slice them crosswise about ½ inch thick. 

Squid pouches, shrimp (top) and roe.

Serves 6 as a starter.

1-2 medium-large squid (about 1 ¾ pounds)

6 ounces fresh hake roe 

Salt

4 ounces peeled shrimp

¼ cup fresh bread crumbs

¼ cup fino manzanilla or Sherry

1 egg white, lightly beaten

½ of a hard-boiled egg, chopped

6 cups shrimp stock, fish broth or water

Shredded lettuce, to serve

Sliced cooked potatoes, to serve

Pimentón (paprika)

Sauces to accompany the squid (recipes follow)

Clean the squid by pulling the head and tentacles free from the body. Leave the body pouch whole. Pull off and discard the discolored outer membrane and remove the cartilage on the inside. Pull off the fins and separate the tentacles from the head. (Save the fins and tentacles for another use.) Discard the mouth and ink sac. Keep the squid bodies covered and refrigerated until ready to stuff them.

Cut roe into chunks.

Bring salted water to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and blanch the whole lobes of roe for 5 seconds. Skim them out and drain well. Trim off dark veins. Cut the lobes into ¾-inch chunks. Keep refrigerated until ready to use.

Chop the shrimp into ½-inch pieces and reserve, refrigerated.

Place the bread crumbs in a mixing bowl. Add the manzanilla and egg white. Stir in the chopped cooked egg. Add the pieces of roe and the chopped shrimp. Season with ¾ teaspoon salt. Use a wooden paddle to very gently fold the roe and shrimp into the breadcrumb mixture. 

Fill squid with stuffing.

Place squid pouch upright in a cup. Spoon the stuffing mixture into the squid Use the handle of a wooden spoon to push the stuffing down. Don´t fill the pouch more than ¾ full. Close the top opening with a toothpick or small skewer. Use remaining stuffing mixture to fill the second squid in the same manner.

Place the shrimp stock in a pan just large enough to hold the squid in one layer. (If using water instead of stock, add salt and a bay leaf.) Bring the stock to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and place the stuffed squid in the pan. There should be enough liquid to just cover them. Place a heatproof plate on top to keep the squid submerged. 

After the squid have cooked 3 minutes, use a skewer to pierce the skin in two or three places in order to eliminate air pockets in the stuffing. Cook the squid 15 minutes. Very gently, turn them over. Replace plate on top. Cook until squid are very tender when tested with a skewer, about 15 minutes longer. Remove the pan from the heat and allow the squid to cool 30 minutes in the cooking liquid. 

Remove the squid from the pan (stock can be strained and saved for another use). Place the squid in a container and tuck a sheet of plastic wrap around them. Cover the container and refrigerate at least 2 hours and up to 8 hours.

Slice the squid crosswise. Serve on a platter or on individual plates with shredded lettuce and sliced cooked potatoes. Sprinkle with pimentón. Accompany with sauces.

Parsley-Spring Onion Vinaigrette

Vinagreta de Perejil y Cebolleta

Use spring onions (also known as green onions, cebolletas) or scallions for this sauce.

1 cup chopped spring onions

½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

¼ cup finely chopped red bell pepper

1 clove garlic, minced

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar

Combine the onions, parsley, pepper and garlic in a small bowl. Add salt and dress with oil and vinegar. Mix gently. Serve in a sauce bowl alongside the squid or spoon some of it over the sliced squid.

Pimentón Mayonnaise

Mayonesa con Pimentón

This sauce is best if home-made with extra virgin olive oil. If using bottled mayo, beat a tablespoon of olive oil into it.

½ cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

½ teaspoon pimentón (paprika, not smoked)

Pinch of pimentón picante (hot paprika) or cayenne

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon capers

Combine the mayonnaise, lemon juice, two kinds of pimentón, salt and capers. Serve in a sauce bowl alongside the sliced squid or spoon some of it over the squid.