MY KITCHEN IN SPAIN: January 2026

Saturday, January 24, 2026

MY FAVORITE TAPA? SIZZLING SHRIMP WITH GARLIC

A classic tapa: Gambas al ajillo--shrimp and garlic sizzled in olive oil.

I wrote a whole book about Spanish tapas, choosing recipes for the most loved dishes from around the country. Of them, I think my favorite is gambas al ajillo, shrimp sizzled in olive oil with lots of chopped garlic. In tapa bars it is usually served in small cazuelitas, eight to twelve small shrimp in bubbling olive oil with slivers of garlic. Bread is the classic accompaniment.

But, sizzle the shrimp in a skillet and serve with rice or pasta and the shrimp become more than a tapa, a fine main dish for family or guests.

Two important points: one, the shrimp should be completely peeled, including the tail, and two, extra virgin olive oil is essential. Butter is not a substitute! Variations, however, are acceptable: in this version, I added spinach greens.

REINVENTING A CLASSIC TAPA

January 26, 2019

From the tascas of Madrid to the tapa bars of Málaga, gambas al ajillo—sizzling, garlicky shrimp—is a favorite tapa (known as gambas al pil pil in Málaga). That’s because it’s a real sensory experience: first you catch a tantalizing whiff of garlic. As the lid is lifted from the little clay dish, the oil spits and splutters. Small pink shrimp, golden slices of garlic and red flecks of chile dance in the oil. Dip chunks of bread into the sizzling juices and fork up the tender shrimp. Wow.

Because it’s a classic, I included Sizzling Garlic Shrimp on the tapas menu for a cooking class I had last week in my kitchen. But, after the meatballs and tortilla, boquerones and orange salad, plus a lot of chatter, we never got to the shrimp. So, the following day, I cooked the shrimp that I had prepped for the class for myself. But I pretty much reinvented the classic.

A few changes on classic gambas al ajillo (sizzling shrimp)--pieces of chorizo and a slosh of fino Sherry go into the bubbling oil.

I had already begun the variations on the traditional recipe. For convenience, I bought frozen langostinos*—jumbo shrimp—instead of fresh gambas—small to medium shrimp that are usually used for this dish. And, now that I have an induction cooktop, I can no longer use the little earthenware cazuelitas. So I cooked all of the shrimp in a deep skillet, instead of in individual servings.

Some leftover soft chorizo and an open bottle of fino manzanilla (Sherry from Sanlucar de la Barrameda) inspired more changes. And, because I think green leafy vegetables improve just about anything, I added a handful of chopped spinach.

First I served the shrimp, sort of like the original tapa, with chunks of bread to sop up the savory juices. For another meal, I served the shrimp, chorizo and spinach with all their spicy juices over cooked rice.

Jumbo shrimp in olive oil with chorizo and bits of hot chile.

You'll need chunks of bread to soak up the savory juices.

A tapa becomes a meal--the sautéed shrimp with garlic and chorizo plus spinach, served over rice. Fino (dry) manzanilla or Sherry is the perfect wine pairing for the shrimp.

Sizzling Garlic Shrimp with Sausage and Spinach
Gambas al Ajillo con Chorizo y Espinacas

As a tapa, I had portioned four jumbo shrimp per person. So I had 20 peeled shrimp weighing 13 ounces. That made three good-sized servings (main dish with rice) or four smaller servings as a starter. Incidentally, the shrimp for this dish are peeled--including the tails. I used soft cooking chorizo** but sliced, hard-cured chorizo could be used too. And, I bet leafy chard or kale would be as good as spinach in this dish.

½ cup olive oil
4-6 cloves garlic, sliced crosswise
4 slices dried chile or red pepper flakes
2 ounces chorizo sausage, chopped
20 peeled jumbo shrimp (about 14 ounces)
1 cup chopped fresh spinach
¼ cup fino (dry) Sherry
Salt
Chopped parsley
Cooked rice as an accompaniment (optional)

Shrimp sauté in minutes.

Heat the oil on medium-high in a deep frying pan. Add the garlic, chile and chorizo. When the garlic begins to turn pale gold (1-2 minutes), add the shrimp and spinach. Sauté, turning the shrimp, until it turns pink, 2-3 minutes. Add the Sherry and cook until the alcohol is cooked off, 2 minutes. Season with salt.

Serve the shrimp immediately, spooned over hot rice, if desired. Garnish with chopped parsley.

Links to more recipes for shrimp "al ajillo," with a "little" garlic:

Sizzling Shrimp (classic al ajillo).

Pasta with Sizzling Garlic Shrimp

2008 (out of print)

Everything you wanted to know about tapas in Spain:

The Tapas Way of Life

Tapas in Sevilla

Tapas for a Holiday Party

Tapa-Hopping Round Town

Tapa Hopping Round Town-2

Tapas in Madrid

Tapas in a Time of Lockdown

Seafood Tapas

FLAVORS OF AL-ANDALUS

The Culinary Legacy of Spain

FLAVORS OF AL-ANDALUS, The Culinary Legacy of Spain. Here's a fresh angle on the traditional cooking of Spain, with 120 recipes that trace their roots to Moorish Spain. See below for where to order.

This cookbook explores the fascinating story of the deep and lasting influences that Islamic culture has left on modern Spanish cooking.

Author and Spanish cooking expert Janet Mendel tells the story of the Moorish influence on Spanish cooking through 120 recipes and photographs for modern-day dishes, from salads and vegetables to fish, poultry and meat to sweets and pastries, that trace their heritage to foods served in medieval times. Dishes from this era include exotic spices such as saffron, the use of fruits and almonds with savory dishes, and honeyed sweets and pastries. The flavors of al-Andalus live on in modern Spanish cooking and are what makes Spain’s cuisine distinctive from the rest of Europe. (Hippocrene Books)

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Saturday, January 17, 2026

WOULD YOU EAT THISTLES?

Tagarninas, wild thistle

Have you ever eaten tagarninas? They are a wild thistle, related to artichokes, gathered by country folk in late winter. When I posted a recipe for tagarninas in the early days of this blog, a friend said, “no one is interested in wild thistles!” Maybe not. While I have cooked them only two or three times in the intervening years, I use this basic recipe for revuelto—scrambled eggs with vegetables—at least once a week. Eggs can be combined with asparagus, spinach, broccoli, etc.

WILD THINGS

January 11, 2010

Today at the village market I found big bunches of tagarninas, the tender stems of a wild thistle that makes its appearance in frosty January. Related to the artichoke, this thistle (Scolymus hispanicus) is foraged in upland areas of Andalusia and Extremadura.

I first tasted it in Extremadura, where it was cooked in a delicate vegetable flan. But, country folk who gather it usually fold the chopped stems into scrambled eggs. So that’s what I had for lunch today.

My first encounter with tagarninas in the wild was in the hills around the mountain town of Ronda, where I had gone to interview a goatherd. The goatherd showed me the plants growing. The first leaves appear after winter rains, forming a flat rosette about two feet across. Later in the summer the plant sends up tall stalks on which bloom yellow flowers. My guide pulled the whole plant up by the roots and, with bare hands, stripped off the prickly leaves, leaving the slender stems. These are chopped and blanched before cooking with eggs in a revuelto, a soft scramble.

Prickly leaves are stripped off the stems.

Eggs Scrambled with Wild Thistles

Revuelto de Tagarninas

Cut away the root ends and chop the stems. (Twelve ounces of tagarninas will make about 2 ½ cups chopped greens, serving two.) Blanch them in boiling, salted water for 5 minutes. Drain well. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet. Add 2 cloves sliced garlic, ¼ cup chopped serrano ham, a pinch of red pepper flakes and the greens. Sauté on medium heat for 4 minutes.

If making revuelto with 2 to 4 eggs, break them right into the sauteed vegetables. For larger quantities, beat the eggs lightly in a bowl and mix them with the vegetables in the pan.

Break 4 eggs into the skillet. Let them set for 1 minute. Use a wooden spatula to push the egg whites around and combine with the vegetable and ham. Then, gently, turn the yolks over, letting them break up and mix with the greens. Turn the eggs and greens out onto heated plates before the yolks are completely set. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with toast “buttered” with olive oil.

You could substitute skinny green asparagus for the tagarninas in this recipe. You won’t need to blanch asparagus more than a minute. But should your foraging turn up wild thistles, by all means try them.

More ways to cook revuelto, eggs scrambled with vegetables:

Eggs Scrambled with Asparagus and Shrimp

Eggs Scrambled with Mushrooms and Green Garlic Shoots

Eggs Scrambled with Peppers

Eggs Scrambled with Ham (Duelos y Quebrantos)

Eggs Scrambled with Pisto

FLAVORS OF AL-ANDALUS

The Culinary Legacy of Spain

This cookbook explores the fascinating story of the deep and lasting influences that Islamic culture has left on modern Spanish cooking.

Order on IndiePubs (USA)

Use PROMO CODE HIPPOCRENE40 for 40% off on all Hippocrene titles at IndiePubs online bookstore.

***

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Order on amazon.es (Spain)

Order on amazon.co.uk (UK)

Order on amazon.com.au (Australia)

(If you order on Amazon, please give my book a review!)

***

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Saturday, January 10, 2026

PUCHERO--THE ANTIDOTE TO WINTER

When I went out at nine in the morning the thermometer outside my front door was showing 0ºC! By midday the temperature had climbed to 3ºC. (Zero celsius is freezing: 32ºF; 3ºC is about 37ºF.) That’s cold when you live without central heating! I’m pulling out the olla, a big stew pot, and starting to cook a puchero, an Andalusian one-pot meal that is the perfect antidote to winter.

Puchero is both the meal and the pot in which it cooks. It is one version of cocido, the national dish of Spain. Puchero and cocido are standbys of home-cooking, meals that can be frugal or extravagant, depending on a family’s budget. Varying somewhat from one region to another, most versions contain chickpeas or other legumes, vegetables, and several types of meats and sausage. (See below for links to other versions of cocido.)They differ from potajes in that the caldo, or broth, is separated from the pot and served separately from the meats and vegetables.

This recipe, from 2020, has a useful glossary of the cured meats, bones, and sausages used in puchero and cocido. Añejo, aged ham bone, gives Andalusian puchero its particular, distinctive, smell and flavor. Walk through the pueblo at midday and you know which families will be serving puchero!

PUCHERO—A ONE-POT MEAL

January 11, 2020

Puchero, a meal-in-a-pot. The soup is served first, with rice, a few chickpeas and carrots, followed by platters of boiled meats--chicken, beef, pork, salt pork, sausages, vegetables and chickpeas. Pumpkin sauce is a tangy condiment.

Puchero is almost the same as cocido, the grand one-pot meal especially famous in Madrid. Every region of Spain has its version of "boiled dinner." Puchero is the one I learned to make in the Andalusian village where I live.

Back then, puchero was an everyday meal. It consisted of a big pot of boiled meats, fat, bones, sausages plus chickpeas, vegetables and potatoes. From the pot came, first, a bowl of soup broth with rice or thin noodles and, to follow, a platter of meat, sausage and fatty bits with the vegetables and potatoes. It was an inexpensive meal to feed a family.

Puchero is served for the midday comida (2 pm), never at night. Nowadays, when families no longer take a long midday break—working mothers, businesses that stay open all day, school cafeterias, have changed the routine—the traditional puchero tends to be reserved for Sundays instead of everyday.

The frugal housewife usually uses the olla exprés—pressure cooker—to reduce cooking time. That makes puchero the perfect meal for today’s Instant Pot. Usually it is made in quantity. Leftover broth can be turned into a different soup for another meal. The chickpeas get recycled in salads. The scraps of meat and sausage—called pringá—go into hash, croquettes or are spread on toasted buns, called molletes. Feel free to add more or less of any ingredient.

Ingredients for a puchero, clockwise from upper left, chorizo, hueso de caña (beef marrow bone), espinazo (fresh pork spine bone), morcilla (blood sausage), morcillo (beef shin), tocino (salt pork fat), and punta de jamón (serrano ham bone).

Glossary of puchero/cocido ingredients:
Añejo (well-cured, aged, ham bone)
Costillas (fresh or salted pork ribs)
Chorizo (pimentón red pork sausage)
Espinazo (fresh or salted pork spine)
Gallina (stewing hen) or pollo (chicken)
Garbanzos (chickpeas)
Hueso de caña (marrow bone)
Morcillo (beef shin meat, boneless)
Morcilla (blood sausage, black pudding)
Panceta (pancetta, fresh or salted pork belly)
Punta de jamón or hueso de jamón (chunk of serrano ham bone)
Tocino salado, tocino fresco (salt pork; fresh fatback)

The serrano ham bone, a piece of only 2 or 3 inches, gives a defining flavor to the soup, an appetizing, umami, subtly rancid taste. A sprig of fresh mint, added to the hot soup immediately before serving, is a sublime final touch.

Puchero is best made with chickpeas cooked from scratch, not from a can. So put them to soak 8 hours before cooking. If your tap water is especially hard, add a pinch of baking soda to the soaking water (or use bottled water). Bring the water to a boil before adding the chickpeas.

Serve the broth as a primer plato--first course--with a few chickpeas, carrots and rice or soup noodles. The sprig of fresh mint is essential with this broth.

After the soup, serve the boiled chicken, beef, fatty bits and sausages, all cut up, with the vegetables and chickpeas.

Carrots, turnip and potatoes cooked in the savory broth can be embellished with coarse salt, freshly ground black pepper and savory pumpkin sauce.

Serve chickpeas with the vegetables or save them for another meal.

After the soup, a plate of meat, sausages, chickpeas and vegetables with tangy pumpkin sauce. Bread is an essential accompaniment.

Mix the pumpkin sauce into the chickpeas and vegetables.

Puchero is a “white” soup. If chorizo and morcilla sausages are to be included in the meal, they are cooked separately, so that the red pimentón in their spicing doesn’t color the broth.

The broth typically is served with thin vermicelli noodles (fideos), rice or thinly sliced bread in it. It usually has a few chickpeas and slices of carrots.

Tangy pumpkin sauce as condiment.

In my pueblo, puchero was always served in its purest form, with little embellishment (sometimes green onions to be munched on alongside the puchero). But elsewhere in Andalusia I have discovered an easy salsa de calabaza—pumpkin sauce—served as a condiment. Mixed with the boiled meats and vegetables, it adds tang.

Everyday Soup Pot, Andalusian Style
Puchero Andaluz

Serves 4-6 with leftover broth and chickpeas.

½ pound raw chickpeas, soaked overnight in water

16 cups water plus additional to cook sausages
½ chicken or stewing hen (about 1 ½ pounds)
6 ounces boneless beef shin
6 ounces fresh or salted pork ribs or spine bone
2 ounces salt pork or pancetta
4 ounces ham bone
Beef marrow bone
1 leek, white part only
4 large carrots, peeled
1 turnip, peeled
1 stalk celery
4-5 medium potatoes, peeled
Salt, as needed
1 cup medium-short grain rice

2-3 links soft cooking chorizo (8 ounces)
6 ounces morcilla (blood sausage)

For the pumpkin sauce:
8 ounces pumpkin or squash
1 clove garlic
¼ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
Pimentón (paprika)

To serve
Sprigs of fresh mint to serve with soup
Sprigs of parsley to garnish meat platter
Bread to accompany the puchero

The night before cooking the puchero, put the chickpeas to soak in water to cover. Soak them at least 8 hours. (If tap water is very hard, use a pinch of baking soda in the soaking water.) Drain the chickpeas.

Skim off the foam that rises.

Place the chicken, meat, fat and bones in a large bowl. Wash them in two or three changes of cold water. Drain and place them in a very large soup pot. Add 16 cups of water. Bring the water to a boil. Use a skimmer or ladle to skim off and discard the foam that rises to the top.

Add the soaked and drained chickpeas, the leek, carrots, turnip and celery. When the liquid again comes to a boil, skim once again. Cover the pot and lower the heat so the soup bubbles gently. Cook 1 hour.

Remove chicken and reserve it (unless you are using gallina, boiling hen, which needs longer cooking). Add the potatoes to the pot. Taste the broth and add salt to taste (about 1 ½ teaspoons). Bring again to a boil, lower heat, cover and cook until chickpeas and beef are completely tender, 40-60 minutes more.

During the last 30 minutes that the puchero is cooking, Place the chorizo and morcilla sausages in a pan, cover with water and cook them 20 minutes. If preparing the pumpkin sauce, cook the pumpkin in the water with the sausages. Keep the sausages hot.

Blend pumpkin for sauce.

For the pumpkin sauce: Skim out the pumpkin. Remove peel and cut it into chunks in a mini food processor or blender. Add a quarter of a cooked potato from the big puchero pot, the garlic, cumin and salt. Add the oil and vinegar and blend to make a smooth sauce. Thin the sauce with 1 or 2 tablespoons of broth from the pot. Place in a sauce bowl and sprinkle with pimentón.

Remove the bones, meat, fat and vegetables from the puchero pot. Place the vegetables in a bowl or on a platter. Skim out the chickpeas and place them in a bowl. (Some chickpeas can stay in the soup.)

Remove congealed fat.

(If the puchero is to be served the following day, place the vegetables and meats in a covered container with a little of the broth and refrigerate. Pour the broth through a colander, discarding any stringy bits of leeks or celery. Refrigerate the soup overnight. The following day, skim off and discard the fat that has congealed on top of the soup. Reheat all of the ingredients. Cook the rice in the broth.)

Discard the bones. Cut the meat, pork fat and reserved chicken into pieces. Cut the chorizo and morcilla into chunks and add to the platter. Keep warm.

Remove broth that is not going to be used for soup and save for another use. Leave about 1 ¼ cups of broth per person in the soup pot. Slice one of the carrots and add to the soup with a ladle of the chickpeas (allow about ¼ cup chickpeas per person).Bring again to a boil and add the rice. Lower heat, cover the pot and cook until rice is just barely cooked, 10 minutes.

Ladle the broth with rice, carrots and chickpeas into wide, shallow soup bowls. Garnish each with a sprig of mint. Serve the soup.

Garnish the platter of meats with parsley. Serve it with the bowl of vegetables, chickpeas and pumpkin sauce.