ALONG THE SPOON-FOOD TRAIL

Prepare your spoons! Stew with chickpeas, chard and sausages.

Tuck your napkin under your chin and get your spoons at the ready because we’re off on the “spoon trail.” The comida de cuchara—a meal eaten with a spoon—is favorite fare in Spain, especially in blustery winter weather. In today’s high-powered world, even well-heeled businessmen and politicos have a weakness for comforting bowls of spoon food—lentils like mamá used to make or abuela’s potaje.


So, when a visiting friend, Lars Kronmark, who is a chef-instructor of culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) at Greystone in Napa Valley, California, said he wanted to taste some typical Spanish soups, I looked to village bar-restaurants for traditional dishes.

During January, February and March, every Friday and Saturday in my town, Mijas Pueblo, a dozen bars are participating in the Ruta del Cuchareo, or “route of the spoon,” offering a cazuelita (earthenware ramekin) of soup or stew plus a glass of wine for just €2 (about $2.70).

We weren’t going from bar to bar, so I chose one, El Refugio (www.barelrefugio.es), for a spoon-food tasting menu for six persons. We had several salads and tapas as starters, then sampled three different soups/stews.

Lars serves a bowl of berza.

 Are they soups or stews? I had trouble deciding what to call them when I was writing recipes for my cookbooks. Most have either legumes, such as chickpeas or beans, or rice. Some are really soupy, others fairly thick. In Spanish, the word potaje covers this category nicely. But “pottage” in English doesn’t sound so enticing. 

Soupy rice and seafood.

Cazuela de arroz—rice with chicken, fish and shrimp—is sort of a “paella soup.” Carlos Boeta, owner of the Bar El Refugio, told us that making a flavorful fondo, or stock, is the most important part. My recipe for cazuela de arroz makes a rice dish not so soupy as the one shown here.

Because this week is the día de San Antón, the festival of St. Anthony Abbot, patron of pigs and other animals, we had to sample the typical feast-day food, potaje de callos, chickpeas, pig tripe, trotter and sausages. That recipe as well as some photos of the fiesta, when locals bring their pets to be blessed by the priest, is here .

Chickpeas, pig tripe and sausages for San Antón day.

And, possibly my favorite soup/stew of all—berza de acelga, an Andalusian vegetable stew chock full of chickpeas, meat, sausages, chard and other vegetables. The version served at El Refugio, made by the cook, Rocio, is soupier than my version, pictured at the top. I wrote about berza on an earlier blog post http://mykitcheninspain.blogspot.com.es/2011/03/carnaval-pre-lenten-pig-out.html. Here is that recipe.

Berza, with chickpeas and chard, at Bar El Refugio, Mijas.

Andalusian Vegetable Stew
Berza Andaluza


Morcilla, blood sausage, and chorizo punch up the flavor in this vegetable stew. If you don’t have morcilla, add a pinch of clove, a spoonful of pimentón (paprika) and crushed garlic to the vegetable pot.

Serves 6.

½  pound chickpeas, soaked overnight
¾  pound beef shin or pork shoulder
½  pound meaty pork spareribs, cut crosswise into short lengths
Small piece of ham bone (optional)
2 ounces pancetta
1-pound bunch of chard
1 carrot, chopped
1 pound pumpkin or winter squash, peeled and cut in chunks
6 ounces morcilla (blood) sausage
6 ounces chorizo
5 peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
1 pound potatoes, peeled and cut in 1-inch chunks

Drain the chickpeas. Put them in a large soup pot with 8 cups of hot water. Bring to a boil and skim off froth. Add the beef, pork rib and ham bone, if using. When water boils, skim again.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Chop the chard. Add to the pot with the carrot and pumpkin. Prick the morcilla several times with a skewer (so it doesn’t pop open when steam accumulates) and add it to the pot. Add the peppercorns and salt. Cover and simmer 20 minutes more.

Add the potatoes. Cook 20 minutes more. Remove several chunks of potatoes and pumpkin and mash them smooth. Stir the mash into the pot to thicken the broth.

Let the stew settle 10 minutes before serving. Cut beef, pork rib, and sausage into pieces. Serve the chickpeas, meats, vegetables and broth in shallow soup dishes.

BLOG BIRTHDAY AND A LOOK AT THE STATS

Favorite blog is about cooking in cazuela.

Raise a glass of cava (Spanish bubbly) with me to toast an anniversary—it’s three years since I started this blog, MY KITCHEN IN SPAIN.

My first couple of posts were experimental, as I learned how to use the Blogger template and wrestled with uploading photos. My “official” “Welcome to My Kitchen in Spain” blog appeared November 28, 2009.

Finding a voice, choosing subjects that interest first me, then you, the readers; testing and formatting recipes, and, especially, learning to take photos of food all continue to challenge me, engross me every week.

The fun part is doing what I’ve always enjoyed about food writing—cooking and tasting and talking to people about what they eat and how they cook it. I’m a reporter at heart and blogging is a great way to keep a hand in.

After years of writing about Spanish food, I’ve gathered a lot of information and thousands of recipes. Here’s where I can share that knowledge with many more people than those who read my cookbooks or magazine articles.

Traffic to MY KITCHEN IN SPAIN has grown steadily over three years. Google.com, Google UK, Google Canada, Google Australia and Google España account for far and away most of the referrals. Top links were from Stumbleupon, the Los Angeles Times after my stories appeared in the food pages of the paper (thanks Russ Parsons), and LeitesCulinaria.

Where are you, the audience? The US leads readership by a lot, Spain is second. After that it’s other English-speaking countries—UK, Canada and Australia. But, then, Russia. I cannot fathom why I have such wide readership in Russia! Then Germany, France, India and the Philippines.

I am fascinated by the “search keywords” category on the stats page. Here are the all-time most searched: “Spanish cocktails,” “avocado tree,” “grelos” (use “Search” at the upper left of the blog if you want to know what grelos are), “pimentón,” “white watermelon” (yes, I wrote about white watermelon here, but why so many searches?), “cazuela,” “piquillo pepper seeds” and “Spain seafood.”

And now for the top five blog posts: in fifth place, Bitter Oranges--Mouth-Puckeringly Delicious ; fourth,  This Gazpacho Is Hot; third, How to Lower Your Cholesterol WithoutMedication, which doesn’t really have much to do with Spanish cooking; second, Five Star Seafood Soup; and, drum roll, please, número uno, Clay Pot Cooking, Cazuela Edition. My welcome page also gets a lot of traffic (link to it by clicking on the photo of me at the left).



I welcome your comments and questions. I'm fascinated to know what you, the readers, want to know about cooking in Spain.

To celebrate this anniversary, here’s another post on clay pot cooking, cazuela edition. Refer to the original post for everything you need to know about cooking in earthenware.

Rice, pork, seafood and vegetables cooked in a cazuela.

Cazuela de Arroz a la Malagueña
Rice with Pork and Seafood, Málaga style
It’s a paella if you cook it outdoors in a metal paella pan. It’s un arroz, merely a rice dish, if you cook it in the kitchen in a cazuela.

If possible buy unshelled shrimp, as the shells and, especially, heads add flavor. Use Spanish round-grain rice for this dish. If not available, Italian arborio is a possible substitute.

Serves 4 to 6.

Saffron and pimentón flavor the rice.

½ pound small clams (such as Manila clams)
¾ pound large shrimp in their shells (or ½ pound shelled shrimp)
4 tablespoons olive oil
½ pound pork, cut in cubes
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, cut in strips
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon sweet pimentón (paprika), not smoked pimentón
1 tomato, peeled and chopped
Pinch of saffron, crushed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
10 ounces asparagus stalks
1 small artichoke
½ pound monkfish fillets, cut in cubes
4 cups water or stock
2 cups round-grain rice

Wash the clams in several changes of water. Put them in a pan with ½ cup of water. Cover and cook the clams just until shells open. Remove from heat. Reserve clams. Strain the broth and reserve it.

Shell the shrimp, reserving the shells. You can use the shells to make a stock, along with any fish trimmings. Or else sauté them in hot oil to flavor the oil.

Heat the oil in a 12-inch cazuela. Add the shrimp shells and sauté them until they turn color. The shells flavor the oil. Scoop them out with a skimmer and discard the shells. Now sauté the shrimp in the same oil. Remove them when they are pink and reserve them.

Add the pork to the pan and fry it until browned on all sides. Stir in the onion, green pepper and garlic. Sauté 5 minutes. Stir in the pimentón, then add the tomato. Mix the crushed saffron in ¼ cup hot water. Pour into the cazuela. Add salt (about 2 teaspoons, unless you have heavily salted the stock) and pepper.

Trim ends off asparagus, cut stalks into 1-inch pieces and add to the cazuela. Remove outer leaves from the artichoke and cut it into quarters immediately before adding to the pan. Add the pieces of monkfish.

Combine the reserved clam broth with water or stock to make 4 cups liquid. Add to the cazuela and bring to a boil. Stir in the rice. Bring again to a boil, then reduce heat so liquid bubbles gently until rice is al dente tender, about 18 minutes. Arrange the clams and shrimp on top.

Remove cazuela from heat and allow to set for 5 minutes before serving.