COOKING WITH NEW APPLICANCES!

My kitchen: new induction cooktop and electric oven!

Oh no! I burned the lentil soup! In an instant, the lentils and carrots at the bottom of the pot scorched, ruining lunch and a perfectly good pan.

This happened on my brand-new induction cooktop. I hadn’t intended to use it until learning more about how it works. But, as luck would have it, when I turned on the big old gas stove to heat up lunch, the burner sputtered out—an empty butane tank. Ben called some burly friends and they, unceremoniously, moved the old stove out. Bye-bye, bombonas (butane tanks).

I put the pot on the new cooktop, turned up the heat dial and touched “P” for power. By the time I turned to get the soup bowls ready, the soup had scorched.

I felt like a dolt. Or, anyway, a novitiate in the kitchen. There’s going to be a learning curve here, as I adapt to a new way of cooking. So, “P” for power is great for bringing a pot of water to a boil to cook pasta—but not for anything with solids that rest on the superheated bottom.

Smaller oven, but 11-pound turkey just fits!

My new eye-level electric oven presented no orientation problems, other than needing to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius for temperature settings. I put in an 11-pound stuffed turkey, basted it with olive oil and white wine every 30 minutes. The turkey was roasted in less than three hours. While I made the gravy, I popped mashed potatoes with pimentón and roasted Brussels sprouts in the oven to reheat.

Roast garlic under broiler/grill.

I’m using the oven way more than I did the oversize one on the old gas stove. It is radically more efficient. Plus, I need it to do a few things that I used to do on an open gas flame—like roast a head of garlic (to add to lentils or black-eyed peas) or roast bell peppers.

Cut peppers in half and flatten them to roast under broiler/grill.

And, I can’t use my clay cazuelas and earthenware tagine on the cooktop (only pans with ferrous content, that a magnet will stick to, work on induction), so, until I get a special induction plate, I am using the oven for clay-pot cooking too.

My first experiment—arroz marinero, seafood rice in cazuela—was a little off on the timing. Although I know from experience how earthenware holds the heat, I still managed to overcook the rice in cazuela!

Note to self: stand back when opening the oven to avoid an eye-level blast of steam.

Baked Rice with Seafood in Cazuela
Cazuela de Arroz Marinero al Horno

Rice and seafood, baked in an earthenware cazuela.

Bring cazuela right to the table to serve.

A touch of saffron gives rice a golden hue.

An earthenware cazuela takes a long time to come up to temperature, but once the liquid starts to bubble, the cazuela holds the heat for a long time. Take the rice out of the oven before it is completely tender and allow it to finish cooking in a 10-minute waiting time. 

 
Bomba is a variety of Spanish rice that doesn’t readily overcook and turn mushy. If not available, use medium round-grain paella rice or Italian risotto rice. 

If you can get whole shrimp with the heads on and you don’t mind peeling them, they’re best because the shells add flavor to the oil for cooking the sofrito. If whole shrimp are not an easy option, just skip the first step in this recipe.

Serves 4-6.

Par-boiled artichokes and frozen peas.

1 pound whole jumbo shrimp
1/3 cup olive oil
½ cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped red or green bell pepper
2 cloves garlic, chopped
¾ cup grated tomatoes (2-3 plum tomatoes)
¼ cup dry Sherry or manzanilla
½ teaspoon pimentón (paprika)
Saffron (optional), crushed
2 tablespoons hot water
2 cups round-grain rice, preferably bomba variety
½ pound cleaned squid, cut in rings
12 ounces monkfish fillet, cut in 1 ½ -inch cubes
5 cups fish or chicken stock
Salt
1 cup frozen peas
Artichoke bottoms, frozen or par-boiled
Sprigs of fresh mint or chopped parsley

Fry heads and shells to flavor oil.

Peel the shrimp, keeping the heads and shells. Reserve the bodies. Heat the oil in a skillet. Add the shrimp heads and shells and fry them on medium heat until they change color. Remove from heat. Tilt the pan so oil runs to one side and carefully skim out the shrimp heads and shells. When they are cool, discard.

Cook tomatoes until jammy-thick.

Add the onion, pepper and garlic to the oil and sauté on medium heat until softened and beginning to brown, 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes. Turn up the heat and cook until reduced to a thick sauce. Add the Sherry and cook until evaporated. Stir in the pimentón.

Dissolve the saffron, if using, in the hot water. Stir it into the sofrito tomato sauce. Scrape all of the sauce into a 12-inch cazuela. Add the rice.

Add the cut-up squid and cubes of monkfish to the skillet and sauté them very quickly. Add to the sofrito and rice in the cazuela.

The cazuela can be prepared up to this point at least 1 hour in advance.

Preheat oven to 425ºF. Bring the fish stock to a boil. Taste it and add enough salt to season the cooked rice. Stir the hot stock into the cazuela. Add the peas and artichoke bottoms.

Bake the rice uncovered. Careful of escaping steam when opening the oven!

Carefully place the cazuela, uncovered, in the oven. Bake until the liquid just begins to bubble, about 20 minutes. Carefully slide oven rack partially out. Add the reserved shrimp to the cazuela and stir the rice. 

Lower oven temperature to 350ºF. Return the cazuela to the oven and cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed, but rice still has a kernel of hardness, about 15 minutes. Remove the cazuela from the oven and allow it to set 10 minutes. Garnish with sprigs of mint. Serve the rice from the cazuela.

Earthenware cookware holds the heat for a long time.

Complementary recipes:

Simple fish stock.

Black-eyed peas with roasted garlic.

"Before" pictures of the kitchen. http://mykitcheninspain.blogspot.com.es/2016/12/my-kitchen-in-spain-gets-revamp.html 

 

MY KITCHEN IN SPAIN GETS A REVAMP!

Part way through my kitchen renovations, I am panicking. We just set the new oven in its niche and I realize it’s almost at floor level. What to do now? Find another location? Raise the stovetop? How did I miscalculate so badly?

Luckily, I’ve got my revamper-in-chief, Peter Nielsen, to help me solve this and some other problems. Peter is an artist who earns a living by doing electrical work, plumbing, carpentry, masonry, and much more.

Peter placing new counter top in my kitchen.

My kitchen in Spain, 1972, with original small Spanish gas stove. (Yep, that's me in the mini-skirt, making a salad.)

When I built my house in 1972, I custom-designed my kitchen to the specifications of the times. I had a dinky little Spanish gas stove, so I built my counter tops to line up with it, only 34 inches high and 19 inches deep. That, I soon realized, was not enough counter space to roll out a pie crust. Peter built me a center island to house a dishwasher and extend the counter space.

My kitchen, with American range converted to run on butane gas and a center island with enough counter top for kneading bread, rolling out pie crust.

Ten years later, I acquired a big American stove, a MagicChef, purchased second-hand from an American military family leaving the US naval base at Rota (Cádiz, on the Atlantic coast of southern Spain). That necessitated knocking out some cabinet tops. The new stove stuck up much higher than my counters.

That stove has served me well through the years—family meals, dinner parties and recipe testing for eight cookbooks.  When the thermostat stopped functioning, I got an oven thermometer so I could regulate temperatures. Clogged gas valves can’t easily be cleaned, as the tubing becomes brittle. That means I can’t get burners hot enough for good wok cooking. And, some invasive varmint ripped most of the insulation out of the oven, so it’s seriously inefficient to heat.

Adios to my big American oven. A whole chicken, apple crisp and beets roast on one rack.

Peter at work in my kitchen. I've alerted him that Monday we're going to have to make some changes.

Panic! The new oven is almost at floor level. It's not wired in yet, so I'm looking for a new plan.

Cooking with gas is swell--but, as I get older, lugging butane gas tanks is a pain. (I got rid of gas hot water heater when I installed solar hot water system.) The new electric oven is way smaller than the old one. But, gone are the days when I roast whole turkeys with all the trimmings for eight to ten people. The induction cooktop only has three “burners.” But, hey, I can’t remember when I last needed four burners at the same time.

During the renovations, we’ve moved the clunky gas stove into the dining room so I can still put meals on the table. With the kitchen en obra, in the works, I’m not doing a lot of cooking.

My favorite soup pot for 50 years--aluminum with copper bottom--is soon to be  decommissioned, as it won't work with induction cooktop.

Peter Nielsen’s web site http://peteratplay.com/ shows samples of his art and photography. His fix-it and build-it artistry is on show in many homes in my area. My neighbor, Jan, wants to clone Peter. That's how important he is in our lives.