CHIPS AND DIP

When I shop at a big hipermercado down on the Coast, I'm on the lookout for foods and products that I don’t normally find in the village market—kale and quail, venison and violet potatoes. In the snack section, I discovered vegetable chips cooked with olive oil. I always grab a bag of them, to nosh on the drive home. 

The chips are made with beets, carrots, parsnips and purple potatoes. Something about the salty-sweetness of those vegetables makes them addictive. But the little pack is expensive. Why not make these chips at home? They’re perfect with a party dip.

Crispy vegetable chips with a creamy goat cheese dip.

Snack-pack of veggie chips from the hypermarket.

Because potato chips are fried, I supposed that beet and parsnip chips were fried too. I sliced my vegetables paper-thin (by hand, as I don’t have a mandoline) and heated a pan of olive oil. I fried each vegetable (beets, carrots, parsnips, purple potatoes and rutabaga) separately until golden, then drained the chips on a rack.

Fail! They were not crisp. The next day I spread them on a baking sheet and baked them in the oven (300ºF/10 minutes). This crisped the chips a lot. Still, why bother frying if baking does the trick?

Back to the drawing board. Happy to report, my baked chips with olive oil and sea salt turned out great.

Crispy, baked beet chips. They're sweet and salty, with a hint of olive oil. 

Headed for the chipper! Clockwise from upper left, rutabaga (nabo sueco or "Swede"), beets (remolachas), carrots (zanahorias), purple potatoes (patatas violetas) and parsnips (chirivías). Also good for making chips are taro, plantain, sweet potatoes, turnips.

If you don't have a mandoline slicer, use a vegetable peeler to shave thin strips from parsnips and carrots. 

Cut a slice off one side of the vegetable so it has a firm base on the cutting board. Aim for "paper thin"--1/16 inch. Shown are purple potatoes. Aren't they pretty?

A serrated knife works well for slicing beets, potatoes and rutabaga. 

Place each batch of sliced vegetables separately in a bowl and toss them with enough olive oil to coat them. Spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet. Place in preheated oven (325ºF with turbo/fan or 350ºF without fan). Bake 5 minutes and flip the slices over. Continue baking until they are golden and crisped. Time varies with each vegetable. Parsnip chips baked 12 minutes total; beets baked 20 minutes total. Expect the vegetable chips to shrink quite a lot in baking.

Baked chips can be stored in an air-tight container for up to two days. If necessary to crisp them up before serving, spread them on a baking sheet and place in preheated oven at 250ºF for 5-10 minutes.

Chip Dip

Salsa para Hortalizas Curruscantes

Chip dip is made with fresh goat cheese, seasoned with smoked pimentón

This dip starts with fresh, soft goat’s cheese (queso fresco de cabra). If not available use a log of French chêvre, Greek feta or Mexican soft cotija. Taste the dip before seasoning with salt, as the substitute cheeses may be saltier than Spanish queso fresco. Pimentón de la Vera--smoked paprika, either sweet or hot--is the main flavouring. Frying whole cloves of garlic gives them a mellow flavour.

Fresh, soft goat cheese.

6 cloves garlic, unpeeled
Oil for frying
½ cup soft goat cheese or queso fresco
¼ cup Greek yogurt
½ teaspoon hot pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika)
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Sherry vinegar

Whole, fried cloves of garlic.

Lightly crush the cloves of garlic, just sufficiently to split the skins. Heat the oil in small skillet and fry the cloves of garlic until golden. Remove. When they are cool, slip off the skins.

Place the skinned garlic in a mini food processor with the cheese, yogurt, pimentón, cumin, salt and vinegar. Blend to make a smooth dip.

The dip keeps, covered and refrigerated, up to 5 days.



I´m thinking I'll buy myself a mandoline for Christmas and make a batch of vegetable chips every time I turn on the oven.



More recipes with beets:
Waldorf Salad with Beets.
Roasted Beet Salad with Grapefruit.
Moroccan Beet Salad.

More recipes with parsnips:
Savory Parsnip Upside-Down Cake.
Roasted Root Vegetables with Quince.

VEGAN OR NOT—A SUMPTUOUS CARROT SOUP

Springtime harvest.

Carrots are so versatile! We tend to think of them as winter vegetables, stored in the root cellar, essential to hearty cold-weather soups and stews. But pulled from the damp spring earth, carrots are bright and sweet, delicious raw or cooked.

This sumptuous carrot soup, vegan or not, with subtle spicing makes a lovely starter for a spring meal. It can be served hot or chilled, so will take you right into summer menus.

A creamy carrot soup with no cream, thickened with almonds and rice.

Chopped fresh mint gives carrots a springtime flavor.

This is a creamy soup without the dairy cream. Ground almonds and rice are the thickeners and olive oil gives richness. For a vegan version, use a well-seasoned vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.

Fresh goat's milk cheese.

The soup is good with a swirl of queso fresco or Greek yogurt. If you prefer the vegan version, just omit the cheese. Garnish with chopped fresh herbs—mint, fennel, parsley, tarragon or cilantro are all good with carrots. Chopped scallions add a sprightly touch.

Carrot Cream Soup
Crema de Zanahorias

Serves 6 to 8.

3 tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup blanched and skinned almonds
5-6 carrots (12 ounces), chopped
1 leek, chopped
1 clove chopped garlic
¼ cup short-grain rice
Strip of lemon zest
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom
Pinch of ground cloves
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt
8 cups vegetable or chicken stock
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Chopped fresh herbs and scallions to garnish
1 ounce queso fresco (soft cheese) (optional)
2 teaspoons hot water

Heat the oil in a soup pot. Add the almonds and fry on medium heat until they are toasted. Skim them out and reserve.

Add the carrots, leek and garlic to the oil. Sauté until vegetables just begin to turn golden, 5 minutes. Don’t let them brown.

Carrots and rice cook til tender.

Stir in the rice, lemon zest, ginger, cardamom, cloves and pepper. Add the stock and salt to taste. Bring the soup to a boil, cover and simmer 20 minutes.

Place the fried almonds in a blender with 4 tablespoons of the liquid from the pot. Blend to make a smooth cream. Stir it into the soup and cook until carrots and rice are very tender, 10 minutes longer.

Remove and discard the lemon zest. Puree the soup with an immersion blender or in batches in a regular blender. Add the lemon juice and reheat the soup before serving. Garnish with chopped herbs and scallions. If desired, mash soft queso fresco with hot water to serve as an accompaniment. 

Garnish soup with chopped scallions and herbs. Serve softened queso fresco on the side.

Fresh goat's milk cheese is softened and mashed.

Swirl the soft cheese into the soup.

Next year perhaps I will try growing purple carrots. I bet they would make a pretty soup.

More vegetarian recipes with carrots:

Carrots with Raisins and Pine Nuts.

Minted Carrot Salad.

Millet and Carrot Pilaf.

Moroccan Carrot Salad. 

"Russian" Salad with Potatoes and Carrots.

GOT MY GOAT (CHEESE)

It’s Goat Day in Málaga! Closing a two-month celebration of the Cabra Malagueña, the Málaga breed of goat, are events for school kids (chance to feed a baby goat with a bottle), a sculpture show and gastronomy tastings.

“Oh My Goat” is the sculpture show, sponsored by the Málaga newspaper, Diario Sur, consisting of 40 life-size goats of molded fibre glass, each one painted or “decorated” by a different Málaga artist. (To see all of them, go to this web page  http://ohmygoat.diariosur.es/oh-my-goat.html .)

Málaga-breed goat (photo by Assoc. de Criadores de la Cabra Malagueña).

The breed, Cabra Malagueña (http://www.cabrama.com/index ), is a short-haired, cinnamon-colored goat, autochthonous to Málaga province. It is noted for being especially fertile and a good milk producer, adaptable to arid terrain where it makes good use of natural pasturage. There are around 200,000 Málaga-breed goats in the province, producing 70 million liters of milk per year. About 90 percent of the milk goes to big industrial cheese makers in La Mancha, Barcelona and France.

Call lost and found--abandoned goat.

 I got my own goat. Getting rid of her was the hard part. It happened on Christmas Day, when the goatherd brought his herd across the hillside—as he has done many, many times before. Maybe he had had too much holiday brandy, because he lost control of his flock, which destroyed my vegetable garden. He finally drove them off my property and headed back over the hill. But he left one goat behind. Oddly, she had no bell. She moseyed about, cropping grass, shrubs and weeds. At night, when it rained a bit, she bumped at the front door, begging to be let in. I did not let her in!

Yes, there were jokes about goat stew. And, “milking it for all it’s worth”. (I wondered if she needed milking—apparently not, but I wouldn’t have known). She had an ID tag on her ear—but there was no one to call during a holiday week. It was nine days before we finally located the owner, who came to retrieve her. The goat was fine.


Years ago, there were several herds of goats in the village. They went out every morning to graze. As they passed through the streets, housewives would come out with their pails and the goatherd would milk the goats at their doorstep. The warm milk was carried to the kitchen and brought three times to a boil in a special milk-boiler. It was then ready to be poured into coffee, whisked into thick drinking chocolate, or cooked in a sweet pudding.

During the milking season, the goatherds made cheese with the excess milk, which I used to buy at a neighborhood shop. It was a small round  of very white curds, marked by the woven esparto grass molds in which it was pressed. The cheese was soft and fresh, very mild in flavor, lightly salted. I never suffered any ill effects from eating raw-milk cheese, but I knew people who did. Nowadays it is prohibited by health regulations to sell fresh cheese made from unpasteurized milk.

So, along with a culinary colleague who was visiting (Lars Kronmark, who is a chef-instructor of culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA http://www.ciachef.edu/california/) Greystone in Napa Valley, California), I went to see how goat’s milk cheese is made at an artisanal cheesemaker, El Pastor del Valle, http://www.elpastordelvalle.com/entrada.html  in the nearby town of Alhaurín el Grande (Málaga).

Antonio Vera de la Rosa tends 750 Málaga-breed goats and his wife, Josefa (Pepi) Burgos Carabantes, makes cheese.

The dairy produces fresh cheese, semi-cured, cured, viejo (aged), raw-milk cured cheese, goat’s milk yogurt, requesón (ricotta) and processed cheese spread.

The milk comes by truck from the farm, where the goats are milked twice a day. The fresh cheese (queso fresco) starts with pasteurization of the milk. That destroys both good and bad bacteria and also changes the calcium balance of the milk. The curdling agent—rennet, a substance taken from baby goats—along with calcium chloride, which restores the calcium balance and firms up the curds, are added to the warm milk, which is allowed to set until it begins to curdle, or form curds.

The curds are cut with a lira, or lyre, a mechanical arm with steel threads that cuts the curds into bits about the size of lentils. The whey is allowed to drain off. The whey is collected—some is heated to make requesón—the same as ricotta, which just means “re-cooked”—the rest goes to feed pigs or, Pepi tells us, as fertilizer in avocado groves!

Pepi and her helper pack the curds into cheese-cloth-lined two-part plastic molds. The molds show a crosshatch pattern that mimics the woven esparto grass strips that were used in traditional cheese making. The molds are mounted on a horizontal press and squeezed to release further liquid.

Pepi, left, is the master cheese maker. Lars, center, learns how Spanish goat cheese is made.

Removed from the molds, fresh cheeses are ready for brining.

Splash! Cheeses go into the salmuera, a 15-percent salt solution, where they stay for 2 hours. Once drained, the fresh cheese is ready to eat. It keeps, refrigerated, for about 20 days.

 Fresh goat’s cheese is my favorite snack food—toasted bread, olive oil, slices of cheese and raw onion. It also works as a dessert—serve it with a dribble of honey and some walnuts.

Semi-cured and cured cheese made from pasteurized milk start out much the same, but they require the addition of lactic fermentation agents, which are destroyed by pasteurization, that convert milk sugar into lactic acid, producing the characteristic cheese flavor. Semi-cured cheese needs a minimum of 20 days of aging; cured, more than 2 months, and viejo, aged, more than 6 months.

The rinds are rubbed with olive oil. Some are dusted with rosemary or pimentón (paprika), which add flavor.

Semi-cured cheese--good for melting.

 Pepi says she makes raw milk cheese maybe only once a month, because it requires a very stringent hygienic protocol. Raw-milk cheese requires nothing further than rennet, as the milk’s natural bacteria provide the lactic ferments that give it character. It does require aging a minimum of two months, after which it is safe to eat.

The raw milk cheese from El Pastor del Valle is rubbed with Ibérico pork fat, adding another layer of umami flavor to the cheese, which is slightly splintery, slightly piquant.

Today’s cheese making produces about 300 half-kilo (1-pound) cheeses from about 750 liters (quarts) of milk.  Expand? No, says Pepi. “We don’t want to be big industry. We want to make only what we can store and sell.” El Pastor del Valle distributes to shops in Málaga province and, by order, to restaurants.

Raw milk cured goat's milk cheese.

 Uvas y queso saben de beso. Grapes and cheese taste like a kiss. A little breathy, very sweet.  I love raw milk cured goat's cheese with amontillado Sherry or with a verdejo white wine. Tannins in red wine seem to get in the way of the flavors of aged goat’s cheese.

Woven strips of esparto once used to mold the fresh cheese.

Málaga-breed dairy goats (photo from Associacion de Criadores).

EVERYTHING BUT THE GOAT

Fresh goat cheese.

I’ve just made fresh goat cheese, start to finish. I attended a workshop where a master cheesemaker showed us all the steps, from curdling the milk to pressing the curds.

Well, everything but the goat. The cheesemaker, Juan José Ocaña Mateo of Quesos Sierra Crestillina (http://www.quesossierracrestellina.es/) , brought 31 liters of fresh, pastereurized goat’s milk from his dairy farm in the Sierra Crestellina, near Casares in Málaga province (southern Spain).

My little cheese is a bit lumpy, but it tastes wonderful. Fresh and sweet, with just a light salting. It keeps up to two weeks, refrigerated. I love fresh goat cheese for breakfast, with toast “buttered” with olive oil, maybe a slice of tomato. It’s also delicious drizzled with honey and sprinkled with walnuts as a dessert.

I learned a lot about the cheese making process and about how different types of cheeses are made.

Fresh cheese is made with pasteurized milk to insure that it has no nasty bacteria (such as brucellosis, a disease that can be transmitted in raw milk). Pasteurization also destroys good bacteria, those that give matured cheeses their particular aroma and flavor. For cheeses that are to be aged, various fermenting agents and molds are reintroduced to the milk. For our fresh cheese, no additions are necessary.

Juan José Ocaña, master cheesemaker.

Juan measures out a tiny amount of liquid cuajo, rennet, a substance taken from the stomach of suckling animals. The type and quantity of rennet influence the cheese’s characteristics. Diluted with distilled water, the rennet is stirred into milk that has been warmed to 38ºC (100ºF).

Then we wait, about an hour and a half, while the milk curdles. Juan shows us a Power Point presentation about the dairy and cheesemaking. It is a family business going back several generations. He describes himself as a cabrero, a goatherd, but, in fact, he does everything from milking goats to marketing cheese. The family has 450 goats of the Payoya breed, autochthonous to the Sierra. A goat produces an average of 1.8 liters (just under 2 quarts) of milk daily, but not all are producing milk at a given time. Pipes carry the milk directly from the milking barn to the cheesemaking facility.

Cutting the curds with a lyre.

We return to our cheese making. After everyone washes hands, Juan tests the curds by cutting them with scissors. Then we take turns cutting the curds with a lira, a lyre-shaped paddle. Clumps gradually separate into smaller and smaller “beads.”

The suero, or whey, is drained off, leaving the curds. On the farm, the whey is fed to pigs that are raised for meat or made into requesón—ricotta cheese—by heating the whey until the protein coagulates into a smooth cheese.

Next step, to mold and press the curds. Cheesemakers, both artisanal and industrial, today use hygienic plastic forms, but in former times, they used strips of woven esparto grass to shape the cheeses. That’s what we are using for this workshop.

We twist the strips into small circles and place them on top of a grooved cheese board that allows the whey to drain into a bucket. Using our hands, we fill the molds with milky curds and gently press and compact them, gradually tightening the cinch. When the cheese holds its shape, it’s ready.

 Cheeses to be cured are submerged in salmuera, a brine, for a period of time. Ours are lightly sprinkled with salt, wrapped and ya está—ready to eat.

Semi-cured goat cheese.

Our workshop finishes with a cata, a tasting, of aged cheeses from the Sierra Crestellina farm. The semi-cured (aged two months) is creamy with a mild lactic tang, a natural rind, perfect for a cheese sandwich. Juan said it’s a good melting cheese. 

Good melting cheese.

The cured cheese is matured five months. It has a stronger aroma, is fattier and drier in consistency. The third cheese is a raw milk añejo, aged eight months. (Raw milk cheeses aged more than 60 days are safe.) It has a thick moldy rind, is saltier, drier, more pungent than the less mature cheeses. It is my favorite. It seems to be calling out for a copita of fino Sherry.

Raw milk añejo cheese has a thick rind, sunken shape.

SHOPPING ORGANIC

Donna Gelb picking out the perfect tomatoes.

As we strolled through the market, filling baskets with fresh produce—gorgeous heirloom tomatoes, striped eggplant, fat zucchinis, glowing red peppers—I started planning my dinner menu.

We were shopping at a weekly outdoor organic farmers’ market, held in four different inland villages on consecutive weekends, this week in Cártama Estación (Málaga province). The village where I live, on a hillside overlooking the Costa del Sol, has lost its agricultural roots. But inland, in the Guadalhorce Valley, farming is still important. ( http://www.guadalhorceecologico.es )

Elly Sleumer, organic farmer.

I was delighted to meet an old acquaintance at the market. She is Elly Sleumer, a Dutch woman who was a pioneer in organic farming in southern Spain. I first met her 20 years ago when I wrote a magazine article about her. She had walked away from a high-powered job that was taking its toll on her health, moved to Spain and bought an abandoned farm with a ruin of a house. Here’s what Elly said back then:

“When Spain entered the Common Market, I started a citrus cooperative here. That's where I learned the commerce of fruits and vegetables. I was the link between the market and farmers. I represented the Spanish Citrus Corporation on various commissions in Brussels.   

“Once I got started in farming, I was horrified at what local farmers were using—loads of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. I come from northern Europe, where already there was a different vision about the environment, about working with nature. I feel connected with the earth. For me, ecological farming is a life-style.    

“At first the local farmers thought I was crazy. Organic farming is not an easy business. You use smelly manure and rotting plant mulch. I was the first one here to invest money in drip irrigation. They had plenty of water then, so they thought I was crazy. Now, everybody uses drip irrigation.”

When Elly got her certification as an organic grower, there were fewer than 200 in all of Spain. Now there are thousands. Elly’s farm and organic produce business, Nature Present, is still going strong, only now her grown children run it.


Back when I first visited Elly’s farm, I made an interesting observation. Standing in a field of organically grown, ripe tomatoes, I picked one and took a bite out of it. Yes, it was better than the tomatoes in the supermarket—but not a lot better. Her business consisted of shipping organic tomatoes to Britain and Germany, so she was growing the same commercial variety as the non-organic growers. Bred for resistance, not flavor. Her tomatoes today were a revelation—heirloom varieties, packed with flavor. We selected a dozen of those beauties.

Organic goat's milk cheese.

Besides fruits and vegetables—the first quinces, cherimoyas, almonds and olives were on sale at the market—we found organic goat cheeses, olive oil (from last year’s pressing), eggs, fresh bread and packaged cereals and herbal teas.

My menu was shaping up. A plate of sliced tomatoes. That goat cheese, sliced and fried, with a quince sauce, then chicken braised with all those vegetables we had bought. As there was no meat at the organic market, I needed to make a stop at my local butcher who sells free-range poultry.

Chicken braised with eggplant, zucchini and peppers, a Catalan dish.

Chicken with Eggplant and Zucchini
Pollo en Samfaina
Samfaina is a Catalan “sauce” of eggplant, peppers and zucchini. Serve the chicken and vegetables accompanied by fried bread, rice or noodles.

The Catalans have an interesting technique for preparing tomatoes: grated instead of chopped. Slice off the tops and stems of the tomatoes and grate them on a box grater, saving all the juice and pulp. The skin acts as a shield so you don’t grate your knuckles.

Serves 6.

1 cut-up fryer, about 3 ½ pounds
salt and pepper
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup diced serrano ham or bacon
1 large eggplant (1 pound), peeled and     diced
1 red bell pepper, cut in 2-inch pieces
1 green bell pepper, cut in 2-inch pieces
1 large zucchini (1 pound), diced
2 onions, quartered and sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 large tomatoes, grated
¼ cup dry Sherry
1 bay leaf
1 sprig fresh oregano or ½ teaspoon dried
1 tablespoon chopped parsley


Sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt and pepper. In a cazuela or large skillet heat half of the oil. Put in the chicken pieces and brown them very slowly. Remove the chicken when browned.

Add the remaining oil to the cazuela and sauté the bacon, eggplant, peppers, zucchini, onions and garlic for 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, Sherry, salt and pepper, bay leaf, oregano and parsley.

Return the chicken to the cazuela. Cover and cook slowly until the chicken is tender, about 50 minutes. The vegetables should release enough liquid to keep the chicken from sticking. If necessary, add a little water to the cazuela.

Fried goat's cheese.

Queso Frito
Fried Goat’s Cheese

Use semi-cured Spanish goat cheese, which is tangy and salty. This makes a lovely starter served atop salad leaves with toasted pine nuts and a sweet-sour quince sauce.

Makes 10 tapas or starters.

¾ pound goat’s cheese
Flour for dredging
1 egg, beaten with 1 teaspoon water
1 cup fine, dry bread crumbs
Pinch of whole cumin seed
Olive oil for frying (about 1/3 cup)
1 oz pine nuts
Salad greens, to serve
Thinly sliced apple, to serve
Quince sauce, to serve

Slice the cheese 3/8 inch thick. Depending on shape of the slices, divide them to make 10 slices that are more or less the same size.

Put the flour and egg in two shallow bowls. Place the bread crumbs in a shallow tin and add the cumin seed. Dredge the cheese slices in flour and pat off excess. Dip them in beaten egg, then coat in breadcrumbs.

Place 1 teaspoon of the oil in a small frying pan and toast the pine nuts until they are golden. Remove.

Place remaining oil in a large frying pan and place over medium heat. Fry the cheese slices until golden brown, about 1 minute per side. Drain on paper towels.

Place greens on salad plates. Top each serving with a slice of fried cheese. Garnish with sliced apple and a scattering of pine nuts. Drizzle the quince sauce over the cheese. Serve immediately, while cheese is still warm. 

Salsa de Membrillo
Quince Sauce
Quince is an autumn fruit so rich in pectin that, when cooked with sugar, it sets up into a solid paste that can be cut into cubes (dulce de membrillo). A handy ingredient to keep in the pantry, quince paste can be turned into a quick sauce, delicious served with pork, with cheese croquettes, with foie gras, with duck. The sauce thickens as it cools. Serve it room temperature or reheat it in a small pan.

Makes about ¾ cup.

4  ounces quince paste
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
½ cup boiling water

Cut the quince paste into pieces and place in a blender with the vinegar and boiling water. Blend until quince is smooth.

©text and photos Janet Mendel