LAMB--SOMETHING SPECIAL FOR MY BIRTHDAY

My birthday is coming up next week. I’ll be dining in, me, family, a friend and a leg of lamb. I love lamb. It’s my favorite meat of all. So, that’s the most special meal I can imagine.

Spain is big sheep country. According to the Foods From Spain web site , Spain has more than 24 million sheep.

Every year a picture appears in the newspapers of flocks of sheep being driven through the Puerta del Sol in the center of Madrid. In times past, when the wool of merino sheep was a source of wealth, the Mesta, a sheep owners’ guild, controlled migratory routes. Vast herds of sheep were moved from northern Spain to southwestern Spain and back again, with the change of seasons, in the trashumancia or transhumance from summer to winter pastures.

With the decline in the wool business, since the 17th century, fewer herds cross the country and most of them are transported by truck or train. In fact, many of the routes have been closed off by fences--or paved over as national highways.

Nowadays, sheep are raised, not for their wool, but for milk (several of Spain’s best-known cheeses, such as Manchego, are made with sheep's milk) and for meat. Lamb from several regions has protected denominations. They are Cordero Manchego, Lechazo de Castilla y León, Ternasco de Aragón, Cordero de Navarra, Cordero de Extremadura and Cordero de Pais Vasco.

The meat is marketed as milk-fed baby lamb, cordero lechal, butchered before 2 months; recental or suckling lamb that has begun to graze, butchered from 2 to 4 months,  and spring lamb, cordero pascual, butchered from 4 to 12 months.

I love baby lamb, split and roasted in a wood-fired oven, in the Castillian manner. I love lamb chops on the parilla, grill, with nothing more than alioli, garlic mayonnaise, to go with them. I love the many lamb stews from every region of Spain.

Birthday present to myself, no need for ribbons. My whole leg of lamb weighs 4 pounds 14 ounces. In the US, a whole leg will be marketed considerably larger, from 6 to 7 pounds.

But, for my birthday leg of lamb, I am roasting it, French style, not Spanish. That is to say, I don’t want a slow braise, I want the meat still pink and juicy. I don’t want gravy or sauce. I want to taste the lamb, herb-inflected.

No recipe is required—just fresh thyme and rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper and, most important of all, an instant-read meat thermometer. That roast comes out of the oven when the meat reaches an internal temperature of 135ºF.

Meanwhile, I have been honing my love for lamb by trying other cuts, such as lamb ribs. Like pork ribs, lamb riblets are really fatty. But, if you love lamb as I do, this is good, as the fat conveys the lamb flavor and makes the meat especially succulent and juicy.

Lamb riblets with garlicky sauce.

Lamb Riblets with Garlic Sauce
Costillitas de Cordero al Ajillo

Spanish style, this dish is accompanied by patatas fritas, fries. However, the ribs are also good with rice or cous cous alongside for soaking up the sauce.

Serves 4.

Racks of ribs, cut into segments.

2 ½ pounds lamb riblets (2-3 racks of ribs)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 peeled cloves of garlic + 6 unpeeled cloves garlic
1 slice bread, crusts removed
1 sprig parsley + more for garnish
½ tablespoon pimentón (paprika, not smoked)
1 tomato, peeled and quartered
1 teaspoon oregano
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ cup wine vinegar
1 cup water

Cut the racks into segments of 2 or 3 ribs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and allow to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil in a deep skillet. Fry the 2 peeled garlic cloves, the bread and sprig of parsley. Remove when garlic and bread are golden.

In the same oil, brown the lamb riblets. With the side of a knife, crush the unpeeled garlics. Add them to the pan with the ribs.

In a blender or food processor, combine the fried garlic, fried bread, fried parsley, pimentón, tomato, oregano, cumin and vinegar. Process to make a smooth paste.

Add the paste to the ribs with the water and ½ teaspoon salt. Cover and simmer until the ribs are fork-tender, 30 to 40 minutes. Serve hot garnished with chopped parsley.

Succulent lamb ribs with garlic sauce.

SOMETHING'S FISHY

Bonito, a great fish.

I think I’ve finally got all my ducks in a row. Or, fish, actually.

Last month when I was in Sevilla for a few days, I encountered tapas of a fish called melva. I found melva in the fish market there too, but I’ve never seen it in my local market. Melva somewhat resembles bonito, a fresh fish that I buy frequently. But, is that the same as bonito del norte, the canned fish that I buy regularly for “tuna salad”?

I pulled out my fishy reference books—Alan Davidson’s The Tio Pepe Guide to the Seafood of Spain and Portugal (Santana Books); Seafood, A Connoisseur’s Guide and Cookbook, by Alan Davidson with sensational watercolors of fish by Charlotte Knox (Mitchell Beazley), and Manual del Pescado by José Carlos Capel (R&B Ediciones).  The Alan Davidson books are really helpful because they give fish names in several languages, including regional variations in nomenclature.

I also consulted http://www.fishbase.org, an amazing on-line data-base of fish worldwide and their names—and variations—in many languages. (That was where I found out that “rosada,” a widely marketed fish in Spain, is the “pink cusk-eel” and comes from the south Atlantic. When a market fish vendor tries to tell me it’s “fresh,” I know better, as it is always frozen, then thawed.)

Here’s the ducky list.

Melva is Auxis rochei, the frigate mackerel (although not actually a mackerel). According to Davidson, it is abundant in the Bay of Cádiz—which explains why it’s so ubiquitous in Sevilla.

Bonito is Sarda sarda (note—not tuna), known in English as bonito or Atlantic bonito. In Japan, bonito is an important ingredient in the cuisine. In Spain, this is an excellent blue fish, very meaty, fairly economical.

Bonito del norte is Thunnus alalunga, albacore tuna or long-finned tuna. In Spain, it’s known as atún blanco, white tuna (to differentiate it from “red tuna,” blue-finned tuna). In summer, albacore is fished off the northern Cantabrian coast. Much of it goes to the canning industry, but, fresh, it is used in the wonderful Basque dish, marmitako, tuna with potatoes.

As I’ve said before: Love the fish you’re with! I’ve got me a pretty bonito (no, I did not find out why bonito—which means “pretty”—is called bonito). Note the dark longitudinal stripes.

While flipping through the pages of Capel’s fish manual, I came across a fine recipe for bonito, calling for olives. As you may remember from last week, I’m on an olive roll, so this suited me just fine.

Bonito and its “blue” relatives, such as mackerel, sardines and tuna, are often prepared in escabeche, a vinegar marinade for cooked fish. This recipe is reversed—more like an adobo, as it is marinated—but only briefly—before cooking. The marinade is reduced to make the sauce.

(This recipe is adapted from one published in Manual del Pescado, by José Carlos Capel and attributed to La Cocina Andaluza by Miguel Salcedo Hierro).

Fillets of bonito with olive sauce.

Bonito Fresco con Aceitunas
Marinated Bonito with Olives

Serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main dish.

1 whole bonito, about 2 pounds
½ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup white wine
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic, slivered
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
Sprigs of thyme
Fennel flowers (optional)
½ cup water
1 cup pitted Manzanilla olives, sliced
Flour, for dredging
Olive oil, for frying

Cut off and discard head and guts. Cut the flesh into four fillets, leaving the skin on. (Besides the center spine, the bonito has a row of bones running down the middle of each half.)

Fish fillets in marinade.

 Place the fillets in a single layer in a non-reactive bowl (glass or earthenware). Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add the oil, wine, vinegar, garlic, bay leaf, parsley, thyme and fennel, if using. Cover and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours.

Remove the fillets from the marinade. Place the marinade in a small saucepan with the water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Strain the liquid and discard the garlic and herbs. Return the liquid to the pan and add the olives. Simmer gently.

Dredge the bonito fillets in flour and fry in hot oil until golden on both sides. Serve hot or cold with the olive sauce.

Crispy on the outside, moist fish on the inside. Olives are a piquant sauce.

JUMPING ON THE OLIVE BANDWAGON

¡PRACTICA EL ACEITUNING!  Before you say “Gesundheit!” to “aceituning,” let me remind you that the Spanish word for “olive” is aceituna. Olivo, a word that comes from the Romans, is an olive tree, but aceituna, from the Arabic, is the fruit of that tree.

Practica el aceituning is the catchy slogan for the grand marketing campaign rolled out this week by the producers of table olives. Spain is the world’s principal producer and exporter of table olives. What is aceituning? “To add original and creative seasonings to commercially bottled olives from Spain.”

Some examples: olives with pesto, cheese and salt cod; black olives with cayenne and orange peel; green olives with goat cheese, honey and hazelnuts; black olives with strawberries, tomato and PX vinegar; olives with soy sauce and ginger. (See more recipes.)

Brining my olives.

I’m practicing aceituning in my own way. I just put my hand-picked olives into salmuera, a brine seasoned with garlic, thyme and fennel. They should be ready to eat in a couple of weeks. I’m also using store-bought olives in some new ways.

Queen-sized Gordal olives.

The most familiar Spanish table olives are Manzanilla, sometimes marketed as “Seville” olives. Manzanilla is the name of the variety of olive tree. It produces a plump, meaty olive. Manzanillas make up the bulk of Spain’s table olive production, but the fat Gordal olive (also called “queen”) is another favorite commercial table olive.

The olives are hand-picked when still green. The curing process entails first soaking in an alkaline solution to remove the bitterness. Then the olives are left in a brine to ferment, which converts the olives’ natural sugars into lactic acid. This is what gives them that wonderful tangy flavor. They are canned or bottled whole and unpitted, pitted and stuffed.

Black olives are picked green.

Most olive varieties, when fully ripe, turn a purplish color, not black. Black olives that you buy in a can—gorgeous for garnishing salads and cold dishes—are not really ripe olives. They are picked green, processed in alkaline solution, then the black color is fixed by oxidation.

These are by no means the only olives in Spain. Every olive-producing region has its particular varieties and methods of curing and flavoring olives.

In Andalusia, you might sample aceitunas partidas, green olives (Manzanilla, Hojiblanca or Morisco)  that have been cracked to split them open, then brine-cured (no alkaline is used). They may be flavored with thyme, fennel, cloves of garlic, slices of lemon, oregano and strips of red pepper.

Split and brine-cured.

In Extremadura and La Mancha, ripe Cornicabra and Cacereña olives are prepared rayado, incised with a sharp blade, then cured in brine and flavored with local herbs. Arbequina is the varietal best-known in Catalonia, especially Lérida. These are tiny olives with a delicate flavor, simply brine-cured. The Empeltre olives of Aragón and Navarre are cured in brine when they reach a purplish-black degree of ripeness. In Murcia and Alicante, the Cuquillo olive is cured when nearly black.

You can add flavor to bottled, store-bought olives by draining them, then marinating for two days in salt water with slivered garlic, fresh or dried thyme,  sliced lemon and a splash of extra virgin olive oil. Or, practice some extreme aceituning and get a little adventuresome.

Olive Bread with Sardines. Inspiration for this recipe comes from a recipe booklet published by the board of the Denominación de Origen Protegida Aloreña de Málaga. The Aloreña olive is a type of brine-cured Manzanilla.  The recipe calls for a sort of focaccia bread made with Aloreña olives and roasted red pepper, topped with grilled sardines, olive “air,” and a smear of strawberry alioli. The bread recipe didn’t work so well for me and the “air” required techniques and ingredients with which I am not familiar. So I topped the bread with canned sardines and stacked some sliced Aloreña olives on top. The strawberry alioli (garlic mayonnaise) was, uh, interesting.

 Potato-Olive Salad. I “aceituned” a typical Spanish potato salad, papas aliñadas, by upping the proportion of olives. For 1 cup of diced, cooked potatoes, I used 1 cup of pitted brine-cured olives. (Split olives are easily pitted by pressing them on a board to squeeze out the pits.) Other ingredients are diced tomato, parsley, green onions, chunks of tuna, hard-cooked egg, olive oil and Sherry vinegar.

Olive-Cream Cheese Dip. This is incredibly easy! In a blender or mini processor, blend 1 cup softened cream cheese, 2 cloves garlic, 2 tablespoons chopped onion, ½ teaspoon pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika), and ½ teaspoon ground cumin. Add 1 cup pitted green Manzanilla olives and process until they are coarsely chopped. Serve with regañás  or any crisp crackers for dipping.

Black Olive, Corn and Avocado Salsa. Relish, salsa or salad?  Combine equal quantities of pitted black olives, corn kernels and chopped avocado with roasted red pepper, scallions, chile to taste, olive oil, lemon juice and a garnish of cilantro. Because olives are salty, you may not need to add salt.