PICK A BIRD FOR HOLIDAY DINING

Planning a dinner party menu, I surveyed the possibilities at the supermarket. This time of year, the choices are amazing. I decided to pass by the wee suckling pigs, great hunks of beef roasts, haunches of brined pork, whole salmon, lobsters. 

 

It was the poultry display that roped me in. There were several types of boned and stuffed birds—whole turkey, breasts, chickens. I like the ease of boned-out roasts, but I’ve never cared for the butcher’s stuffing mix, usually too much ground pork and too much salt for my taste. Nor did I want to spend time boning a bird myself.

Mini-chickens at top, center; partridge on the right; capon, duck.

A whole turkey would be way too much. Same for those gorgeous whole capons. Whole duck presented the opposite problem—not much meat on one duck (as the carcass is heavier, proportionately, than chicken or turkey) and it gets pretty expensive to buy two or three. (I did pick up a couple duck breasts, magret, to stash in the freezer for my own delectation.) 

In the small-bird section, I found partridges, quail and mini-chickens, called picantones. Weighing about 16 ounces/450 grams each, one bird would serve one or two persons. Stuffed with raisins, apricots and nuts, they would be special enough to serve to guests.

Small chickens, stuffed and roasted, make individual servings.

My recipe, actually, is for squab, which are young doves or pigeons, once a common bird in Castilla and La Mancha, where every farmyard had a dovecote. Besides providing an excellent source of guano fertilizer, it yielded tender young squabs for the stewpot. In fact, it’s what Don Quixote had for dinner on Sundays—"y algún palomino de añadidura los domingos"—"some squab on Sundays as well."

I prepared this recipe with four 1-pound small chickens. Squabs, if available, weigh slightly less, so figure 6 to 8 birds for the same quantity of stuffing. Cornish game hens (which are not wild game, but another sort of small chicken) weigh between 1 ¼ and 1 ½ pounds, so three birds would work for this recipe.

The recipe calls for a medium-dry Sherry, such as amontillado or oloroso seco . You only need a half cup—but the wine is so fantastic you’ll be delighted you sought out the bottle (serve it with toasted almonds, Spanish ham and sausage, mushroom croquettes). Otherwise, use dry fino Sherry.

Walnuts, dried apricots and raisins go into the stuffing for small birds.

Dinner serving, with roasted pumpkin and rainbow chard from the garden.

Squab or Small Chickens Stuffed with Raisins, Apricots, and Walnuts
Pichones Rellenos

Serves 4 as a main course or, if each bird is split in half, 8 as part of a larger menu.

4 1-pound chickens
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper
1 lemon
¼ cup seedless raisins
½ cup chopped, dried apricots
½ cup medium-dry Sherry, such as amontillado or oloroso seco
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup chopped shallots
¼ cup diced bacon
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1/3 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
¼ cup chopped parsley
Pinch of thyme
½ cup white wine
Water
1 cup chicken broth
¼ cup cream

Rinse the chickens and pat dry. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grate some of the lemon zest into a bowl and reserve. Squeeze lemon juice into the cavities of the chickens. Allow them to come to room temperature, 30 minutes.

Combine the raisins and apricots in a mixing bowl with reserved lemon zest. Add 3 tablespoons of the Sherry. (Reserve remaining Sherry for the sauce.) Macerate the fruits 30 minutes.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a small skillet and sauté half of the shallots on a low heat until softened, 5 minutes. Add the diced bacon to the skillet and sauté 1 minute.

Add the shallots and bacon to the raisins and apricots. Add the bread crumbs, walnuts, parsley, ½ teaspoon of salt, pepper, and thyme. Combine well.

Bondage--truss the chickens.

Fill the cavities of the chickens with the stuffing mixture. Skewer the openings closed. Tie the legs together with kitchen twine.

Heat remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet. Slowly brown the birds on all sides, 8 to 10 minutes. (Brown them in 2 batches if necessary.) Remove when browned and place in a shallow roasting pan just large enough to hold them.

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Ready for roasting.

Pour the white wine and ½ cup water over the birds and place them in the oven, uncovered, until they reach an internal temperature of 160º, 30 to 40 minutes.

While chickens are roasting, add remaining shallots to oil remaining in the large skillet and sauté 3 minutes. Add the broth and remaining Sherry. Bring to a boil, then simmer 10 minutes.

When chickens are roasted, remove them to a platter. Remove the skewers and twine. Tent the birds with foil and keep warm. If chickens are to be served in halves, place them on a cutting board and cut them through the breastbone and back.

Add ¼ cup of water to the roasting pan and scrape up any drippings. Add to the skillet with broth and Sherry. Bring to a boil. Carefully pour through a strainer into a saucepan. Add the cream. Cook gently 5 minutes.

Serve the squab accompanied by the sauce.

A stuffing of dried fruits and nuts, a sauce with mellow Sherry. Lovely for a dinner party.

ARTISANAL CHRISTMAS COOKIES FROM ANDALUSIA

Roscos de vino--an Andalusian Christmas cookie.

It took me a long time to get to like Spanish Christmas sweets—the ring cookies heavily flavored with aniseed, fried pastries filled with a sort of pumpkin jam and tiny lard cakes that crumbled into bits in the hand. They were all so different from the buttery, icing-topped cookies I knew growing up in Midwest America.

When I began collecting recipes, I joined village women in their kitchens to make many of these beloved holiday cookies and pastries. Gradually, I came to love them.

Mantecados are melt-in-the mouth cookies made with lard, almonds, cinnamon and sesame.

Nowadays, in my village, a few women still make homemade sweets. But, more and more, these are produced industrially. The town of Estepa in the province of Sevilla is renowned for its mantecados, cinnamon lard cookies, which are said to have originated in the 16th century in the Santa Clara convent.

Mantecados are the first in the trinity of Andalusian Christmas cookies—the other two are  polverones, “powder” cookies, and roscos de vino, tiny, wine-scented doughnuts. Polvorones are made with virtually the same lard dough as mantecados. After baking, they are dusted heavily with powdered sugar to “powder” them.

The winter hog-butchering season coincides with the Christmas holidays. After the hams are salted and the sausages hung to cure, pork fat is rendered to make pure, white lard. Lard makes melt-in-the mouth cookies. Mantecados also are made with olive oil. However, butter or other shortening is definitely not a substitute. (Yes, I know that so-called "Mexican wedding cookies," with butter, were originally Andalusian mantecados and polvorones.)

I call my homemade cookies “artisanal” because I bought a hunk of ibérico pork fat, rendered and strained  it to make pure lard.  I picked the almonds, cracked them, blanched and skinned them, toasted them in the oven, then ground them to meal.

Pork fat for making lard.

Do not use packaged lard for these cookies, as it is a hydrogenated product. Either render your own or find a butcher who makes it. You will need about 1 ½ pounds of pork fat to make 2 cups of lard. Chop the fat and heat it gently until melted. Strain. Cool and refrigerate, covered. The rendered fat solidifies and turns white as it cools.

In both of these recipes, the flour is lightly toasted before mixing. If you are making both cookies, prepare enough flour for them both in one go. This can be done a day or more in advance. Stir the flour every 5 minutes while toasting to avoid scorching it. It should be a pale gold in color. Let it cool completely, then sift the flour.

You can make these cookies bigger or thicker than I specify in the recipes. But, remember, that will change both the baking time and the yield. 

The cookies keep well in a cool place. They stay firmer if kept refrigerated.

Cinnamon-Lard Christmas Cookes
Mantecados

Let the baked cookies cool 10 minutes on the baking sheet before lifting them with a spatula, otherwise they will crumble.

Makes about 30 cookies.

Toast flour and almonds.

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup ground almonds
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Pinch of salt
1 cup lard
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon sesame seed

Preheat oven to 350º. Place the flour on a rimmed baking sheet and almonds on a shallow oven pan. Toast them in the oven, stirring every 5 minutes, until flour and almonds are lightly colored. The flour will be pale gold, not brown, in about 15 minutes. Ground almonds need only about 4 minutes.

Cool the flour and almonds completely. Sift the flour with cinnamon and salt.

Beat lard until fluffy.

Place the lard in a mixing bowl and, on medium speed, cream it until fluffy. Gradually add the confectioners’ sugar. Stir in the toasted flour, then the almonds.

Turn the dough out onto a board or marble work surface. Combine the dough by kneading it with a few squeezes. Gather it together in a ball and chill it for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours.

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Press sesame seed into the top of the dough.

Divide the dough in half. Keep one half refrigerated. Roll the other half out on an unfloured surface to a thickness of ¾ inch. Sprinkle some of the sesame seeds on top of the dough. With the rolling pin, press them into the surface of the dough.

Use a 2-inch biscuit cutter to cut rounds of the dough. Transfer them to a baking sheet lined with oven parchment. (Use a knife or offset spatula to lift them from the board.) Gather remaining dough, roll out and cut again.

Repeat rolling and cutting with the remaining half of dough.

 

Cool before lifting the cookies from baking sheet.

Bake the cookies for 20 to 25 minutes until they are lightly golden on top. Let them cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes. Use a spatula to lift them onto a rack to cool.

Once the cookies are cool, wrap each cookie individually in 7-inch squares of tissue paper, twisting the ends to enclose.

 Wine-Scented Ring Cookies
Roscos de Vino

There’s no sugar in this dough. The wine gives the cookies a slight sweetness. (Use Málaga muscatel, Pedro Ximenez or oloroso Sherry.) Once baked, the cookies are dusted with confectioners’ sugar.

Improvise--cut doughnut holes with cap from a marker.

Use a 2-inch doughnut cutter to cut the dough. If you don’t have one that small, use a 2-inch round cookie cutter to cut circles, then improvise with an apple corer or other tool to cut out the holes. (I used a champagne flute to cut the circles and the cap from a marker to cut out the holes.)

Makes 30 2-inch rings.

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
½  cup (unsweetened) ground almonds
1 cup lard
½ cup sweet wine, such as Málaga muscatel,    Pedro Ximenez or oloroso Sherry
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup powdered sugar
 

Preheat oven to 350ºF.
.
Spread the flour in a shallow baking pan. Place the almonds in another pan. Toast the flour and almonds in the oven, stirring occasionally, until they are lightly toasted. Let the flour and almonds cool completely.

Sift the flour and combine it with the almonds.

Using a mixer on medium speed, beat the lard until fluffy. Beat in the wine, cinnamon and cloves. Add the flour-almond mixture in three additions, stirring in at low speed just until combined to make a soft dough. Refrigerate the dough for at least 45 minutes or up to 24 hours.

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Divide the dough in half. Roll one half out on a board or marble work surface (you can cover it with baking parchment to avoid sticking) to a thickness of ½ inch. Use a 2-inch doughnut cutter to cut into rings. Place them on baking paper on a baking sheet. Gather up scraps of dough. Roll and cut remaining dough in the same manner. If dough becomes too soft and sticky, return it to the refrigerator to firm up.

When all of the dough has been cut, bake the rings until lightly browned, about 23 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes.

Place half the powdered sugar in a rimmed baking sheet. Use a spatula to transfer cookies to the sheet. Sift the remaining sugar over the cookies. Let them cool.

Once cool, the rings can be wrapped in tissue paper, as in the previous recipe.

Sweet wine in the cookies and a dusting of powdered sugar.

A basket of mantecados and roscos de vino, individually wrapped in tissue paper. (White is best.)

Cookie packets for giving to friends.

Another Spanish recipe with lard is here.

Here's a link to a Spanish TV chef making mantecados with extra virgin olive oil instead of lard (in Spanish) http://alacarta.canalsur.es/television/video/mantecados-de-aceite-roscones-de-chocolate-y-almendra/1843577/17.

A SLOW-COOKED STEW FOR DARKENING DAYS

As the days grow shorter on the countdown to the winter solstice, I want bright candles, flickering flames in the fireplace, twinkling lights on a holiday tree and a pot of stew bubbling on the stove.

Spain has lots of stews and braised dishes that will fill the bill. Many are made with economical cuts of meat that need slow cooking to render them tender. In the process, they also take on flavor, of wine, herbs, vegetables and sausages with which they cook.

Chunks of lamb, braised till tender, in a sauce with dried red peppers.

I’m making a lamb stew that’s simmered in wine with four kinds of red peppers!

This dish from La Mancha derives from the rustic shepherds’ caldereta, or iron stew pot, in which meals were cooked over embers. At its most basic, the stew was eaten straight from the pot, with bread for sopping the gravy. Other versions use either the lamb liver, grilled and mashed, or ground almonds, pine nuts, or walnuts to thicken the sauce. I’ve used almonds, ground finely in the blender with the peppers to make a smooth gravy for the lamb.

If baby lamb is used, it’s usually hacked into chunks, bones and all. For larger cuts of lamb, use boneless pieces from leg or shoulder. Goat meat can be substituted for the lamb.

Keep the meat covered with liquid as it cooks and, if preparing it in advance, keep the cooked meat completely covered with liquid so that it doesn’t darken and dry out.

Dried ñora peppers and tomatoes go into the stew.

Ñoras are plum-sized, dried bitter-sweet chiles. After cooking, the soft flesh is scraped from the insides of the peppers. Mild California chile pods are a possible substitute, though they are not quite as fleshy as the ñora. Otherwise use a spoonful of sweet pimentón. Use a little hot chile in addition to the mild. A piece of red bell pepper adds to the ruddy-red color of the gravy. I like to add some smoky Pimentón de la Vera to make up for the shepherds’ wood fire smoke. (Count ‘em—that’s four kinds of peppers.) The recipe also calls for sun-dried tomatoes, an ingredient used in La Mancha. If they are not available, use a spoonful of tomato concentrate.

Serve the lamb and red pepper gravy with Mashed Potatoes with Green Garlic (that recipe is here), rice pilaf or cous cous.

Lamb stew with red pepper gravy--nice served with rice pilaf and a glass of red wine.

Lamb Stew with Red Peppers

Caldereta de Cordero

Serves 6.


2 ½ to 3 pounds boneless lamb cut from the leg or shoulder
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, quartered and sliced
3 ñora peppers or 2 California chile pods, stems and seeds discarded
1 small hot dried chile, such as cayenne
4 sun-dried tomatoes, sliced
½ red bell pepper
¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley plus more to garnish
Sprig of thyme
2 bay leaves
2 heads garlic, char-roasted (see below for how-to), cloves peeled
1 cup dry white wine
3 cups water or lamb stock
¼ cup blanched and skinned almonds
1 teaspoon Pimentón de la Vera (sweet, bittersweet or hot)

Trim lamb of excess fat. Cut it into chunks of approximately 2 inches square. Sprinkle the pieces of lamb liberally with salt and pepper and allow to stand at room temperature for 1 hour.

Heat the oil in a large stew pot or lidded cazuela and sauté the sliced onions until lightly browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Put in the pieces of meat and turn them in the oil for a few minutes. They do not need to brown, only to lose their pink color.

Add ñoras or California chile pods with the whole dried chile, tomatoes, bell pepper, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, peeled garlic cloves and 1 teaspoon salt.

Add the wine and 3 cups of water or stock. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer until meat is very tender, 1 to 1 ½ hours.

Lift the pieces of meat out of the cooking liquid with any vegetables clinging to them and set aside, covered tightly. Skim off fat from the top of liquid remaining in pot.

Place a strainer over a heatproof bowl and pour the liquid through it. Discard the cayenne chile and bay leaves. Lift out the pieces of ñora. Use a spoon to scrape the pulp from the inside of the ñoras or chile pods. Discard the skins and put the pulp in a blender or food processor. Scrape the pulp from the piece of bell pepper and discard the skin. Add the pulp to the blender with some of the onions, tomatoes and garlics remaining in the strainer.

Add the almonds to the blender with the Pimentón de la Vera and 1 cup of the strained liquid. Blend or process until the almonds are ground to a smooth paste.

Return the liquid to the stew pot and add the almond mixture. Bring to a boil, stirring. Return the lamb to the pot and cook gently 20 minutes longer.

 Allow the stew to settle 10 minutes. Serve garnished with chopped parsley. 

To Char-Roast a Head of Garlic

Spear the head of garlic on a fork or grasp it with tongs (protect hands with an oven mitt) and hold over a gas flame, or put under the broiler. Turn the garlic until it is charred on all sides. Peel the garlic cloves, rinse them in water, and add them to the stew to continue cooking.

Ground almonds thicken the stew's gravy.

Here are links to some other hearty winter stews.

Andalusian Vegetable and Sausage Stew (Berza Andaluza)

Potato and Wild Mushroom Stew (Guiso de Patatas y Níscalos)

Braised Lamb with Quinces (Guiso de Cordero con Membrillo)

"Altogether" Beef Stew  (Tojunto)