BREAK OUT THE BUBBLY!

Get ready for New Year’s Eve! Pop open a bottle of bubbly and get your twelve grapes in hand. At midnight, you eat a grape on each stroke of the bells, to assure a year of good fortune ahead. Pour the festive cava and proffer a toast to future sparkles. 

A sparkling dish for New Year's Eve--roasted salmon with cava sauce and grapes.

Make this recipe for salmon with cava sauce and grapes and you’ll have a good excuse to open the bubbly way before midnight! You’ll need less than a cup of cava for the sauce—the rest is for sipping with dinner.

Cava is Spanish sparkling wine.

What is cava? Cava is the official denominación de origen (DO) label for Spanish sparkling wine made by the same process as Champagne. No, don’t call it “champagne” or “champán,” because Champagne is a region of France and the wine made there has its official denomination.

The word “cava” comes from the Catalan word for “cellar.” Most cava—but not all—comes from Catalonia (85 percent), in particular, the Penedes region. Carbonated wine—vino espumoso—is not cava and does not have DO.

Cava ranges from extremely dry, with virtually no residual sugars—brut nature—to semi-sec, or “medium-dry,” which is actually medium-sweet. Serve dry cava with tapas, with soup and with seafood and poultry entrées. Serve the sweeter ones with dessert—especially with turrón, almond nougat candy, after a holiday meal.

A gorgeous sauce for salmon, made with cava and finished with cream. (Pictured with roasted grapes and a side of purple potatoes.)

This recipe makes enough of the gorgeous cava sauce for one, two, three or four servings of salmon. If you’re dining alone, save the remainder of the sauce for another meal. (I sautéed shrimp in a skillet, added the sauce and poured the mixture over cooked pasta.)

The salmon fillets can be poached, pan-fried or roasted. I like the quick and easy roasting method—once the oven is up to 500ºF, the fish needs only six to eight minutes to cook. Be sure to have dinner plates heated. Lift salmon out of the pan onto plates and spoon the hot sauce over.

Vinalopó grapes, uvas de la suerte.

Adding grapes to the sauce is one way to ingest your uvas de la suerte—midnight’s twelve grapes of good luck. I’ve used both golden Vinalopó grapes and red ones. The Vinalopó grapes (DO Uva de Mesa Embolsada de Vinalopó) come from Alicante province, where they are grown enclosed in paper bags that protect them from insects, birds and burning sun. Maturing slowly, the protected grapes ripen in time for the winter holidays.  It’s estimated that about 2 million kilograms of these grapes will be consumed on New Year’s Eve!

Salmon with Cava Sauce and Grapes
Salmón al Cava con Uvas

Allow about 6 ounces of salmon per person. The fillets should be approximately 1 inch thick. The recipe makes enough sauce for 4 servings.

6-ounce fillets of salmon (1 fillet per person)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
Whole grapes
3 shallots, minced
1 cup shrimp-shell stock or fish stock
½ cup dry cava
2/3 cup cream
Peeled grapes

Sprinkle the fillets of salmon with salt and pepper. Allow them to come to room temperature. Lightly oil a rimmed baking sheet and place the salmon on it. Drizzle additional oil over the fillets. Place a few grapes (2 or 3 per fillet) around the salmon.

Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and sauté the shallots for 3 minutes. Do not let them brown. Add the shrimp or fish stock and the cava. Bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes, until the liquid is reduced by half. Add the cream to the saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer the sauce until it is somewhat thickened, about 5 minutes. Add the grapes to the pan and keep the sauce warm.

Preheat oven to 500ºF.

Probe to test doneness.

Place the salmon in the oven and roast until the flesh separates easily when probed with a skewer, 6 to 8 minutes. Thinner fillets will take less time than thick-cut pieces.

Place the fillets and roasted grapes on heated dinner plates. Spoon the sauce with some of the peeled grapes over the salmon.

Fat red grapes are great for roasting--but too big to be swallowed on the 12 strokes of midnight. 

Here’s to a sparkling New Year! Feliz año nuevo!

More recipes for New Year’s Eve:
Black-Eyed Peas with Tomato Sofrito.
Pears in Cava with Fresh Cheese.
Consommé with Quail and Wild Mushrooms.
Duck Breast with Clementine Sauce.

A FESTIVE HOLIDAY DESSERT

Are you finished forever with pumpkin-pie spiced everything? Here’s a festive holiday dessert with a different palette of spices. You can lose the pumpkin too.

A luscious parfait of sweet potatoes sweetened with molasses, spiced with aniseed. A festive holiday dessert that's easy to prepare for a crowd.

It’s a sweet potato parfait, sweetened with molasses, spiced with aniseed and cinnamon. The festive dessert is based on a very traditional Málaga recipe for sweet potatoes cooked in molasses syrup.

A compote of sweet potatoes cooked in molasses syrup is a traditional Málaga recipe.

Originally, the sweet potatoes (batatas or boniatos) were cooked with an equal weight of molasses and sweet potatoes, making a conserve with keeping power. I’ve reduced the quantity of molasses, creating a compote that’s good served on its own or as an accompaniment to sponge cake, with a side of vanilla ice cream or topped with a dollop of whipped cream or Greek yogurt.

To turn the compote into a festive holiday parfait, I pureed the sweet potatoes and folded in whipped cream. Luscious. Molasses, both intensely sweet and subtly bitter, complements the sweet potatoes.

The creamy sweet potatoes, spooned into dessert cups, have a layer of crunchy nougat on the bottom and top. 

The compote keeps, refrigerated, up to 5 days, so it can be prepared in advance of finishing the dessert. And, the parfait can be made in advance of serving and frozen. (Be sure you have space in the freezer for the individual dessert cups.)

Sweet Potato-Molasses Compote
Batatas con Miel de Caña

Lightly oil the measuring cup before adding molasses so that the molasses pours without sticking. 

Makes 8 (½-cup) servings. 

Sweet potatoes or batatas.

2 pounds sweet potatoes (6 cups cubed)
Drop of olive oil
1 ½ cups molasses (not blackstrap)
1 ½ cups hot water
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon aniseed
3 cardamom pods
2 cloves
3-inch strip of lemon zest

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into ¾-inch cubes. (You should have approximately 6 cups of cubed sweet potatoes.) Place in a pan.

Molasses sweetens the compote.

Use your finger to grease a measuring cup with oil. Measure the molasses and add to the pan. Add the hot water to the measuring cup to dissolve any remaining molasses. Add the water to the pan.

Aniseed, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom.

Break the cinnamon stick into thirds. Wrap the cinnamon in a strip of cheesecloth with the aniseeds, cardamom and cloves. Add to the pan with the strip of lemon zest.

Bring to a boil, Simmer uncovered until the sweet potato is tender, about 20 minutes. Discard lemon zest and bundle of spices. 

Cool the sweet potatoes. The compote keeps, covered and refrigerated, up to 5 days. Serve the sweet potato compote cold or room temperature. 

Sweet Potato-Molasses Parfait
Parfait de Batatas con Miel de Caña

Use the preceding sweet potatoes in syrup to make this dessert. Spoon it into individual cups over a layer of crocanti—almond turrón crushed with cookie crumbs. Use turrón duro, hard almond nougat candy. It is white studded with whole almonds.   For the cookie crumbs, use galletas marías or graham crackers, crushed. 

The parfait can be served chilled or frozen. Remove frozen desserts from the freezer 20 to 30 minutes before you intend to serve them to allow them to soften.

Chill the bowl and beaters before whipping the cream.

Makes 10 (¾ -cup) servings.

4 ounces (125 g) almond nougat (turrón duro)
¼ cup crushed cookie crumbs
Sweet potato compote with molasses syrup (recipe above)
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups whipping cream, chilled

Almond nougat (turron duro), ground in food processor, makes a crunchy layer for the parfait.

Grind the almond nougat and cookie crumbs together in a food processor. Spoon it into 10 dessert cups. (Save a little for sprinkling on the tops, if you wish.)

Put the sweet potatoes and syrup in the food processor with the cinnamon, cardamom, zest and juice. Process until fairly smooth. Place the puree in a mixing bowl.

In a chilled bowl, whip the cream until stiff. Fold a third of the whipped cream into the spiced sweet potato puree, mixing it well. Fold in the remaining cream. It’s fine to leave streaks of cream through the puree. 

Divide the sweet potato-cream mixture between the dessert cups. Chill the parfaits at least 5 hours before serving. They can also be placed in the freezer for up to one week. Remove the desserts from the freezer 20-30 minutes before serving.

More recipes with molasses:

Fried Eggplant with Molasses.

Cod Fritters with Molasses.

Barbecue Sauce with Molasses.

More recipes with sweet potatoes:

Sweet Potato Fries.

Salad of Sweet Potatoes, Fennel and Clementines.

Sweet Potato Buns.

More festive desserts:

Almond Nougat Mousse.

Fruit Compote in Grape Syrup.
Sponge Cake.

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.