GRAPES FOR A SWEET NEW YEAR

Happy New Year, everybody! It’s Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year (the year is 5774). This holiday came very early this year. It’s still summery where I live in southern Spain. No pomegranates or quinces, fruits so typical of this holiday, have come to market yet. We are still basking in late-summer fruits—luscious  ripe figs and grapes.

In Spain, the fruit most associated with New Year’s—the New Year that turns on January 1—is the grape. Twelve grapes, actually, one consumed on each strike of the midnight bells to assure 12 months of good fortune in the coming year. So, melding my customs a bit, I am serving grapes for the Jewish New Year.

Black grapes make a leafy arbor on my patio. The green ones, above, tumble over the sides of a terraced hillside. I'm told that this hillside was once completely planted in vines--before the phylloxera blight of the late 1800s.

 Spain has the most extensive vineyards on earth, most of them dedicated to the production of wine grapes. There are also large plantations of table grapes. The muscatel, in particular, is especially esteemed. Intensely sweet, these grapes are also dried to become famous Málaga raisins, pasas.

When grapes are pressed, they produce mosto—grape juice or must. Left to ferment, it becomes wine. The mosto can also be pasteurized to be served as a non-alcoholic beverage. Or it can be slowly reduced to a thick grape molasses, called arrope. Fruits and even vegetables are preserved in this intensely sweet syrup (see a recipe for pumpkin in arrope).

Chicken simmers in spiced grape juice, a lovely holiday meal.

Chicken Braised in Spiced Grape Juice
Pollo al Mosto

Where there are vineyards, there will be food cooked in the juice of the grape. This chicken dish is adapted from a renaissance recipe in a little book, Carlos V a la Mesa, by L. Jacinto García, describing culinary trends in the 1500s. The sweetness of the grapes and the aromatic spices make this dish especially appropriate for Rosh Hashanah. Perhaps it was served in this way in Toledo, pre-1492.

To make your own grape juice: Choose any variety of grape—red, black, green, gold—that tastes good. Remove stems and wash the grapes. Use a food mill, processor or blender to crush the grapes. Sieve the pulp, saving the juice and discarding pips and skins. You will need about ½ pound of grapes to make ¾ cup of strained juice. Add lemon juice to the fresh grape juice. Use the juice within a few hours or else bring it to a boil, cool and refrigerate to prevent it from beginning to ferment. Unsweetened bottled grape juice can be substituted for fresh grape juice in this recipe.

Serves 4-6.

3 pounds chicken legs and thighs
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped leek
¼ teaspoon saffron threads, crushed
¼ cup hot water
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon grated nutmeg
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon coriander seeds, coarsely cracked
Pinch of ground cloves
¾ cup grape juice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Sliced butternut squash or carrots
2 egg yolks
Grapes to garnish
Parsley to garnish

Sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and allow to stand for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil in a large skillet or sauté pan and brown the chicken pieces on medium-high heat, about 5 minutes per side. Remove them and reserve.
Add the leek and sauté until softened, 3 minutes.

Combine the crushed saffron with hot water and allow to infuse at least 5 minutes. In a small bowl combine the ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, cloves, ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper, and ½ teaspoon salt.

Return the chicken to the pan with the leeks. Add the grape juice, lemon juice,  saffron water, and spices. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer the chicken for 20 minutes. Turn the chicken pieces. Add the squash or carrots, if using. Cook until chicken is very tender, 20 to 30 minutes longer.

Remove chicken to a serving platter and keep it warm. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl with some of the liquid from the pan. Stir the yolks into the pan and cook without boiling, uncovered, until the sauce is slightly thickened, 5 minutes. Spoon the sauce over the chicken. Garnish with grapes and sprigs of parsley.

Chicken with grapes and butternut squash.

THE GAZPACHO DIARIES, FINAL WEEK

Turning the page on The Gazpacho Diaries. The air has changed. After a light rain before dawn,  today is muggy and a little cooler. The crackling dry heat of summer has passed. It’s the last day of August, the last day of my grand Month of Gazpacho. I still have a pitcher of gazpacho in the fridge. But, maybe, with the arrival of some clouds, I’m ready to move on.

I’ve served gazpacho every single day for a month. In 31 days, I made 12 different batches of the stuff. I served it for lunch, for snacks, for tapas, on picnics and potlucks. To family, to guests, to kids.

Here are some notes from my gazpacho chronicles.

Gazpacho proves to be a potent antidote to heatstroke, as Ben found out when he overheated while clearing brush in the arroyo. Indeed, gazpacho was once the summer meal of threshers in the fields, providing nourishment (bread, olive oil and tomatoes), fluids, salt to prevent dehydration and vinegar to quench the thirst.

Kids like gazpacho with chips.

After a swim: gazpacho and chips, the perfect kid combo. From left, cousins Levi and Cloe Gordon and my grandson, Leo Searl. If you are packing gazpacho on a picnic or to a potluck, funnel it into a tall plastic water bottle for easy transport.

Cool by the pool.

Cool by the pool on a lazy summer’s day. Guests George and Marja Parker sit in the shade of a leafy fig tree and sip gazpacho from goblets. George (http://www.georgeparker.tv/) is an illusionist who performs worldwide.

Lunch: Leo enjoys gazpacho with corn-on-the-cob. Why not?

Gazpacho with marinated fresh anchovies.

Marinated raw anchovies (boquerones al natural), salad and gazpacho make a lovely light lunch. What else does gazpacho go with? Serve it alongside fried fish or fried chicken, with just about anything from the grill, with sandwiches, with stuffed eggs or Spanish potato tortilla.

Don’t serve gazpacho for late-night dinners, say Spanish friends. “Se repite,” it “repeats,” meaning the garlic and oil come burping back up. Not a problem, as gazpacho is so perfect in the sunshine, that it never occurred to me to serve it after dark.

 At my house, we spooned gazpacho over grilled bread to serve with serrano ham, an Andalusian version of Catalan pan con tomate.

I used leftover gazpacho as a dressing for salad of green beans, sliced potatoes and greens.

Penne with gazpacho "sauce."

Gazpacho makes an instant, no-cook pasta sauce. Let the gazpacho come to room temperature. Toss it with hot penne. Add some sliced mozzarella and basil leaves. Or, use it as a dressing for a cold pasta salad.

In this month of gazpacho, I only regret that my own tomato garden has not met the daily challenge. I have had to buy tomatoes to keep up. And, although southern Spain is a tomato paradise, in that the real-deal, vine-ripened tomatoes are everywhere, the “heritage” varieties, the super-good tomatoes, are not to be found in ordinary markets. I had to seek them out at the monthly organic farmers’ markets or from individual growers. The best ones ever came from a guy named Ramón, a neighbor of a friend, whose has a river-bottom huerta near Tarifa. 

In the first week of THE GAZPACHO DIARIES, I gave you the basic gazpacho recipe.  In Week 2, I explored the flavors of different ingredients,  the tomatoes, olive oil, vinegar. Week 3 was devoted to gazpacho spin-offs and variations.  Hey, gazpacho Bloody Mary is pretty good! Last week I took you back in time, to pre-blender days, for a traditional country gazpacho.

Gazpacho is not always cold (see a recipe for hot gazpacho here). Sometimes it's not even gazpacho (see a recipe for cold melon soup here).It’s not always a soup, but can be a thick dip (see the salmorejo recipe) or a soupy salad (see pipirrana recipe). And, it’s not always red (see the recipe for gazpacho with no tomatoes--ajo blanco con uvas, white almond-garlic gazpacho).

I’m beginning to harvest almonds, so tomorrow, instead of gazpacho, I’ll be making ajo blanco. I’ll serve it room temperature, rather than chilled. I've just picked some juicy grapes to put in it. 

THE GAZPACHO DIARIES, WEEK 4

Gazpacho where it grows.

I learned to make gazpacho far from an electric blender. The first summer I lived in Spain, old man Vega showed me how to make real country gazpacho. Vega was the godfather of Paco and Estéban, the brothers who ran the village bar where I learned Spanish cooking. Vega had no family, but he did have a sizable plot of land in the campo (country).

“Many tomatoes in the fields now,” he announced one day. “Why don’t you come to the campo with me and make gazpacho?”

We arranged a day and got together a party. Our friend Irma, from Kentucky, contributed fried chicken and deviled eggs. Vega’s donkey was enlisted to carry Irma and supplies. A case of beer, wine and soft drinks had been carried down to the finca, a small farm, in the early morning and were already cooling in the alberca, a spring-fed reservoir. 

Off to the campo on the camino real.

 We were quite a caravan on the dusty camino real, an ancient country thoroughfare traveled by people, donkeys and goats. It was a steep downhill trek.

At the finca we cooled off in the chilly alberca and enjoyed a beer in the deep shade of a huge carob tree.

Vega took a basket and went to pick tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Then he dipped them in the reservoir to rinse off the sun’s heat. He set the basket at my feet, brought a giant earthenware bowl from the house with some onions and garlic. 

Picking tomatoes in the huerta (field).

Washing the tomatoes in the irrigation reservoir.

With a knife Vega proceeded to chunk a lot of bread into the bowl and moistened it with a little water. He crushed the garlic on a stone and added it to the bread. He cut up tomatoes into the bowl, mashing them as he went. Next came olive oil poured from a jug which was stored in a shed. We all helped dice up the cucumbers, peppers and some onion into the bowl.

That's me, on the left, adding spring water to the gazpacho.

Serving gazpacho where it grows.

 (The above photos, by David Searl, were copied from an article I wrote in August, 1968, in Lookout magazine.)

Garden tomatoes for country gazpacho.

At long last, I have tomatoes, peppers and cukes from my own garden, so I am recreating that rustic, peasant gazpacho. These tomatoes—I think they are the esteemed variety, huevo de toro, similar to those called “beef heart,” only named for a different part of the bull’s anatomy—have tough skins that can be peeled off easily.

I crushed 3 cloves of garlic in a wooden bowl using a wooden pestle. I soaked stale country bread (6-8 ounces) in water until softened, then squeezed it out and mashed it up with the garlic. I stirred in about ½ cup extra virgin olive oil, creating a thick paste.

Chop or grate tomatoes into bread-oil mixture.

I chopped the peeled tomatoes (about 2 pounds) and mashed them into the garlic-bread-olive oil paste in the bowl. If you don’t have tomatoes that are easily peeled, you could grate the tomatoes into the bowl, discarding the skins.

Add chopped or grated tomato pulp.

Add chopped peppers, onions and cucumbers.

 I added about 1 teaspoon of salt and 3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, ¼ cup each of finely diced cucumber, green pepper and onions and 1 cup very cold water.

  Thick, chunky country gazpacho, ready to serve. No fridge or blender required. The perfect meal on a hot August day in Andalusia.