CHOCOLATE—SHARE THE LOVE!

Why do chocolate and romance go together? While chocolate has never been proven to have aphrodisiacal properties, its consumption certainly soars on Valentine’s Day. Here’s a dessert to share the love. 

Chocolate = romance. A luscious chocolate custard for Valentine's Day.

Unlike airy chocolate mousse, this custardy chocolate dessert is dense, intensely chocolatey. While not overly sweet, it is sublimely rich. A little goes a long way. I’ve noted a yield of six half-cup servings, but the custard could easily be divided into much smaller servings.

Chocolate with no sugar added.

You need to start with good quality dark chocolate, at least 70 percent cacao. I’ve used chocolate with no added sugar. The sweetening is a combination of malitol and stevia. A touch of raisiny dessert wine, either Málaga Muscatel or Pedro Ximénez, complements the chocolate’s natural fruitiness.

The hot, eggy custard mixture melts the chopped chocolate. Blending turns it smooth and glossy.  

The dessert is best served at room temperature. It can be prepared in advance and refrigerated, but bring it to room temperature before serving.

How to serve the custards? With a luscious strawberry imbedded in the chocolate. With a sprinkling of Muscatel raisins that have been plumped in Muscatel or PX wine. With a dollop of crême fraiche or Greek yogurt (sweetened to taste). Sprinkled with chopped nuts. Spread on a crumb crust. The custards could probably be put into heart-shaped molds and unmolded after firming in the fridge.

Share the love! Rich chocolate custards are an easy, make-ahead dessert for a dinner party.

Chocolate marries well with berries, with raisins and figs, with oranges. 

Serving options: a dollop of Greek yogurt or crême fraiche.

Dark Chocolate Cream Custards
Crema de Chocolate Intensivo

Makes 6 (½ -cup) servings.

12 ounces dark (70%) chocolate
4 large egg yolks
Pinch of salt
¾ cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
¼ cup + 1 tablespoon sweet Muscatel or Pedro Ximénez wine

Chop the chocolate finely. (This is easy to do in batches in a mini food processor.) Place the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl.

Whisk the egg yolks in a heat-proof bowl with a pinch of salt.

Whisk hot cream into yolks.

Place the cream, milk and ¼ cup of sweet wine in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Whisk half of the hot cream into the egg yolks. Return the egg yolks to the saucepan. Cook on moderate heat, stirring constantly, until custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, 3 to 4 minutes.

Hot custard melts chocolate.

Pour the hot custard over the chopped chocolate and allow to stand a few minutes to soften the chocolate. Stir to mix the chocolate and custard completely.

Blended custard is smooth and glossy.

Transfer to a blender. Add 1 tablespoon sweet wine and blend the mixture until smooth and satiny. Divide between custard cups or dessert glasses. 

More about Spain and the history of chocolate: 

Spain's chocolate connection.

More chocolate dessert recipes:

Chocolate-Covered Figs.

Hot Drinking Chocolate.

"Gypsy's Arm" Rolled Cake with White Chocolate.

Frozen Torte with Chocolate Cream Filling.

Failed Chocolate Cake.

Flourless Chocolate-Almond Cake.

A FAMILY-STYLE FISH SOUP

Emblanco is a white fish soup with vegetables, perfect as a starter for a family meal.

“Hoy, voy a poner un emblanco,” said the woman next to me at the village fish market. “Today I’m making ‘white fish soup’.” Emblanco is one of those everyday dishes in the pueblo, the sort of easy and economical dish that mothers might serve to children.

Typically, the main meal of the day, when the family sits down together, is served around 2 pm in the afternoon. (Yes, this custom is changing, as shops, offices and schools change to hora intensiva, not closing for the midday meal and long break.) La comida, the main meal, consists of primer plato (starter), segundo plato (main course) and postre (dessert). A light fish soup such as this one is the perfect starter for the comida. A main course with more substantial protein (fried fish fillets, meat or poultry) would follow.

The soup starts with a whole pescadilla, small hake. The head and spine are cooked first to produce a flavorful broth, then the fillets are added to the soup with vegetables. It's easy to remove any remaining bones after the fish has cooked. 

The best way to make this soup is to start with a whole, fresh fish. Use the head, bones and trimmings to make the caldo, the broth. Cook the pieces of fish in the broth, skim them out and, using your fingers, carefully remove all the skin and bones. This makes the soup kid-friendly. Cook the vegetables in the broth, then return the cooked fish to the pot, y ya está—that’s it.

Potatoes, carrots, onions, peppers and tomatoes cook in the fish broth. 

If you can get it, use a skinny Italian frying pepper in this recipe. Cut it crosswise into rings. Otherwise, cut green bell pepper into thin strips. Cook the tomato and onion whole. Before serving, slip the skin off of the tomato and break it and the onion into a few pieces and return them to the soup. My version has sliced leek instead of onion.

Some versions of this recipe call for the vegetables except for the potatoes to be pureed in a blender, then stirred back into the soup to thicken it (and perhaps disguise their presence from children). I like the original, with pieces of fresh veggies.

Start with a white-fleshed fish such as hake (merluza or pescadilla) or one of hake’s close relatives, such as cod, haddock, whiting or forkbeard. Also good are the flavorful, but bony, rockfish (cabracho, gallineta, rascasio).

If using a fairly large fish (more than 2 ½ pounds), it’s possible to cut 6-ounce fillets from the lomo, center, of the fish to serve as separate meal.

I separated the two 5.5-ounce fillets on the left to serve as a separate meal. I had about 9 ounces remaining for the soup. If you put all the fish in the soup, it easily serves 6. 

White Fish Soup
Sopa de Pescado Emblanco

Serves 4-6 as a starter.

Whole white fish (2 ½ pounds), filleted, head and bones reserved; fillets cut into 3-inch pieces
10 cups water
1 lemon
Sprigs of parsley
Salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium potatoes (12 ounces)
1 carrot, sliced
1 leek (white part only), sliced
1 small green pepper, sliced
1 whole tomato
Parsley to garnish

Place the fish head, bones and trimmings in a soup pot with the water, 1 slice of lemon, parsley and 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil. Cook, uncovered 10 minutes. Lower heat and add the fish fillets. Cook until the fish flakes easily, 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove the fillets from the soup. Reserve them.

After cooking, use fingers to remove any remaining bones.

Pour the soup through a strainer. Discard lemon and parsley. When cool enough to handle, pick any flesh from the head and bones. (There are dollops of flesh in the "cheeks" and flaky bits on the "collar.")Discard the bones. 

Return the soup to the pot. 

Cut the potatoes in quarters lengthwise, then slice them crosswise. Add them to the soup with the carrot, leek, green pepper and tomato. Bring the soup to a boil and cook, uncovered, until potatoes are tender, 8-10 minutes. 

Remove the tomato with a slotted spoon. Slip off and discard the skin. Cut the tomato into several pieces and return them to the soup.

Immediately before serving, heat the soup thoroughly. Break the cooked fillets into pieces and add them to the soup with any reserved bits of fish picked from the bones. Add 2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice to the soup or else serve it with sliced lemon for diners to add at the table. Garnish with parsley.

So many more Spanish fish soups!

Seafood Bisque.

Seafood Soup.

Mediterranean Fish Chowder.

15-Minute Fish Soup.

Broth with Fish and Clams.

Fish Soup with Sour Orange.

NEW WAY WITH RED POTATOES

My neighbors, who were returning to France, dropped off a bag with remains from their kitchen. Here’s a heap of red potatoes, several heads of garlic, red onions, oranges and most of the lemons I had given them a few days earlier.

What to cook with red potatoes? A sort of hot potato salad with lots of garlic.

Red potatoes. I never cook with them. Although they are widely available in markets, red potatoes were not traditionally grown in my region of southern Spain. What are their attributes? For one thing, this variety, less starchy than “baking potatoes,” doesn’t turn to mush when cooked and mixed with dressing, making it perfect for potato salads.

My mother used to make a German hot potato salad using red potatoes. I found a Spanish recipe, typical of Murcia, that reminded me of that old favorite. This one, patatas al ajo cabañil, or “shepherd’s garlic potatoes,” doesn’t start with boiling the potatoes. They are first sliced and cooked in olive oil, then finished in a sauce of crushed garlic and vinegar.

Potatoes are lightly browned, but not crisped, in olive oil. The finished potatoes are slightly juicy with the garlic-vinegar sauce.

The potatoes don’t fry, but “poach” in olive oil. This is the same procedure used when cooking them for a Spanish tortilla. So use plenty of olive oil and, if necessary, cook the potatoes in two batches. They need to lightly brown on the edges and be tender, but they don’t need to be crisp, as they will finish in the garlic sauce.

Lift the potatoes out of the oil with a slotted spoon and reserve them in a bowl. No need to drain on absorbent paper, as residual oil becomes part of the sauce. Strain the remaining oil and save it for another use. You will be surprised at how little oil is absorbed by the potatoes. I started out with 1 ½ cups of oil and retrieved 1 ¼ cups after straining. Olive oil, mind you. No other oil will give this result.

Serve the potato dish, hot or room temperature, on its own (a little chopped bacon would make it not unlike German potato salad) or, Murcia style, as a side with pan-fried chicken, rabbit or lamb chops. Sometimes the same aliño, or garlicky dressing, is added to the meat as well as the potatoes (make double the quantity of sauce). I'm thinking this is a perfect side with old-fashioned Midwestern meatloaf like my mother made.

The potatoes, with their tangy sauce of vinegar and garlic, are a great side with chops. Here alongside a thick-cut chop of ibérico pork. (The accompanying salad-relish is sliced oranges, grapefruit, avocado and red onion with olive oil.)

Red potatoes keep their shape.

Another way to serve the potatoes--topped with fried egg.

Potatoes with Garlic Dressing
Patatas al Ajo Cabañil

Rinse potatoes after slicing.

Serves 6 as a side dish.

2 pounds red potatoes
1 ½ cups olive oil
4-10 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
½ teaspoon coarse salt
1/8 teaspoon cumin seeds
Red pepper flakes (optional)
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
¼ cup water
Salt
Chopped parsley

Peel the potatoes and cut them crosswise into ¼-inch slices. Place the slices in water. Drain the potatoes and pat dry on kitchen towels.

Moderate heat so potatoes cook gently in olive oil.

Heat the oil in a deep skillet. Add half the potato slices and cook them on moderate heat, turning gently, until they begin to turn golden and are just tender, 8-10 minutes. Skim the potatoes out of the oil and place them in a bowl (no need to drain on paper towels). Add remaining potatoes to the pan and cook them in the same manner. Remove.

When oil has cooled slightly, strain it into a jar and save for another use.

Place the coarsely chopped garlic in a mortar with the coarse salt, cumin seeds and red pepper flakes, if using. Crush the garlic to a smooth paste. Stir in the vinegar and water.

Return the potatoes and residual oil to the skillet on medium heat. Pour the garlic-vinegar mixture on top of the potatoes and gently combine them without breaking up the potatoes. Season with salt. Cook until all the liquid has cooked off, 5 minutes.

Serve the potatoes hot or room temperature, sprinkled with parsley.