A WHIFF OF SPRING

Fennel fronds--a sure sign of spring.

Tramping through an overgrown field, I catch the first whiff of spring—the  unmistakable scent of wild fennel. The first sprouts of fennel, crushed underfoot, give off a distinctive sweet, springy-green, anise smell.

Wild fennel grows on dry slopes where I live in southern Spain. After spring rains, the plant sends up the first green fronds that grow to tall, rangy stems by the end of summer. Late in the year, the stalks bear yellow flowers (source of fennel pollen) and bracts of immature seeds. The seeds eventually turn brown and fall away and the  plant dies back in the winter.

Tender fennel shoots for spring soup.

In Andalusia (southern Spain), country folk gather the first feathery shoots of fennel to cook in a potaje, a stew with chickpeas or beans, wheat berries and sausage. Snippets of the fronds are also sprinkled on spring vegetables such as fava beans, peas and artichokes. 

To use wild fennel, choose only young, tender stems. They should be pliable and easily sliced with a knife. Strip off the feathery leaves, saving a few for garnish. If wild fennel is not an option, cultivated fennel bulbs, which you’ll find at the green grocer’s, can be substituted.

Fennel, whether wild or store-bought, loses its pungency with slow cooking, adding a subtle background flavor to the soup. A garnish of chopped fennel leaves, added just before serving, returns the sweet spring aroma to the dish.

Two versions of Fennel Soup, bottom, with sausage; top one is vegan.

Potaje de Hinojo
Fennel Soup with Chickpeas, Wheat and Sausage

The first version of wild fennel soup comes from the upland regions of Granada and Almería, where springtime can be blustery and cold. The robust soup is made with pork ribs, pig tail, fat and sausage (my interpretation is slightly modified) plus chickpeas or beans, sometimes both, and wheat kernels. Besides wild fennel, it might include other foraged greens, such as cardillo (also known as tagarninas), a kind of thistle, or wild asparagus. If morcilla sausage is not available, you could use any pork sausage in the soup.

Wheat berries are delightfully chewy. If not available, try brown rice in the soup, but don’t add it until the last 40 minutes of cooking. I used cooked chickpeas. I soak and cook chickpeas in large batches, then keep them in the freezer to use as needed—quickie hummus, salads, soups. If desired, you can start with uncooked chickpeas. Soak 1 ½ cups chickpeas 12 hours. Drain and place them in the soup pot at the very beginning of cooking. They need about 90 minutes to become tender.

Fennel soup with chickpeas, sausage and wheat.

Chopped fennel stems.

1 cup wheat berries
4 ounces pancetta or bacon
1 cup chopped wild fennel stems or fennel bulb
1 carrot, sliced
2 teaspoons salt
8 ounces morcilla de cebolla (blood sausage with onion)
2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas
2-3 potatoes, cut in pieces
1 cup green beans, cut in small pieces
1 thick slice bread
1 tablespoon vinegar
3 cloves garlic
½ teaspoon pimentón (paprika)
Fennel leaves for garnish

Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the wheat berries and let them soak for 3 hours.

Drain the wheat and add to a soup pot with the pancetta, fennel, carrot and salt. Add 6 cups of water.  Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer 30 minutes.

Add the morcilla, chickpeas, potatoes and green beans. Simmer 30 minutes more.

Place the bread in a bowl and sprinkle it with the vinegar. Let it set until vinegar is absorbed. Place the bread in a blender with the garlic and pimentón. Ladle in enough of the liquid from the soup pot to soften the bread. Blend until smooth.

Stir the mixture from the blender into the soup and cook another 15 minutes. Remove the piece of pancetta and the morcilla from the soup. Use kitchen scissors to cut them into pieces. Return to the soup.

Allow the soup to settle for 10 minutes before serving. Garnish with chopped fennel leaves.



Potaje de Hinojo para Vigilia
Lenten Fennel Soup with Beans

This vegan version of fennel soup is suitable for Lent, which is right now. It has olive oil instead of pork fat to give it substance. I used cultivated fennel bulb for this soup. Cut it lengthwise in quarters, cut out the stem and slice it crosswise.

Canned beans make this soup easy to cook in a short time. If starting with uncooked beans, soak them 12 hours, drain and add to the soup at the very beginning of cooking.They need about one hour to become tender.

Mash the cooked vegetables.

The soup is thickened by a mash of cooked tomatoes, onions, pepper, squash, potatoes and garlic. The garlic is typically char-roasted before being added to the soup pot.

To char-roast a whole head of garlic, spear it on a fork or hold it with tongs over a flame (on a gas stove) or place under the broiler, turning until it is blackened on all sides. When cool enough to handle, rub off outer blackened layer. Cut the top off the head of garlic and add the whole bulb to the soup pot. After cooking, separate and peel  two, three or more of the cloves and add them to the blender mash.

Fennel, pumpkin and beans for a Lenten soup.

Cultivated bulb fennel.

2 cups chopped fennel bulb (1 or 2 bulbs)
1 small tomato, core removed
½ small onion
½ green bell pepper
1 head garlic, char-roasted
2 cups cut-up butternut squash
2-3 potatoes, cut up
1 ½ teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 cups water
½ teaspoon cumin
1 ½ teaspoons pimentón (paprika)
Pinch of ground cloves
1 cup cooked or canned white beans (drained)
Fennel leaves to garnish

Put the fennel in a soup pot with the tomato, onion, pepper, garlic, squash, potatoes, salt and 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the water, bring to a boil, lower heat to a simmer and cook until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.

Skim out the tomato, onion, pepper, garlic, a few chunks of squash and potato. When they are cool enough to handle, slip the skins off the tomato and pepper and some of the cloves of garlic. Place them in a blender with the cumin, pimentón, cloves and remaining 2 tablespoons of oil. Add enough liquid from the soup to make a smooth puree. Stir it into the soup. Add the beans. Cook 10 minutes more.

Serve the soup sprinkled with chopped fennel leaves.

Fennel flower in summer.

More about wild fennel on this earlier blog post. http://mykitcheninspain.blogspot.com.es/2011/08/foraging-for-wild-fennel.html

Tagarninas, wild thistle.

And, about another foraged spring green, wild thistle, (Scolymus hispanicus) http://mykitcheninspain.blogspot.com.es/2010/01/wild-things.html

FISH -- FROM FARM TO TABLE

Farmed fish--gilt-head bream, left; sea bass, right.

An offer I couldn’t resist—lubina, fresh, whole sea bass, at €2.50 each (about $3.50 for a fish weighing about 1 pound, including head).  I bought a couple of them. Two one-pound fish serve two, three or four persons, depending on how much fish you can eat. Me, I can easily eat a whole one all by myself.

At a local market.

The bass, as well as dorada, gilt-head bream, come to local markets from a fish farm where they are raised in a manner respectful of the environment. The aquaculture station of Veta la Palma, located near the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, south of Sevilla and bordering the nature preserve of Coto Doñana, raises fish in artificial wetlands, a managed and sustainable ecosystem, created by pumping water through canals to create marshy, saline ponds where fish feed on natural algae and tiny shrimp. So healthy is the environment that it shelters 250 different bird species.

For more about Veta la Palma and aquaculture, see the links at the end of this post, following the recipe. Fresh fish from Veta la Palma is marketed in the US and may be available at your favorite restaurant.

The fish I buy are excellent. Here’s a way I first learned to prepare them at chiringuitos, beach shacks, on the Málaga and Cádiz coasts. This recipe is typically made with a large whole fish, cooked in a rectangular metal pan called a besuguera, on a bed of sliced potatoes, onions, peppers and tomatoes.

Ready for the oven--sea bass on a layer of potatoes and vegetables.

A whole fish weighing 4-5 pounds will serve 4 to 6 people. As the market size of the aquaculture bass are about 1 pound, I usually use one per person. The fish need to be gutted and scales removed. In Spain, the fish is baked whole, with the head. But, if your fish market sells fish with the head already removed, that’s fine too.

If using individual-sized fish, I serve them whole, letting each person remove bones (provide dishes for the debris). But, if using a large fish, it is best filleted in the kitchen after baking and served onto heated dinner plates with scoops of potatoes.

Potatoes soak up tasty juices from the fish, wine.

Baked Fish with Potatoes
Pescado al Horno

Serves 4.

4 1-pound sea bream or bass
Salt
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly
5 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 green pepper, cut in strips
Salt and pepper
1 onion, sliced
2 tomatoes, sliced
2 bay leaves, broken into pieces
½ cup dry white wine
½ cup water

Have the fish gutted and scaled. Rub fresh fish inside and out with salt and leave it to set for 30 minutes. Rinse and pat dry.

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Pour half the oil into a large flameproof oven pan (a roasting pan could be used) and add half the sliced potatoes. Sprinkle over half the garlic, parsley and peppers. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add all the sliced onions, most of the tomatoes, then the remaining potatoes, garlic, parsley and peppers. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Place the fish on top of the potatoes and top with the remaining slices of tomato. Drizzle with remaining oil. Tuck in the pieces of bay leaf. Pour over the wine and water. Cover the pan with foil and bake until the potatoes are tender, about 35 minutes. Remove the foil during the last 15 minutes. Add water, if necessary, so the potatoes always have some liquid.

Baked sea bass with potatoes.

About the fish farm at Veta la Palma http://www.vetalapalma.es

Chef Dan Barber's TED talk about "How I fell in love with a fish," also about sustainable aquaculture at Veta la Palma.

Sea bass, oven-ready.

Gilt-head bream have a distinctive golden band between the eyes.

RABBIT--THE OTHER WHITE MEAT

Tender pieces of rabbit with mushroom gravy.

When I started collecting recipes from Spanish cooks—more than 40 years ago—I found very few chicken dishes and dozens of recipes for small game such as rabbit, hare, partridge and turtledove. In those days, a chicken’s purpose was to produce eggs, not dinner, whereas rabbit was free for the shooting.

Nowadays, of course, battery-raised chicken can be purchased cheaply, so chicken is every-day food. While few rural people depend on wild game anymore, rabbit, partridge and quail are also farm-raised and available in supermarkets.

Which is where I found a special on rabbit (€3.50 per kilo) this week. A 3-pound rabbit cost me about $7.00. I had the butcher cut it into eight joints, serving four.

Rabbit can be called “the other white meat.” It’s delicate in flavor, extremely lean and very tender. Adding fat—preferably olive oil—and taking care not to overcook keep the meat from drying out.

Mushrooms and herbs.

From my many rabbit recipes, I chose one that comes from the nearby sierra of Ronda (Andalusia). It calls for “wild mushrooms” and mountain herbs. What I had available was an efflorescence of setas, oyster mushrooms, from a “grow bag,” in a dark, damp corner on my front porch, as well as clumps of “mountain” herbs—thyme and rosemary. Along with the mushrooms and herbs, both brandy and wine produce a delicious gravy.

"The brown food problem---"

The gravy, though, reminds me of what Coleman Andrews wrote in his book, Catalan Cuisine, about “the brown food problem... Like traditional cooking around the world, it tends to be monochromatic, murky-looking brown.” Nothing that a sprinkling of chopped parsley or other herb can’t remedy.

De las gallinas, el suelo; de los conejos, el techo. The best of the chicken is the “floor” (breast); the best of the rabbit, the “roof” (saddle). The meatiest rabbit pieces are the back legs and the saddle, or loin.

Clockwise from the top: back leg and thigh, ribs (rabbit “chops”), front leg, saddle or loin. In the center, pieces of liver.

Rabbit, Sierra-Style
Conejo a la Serrana

Serves 4

1 rabbit, 2 ½ -3 pounds
1/3 cup flour
¼ teaspoon coarsely-ground black pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon crumbled oregano
¼ teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
½ teaspoon fresh thyme
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 ounces bacon or serrano ham, diced
½ pound mushrooms, preferably wild, sliced
½ cup chopped onion
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons brandy
½ cup white wine
1 ½ cups water

Cut the rabbit into 8 joints. Combine the flour with the pepper, salt, oregano, rosemary and thyme. Dredge the rabbit pieces in the flour, patting off excess. Reserve remaining flour.

Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a deep skillet and brown the rabbit on all sides. Remove the pieces as they are browned.

Add remaining 1 tablespoon of oil to the pan. Add the bacon, mushrooms, onion and garlic and sauté until onions are softened.

Stir in remaining flour in which the rabbit was coated. Add the brandy, wine and water. Return the pieces of rabbit to the pan. Simmer, covered, turning the pieces once, until rabbit is very tender, about 45 minutes.