Spain's Best Food Blog/Blogger

El Cocinero Fiel has taught me so much about the food here and about cooking in general. His Youtube videos cover almost anything you would want to cook.

The Right Tool for the Job

To make a really good tortilla it’s best to start with a really good pan. This enameled fry pan is perfect but I don’t want to give you the impression that a normal slob like yourself can make a tortilla like mine simply because you have a good fry pan. That would just be cruel on my part.

P.S. Just in case people still think that we have crappy food in the USA I present Exhibit A, a take-out pizza from Washington. I would kill for a pizza like this here in Valencia.

Tortilla de Setas con Queso

Primero vamos a freír las setas con cebolla en aceite de oliva y mantequilla que da un toque francés a la receta. Lo importante—por lo menos para mí—es freír las setas muy bien para que quedan muy tiernos…a mí no me gusta que sean al dente. Cuando están cocidas las añadimos en un bol con los huevos batidos. Luego añadimos un poco de queso tierno y sal. Echamos esta mezcla en una sartén a fuego muy lento…siempre con los huevos a fuego lento. Damos la vuelta a la tortilla y la cocinamos un rato más y ya está. El color debería ser amarillo, no quemado.

My Version 2.0 of Patatas Bravas

One of the most ubiquitous dishes in all of the Iberian Peninsula is patatas bravas, generous lumps of fried potato that should be crisp on the outside and tender and soft on the inside.  One of my friends here even started a patatas bravas Facebook page to alert people to good places to find them. As common as patatas bravas are in the bars in Spain there are few places that do this dish justice.  I would have to say that, in general, the bars of Madrid do a much better job with bravas than here in Valencia.

I’ve tried making patatas bravas at home with varying degrees of success and countless degrees of utter failure.  I don’t have an oil thermometer which is essential if you are using the twice-fried method, and the twice-fried way makes the best fried potatoes. I recently experimented with a par-boiled method in which I boil the cut and peeled potatoes in salted water, making sure not to cook them very much. You are just looking to make them a bit tender because anything more and they will fall apart when you cook them again in hot oil. I never even brought the potatoes to a boil but turned off the heat as the water approached a boil and left the potatoes to sit in the covered pot. I set my timer so that I didn’t leave them too long. I can’t say exactly how long to cook them or just when I decided to drain them. After I drained them I immediately put them in the freezer to halt the cooking process. I timed this, too, so that they wouldn’t freeze. Once they had cooled completely they are ready to fry in hot sunflower seed oil.

I topped these potatoes off with my fiercely-garlicky alioli.

Un Carajillo, Por Favor.

A carajillo is simply an espresso coffee with a bit of either Spanish brandy, whiskey, or rum added in. Another amazing contribution to world civilization thanks to the Spanish. This should come with a twist of lemon but most places don't bother with that tiny extravagance. ¡Salud!

Bar Casa Morrut

A corner bar like no other in Valencia. Great food and very inexpensive. Pepe makes traditional Spanish food as well as anyone. Great sandwiches (bocadillos) of all sorts but you really need to try his tortilla de patatas. The more I go here the less I feel like cooking at home.His morro is the best I've ever had and I try it everywhere.

At the front of this photo you can see batter-fried artichokes, then there is a bit of fried squid, croquetas de bacalao, a tortilla, and chicken wings. He makes his mayonnaise with milk instead of eggs as Spanish health code forbids the use of raw eggs.

Bar Casa Morrut

Carrer del Maestro José Serrano, 4

46005 Valencia

Barrio: Russafa

963 743 609

Horas de apertura:

lunes-viernes 09.00 - 16.00

lunes-viernes 18.00 - 23.00

sábado 18.00 - 23.30

Arroz de Setas - Mushroom Paella

Welcome to my kitchen. This dish turned out rather well because I used stock from cocido which I made a couple days before.

¿Arroz en la noche? (Rice for dinner?)

I think that I have worked very assiduously to integrate myself into Spanish life. I study the language like a conscientious undergrad. Spanish cooking comes naturally to me and I probably eat less American food than the average Spaniard. Football to me is fútbol and not the game with pads and helmets.  Despite all of my efforts to fit in, I just can’t get used to the Spanish dinner hours and their rather rigid notion of what one eats and doesn’t eat at a certain hour of the day. The biggest problem I have is the local prohibition of eating rice for dinner.

¿Arroz en la noche? “Rice for dinner?” I remember the first time someone asked me about this after telling them that I was making a risotto for dinner. For Valencianos eating rice for dinner rates right up there with rat poison. Rice is a midday meal for them, period.  If you went to a restaurant and ordered paella for dinner I think they would first laugh at you and then escort you brusquely from the premises while warning you never to return.

The Spanish eat their big meals in the afternoon.  They feel that eating a big meal in the evening is basically just asking for trouble; trouble in the form of weight gain, disturbed sleep, gout, rickets, and possibly erectile dysfunction.  You name it and eating big in the evening causes it.  From everything that I have read about nutrition there is absolutely basis for this belief because the body is basically on a 24 hour schedule and what matter is the total caloric intake during the day and not when they are consumed.  I understand that it is the tradition to eat a big afternoon meal basically everywhere in the Mediterranean basin. I respect tradition but this doesn’t mean that the tradition is based on science.

Even after all this time here in Spain I would much prefer to eat a being meal in the evening. And it’s not like Spanish people don’t eat big meals late in the evening. It’s rare to see anyone in a restaurant before 10:00 pm and it’s not like people only eat carrots and celery when they go out at night. Someone who admonishes you for eating rice at night will think nothing of eating a prodigious amount of bread with a salad for dinner. Potato dishes are quite popular for dinner as well as other recipes steeped in carbohydrates.

If I am going to eat a big meal I like to have a bit of wine with it. Having even a single glass of wine at lunch just wipes me out for the rest of the day. I can drink wine at lunch on Sundays when I have nothing to do the rest of the day put the rest of the week this just isn’t the case.  I will often eat rice for dinner (only if there are no Spanish people around to witness this heinous crime). I sleep like a baby after these meals.  You can read all about it in my upcoming book, Eat Rice at Night and Live to Tell about It!