Kitchen Gong Serendipity

World's Best Ice Coffee

How to Make Pasta Putanesca

One of my absolute favorite pasta sauces using ingredients that make up the heart of Mediterranean cooking.

Conejo con Salsa Romesco

They don't eat romesco sauce around these parts much as it is more of a Catalan dish. I had this once in a restaurant once upon a time in Catalunya and thought I would try it myself.

Two Hobbies in One Video

Bad French, Good Dish

As I say in the video in French, Fridays are my French days. I have my class in the morning and then I try to do some reading or watch a movie in French. Today I made ratatouille.  I did quite a bit of research for this dish. I probably looked at ten different recipes, even the rat’s high-brow interpretation from the Disney movie. Mine came out very well although I made much more than I expected. Just what I am going to do with six liters of ratatouille is something I haven’t figured out just yet.  Any suggestions?

I’ve always wanted to go to music school and cooking school. I’m a better cook than musician but that’s only because I’m a completely lousy piano player, not that I show much promise in the kitchen. Now that I’ve written that last sentence I realize there’s a bit of false modesty in saying that I can’t cook well. You’ll forgive my brief lapse into false modesty because much of the time I am forced to be modest because any other stance would be an outright lie regarding my abilities. I practice a lot in the kitchen so I’ve improved. I used to practice the piano a lot, too. I got better when I practiced a lot on the piano but it was barely perceptible, at least as far as I could tell. With cooking I can actually taste the improvements I make.

Cooking for me is just a great way to relax and clear my head.  It’s much more than the simple act of cooking, first you have to think of something to cook and then search out how to pull it off.  It’s also another phase I’m passing through but I have to say that it’s a highly useful phase.  I spent a lot of time and effort learning jiu-jitsu yet I hardly ever have to the opportunity to beat someone up. I suppose that “phase” isn’t really the correct word. The things I dedicate myself to are gaps in my education that I’m trying to fill. Learning to cook these days is very easy.  There are hundreds of professional videos on YouTube as well as thousands more made by inspired amateurs covering every possible dish on the planet.

Salade Niçoise

 

The salade niçoise* is another Mediterranean classic. This dish may have a French name but it is still peasant food like everything else I cook. It may be on the menu of expensive restaurants but it’s inexpensive and easy to make. Canned tuna is used almost exclusively when you order this dish in France so hold the seared, sushi-grade ahi tuna. Where? How about between your legs? If you’re looking for yuppie food you have the wrong guy and the wrong salad. I don’t mind people jazzing up a recipe but I do mind when chefs try to take food away from the people to feed the rich.

The basic ingredients are standard enough: tomatoes, onion, green beans, new potatoes, greens, olives, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, capers, and tuna—not much wiggle room. I looked around at dozens of different versions of this simple dish and they all had the same thing, more or less. I found a couple of tricks here and there but nothing that has drastically changed my own recipe. As you may have noticed, the ingredients for this salad read like an inventory of the best things in Mediterranean cuisine. Instead of French olives I bought some black olives from Aragón. I also opted for some big Spanish capers with the stem. The canned tuna and anchovies are from the supermarket and serve this dish very well.

I’ve had a somewhat troubled relationship with hard-boiled eggs. I have looked at literally dozens of recipes for this simple menu item and have tried every trick in the book and I still fail quite often. For today’s cooking my eggs happened to turn out perfect. I don’t know exactly what I did to deserve this bit of fortune but it may be due to the fact that the eggs I used weren’t particularly fresh. I had them sitting out on my counter for a few days. I have read that fresh eggs don’t lend themselves well to hard-boiling.

This salad stands on the strength of the ingredients you use. For me the least important of these are the greens. In fact, they are so unimportant to me that I forgot to buy them when I went to the market so my salad is green-less. I did, however, find some beautiful new potatoes that I boiled. I peeled and dressed them while they were still warm so that they would absorb the oil, vinegar, and lemon juice. I did the same with the green beans. After that I refrigerated these vegetables.

The tomatoes this time of year on the Mediterranean are amazing, so that wasn’t going to be a problem. You buy tomatoes this time of year and after a day in your kitchen they are practically bursting, as if they are impatient to be used in one form or another. The best way to use them in August is raw with just a pinch of salt and perhaps a drop or two of olive oil; leave the heavier dressing for the other, lesser vegetables.

Most of the French videos I looked at said that the dressing for this salad is a vinaigrette with quite a lot of vinegar (2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar) and that mustard isn’t used in a salade niçoise. I’ll go with what the home team recommends. I’m going to try to mix vinegars because most recipes call for balsamic vinegar and I find it pretty strong to use at this ratio. I used the oil from the anchovies as a supplement to the regular olive oil. I added salt and oregano to the dressing as well as a little lemon juice.

My camera ate most of the first video I shot for this dish so I had to do it over the next day. Luckily I still had enough stuff leftover. I did have to go out and buy more greens which was sort of ironic since I don’t even like greens and I had forgotten to buy them the day before.

*Every time I have to use a Spanish or French character I’m thankful for the laptop I bought here in Spain even though it was expensive.

How to Make Greek Salad and Tzatziki

The humble Greek salad is one of my all-time favorite dishes. Nothing earth-shattering in this version but I can say that it is authentic. Keep in mind that I lived in Greece for three years and probably had this salad 100 times in restaurants. Tzatziki is another Greek favorite and super easy to make. !Buen provecho! Καλή όρεξη!

How to Make Chilaquiles

I really miss Mexican food. Tracking down the necessary ingredients can be a pain and they are often expensive. I made refried beans a couple of days ago and added a bit of morcilla sausage I had in the fridge. Yum. I put the beans on some tostadas with chicken and pico de gallo (I made another batch of pico).

Paella Valenciana II

I thought it was time to update my recipe for paella before the Valenciano paella Nazis came banging at my door. I think it is an arrestable offense to alter their recipe in any way. I think I'm safe with this video. I actually used video from two separate paellas as I wasn't happy with the one I made two weeks ago. I made another one today and it came out rather well, if I can say that. I used much more water initially this time to compensate for the evaporation during the cooking process. You can't really measure the water because you can't be sure how much you will lose. When you add the rice you just have to eyeball the fluid level in the pan.

Huevos Rancheros

I made salsa picante a few days earlier. I had also bought some corn tortillas and was deciding what to do with them so I made a Mexican favorite, huevos rancheros. A great meal that should be served with a cold beer and some music by Vicente Fernandez.

Fideua

Fideua is another Valenciano favorite although I have never made a serious attempt at it. This time I did a bit of looking around and came up with this fairly standard recipe. When preparing a new dish I usually look at a couple of recipes and then look on youtube or videojug. I take a bit from every recipe I like to build my own. Cookbooks seem like such an anachronism these days. I can’t imagine cooking something from just a page in a book. Sic transit gloria mundi or whatever.

Gazpacho Manchego

Gazpacho manchego is yet another iconic item on the Spanish menu, not that you will see it on many restaurant menus. As you may have guessed from the name it comes from the Castilla-La Mancha region of Spain, the center of the country and considered by many to be the heart and soul of Spanish culture (as opposed to the cultures of Catalunya, Galicia, Asturias, Valencia, etc.). This dish is the very definition of hearty peasant food. There are a few basic things you need to know about gazpacho manchego.  

First of all, it is not to be confused with the chilled tomato soup sharing part of its name, gazpacho andaluz. This gazpacho is a shepherd’s stew with loads of meat.  When I began to do some research into gazpacho manchego I found that you can make it with chicken, rabbit, hare, partridge, quail, pigeon, mushrooms, onions, chicken livers, gizzards, and just about anything you can think of. So back in the old days it went down something like this:  the shepherds would blast anything that moved, throw it in a pot with whatever vegetables they had on hand, and then they added bread to the mixture. The key ingredient here being the addition of bread or dough.

In the dozens and dozens of recipes I poured over the only unifying ingredient I found was the bread that is added at the end of the cooking process.  The bread used now in gazpacho manchego (at least most of them) is called tortas cenceñas. They are kind of like crackers—unleavened, unsalted, and toasted. Besides the addition of the tortas cenceñas the other ingredients are whatever you decide. I found the same thing true concerning the spices. Some ingredients called for saffron, some cumin, and a lot of other herbs and spices. It seems to me that there isn’t a universally accepted recipe, unlike paella Valenciana, for example. I think that personal interpretation and improvisation based on whatever ingredients are available are essential aspects of making gazpacho manchego.

For my own recipe I have distilled at least 20 variations. That is usually how I begin to prepare any new dish. I search for as many recipes as I can find and take from each one anything I feel to be worthwhile. I almost never just lift an entire recipe from someone else. Each thing I cook has my own personal watermark. This is certainly true of the gazpacho manchego I make in this video.

One problem with a peasant dish like gazpacho manchego is that the final presentation is a little less than spectacular which is probably why you don’t see it in many restaurants. It ain’t yuppie food, that is for sure but if it is a cold winter’s day and you want to eat like a Spanish shepherd, this might be the dish for you.   

Papas Aliñás

This is my new summer favorite. I have made it about five times since learning about it just a couple of months ago. Here is the definitive version presented by my Andalucian-Australian friend, Juan. ¡Buen provecho!

Summer Menu

If you had to plan an ideal menu of Spanish and Mediterranean cuisine it would probably come close to what we had this past weekend at the country home of a couple who recently left my hectic neighborhood of Ruzafa for the peaceful hills of an agricultural community south of Valencia. It’s a startling contrast whenever I spend time at their place where I will spend days without hearing a car horn or a jack hammer—two instruments that are major contributors to the soundtrack of life in the city. We have always eaten well when we spend time together but these last few days were exceptional. I haven’t visited them in months and it was like we were making up for lost time in the kitchen and on the patio grill.

I had bought a huge supply of tomatoes which are on sale all over Valencia in the usual summer gold rush manner. I hauled almost four kilos of them along with me for the weekend. Upon arriving I almost immediately started making gazpacho. This is a dish that belongs in your refrigerator all through the summer months. It is also easy to make and open to a lot of personal interpretation and adaptation. It’s impossible to mess up and the only cooking required is when you drop the tomatoes in hot water to remove the skins. The important thing to remember about gazpacho is that after it has been left in the fridge to chill you will want to take it out and adjust the seasoning. My huge batch went from bland and uninspired to delicious after I added quite a bit more olive oil, garlic, and salt after leaving it overnight to chill.

One of the things that I most missed about Mediterranean cooking when I left Greece many years ago and returned to the United States were grilled sardines. I don’t think we have the tradition of eating these little fish except in canned form. It just so happened that my friends had just visited their local fish merchant and picked up about three kilos of very fresh sardines. Although the people along the Mediterranean think rather highly of sardines they aren’t willing to pay much for them. They cost about 2€ a kilo. The modest price of this variety of fish means that they sell quickly which insures that the quantity you buy is always fresh. Anyone who has done a bit of angling knows that fresh fish are harder to scale than older stocks; a small price to pay when preparing sardines—and cleaning three kilos of sardines is quite a bloodbath. I rarely ever cook sardines at home, mainly because I don’t have a grill and also I don’t want to drive my neighbors away with the smell they make while cooking. Grilled sardines are one of the few reasons I ever bother to go to a restaurant in Valencia. Of course the odor isn’t a problem when you have a grill on the patio of a country home.

We cleaned the fish and then sprinkled them with very coarse salt before placing them on a double-sided grilling rack over a hot charcoal fire. High quality charcoal is something my friend takes very seriously so he buys it in huge 40 kilo bags from an Argentine who supplies a lot of backyard barbequers in his area. When the sardines come off the grill you simply splash on a bit of olive oil and you are ready to serve. I don’t even bother with lemon. These sardines are about 20 centimeters (8 inches) in length so they have a healthy backbone. With smaller sardines I just eat them bones and all but on these the meat separates easily. After a swelteringly hot day the heat had waned considerably and we were able to eat outside on the patio. Other factors in our favor were the Mediterranean summer dining rules which allow you to begin an evening meal at 1 am. This was going to be a tough meal to top and it was only Friday.

I’m the kind of guy who brings along his own chicken when you invite him over for the weekend. Friday afternoon I had cut it into pieces and seasoned it with salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, paprika, and garlic. I drizzled olive oil over all of it and put it in a covered glass dish in the refrigerator. On paper this doesn’t sound like the most imaginative dish I the world but it is amazing the results you get with a good charcoal fire. We had this chicken for lunch the next day and it was slow grilled to absolute perfection. The gazpacho came out well, if I do say so myself. A slice of bread and a glass or two of wine (who’s counting?) and we had another great meal.

There is a wonderful community swimming pool just a few blocks down the street so I headed down there a bit after lunch. As much cycling and running as I have been doing lately haven’t really prepared me to take my position on the podium of World’s Underwater Swimming Champion, a post I held for many years—at least in my own eyes. I could barely make one lap of the pool (25 meters? perhaps less) underwater without drowning. I used to be able to make it twice this distance. I am just out of practice as I haven’t been snorkeling since I moved to Spain and it’s been a long time since I really worked to improve my underwater swimming skills. If I ever want to be a Navy SEAL I had better get cracking.

None of us were even thinking about dinner that evening until late into the night. Of course, there was enough gazpacho to withstand a month-long siege but we didn’t have anything else planned. I made an appetizer with some of the leftover sardines. I just mounted them on a thin slice of bread in the Spanish manner of montaditos. Along with a glass of white wine we were off to a good start to another fine meal.

My host whipped up a dish that should be in everyone’s repertoire: pasta aglio olio: pasta in a sauce of olive oil and garlic. This Italian standard has been mastered by every resident of that peninsula and has made into way into the diet of just about everyone else living on the Mediterranean. It is as simple as it is delicious. Boil pasta (tagliatelle in this case), heat a good amount of olive oil, add minced garlic, and toss the pasta in the oil. I make it with red pepper flakes as well. We served this with fresh basil and Parmesan cheese. People tell me that this is a late night dish in Italy, usually served after you have been out all night dancing or whatever. We call it “drunk food” in American where we are a little less moderate in our intake of beer, wine, liquor, shots, tequila, more beer, another round of shots, etc.

As he made the pasta he also started a huge pot of fish stock to be used with Sunday’s traditional Valencian rice dish. The stock contained two heads of rape (monkfish?), some galeras, a truly terrifying version of shrimp, and langostinos. A good stock is crucial for a successful Arroz a Banda that we would be making for tomorrow’s afternoon meal.

I feel stuffed just writing all of this down and I still have another big meal left to describe. I have previously posted a video for Arroz a Banda so I will spare us all this meal. I would like to say that he changed his recipe a bit this time around and added cuttlefish to the dish. I think that it is safe for me to say that I ate rather well last weekend.


Gazpacho

How to Make a Frappé (Greek Ice Coffee)

This is better than Starbucks, I guarantee it. I have talked about frappés for a long time. I can’t believe that nobody makes them here in this part of Spain. If I had a café I would make them and the place would be mobbed. Here they just pour a coffee over ice which isn’t nearly as good. If you order one of these in Greece make to ask for very little sugar. If you don’t you will get about an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and it will feel like a biker has kicked you in the pancreas when you finish drinking it.

As I have mentioned before, I don't know how this French word made its way into modern Greek or why the Greeks don't have their own word for it. Enjoy.

Pasta or Pizza Sauce

I have been making tomato sauce the same way my entire adult life. I think I picked this up from The Cooking of Italy by Waverly Root. This is one of those recipes that I would never change; I call it "unimprovable."  After the dish has cooled it thickens and you may just want to eat the sauce with a spoon. It is easy to make, inexpensive, and perfect.

It only takes a few minutes to prepare (although it needs to simmer for an hour or so). What more do you need to know?

Mar y Montaña

This is a very easy recipe that also happens to be delicious—always a good combination. A cuttlefish is truly a revolting little creature both in and out of the water. I have always loved squid, especially the batter-fried variety I could never resist in Greece.

I got this recipe here:

El Cocinero Fiel

He is about the best video blogger on Spanish food. I have cooked at least a dozen of his dishes so far and they have all been well worth it.

Arroz de Mariscos

As I have said many times, Valencianos really only call something a paella if it is a true paella valenciana (with chicken and rabbit). Anything else to them is just rice. I just made this because I have only tried to make it once before. To be honest, I much prefer a real paella. I just like to film the dishes I make to sort of remind myself of what I have in my repertoire. ¡Buen provecho!

Arroz a Banda

Arroz a banda is not paella, although it is made in a paella pan (also called a paella). It is a Valencian rice dish made with some sort of mutant shrimp called cigalas here in Spain. I don’t know what we call them in English. I have never made this dish before so I was delighted when my country mouse friends invited me to their home out in the hills near Catadau (about 40 kilometers south of Valencia). Alain is French and a damn good cook. His recipe for lapin à la moutarde (rabbit in mustard) is one of the best things I’ve had since arriving. I took advantage of my most recent meal with my friends to record this video. The dish is fairly simple and the result was truly amazing. I can’t wait to make this at home although I don’t have the cool gas paella cooker he has. When he makes paella Valenciana (with chicken and rabbit as opposed to seafood) he uses a wood fire. For this dish he says that the smoke flavor can interfere with the fish flavors.

Rice
Fish Stock
Shrimp (or whatever the hell they are)
Red Pepper
Onion
Garlic
Can of diced tomatoes
Saffron, Olive Oil, Salt

Brown shrimp in pan with oil. Remove shrimp. Sauté pepper and onions, then add garlic. Pour in canned tomatoes. Add rice and mix with sautéed vegetables. Add fish stock and bring to simmer. Add a few shrimp heads. When rice is cooked add the rest of the shrimp on top of the dish. Cover with newspaper for about five minutes after turning off the stove to dry out the rice a bit. Serve. ¡Buen provecho!

Falafel King