in praise of sardines

Follow the trail of crumbs...

...into the kitchens of Spain.

Leave it to the frugal Spaniards to elevate a simple dish of stale bread crumbs into the gastronomic stratosphere. Migas, the Spanish word for crumbs, is so beloved throughout much of Spain that the residents of Torrox, a town along the Costa del Sol in Andalucía, annually host a Fiesta de Migas that draws tens of thousands of people.

At its most basic, migas consists of leftover bread torn into small bits, slightly moistened with water, and then fried in olive oil with garlic and pimentón, the Spanish paprika. Every region seems to have its own variation on the theme, most of which call for the cook to add healthy doses of cured pork products, such as chorizo (dry-cured paprika-laced sausage), morcilla (blood sausage), jamón serrano, and bacon (hungry yet, Biggles?). The dish also often includes peppers and onions in the mix and, surprisingly, may be garnished with a handful of green grapes. Typically, migas serve as the base for one (or two) of the glorious fried eggs I recently wrote about. They can also be topped off by many other humble delicacies, including, I feel obligated to add, sardines.

This weekend, I made a dish of migas con huevos for my entry in the 25th edition of "Is My Blog Burning?," Give Us This Day Yesterday's Bread, hosted by Derrick of An Obsession with Food.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, like all rustic, straightforward dishes, the key to making the most delicious rendition of migas con huevos resides in the quality of your ingredients. Use the best available loaf of country bread, farm fresh eggs, and, most importantly, authentic Spanish chorizo (in the US, there is only one brand, Palacios, available at specialty grocers and on line here and here), jamón serrano, and pimentón.

After N and I scooped up every last bite of our migas, we decided that the point of the humble main ingredient - day old bread - was to soak up every bit of precious pork fat that rendered out of the chorizo, jamón serrano and bacon in the dish. It was like breakfast hash, substituting bread crumbs for potatoes!

No wonder that I was surprised, then, to read that the dish seems to have originated with the Moors, the Muslim occupiers of the Iberian peninsula from the eighth to the fifteenth century. From what I read, it seems that buried beneath the avalanche of pork bits, migas shares a common, if distant, ancestor with North African couscous, steamed semolina.

Regardless of its mysterious beginnings, today a hearty plateful of migas con huevos will load you up with enough calories to keep you going out in the vineyards all day. If you won't be working the fields, you can reduce the fat somewhat (such as by poaching the eggs, as I did), but you lose some of the authentic flavor that makes this belly-buster so quintessentially Castillian. Spoil yourself and eat it for brunch or lunch on a special occasion. Next birthday or anniversary, skip the foie gras, oysters, and caviar, and beg for a plate overflowing with migas con huevos!

Banoffi, banoffi bo anoffi,...

...banana fanna fo fanoffi, fee fie mo manoffi, Banoffi!

I have to admit that when I first saw the "What's for Pud?" post by Sam and Monkey Gland which asked bloggers to whip up an English pudding (aka "dessert" in American English) to celebrate St. George's Day, I was less than enthusiastic. The names of the puddings, though amusing, did not exactly titillate my taste buds. Spotted Dick, Eton Mess, Lardy Cake, Ginger Nuts were but a few of the examples Sam listed on her blog.

Then I spotted Banoffi (also spelled Banoffee) Pie. Banoffi Pie is a sweet pastry crust filled with dulce de leche and sliced bananas and topped with a cloud of whipped cream and a dusting of ground coffee or shaved chocolate.The name is a portmanteau, a blend of the words "banana" and "toffee." There were two reasons I decided to make this particular pudding. First of all, when, I reasoned, would I ever again get the opportunity to use the word portmanteau?

The other reason was that, unlike the other "puds" on the list, I had actually tasted this one before. Last summer, N and I tucked into a slice of this gooey pudding while perched on rickety stools at New York's Spotted Pig, as far as I know the only bona fide gastropub this side of the Pond. We liked chef April Bloomfield's rendition of Banoffi Pie (see her recipe here) so much that we licked our plate clean even though our bellies were overflowing with smoked haddock chowder, pumpkin and pecorino salad, enough chicken liver mousse to fill a derby hat, and pan-fried kidneys from what was surely a herd of calves.

Using the original recipe created in 1972 by the owners of the Hungry Monk, a pub in East Sussex, England, the Banoffie Pie I made was a sticky mess of deliciousness. As you can see from the picture above, my pie was rather impressive looking before I sliced it. Unfortunately, I hadn't chilled it enough by the time my friends arrived for our impromptu "tea party," so the dulce de leche flowed over our plates like primordial ooze. My pudding became a puddle! What the dessert lacked in appearance (hence no pictures of the final slice!), though, it made up for in sticky sweetness. Mary Poppins herself would surely have declared my Banoffi Pie scrum-dilly-icious!

One note on making dulce de leche. The most common way to make this caramel custard is to heat unopened cans of sweetened condensed milk in a pot full of boiling water for 4-5 hours. Be careful to keep the cans covered with an inch or two of water.

The nanny of my friend S (S, by the way, just returned to San Francisco from a few months hiatus at her home in Madrid) once did the unthinkable. She accidentally let the water covering the cans boil away. The pressure built up inside the cans and then, S recalls, she heard a loud boom! boom! boom! She and her gaggle of brothers and sisters dashed to the kitchen and found dulce de leche dripping off the ceiling, down the walls, even inside light fixtures. They spent the next several hours happily licking everything in sight. So, unless you have a house full of children, make sure you keep the cans covered with water at all times! (Or simply avoid the whole issue by following the instructions on the can for making dulce de leche in the oven).

Happy St. George's Day, Sam, MG, and any other English readers out there!

What's For Pud?|St George's Day

I heart artichokes + a favorite way to prepare them

Last Saturday, the day before Easter, I was singing the blues. By that day, the Bay Area had endured far more than 40 days and 40 nights of rainfall (which might help to explain my extended break from blogging). I had started scouring the web to learn more about the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, convinced I must be suffering from it. After I grew bored with medical sites, I surfed over to ones picturing vacation rentals in Barcelona, hoping that Travel Porn would lift me out of my funk. No luck. Nothing could cheer me up, not even dunking chocolate covered Digestive biscuits into a cup of Earl Grey.

Then I made my weekly trip to the local farmers market and spied these.

Just knowing that something so gorgeous could spring up out of our sodden local landscape cleared away my gloominess in a flash, like the elusive burst of sunshine that I and everyone around me so desperately craved.

Feeling like a child who had just found a stash of brightly colored plastic eggs filled with chocolates, I picked 6 purple-tinged lovelies out of a basket of the Sicilian Violetto artichokes at Mariquita Farm's market stand. I was amused that about a third of the artichokes in the basket perfectly mirrored my previous foul mood: dark violet in color, they bore vicious long spikes as sharp as a wolf's fangs or claws. I was happy to leave those -and my blues - behind. I'd dealt with cases of those bastards a decade ago as an intern at Chez Panisse, daily returning home with a new collection of bandages. I figured this time around that I deserved to pluck the tamest looking chokes in the basket.

I am a sucker for sexy produce. Some might say to an unhealthy degree. Once, a few summers back, I was so absorbed by a display of ripe, juicy heirloom tomatoes in a rainbow of colors that I completely missed that a beautiful Hollywood celebrity was standing right next to me. I'm not making this up. She apparently even bumped into me and excused herself and I didn't even look up. In fact, I recall being rather annoyed. I only learned of it when, after she had left, the salesperson and my wife both exclaimed their excitement at the brush with celebrity. I was oblivious and thought they were making it up. Sadly, they were not. And N will never let me forget it. Yes, I have a problem.

Where was I? Ripe, juicy, sexy... oh, yes, artichokes! I have yet to find a way to prepare these prickly flower buds that I don't like. See Mark Bittman's article in yesterday's Dining section of the New York Times (on line free for a week) for how to stuff, pan fry, and shave artichokes raw into a salad. But stay here if you want to learn one of my favorite ways to tame this thistle, a method that draws out the vegetable's innate sweetness better than any other. For lack of a better term, I'll call it oven-braising.

You can use any size artichoke for this method, but try to use the smallest you can find. Regardless of the size, the challenge with these curmudgeons of the vegetable kingdom is always the same: getting down below the layers of armor and thorns to expose its tender "heart." Of course, as a loyal reader of this blog, you already know how to do that from my recipe for vegetable paella.

So, on to the recipe!

The art of the frying an egg

While we're on the topic of eggs....

Several years ago at our farmers market, N and I spied one of our favorite farmers, Lee of Tierra Vegetables, surreptitiously slip a small carton of eggs into a customer's canvas bag. Our curiosity was piqued. Neither of us had never seen a sign advertising fresh eggs at Tierra! My eyes widened and my jaw started to drop. N, sensing an opportunity, cast a sharp sideways glance at me that wordlessly communicated that I had better bite my tongue and not make a spectacle of myself. This situation required finesse.

We sidled up to the displays of dried and smoked peppers and feigned interest in the jars of spicy pepper jams even though our cupboards were already filled with them. Now within earshot, we overheard Lee tell the grateful customer that her brother Wayne had gathered the eggs that very morning. The customer prattled on about freshness and flavor and how these were the best eggs ever...blah blah blah.

My heart began to race and I turned Araucana green with envy. Must. Have. Eggs. Now. N gave me another one of her looks, this one saying "Let me handle this." I bit my tongue until it damn near bled.

As soon as the lucky bastard had left with his stash of eggs, N mustered up all her charm and made her move.

I watched with my usual sense of awe as N wove one of her masterful stories, using her astounding powers of persuasion and innate emotional intelligence that, were EQ as highly regarded as IQ would surely place her on a par with Einstein. Were my memory as gifted, I would share every detail with you. Suffice it to say that she somehow turned Lee's initial "No, I only have a few eggs for special long-time customers" into a "Yes, just this once."

At the time, no other farmer at our market was selling eggs from truly free-range chickens. (I remember how shocked I was when I first learned that poultry ranches could use the term "free-range" even if they debeak their hens and stack cages one atop the other. If I understand correctly, all they need is occasional access to the outside). Wayne's tiny flock of chickens actually get to roam around a yard and blissfully peck at weeds and grubs and slurp up the occasional worm. Like a scene out of Chicken Run (minus the evil chicken pie machine).

We carried our treasure home, nestled between bunches of herbs and spinach in our basket. Although I may not have remembered every detail of N's story, I do remember every detail of lunch that day. We fried our eggs in fresh butter, sprinkled them with coarse fleur de sel and freshly ground pepper, and plopped them on top of thick slices of toasted country bread from Della Fattoria. The yolks were as dark orange as a tangelo and we were convinced the eggs had the distinct taste of freshly roasted chicken.

Today, of course, it is much easier (for you local San Francisco readers at least) to find true farm fresh, free-range eggs at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. They'll set you back a few bucks, but they are worth every penny. While I don't think Lee still brings eggs to the San Francisco market (you can buy them at her stand in Healdsburg), on Saturdays Eatwell Farms sells eggs from Three Wise Hens (see Sunday's post) and Marin Sun Farms sells their own chickens' eggs, while Nash sells eggs at the afternoon FP market on Tuesdays and across town at the Alemany market on Saturdays.

Below are instructions for how to fry an egg Spanish-style in olive oil, which is (perhaps not surprisingly) my new favorite way to devour these culinary jewels.

Diego Velázquez's "Vieja Friendo Huevos" (Old Woman Frying Eggs), 1618, hanging in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

Happy Easter!

And a Happy (belated) Passover!

Naturally blue and green eggs brought to you by the free-range Araucana chickens of Three Wise Hens in Davis, California.

Spring and Easter are a time of rebirth and new beginnings. I'm hoping some of that seasonal energy will rub off on my blog, which has been hibernating lately. Stay tuned....

Food|and Drink|Eggs