in praise of sardines

Home sweet home

I know, I know. I said I would post a summary of my future restaurant's concept today. Mañana, amigos. The thump thump that was fun on the dance floor last night is now thump thumping my brain.

Since you were kind enough to drop by, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least offer you a snack: grilled sardines with escalivada on toast. Escalivada is a Catalan salad of grilled or roasted summer vegetables, usually including eggplant, peppers, onions, and sometimes tomatoes. I cooked every part of this appetizer for you in my newest favorite toy: my fireplace. I heart you, hearth.*

Warning. Cooking sardines in your fireplace is a risky undertaking. If done improperly, your house could be haunted by the smell of sardines for eternity. Contemplate that on Halloween. There are two keys to help you avoid this fate. First, you need an excellent fireplace. I can't overstate my enthusiasm for the one in my new home, which is about 80 years old. I love it so much I've cooked dinner in it the last three nights. By comparison, my attempts at hearth cooking in my last house, built in the early 1950's, failed. The aromas of firewood lingered for days afterwards. I never dared attempt sardines. I wish I knew what made one better than the other, but I don't. Apparently they don't build them like they used to.

The second key is maintaining a medium to large fire. In his book "The Magic of Fire: Hearth Cooking," William Rubel describes the ideal fire for grilling as "a mature fire with moderate to high flames and a substantial bed of embers." Don't actually grill the fish directly over the flames, however. Grill them over the radiant heat of the white hot embers that you spread in front of the flames. High flames are necessary because they pull the smoke and sardine-cooking odors up the chimney and out of your house. Again, I'm not sure why. Something to do with physics. Or perhaps magic. I'd look it up, but remember: thump thump.

Escalivada from the Fireplace (recipe)

By contrast, I roasted the eggplant, peppers, and onion (whole and unpeeled) for the escalivada in a bed of embers and ashes in front of the fireplace hearth. In fact, the root word for escalivada, escalivar, means to cook in ashes and this is the traditional method for cooking the dish. I also wrapped a few cloves of garlic in heavy duty aluminum foil and roasted them the same way. The smoke permeates the vegetables. (Now, if I had an editor, I'd be required to tell you that you can, of course, roast the vegetables in your oven or over a gas burner. The difference in the end results, however, is akin to the difference between soaking in the hot springs of Esalen overlooking the cliffs of Big Sur and taking a bath at home). To finish the escalivada, I allowed the veggies to cool, peeled off the blackened skin, and tore the eggplant and peppers into strips by hand. I sliced the roasted onion into eighths. Then I made a dressing by mashing the roasted garlic with a few splashes of aged sherry vinegar and a healthy dose of extra virgin olive oil. Finally, I tossed it all together, adjusted it for taste with sea salt and more vinegar, as needed, and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

Hey, check it out! That's the closest I've come to publishing a recipe on this site in many, many months.

I actually assembled the escalivada the day before when I served it with grilled lamb spread with romesco. For the sardine dish, I chopped up the leftover escalivada, transforming it into a marmalade-like relish. Then I spread that on grilled bread and topped with the sardine fillets. How did I grill the sardines? Now you're getting greedy. Do you want a sardine recipe too? Fine.

Grilled Sardines

Gut the sardines. Season with sea salt. Place in grill basket or directly on the grill. Cook until done.

Heh. Are you satisfied now?

Well, one more thing. This is an open letter to all the restaurant cooks who have overcooked my sardines nearly every time that I have ordered them. The properly grilled sardine should maintain all the tenderness and juiciness that makes sardines such a delight to eat. Like all fish, sardines should be cooked delicately, just to the point where the flesh firms up. I implore you. Please, please, please do not overcook my sardines ever again.

Thank you. I feel better now.

Why did I title this post "Home sweet home?" Could I really consider my new place home before I cooked sardines in it?

* Hearth. About 10 years ago I thought of calling my restaurant Hearth. I liked that it had the word heart in it, because my personal cooking goal and motto is to "cook from my heart." I referred to my restaurant as Hearth in all my old "restaurant ideas" journals (note to aspiring restaurant owners: start a journal). I was sad when, several years ago, some big name restaurateurs opened Hearth in New York City. What really galls me is that, as far as I know, their restaurant lacks a wood-burning oven or grill or anything that remotely resembles a hearth. To add insult to injury, I discovered that I couldn't use that name in San Francisco even if I had wanted to, because there's already a bar that goes by that name. Harumph!

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!

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

When is a trout not a trout?

When it's an omelet, of course! (Don't worry, this Dadaist answer will soon make sense).

A month ago, I promised an unusual Catalan recipe that features green garlic "later in the week." I made the dish, took pictures, ate it, and then plumb forgot about it.

My promise remained buried in my gray matter until an alert reader, Jesse, emailed me a few days ago. Jesse subscribes to the weekly CSA box (go Jesse!) from one of my favorite local farms, Full Belly, and was scheduled to receive a bunch of fresh green garlic on Tuesday. Jesse, hopefully you still have some of your stash remaining to use in this recipe!

During my trip to the Priorat wine region of Catalonia last summer, I sampled what was to me an unusual riff on the classic Spanish tortilla. In place of the traditional potatoes (and onions in some renditions), the cook had substituted local white beans, called mongetes, and green garlic. Tasted alongside the potato version, I actually preferred this tender, mildly garlicky tortilla.

Once I returned home, I flipped through old and new Spanish cookbooks and learned that the Spanish tortilla is just as versatile a platform for experimentation as the more familiar (to American cooks) frittata of Italy. The potato-based tortilla is the most famous and widely adored version, but there are countless others. What they all have in common is a relatively low proportion of eggs to filling.

Catalan cooks appear to be especially fond of tinkering with the classic potato version. In his book Catalan Cuisine, Colman Andrews wrote that he encountered a wide variety of fillings while in Catalonia, including "white beans, green beans, samfaina [similar to French ratatouille], artichokes, asparagus, garlic shoots [another word for green garlic], wild mushrooms, tuna, botifarra sausage, apples or pears, even fried zucchini flowers." The version I tasted, then, was not as shockingly original as I had assumed!

It's time I explain the seemingly absurd riddle of the title. It's quite simple, actually. In the Catalan language, the word for tortilla is truita, which means "trout." Although theories abound as to why a round omelet made of eggs and vegetables would be called a trout, nobody seems to know the true reason. To differentiate between a real trout and an omelet, Catalans call the fish a "trout of the river" (truita de riu). A few months back, when I made a delicious tortilla with potatoes, leeks, and smoked trout, I had unwittingly made perhaps the world's first truita de truita.

The following version is called a truita de mongetes i all tendre, meaning white bean and green garlic omelet. In its homeland, it would most likely be a served as a tapa, cut into small wedges or squares and served on toasted slices of baguette, perhaps with a smear of romesco sauce or a paper thin slice of jamón serrano. N and I enjoyed this truita one weekend for brunch. It would also makes a nice luncheon or early supper with a simple salad and a glass of sparkling Catalan Cava.

Recipe: Salsa de Romesco

After a week of culinary classes in Catalonia this past summer, I began to believe the "healthy Mediterranean Diet" was a marketing ruse. A fantasy. A bald-faced lie.

Having devoured quantities of food, wine and olive oil that would have made the Emperor Caligula blanch, my stomach decided to go on a temporary strike. The last morsel of food I recall consuming, between glasses of black Priorat wine, was duck braised in red wine with duck prosciutto, porcinis and prunes. Mediterranean diet indeed!

In hindsight, the most dire consequence of this unanticipated one-day fast was my absence for the lesson on making romesco (the o is pronounced more like a u, so it should be pronounced ru-mes-cu). Fortunately, my chef-instructor and hostess for the week, Alicia Juanpere, had the foresight to save me a taste (and recipe) for the next day, when my stomach lay down its picket signs and I had fully recovered.

The dominant toasted nuttiness of Alicia's recipe for salsa de romesco come from hazelnuts, almonds and bread that are fried in olive oil. She encourages you to pound them in a ceramic mortar with a wooden pestle to form the base of the sauce, but you would get good results in a food processor. Roasted tomatoes and dried nyora (spelled ñora in Castillian Spanish) peppers reconstituted in red wine vinegar contribute acidity, fruitiness and their vermilion color. The combination of roasted and raw garlic adds complexity, while cayenne adds a hint of heat. Extra virgin olive oil (the more, the better) gives the sauce an unctuous consistency. The goal, as in any dish, is to balance the contrasting flavors so that they form a symphony without any one player taking over.

With those alluring flavors firmly planted in my taste memory (the most reliable and active part of my gray matter), I used Alicia's detailed instructions to recreate the meal that I had so unfortunately missed: roast lamb with romesco sauce (pictured above, left).

I substituted one local dried red chile from my friend Lee at Tierra Vegetables for two imported nyora peppers, which are expensive. In appearance and flavor, Tierra's peppers resemble the true romesco peppers used in Tarragona, the birthplace of salsa de romesco, much more than the nyora peppers that Alicia used, which are more available throughout Spain (and online). Easier to find ancho chiles also yield excellent results.

In the goal of achieving the most authentic result, I highly recommend seeking out an olive oil from the region where the sauce originates. The olive oil from this region, a special government protected "denominación de origen" called Siurana, comes from the arbequina olive. The oil from this region, which spans most of southern Catalonia and northern Valencia, is the best I have tasted. Its characteristic after taste of almonds never fails to intoxicate me. An excellent domestic alternative to the Siurana oils are the arbequina olive oils produced by the California Olive Ranch.

My romesco sauce came out so well, that I used it later in the week to sauce a pan-fried ling cod (pictured right) and then as a piquant spread in an untraditional toasted panino (Italian-style grilled cheese sandwich) that featured smoky Basque Idiazabal cheese and Melissa's recipe for membrillo, Spanish quince paste. You could also use leftover sauce as the base for a voluptuous Catalan seafood stew by thinning it with the addition of fish or chicken stock, or, thin it with more olive oil and use it as a vinaigrette for a hearty salad of frisée, escarole and salt cod known in Catalonia as xató (pronounced like château).

For more details and background on salsa de romesco, see my earlier post describing my visit to Tarragona, where I dined at Barquet, the restaurant owned by the chef and author of the most authoritative book (in Catalan) on romesco, David Solé i Torné.

Unexpected food discoveries lead to a tasty Halloween and Diwali

There are few things that get me more excited than discovering something new to eat. In the name of unearthing an unusual and original taste, I will scour local markets, steal tastes at farm stands, pilfer fruit from neighbor's trees or wild bushes. I will endure excruciating heat, verbal abuse, gastrointestinal discomfort, endless hours of searching, even potential jail time.

Of course, the joy multiplies tenfold when new products practically jump into my undeserving hands, which is exactly what happened not once but twice over the weekend at our local farmers market.

Making my usual rounds, my blood hound mind was distracted by every aroma and shiny object. I paused here to sample a glistening pear, there to sniff the rose geraniums. I was as insatiable as Condoleeza Rice at Ferragamo.

The sight of a giant bee out of the corner of my eye momentarily yanked me out of my reverie. Once my reptilian brain relaxed, I realized the over five-foot tall bee was actually Helene Marshall of Marshall's Farm Natural Honey dressed as a bee, a la John Belushi.

Having my foot swell to the size of a basketball after stepping on a bee when I was a toddler didn't dampen my enthusiasm for honey. Neither did the discovery that the liquid amber is essentially bee vomit. I adore the sweet nectar.

In the Bay Area, the folks at Marshall's are the ambassadors of the bee kingdom. Their selection of dozens of varieties range in color from pale gold to dark chocolate and in flavor from floral to bittersweet. I decided to veer from my usual favorite "star thistle" and sample their seasonally changing collection of sticky wares.

After licking enough samples to send a dozen diabetics into shock, my clear favorite was endearingly named "Haunted Honey." Made from the pollen of pumpkin blossoms, this bright orange syrup has distinct undertones of roasted butternut squash and butterscotch.

Haunted Honey for Halloween. How appropriate. Unbelievably, I next stumbled upon a product worthy of Diwali, the Indian festival of lights which takes place today.

This time, I spied a product that stopped me in my tracks - a local version of an Italian cheese that some readers know I am inordinately fond of. While I paused to take a picture of the sheep's milk cheese, another cheese grabbed my attention.

Apparently a month or two ago, the local cheesemakers at Cowgirl Creamery teamed up with noted Indian food expert Niloufer Ichaporia King (whose cookbook I am excitedly awaiting) to create a creamy "Parsi style" version of panir (also spelled paneer). The Cowgirl version of this cow's milk farmer's cheese tastes like a smoother, saltier version of fresh ricotta, remarkably similar to a fresh cheese I often enjoyed in Catalonia called mató.

And guess what! Mató is almost always paired with honey* as a light and refreshing end to a Catalan meal. So I married my Halloween honey with my Diwali panir, added a few toasted California walnuts, and ended up miraculously with the best version of mel i mató I have had outside of Spain. Kismet.

Happy (belated) Halloween! Happy Diwali! And, most of all, happy tummy!

*Thanks also to the brilliant NS of San Francisco Gourmet San Francisco Gourmet who just a month ago reminded us all what a simple yet wonderful combination fresh ricotta-style cheese is when drizzled with a flavorful honey.

Food|and Drink|Recipes|Cheese|Desserts

Paella 101: "What's in a name? That which we call arròs By any other name would smell as sweet."*

As I mentioned in my wrap-up of Eat Local month, during August I had been resisting using the ingredients I brought back from Spain in order to support the campaign to eat as much locally produced foods as possible. Although it's true that some of the ingredients I brought back were local when I purchased them (such as the olive oil that I bought at the local co-op's mill), I didn't want to go down that road, or before you know it I'd have been rationalizing my way into eating a dozen Ho Hos® ** (you know, Hostess® claims the recipe, or more accurately the chemical formula, came from a bakery in San Francisco, so maybe it qualifies...).

Last night was the first day of September, so it was high time for me to dig into my Spanish products and make some paella!

So, what's in a name? I hesitate to even use the word "paella" to describe this Spanish-inspired rice dish, which in Spanish I would be more inclined to call arroz de verduras and in Catalan arròs amb verdures, arroz/arròs simply meaning "rice" and verduras/verdures meaning "vegetables." But, for better or worse, in English we tend to call any Spanish-style rice dish a paella, so that's what I'll call it here.

My goal for this vegetable paella was to showcase the pristine artichokes and peas from Swanton, one of our local farms, in a vegetarian (heck, it's even vegan!) rice dish that would retain the integrity of an authentic paella or arròs like the one I sampled in Valencia. You could substitute any combination of fresh seasonal vegetables that you prefer, such as peppers, zucchini, green beans or mushrooms. Even if you've never had a good paella -- oh the horrible things I have seen and tasted that went by the name of paella (even in Spain)!-- I know you're really going to like this one! And it's so easy, much less work than making risotto, because you don't have to stir it at all!

Background

Before I get to the recipe, though, I want to get on my soapbox and share with you some of the things I've learned about paella on my trips to Spain and in my readings.

Traditionally, a paella should be cooked in a special shallow, round steel pan called, not surprisingly, a paellera. I don't yet have one, but they're easy to order on line. The important thing to take into account when choosing a paellera or whatever pan you're going to use is how many people you plan to serve. The size of the pan increases with the number of servings.

For example, my recipe below is for just 2 people, so I used my shallow 10-inch/26 cm sauté pan to successfully imitate a paellera. For 4 servings, you'll need a 13-inch/34 cm paellera; for 6 servings, a 15-inch/38 cm pan; for 40-50 servings, a 36-inch/90 cm pan (and a really big spoon).

I wasn't going to get into this, but I might as well. At least in Valencia and Alicante, Paella is traditionally the Spanish equivalent to the American Sunday afternoon backyard bar-be-cue. What I mean is it's a dish, more often than not, cooked by men. And when men cook, we like to do it outside, over a wood fire. If you're inclined to cook your paella in a manly fashion, you may want to consider a tripod, but actually the standard round Weber® is perfect. If you can get your paella pan in time, it would be a perfect alternative to hot dogs and burgers for the upcoming Labor Day weekend grill-fest!

Alas, as I've mentioned before, I don't own a grill, so I had to settle for cooking my paella indoors. Besides, a vegetable paella is hardly manly (real men don't eat vegetables, do they?). To replicate the subtle smokiness that a wood fire imparts to the rice, I used a little of the marvelous smoked Spanish paprika, pimentón de la Vera.