Time-Life: Spain and Portugal

The Spain and Portugal volume of Time-Life Foods of the World was a much more satisfying read than the Quintet of Cuisines. The writer Peter S. Feibleman actually lived in Spain, knew the people, and could write great descriptions of landscapes and cultural events. I think I'd like to read some of his other books, such as his biography of Lillian Hellman, with whom he had a long friendship.

I found the recipes I tried less successful, whether it's because they were simplified too much or whether the food itself is less appealing, or perhaps just poor technique on my part.

I've been to Andalusia and had wonderful home-cooked meals with fresh produce at a lovely B&B (Villa Matilde near Anjar), but I found eating in restaurants frustrating. Oily, mass-produced paella, monotonous salads of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, boiled eggs, tuna, and ham. The overwhelming emphasis on meat, the lack of vegetarian meals, or even vegetables that were not served in oil, made lunches particularly unappealing. It's hot, you want a light lunch and the only vegetable choice is that same old salad! The consequences of mass tourism, perhaps. However, I do remember a delicious supper of sea bass baked in salt in Malaga, and I loved Seville and would like to go back there.

Anyway, back to this book. In general, they call for at least 2 times as much olive oil as I would use, and I cut the amounts whenever I thought it appropriate. Ingredients are simple with very few extra flavourings beyond salt and pepper. In some case, I adapted a couple by adding some hot peppers to give them a bit more kick.

I've not provided the recipes, but will be happy to post if anyone wants them.

Spain

From Spain, I made:

• Truchas a la Navarra (Marinated trout with red wine and herbs. This was tasty, but I found the choice of red wine odd and the resulting sauce yielded an unappealing color. If I make it again, I will use white wine.
• Spinach with pine nuts and almonds. I didn't have pine nuts and have grown tired of the flavour, so I just used almonds. I really liked this dish and will put it into rotation. The nuts provide a crunchy contrast to the soft spinach, and the garlic and serrano ham add depth and umami.
• Pollo a chilindron (Sauteed chicken with peppers, tomatoes, and olives. This was very good, although I did add some red pepper to give it a bit of a kick.
• Ternera a la Sevillana (Sauteed veal with sherry and green olives). I enjoyed the sofrito at the heart of this dish, but it rather overwhelms the delicate veal scallops. The sauce is a mixture of onions, garlic, olives, tomatoes, mushrooms, and ground almonds. The olives are quite dominant and I think this would work very well with pasta. In fact, it reminded me of past putenesca. 

Portugal

From Portugal, I made the Bolinhos de Bacalhau (Salt cod fish cakes, with parsely, coriander, and mint).

Salted cod is apparently the national fish of Portugal. Traditionally, that cod came from the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. I remember the early 70s when Canada started enforcing a 200 mile offshore limit to prevent the factory fishing boats from Spain, Portugal and other countries from fishing these waters dry, and then Canada's own mismanagement which led to the total collapse of the cod fishery in the 1980s. Thirty years on and the cod has still not recovered.

The only bacalhau I could find was actually salted Alaskan pollock and I think it does not require as long a soak as the original cod. However, the fish cakes it produced were very tasty. I made half a recipe and served with a poached egg.

If you just finely flake the fish, I found the cakes fell apart when you tried to term them. So after trying one, I briefly processed the mixture in a food processor. The resulting patties looked more like the ones in the book and stayed together better when frying.

Dulce de Membrillo

I've seen them in the Turkish grocers and wondered what they were, and only recently discovered that they are quinces (kweeperen in Dutch). A South African colleague said he used to eat them sliced with a bit of salt, and apparently the Chinese and Turks also eat them this way. The Spanish and Portuguese, however, make them into dulce de membrillo. This is a firm, jelly-like paste that is traditionally sliced and served with a good cheese, such as the Spanish sheeps cheese manchego. The sweet and salt combination really works for me!

I recently acquired a new cookbook called Comfort Food by Janneke Vreugdenhil, which despite its name, is in Dutch. This recipe comes from her, but I've also seen recipes that call for some lemon juice and/or rind, a vanilla bean, and lots more sugar.  Although I like the idea of the lemon rind, I can't imagine using more sugar. This is plenty sweet enough.

Apparently membrillo is supposed to be a very rosy pink or red color. For whatever reason, my mebrillo turned out to be a caramel colour. It tastes fine, but I'm sorry it didn't turn pink. I wonder if it has to do with the variety of quince.

Dulce de Membrillo
Adapted from Comfort Food, Janneke Vreugdenhil

It is not difficult to make membrillo, but it is time-consuming. Ideally, you should have a kitchen scale (the amount of sugar you use depends on the weight of the cooked quinces) and a food mill (to puree the cooked quinces and separate the peels and cores). I don't have a food mill, so I used a sieve, but this was a lot of work.  I have since discovered some tips that would have made this less work. I've made note of these in the instructions.

4 quinces (this was1.6 kilos)
500-600 grams (2.25 - 2.75 cups) sugar
water

1. Wash the quinces, chop them, and put them in a large heavy pan. However, next time I will first peel and core the quinces, wrapping the peel, cores and seeds in a couple of layers of cheesecloth or muslin. (If these are hard to come by, consider using a very fine mesh laundry bag, or a knee-high stocking). 
2. Add enough water to the pan to reach a depth of 2 inches, add the peels and cores in muslin, and cook the quinces for 45 minutes until they are cooked soft. The peels and cores add a lot of pectin, which is needed to set the membrillo, so they really should be included.
3. Drain the cooked quinces, reserving the liquid for another purpose (add some sugar to make it into a syrup for pancakes or ice cream), and discarding the peels, cores, and seeds.
4. Purée the cooked quinces using a food mill, sieve, or food processor. (Using a spoon to push small batches of cooked quinces through a sieve took a good half hour. If I had separated the peels and cores, I could have used a food processor which would have been so fast and easy!)
5. Weigh the quince purée and return the puree tthe pan.
6. Add sugar that is equal to half the weight of the quince puree. In my case, the purée weighed about 1120 grams and had a volume of 4.5 cups, so half the weight in sugar was 506 grams.
7. Cook the quince purée, stirring frequently, to reduce it to a thick paste. Although you can start cooking over medium high heat, you'll need to turn it down soon to prevent the bottom from burning. I even used a flame spreader. 
8. Line a 9-inch square pan with baking parchment.
9. After 1.5 to 2 hours, the purée should no longer or hardly flow back when you stir it. At this point it's ready.
10. Pour and scrape it into the lined pan, spread it evenly with a spatula. Let it cool and set for a day. If the bottom has not quite set, turn the membrillo over onto a plate lined with more parchment paper, and return that to the pan. Let it stand for another 12 to 24 hours so that it can dry out and set some more. 
11. Cut the membrillo into squares or rectangles and wrap these in pastic wrap.  These will keep a long time int the fridge.
12. Serve with a good hard cheese, cutting it into thin slices. 

Pork Cooked in Milk, with Bay and Cinnamon

Normally I stay clear of combining meat with milk. It's a combination that doesn't appeal to me (I will never choose Beef Stroganoff in a restaurant, for example). I'm not kosher about it--pepperoni pizza, here I come--but in general, I avoid it.

But to prove how goy I really am, this Spanish recipe for pork cooked in milk (from Moro) intrigued me and proved to be delicious. There is a plainer version in Essentials of Italian Cooking, and the Moro recipe also mentions using lemon zest and sage leaves instead of bay and cinnamon, so you could make lots of variations.

Basically, it involves browning a pork roast in a pot, adding milk and flavourings, and then simmering with the lid half off until the pork is cooked and still juicy, and the milk has evaporated leaving the remaining solids to caramelize into an almost cheesy sauce. It sounds simple, and it IS simple, but ...
I only had a small roast (about 500 grams) and, even though I tried to scale the recipe down, it took only 50 minutes to cook the pork and over 2 hours to evaporate the milk. This may have been a result of cooking the roast in a smaller pan, although I figured this was just part of scaling down the recipe. Fortunately, I had no guests and was not pressed for time. The result was tender and flavourful pork. The caramelized sauce is slightly sweet and subtly flavoured with bay and cinnamon. If you didn't know what it was, it would be hard to describe.

Lomo con Leche

Although this recipe reduced the meat and milk, I left the seasoning, bay leaves and cinnamon at the same amounts.
500 grams pork loin roast
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups milk
3 bay leaves
1/2 stick of cinnamon

1. Season the outside of the pork with salt, pepper, and thyme.
2. In a large heavy pot, heat the olive oil. When it is hot, add the pork and brown it on all sides.
3. Add the milk, bay leaves, and cinnamon and bring to a simmer. 
4. Turn the heat down and put the lid on the pot so that it is only half covered. 
5. Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, turning the pork from time to time.
6. When the pork is cooked, remove it to a plate and cover with with tin foil.
7. Keep the lid off the milk, raise the heat slightly, and continue simmering until the milk has reduced to a thick brown sauce.
8. At this point, you can add the pork again to reheat it, before taking it out to serve with the sauce on the side. (Or you can just reheat the pork in the microwave.)