Black Rice (Arròs Negre)

Arròs negre is a typical dish from Tarragona, Catalonia, but even today its origin is disputed between Catalonia and Valencia. I believe that it is a dish from Tarragona since they have all the necessary ingredients, including rice from the Delta del Ebro and any fish and seafood that the sea gives them. Its origins, like paella, are humble from the beginning and not very well known outside the fishermen's world. If they catch cuttlefish or squid they cook them with rice and use the ink to give black color and infuse the flavors of the sea. There is a similar dish from Cuba and Puerto Rico called "arroz con calamares."

Ingredients:

olive oil
2 pounds squid, cleaned and cut
1 onion
4 garlic cloves
1/2 green pepper
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
fish stock and rice (If using Spanish bomba rice, 3 parts stock and 1 part rice)
2 envelopes squid ink
Alioli

Optional Ingredients:

1/2 pound shrimp
1/2 pound mussels
1/2 pound clams
1/2 cup green peas

In a paella pan, heat the olive oil, onions, garlic and green pepper. Then add the squid and paprika. Stir and cook of a few minutes and then add the ink dissolved in a cup of broth. Add the rice and fish stock and cook for about 10 minutes. Next add the peas, mussels and clams. Cook until the rice is done. Cover for 5 minutes and serve with alioli.

Chicken with rice and vegetables (Pollo con arroz y verduras)

This dish is a combination of chicken and any and every vegetable that we have in the refrigerator -  not enough to make a dish by themselves but the sum of all of them with the rice make for a good and healthy meal. For instance, I had three chicken breasts (not enough for a family of five), a handful of green beans, another handful of peas, some leftover artichokes that I froze and a few black olives. The point is to make a good and fresh dish with the available ingredients. It is popular all over Spain.

Ingredients:

3 skinless chicken breasts, cubed

1 cup green beans, cut in 1 inch pieces

1 cup green peas

1 cup artichoke hearts

1 ear of corn, cut off the cob 

1/2 cup carrots chopped

6 garlic cloves, cut in thirds

1 small can of tomato sauce

2 cups Mexican long grain rice

4 cups chicken broth

4 tablespoons olive oil

salt to taste

In a pan put the olive oil, garlic, carrots and brown. Then add the chicken and brown it as well. Add the rice and stir it until it starts changing color. Then add the tomato sauce and four cups chicken broth, stir, and then add the vegetables. Bring it to boil and lower the heat. Let it cook covered until the rice is loose. Then let it rest for few minutes and garnish with black olives.

Onion Filled with Orange Lentils (Cebollas rellenas de lentejas)

This is the vegetarian version of "cebollas rellenas." For many families in Spain, during and after the  Civil War, onions were one of the few foods they had to eat. I remember watching a movie of the period where the children would eat raw onions as snacks. Even the great poet Miguel Hernandez has a poem about the onion, "Nanas de la cebolla." It is a nursery rhyme for his son that he wrote in jail after learning from his wife that onions were the only food that she had at home to feed their son. The poem includes the words "cebolla y hambre" (onion and hunger.) It is interesting that the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda also dedicated a poem to tho onion: "Oda a la cebolla." In hard times filling it was better than just a bare onion. Now, like "shepherds crumbs," such onions have become a fancy dish on many menus.

Ingredients:

1 onion per person
1/4 onion chopped 
1 garlic clove chopped
1/4 green pepper chopped
2 mushrooms chopped
1/3 cup diced tomatoes
1/2 tablespoon smoked paprika
2 cups orange lentils (also known as Turkish)
1 cup chicken bouillon
1 cup of the liquid used to boil the onions

Boil the onions in a pan with water until tender. Make the "sofrito" in another pan by cooking the chopped onion, green pepper, garlic and mushrooms until everything is tender Add the paprika and stir, then add the tomatoes and about 3 tablespoons chicken bouillon. Let everything simmer for about 5  minutes, then add the lentils, stir, and add the rest of the cup of bouillon. Simmer for about 40 minutes adding the water from the onions as needed.

Remove the inside of the boiled onions until you only have two outside layers. Fill the onions with the lentils and broil them until they get a light brown color. If you don't have a broiler, just put them in the oven on high heat for a few minutes.

Coca de "Escalivada" con Romesco Sauce

The "coca" is a type of Catalan pastry and can be sweet or savory. The dough is very much similar to pizza, even though the coca is not related to or inherited from the Italian pizza. I made a savory one with "escalivada" - grilled vegetables, anchovies and "romesco" sauce. The combination of ingredients is wonderful - eggplant brought to Spain by the Moors, peppers from the Americas and onions from Asia. I have always enjoyed this coca since I don't have a sweet tooth as indicated by my few desserts posted but I wil get into it. When walking into a pastry shop in Catalonia you will find these cocas among their many specialties.

Tasty roasted vegetables over a homemade dough

Ingredients for the dough:

2 Cups Flour (can be substituted by gluten free flour)

1 Cup Lukewarm Water

1 Envelope Yeast (gluten free)

Salt

Ingredients for the Toppings:

1 Red Pepper Grilled

1 Yellow Pepper Grilled

1 Green Pepper Grilled

1 Eggplant Grilled (optional)

1 Caramelized Red Onion

6 Anchovy Fillets (optional)

Ingredients for the Romesco Sauce:

1 Head of Garlic roasted

3.5 oz. Toasted Almonds

1.1 oz. Hazelnuts

4-5 Ripe Grilled Tomatoes

1 Slice Toasted Bread

1 Ñora (just the meat) or Chile Ancho hydrated and the meat removed

Salt

On a counter lay the flour and make the form of a volcano. In a bowl put the yeast, 2 tablespoons flour and add a 1/2 cup warm water. Let it rest for few minutes. Pour the mix over the volcano little by little and start working the flour with the mix. Pour the other 1/2 cup  water and keep kneading. Make a ball, put it in a bowl brushed with oil and set aside in a warm place covered with a kitchen cloth for about  two hours or until it doubles in size.

In the meantime grill the vegetables, peppers, garlic and tomatoes for the sauce in a hot oven until brown. Put the peppers in a plastic bag and let them cool off, peel them, remove seeds, and cut them in julienne. In a pan caramelize the onion with a tablespoon of olive oil. 

To make the sauce, remove the peel of the tomatoes, add the garlic, bread, the meat of the dried pepper, almonds, hazelnuts, salt and olive oil and blend everything together.

Roll the dough forming a rectangle, brush it with olive oil, lay on the peppers, egg plant, caramelized onions and the anchovies. Put it in a preheated oven at 400 farenhait for about 30 minutes or until done. Remove the coca from the oven and drizzle on the romesco sauce.

Fried Wild Rice (Arroz Salvaje Frito)

We have visited Minnesota for many, many summers due to our involvement with Concordia Language Villages (a fantastic language and culture immersion program). First, my husband was a villager (camper), then a counselor, and now he is a professor. I was a counselor as well and our kids are now villagers in Bemidji. You cannot leave Minnesota without a bag of wild rice. After you buy the rice, you wonder how to cook it. Don't worry, there are thousands of recipes that you can make. The interesting irony is that I learned the most unorthodox way to cook wild rice through a Spanish cooking program with the famous Chef, José Andrés. One day my son, Alex, asked me to cook something extraordinary and different for his 4th grade class. Quickly, I remembered this crazy recipe where you deep fry the wild rice. Once the rice pops it looks like maggots. I thought either those 4th graders would think  it's cool or else.....; Well, it turned out they thought it was the coolest thing and they finished it all.

The wild rice pops up looking like maggots!!!

I must say that wild rice, even though it's called rice, is not rice but rather the seed of a grass found on the river banks and lake shores of Northern Minnesota. The rice from Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi River, is especially famous. The collection of the rice is a Native American tradition of the Leech Lake Tribal Reservation. The Ojibwe get into their  canoes, paddle to the river banks and shores of the lakes, shake the grass and the grain falls into their canoes. It is black and brown in color and long.

Roasted wild rice

Truthfully, it makes a great snack and a conversation piece for those Viking and Green Bay Packer games. Don't forget to wear your Norse helmets and cheese heads while you are enjoying fried wild rice.

Deep Fried goes well with grapes

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Wild Rice

Oil

Salt

Utensils:

2 pans

strainer

Before you start, you need two deep pans. We add oil just to cover 1/3 the height of the pan and heat it. When it gets really hot, add the wild rice. When the rice starts popping and opening, remove it very quickly by pouring everything into a strainer covering the second pan. Remove the rice from the strainer, and lay it on a paper towel. Now we can cook a second batch in the second pan, the oil will be hot already. We can do this as many times as we need.

The wild rice cooked this way can also be used to top other dishes.

Basque Beans (Alubias)

This dish is very typical all over Spain and especially in the Basque Country. It is one of those weekly dishes that families make where legumes and meats are mixed. One of the greatest activities in the the Basque Country is hiking in the mountains on weekends so it is not uncommon to eat a good "plato de alubias" at the end of the hike in a local "caserio" (farmhouse) that has just two dishes on its menu: Alubias (beans) and Sopa (soup). This dish is rich in protein with the legumes and the meats. Unfortunately it also has fat but you can make it vegetarian if you don't add the meats.

Beans with Basque hot peppers "guindillas"

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 Pound "Tolosa" Beans
1 Cipollini Onion per person (whole)
2 Leeks cut in 1 inch pieces
1 Head of Garlic 
2 Tablespoons Smoked Paprika
Chicken Stock to cover the alubias (beans)
1/4 Pound Salt Pork
2 Chorizos
Morcilla

Put the beans in water the day before you are going to cook them. Place the garlic, onions, and leeks in a deep pan, sauté them, add the paprika, and stir for about a minute. Add the chicken stock, beans and salt pork and cook until tender. Add the chorizo and morcilla at the end and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes.

Couscous, Kuskus or Cuscus

There are two autonomous Spanish cities in Morocco, Ceuta and Melilla. The foods and flavors of those two cities are influenced by Andalusia and Moorish cooking since those cities have a mixed population - Arabic, Spanish, Jewish and Indian. This mix is manifested in their gastronomy with one dish being couscous. This recipe come from friends of my husband's family who owned a hotel in Tangier and I thought it appropriate. We have adapted it slightly. Couscous is a berber semolina, eaten mostly in the Maghreb, Northern Morocco and Algeria.

The dish is name after the grain

We use a couscous maker, a couscoussier, a deep pan where you cook the meats and vegetables, and on top goes another pan with small holes where you will steam the couscous with the aromas of the meats and veggies.  The top pan is covered with a lid.

This is our "couscoussier" 

You can serve the couscous in a Tagine, an earthenware dish, with the grain on the bottom and the veggies and meats on top or you can serve it in two tagines, one for the grain and the other for the meats and veggies.

"Tagines" from Tangier and Tetuan 

Ingredients:

1 lb. Lamb cut in serving pieces
2 lb. Chicken cut in serving pieces
Olive Oil
1 can Chick Peas (Garbanzos)
1 can Tomatoes, diced
1 large Green Pepper, diced
1/2 Onion, diced
3 Garlic Cloves, chopped
3 Carrots, sliced
10 oz. Green Peas
1/2 cup Raisins
1/2 cup Prunes
1/4 tsp. Cayenne Pepper
1/8 tsp. Saffron
Salt and Pepper to taste

2 cups Couscous grain
2 cups Water
1 tsp. Salt
1 tbsp. Olive Oil 

Cook meats and set aside.  Cook vegetables for 25 minutes and add meats.  Mix couscous grain with water, salt and oil and put in top steamer. Cover and cook both parts 20 minutes more.

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Rice with Mussels (Arroz con Mejillones/Mojojones)

Wow!!! When I was little, This was my favorite dish in whole wild world. Coming from a relatively a small town, many people but mostly friends of the family new this was my favorite dish ever, so every time they cooked rice with mussels (mojojones in the Basque Country) they will invite me. One day I will eat at my neighbors, the Izas, other day at the Arreguis, and so on. Probably I had mussels with rice 3 o 4 times a week. My kids enjoy this dish as much as I did...the apple doesn't fall to far from the tree!!!

Ingredients:


Olive Oil
8 garlic cloves
1 Cup "Bomba," "Calasparra" or Jazmin rice
3 Cups water
1 1/2 Pounds Prince Edward mussels
Salt
Parsley finely chopped to Garnish


In a wide pan put the olive oil and the garlic until they are golden brown, add the rice and water until it boils, turn burner to low and cover when the rice is almost done add the mussels mixing well with the rice until they open.


Add everything on a serving plate and add parsley.

Seafood Paella

Paella, like many of the dishes that we eat today, started with the availability of its products to the peasants that went to work in the fields or to the "albufera" a salt water lagoon and estuary in Valencia, Spain, where most of the rice in spain is grown. Another place that grows rice is the Ebro River Delta. The name paella comes from the latin word for pan "patella,"  the shallow pan where it is cooked, the pan is made of steel or stainless steel. The paella pan after used and cleaned should be rubbed with olive oil.

The most common ingredients at the time were chicken, rabbit, beans, eel, snails, artichokes and of course the rice. The peasants cooked the paella in the fields over an open fire. Since then, people have made many combinations and variations, but the base is the rice, a short round grain called "Bomba" or "Calasparra" and the broth. The most popular combinations are vegetable paella with a vegetable broth, a meat paella (chicken, rabbit and pork ribs), a seafood (shrimp, cuttlefish or squid, "cigalas," also known as langoustines, mussels, clams, and monkfish) with the fish broth and lastly mixta, seafood and meat.


The last ingredient is the saffron, which is the most expensive spice on the market, the reason its highly priced is that it comes from the saffron crocus plant which yields about 4 flowers each and from the plant you only use the stigmas, and they are harvested by hand, so imagine what it takes for a pound of saffron. Once the saffron is harvested, it is dried. To get the best coloring and flavor put it in a pan to toast, but be careful not burn it, and then pour hot water over it.

Ingredients in the order I use them:


1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
6 Squids, cut in squares, include legs
1 Tablespoon Paprika
2/3 Cup Homemade Tomato Sauce (look at the "Three Sauces" entry)
9 Cups Fish Broth with the saffron (9 to 12 stigmas). I use fish bouillon, every brand has a different ratio.
3 Cups "Bomba" or "Calasparra" Rice or a short grain rice
3 Small Artichokes Hearts, cut in fours
2/3 Cups Peas
1/2 Cup Red Roasted Peppers cut in julianne.
3 Littleneck Clams per person.
3 Mussels per person
3 Shrimp per person
1 Langoustine per person, if you can't find them it's fine.




In a paella pan or a shallow pan we put the oil and the cuttlefish or squid. When it changes color, add the sweet paprika, be careful not to burn it, otherwise it will give a bitter flavor. Add the tomato sauce, and stir it. Add the fish bouillon and the rice in the form of a cross, then spread evenly. Bring everything to a boil, turn the heat to low and add the artichokes, peas and roasted peppers.

As the rice absorbs the broth add first the clams as they start opening, then add the shrimp, the langoustines and finally the mussels. One thing to keep in mind is, when you add the seafood, you are adding great flavorful liquid so cover it with aluminum paper until done. If your rice is a little burnt at the bottom, don't worry, the people from Valencia say it is the best part and they call it "socarrat." Serve with lemon wedges.

Some people cook the seafood one at a time and then put them aside. Then they cook the rice with the vegetables and at the last minute they add the seafood out of their shells.


You can find Shrimp (gambas), prawns (langoustines) and langoustines (cigalas) tiny lobsters and www.latienda.com

Fillo Shells with Crab (Tartaletas de Cangrejo)

Another great appetizer, this one with king crab legs. You can use any seafood you  find in your area. Where we live, Alaskan crab is readily available. You can make or buy the fillo shells.  If you decide to make them, they have to be covered until you put them in the oven because fillo dries really quickly. I buy mine already baked.

Ingredients for 15 fillo shells:

2 King Crab Legs

1/4 Red Onion

1/2 Red Pepper

3 - 5 Black Olives

Ingredients for the sauce:

2 Tablespoons Mayonaise

1 Tablespoon Ketchup

1 Tablespoon Brandy

Put the King Crab Legs into boiling water, wait until it starts boiling again and turn the heat off. Let the crab legs cool off, crack them and take the meat out. Chop the crab and mix with the other ingredients. Before serving add the sauce to the mixture, stir and spoon into the fillo shells.

Cuban Rice (Arroz a la cubana)

Cuban Rice (Arroz a la cubana)

Again, that's what my family and others call this dish. I don't know if it's name comes from a dish that the "indianos," (the spaniards who immigrated to Cuba and returned to Spain very wealthy,) brought it from Cuba and adapted it to the ingredients they found in Spain.

Sometimes we find ourselves with a pot of leftover white rice, and here comes the dilemma. Should we make a fried rice, should we add something, or should we make a super simple dish with a couple more things? Let's do that simple dish with ingredients that we always have in the pantry.

Ingredients:

Leftover rice (I cook my white rice always with  4-5 garlic cloves)

1 or 2 eggs per person

Tomato sauce (homemade or from a can)

Green Bananas or Plantains.

You should put more tomato sauce on top of the rice

We heat the rice and then we put it in a mold, this could be an espresso cup, or a ring. We crack an egg, put it in a pan, and we cover it with a lid. We check once in a while for the doneness we want. We add the egg to the rice and we add tomato sauce and the fried banana chips or plantains. (Cut the plantains with a peeler lengthwise, and then deep fry.)