partial success: mexicanesque pork

check out those sexy scorch marks


To be fair, this effort was kind of doomed from the start. I had wanted to make cochinita pibil, but was unable to find some key ingredients. You know. Annatto seed. Allspice.

Whatever, I thought, I'll just use what I have and we'll see what happens.

It turned out OK. It was basically tasty, but a little dry and too intense in flavor. I'm not going to put the recipe up, just what I'd do differently next time. First, it was kind of dry - I tried to seal the pork and then the casserole up well with aluminum foil, but not airtight enough apparently. I'd cook it on lower heat for a bit longer to make up for that.

Next, the vinegar. I'm just gonna give it to you straight: I saw that a recipe with pork called for vinegar and my Carolina girl DNA just took over and I added too much. I'm honestly not sure it needed any at all.

Also, more onions (like 2-3 instead of just 1) along the bottom of the aluminum foil would have protected the pork from scorching on the bottom (see above).

Oh, well. You win some, you lose some.

i think all that oven wants is a good exorcism

Snickerdoodles

No, they're not complicated. Anyone can make them (although not as many people seem to bake in Iberia as in the USA. I wondered why this was, but now it dawns on me that maybe all the ovens here are as evil as mine, which I cannot get to cook anything without burning it). But anyway, LOOK HOW CUTE THEY ARE.



So cute, right?!

Adapted from the standard Betty Crocker recipe:


3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 1/3 (plus change, a heaping 1/3) cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt (but a short 1/4 teaspoon; I've already almost doubled the salt here, let's not get crazy)

Vanilla extract, preferably a lot of it. I like a teaspoon or so. I'd probably add a tablespoon if I weren't over here with limited resources, trying to make my vanilla extract last.

Some more sugar, mixed with some cinnamon, on a little plate.

Heat oven to 400ºF. Or a little less than 200C, if your oven is crazy evil. Like mine.

Mix 3/4 cups sugar, the butter, shortening and eggs in large bowl. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.

Shape dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. Roll balls in cinnamon-sugar mixture you have on your little plate. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.

A note for people with evil ovens that love to burn your treats: 1) parchment paper is your friend. Lay it out on the cookie sheet. This helps but is not enough to foil the most determined of evil ovens so 2) make the cookies a little smaller so they cook inside faster. The bonus here is it also makes the cookies more adorable. 3) turn that broiler function on. It's your only hope of your cookies getting a nice tan on top before the bottom is incinerated. Freaking oven.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Which is to say, 5 minutes in an Evil Iberian Oven. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

Makes 40 tiny cookies, or like 20 regular-sized ones.

love is in the air. so is onion breath.

Ever noticed something adorable about the souvenir shops in Barcelona, Bilbao or San Sebastian? All those T-shirts and keychains featuring a Basque flag and a Catalan flag squeezed in next to each other, as if to say, "hey, baby, mind if I move in closer?"

This is because Euskal Herria and Catalunya have big regional crushes on each other. Both have languages distinct from Spanish, after all, and both have sizable independence movements. And both have a seriously righteous - sometimes downright intimidatingly so - food tradition. Today being both Valentine's Day and the day I got back from a mini-vacation to Catalunya, I've decided to indulge the puppy love for a few extra days with Catalan Week on Life in la Capital del Mundo.

First up: calçots.

All you really need to know to be successful at the event known as a calçotada is this: get ready to get messy, and you pronounce the "ç" like an "s."



These poor little guys have no idea what's coming...

Phase one: calçot growing. Sometime in the late summer or early fall, plant some nice white onions. Spend the next several months gently packing dirt up around them so they grow long and green, like leeks. These guys have some great instructions if you care to create your own little slice of Catalunya somewhere. Then, in late winter, pull them up! On to phase two: calçot cooking.


To cook calçots: grill to the point of charring. Remove from grill/fire pit, then roll them up into bunches and let them steam in their own goodness until they're a little squishy. You may do this part yourself, or you may, as we did, go to a restaurant where everything up until here is handled for you. Don't worry, I have big plans to grow my own calçots next year.



Phase three: calçot eating. First, put on a bib. This is key if you don't want to wind up with romesco sauce all down your front.



Next, holding calçot by the green part in one hand, strip off the charred outer layer. Allow Anselmo to demonstrate:



Finally, dip calçot in romesco sauce, then, in the immortal words of Tony Bourdain, "coil gracefully into your grateful, gaping maw."






The only appropriate response to a calçotada invitation.

perfect spaghetti.

Scott Conant did a stint on the No Reservations techniques special, explaining how to make the perfect tomato sauce/perfect spaghetti. It is, no surprises, easily the best tomato sauce I've ever made. Want some?

Boiled down (no pun intended), here are the instructions:

Blanche a lot of tomatoes. Pull the skin off. Squeeze the tomatoes to remove the seeds and extra juices. Save some extra juice in case your tomatoes get dry later. (Side note for when you're lazy and it's winter so the fresh tomatoes aren't all that good anyway: you can use canned peeled tomatoes here. Scott Conant would slap me I'm sure, but if you're pressed for time and don't have fresh tomatoes on hand, these work. Just add some white wine to the sauce to cover up your cheap canned tomatoes, you slacker.**) Stick tomatoes in a hot pan with EVOO; add salt. Mash tomatoes up.

In a separate pot over low flame, add lots of garlic, lots of fresh basil and a little crushed red pepper to olive oil to make a "tea."

Add now-infused olive oil (leave the garlic + basil out) to tomato sauce.

Make spaghetti - only 90% of the way done.

Here's the important part: set some of the tomato sauce in a pan. Add the mostly-cooked spaghetti and a little of its starchy water to thicken the sauce. Add a pat of butter. Cook it the rest of the way in the sauce, flipping it in the air a little (confession: I have yet to master this). The flipping in the air aerates it and makes the dish lighter and creamier; the cooking the pasta the rest of the way in the sauce means the sauce is absorbed some into the spaghetti so they're one dish instead of just sopping wet sauce scooped on top.

Done. Mmm.

**Note: I've used canned tomatoes in this several times. Not amazing like fresh, but still makes a better (and cheaper!) sauce than premade. Just sayin'.

fall desserts: apple crisp

a little burned but still good

What's easy to make, tastes like fall and makes use of the produce that's everywhere around Basque Country this time of year?

I'm sure there are others, but I'm thinking of the apple crisp I made yesterday for Thanksgiving dinner. I adapted it from here to be bigger, simpler and not include brown sugar (sigh).

Topping:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup granulated white sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon fresh nutmeg

12 tablespoons (170-ish grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

Filling:

2 kg Granny Smith Apples or other firm, tart-tasting apple (peeled, cored, and cut into 1 inch (2.5 cm) chunks) - I used a combination of Granny Smith and the golden apples that are everywhere here right now

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon lemon zest

6 tablespoons white granulated sugar

Large baking dish

Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Toss filling ingredients together; pour into baking dish. Place all the topping ingredients (flour, sugar, spices, butter, oats in a food processor and process until the mixture is crumbly (looks like coarse meal) and there are no large pieces of butter visible. (This can also be done with two knives or your fingertips. I used my fingers.) Cover filling evenly with topping. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until bubbly and golden brown. Remove, wait 30 minutes (if you can), enjoy.

Side note: make sure your broiler function is not on. The black oats you see are the result of me not doing this.

Thanksgiving: Round Two

My first helping

The guests for the Big American Thanksgiving just left my house. All I can say is it was really, really nice to get together and enjoy some American tradition together, eat American food (there was even turkey! Can you believe it?!) and listen to christmas music (hey, it's not technically Thanksgiving anymore, christmas music is now fair game).

Everyone who came, who brought food, paper plates, wine, whatever: Thank you.

There's no place like home for the holidays, but maybe home can be, just for a while, a little corner of the world far from where you were born.

so much to be thankful for.

Julieta Venegas from the front row.

This week has been crazy hectic but also unbelievably blessed. Here's the rundown:

Monday: Javi, the actual teacher of my "clase mala," stayed in class with me after having a come-to-Jesus last week with the kids about how rude they were being. They behaved awesomely.

Tuesday: interviewed for and got a job in Zornotza/Amorebieta, a town about 25 minutes away. 4 nights a week and more than doubles my income.

Wednesday: Julieta Venegas, one of my very all-time favorite singers, came to Bilbao and did a concert. My friend Jessica and I got there half an hour early; apparently half an hour is all you need to get perfect front-row spots. The above picture was taken on my LITTLE camera with no digital zoom. Besides being only 5 feet away, Julieta was of course amazing. Incredibly sweet, funny, she played at least 4 instruments, and it was her birthday!! Easily best concert of my life.

Thursday: Thanksgiving! I found sweet potatoes (a certain moroccan store gets a big "eskerrik asko" for that one). Cooked them the way my dad always did them, the way I prefer them, which I'll tell you here:

Rinse potatoes. Poke holes in potatoes with fork. Bake in 350-400F (a little under 200C) oven for 40-50 minutes.

Eat. Don't you dare leave the skins, they're caramelized and wonderful!

Yesterday I also started my new job and both of my classes (one of 10-year-old girls, one of adults) were really nice. Then last night was Thanksgiving Round One: Basque Edition. I went with my roommates to a friend's house (actually, the house of Sara, the girl who used to live in my room) for a Thanksgiving dinner party and it. was. awesome. They played (American) Christmas music, made nachos and a "baby turkey" (i.e. large chicken, which I have to say was tender and juicy beyond belief). We each gave thanks for something at the end of the meal, and it was so funny because as the only American I suddenly became the Thanksgiving expert. "Kata, are you allowed to give thanks before the dinner?" "Kata, do you ask for something too, or just give thanks?"



But of course there aren't really any Thanksgiving rules except that you must eat too much, which we dutifully did.

Now I'm gearing up for Thanksgiving Round Two: American Edition on Saturday.

jappy jalloween

I keep making weird foods here. This one felt appropriate for Halloween because it was inspired by a classic of Adelaide, South Australia known as the AB, which stands for - warning, totally gross - AfterBirth. The original AB consists of Aussie chips, gyro meat and the sauce trio of tzatziki, barbeque and ketchup. The AB "a la bilbaína" I made today was fried potatoes, chicken, ketchup and a garlic-cream-mayonnaise sauce. Completely creepy, completely Halloween-appropriate and completely delicious.

"But what about Laudio," you are surely wondering. "What in the world are those crazy kids at IES Laudio BHI up to?" Well, this weekend being the turbo-American cultural event that is Halloween, my class activities this week were all related to the spooky holiday. By the end this meant kids playing Halloween Bingo, doing wordsearches and competing for Real American Candy Corn.

We also took the opportunity to practice some English pronunciation with Halloween words. Some of the students surprised me with their ability to mimic a southern drawl: I got quite a few Basque kids saying back to me, "VAYUM-pawr." I don't even say "VAYUM-pawr." Awesome.

Incidentally, none of these were the kid who came up to me before class with a flier from a CAROLINA MUDCATS GAME (the Mudcats are Raleigh's local baseball team, and I use the term "baseball team" loosely because they are terrible). And a target from a turkey shoot. I asked him, "are you kidding me??!?", but he was not. As it turns out, he stayed with a family in Raleigh, of all places, to improve his English. Go figure.

Silk Road Lentil Soup

Not many of you (or indeed any of you who are from outside NC) will remember this, but awhile ago there was a restaurant/tea house in Chapel Hill called Silk Road. It was a fantastic little Turkish place. Unfortunately, it had a terrible business model: cheap, good food + comfy couches + college town = lots of people who come in, buy one thing and stay forever, and about ten years ago it finally closed for good.

They were known for their Turkish desserts and wide tea selection, but the flavor that still transports me back to Silk Road is red lentil soup - theirs is still the best I've ever tried. Stuck at home with a cold, some red lentils and a serious craving for comfort food, I used up my red lentils in this homage (and I have to say, it's pretty close, although I reduced the onions in the recipe because the one I made had too many).

Silk Road Red Lentil Soup (serves 2 hungry people, or 4 starter cups)

1 cup red lentils
4 cups chicken stock
1 tbsp cumin
1/2 lg onion (chopped)
5 cloves garlic (minced)
3 tbsp olive oil
juice of 1 lemon

bring stock to a boil. add red lentils. Cover, then cook on meduim-low about 20 minutes. In a separate pan, heat olive oil, then add onion and garlic. Cook until onions translucent. Add onions, garlic and cumin to lentils. Stir, cook until desired texture (about 5 mins for me - try not to cook the lentils too long as they lose their texture pretty easily and it becomes an exotic split pea-type soup.). Stir in lemon juice just before serving.



(Recipe adapted from here.)

hit me, baby, one more time

That's right, two posts in one day!

This morning I woke up with the beginnings of a cold and it was raining and chilly outside, so of course I went out to the outdoor plant market by the river. My friend Marti (you'll know her from such posts as the last one), with all her legit cooking materials, inspired me to get herb plants, so early cold symptoms and all it was off to the market I trotted. I got these guys:



Their names are Antxon and Patxi, and the wire contraption you see is so they stay in place on my slanted windowsill. If you're interested in buying any of their brothers, they were €1.50 each. Score.

On my way back from the river saw a "Tastes of the World" tent and went in. "Random Whatever of the World" would have been a more accurate name, and it was awesome. I wonder if anyone has ever thought to himself, "Now let's see, I need to buy some dried beans, new age crystals, earrings, cheese, sardines, a Communist T-shirt, and maybe an empanada or two." That guy would be so happy there. Anyway, I bought some red lentils. I have no idea how to prepare them, but I love lentils and the color coral so that was really bound to happen one way or another.

thank you, anthony bourdain

Just a couple thoughts now that the week (the work week for me, anyway) is over:

I am so glad I get to teach real lessons next week. Talking about myself for half an hour 12 times is, as it turns out, super awkward. I showed them pictures of my family, southern food, Michael Jordan and a Pepsi logo (hey, there's not a lot of internationally recognizable NC stuff out there). Also, watch out, stepsisters, because I think several dozen teenage Basque boys might be in love with you.

I just made what was easily my best pasta ever. Anthony Bourdain's cooking techniques special is incredibly useful and I can't recommend it highly enough. Dropping some starchy pasta water in with the sauce and your almost-fully cooked spaghetti: who would have imagined it was so good?

And I am going to Donostia this weekend.