Super powered risotto, the basque way! My dad started cooking this dish some years ago and now it was time to transfer the knowledge to the next generation.
This dish is tough. It’s basically deep fried garlic, with deep fried sausage, with deep fried flour dough, cooked into an omelette. Helios says it’s a hit at 7am when going back home with friends after a night’s party… this thing for sure can soak the excess of beverage intake!
Fry the garlic cloves in a big deep pan with all oil at medium heat until golden, then remove.
Then fry the sausage pieces until crispy, then remove and turn off the fire.
Add all the flour to the oil mix until you get crumbles.
Add in the water carefully and mix until you get an homogeneous dough. Salt to taste. Stir and cook at medium heat for about 45 min.
Before the dough gets too dry, add in the sausage and the garlic. Keep on stiring and cooking for about 25 min more, until the dough is cooked and resembles a Spanish omelette.
Each culture has it’s own thingy wrapped in dough: jiaozi in China, momos in Nepal, pierogi in East Europe, ravioli in Italy… Spain has got empanadillas. This is classical savory yet easy to prepare finger food; and Teba excels at it.
Back at home, in the Basque Country, Unai’s father is who does the cooking, and he doesn’t like fish. So when he is not around, his mother always takes the chance to prepare this simple, yet delicious typical Spanish dish.
Clean the clams and cut the hake into large pieces.
Put a sliced garlic clove in a large pan covered with 5mm of olive oil at medium heat, then remove garlic when brown and leave oil to cool.
Chop the parsley and two garlic cloves, add two tbsp of flour, a cup of water and process until homogenous.
Coat the hake cuts with flour, only the meaty part, leaving the skin clean. Place them in the pan with oil, skin facing down, sprinkled with a handful of chopped parsley.
Set it to medium-low heat and cook for about 15 min, continously agitating the pan so it doesn't stick, keeping the oil at a slight boil, until you see the meat is almost cooked.
Add the sauce, sprinkle with salt, add the clams, and keep agitating on medium heat until most clams open.
Salmorejo is typical from Córdoba, and I am familiar with this recipe because I have friends with family of the south. It’s perfect for the summer, because is light, healthy and very easy to prepare.
Peel the tomatoes. It's easier if you dip them half a minute in boiling water before.
Put the peeled tomatoes and the rest of the ingredients into a blender and blend at max speed for less than a minute. The texture has to be smooth, thick enough as to qualify as a cold soup and not as a juice. Taste and correct vinegar and salt.
Enjoy extra-cold, garnished with hardboiled egg and ham shavings!
The first thing that comes to mind when foreigners think about Spanish food is the almighty paella, but, while arguably a perfect dish, my favorites are variations like the fideuà or arròs negre, which pass under the radar and so keep the quality of well-kept secrets. This recipe is taken from a book from the most famous Catalan cook, Ferran Adrià.
