Bresaola-Wrapped Arugula-Pecorino Salad

I have all of these epic posts in progress right now, but I had to share this half-salad, half-appetizer with you right away as it’s quite possibly the platonic ideal of easy springtime/summer eating. This recipe comes from Polpo‘s cecchetti section as part of a selection of “wraps” that they offer as small plates, and it is absolutely fantastic as an alternative to a big salad when paired with a simple little meat dish. It’s also a great variation of the bresaola carpaccio I assembled a few years ago, albeit a little more substantial and a little more favorable on the meat to salad ratio.

That the meat in question is incredibly lean is merely one more reason to try this little dish; that it’s easy to eat and quite substantial are the primary reasons to do so. It’s not even really fair to call this a recipe, but the inspired presentation, to me at least, is more than enough reason to share it. Just say that you got it from a fabulous Venetian-style restaurant in London.

Bresaola-Wrapped Arugula-Pecorino Salad

adapted from Polpo

serves 2

• 2 generous handfuls of baby arugula, washed well and spun dry
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1/4 cup (max) of grated Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano Reggiano (not fine, if possible–shards are good)
• Up to 1/2 cup good olive oil
• 6 slices bresaola
• Kosher salt to taste (note that the beef is salty, so no heavy hand is needed)

First, dress the salad: take freshly-washed arugula and dress first with lemon juice, then salt, then olive oil, and finally with cheese right before serving. (Any sooner on the cheese and the lemon will break it down too much.) Take a slice of the bresaola, fill with approximately 1/6th of the salad and secure with a skewer. Repeat until you have used up all of the salad. Serve immediately.

Pan-Fried Striped Bass with Pancetta and Parsley

A few months ago, right around Valentine’s Day, one of my coworkers asked me for some advice on making paella, and if I’d mind lending him a cookbook with a recipe in it. That night found me pulling my various Spanish cookbooks and reviewing the paella recipes contained therein; I wanted to give him one that was authentic but presented in an accessible way. I ended up bringing in my copies of The Barcelona Cookbook and Made in Spain for him to peruse, and between the two he was able to cobble together a recipe that would work for him.

My point of this story? When I went and pulled all of those cookbooks off the shelves, I realized I had upwards of at least fifteen dedicated to Spanish and//or Catalonian cooking. And that only counts the books we keep downstairs–the less-often used go upstairs in our loft “library.”

Common sense, recollection, and this blog’s archives tell me that I shouldn’t be so surprised by this, but I am all the same.

This dish comes from one of the very first Spanish cookbooks I ever bought, an impulse purchase while browsing the aisles at a Crate and Barrel. I’ve featured it here before–the Catalan meatball soup is a favorite of mine–but lately I’ll leave it be in favor of other books that have more refined or unique versions of the dishes contained in its pages. But two weekends ago I revisited it for the first time in months, and when I found a frightfully simple pan-fried trout recipe with bacon, I knew I had Wednesday’s dinner set.

There’s not much to it: take a cleaned whole fish (head and tail removed), and dust it with some seasoned flour. Then season the belly and stuff it with slivers of garlic. It’s fried in the rendered fat from some pancetta chunks, then removed and served with said cubes of pancetta, some parsley, and some wedges of lemon.

Served with a big salad, the fish above was enough to satisfy both of us, even if one had just gotten home from a serious session at the gym.

Pan-Fried Striped Bass

adapted from Spanish Country Kitchen

Serves 2

• One striped bass, fully dressed (head and tail removed, gutted, and scales removed)
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• About 1/4-1/3 lb of pancetta, diced
• 2-3 cloves garlic, slivered
• 2 tablespoons of parsley, chopped finely
• Olive oil
• Lemon wedges for serving
• Kosher salt and pepper

In a small, non-stick pan, slowly cook the pancetta with a tablespoon or so of olive oil until the fat has rendered out and the pieces are crispy; drain, set aside, and keep the fat in the pan.

Place the flour onto a plate and season well with salt and pepper, and dust well on both sides. Season the belly of the fish with salt, and place the garlic slivers inside. Bring the pork fat in the pan up to medium heat, and carefully cook each side of the fish for 3 minutes on each side. Bring the heat up to medium high, and cook each side again for an additional two minutes. Remove the fish, drain the fat, and quickly re-heat the pancetta until warm; top the fish with the pancetta and the parsley, and garnish with lemon wedges. Serve immediately.

Beignets with a cafe au lait from the Cafe du Monde.

[Scene: at the Cafe du Monde, at an outer table near the fencing. MICHAEL and ELIZABETH have just finished eating beignets and are sipping on their coffees.]

MICHAEL: (happily, eagerly gesturing to a guy standing in the growing line, outside of ELIZABETH’S view)

ELIZABETH: (turns to see said guy in a Duff’s Wings sweatshirt with similar enthusiasm, and makes confused expression)

ELIZABETH: What the hell was that all about?

MICHAEL: (jumpy) He was wearing a Duff’s Wing’s shirt! It was awesome! I wanted to show my appreciation!

ELIZABETH: (now more distrusting, giving him a look of complete disbelief) What the fuck is up with you?

MICHAEL: (visibly twitchy and excited) I don’t know. I just want to hug everybody!

[end scene]

It probably goes without saying that sweets aren’t normally our thing, especially as evidenced on what’s shared here. I only bring out the stand mixer to make pizza dough, or fresh pasta dough, or empanada dough, or focaccia dough, because that’s the kind of food I know we’ll eat. Sweet baked treats are awesome, but with only two people in the household it’s way too easy to have a surplus with one baking session.

But I was told time and time again that Cafe du Monde was a must-visit place, and after a night of drinking some stiff cocktails at the Carousel Bar and French 75, it was the perfect breakfast to ease us into a day of lots of walking (we went from here to the WWII museum). We were lucky in being able to set out fairly early, as we were able to make it to the Cafe du Monde prior to 10AM and therefore able to snag a table before a ginormous line had formed in front of the restaurant.

There is a distinct feeling of anarchy at Cafe du Monde as you prowl around the premises, searching for the telltale signs of a finished table: napkins piled high, piles of powdered sugar everywhere, empty coffee cups. With the scads of huge groups inevitably wanting to eat breakfast the same time you do, you must be sharp and unrelenting in your quest. Besides, it takes a little time for one of the waitstaff to come over and wipe the table down and take your order, so patience should only be reserved for them and not the other tourists who just want what you do, after all.

And patience is exactly what you need when you see plate after glorious plate of beignets brought out to tables other than yours, accompanied by steaming-hot cups of coffee and cafe au lait. That waiting does make the eventual arrival of your plate and your coffee all the more rewarding, of course, and if you’re anything like us, you’ll spend a good ten minutes quietly eating your doughnuts and sipping your coffee because that’s all that matters in that moment. Powdered sugar will fly everywhere and end up on everything, but why do you care?

Of all the food we ate during our few days in the city, these beingets were among the few items that I had no desire to try to bring back with me. (The other was crayfish, but that’s another post.) Food this special deserves to be savored and remembered and revisited, and sometimes the only way to do that is literally revisiting the place where you enjoyed them once again. Grabbing a few more orders of beignets is reason enough to come back to the Crescent City; as much as I enjoy seeing Michael hopped up on sugar, I also like having a way for him to walk it off quickly. It’s too unnerving, otherwise.

Late last year, Michael and I struck up a deal: since I had picked our last big vacation destination, he would be able to choose the next two so long as they were more local. (By local, I mean that they did not require crossing an ocean in order to visit.) New Orleans has been one of his favorite places since he went there ten years ago, and so we spent the better part of last week walking, eating, drinking, and photographing our way around the Crescent City.

In short: it was fantastic. I’ll be posting in more detail over the coming weeks, but in the meantime I wanted to provide a bit of a sneak peek of our few days in the Big Easy.

Ajo blanco de malagueño (or, white gazpacho)

Yes, that’s a whole mess of Spanish and Català up there in the post title.  No, I make no apologies.

This meal was a bit ambitious for us, even for a Sunday night: in the mood for some delicious José Andrés-style tapas after hearing about Michael’s visit to Zaytinya during his recent trip to DC. Picking four dishes (the three listed here, along with a variation of this salad), I made a plan to get some of the work done early in the afternoon, after my workout but before I went down the street to see the Chilean movie No at the local non-profit movie theater. I really thought that I had it all in hand: I made the sofrito for the rossejat after we got back from the store, and everything else was pretty much self-explanatory. Or so I thought.

Pollo de ajo

What almost, almost threw my whole plan into disarray was the white gazpacho, or blanco ajo. Here’s the thing: you make it by boiling your blanched almonds and cloves of garlic twice, then blend it with bread and water and sherry vinegar and a little salt and olive oil until it’s nice and smooth. That mixture needs to then sit in cheesecloth and drip, drip, drip–this is great if you have all day to do so, but it requires a lot of tending in addition to a good 30 minutes to let the strained product chill in the refrigerator. I ended up adding a little more water to the mixture to help things along, and Michael assisted in scraping the mesh strainer to clear out the spent bits while working on the pollo de ajo.

That garlic chicken, by the way, was sublime and delicious. It’s simply a lot of garlic, a little herbs, some salt and some chicken. Not much to dislike there!

Rossejat de gambeta i allioli

Following the first two courses, I went to the serious work of making the rossejat. Normally, this would be made in a paella, but because I wanted leftovers for the week I used a skillet to make it. (Note: to make this right, you’ll need a pan you can fit into a broiler if your broiler is separate from  your regular oven.) This was the first time I’ve used capellini instead of egg noodles to make a Catalan pasta dish, and I think for this particular dish, the former works better than the latter. The pieces of pasta need to be really small in order for you to move them with any sort of finesse in the pan as they toast, and then it makes it easier to incorporate the garlic and the sofrito later on, right before you add the hot stock to help everything cook. As someone who saves every shrimp shell I tear off, I had plenty to use when I made the stock for this–just boiled shells that are skimmed out and then simmered with bay leaf, a peeled shallot, and some garlic and a little salt.

Once the components come together, there’s not much else to do with this but let the stock absorb and then send the whole pan into the broiler to finish, and in the meantime you can get everything ready to make some allioli. We had amazing, homemade ailloli when we were in Caldetes, and it was honestly one of the most significant foods I ever ate, because it made me appreciate a food I had long avoided as being bland, flavorless ,and therefore a unnecessarily fatty addition to any dish. Thanks to the addition of garlic this was light and savory and thick, thicker than any homemade mayo I’ve ever made. But Chef Andrés had a recipe that used an immersion blender, and I told Michael it was at least worth an attempt to make. Spooning some dollops of the stuff into this dish elevates it from “okay, it’s pretty good” to “OMFG MUST EAT ALL OF IT” status. How do I know? Michael himself went back for a second portion, and was happy to help me with my puny second portion afterwards.

The picture above indicates that the attempt was a success. Was it as thick as the stuff we had in that little restaurant in Caldetes? No, but it was close. I’ll take close. I also had enough delicious pasta to last me through the week for lunch. 

Despite of all of this kitchen activity, we started having food at 6:30 and finished by 8. Not too bad, if I say so myself.

Ajo Blanco de Malagueño

adapted from Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America by José Andrés

• 3 cups filtered water, plus extra for thinning if needed
• 7 ounces blanched almonds
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 ounces white bread, torn into small pieces
• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus some good olive oil for drizzling
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar 
• 1 teaspoon salt 
• Seedless grapes, sliced in half (as many as you want)

Take a cup of the filtered water, and in a sauce pan add it, the almonds and garlic and bring to a boil. Drain, and then add another cup of water and boil the almonds and garlic again, also draining. At this point the garlic should be softened and mild and the almond should also be soft.

In a blender, add the bread, sherry vinegar, the remaining, water, and salt. Blend well until smooth, and then place into a fine-mesh sieve to begin draining. If seeing little movement return mixture to the blender carafe and add a few more splashes of water and blend again. Working in batches, add the mixture to the strainer and gently mix to move the spent bits away from the liquid. When all liquid has been extracted, discard solids and let the strained liquid chill for at least 30 minutes.

Pour gently into bowls, and add grapes and drizzle good olive oil as desired.

Arugula salad with citrus, burrata, and prosciutto

Michael has been spending the bulk of the week in Virginia on business, and so I’m on my own when it comes to dinner from Tuesday through yesterday. In my ongoing efforts to avoid defaulting to pasta, I queued up a few recipes that have sat on the bench that is my recipe board on Pinterest, and so instead of eating all of the pasta this week, I am eating all of the cheese. It’s still healthy if it’s part of a salad, right? (I kid. Of course I know the answer to that question. It’s yes.)

First up: the salad above teeming with citrus segments, slices of prosciutto, and torn pieces of burrata. I considered it my consolation prize as Michael and our dear friend LT were going to one of José Andrés’ restaurants for dinner that night, and as much as I enjoy cooking along with him via his PBS show and many cookbooks, I’m dying to try his food in person. It should also go without saying that I would have loved to been in the company as well, but I’m going to say it anyway.

I first encountered this recipe while browsing through Borough Market’s recipe collection one Saturday when I was looking for inspiration; loving how accessible the ingredient list was, I squirreled it away for a rainy/lonely day when I could eat stringy cheese with impunity. One of the very few regrets I had about our first trip to London was that we were there the two days a week the market was closed, but it’s all the more reason to get back there sooner rather than later in order to experience it in all of its vibrancy. In the meantime, I’ve made this salad: as the chef who submitted the original recipe mentioned, it could be adapted to any taste, and to any season; the key is selecting quality ingredients. You will spend some money when you buy the burrata, but one or two tastes and you will quickly understand why: this is simply among the best fresh cheese you will ever eat.

That all of these ingredients played so nicely with the sherry-garlic vinaigrette inspired by José Andrés was a sheer stroke of luck, but in retrospect should I really have been that surprised?

Arugula Salad with Citrus, Burrata, and Prosciutto with Sherry-Garlic Citrus Vinaigrette

adapted from Borough Market’s website  and Tapas

serves one as a meal, two as a side

• 2 cups arugula, washed and spun dry
• 2 clementines, segmented (keep remains for juicing)
• 1 Valencian orange, segmented
• 2 oz prosciutto, torn
• 1/2 ball burrata, torn (wait until salad is ready to do this)
• 2-3 TBS garlic-sherry vinaigrette (recipe follows)
• Sea salt (optional)

Segment the citrus: using a paring knife, cut the bottom and top of the fruit, and then carefully cut along the pith around the fruit to reveal the segments. Cut away as much of the white pith as possible. Then, using the white lines in the fruit as a cutting guide, segment the citrus, but beware of any seeds. Place onto small plate and set aside, also reserving the remains of the clementines.

Make the dressing below. Dress the greens with the dressing alone, then arrange on a plate with the segments and the prosciutto, and then tear the cheese over all of it. Serve immediately, and garnish with sea salt if desired.

Sherry-Garlic-Citrus Vinaigrette

Adapted from José Andrés, via Tapas

• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons plus 6 tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of sherry vinegar
• Juice of two clementines, plus remains of segmented clementines
• Kosher salt

In a small saucepan, heat two tablespoons of oil and gently cook the garlic until golden brown, and add to a blender carafe. Also add the sherry and the juice, and start to blend the dressing. Drizzle in the rest of the olive oil (use less if you desire), blend well, and then stop and add some salt to taste. Blend again briefly, and use immediately.

Moules à la grecque, from The Les Halles Cookbook

This one’s a nice departure from the summer-style mussel recipes so far, a dish more suited to fall or winter, or post-Labor Day New England. You know, fluffy sweaters and shorts, tourists all gone…that crisp, cool, Cape Cod light. Okay, I don’t live that way either. But it sounds good, right?

Anthony Bourdain, The Les Halles Cookbook

There are days in August especially when all I want is a nice, rich bowl of pasta; fortunately for me, I can make us a pan of Amatriciana sauce with fresh tomatoes and still count it as seasonally-appropriate cooking. It’s much more difficult to find an analogous dish in the wintertime, one that is made with seasonal produce but won’t weigh you down in its density.

Shellfish dishes have been filling this need fairly well so far this season, but moules à la grecque is quite possibly the ne plus ultra of the bunch. Relatively fast to make, easy to cook, and riddled with fennel, this is everything that Bourdain promises above: a wintertime alternative to the bright, summery dishes that beg for freshly-trimmed herbs and fresh tomatoes from the garden. If you can get it made by 5PM in late February, you can also enjoy it in the crisp, cool New England light, though shorts would only be recommended if dining indoors with good central heating.

Paired with a nice French 75, this served as a lovely aperitif to a dinner of decidedly Italian origin: spaghetti alla gricia and pollo fra diavolo. Given that this is a French version of a Greek spin on mussels, though, it’s not that incongruous, no?

Moules à la Grecque

adapted from The Les Halles Cookbook

serves 2 as an appetizer

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 (small) fennel bulb, cored and sliced thinly
• 2 shallots, sliced thinly
•  4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 cup white wine
• Juice of a lemon
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• Kosher salt
• 2 lbs mussels, cleaned

Heat the olive oil over medium to medium-high heat. Add the fennel, the shallots, and the garlic, and cook until soft–about five to eight minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the white wine, lemon, coriander and fennel seeds and stir well and then add the mussels and cover. Shake the pan, then cook for about 2-3 minutes; shake it again, and cook for another minute. Begin removing mussels to a serving platter as they open and cover and cook to allow any slower-to-open mussels cook. If they don’t open up after two minutes, discard. Cover the mussels with the sauce and serve immediately, preferably with some nice white wine.

Grilled Quail with Pomegranate, Valencia Orange, Romaine and Almond Salad

One of the great things about the rise in awareness (and subsequent popularity) of CrossFit is how it  has made weightlifting pretty cool for a growing subset of women. Don’t get me wrong: it’s very clear that the prevailing advice that encourages eschewing heavy weights for lots of cardio is still the loudest voice in the room, but every so often I’ll learn that one of my colleagues or acquaintances lifts and it’s kind of fantastic. That said, I find some aspects of CrossFit to be rather problematic, and those issues I think can be summed up in two bullets:

• This nonsense that airs during reruns of the CrossFit games* drives me up a wall, because of course the ONLY reason why women would be remotely interested in lifting weights or doing other tough exercises is to become a “ten” rather than a “seven.” Never mind the actual benefits of exercise–it’s just so we look hot when we hit up the bars after the gym, amirite ladies? (Insert a GIF of Liz Lemon rolling her eyes.) UGH THIS MAKES ME SO ANGRY I END UP OVERUSING ITALICS AND CAPS LOCK.
• Their endorsement of and adherence to the Paleo diet, which I instantly give the side-eye to given that it doesn’t allow any grains or dairy.

There are other things about it I find troubling, but these are the two that grind my gears the absolute most.

Pomegranate, Valencia Orange, Romaine and Almond Salad

I won’t belabor my first point too much more because this will either devolve into an incoherent smashing of keyboard keys, or I’ll be too tempted to share Michael’s assessment of the ad and it’s for the best if that particular conversation stays off the internet. As for my beef  with Paleo, well, I’ve never liked the idea of diets that cut out entire food groups outside of doing so for medical reasons like an allergy. Is there a benefit to not making your entire diet based on grains and cheese? Probably, but I’d rather just incorporate a wider variety of foods into my diet rather than cut out certain ones altogether.

Some days require a nice plate of pasta at the end of them, you know?

That said, I know that Paleo works for a number of people, and hey, bully for you if it does. I’m just trying to enjoy having more vegetables in my diet. So in my quest to broaden my appetite for the cruciferous, I’ve turned to salads. Big, satisfying salads that complement a meat or fish and never make you wish there was something else on your plate. Thankfully, my latest latest culinary crush José Andrés has a couple of absolutely out-of-this-world salads in his book Tapas that take full advantage of wintertime citrus available now. The salad above, served with Tom Colicchio’s balsamic-grilled quail, was easily one of the fastest meals I’ve put together on a Tuesday night and reader, it was fantastic, and it could technically count as something paleo-friendly as long as olive oil is a permitted fat.

The seasoned quail sit all day in a marinade of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, thyme, rosemary, and garlic; just a few minutes on a hot grill is all that’s needed to finish them, so you have plenty of time to devote to salad construction. The two most time-consuming aspects of this recipe are seeding the pomegranate and supreming the oranges. Truthfully, I went for convenience and picked up a small container of arils rather than going through the trouble of seeding a pomegranate. The way I see it, I had more time to tend to the oranges this way and I saved myself some cleanup time because I didn’t have pomegranate juice stains to scrub out of the cutting board.

Supreming is straightforward once you get the hang of it: using a good, serrated paring knife, slice off the top and bottom of the orange so you have a stable base to work on, and slice off the skin while following the contours of the fruit. You’ll need to do a little touch-up work to get all of the pith off of the fruit. Then, using the outlines of the membrane as a guide, slice out the segments (be careful of seeds as they can make things difficult) and place them on a plate. That’s all there is to it, but it takes a little practices to not waste fruit as you cut. Valencia oranges are both small and relatively inexpensive, making them ideal fruits to test out this technique.

The recipe for the grilled quail can be found here (scroll down to the fourth recipe–you will need to expand the text), and my take on Jose Andres’ sublime salad can be found below.

Pomegranate, Valencia Orange, Romaine and Almond Salad

adapted from Tapas by José Andrés 

Serves 2

• 1/2 head Romaine lettuce, torn into pieces
• 2 Valencian oranges, supremed (see above for my tips)
• 1/2 cup of pomegranate arils
• 1/2 cup of sliced almonds
• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
• 2 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt

Wash and dry lettuce and set aside. Toast the almonds gently in a small saucepan until they begin to smell like almonds and set aside. Make the dressing by whisking the minced garlic, olive oil, sherry vinegar together and then add some salt to taste. Dress the greens well, and then add the orange segments and almonds together and sprinkle the pomegranate arils generously. If you’re looking for a particularly visually-pleasing presentation, add the greens to the plate first and then sprinkle with the orange segments, almonds, and pomegranate arils.

*Sometimes we turn this on when it’s 4PM on a Saturday and it gives me an extra boost of confidence to squat or deadlift a little more than I’m used to. Watching the amazing lady lifters perform Oly lifts during the Olympics did the same thing.

Roncal-stuffed piquilo peppers

Michael didn’t really believe me, I think, when I first mentioned that a storm was coming this weekend (and said storm has since blanketed the Northeast with a sizable amount of snow), but he willingly went along with my plan to stay in on Friday and Saturday and cook anyway. He balked a bit when I came home Thursday night laden with bags of provisions–likely thinking I was going overboard–but lo and behold, my instinct to stock up was right on the nose. That I was also able to get in and out of Fairway despite the fuller-than-usual parking lot was simply a bonus.

So while the snow fell and the wind howled on Friday night, we opened up a bottle of prosecco and got to work on a tapas spread. The one you see above was a bit of a punt. A delicious, delicious, punt.

Originally, the plan was to have some figs with serrano ham, which would be light but still interesting. Alas, fresh  figs were not to be found at Fariway Thursday night, and there was no way I was going to spend time waiting in line at the predictably-crowded deli to get ham for dried figs. So I gathered most of the other things I needed instead and then went to the jarred pepper/pickle aisle to see if I could find some guindilla peppers to make some Gildas. Those I couldn’t find, but I did spot several jars of piquillos…and my mind flashed to this tapa from an early episode from Made in Spain:

So back to the cheese counter I went to get some Roncal (a sharp, hard cheese that is kind of like a Parmigiano or a Grana Padano than Manchego is), and I had my third tapa all set to go.

Creamy Eggs with Shallots and Scallions

This egg dish was one we originally tried on New Year’s Day for brunch…but it didn’t work out that well on the first attempt. Michael admitted that the pan was too hot when the he added the eggs so some of them browned on contact, so he ended up cooking it for longer as the runny consistency didn’t look right. It was still tasty, but not the dish we were trying to make. This time around I took control of the pan and kept the heat a little lower, and while it might have been a little runnier than some prefer, for us it was out of this world. Chef Andres mentions that this is a tapa that you can find at Bar Pinotxo in La Boqueria, and the desire to try the inspiration is yet one more reason I want to get back to Barcelona as soon as possible.

The bacon-wrapped shrimp didn’t come from any cookbook, and certainly doesn’t count as a traditional tapa, but the shrimp looked good and we haven’t had them in ages. And in retrospect it worked well with the creamy eggs as part of an accidental tapas-for-dinner concept that looks even worse in print than it sounded in my head, so I promise I won’t try to make it happen. We made way more than we needed, of course, but the leftovers were surprisingly tasty the next morning.

The peppers, though? They were utterly fantastic. There’s so little to them: just the peppers, the cheese, and a dressing made from shallots and scallions. I should have sliced the cheese into more uniform pieces to help speed along the melting process as one or two of the peppers fell apart in the pan, but otherwise they came out very well, indeed.

I wouldn’t expect anything less from a recipe by José Andrés. You can find it in full here, exactly as it appears in the companion cookbook for Made in Spain.

¡Buen provecho!

Basque-style mussels and white bean stew.

I know the first post in this series was for an agua fresca, but I should make it clear that juicing is not something we do at all, but every once in a while I’ll crave something sweet and light and that fresh drink mix does the trick nicely. But then I see things like this interview and I’m kind of boggled by anyone being satiated by only drinking a few juices during the day and waiting until the evening to eat a meal of solid food. Then again, there’s no way I could do what I want to do powered simply by juice, because you can’t lift heavy or lift in volume on what appears to be a very limited amount of calories, particularly in the protein realm.

Because that’s the thing about doing things like barbell deadlifts and squats: for me, I need to feel like I have some serious fuel in the tank to get over the mental hurdle that is pulling a series of heavy triples in a row, or doing a circuit that calls for ten to twelve rounds of pressing sixty pounds over my head and squatting it on my back, all the while feeling confident that every time I do so I’m completely in control of the barbell in my hands. Fueling those pre-workout dinners with something that’s both filling but not stuffing can prove to be a challenge, but I find a nice balance with seafood, especially when I pair it with beans or quinoa.

What makes this stew work so well is that there really isn’t much to it: you make the broth by steaming the mussels in a mixture of sherry and white wine, with the former adding a buttery flavor and the mussels providing most of the salt you need, you take out the mussels, strain the liquid, and after sauteing some garlic and fresh chile together, the beans are added with the soup and the picked mussels, heated to warm through, and you’re done. The only key is to not over-salt the broth because the mussels have plenty of salt on their own; while my seasoning did not make the stew inedible, it was still quite…briny.

I suppose that’s not a bad thing when it comes to seafood, right?

Basque-style Mussel and White Bean Stew

adapted from a recipe by Alex Raij as seen in Food and Wine

• 2 lbs mussels, cleaned and debearded
• 3/4 cup dry sherry
• 3/4 cup white wine (I like a nice Verdejo here, but use what you like)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 small chile, minced
• 2 14-oz cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• Kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons chopped parsley
• Bread for dipping

Using a large skillet, the mussels to the mixture of sherry and wine. (Discard any broken mussels you see here). Bring the pan to a simmer over moderate heat, and then cover and cook until the mussels open, about three or so minutes. (Fresher ones may take a little longer.) Remove fully-opened mussels as you see them, and when cool enough to touch take the mussels out of their shells and set aside, discarding the shells. Strain the broth (there may be some bits of shell or sediment left) and reserve.

Clean out the pan, add the olive oil, and bring to moderate heat. Cook the garlic and chile for about a minute, then add the beans, toss quickly, then add the broth and bring to a boil. Taste the broth and then season with additional salt if necessary. Reduce to simmer, add the mussels and parsley, and heat through. Serve immediately with bread.