Four Days to Party Time!

So far we’ve got embutido (not my recipe, but something similar), samosas, chicken wings (sweet-spicy and Buffalo), crab cake bites, Thai-flavored mussels, morcon, scallops-in-bacon, chicken sate, and mango sorbet done.

The recipes linked are not the ones I’m using but no time right now to post recipes for those… Working on: Chicken with Green Mole and White Beans, Spanakopita, stuffed mushrooms and rainbow cookies for the cookie platter.

And this bagna cauda recipe. Many bagna cauda recipes call for butter, but I’ve omitted it for dh.

A whole head of garlic, peeled and minced (at least 1/2 cup)
2 cups extra virgin olive oil
12 anchovies
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Touch of freshly squeezed lemon juice , to taste, or some white wine if you like
Minced parsley to be added at serving time

I just heat everything up in a small saucepan, until the garlic is softened and the anchovies have disintegrated. Now that I think about why I love bagna cauda so much these days, I recall that it’s very similar to something called “October Sauce” which I found years and years ago in a garlic lovers’ cookbook. Stinking Rose or something like that; the author invented the sauce from whatever he had in the pantry on an evening when he found himself confronted with unexpected guests. It was in October so he called it October Sauce.

We will be serving this in a fondue pot, with cut up vegetables all around — broccoli, cauliflower, fennel, carrots, peppers, etc.

from

Paraphrasing here:

1 1/2 pounds butternut squash (or use summer squash), peeled and chopped
3 leeks or 1 large onion, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
3 carrots, sliced en paysanne (I didn’t bother with this and just sliced the carrots straight through)
3 cups cooked dried beans (James Peterson suggests cranberry beans or boiling potatoes, I used navy beans)
3 pounds fresh tomatoes, chopped, or 2 cans tomatoes, drained seeded and chopped (I don’t bother with that except with the chopping — but I put the tomatoes in, sauce and seeds and all)
1 pound string beans, cut into 1/2 inch lengths (I used regular organic green beans as there were no haricots verts available, the only time I use this for cooking is when I grow them myself, as they can get horribly expensive here)
1 cup dry small macaroni (I omitted this for obvious reasons — but adding these in would bring this closer to a minestrone, which is hubby’s favorite soup — maybe next time I’ll add Ener-G rice-elbows)
salt and pepper to taste
1 recipe pistou (basically pesto sauce, but the French version) — and again, did not use this because of the cheese — I did make a garlic-basil-salt-pepper-olive oil-anchovy-pine-nuts-sauce, and forgot to take a picture of the soup topped with that!

Heat olive oil in 6-quart saucepan or pot and stir in leeks or onion, garlic, carrots and squash. Stir over medium-to-high heat, until leeks or onions are translucent, about 15 minutes. Add water, bring to a boil, then immediately bring down to a simmer. Stir in beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and simmer 15 minutes. Add string beans and pasta and simmer 10 minutes or just until cooked through. Season to taste with salt. Grind pepper on top and add pistou at the table.

A La Espanyola, or “in the Spanish style” (my rough translation), is the theme of this month’s edition of Lasang Pinoy (The Filipino Taste), hosted by none other than Purple Girl of In Lola’s Kitchen).

Unlike Purple Girl, I don’t remember our dining table being predominantly Spanish-themed at any one time. Sure, we had the usual Adobo, Asado, Mechado, Menudo, etc., but my mom placed no more emphasis on those dishes than on other Filipino ones such as fried fish, soups like sinigang, the occasional canned meat/fish dish (corned beef, Spam, sardines), pansit (noodle dishes), vegetable stews and salads. I did have a preference for my mom’s Chicken Asado over the other “ado” dishes, as Purple Girl likes to call them. Mom’s was a very simple one, with soy sauce, bay leaf, lots of garlic and black peppercorns as the main seasonings. But to a kid who asked for this dish often, every single time she prepared was one more deposit into my love account.

At Christmastime, yes, we had the usual festive Spanish dishes like embutido, a rounded pork meatloaf, but nothing like the American kind, morcon (beef rolled and stuffed with goodies like gherkins/cornichons and carrot strips/sticks among other things) and hamonado (a pork dish made to taste like ham but isn’t cured for any major length of time, so to me the name always translated to “ham-like”). Edited to add: I forgot, hamonado is really more Chinese than Spanish, but it does bear the Spanish name like many other dishes of the comida china variety. But then again, I didn’t really notice these dishes being prepared only at Christmastime, as they were on the table often enough the rest of the year.

Come to think of it, I used to cook a lot like my mom, preparing dishes just because, not to follow any calendar or cooking season. Now that I’m learning a lot more about the liturgical year, and am more conscious about following the seasons’ harvests, there is more of a rhyme and reason to my cooking schedule. It’s also very satisfying because I’ve got most of my magazines, cookbooks, and recipes now arranged chronologically, just like this blog, so one day I hope that my children will be able to observe the passing of the seasons by following the same rituals I am now documenting. There is something about doing things this way that brings much comfort and peace.

At any rate, let’s talk about callos. Depending on which Spanish-English dictionary you consult, you’ll get a translation of tripe, or callouses, or scallops. I admit to my Spanish being rusty, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you for sure, though both “callouses” and “scallops” could apply to the way honeycomb tripe looks. [I personally prefer the finer kind, but it wasn't available.]

What I *can* tell you is that I never touched this stuff until I was grown. There it is again: the abhorrence for something so familiar and near, turning into tolerance, then fondness, and eventually a longing or even a craving, when it appears in a setting far from home. Though tripe is accessible enough where I am and I could make this dish anytime I want to, its association to the land that I grew up in evokes more affection than it ever did when I encountered it back then on our family’s table. Believe it or not, I tasted it first at Dad’s (a Filipino restaurant chain) in 1994, when I came back, already married and had a child, and my cousin took me there for lunch. It was like I had never seen it before and couldn’t wait to taste it. Of course, I had seen it here often enough, at Filipino parties and such especially, but don’t ask me why I had to wait to go home to the Philippines to have my first mouthful. I can’t explain. But it was bliss.

So now I make this dish once or twice a year — not too often because of health concerns, but often enough to keep my kids familiar with it. They *love* it, and even the little ones who rarely ever eat the veggies that come with this dish — chickpeas, sometimes green olives, the red peppers — oblige me by eating them along with the meats and their favorite Spanish chorizo slices.

I do apologize for the picture. This was the dish I prepared for our most recent household gathering, and the same afternoon my 15-yo brought the camera to another party, and I couldn’t take the picture until she was back, at which time we only had leftovers, not even enough to fill this cazuela.

To prepare callos, you’ll have to pre-cook the meats. Do this as you normally would. Tripe can be pre-cleaned and pre-cooked several ways. [Here in the US, you can buy it pre-bleached (I know, yuk!) and cleaned.] One way is to rub it all over with vinegar and salt, then cook it. Or if you’re lazy like I am, I cook it in several changes of water after scrubbing it with salt. Some people pressure-cook it, but in this instance I’m of the same mind as the Slow Food folks. You can also vary the kind of meat that accompanies the tripe. I use oxtails and pork hocks interchangeably, or together, depending on what’s available.

The Recipe:

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Yena’s Request.

Oh no, now I can’t remember now where I got the recipe for this — if I made it up myself or from a cookbook. Gotta find my notes… sigh. And to think this is why I blog.

It was 9-yo’s turn to help with dinner prep, so we picked this dish from

to try. Mainly I also wanted to compare it to Filipino adobo and escabeche, which share some similarities with this recipe, in terms of preparation and ingredients. I didn’t have any major revelations cooking this dish, except for the chance to marvel again at what good olive oil can do in a dish such as this that’s marked by simplicity. One of my most favorite tuna recipes (when we still ate tuna steaks regularly) was a similar one marinated in at least a cup of olive oil, and just the littlest bit of citrus. The olive oil suffuses the tuna with richness, giving you mouth-melting flavor without being mushy. Same thing here with the chicken. Incidentally, I also love olive oil for its healthy properties — and I’m not just talking about Omega 3. My friends (who are more knowledgeable about natural methods of healing than I am) always recommend olive oil for things like yeast infections, skin rashes, dry scalp, etc. I’ve even used it on occasion to moisturize my hands after doing the dishes.

Teresa Barrenechea says you can keep this dish in the fridge for a few days, and serve it cold or at room temperature. Lovely in the summer.

2-pound chicken cut into 1- to 2-inch pieces (we skipped the cutting, and used more chicken than called for)
Salt
1 yellow onion, cut into thin rings
1 clove garlic, minced (being a garlic lover, I am tempted to use more next time)
2 bay leaves
10 black peppercorns
1/4 cup red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar (we used the latter, a yummy one from Spain)
3/4 cup olive oil

Season chicken with salt and place in a bowl. Add onion, garlic, bay leaves, and peppercorns, and mix well. Add vinegar and olive oil, toss to combine well. Marinate in the refrigerator, covered, for at least 2 hours and up to 24.

Transfer to a deep skillet or wide saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Decrease heat to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes or until chicken is tender (because we used larger pieces, I increased cooking time to 30 minutes).

Remove from heat and let cool. Serve at room temperature, or refrigerate in its sauce and serve cold.