Pecorino pasta and cream pies

Monday evening I cooked a very simple dish: spaghetti with Pecorino cheese and red cabbage, a recipe I took from one of my favorite easy cooking sites for beginners:
http://www.tf1.fr/petits-plats-en-equilibre/recettes/spaghetti-au-pecorino-et-trevise-5539340.html
In general terms I boiled the spaghettis in a large pot, cut half red cabbage in half and fried one quarter with 2 sliced cloves of garlic in olive oil and chopped the other quarter. In a large bowl I mixed the spaghetti, the fried cabbbage and garlic, sea salt (very little since this cheese is a little salty) and pepper, and shaved Pecorino Romano cheese. And that's it: ready to serve.

It turned out quite tasty, with a little bit of Italian and French touch, crunchy in texture and colourful in flavour.

For dessert, while listening to Fado music on the background from rtp.pt, I made Portuguese cream pies or "pasteis de nata" with the help of the recipe from a Portuguese cooking channel with videos in youtube, Saborintenso:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n529ZWCjYpI
Basically I buttered the molds, set the crust on them (don't put too much). Then I boiled half a liter of whole milk with a cinnamon stick and a lemon peel. I added a little of the milk mixed with 60 grams of flour. I boiled two cups of sugar in half a cup of water and added to the milk. Then I drained it all with a strainer and added 7 yolks, mixing it all very well. I filled the molds withe the mixture and set them in the oven at 480 degrees Fahrenheit for about 17 minutes. You can serve the pies cold from the refrigerator or just made and warm from the oven with a little sprinkled powder cinnamon:

It's a sweet and yummy dessert: when you eat it with your eyes closed you can taste the melancholic streets of Lisbon.

Rusadilla

Time for a classic of Spanish tapas bars: the ensaladilla rusa (literally Russian potato salad) is a kind of potato salad with mayonnaise we make in Spain. Mishé mixed the words and now we call it at home the "rusadilla": it's funny. Apart from my mom's, which is delicious, my favorite was the one they used to serve at the bar La Bohemia in El Pedroso, a village in the province os Seville (Spain). Now the bar is gone, but not the remembrances of the good cooking and flavours. This time I roughly used a recipe I got from this website:
http://www.hogarutil.com/Cocina/Buscador/Ensaladilla+rusa
First I boiled in a pot of water a couple of potatoes and 4 peeled carrots for 25 minutes at high and then low flame. Then I added 2 eggs and a spoonfuls of sea salt and boiled for 10 more minutes. In a bowl with water I microwaved some green peas for a couple of minutes. Then I took a big bowl and laid there the peeled potatoes and carrots well chopped and added sea salt, the green peas, crushed tuna in olive (two small cans), mixing it al up with 20 piquillo pepper stuffed olives from Seville also sliced. I mixed it all up again with half a bottle of Hellmans mayonnaise. The result is a little bit salty but nonetheless quite delicious:

It's also great to serve it as a side dish of a juicy steak for example, accompanied by a really cold beer. I wonder what the Russians would think about it ; )

Mushrooms in wine sauce

http://www.recetasgratis.net/Receta-de-Champinones-salsa-vino-receta-13967.html
(The recipe is from Karlos Arguiñano at Hogarutil.com I think ; ) ).

How delightful! Lightly frying in a wide pan with a little bit of Spanish oil the sliced white onion and the clove of garlic, adding the washed mushrooms, the chilli peppers, one and a half spoon of flour and the glass of white wine (cooking wine is fine, but I used Sherry Amontillado this time); mixing it and adding salt and sprinkling with parsley.; letting it all boil on a low flame for 45 minutes; frying some slices of bread in a separate pan in Spanish olive oil; and serving the mushrooms and sauce on the slices of bread in small plates: hmmmm!

How to yummify a can of baked beans

First you open the can of baked beans and start heating the content in a small saucepan. Then you slice half a white onion and some pieces of spicy chorizo (I used Spanish chorizo picante Palacios), then you add some chopped cilantro. You keep it heating as low as possible for a while until bubbly and you keep mixing all up well with a skimmer. Finally you serve it in a bowl, perhaps accompanied by some guacamole in matching bowl. It's a simple and humble dish which improves the plain baked beans meal, making it more flavourful.

Zucchini omelette

Sometimes, for a change, like last night, instead of the magnificent "tortilla de papas" (potato omelette) I make this variant with zucchini. I fry in a pan with olive oil a sliced zucchini and a white onion. In a bowl I beat 6 eggs until frothy (you can separately beat the white and the yolk for better results). Then I add to it sea salt, crumbled feta cheese (Mount Vikos from Greece) and the drained zucchini and onion, mixing it all and then I put a table spoon of olive oil in the pan and the mixture cooking it at medium temperature for a couple of minutes each side (so I flip it with two pans).

It is simply delicious.

Catalan spinach

sauté			saltear vt
sauté			sofreir

sauté			saltear vt
sauté			sofreir

Usually I prefer making the spinach with garbanzo dish "mi abuela" style, but when I have little time to cook, I just boil a package of spinach and drain them. I sauté in olive oil half a white onion, pine nuts and raisins. I add salt and the spinach to the pan to fry the whole thing lightly and serve it:

The first time I tried it was in Barcelona, at the university cafeteria and I loved it: it has a nice balance and mixture of salty and sweet flavors. You can also substitute the ingredients using for example instead of pine nuts, hazelnuts or walnuts and cherries instead of raisings, add garlic, or whatever you want and even serve it accompanied with a fried egg. Besides it looks healthy!

Guacamole

The way I make it: I cut a ripe avocado (jade color) in half and get the bone out. With a long spoon I eviscerate the whole green pulp and lay it in a bowl where I press it with a fork. I add a sliced ripe tomato, a little bit of onion (red or white), a clove of garlic, a little bit of onion, fresh cilantro, a splash of Spanish olive oil, a trickle of lemon juice, some drops of Tabasco sauce, sea salt and mix it all up with the fork, pressing it again and again. I serve it with corn chips in the same bowl:

It's a great hors d'oeuvre. I love Mexican cuisine: it's so flavourful, spicy, traditional and authentic. I have to do more research to improve the recipe every time so that it's closer to the tasty varieties they serve in Texas and Mexico.

Mofongo, a fried plantain side dish from Puerto Rico

Last night I made this yummy plantain dish from Puerto Rico, which I dedicate to my friend Elizabeth, who was so kind to prepare the Andalousian spinach with garbanzo recipe of my grandmother.

First I lightly fried in olive oil 5 cloves of garlic and half a white onion, setting them apart in a bowl with cilantro.

Then I peeled and sliced the plantains, sank them for 15 minutes in salty water and fried them in sunflower oil.

I also fried 7 slices of bacon in a third pan.

Finally I mashed the whole thing with salt and pepper in a pilón (a granite mashing bowl, a present courtesy of our Mexican-Texan friends Rolando and Lucía), trying to leave the bacon in the inside.

The result was spectacular, a symphony of Caribbean flavors, I felt I was eating in a chiringuito (a beach joint) in San Juan or Bayamón (where my beloved Sevilla FC has a fellow soccer team), breathing the wonderful breeze of the beautiful island. Certainly a good experiment: two thumbs up!

Rice with mushrooms

Las week one night for dinner I tried to make this recipe of rice with mushrooms from the famous cook, "my friend", Bruno Oteiza:
http://www.hogarutil.com/Cocina/Recetario/Legumbres-cereales/Arroz+con+champi%C3%B1ones
Basically what I did was lightly frying a chopped onion in olive oil in a big paella pan, add a couple of slices of bacon, the mushrooms previously washed and sliced, then the cup of paella rice (Calasparra). After a while I added 2 and a 1/2 cups of water, salt and pepper, cooking it for 20 minutes. I made the first mayonnaise taking a handful of frozen spinach, boiling it, then drained it, and put it in a blender with an egg, a sliced clove of garlic and a little bit of olive oil. I blended the mixture with a pinch of salt. To adorn the dish I made a second mayonnaise (an addition of my own) with an egg, apple vinegar and a pinch of Sherry vinegar, and then blended all with the pinch of salt and sunflower oil. Finally I slowly fried in olive oil a couple of green peppers cut in julienne to put on top of the dish. The presentation was like this:

It was simple to make and tasty. The only problem is that really you have to downsize the amount of ingredients because otherwise you end up with too much of the same dish and have to eat it again and again at least for a week. It would be nice to have a large family with a lot of efficient eaters ; ) Mishé liked the white mayonnaise better, perhaps because of the kind of oil used and the combination of vinegars. It's one of the first times I've made a simpler rice dish without saffron. Some day I have to try and make a big classic seafood paella with my friend Luis.

Sweet potato fries: simple crunchiness

Another simple but nonetheless yummy step in the process of gordification or chubbification is a favorite from many people's childhood: the typical Saturday dish of fried potatoes and fried eggs with bacon. Tonight for dinner I made a variation of it, perhaps a little bit more healthy:

It's just fried egg/s with sweet potato fries. The secret: , drying a little bit the oil in kitchen towels on a plate, using cooking (sea) salt and Spanish olive oil of course. We're the true greasers ; )

"My" Michigan Salad

In many restaurants here in Michigan they serve a yummy salad called the Michigan salad with blueish cheese, walnuts or pecans, dried Traverse City cherries and of course... lettuce. This is my version I made for dinner a couple days ago, which I serve occasionally:

I put lettuce, walnuts, dried cherries from Traverse City and Greek feta cheese (Mount Vikos), very creamy and delicious which I buy at the Food Coop and I find it superb. The dressing I use is something like 6 tea spoons of Spanish olive oil, 2 of Sherry vinegar and half a spoon of French Dijon moustard Grey Poupon. It really gives it a little bit of punch, makes it more flavourful. The key to a good tasty salad I find it's the balance between ingredients of exceptional quality like these.