Cocido, or rather, cocidon't

Last night Yolanda told me she was craving cocido--a stew made in lots of different ways all over Spain.  Cocido is often served as three separate dishes-first, the broth from simmering jamón bones, legumes, vegetables and various types of meat for hours, second, the chickpeas or beans along with the veg and third, the meat.  She said her Dad would always make up big pots of cocido this time of year and ladle the steaming caldo into mugs for sipping.  Tough act to follow but I told her that I had it all under control and would have things ready by lunchtime at 2:30pm on the dot.  She then proceeded to guide me around the kitchen with a light hand on my arm, showing me the bones and chicken pieces in the freezer, the bouillon cubes in her spice drawer, the chickpea stash in the pantry and finally, the bright orange colorante in cupboard.  People here love their soups and rice nice and golden, and all of the dry-goods vendors in the mercadillos and open markets have bottles of colorante in stock.  You can buy the powder in bulk too, and the tall glass jars are lined up proudly right next to clear little capsules of saffron threads and Murica's famous pimentón.  I was not to forget the colorante.

Made this..

For my brother and his co-op mates in Boston, soaking beans is almost part of the nightly routine, but I myself had no prior experience with prepping legumes.  As we were trying to decide whether or not to use the whole package of chickpeas, Yolanda asked me if they would bulk up a lot by morning.  With a shrug I said "naw, no mucho.." and in went the entire bag.  I came downstairs today to find that my assumptions were vastly incorrect.  What had looked like just the right amount of innocuous garbanzos had grown to a volume that can only be described as overwhelming.  I flashed back to a scene from the children's book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs with bleary-eyed kids slumped over in chairs after eating a blizzard's worth of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches. I imagined Yolanda and I, struggling to make our way through our 7th garbanzo dish of the week, exhausted and wearing wrist braces to prevent carpal tunnel from repetitive spooning motions.

With that

I decided I'd think about all the different ways I could use chickpeas later (fritters, hummus, more soup, more fritters..) and get started boiling them with the jamón bone (which was still encircled by a fair bit of meat) in the pressure cooker. With just that and nothing more the broth already tasted mug-worthy, but I had never made the recipe before, so I just kept going.  I added the rest of the ingredients and left it all bubbling away, figuring that the more it reduced the more flavorful it would become.  During breaks from Spanish workbook exercises (thanks to a colorful sidebar I now know all kinds of fun facts about Gypsy weddings) I would give things a quick skim and stir.  Back at my desk I got caught up finding the definitions to every third word in a news article on the national banks (I was able to skip "corrupto"), and by the time Enca got home, the cocido looked much more like yellow-hued Dinty Moore than a pot of soup.

As I was asking about her mom's version (she serves the caldo with short pieces of fideuá pasta and the final dish includes various and sundry encased meats), I managed to forget about the stove completely, and the fact that it was still on.  Yolanda came in 20 minutes later and by that point there wasn't a drop of broth to be had.  When I told her there was no caldo I was met with the expression of a 7-year-old who wakes up from a very realistic dream about leaving for camp, bolts downstairs to find their duffel bag and is told that it's still February, and a school day too.

Luckily, she was soon distracted by helping me with the Spanish for "evaporate" and "better luck next time".

We're going to her hometown for the holidays and I'm looking forward to sitting down with Papa Calzado for a lesson in the nuances of this dish.  Hopefully I'll be able to share his recipe once I've successfully doled out my first cocido trifecta.