Cocido con Pelotas, or when the whole is less than the sum of its parts

Two months after my initial attempt at a Spanish stew called cocido the right conditions lined up and I was ready to try again.  Cocido has variations all over the peninsula and the classic version here in Murcia is made with oversized meatballs, especially around Christmas time.  We were well past the holidays but Yolanda had family coming into town from Castilla-La Mancha and surely that was cause enough for celebration.  After hours on the road they showed up bearing their region's famous Manchego and bags full of typical olive oil cookies from Ciudad Real.  I decided the only way to reciprocate was through proudly presenting them with a local specialty of our own, pelotas and all.

The building blocks of cocido

Back in December I had accidentally boiled off all the broth from my first batch of cocido.  Never having tasted the dish before I wasn't exactly sure what I was going for, but I knew that wasn´t it.  Several weeks later I was introduced to a proper rendition at my friend Marina´s house and effectively dropped out of lunchtime conversation in order to concentrate on a second helping.  The recipe she talked me through challenged everything I'd ever learned about building flavor.  No onions, no garlic, no development of nicely browned bits at the bottom of the pot.  And certainly no deglazing.  When she showed me the stew was made with a ham bone and a solid block of serrano the size of a playing card and the height of two full decks, I understood why.

Marina´s dish gave me a reference point but it was a quick pressure cooker cocido she learned from her mother in Sevilla, sans meatballs.  A perfect dish for Yolanda and I on a cold weekday afternoon.  But with guests to feed I had the chance to bring the full-blown version into my repertoire and for that I turned to the definitive Murcian cookbook-La Cocina Murciana.  I picked it up from the library soon after arriving in town and had heard it referenced by Murciano men and women across three different generations.  If I was searching for a guide to all the authentic bells and whistles, this had to be it.

I strode purposefully to the weekly market and the first stop furthered my conviction that I was on the right track.  The recipe called for thistle as an optional add-in to enrich the cocido and I asked my go-to onion and garlic vendor for the biggest one she had.  The woman next to me must have seen I was examining the leaves because she leaned over to explain they weren´t actually what I was after.  Once I had trimmed them all away I was to slough off the stalk´s green outer layer with a handful of sea salt, chop up the tender white interior and add it to my stew along with the green beans but, of course, before the potatoes.  If I followed those steps, she told me, I´d have a fine cocido without a doubt.

Made this..

Feeling I was well on my way I walked to Isidro´s charcutería stand for what would be the most crucial component of all.  But as I stood in line and scanned the ingredient list once more I noticed there wasn´t actually a single reference to hueso de jamón.  The realization left me at a loss but in the midst of the busy market I don't think anyone noticed the American girl bearing the blank expression of a codfish in mid-breath. With the image of the ham hunks in Marina´s stew so central in my mind, I had overlooked the recipe´s call for a veal knuckle instead.  In addition to coming from two very different animals these bones are separated by an even more fundamental divide.  Huesos from legs of jamón are ringed with cured meat while those from veal are fresh.  Up against such a seasoned heavyweight, young cattle bones seemed like a weak act from amateur hour.  The cocido´s flavor, or lack thereof, rested squarely on which one I chose.

When I first got to the booth I had pulled a number in the 40´s and customers with pink paper tabs in the   30´s were currently being served.  Generally being close to the front of the line is considered a positive but I was trying to reconcile the advice of real live Sevillana with instructions from a book that had remained the authority on Murcian cooking for decades.  Marina was at work and I didn't think my bone query could be deemed a legitimate emergency, although looking down I realized I had almost crumpled my "#46" to pieces.  So, I did the next best thing-I asked the woman next to me.  With a comforting pat on my arm she said I'd have to head to the carnicería for the veal knuckle, which was fine if I didn't mind another stop.  If not, I could use a ham bone and be alright too.  I thanked her profusely, just glad to have some additional counsel, but as she walked away with her bag of boquerones and dried sausage I realized she hadn't actually told me anything I didn't already know.

And with that, Isidro was ready to take my order.  He asked if I wanted my usual, but I told him today was no ordinary day.  I was making cocido, with pelotas, for six!  He smiled big and chuckled, calling out a few of my favorite Spanish exclamations melding surprise and encouragement.  I suppose it would be like a Murcian girl showing up to her favorite boardwalk vendor on Mackinac Island and proclaiming she was about to try her hand at a big batch of homemade fudge.  Spurred on by the approving nods of fellow shoppers who had overheard me, I decided there was no contest.  My cookbook might have recommended a veal bone but a fine hueso de jamón spoke for itself.  Beyond that I needed almost half a dozen other cured meats and as Isidro packed things up he assured me my cocido was destined for success.  Playing to the huddle of customers nearby he gestured grandly to the selection in his booth and said that as long as I started with the highest quality ingredients I couldn´t go wrong.  The peanut gallery chimed in with "si, si, claro, claro!" and I headed off feeling that crisis had been averted.

With that

Surely I had made the right decision. From a firm €5 a day perspective buying the veal bone was now simply out of the question but while waiting my turn in the butcher shop my momentary resolve disintegrated.  Along with the various encased meats from Isidro there was indeed jamón in my bag.  There was just no bone.  Instead I had a nice package full of hand-cut ham cubes the shape of oversized croutons.  Perfect for coliflor al horno.  Not cocido.  Dumbfounded, I figured I must have misspoken at the counter-if anyone knew his pig parts it was Isidro.  I took it as a sign, handed the recipe over to the butcher and with an air of defeat asked him to make sure not to forget the veal knuckle.

With a wink he went to work chopping up chicken pieces (and removing a few remaining feathers), cutting off a thick slice of pig fat from the foot-long piece on the counter and grinding up everything from turkey liver to cured pork loin sausage for the pelotas.  When it came to the all important hueso he picked up the entire piece of veal from the case with two hands and hoisted it on to his sturdy butcher block.  After a few steady whacks he came back with a well ringed bone in one hand and a thick slab of meat in the other.  This was no petite filet.  Instead it looked just like the hefty red steaks cartoon robbers always have on hand to distract growling cartoon guard dogs.

Twice I tried to explain that I had no need for the additional veal but the butcher kept plugging away, saying "no, no, for cocido you need to put all this in along with the bone.  You have to use the best to get the best result."  I knew the extra ingredient would be an expensive departure from the recipe, but between the baffling haul from Isidro and the butcher´s admonitions I was so confused I just asked for the bill.  Upon seeing the total, my heart rate rose significantly.  At €21.17, the purchase totaled more than four days worth of my normal budget.  I seriously considered trying to return the veal.

I've heard that when foreign curse words come to mind more readily than English ones its a sign of solid language learning, but that did not nothing to improve my mood.  Walking away stunned I set a limit of exactly two blocks to feel sorry for myself but continuing to mutter under my breath I stomped right through into block three. If there was any time to pull it together and overcome a problem so utterly first-world, it was now.

Pelota batch #1

Back in the kitchen I had to confront a whole other set of contradictions.  Upon hearing my plans for lunch, Yolanda´s cousins had told me to be sure and chip the potatoes in uneven wedges rather than slicing them for increased flavor absorption (a technique corroborated by excellent cocineras in León and Granada).  But Marina had just peeled hers and dropped them in the pressure cooker whole, using kitchen shears to break them into rough quarters when the timer went off.  Along with the potatoes, she put everything in the pot at the same time, but according to my cookbook, order matters.  The garbanzos, chicken, veal bone, and pig fat were to cook for an hour before adding the green vegetables, followed 30 minutes later by the potatoes, chorizo and saffron and 10 minutes before serving, the meatballs.  I had already schlepped around town with an unwieldy bag full of thistle and kilos of meat, dished out more during one stop to the butcher than I had in half a week and there were residents from the birthplace of Don Quixote expecting quite a lunch. I might as well to do this the hard way.

What happened next is still a blur, but it ended with the kitchen in bits and my flamenco dress-style apron in need of a thorough washing.  I asked Yolanda to put out the silverware and her cousins pulled chairs to the table.  Dazed, I felt like a stage manager calling for places when well aware the sets were still covered in wet paint. Then the meatballs started cooking through and as they bobbed to the surface I decided everything was going to be just fine.  I had followed the recipe exactly, dividing everything between two big pots to accommodate the several hearty servings.  The caldo hadn´t evaporated and the chickpeas were no longer crunchy.  I had used 25 ingredients, half of which were mixed together for the pelotas alone.

But after all that, a final taste revealed that despite everything that had gone into the dish the broth was sorely lacking and the wiffle ball sized pelotas were coarse and grainy.  Oblivious to the shortcomings of the dish that awaited them Yolanda´s cousins came in to dote on the simmering cocido.  I ladled it out reluctantly while doing my best to manage their expectations.

Half way through the meal I glanced over and saw Maria Carmen attempting to inconspicuously deliver the remains of a half eaten meatball into her boyfriend´s bowl.  Someone said something about being spoiled by their mother´s cocido, which incidentally had nothing to do with veal.  No one went back to the kitchen for more.

Daunting leftovers

Perked up at the prospect of clearing the table as quickly as possible, our guests brought a stack of bowls into the kitchen and I started transferring leftovers into Tupperware. As I topped off the third family size container it became clear that this cocido anti-climax was going to haunt us for days.

That weekend Yolanda went to Granada and I was headed to a nearby town called Águilas for Carnaval,  but despite repeated stew-centric meals we were still only a third of the way through the leftovers. I shredded all of the remaining meat for croquetas, set aside the chicken bones and figured I´d polish off one more serving for breakfast before leaving in the morning.  Unfortunately due to a turn of events involving an accelerated carpool schedule and a lengthy search for lost keys I had to rush out of the house before getting the chance to lodge everything in the freezer.

The hombres of Águilas

Worse than wondering if the lights were left on on or the iron plugged in, there was no doubt that the cocido was in a race against time.  The Carnaval parade of themed floats, feathers and shiny pantyhose (worn in large part by men) provided distraction, but after the festivities I found myself steering the conversation towards leftover longevity, stopping just short of pleading "say it ain´t so" en Español.  My hosts let me down easy but the pity in their eyes told me there was no hope.

Luckily I got dropped off at the end of the weekend before Yolanda could return home to a fridge full of spoiled stew, but it was hardly consolation.  There would be no croquetas, no stock pile of frozen meals to reconcile the cost of the original dish.  With my head hung low I disposed of it all, feeling another pang of regret with the dull thud of each meatball I pushed overboard into the trash.

With the weather turning warm and the unlikelihood of my roommate craving cocido again anytime soon, I resigned myself to the fact that I had missed my window.  Hopefully it would be much more difficult to go wrong with gazpacho.

When Yolanda walked in the door that night I couldn´t bring myself to tell her what had happened.  It would be better for everyone if we just moved on. Coming upstairs she said I´d never guess what her mom had packed up for us and I scurried over to look in the bag, thoughts of Andalucían specialties dancing across my mind.  But it wasn´t pipirrana or patatas a lo pobre.  It was a big container of cocido, filled to the brim.

You know you're in Spain when...

A holiday meal kicks off with salt-cured tuna and Marcona almonds

You know you're in Spain when...

You find yourself making brownies in a paella pan

You know you're in Murcia when...

You make up a big pot of winter stew for a hearty hot lunch,
and end up rolling back the sun shade and eating outside

Doctor's orders

With a friend visiting from Andalucía we planned a weekend fiesta complete with crispy fried corn nuts, Murcian Estrella and big plates of paella.  As lunchtime neared we found out one of our guests would be late, but another assured us there was no cause for concern.  Andrés had brought red wine and jamón and with those provisions we could wait indefinitely.  When he retrieved the goods from his trunk it was not a package of sliced ham from the butcher that he carried in with the bottles.  It was a whole leg, from his counter to ours.  When he removed the kitchen towel draped over the jamón's cutting surface I noticed it wasn't a carved out curve but a straight line from end to end.

All for calming restless party guests, staving off hunger and
 imparting jamón-slicing wisdom to enthusiastic Americans.
But first, do no harm.

A doctor at one of the local hospitals, Andrés told me he sees a huge spike in jamón-related injuries around Christmas time, when patriarchs everywhere are setting out festive spreads for their families.  As he demonstrated, the slicing stance involves one arm dedicated to stabilizing while the other works away; it's all too easy for an exhausted cutting hand to accidentally jump its track and meet the other with full force. In order to avoid such incidents Andrés always notches out a deep right angle near the hoof, creating a vertical barrier to keep stray knife strokes at bay--a practice I was very thankful for when he handed the just- sharpened blade over to me.

You know you're in Murcia when...

You can buy snails like this

Hake with Salsa Verde

When people here ask why I love food so much I tell them it's because my Mother is a chocolatier, my brother and I grew up watching the Frugal Gourmet and that our family lore often revolves around subjects like chicken stock.

When I was little, my mom didn't make her stock according to how many soups or stews it would yield but rather the number of small armies it could feed.  She boiled up these big batches in order to freeze them and always opted for ice cube trays rather than large containers for the job.  She's never been one to stand by waiting as something akin to a poultry flavored curling stone defrosted slowly on the counter.

For their third date, my mom prepared a homemade dinner for my dad.  Trying to be useful, he set to work washing dishes and the ensuing tale involves very clean ice cube trays and not a drop of stock.  When they realized what had happened they both burst out laughing and fell in love with each other even more.

Made this..

From my mom´s signature stock cubes to getting quizzed on kitchen basics while working at a restaurant in Colorado, I have always thought of stock-making as a serious project.  For me it calls to mind firing up a flame under an heirloom Le Creuset,  quartering aromatics with a few clean chops and tying up a neat little sachet of spices.  Then, lowering in the noble remains of a heritage chicken or wild fish and standing sentinel by the stove, wooden spoon at the ready to skim off foam at the slightest gathering of bubbles.

When I headed to the other side of Murcia for my first lesson in paella, my friend Maria del Mar explained that the very first step, and one of the most important, is preparing a pot of stock (caldo en Español) that corresponds with the principal protein in the dish.  We were making a seafood paella so it would be our fish stock that lent an essential layer of flavor to the rice.  But as crucial as a good caldo was,  it turned out not to have anything to do with expensive enamel cookware, cheesecloth or textbook ingredients.

Maria del Mar

I've always heard that the cardinal rule for fish broth is to avoid oily species at all costs, but salmon is what Maria del Mar and her family had eaten the day before, so salmon scraps it would be.  She added some other various bones from her stash in the freezer, poured in mineral water from a big jug on the counter, spooned in a little salt and that was all.  No white wine, no bay leaves, no peppercorns or sliced leeks.  As we prepped the rest of the ingredients she recommended dedicating freezer space to a fish bone collection of my own, culled from whatever dishes I happen to make.  But, she told me, if I wanted to go for gold and simmer up the king of stocks, then it was monkfish I was after.  When we wrapped up lunch at 7:30pm I reasoned that if a species normally blacklisted from stock pots had resulted in something that tasty, anything made with monkfish broth had to be stellar.

While paella is traditional all over Spain, another rice dish called Caldero is one of Murcia's most prized specialties.  It too calls for caldo de pescado, and if I was going to attempt it, it would be with fish stock of the highest caliber.  Maria del Mar said the fishmonger near her house always had bags of monkfish heads and bones available, but while a frozen variety pack sounded convenient I figured that if the skeletons were so sought after, the flesh was more than worth trying.

Cooking up seafood paella with fish broth

When Yolanda told me she had invited a friend over for lunch the following day, my ears perked up.  Partly at the chance to practice "getting to know you" phrases in Spanish, but even more so at the prospect of tasting such a highly acclaimed fish and reaping a pile of its bones at the same time. No disembodied monkfish from the freezer case for me--I was going to buy one whole and take notes on procedure as the fishmonger broke it all down.  After paging through three different Murcian cookbooks I landed on a recipe for monkfish cooked gently in lemon sauce.  We had almost all of the ingredients on hand already, so I could devote my budget to the fish itself.

The next morning I made my usual rounds for fruit and vegetables at the weekly market, then joined a larger than average crowd in front of my favorite husband and wife charcuterie team.  Isidro and Patricia gave me a primer on Manchego varieties during my first trip to the market and I've only had eyes for their mobile meat and cheese trailer ever since.  At this point they know my standard order (five slices of serrano), my preferred ham to fat ratio and that when I´m really splurging I'll spring for 200 grams of Queso Murciano.  The stand is always busy, but the extra wait-time traced right to an elderly couple selecting a whole leg of jamón from the rafters.

Patricia and Isidro

Their agreement on the final pick triggered an all out cured meat montage and I watched on, captivated.  Following Isidro's multi-step process from my spot in line, I imagined Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" playing triumphantly in the background from start to finish.

With swift precision and even grace he shifted fluidly between two work surfaces, alternated between various blades and band saw settings and paused part way through to run a hunk of the jamón under his nose as if it were a Cuban cigar.  When he was done, everything was set side by side on the counter: rough pieces chopped for sauce, a stack of discs portioned from the bone for stew, paper thin slices pre-cut for a party and the rest of the leg ready for mounting on the family ham stand and slicing at will.  As the couple walked away with taught plastic bags full of neatly folded white packages and a sturdy cardboard box housing their jamón, I realized it was almost my turn to order.  On 5€ a day and only two mouths to feed, I would be sticking with my five slices and nada más, but at least I would soon have the entirety of a monkfish in my possession, its various parts split up into little packages of my own.

I strode into the fish shop with that image in mind, but walking up to the ice packed display I realized that rather than being shaped conveniently in the form of three lunch-sized portions bookended by a head and a tail, monkfish are actually quite large.  Coming to terms with the fact that carting home a sizable animal of any kind was not in my near future, I turned my attention to recipe advice.  The fishmonger had never heard of the lemon sauce I had selected and decided to call in reinforcement, beckoning over a white-haired customer by name.  With one look at the cookbook in my hand the woman decided I was in need of some real guidance and pivoted from her spot in line to stand next to me, elbow to elbow.  First things first, she needed to know how many people I was cooking for.  Three?  In that case, it was hake I wanted, not monkfish-a point she made clear by gesturing between their two price tags. And if I really wanted to do hake justice, I'd dredge it in flour, cook it gently in a terracotta cazuela along with peas and tomatoes and finish everything off with a little white wine, of course.  I nodded and smiled, but figuring I'd exceed my daily budget with the protein alone, I knew there would be insufficient funds for any extraneous ingredients.

Based on the price per kilo I realized that the only monkfish parts I would be able to afford were those without meat anyhow, so my future caldero would be made with frozen scraps after all.  I was about to abandon the most basic element of the original meal, but at least my recipe research hadn't been completely in vain.  The fish would change but the sauce would stay the same-lemons were only 10 cents a pop.

With that

A block further down the road I stopped into a produce shop and when I handed over my single piece of citrus the young man behind the counter asked what big plans I had in store for my purchase.  I flipped open my cookbook and slid it over to him with the preface that I had just switched species and he ran over the recipe with his index finger while reading the ingredients quietly to himself.  He commented politely that my choice sounded like a nice idea,  but while ringing up the lemon he leaned over the counter and said that when it came to hake, salsa verde was really the way to go.  All it took to replicate his mother's go-to accompaniment was parsley, garlic, olive oil, salt, lemon juice and a sturdy mortar and pestle.

With that I let go of the last remnant of my initial plan, scrapped the bus ticket I'd been using as a placeholder and put the cookbook back in my bag.  As I dug around for my coin purse the shopkeeper listed off the necessary ingredients again to make sure I had everything I needed and started gathering up a hefty handful of parsley. When I told him I had just bought some at the market he said "ah, we have too much anyway" and kept selecting leafy stems from the tall container near the register.  It was clear I'd be taking the parsley but when I asked him for the price he hardly acknowledged the question.  He had already shared his family recipe and let me offload a stack of one-cent coins for likely his smallest sale of the day, but he stopped me between "muchas" and "gracias", waving off my thanks with a smile.  With an outstretched arm he urged me on, giving the green bouquet a shake in my direction.  "Go on, take it!" he said.  "It will give you good luck!"

I had given up monkfish for hake, scrapped lemon sauce for herb paste and our main dish was tepid by the time our guest turned up late, but the parsley proved lucky indeed--when everyone asked for a second helping, I needed every last leaf.

Hake with Salsa Verde
(Note: If you happen to be searching for hake in Spain, here it's called merluza)

Yield: Main dish for 4
Ingredients

For the fish:
Extra virgin olive oil
4 pieces of hake (about 200g each)
Salt
Flour
Pimentón

-Pat fish with paper towel to remove extra moisture and season with salt on both sides
-Dredge in flour mixed with a little pimentón
-Heat olive oil in a pan until hot but not smoking
-Cook fish for just a few minutes on each side, until flesh flakes apart easily

For the salsa verde:
2 large bunches of parsley, all stems removed and leaves roughly chopped (you may end up needing more)
2 or more garlic cloves, roughly chopped
Salt to taste
Lemon juice to taste (the shopkeeper said that here in Murcia, where lemons grow everywhere, it's typical to use quite a bit of juice, but use as much or as little as you like)
Extra virgin olive oil

-Add all ingredients except olive oil into a mortar and pestle and work until paste begins to form
-Drizzle in olive oil until you reach the consistency you like-I keep mine quite thick
(For a smoother paste, use the same method but with an immersion blender instead of a mortar and pestle)

-When the salsa verde is finished, transfer it to a bowl and swirl more olive oil around the inside of the mortar, using a spoon or spatula to scrape any remaining parsley or garlic bits into the oil.  Reserve this infused oil and use it in dressings, on top of steamed potatoes etc.