You know you're in Granada when...

Lunch is finished with Moroccan Tea, made at home but served like it is in the teterías here-
poured from an arm's length away and then returned to the pot three times
 to make sure the tea, mint and sugar are all well mixed--
and that any foreigners at the table are thoroughly impressed

Fava beans with a little jamón

I've seen fruit vendors in the U.S. selling their seconds for half price but Murcia is the first place I've noticed the vegetables offered in distinct grades too.  After trying out a local recipe for fava beans in my first week here I was reminded that a) just because a recipe is traditional doesn't guarantee that it's going to taste good and b) when it comes to fresh fava beans, pretty much anything beyond fat and salt is gilding the lilly.

Made this..

I peeled my way through lots of favas in Sicily and I'm still amazed each time I whittle a mountain of them down into a tiny dish of delicate, slippery little beans that look like they could easily hold their own in a whimsical Fantasia number.  After needing both hands to transport the tough pods to the trash and then a spoonful or two to sprinkle them into the pan, those things are vegetal gold.  But as soon as the mess of tomatoes and onions hit the skillet for my first favas in Spain, it was no longer evident that the dish had anything to do with them.  That all got turned into a soup the next day (by way of a little broth, a hard boiled egg yolk to thicken the mix and an immersion blender to whip it even further beyond recognition from the original dish), so this time I had no plans to doctor them up.

I circled the market a few times scoping out the fava scene and when I came upon a stand selling them for half the going rate I had a feeling it was too good to be true.  The scraggly sign read 1€ and was placed just off center between two huge piles of beans.  When I got closer I realized that one heap looked pretty good, like the favas I got (literally off the back of a truck) in Balestrate and the other looked sort of like an air-brushed version of the same with smooth, unblemished skin and not an age spot in sight. When I asked the vendor if there was a difference in price he looked over the top of his glasses in a friendly librarian sort of way and gesturing between the two piles I imagined him saying "is a high speed computer database worth more than a dusty card catalog system? Of course it is."  Having already shelled out two euro for ajo tierno that morning I wasn't about to part ways with two more.  I knew half a kilo wouldn't yield much, but it wasn't bulk I was going for.

With that

That night I saddled up to the counter at home and got into bean peeling position. I opened the first one and besides the flawless favas, even the bright green pod itself was tender. The underside of the shell was so downy it could have easily eeked out the courderoy patch in the tactile awareness book I "read" with the 2 year old Spanish triplets  I look after on Fridays.

I pulled myself together after realizing my roommates weren't quite as excited about just how soft a young bean pod could be and kept shelling.  From there it was a pretty straight shot from the pan to the plate with a little jamón fat, ajo tierno and sunny side up egg fried along the way.  As I was finishing up dinner Yolanda asked why I hadn't cut off a good hunk of bread to soak up the yolk, but  I decided against a lengthy explanation.  Yes, perhaps that was because I was too tired to try saying it all in Spanish but remembering her low enthusiasm level for the pillowy shell I reasoned with myself "ah, she just wouldn't understand."

Fava beans with jamón 

Yield: Side dish for 1
Ingredients
1/2 kilo of fava beans in their pods
The strips of fat torn from 3-5 thin slices of jamón serrano (Whenever I eat a piece of serrano throughout the week I just tear off the fat and keep it in the fridge to use for recipes.  Often there are little bits of jamón that come off with the fat, and that's perfect)
Extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon of finely chopped onion or green onion
Salt

-Remove the fava beans from their pods and skin each bean
-Heat the serrano fat in a pan until it has rendered and any little bits of meat have crisped up
-Add just a bit of extra virgin olive oil
-Add in the favas and cook, stirring occasionally  for a few minutes, just until tender
-Taste and season with a touch of salt if the beans need it
-Great served with a sunny side up egg that's also cooked in rendered serrano fat and a little olive oil

The cooking times for the fava beans can vary a lot.  The favas I used in Sicily needed several more minutes in the pan, but these ones were so tender and fresh that just eating them raw with a little olive oil, salt and crusty bread would have been delicious too.

You know you're in Murcia when..

My friend Marina made up a big batch of Ensaladilla Rusa and gave me half to take home and share with my roommates.  Made with potatoes, pickled vegetables, tuna, hard-boiled eggs and mayo, Ensaladilla Rusa forms the base for one of Murcia's most beloved tapas-the Marinera.  The salad is piled high on a crunchy breadstick that's looped around and pressed together at the ends in the shape of a teardrop.  When made right, the salad holds its shape well enough not to fall through the middle, and it's finished off with a single anchovy laid across the top.  Marina can't stand anchovies and is always the lone person at a bar to order hers without. 

For some reason, she told me, that's not called a Marinera sin anchoa...but rather, a "bicicleta".   

After 15 minutes and 3 spoons, the container looked like this

Market day

From week one, when Isidro gave me a quick discourse on Spanish cheeses while laying out thin slices of jamón on wax paper and Paco offered pickled caper stems to try, I've been loyal to my charcutería and olive vendors.  I've also landed on my man for marcona almonds (I could have gone either way until he showed up last week with an endearing salt and pepper beard and also seemed to recognize me) but I'm still in the midst of trying out different fruit and vegetable stands.

This week's haul

For the past few weeks I've walked by a vendor who with grey hair, black mustache, rugged plaid button down and all beckons market goers to his stand with a deep, resounding call that would be the pride of any rhetoric teacher.  He's been selling mostly cauliflower lately, but since I had Yolanda's at home for a recent coliflor al horno recipe, I haven't had any need.  I had noticed a lot of recipes in my Murcian cookbooks calling for ajo tierno, and via vocab charades Enca was able to explain that they're what we call green onions.  When I passed by the booth this week it was piled high with them and I stepped right up, but since we're leaving for Granada this weekend to celebrate the holidays I knew I didn't need much.

Made these..

I should have known from the vendor's steady bray of "uno, un euro-uno, un regalo!" (one for one euro and one as a gift) that he means business when it comes to offloading his bounty.  As I was attempting to ask if I could get two bunches rather than the standard four tied together at the top, the old woman next to me was actually handing back the extra celery the vendor had put in her sack, but gave up when he responded with the equivalent of "no, no, take it, it's for your boyfriend!"  She smiled over to me when she realized what I was hoping for and with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head confirmed that there was no use in in trying.

With this..

At that, the vendor had swept up the four bunches in front of me, ripped off the tops with a flourish and thrust them into a plastic bag. He handed them over with  the wide smile of a used (or rather "pre-owned") car salesman that left no room for asking "could I just take half?"  When he handed back my change I realized that I was so conditioned to his one euro refrain that I hadn't checked the price on the ajo tierno.  Turns out they were twice as much, and on a very strict 10 euro market day limit, being out 2 euro right off the bat felt like a crushing blow to my reserves.

But after some very selective purchasing, I had picked up what I needed for lunch plus a little Manchego from Isidro and a small container of spicy green olives with garlic from Paco, a few ounces of marconas and the cheapest apples I could find. I then passed by an underclothes vendor who was pulling a pair of tights over both his beefy arms and up to his chest, gesturing to a potential (and very pregnant) customer with his girded hands and showing her just how stretchy his wares could be. With the lure of cheap leggings at my back I pressed on to my last stop.  When I held forward a single lemon the vendor looked down and asked "algo mas?", puzzled at the notion of someone coming to the weekly market and only getting enough citrus for one day. When I shook my head no and then tried to pass him some coins, he held up his hand, leaned back on his stool and replied to my "oh, gracias..Feliz Navidad!" with a little nod and a faint grin.

and that

For lunch I got through more of our chickpea surplus and a red pepper that was starting to get wrinkly by using them in a salad with herbs and the olives I got from Paco's stand last week.  As that stood on the counter to marinate, I cooked up Yolanda's extra mushrooms and soaked the dried ñora peppers I had bought in my first week here, without any idea of exactly how to use them.  The peppers aren't spicy at all-just sweet and meaty and I realized what the recipe was getting at once they softened and I could scrape out their brick red flesh onto the cutting board. When Enca got home and saw what I was making she said her ex-boyfriend used to drop ñoras into stews for flavor and then spoon out their pulp and spread it on toast with a little olive oil.  I had an urge to defrost a slice of bread and fish out pieces of the pepper right there, but I kept cooking everything down into a glossy sauce for the mushrooms instead.

We all sat down and went to work finishing off the chickpea salad--leftovers weren't an option.  I'm continuing to make my way through our excess garbanzos and there are more destined for the stovetop today.

Champiñones Murciana

Yield: Side dish for 2
Ingredients
1 ñora pepper
Hot water
Extra virgin olive oil
1 1/4 inch thick slice of chorizo, finely diced
1/2 of a small onion, finely diced
6 cloves of garlic, ends cut off, smashed with the flat side of a chef's knife and peels removed
About 8 large white button mushrooms, sliced
Salt

-Cut the ñora pepper in half and place in a small bowl
-Pour hot water over the pepper just to cover and let soak for about 20 minutes
-Heat the chorizo in a pan and when some of the fat has rendered and the pieces have crisped up, add a bit of olive oil
-Add in the onion and cook with the chorizo until the onion has browned, then set aside the chorizo and onion
-Heat about 2 tablespoons of oil in the same pan and add in the smashed cloves of garlic, cooking over medium-low heat until they start to brown
-Add in the mushrooms and cook for a couple minutes, then add back the chorizo and onion and continue cooking over medium-high heat for several minutes, until the mushrooms have released their moisture and have browned well
-Meanwhile, remove the ñora peppers from the water, but do not discard the soaking liquid
-Remove the stem and seeds from each half and then, using the back of a butter knife or spoon, scrape out the now soft flesh from the inside of the pepper and then run your knife through the pulp a few times
-Reserve about half of the soaking liquid for another dish and add back the pepper flesh into the remaining water
-Pour into the pan to deglaze and continue to cook until the water has almost all evaporated

Chickpea salad

Yield: Side dish for 3
Ingredients
A small handful of finely diced green onion
A small handful of chopped parsley
A small handful of chopped fresh mint
A small handful of small black cuquillo olives (or other black olive variety), chopped
Juice from half a lemon
Zest from half a lemon
Salt
Pepper
Extra virgin olive oil
1 16oz. can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed, (if using dried chickpeas, soak about 8oz. for 12 hours, then     boil with a bit of salt for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until tender)
1 red bell pepper, roasted, with skins and seeds removed, liquid reserved and cut into thin strips

-Mix all ingredients together in a bowl (including the liquid reserved from roasting the pepper)

You know you're in Spain when...

Even busy professionals can have a nice bowl of tripe,
hot and ready in less than 2 minutes

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.

The Jaén pop-tart

My first attempt at baking bread was a wait-and-see operation.  I've always heard that baking is a real science--that using the right proportions can make all the difference in the oven.  My roommate doesn't have measuring cups or a scale, so I eye-balled the flour and water, and when the ingredient list called for a coffee spoon and half of salt I used a few healthy pinches.  The recipe on the back of the flour bag didn't actually say anything about kneading, and it's hard to tell once the dough has "fermente hasta que duplique su volumen" when you happen to forget what the original volume looked like.

I cooled the loaves on a makeshift rack of overturned plates and upon my first bite I figured that they would at least provide an ample supply of crumbs for some Murcian recipes I'd seen.  

But just like most things can be rescued by roasting, so too can they be improved by toasting.  I came downstairs the next day to see my roommates with slices on their plates, and Yolanda said it had actually made for a treat. As a little girl growing up in Jaén, her Dad would make up some toast topped with olive oil for breakfast, and then, when her mom wasn't looking, he would top hers off with a little sugar.

What didn't get eaten or grated for crumbs in the first couple days got sliced up and put in the freezer, and I retrieved a couple pieces this morning to listen to Spanish radio over a Jaén pop-tart of my own.