Calçots At Home

What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you because of a delayed flight? 

Despite the frecuency of my airline trips, I've been quite lucky up to now.  But this year, a delayed flight (not mine, but one of a friend) caused me to miss one of the year's most important traditions: the calçotada. We had the weekend planned in one of Spain's little coastal villages, but a late flight left us stranded at home in San Sebastián.

My friends being my friends, however, they gifted me a bundle of calçots upon their return to cook up at home (they also gifted me a tub of romesco, but we're going to pretend like that didn't happen since it somehow got devoured before it made it to the refrigerator).

What is a calçot? The calçot is an onion, a generic onion, pulled from the ground, allowed to sprout, and then reburied. The farmer then continues heaping soil over it during its growing period, preserving the whiteness and the slim shape, similar to a leek. Typically, they are charred over open fire and left to rest in newspaper, but you can create a similar effect right at home in your own oven, which is what we did.

The traditional dipping sauce served with these charred alliums is romesco. I have a version here, but lately I have been making with tomatos, almonds, and roasted garlic as well. Make plenty of romesco....it won't go to waste. Trust.

calçots at home

• one bunch of calçots (you could try subbing baby leeks or green onions)
• olive oil
• salt
• romesco sauce (one version here)

Preheat oven to 475º. Peel off exterior layer of calçots. Rub or rinse off any remaining dirt. Set on an oven tray, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.  Pop into oven, rearranging occasionaly, until calçots are both charred and tender. Serve with romesco.

Homemade Goat Cheese + Giveaway

Now I understand the cheesemaker. A person who has decided to devote their life to curdling milk and playing with it until it tastes completely different and utterly delicious.

Making your own goat cheese is addicting. Since I first made this recipe last week, I've already made goat cheese two more times. It couldn't be easier, and it's so satisfying.  Three ingredients:

Goat's milk, lemon juice, and salt. You can't go wrong: just heat, mix, and hang to strain.

A tip from my boss, who happens to be one of American's best cheesemakers, is to let it hang at least two hours. A particularly succesful batch for me was the one I forgot about for seven hours. Squeeze to dry.

Now, my boss also happens to have a brand new cookbook out, and along with her I am giving away a free signed copy of her book to one lucky winner. Simply leave a comment below and, for an extra entry, tweet this contest using the handle @martibk, @BelleChevre AND the hashtag #tasiastable.

goat cheese
from Tasia's Table

• 1 quart goat milk
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Salt
• Cheesecloth or cotton kitchen towel (or Hakei shoe bag;)

In a heavy-bottomed pot, bring goat milk to a boil over medium heat. Take off the heat. Immediately stir the lemon juice into the milk. Let stand for a couple of minutes, so the milk can curdle. Lay out a cheesecloth (or a cotton kitchen towel) in a bowl. Pour in the milk-lemon mixture. The curds simply resemble curdled milk at this point so don’t worry that they will pour right through the cheesecloth— it will catch them. Tie the ends of the cloth together so it becomes a bag. Hang it on a wooden spoon and let the bag hang free. The whey should strain out of the cheesecloth for at least two hours. Before taking the cheese out of the cloth, squeeze the cloth to extract more liquid from the cheese. Transfer the cheese from the cloth to a bowl and season it with salt.

Here's a list of participating bloggers, all lovely, talented ladies!

• Cooking With Books   
• Cheese And Champagne
• Deep South Magazine
• Sale e Pepe
•  Eggton  
• La Buena Vida
• Susan Greeley
• Bibberche
• Cactus & Kudzu 
•  Story of A Kitchen
• Sugar and Spice by Celeste
• Once Upon a Cutting Board
• 30AEats
• Miss in the Kitchen
• The Picky Eater

Pickling Guindillas

I am no longer capable of imagining a world without guindillas. 

Fresh, they appear each spring on the counters of pintxo bars, in bowls that signal their availability. Sometimes, but not often, accompanied by a hand-written or Microsoft Word sign that says "hay guindillas". 1 out of 10 fresh guindillas are spicy, and if I had a nickel for every theory on which are the spicy ones, I'd have, like, $1. The big ones. The small ones. The skinny ones. The only thing I've found to be remotely fact-based is the ratio of spicy to non-spicy changes as the season stretches on.

The rest of the year, there's pickled guindillas. These are ubiquituous, as one of the main ingredients on a famous pintxo, on a notorious mini-sandwich of tuna, anchovy and pepper, and all the way to the new posh eateries in town that serve it in a mayonnaise on some farm-raised hoity-toity hamburger. Plus they're just amazing popped into your mouth around 7pm with a glass of red vermouth.

And they're SUPER easy to make yourself. Look:

pickled guindillas

• green, fresh guindillas
• water
• vinegar
• salt
• bay leaf

Blanch guindillas for one minute in boiling water. Meanwhile, in another pot, boil a mixture of 60% vinegar and 40% water with two bay leaves for 10 minutes.

Place peppers in jars, covering them with the vinegar water mixture, and throw in a large pinch of salt. It's not necessary but I usually put the jars lid down while they cool. Allow them to pickle for about a month for best flavor.

sun dried tomatoes

I was developing a recipe recently for a very special upcoming cookbook, and I had the good fortune to stumble across a fact that has been quietly evading me for years: how to most deliciously reconstitute sun-dried tomatoes  It came to a head this fall when I had the most delicious salad at the now-defunct (but soon to re-open!) Narru . A salad of gratineed goat cheese with sun-dried tomatoes and an amazing honey-sesame dressing. But how to replicate it at home without buying those expensive oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes?

There's just some really bad information out there, given as gospel, much of which makes me laugh. (Julienne your tomatoes? Boil a large pot of water? WHY?)  But seriously, even when Bittman hopped on the sun-dried tomato boat he evaded the question.

How do you make sun-dried tomatoes taste AMAZING?

My answer came on the back of an unsuspecting bag of the stuff, bought in a little grocery store here in San Sebastián. And it was simple and surprising. A 2 to 1 ratio of water to VINEGAR. Skeptical, I tried it, and it was incredible. It produced that delicious tang tomatoes have in the bars and on the pintxos  that I was trying to replicate.

And the most curious thing? The instructions were in several languages on this package of tomatoes: italian, spanish, portuguese and english, among others. In almost every language they instructed the 2 to 1 ratio of water to vinegar. But the english instructions read: Hydrate in warm water. Only.

It's a conspiracy.

sun-dried tomatoes

• 1 cup sun-dried tomatoes
• 1/2 cup white wine vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1/3 or more cup of extra-virgin olive oil

Heat vinegar and water to a simmer. Pour over tomatoes, making sure all are submerged. Allow to sit for at least 15 minutes. Drain, drizzle with olive oil. Use in recipe, or just eat.

se llama 'cookie'

Today, Andoni and  I chatted on the radio show Hoy por Hoy with the folks at cadena SER in Donosti.

We talked about the amazing initiative that is BasqueStage (if you don't know it, you should...and you should tell all your cook friends). Then the talk turned to sweeter things....the chocolate chip cookie. I shared with them some fresh-baked American goodness...and they were freaking out. Yay America! I never said we didn't do some things right.

Hace mucho tiempo que se acabó la busqueda del 'cookie' perfecto.

Pero últimamente estas galletas de chocolate chip están pasando de moda. Y así debe ser...directo del horno, no hay nada mejor. Cuando yo leí el artículo ese del New York Times, flipé. Y después de flipar, hice las galletas.

Son las mejores. Punto y aparte. Y aquí tienes traducida la receta (incluso con conversiones métricos, hombre). Ahora te quedas sin excusa...salvo que YO no he visto azucar moreno aquí....y vainilla solo en Don Serapio. Buena suerte y disfruta! La cual, por cierto, se hace en etapas: primero, la masa cruda. Luego, yo suelo coger un poco mientras que están horneando. Luego, directo del horno. Y otro más despues de un rato cuando te vuelvan las ganas de galletas.

 Extra reading: hashtag on twitter #MegaGalletas  (everybody's doin it!)

the original mega cookie recipe, 101 cookbooks.

y un buen blog, el comedista, en castellano.

Y disfrutad! Caliente y con leche fría, claro.

chocolate chip cookies

• 240 g harina de repostería
• 240 g harina de pan
• 1 1/4 cucharadita (6g) de bicarbonato
• 1 1/2 cucharadita (7.5g) de levadura en polvo
• 1 1/2 cucharadita (7g) de sal grueso
• 250 g mantequilla
• 280 g azucar moreno "auténtico"
• 225 g azucar blanco
• dos huevos grandes
• 2 cucharadita (10 mL) de extracto de vainilla
• 300-500g chocolate (corta una tableta en piezas)

Tamizar las harinas, bicarbonato, levadura en polvo y sal.

Batir mantequilla (a temperatura ambiente) y azúcares bien. Añadir huevos, mezclando despues de cada uno, y luego la vainilla. Sumar la harina y mezclar suavamente lo justo para que se forme una masa homogénea. Sumar el chocolate de la misma manera.

Dejar que repose la masa durante 24 o 36 horas en la nevera (dura días más, mejorando cada uno). Precalentar el horno a 180 grados. Formar bolas grandes (el tamaña de pelotas de golf). Espolvorear con flor de sal o sal marina encima y hornear hasta que se doren, 15 minutes.

Comer caliente, con servillete y leche fría.