More Easy Spanish Recipes
Did you enjoy the delicious recipes I recommend in my last article? If you are still hungry, here I bring you more, learn easy ways to cook Spanish dishes.
I would like to talk to you about a dish that is perfect for the winter, with hearty pork and legumes that makes your tummy warm and ready for a nap on the couch. El Cocido is a bunch of meats and veggies and legumes boiled all together. The taste comes from the quality of the meats, the seasoning and the love you put on it.
El cocido varies depending of the area of that comes from. This old dish was the main recipe for Spanish people living in the country, they killed one pig every year to provide meat for the winter. Now like then, all parts of the pig are used, and the best meats are put together. In the North of Spain, in
, big parts of the pork are salted for conservation. That gives the Cocido Gallego a specific taste. We have to soak in water the salted ribs, ears, feet and tails for twenty four hours, al least, to make them ready to cook. And we can't forget one of the traditional items from the
's cuisine, el lacon. This is the upper part from the front leg of the pork, similar to the ham. And has to be soaked carefully, because can be very salted. When all the meats lost their salt, we put them to boil, covered with water. When they cook for a while we add the rest of the meat ingredients: chorizo (the popular pork and paprika Spanish sausage), a piece of fatty and tasty beef (chuck is good), and a half of fresh chicken. Later, we add potatoes, medium size cut in half. And when everything is almost done, we add the legumes and the veggies. I love to add garbanzo beans, soaked for twenty-four hours, and with them, I use cabbage. If I go traditional, I choose grelos, a typical Galician green, with a sour taste very similar to the collard greens. However, you can use all the legumes and veggies you want. I love to have the boiling water as consomm? before the supper, and the legumes and veggies served with the rest of the meats and potatoes.
In Madrid, and other most centered areas of , the meats used for el Cocido are not salted. Fresh pork ribs, piece of beef, half chicken and sausage are used. For cooking in the US, where the imports of pork can be a problem, you can make a pseudococido: Put to boil all together some fresh bacon, fresh side pork, half of chicken, three or four kind of sausages, (like polish, bratwurst and a hot link), pig feet, ears cut in little pieces, and some corn beef. Add later the potatoes and the veggies and legumes you prefer, and again, voila. And if you check in Latienda.com, or Amigofoods.com, you can find cured ham, chorizo and different Spanish dishes with tolerable quality.
The morning after this wonderful dinner, you can make what we call opa vieja (old clothes). Put together all the meats, and cut them in little pieces. Mix them in a big bowl. Add a red onion cut in tiny pieces and from two to three tablespoons of virgin olive oil, depending of how much meat you have. Add sweet paprika to cover all this, and serve cold. It is awesome! And the veggies and legumes you have left, warm them up and use them as side dish. Alternatively, you can use the meat to cook croquetas. This very traditional dish is easy, but requires a good spirit and patience:
- Cut all the meats in very tiny pieces.
- In a good non-stick skillet, drop a couple of tablespoons of butter or margarine.
- When the butter is almost melted, start adding All Purpose flour and bate it until makes a ball.
- Add milk to soften the ball.
- Keep adding flour and milk until you have a compact but soft dough, cannot be dry or too moist.
- Add the meats and mix.
- Put this dough on the fridge uncovered for twenty-four hours.
- Divide the dough in little pieces, like fingers, and soak them in raw bitten eggs and batter them in flour.
- Fry the pieces in hot olive oil for forty seconds each side.
Croquetas are a wonderful appetizer, snack or supper if you ad some salad or fries.
Moreover, talking about pork, I remember my long evenings in the restaurants in the little towns close to
Madrid. I want to cry thinking about the brick or stone ovens, and the small pigs (cochinillos) cut in half and baked. Slightly seasoned with garlic, salt, pepper and parsley, and rubbed with real pork grease, they came to my plate warm and toasty. They do not have a lot of meat, but they are tender and succulent, and the skin is crunchy and tasty. You can find small pigs in your butcher shop; ask him to cut in half, so you will have two halves with head legs and feet. Season it with garlic, salt and pepper, and rub it with shortening, or pork grease. Bake it in the oven until tender and crispy, and serve with fries and a huge mix Spanish salad, like this one:
-Cut a medium size butter lettuce, one red onion, three medium tomatoes and one medium cucumber.
-Add two boiled eggs cut in little pieces.
-Add tuna from a medium size can.
-Pour over some thick and good Spanish virgin olive oil, wine vinegar and salt to taste.
And remember, all this food must to be soaked with a good red Spanish wine, or sangria. In another article, we will talk about the best Spanish wines, desserts, and many dishes we can cook and enjoy.
By Lourdes Portela