I love tortilla de Patatas!

Mantecadas (pronounced /mahn-tay-kah-das/). They are sort of pastries. I don’t know how to explain. They look like cookies but their interior is more like a puff pastry. What makes them different then? Something that some of you might find a bit bizarre: LARD.

3 ingredients make this magic combination: flour, lard and eggs. Also, a (really small) bit of sugar and some help from baking powder.

When you mix all the ingredientes, I must confess it smells weird, but it all disappears when it’s baked. Flavor is not strong at all, it is actually very soft, I could even say delicate with the sugar cover texture. I just love them.

As usual, they bring some memories. When I was young we used to spend really boring school breaks in a family cottage house my family has. My parents loved it (still do) and one thing my father has always liked is to explore pastry shops and try new things. So one day he brought these mantecadas. For some reason, this Easter I thought of them, and I wanted to bake them so badly.

Some of my Spanish expat friends here were as excited as I was to try them again. They are so authentic! I am happy when I get to unveil old moments from others with food.

So, Dad, next time I go to Madrid (soon!!) I will bring some mantecadas to you. Specially for you. 

Mantecadas (around 30 units)

Recipe from webos fritos, one of my favorite Spanish food blogs ever! Susana adapted the recipe from a classic, Simone Ortega.

Ingredients

200 gr / 1 cup lard

375 gr / 3 cups

2 eggs

3 tbsp of sugar

1 / 2 tsp of lemon juice

1 tsp of baking powder

More sugar to coat cookies

Steps

0. Preheat the oven at 300ºF / 150ºC

1. Mix flour and baking powder.

2. In the middle of the flour mixture, add the eggs, tbsp of sugar, lemon juice and lard. Mix them altogether. I did it with my hands but the paddle attachment of a kitchen aid will do fine too ;-)

3. When it comes out a soft dough (a bit dry and greasy), make a ball and leave for 15 minutes into the fridge.

4. Take the dough out of the fridge and knead with a rolling pin until it’s 1 cm / 0.40 inches thickness.

5. With a cookie mold, cut as many mantecadas as you can.

6. Bake them for 25 minutes. They should NOT be golden, white is the best so they keep their texture.

7. Right after they are baked, coat them with sugar (you can use a spatula’s help, they are not that hot) and leave them cool down on rack.

8. Eat, eat, eaaaat!

Print PDF

Torrijas because we are almost in Easter. There is nothing I miss more (besides my family) than eating torrijas in Spain in these days. Everybody cooks their own version, so the best way to cope is make mine too.

This year I decided to make them in a mini version, using milk bread. They are so nice. You can use any other bread you like or have anyway. I used the same torrijas recipe as last year.

Before I get into the recipe, I want to say a big SORRY. School is taking most of my time. I love it because I learn so much and it feels right that I am there. But it also feels exhausting and I miss posting more often in here. I wish and hope I can catch up here again soon. Therefore, I am going to chance a little bit my posting schedule as it doesn’t sound realistic anymore. Anyhow, I have plans to publish in here, to improve the design of this site… ooooh, I just need TIME. Why is it not unlimited??

Recipe for torrijas

Ingredients for 10-12 torrijas:

- 1 or 2 days old bread or brioche / milk bread.

- Milk infused with the peel of a lemon and a stick of cinnamon and 2 tbps of (vanilla – optional) sugar.

- 2 eggs beaten

- 1/4 cup sugar mixed with 1tpsp of cinnammon

Steps

0. Start heating oil in a frying pan. Oil should cover well the whole surface of the pan. It must not be super hot, torrijas are quite delicate.

1. When milk has cooled down (less than 104ºF/40ºC), soak bread in. You must pay attention to how much milk the bread has absorbed, if it’s too much, you won’t be able to handle bread well.

2. Immediately after soak the slice of bread in the beaten eggs.

3. Right after, fry them in olive oil, both sides. Transfer to a plate when they are golden as in the picture.

4. Repeat this action with all the slices.

5. As soon as you can, coat into the sugar + cinnammon mixture every torrija and let them cool down.

Notes:

The cinnammon and sugar coating will melt with the heat of the fried torrija while it cools down. That coating will give torrijas a nice brightness as you see in the pictures.

Don’t soak too many slices of bread at the same time, just the slices you can put right after in the frying pan. Thus, you will avoid the risk if disintegrating bread  ;)

Enjoy torrijas and Easter!!

Print PDF

Mazapán (pronounced as /mahr-zee-pahn/) is the direct translation of marzipan. These treats are also regulars of Christmas time in Spain. I must confess that they are very sweet for my taste, but that doesn’t mean they should not be mentioned here :-)

I realized that mazapán is shaped in a completely different way outside Spain. The traditional mazapanes have no artificial colorings or “funny” shapes, just simple shapes and not really fancy ones. In The Netherlands or in the UK I have seen vegetable and fruit shaped marzipan. Which is funny, because they look really cute and they are supposed to be the same thing, but I could not tell that at first sight.

My Somebody’s mother gave me a recipe to make my own mazapán, but I’ve had no time to test it. It was just icing sugar (40%) + almond flour (60%) + egg whites (1 or 2), anyway I should try it out first for you ;-)

It’s really cold in here and it’s getting tougher and tougher to end the weeks… I feel so exhausted. I am counting the days until my family gets here!!

Have a nice Wednesday!!

Print PDF

I know it’s been quite a lot of time… School has been overloading these last weeks (again). Fortunately, in 2 weeks I’ll be enjoying my holiday break with my family, I am so happy!

This year I wanted to show you the usual sweets we eat in Spain. Maybe you live there for the first time and you wonder, maybe you are going there on holidays and you wonder, or maybe you just wonder what Spaniards eat in Christmas.

Well, we eat a lot. We have some special treats, which are quite different from the Dutch ones, for example. Sweets have a lovely spicy touch in The Netherlands, while in Spain it is more about dried fruits and marzipan.

(here you can see the basic elements of a Belén, the common nativity decorations in Spain)

I have a small assortment of basic Christmas sweets and today we will start with polvorones /pohl-voh-rohn-eh-s/. This name might sound familiar to you because in México they use this name for cookies in weddings. However, this mexican cookie is pecan nut based and the spanish one is not.

Polvorones are wrapped as in the image above, with a very thin paper. One way of eating them is smashing them with your first, as if they were plastiline. Why? Because polvorón is a very crumbly sweet and being smashed becomes more compact and easy to eat.

The have a nice lightly crunchy surface and sandy and dense interior. They also have hints of cinnamon… I would have one now if I have.

I hope you have a nice monday and I will come back with more Christmas sweet on Wednesday!!

Print PDF

Judías verdes (/hoo-deas — bird-es/ where bird is pronounced as the usual bird animal describing word). Flat green beans. Simple dish, another classic from my mother’s menu. My mother must love judías verdes, because my whole winter season dishes from childhood is full of dishes with them. Soups and this dish in many variants, with sausages, with serrano ham… I just decided to keep it simple and vegetarian in this case. Oh, I also chopped the vegetables quite gross, I know my mother is about to complain about this when she spots these pictures ;-)

I am sorry I missed 2 of 3 posts last week. My life is really hectic since I started in Art School in September. I am really happy with all I am learning. I am not that happy with the pace we have at school. I live in a constant heart-attack way of life. There are daily hand in assignments very single day of every week. It has been highly challenging and I often feel exhausted. But I can’t hide how happy I am with everything I am learning in the end. But this means I have to also struggle to publish in time, to cook and have light to photograph. But, hopefully, soon you will be seeing some reflections of my work in here.

This recipe could not be simpler. I know I said I was a bit tired flat green beans were always in my mother’s winter menus. However, when I got to live on my own I could not wait to cook them my self this very same way.

Judías verdes

Ingredientes for 2 servings

- Flat green beans (I didn’t measure properly, but the picture helps, I guess), both tips removed

- 2 potatoes, peeled

- 2 carrots, peeled and halved (maybe 1 is fine, but I just love them so…)

- 1 onion, quartered and finely sliced

- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped

- Smoked paprika powder to taste (I use sweet and smoked)

- Salt to taste

- Olive oil

Steps

1. Throw into a pan all the vegetables (except garlic and onion) and cover them with water.

2. Cook them at medium heat until carrots are tender.

3. Meanwhile, you can prepare the “ajada” which is: poach the onions in pan with olive oil at medium heat. When they are tender, add the garlic. Stir and leave it for less than a minute and then, add the paprika. Leave this ajada resting with the heat off until vegetables are cooked.

4. When vegetables are ready, reheat a little bit the ajada (step no.3) in case it is cold already and mix them with vegetables in a flying pan (with a couple of tbsp of olive oil). When everything have the same paprik-ish color, it’s ready to eat.

5. Season to taste before serving.

To serve, drizzle some olive oil.

I hope you enjoy this dish and have a nice week! (Is it possible to still wish a happy week on a Tuesday?)

P.S.: Probably I will be missing tomorrow’s tapa, but hopefully I will post something on Friday! ;-)

Print PDF

Puré de calabacín (pronounced as /poo-reh — the — kah – lah – bah – ceen/ I think this is an easy one!) would be translated as zucchini… soup? As I told you before, I don’t feel like calling this a soup (for me, soup is this). This puré de calabacín a spoon dish, soup like but that is why is called puré (which means pureed, yes, but it is not the same concept as most English speakers have).

3 mondays, 3 spoon dishes in a row. I know. But it is getting cold in here. These dishes are the only thing that really make sense to eat when I get home (by bike!).

This puré de calabacín is another dish often made by my mother when I was a child. I am afraid I had to modify the recipe. Why? My mother made this puré super enriched with milk and cheese (with these quesitos which I have not been able to find here). For that reason, she will call her version: crema de calabacín (which, translated, would make even less sense than the term puré for you! It would mean zucchini cream…) because of all its milk based ingredients. Anyway, I had to make my own version because my body cannot afford that much “enrichment” now… :-P

Puré de calabacín

Ingredientes

2 zucchinis, washed and halved

1 leek, washed and halved

1 potato, peeled and halved

Water (my mother used to add milk instead… lovely but I can’t do that now…)

Some kind of soft / spreadable cheese, to taste (the more, the creamier and softer-lighter color of the puré)

A drizzle of olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Easy peasy steps

1. Put all the ingredients (but the soft cheese) together in a pan

2. Cover them with water

3. Let them cook at medium until all of the ingredients are soft

4. Blend them and and add the cheese to taste.

5. Eat it! Breadcrumbs are delicious here.

I hope you are having a great Monday!

Print PDF

I have shown you empanada before, for this Daring Bakers challenge. I didn’t want to miss the chance of showing you my favorite savory version: bacalao con pasas (cod with raisins).

This flavor was quite new to me until a couple of years ago, that I entered in one of my favorite pastelerías (which means pastry shop) in Madrid (yes, sorry, a lot of favorites). It was after work, and I used to like to pick up something and eat it at home on fridays. I did not know what to take that day. I wandered around for a few minutes and then, I was in front of empanadas and I spotted this flavor!

Bacalao con pasas. It sounded just delicious. Bacalao (cod) in Spain is related with saltiness because it is commonly cured in salt to preserve it. Pasas (raisins) are just the opposite. I also spotted a lot (a lot) of poached onion. That was it, my choice was made.

And I was right, I loved it. Sometime ago, I decided I missed this empanada and I should try to make it at home, here in The Netherlands. I was so stressed making my portfolio for presenting it that I decided to make something that will last the whole weekend and that it was filling and healthy. Empanada!

It really surprised me because I actually remembered the resultant flavor as the original one. I told my father that I was making and he got jealous (he loves empanadas), so I decided to freeze half of the batch (both dough and bacalao filling) until his visit, a week after. He liked it a lot too. So here I am, sharing it with you too!

Empanada de bacalao y pasas

Ingredients for the filling (for the pictured empanada I used half of this resultant filling) 

- 500 gr Bacalao / salt cured cod

- 3 onions, finely chopped

- Half a green pepper, finely chopped

- Raisins to taste, around 3/4 cup (I used golden, but black is the common variety in Spain)

- Quarter a red bell pepper, finely chopped

Steps

1. Heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a pan, when it is warm, add:

2. The onions and poached them until they are very soft

3. Add raisins, let them cook for some minutes, until they are sof too.

4. Add peppers and let them cook until soft.

5. Add bacalao until it is cook and the mixture looks soft and smooth again.

6. Drain (and keep!!) the juices, and leave it to cool and reserve it for latter.

7. Make the dough. I really liked this recipe for the daring bakers challenge.

Dough Ingredients

( I used just HALF of the quantities below, I froze the other half for a future occasion )

5-1/3 cups (1280 ml) (750 gm) bread flour

2 cups (480 ml) of lukewarm water (about 85°F/30oC),

approximately 1 satchel (1 tablespoon) (15 gm) dry yeast or (1 oz) (30 gm) fresh yeast

2 teaspoons (10 ml) (11 gm) salt

4 tablespoons (60 ml) of resultant juices from the cooked filling (this makes the perfect dough taste!!)

1 large egg, for egg wash

Dough steps

1. Measure out all the ingredients.

2. Shift the flour into a big bowl and make a well in the middle. Rub the yeast in with your fingers.

3. In a small bowl, mix the water and the salt.

4. Now, using your fingers or a wooden spoon, start adding the water and mixing it with the flour-yeast mixture. Keep on working with your fingers or spoon until you have added enough water and all the flour has been incorporated and you have a messy ball of dough.

5. On a clean counter top, knead the dough for approximately 10 minutes

6. You could do all the above using a stand mixer, in that case mix the ingredients with the paddle attachment until mixed and then switch to a dough hook and knead on low for about 6 minutes.

7. Clean and oil the big bowl you used for mixing and place the kneaded dough in it. Cover it with a napkin or piece of linen and keep it in a warm, draught-free place for approximately 40 to 50 minutes.

8. Once risen, turn the dough back into a floured counter and cut it in half. Cover one half with the napkin to prevent drying.

9. Spread the other half of the dough using a rolling pin. You can use a piece of wax paper over the counter, it will make it easier to move the dough around. Depending on the shape of your oven pan or cookie sheet, you will make a rectangle or a round.

10. Now, the thinness of the dough will depend on your choice of filling and how much bread you like in every bite. For your first time, make it about 3mm thin (about 1/10th of an inch) and then adjust from that in the next ones you make.

Assemble the empanada

1. If you haven’t used wax paper, either lightly flour or line with wax paper your pan or tray.

2. Cover the base and sides with the dough. Using the rolling pin or a knife, cut the extra dough.

3. Place the filling, making sure it is cold and that all the base is covered. Using a hot filling will make the bottom layer of the empanada become soggy. Be careful to avoid adding too much oil from the filling, try to make it as “dry” as possible.

4. Start preheating your oven to moderate 350°F/180oC/gas mark 4.

5. Take the other half of the dough and spread it out to the same or less thinness of the base. You can use a piece of wax paper for this too. Take into account that this “top” dough needs to be smaller around than the bottom, as it only needs to cover the filling.

6. If not using wax paper, move carefully the top to cover the filling. If using wax paper, transfer the dough, turn upside down, cover the filling and gently peel off the wax paper.

7. Using your fingers, join bottom and top dough, when you have gone all the way around, start pinching top and bottom together with your thumb and index finger and turning them half way in, that way you end up with a rope-like border. As a picture is worth a thousand words, please watch this video to see how it is done: http://youtu.be/CNpB7HkTdDk

8. When you are finished, make a 1 inch hole in the middle of the top layer. This will help hot air exit the empanada while it’s baking without breaking the cover.

9. You can use left-over dough to decorate the empanada, using rounds, bows, lines… let your imagination flow and make it pretty!

10. Using a fork, prick the top layer or, using scissors, make snips that go all the way through the layers.

11. In a small bowl, beat an egg and add a tbsp of cold water. With the pastry brush, paint the top of the empanada with the egg wash.

12. Place the empanada in the oven and bake for about 45 minutes. Check that the bottom part is done.

Print PDF

I wish I could photograph this tapa, but I don’t have cortezas at hand today. Even though I swear I saw them somewhere here, in The Netherlands. I guess I didn’t look hard enough because they are not my favorite, but that does not mean I should not show them to you.

Cortezas (pronounced as /coh-r-teh-zah-s/ using the “e” as in lent and not as in tea) are a pork product. They are commonly known as pork rinds. They are eaten as a crisps, aside of a beer or any other beverage in a bar. My mother loves them!

Have a nice wednesday!

Print PDF

“Lentejas, comida de viejas, si quieres las comes o si no, las dejas”. This is an idiom widely used in Spain which would be translated into something like this: “lentils are granny’s food, if you want you eat them, if not, you don’t”. I have heard that silly sentence sooo many times (still do, of course) in my life. I have never thought of not eating lentejas. I love them too much to avoid them.

Lentejas (pronounced /leh-n-teh-has/, “e” here is pronounced as in lent, not as in tea) are a lovely winter spanish “stew”. A lot of vegetables, chorizo, morcilla and lentils are slowly cooked with a bay leaf and water in a pan.

I have been thinking of publishing this dish in this blog even  before I started it. Lentejas are one of those super-comfort dishes for (almost) every single spaniard. Hearty, warm, it is a fantastic dish to make winter days much better. It is so easy to make as well… Needless to say it is one of my favorites!

By the way, we don’t call this a soup, soup for Spaniards looks like this. Lentils would be more like a stew. Anything different to stock with noodles is not called a soup in Spain. You’ll see more examples in the following weeks!

Lentejas (4 servings)

- 1, 5 cup lentils, wash them briefly with fresh water (pardina variety is the one I use, it is smaller than the average, but it does not really matter, use the variety you have at hand)

- 1 tomato, peeled and chopped

- 2 onions, peeled and chopped

- Half a green pepper, chopped

- Half a red pepper, chopped

- 2 medium potatoes (or 4 if you like them so much, so each serving can have one ;-))

- 2 carrots, peeled and halved (2 is enough, but I always put 3, because I love them!)

- 1 garlic clove, fiiinely chopped

- 1 dry bay leaf

- Olive oil

- Salt to taste

*Vegetarians, don’t read the following 2 lines!!*

- Fresh chorizo (easier to find outside Spain nowadays, right?)

- Fresh morcilla (this could be more difficult to find outside Spain, it is basically like the English black pudding but it have onions or rice also in the filling, I love the rice variety!!!)

Steps

1. Make sofrito, which is: heat the pan with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. As soon as it gets hot (low heat to medium), add garlic, leave it to cook for half a minute. Add onions, stir and leave them to cook until they are soft. Add tomato and stir again until the you have a smooth vegetable mix. This sofrito (pronounced /soh-free-toh/) and this is what gives the natural flavor to all dishes!

2. After that, you just need to throw everything else to the pan: lentils, carrots, potatoes, chorizo, morcilla (omit these 2 if you are vegetarian) and bay leaf.

3. Leave it to slowly cook (medium – low heat) for about 50 minutes. Check every 20 minutes. You don’t want your lentils to be mushy. Check if carrots and potatoes are done as well. If they are, that’s it!!

4. Slice cooked carrots and half potatoes and put them back into the stew.

5. Serve them, warm. Enjoy you winter lunch!!

+1 enjoyment if you drizzle a liiittle olive oil into each serving plate ;-)

Have a nice Monday!!!

Print PDF

At the end of september we went on a date ;-) to have dinner in a place in Amsterdam. This place is called “La Oliva” and we had a pretty nice experience there.

Oh… I miss so much summer weather. It’s true I like fall, but no doubt that I am truly in love with summer. I will always be. Amsterdam looks amazing in the warmest months of the year. It just glorious to wander around the streets and channels.

So, going to the main topic, we went to La Oliva and we liked it a lot. It is located in Amsterdam’s Jordaan neighborhood, which is a plus.

There were a few things I would love to highlight from our visit:

- The local is not too big, I always prefer small – medium sized places to avoid crowds

- Cozy and stylish atmosphere.

- Cooks were spaniards, something really important for me when I visit a Spanish restaurant abroad

- Presentation of pinchos was beautiful and not complicated to understand

- There were a lot of Spanish classics, but also some innovating pinchos

- Good quality ingredients

- Nice price, completely reasonable

- Their owners speak Spanish too, which makes you feel much more comfortable!

- They accept dogs (as in numerous places in The Netherlands, which is something I love from this country!) and they give fresh water (idem!!)

I would like to show you some of the things I saw there. They were really kind and they let me took all the photographs I wanted to (for me it’s a daring exercise ;-) by the way, I didn’t dare to speak longer than a few words with one of the cooks, which is shame, but I was dying to see the kitchen and talk with some of them…)

This is a Spanish favorite: Chistorra, pimientos de padrón and eggs (quail eggs look cooler ;-) I like them a lot!)

This was one the mentioned innovative pinchos: figs with blue cheese. They look pretty, don’t they?

Yuum…. setas (a kind of mushrooms) with jamón serrano and quail eggs. Delicious!

Of course, a lot of varieties pinchos de tortilla de patatas!! With jamón serrano, green sparragus, mushrooms…

Another innovative pincho: mango with duck foie and cheese.

A happy dog with his humans spending the afternoon in a restaurant plus fresh water :-)

Oh, and we could not help but order dessert. Crema catalana. I just love this, it was perfectly done!

There are always some buts, I should be honest with this matter too:

- Food served is reheated in the oven, therefore, tortilla de patatas and some other pinchos were actually overcooked or dryer for this reason. We asked for 2 rounds of pinchos and in the second round we asked specifically not to reheat anything… cold but much better. I guess this was also due to to the time we went there, it wasn’t peak time. Maybe in peak hours food is served just made to the table.

Print PDF