Cookstr

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hh — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 13:57:18 GMT

#Cookstr #Foodstr

Suquet de gambes / Shrimp sailor's soup

Supposedly something fishermen cook on board or with discarded fish, variations of this can be found all along the Mediterranean shore, from Iberia to Greece.

Specific to this Catalan version would be the use of potatoes and a dry mash ("picada"), and the fact that even though the fish soup and the potatoes are cooked separately, we use the soup to cook the stew, and then as the base for the sauce/thicker soup.

I know, I know. As it…

hh — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 14:21:21 GMT

I know, I know. As it always happens with this sort of food, the generic brown color and sauce make it quite difficult to take a picture that makes it justice.

But I can tell you, of all the things I've posted about on #cookstr #foodstr, today I've outdone myself. This was simply heavenly.

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It's gonna be a lamb…

hh — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 08:46:35 GMT

It's gonna be a lamb stew today.

#cookstr #foodstr

#cookstr #foodstr

hh — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 12:46:35 GMT

#cookstr #foodstr

Today I made a classic recipe for lunch, "truita en suc", "omelette in sauce".

As can be surmised by the name, it's basically an omelette plus a sauce to go with. Yeah.

The traditional take, which I followed today, requires the omelette to be made with spinach and white beans, and is usually served next to a piece of fried cod.

The sauce is made from the usual base of onions, plus a "picada" (I've explained what that's all about many timed, check out older #foodstr #cookstr notes of mine). Because that's all I had today, I used garlic, toasted hazelnuts and almonds, and parsley. Not fancy but effective.

Most people will flavor the sauce with paprika powder, and the most degenerate even add tomato sauce (which destroys everything and makes the sauce pointless). I used "nyora" pepper puree instead because I saw it in the market when I went to buy the boiled beans from my... beaner? I don't know what you call a literal "boiled bean merchant" in English, but that's a thing over here. I've also mentioned what nyora peppers are in the past.

Because it's served with cod, many people will also help the sauce with some sort of fish broth. I didn't have any, so instead of that I minced some cod and added it to the sauce ingredients for flavor, and simply cooked everything with water (and a couple of bay leaves and a generous dose of black pepper of course).

#cookstr #foodstr

hh — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 15:39:47 GMT

#cookstr #foodstr

It doesn't look like much, but this is a delicious recipe that's one of my wife's favorites, so I make it for her now and then. I got it from chef Max Mariola's Youtube channel, which I highly recommend for his approachable attitude -- you can almost always cook whatever he is doing with basic home equipment. The ingredients, your milleage may vary, because Italy is Italy. But mine is close enough.

To the point, this is a very complete dish, and quite simple to make. You need:

- Fresh anchovies (I repeat: fresh, not salted!), deboned, cleaned and cut butterfly-style or even better fillets without the tails. I used 500 grams, gross weight before cleaning
- High quality mortadella, 250 grams
- Broccoli, kailan or some other veggie like that. Just the stems, thinly sliced. 150 grams maybe, didn't weigh it.
- Provolone cheese, 200 grams
- High quality bread crumbs
- 1 clove of garlic
- Extra virgin olive oil
- An iron pan and gas stove

Cook the broccoli stems in the microwave at high power for 2 minutes.

Once they're tender, sautee them with the crushed garlic clove. Just a thin oil coat in the pan does it. Prep big thin slices of the cheese and have them at hand.

After that, turn the flame down to the lowest possible, slightly coat the pan again, cover the surface with bread crumbs and toast them. Once they are toasty, begin to place the anchovies on top of the crumbs. You must cover the surface, but avoid overlapping them too much.

Do not wait for the fish to cook, it'll be done in a minute, and immediately start to cover it with cheese. Then mortadella. Then broccoli. Then cheese. Then mortadella again.

Understand what you're doing: the idea is that, once it melts, the cheese helps bind the anchovies together and with the other ingredients, so the pie has some structure. And the last layer of mortadella was just to wrap the others, so when you turn the pie upside down on a large plate, they don't crumble and fall all over the place.

Shake the pan slightly in a circular motion. If all is well, the pie won't be stuck. It should slide over the toasted crumbs. The anchovies are done by now too, so the dish is basically done.

Now, theoretically, after you do that, you should prepare another layer of crumbs and anchovies, then put the pie back on the new layer, to sandwich it with anchovies. I've done it many times in the past, but today I chose not to.

Firstly, it's a tricky manoeuvre to pull. The chances that you fuck up an otherwise perfectly good and easy to make dish are significant.

Second, it's usually just too much. A full double-layered pie would require 1 kg of anchovies, and double the other ingredients to have the same taste and texture balance.

All in all, if you have a decent fishmonger who cleans the fish for you, this is such a simple and fast dish to make, so why make it difficult.

If you have guests, it makes for a great table center dish (if your aesthetic skills are better than mine at least), and it even has some shock and conversational value due to the unusual combination of anchovies, mortadella and cheese.

As much as I love spending…

hh — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 10:09:42 GMT

As much as I love spending time #cookstr ing #foodstr , I am a simple man, really.

Coming out nicely

hh — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 12:31:02 GMT

Coming out nicely
#foodstr #cookstr

Forgot to mention, I added four cloves and grated lemon zest to boost the aromatics, and as usual I'm using "vi ranci", our local Catalan-style oxidative-aged wine (in this case, a white one) to deglaze.

Incoming some weekend improv cooking.

Incoming some weekend improv cooking.

hh — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 10:32:45 GMT

Incoming some weekend improv cooking.

Pork neck in a sort of kind of maybe whitish ragù I guess...? With fennel and turnips because obviously, and pears which I'll add later, because duh.

(In fact I wanted to use quince, but we live in a decadent society and couldn't find any).

All the ingredients are certified eco and local. The veggies are from a town I know well, just 20 km from here, and the meat and the pears are from within 100 km so that works too.

To be totally honest, I buy all these rather expensive eco ingredients not so much because of the eco label, which you can or cannot believe in, but because these foods simply look and taste completely real. They're a joy to cook with, and even more to eat.

We'll see how the dish turns out.

#cookstr #foodstr

Incoming. #cookstr #foodstr

hh — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 10:03:15 GMT

Incoming. #cookstr #foodstr

Potato omelette is one of those deceptively simple dishes that requires a lot of practice, knowing your tools and ingredients exhaustively, and precision.

After years and years, I still fuck up on occasion. And this is a dish with four or five major steps, that is, occasions to make a mistake, and one single mistake completely ruins it.

A little bit overcooked for my…

hh — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 11:45:47 GMT

A little bit overcooked for my own taste, but still juicy and tender. #cookstr #foodstr

nostr:note15uycv85czruclw9wmxr9pc37lng4k54s7x3aprmm7hm2av9azwdqdasjrf

Incoming.

hh — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 10:49:08 GMT

Incoming.

IYKYK.

#cookstr #foodstr

Forgot the hashtags #cookstr #foodstr

hh — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 12:04:32 GMT

Forgot the hashtags #cookstr #foodstr

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Digging into some leftovers of a…

hh — Sun, 19 May 2024 18:54:22 GMT

Digging into some leftovers of a random lamb thingy I #cookstr in the oven the other day.

Lamb, fennel, garlic, some bay leaf, pepper, the tiniest amount of cumin on some of the meat (not all).

Lamb/mutton is so superior to beef, it's not even a competition.

As promised #cookstr #foodstr. We had…

hh — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 22:48:02 GMT

As promised #cookstr #foodstr. We had it for dinner this evening.

As expected, much much better if you let it sit for one day as we did.

It's kind of lame that I say it myself, but it was outstanding.

Unlike my pictures of it 🤷🏻‍♂️ #cookstr #foodstr As you fry the…

#cookstr #foodstr As you fry the…

hh — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 12:40:21 GMT

#cookstr #foodstr As you fry the slices, let them sit for a minute on absorbing paper to get rid of some of the oil, but do not slumber. It's time to put them into the stew. And after that, there go the mushrooms. I threw in the mushroom water too because I intend to cook this for a long time.

If you kept the heat low, you should still have enough liquid to cover the meat. If there isn't, add water or broth, but do not overdo it.

Now, the final step: the picada. I've talked about it many times before, so I won't go over it again. In this case: a couple of garlic cloves, almonds, hazelnuts, and some spices like peppercorns, a pinch of cinnamon, and a pinch of nutmeg.

Depending how much you want the sauce to thicken and taste like raw garlic, you can wait until the very last minute when you turn the heat off. I wanted to have lunch and I prefer to cook the mix and tune down the garlicness, so I just threw it in immediately.

And the rest is just a matter of letting the low heat work, until you get something like this. In my case, after adding the meat, it has simmered for about one hour.

Then turn it off, and let it sit for six to eight hours before transferring it to another recipient and putting it in the fridge for tomorrow or the next day.

Will upload pics when we eat it.

Bon profit a tothom Alright, #cookstr #foodstr, while the whole…

Alright, #cookstr #foodstr, while the whole…

hh — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 12:29:30 GMT

Alright, #cookstr #foodstr, while the whole base simmers but before it really starts to reduce, the meat.

It is thought that the name of the dish refers to the fact that the meat is fried before stewing. In any case, that's precisely what happens, so let's go.

1. The best parts are either what we call "llata", which I guess is the brisket or somewhere near it (I'm more of a fish person), or the "jarret", which should be the round steak from the hind legs.
2. The purpose of frying the meat is to shock it into a firmer texture that can withstand the long cooking time, so you want a high heat.
3. Do not overdo the flour
4. Ideally, you want cuts 1 cm thick that you later manually smash thinner. If you, like me, neglect to do this because you bought thinner slices and thought it'd be OK, know that the meat will curl, which is a pain in the ass when you flip it to fry the other side #cookstr #foodstr Let's continue:

#cookstr #foodstr By the way, this…

hh — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 11:39:08 GMT

#cookstr #foodstr By the way, this is what I made yesterday for today's lunch. Some random pumpkin and lamb stew I improvised and didn't think about documenting. I'll come back to today's fricandó (which is for tomorrow) after lunch. #cookstr #foodstr Let's continue:

#cookstr #foodstr Let's continue:

hh — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 11:22:14 GMT

#cookstr #foodstr Let's continue:

Now, even at such low heat, eventually all those roots and bulbs and even the tomato will caramellize, so you will have to deglaze. In traditional Catalan cuisine, we use what we call "vi ranci", literally "rancid wine", which I can't seem to find an equivalent for even in Spanish. It's basically a dry wine that is aged in oxidative conditions. I guess similar, but different to Jerez wines?

Anyway, today I'm using one full glass of vi ranci and half of red wine, which is more astringent and will help a lot. After the alcohol is gone, I'm adding one glass of broth.

After adding all this liquid you obviously have to turn the heat on quite a bit until everything is back to a boil and then turn it back down always allowing it to keep chugging along. Let it do its thing. It begins. #cookstr #foodstr.

It begins. #cookstr #foodstr.

hh — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 11:10:16 GMT

It begins. #cookstr #foodstr.

"Fricandó de vedella amb bolets", that is, veal "fricandó" with mushrooms. I keep the Catalan denomination instead of the gallicized "fricandeaux" because the Catalan dish has little to do with the French one, even the current Occitan one. Nevertheless, veal recipes are very uncommon in Catalonia, so it may well be the case that this came over from across the mountains in any of the successive Occitan migrations during the late Middle Ages and the end of Catalan sovereignty in the 18th century.

No matter what, this is a very ancient dish. It's found on all Catalan cookbooks since at least the 18th century in its current form, and the fact that it's one of those recipes lacking any type of American ingredient (tomato, potato, bell pepper...) also points at a pre-16th century origin.

Today I'm committing a transgression against the Nation then, because I'm using tomato for the base. I decided to do so only after realizing that I was overdoing the sweet section: onion, parsnip, turnip, leek, celery, garlic. Tomato helps to deglaze all those sugars and to raise a bit the acidity and the umami.

The bundle of herbs contains the usual local mix of bay leaf, thyme, rosemary.

I'm also using a mix of dehydrated mushrooms which I'm reviving for one hour in cold water. I'm too lazy to try to figure out the names in English, if they even exist. Those DO NOT go with the base, they come in at the end.

The key points for the base are:

1. to chop everything (never grate!) into dice as little as your knife skills allow you (not much in my case as you can see)
2. to use barely enough (extra virgin olive) oil to barely coat the pot
3. to keep the flame at the bare minimum your stove allows
4. to begin with the onion by itself until it is starting to "sweat out", then add all the other vegetables, and only add the tomato (half as much as you used onion, peeled and chopped)
5. Do not fry, sauté, make golden, or anything like that. If you're roasting the vegetables, there is too much oil and the heat is too high Today's #cookstr #foodstr, a classic…

Today's #cookstr #foodstr, a classic…

hh — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 09:31:20 GMT

Today's #cookstr #foodstr, a classic among classics of Catalan-Occitan cuisine.