Calamari with Lemony Pan Sauce

I was experimenting with some Spanish tapas ideas recently and came up with a successful appetizer dish here; the photos are bad but the taste was great! 

I started off by soaking some thawed calamari rings in milk, then coating them with flour mixed with some cayenne and salt. 

They sauteed easily in olive oil and I turned them as needed to crisp them up:

Next time I will let them form a little better since I obviously mangled them somewhat in the process.  After they were done, I made a quick pan sauce with white wine and fresh lemon juice, then thickened it with a little flour/butter mix (I'd like to think it was a bit of buerre manie).

The sauce looks more like melted cheese than a lemon sauce, but it was a tasty snack!  I'm not sure why I chose chopsticks for eating this but it probably had something to do with the leftover wine that I was enjoying while I cooked this.

Cocido Rapido!

Cocido is one of Spain's most famous dishes, and you can look up endless versions of it online.  I made a fairly quick version for lunch recently and it worked out really well:

 

Many Spanish dishes, and certainly cocido, are heavily influenced by Spain's long Moorish and Jewish cooking traditions--that accounts for the use of chickpeas, red peppers, rice, chicken, etc. 

My version was made just for me and included the following that I had available:

1/3 red onion, diced (I liked the red this time, but normally this would use yellow or white)

1 medium carrot, diced (use red pepper if you have it!  or both carrots and red pepper)

I sauteed the above in olive oil for 5 minutes or so, then added 1.5 cups of water and just a handful of long grain Mexican rice.  I used half a Mexican-style Maggi bouillon cube to add the broth flavor.  Yes, I'm mixing the various building blocks I keep around for my daily cooking and crossing New World with Old World concepts!  

When the rice was mostly cooked, I shook some Cholula hot sauce into the pan (again, more Mexican flavors invading a Spanish classic!) and roughly a half can of chickpeas.  At the end, I diced up a tiny bit of summer sausage (Usinger's, a Wisconsin classic) and finished it up a few minutes later.

In classic Spanish cocidos, leftover chicken or rabbit is often involved, along with some pork content and perhaps some seafood depending on the region in which the Spanish cook resides.  I should have used garlic cloves here, so don't forget that classic Spanish building block.  Spanish stews like this usually use chopped chorizo, which in Spain is pre-cooked and resembles the Polish kielbasa I can find commonly in the Chicago area (Note: Mexican "chorizo" is actually the uncooked, super spicy stuff that has nothing to do with Spanish chorizo, but nonetheless is an incredible flavor enhancer if you can stomach the grease--perhaps I need to make a cocido with Mexican chorizo!).  

They key point about this experiment is to learn to use a simple broth, some diced veggies, and leftover meat to create a healthy, flavorful stew that you can adjust in many ways!

Spanish Style Tortilla

One of my favorite food memories from Spain was their well-known tortillas, which are like omelettes with onion and potatoes inside. A typical way to prepare them would be to saute thinly sliced Yukon Gold or russet potatoes along with a lesser amount of sweet onion slices. Use plenty of olive oil for this!

When the potatoes are a bit softer, stir some eggs up in a bowl, season with salt, and add enough eggs to the pan to cover the potatoes well, and then let the pan do the work. Later you'll need to flip it using a plate on top of the pan; it takes a bit of practice but becomes easy enough after 1-2 tries. Add more oil underneath the tortilla if needed, and keep the tortilla solid without burning it (med to low heat is good here). Add cheese if desired; cheddar, goat cheese, or gruyere would probably pair well. Serve by itself or create a small sandwich with it using French bread, which is how you'll see it served for lunches or snacks in Spain, at least in the Basque area where I was staying at the time.

Tapas!

This weekend I wanted to make a light, tapas-style meal, but didn't look up any recipes ahead of time, so I started backwards with what ingredients were available and came up with this:

*Pan-fried red pepper strips cooked in olive oil, chopped garlic, and topped with thin slices of brie, which melted nicely in the larger strips.

*Scallops lightly sauteed in olive oil, fresh chopped garlic, salt, pepper, and fresh lemon juice.

I served the cheesy pepper strips atop thin slices of french bread, and the scallops went alongside on the plate. A little extra french bread soaked up the scallop "sauce" quite nicely and it all went down well with Sauvignon Blanc (a $14 dollar bottle of Sterling found on sale for $8).