Je Mange la Ville » Spanish

FFwD: Potato Chip Tortilla

mlb — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:34:51 +0000

This week’s French Friday with Dorie is kind of neat — a Spanish Tortilla made with potato chips instead of slices of potato! You basically crush a bunch of chips and add to eggs, onion, spices and pop into a pan to cook! I’d go so far as to say that if you crushed your chips on the larger side and didn’t tell anyone that you’d used potato chips, they might not even be able to tell.

I used a mix of red onion and green onion in mine and I was very tempted to try this with the multicolored vegetable chips, but after reading the label, decided against it as they were higher in calories, fat and carbs than these olive oil potato chips. Go figure.

Anyway, here’s a link to everyone’s posts and here are my photos below!

Trader Joe’s chips with olive oil…a good choice!

Crushed chips, green onion, red onion and other stuff…

Now the eggs, paprika, salt and pepper are added to the mix.

In the pan, cooking up with some olive oil.

After being under the broiler for a few minutes.

A bit of chopped parsley on top for some color.

Blog Post that was Almost an FFwD, Then Became This – Roasted Chicken Legs with Chorizo, Potatoes and Spinach

mlb — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:09:36 +0000

So, this last week’s French Fridays with Dorie was for Cola and Jam Spareribs, which sounds good but neither jwa or I are big rib eaters. But here’s what I thought — I’ll take the cola and jam idea, but just use them on another kind of meat. How about chicken drumsticks? Perfect! Sounds like a winner! And then…that’s not what actually happened.

1. After not being able to find the Coke with sugar in it instead of high fructose corn syrup, I found an organic-hippie cola brand with sugar. Great. I put a can of that in my cart. But then when I got home, discovered I accidentally grabbed the Diet Cola instead.
2. After seeing this, I think, um, okay. I can still make this work. At this point I have the jam, orange juice and Chinese 5 Spice Powder already simmering in a pot with the cola to make a glaze. I grabbed the unopened bag of brown sugar from the cabinet, thinking I can just add a spoonful or two and I add a little in with the jam and orange juice.
3. Ants. There are ants in the brown sugar bag. Oh my god. THERE ARE ANTS IN THE BROWN SUGAR BAG!!!@#!# And, I had just put the brown sugar in the pot with everything. Ewww. Down the sink with all syrupy stuff in the pot and out to the garbage with the bag of brown sugar.
4. Now what, I thought? I had six chicken legs in the fridge and it was already 6pm. Maybe pizza? A walk down to ~~Una Mas~~ Pepinos? No, I was not giving up yet, damn it. This is a challenge.

After a few minutes of frantic epicurious.com searching I came across a one pan recipe for chicken legs with potatoes and vegetables. Miraculously, I had potatoes (we usually don’t have potatoes in the house unless I specifically bought them for something). I also remembered I have a sealed package of two Spanish chorizo sausages that I had wanted to use this week and from there, my mind automatically went to the Smoked Paprika. Mmmm….Spanish Smoked Paprika.

Hmmm. Okay. New dinner plan!

Roasted Chicken Legs with Chorizo, Potatoes and Spinach
Adapted from a recipe in Gourmet Magazine
6 chicken drumsticks, (or 3 whole legs, divided into thighs and drumsticks)
1 tbsp olive oil (plus more for random drizzling, if you feel so inclined)
Salt, pepper
1 tbsp smoked paprika
3/4 pound small boiling potatoes
1 red bell pepper
1 medium onion
8 cloves of garlic, peeled
1/2 tsp dried thyme, crumbled
1 small Spanish chorizo sausage, sliced
1 bunch baby spinach (about 2 packed cups)
Balsamic vinegar for sprinkling
1/4 cup dry white wine
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Preheat oven to 425°F. Quarter potatoes. Cut bell pepper into 1/2-inch-wide strips and onion into 1/2-inch-thick wedges. Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika on each side. Heat oil in a large flame and oven proof skillet and brown chicken.

To the pan with the browned chicken, add the potatoes, bell pepper, onion, chorizo slices, thyme, garlic cloves, and a little more salt and pepper. Arrange everything in one layer. Eh, maybe give it another drizzle with the olive oil. Roast chicken and vegetables 35-40 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through and everything is golden.

Check about half way through the cooking time and make sure your slices of chorizo aren’t getting to dark. If they are, just tuck them down, underneath the chicken and vegetables. After the cooking time, if you want the chicken and potatoes a little darker on top, turn on the broiler for a few seconds, watching closely.

While chicken and vegetables are roasting, discard any coarse stems from spinach and put in a large bowl. Drizzle with a little balsamic vinegar. To go with the Spanish theme, I added a handful of Marcona Almonds to the spinach leaves. I also added a handful of crumbled feta cheese on top of the spinach leaves just because I do enjoy the cheese.

With tongs transfer chicken and vegetables to bowl with the spinach. Add wine to the hot pan and deglaze over moderately high heat, stirring and scraping up brown bits and stirring into any pan juices, about 1 minute.

Pour the wine sauce over chicken and vegetables and serve. This will feed probably 3 people, if you figure two drumsticks each. You may end up fighting over the roasted garlic cloves.

This was really very good. You can tell because there’s hardly any left. ~~I’m almost glad ants ruined the original dinner idea~~. No, I’m not. Ugh, ants.

Pork Tenderloin with Lightly Seared Strawberries

mlb — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:48:27 +0000

Summer makes me think of Spanish food. I think it’s the sun and the heat and the fact that I want to make gazpacho all the time and drink sangria (also, all the time). So, it’s usually in Summer that I will grab one of my most favorite cookbooks ever and page through it looking for something tasty to make. The cookbook? The New Spanish Table. If you don’t have it, go get it. You will not be sorry.

So, yes, Summer. Spain….strawberries! This was really good. The berries got a little caramelized and pork tenderloin with rosemary is always a winner. I thought the sauce would be a little too acid-y but it was just perfect with this. Also, since you’re cooking them a bit, the strawberries don’t have to be overly super-over-ripe. A great use for the first ones of the season!

Pork Tenderloin with Lightly Seared Strawberries or Solomillo de Cerdo con Fresas
Adapted from The New Spanish Table by Anya von Bremzen
1 pork tenderloin (about 1 pound, silver skin removed)
coarse salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp crumbled dried rosemary
1 tbsp olive oil, plus more for brushing the griddle
5-6 large strawberries, hulled and sliced
3 tbsp chicken stock
1/4 cup sherry wine vinegar
1-2 tsp sugar
Optional: minced fresh chives, for garnish

Rub the pork generously with salt, pepper, and rosemary. Heat the olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the pork and cook until browned nicely on all sides, about 6 minutes total. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook the pork, turning several times, until it is tender and an instant-read thermometer registers 155 degrees F, about 15 minutes.

Transfer the pork to a cutting board and let it rest, covered with foil, while you prepare the strawberries and sauce. The internal temperature will rise as the meat stands. Set the skillet aside, you’ll use it to make the sauce.

Rub an unridged rimmed griddle pan or a large, heavy skillet with an oiled paper towel and heat until almost smoking. Add the strawberries and sear for about 45 seconds, turning once. They should be cooked until slightly softened but should not release too much juice.

Add the chicken stock to the skillet in which the pork cooked and place it over medium-high heat, scraping the bottom to dislodge the brown bits. Cook until the stock is almost syrupy, about 3 minutes.

Add the vinegar and 1 teaspoon of the sugar and continue cooking until the sauce thickens a bit more, 3-5 minutes longer. After 1 1/2 minutes, taste the sauce and add more sugar to taste if it seems too tart.

Cut the pork into slices and arrange them decoratively on dinner plates. Spoon some seared strawberries on top of the meat and drizzle the sauce on and around the meat and strawberries.

Garnish pork with chives if desired. We actually have chives growing out in the garden but I was too lazy to grab any.

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Self-indulgent alert: I made a facebook page for Je Mange la Ville. I’d been thinking about it for a while (as I manage our facebook page at work, so I’m used to updating fb content regularly), I just hadn’t gotten around to it. Anyway, finally I made one. Wanna like it? That’d be cool! I’ll try to have extra stuff there like more photos and links to interesting food things and such.

Grilled Chicken with Fresh Fig Salsita

mlb — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:19:35 +0000

This is one of those meals that is so simple yet so good, that you can’t believe you didn’t make it before or that you don’t have it for dinner a few nights per week. It’s from The New Spanish Table and I promise, the next few posts WILL NOT be from that cookbook. Really. But, it’s such a wonderful cookbook! But no. I will restrain myself.

Here, I had just scored some figs from Limbo and was needing something to do with them. This was the perfect solution!

Grilled Chicken with Fresh Fig Salsita
Pollo a la Brasa con Salsita de Higos
8 to 9 smallish ripe but firm fresh figs, trimmed and cut into thin wedges
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced (I used a sweet onion instead)
3 tsbp medium-dry sherry
2 tbsp sherry vinegar
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
kosher or sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, rinsed and patted dry
1/4 cup lightly toasted slivered almonds
1/4 cup finely sliced fresh mint
Salt

Place figs, onion, sherry, vinegar and olive oil in a bowl; toss to mix. Let stand for 30 minutes.

Get your grill ready or heat up a grill pan.

Mix the minced garlic, rosemary, 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper and then add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to make a paste. You can also crush all of this up in a mortar and pestle. Or use a knife and crush it into a cutting board to form the paste.

Brush the chicken with the paste. Grill the chicken until lightly charred and cooked thoroughly, 6-8 minutes per side. Brush a few times with remaining paste while cooking.

Transfer chicken to a cutting board and let rest for 5 minutes. You can either slice the chicken breasts on the diagonal for serving or leave whole. When ready to serve, add almonds and mint to the salsita, toss to mix, and add salt to taste.

Plate a chicken breast and top with some of the salsita. I would feel remiss here, if I didn’t say that you could add some cheese, just as a garnish if you will. I think a little goat cheese would be amazing with this!

Okay, next, my new favorite granola recipe! Also, in house news — the siding is completely done and the paint prepping has begun. Hopefully, we’re looking at the whole project being done no later than next week. We’ve also changed weather patterns just in time for the painting and now we are getting rain. So, we’ll see…

Spanish Paella for a Crowd

mlb — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:09:18 +0000

I combined a couple of recipes here — one of the Paella recipes in the (awesome) New Spanish Table cookbook, a paella recipe from Tyler Florence and I also used the meat I wanted to — chicken thighs, chorizo and shrimp, rather than the exact ones in either recipe. You could throw all manner of meat and seafood in here, but I stuck to those three.

This makes a ton of paella! A. Ton. Of. Paella. It would be great to make for a dinner party or of you want to make something for dinner, have lunch the next day, and then be able to freeze a couple more lunches.

You will need a huge skillet or an actual paella pan here. Do not underestimate the amount of room you need in your cooking vessel or you will cry into your overflowing pan of Spanish tastiness.

Aside from the simmering stock, this all happens in one pan!

Lots of pictures in this post…

Paella for a Crowd
This will easily serve 8 as a main course.
1 tbsp smoked paprika
2 tsp dried oregano
1 lb chicken thighs
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 Spanish chorizo sausages, thickly sliced
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 white onion, diced
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded, cored and diced
1 (15-ounce) can whole tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped, or 1.5 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
2 cups short grain Spanish rice
6 cups chicken stock
Generous pinch saffron threads
1 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined
1 cup green beans, trimmed and cut into 1.5 inch pieces
1 roasted red bell pepper, cut into strips
Optional: 1 long strip of orange zest

Paella rice

Roasted red bell pepper

Roasted red bell pepper strips

Sliced chorizo

Okay, here are the directions!

Combine the paprika and oregano and rub the spice mix all over the chicken and marinate chicken for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Heat oil in a paella pan over medium-high heat.

Saute the chorizo until browned, remove and reserve.

Salt and pepper the chicken and add chicken and brown on all sides, turning with tongs.

Remove from pan and set aside. When cool enough to handle, slice into thick strips.

In the second pot, heat up the chicken stock and add the saffron. Keep at a very low simmer.

Next, in your paella pan, saute the onions, garlic, yellow bell pepper, and parsley in all the chorizo-y/chicken-y olive oil. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes on medium heat. Then, add tomatoes and cook until the flavors meld, about 5-6 minutes.

Fold in the rice and stir to coat the grains.

Now, this is where you need to decide if your pan is big enough. There’s no going back. Ready? Okay!

Pour the hot saffron-stock into the paella and simmer for 10 minutes, gently stirring occasionally so that the rice cooks evenly and starts to absorb the liquid.

Next, add the chicken, chorizo, then the green beans and shrimp. Try to tuck the chicken and shrimp under the rice. If you are using it, add the orange zest strip in there too. Put a lid on the pan and put in the oven for 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven, check the rice for doneness — you can always stick it back in for a minute or two. If it’s good, uncover and rest for 5-10 minutes. Garnish with the roasted red bell pepper strips.

Leftovers will keep the fridge a few days, then freeze as needed!