Spain and Portugal cold dishes

[pedro]

Summer's here and the time is right for eating in the streets. It looks like summer finallly arrived to our peninsula, after some timid tries. So now we're going to see the temperature high in the thirties (ºC) - nineties (F) for some months, which cold dish do you enjoy the most?

Since I've created the thread, I'll choose the cliché: gazpacho, in almost any of its endless variations. But there's much more outside gazpacho.

I'm curious what our triumphant friends to the other side of the border have these days, since I'm not familiar with any cold dish from Portugal.

[Rogelio]

My votes goes for:

- Ajoblanco: The white almonds soup

- Piriñaca: The adalusian salad. Tomatoes, red and green pepers, spring onions, oil and vinegar

- Salmorejo: The thick gazpacho from Cordoba

- Asadillo: Red roasted pepers and tomatoes salad.

- Fish pickles

It's almost lunchtime here and I'm mouthwatering

[Chloe]

Salada de bacalhau cru, commonly known by the very crude name of punhetas de bacalhau.

Chloe

Ponte de Lima

[Silly Disciple]

Esqueixada de Bacalao. I can't get enough of it, and don't seem to get bored of it.

it seems very similar to the cod salad you describe, Chloe.

Simply raw cod fish salad, with tomatoes, peppers and olives.

Silly.

[vserna]

A couple of other things:

Perdices en escabeche, or perdizes em escabeche in Portugal: Pickled partridges, which can be eaten warm or cold, but really best cold in summer. One of the great gastronomic legacies of our forebears on the Iberian peninsula, the Arabs. Light, delicious - you never get tired of them. They came to my mind first because I had some delicious morsels of partridge this week for dinner in Sangalhos, in the Bairrada wine country, at the home of wine journalist Luis Lopes (the editor of Revista de Vinhos) before we headed for a lecture and tasting the next day at Viseu, in Dão this time.

(Other highlights of this quick foray into Portugal: a superb 'ensopado de borrego', the traditional lamb stew; a very light, flavorful version of 'arroz de pato', the rice-and-duck dish, that owed much to the bits of exceptional, smoked 'chouriço' sausage that dotted it; the terrific walnut cake baked by Luis' wife; a taste of the 1937 Burmester Colheita port and one of the 1963, two immense wines; a couple of glasses of the elegant, balanced 2002 Quinta do Terrugem red made by Francisco Antunes and Michel Rolland in Alentejo: the best bottle from the giant Aliança company I've ever tasted...)

Periñaca, the delicious boiled potato, tomato, pepper and tomato salad from Cantabria (or La Montaña, as we oldtimers still like to call this Atlantic region.) Olive oil mixed with cooked egg yolks forms the basis of the dressing. Not to be confused with the Andalusian piriñaca.

Mojete, another great salad, this one from La Mancha: main ingredients are strips of roasted morrón peppers and of spring onions, in virgin olive oil, with a touch of cumin and maybe some black olives; better kept overnight in the fridge.

[Bux]

Roasted red peppers with anchovies and olive oil. I'm not sure if this is a classic Spanish combination or not. I associate it with Collioure on the French side of border on the Mediterranean because that's where I first had the combination. As I've noted before current political borders don't always coincide with old political borders or cultural borders. Collioure is probably the epicenter of anchovy processing in France, although it is surpassed by by Spanish Catalan and Basque sources.

Spain excels in two areas of food that make for eating well without cooking--great for the summer. Those are cured meats and canned foods.

[Jason Perlow]

A sliced up Tortilla de Patatas, cooled down and served over crusty bread with mayonnaise. With some chilled Manzanilla sherry on the side.

[vserna]

Collioure is probably the epicenter of anchovy processing in France, although it is surpassed by by Spanish Catalan and Basque sources.

The greatest source of fine anchovies in Spain is neither Catalan nor Basque - it's the port of Santoña, in Cantabria. The top-rated cannery there is Consorcio Conservero. By the way, Spain's techniques in preserving anchovies in olive oil were brought in by Italian entrepreneurs in the late 19th century.

Collioure's competitor on the other side of the Spanish-French border is L'Escala. However, the great specialty there is not anchovies preserved in oil, but salt-cured anchovies.

[vserna]

Just came home from one of my professional forays in La Mancha, and to show the subtleties of local cold dishes, I can report that today I had a moje, not to be confused with the mojete which I mentioned above. Moje, a specialty of Cuenca province, is made with strips of peeled, roasted red peppers mixed with strips of peeled uncooked tomatoes, all seeds removed, with just some salt, a bit of cumin powder and olive oil. It's best eaten, as I did today in the heart of the Manchuela wine region, as a side dish accompanying a great platter full of just-grilled, baby lamb cutlets done on an outdoor fire of grapevine cuttings. Sensational country fare this... We also ate, as a first course, a Portuguese-inspired salad of desalted cooked codfish, boiled new potatoes and spring onions.

[lambretta76]

I'm partial to the Ensalada Malaguena - a salt cod salad with potato, black olives, orange, onion and garlic. The citrus really makes this salad shine. Maybe just found around Malaga, although it may be elsewhere in Andalusia/Spain.

[pedro]

I'm partial to the Ensalada Malaguena - a salt cod salad with potato, black olives, orange, onion and garlic. The citrus really makes this salad shine. Maybe just found around Malaga, although it may be elsewhere in Andalusia/Spain.

Being my mother from Málaga, it won't be a surprise to anyone that I've had similar salads. Without potatoes and garlic. With good olive oil, of course.

[vserna]

Actually, the real recipe of remojón (that's the actual name) comes from Granada, not Málaga, and includes desalted codfish, orange quarters, spring onions and olives, dressed with olive oil. I've heard of many versions, but until today none with potatoes.

[pedro]

She's from a small village in la Axarquía, really close to Granada. In fact, there was an old road used by sepherds and peasants to trade their goods, and a few ventas (inns) where they could eat. That probably explains why this kind of salad has been done in my family for years (grandmother and beyond).

Never occurred to me that remojón could come from the other side of the border. The Málaga/Granada border, I mean.

Thanks for the clarification, Víctor.

[lambretta76]

I had this at a couple of joints in the Malaga area - all with potatoes, all referred to as an ensalada Malaguena. The first time I ordered it from sight from a bar-top cooler and asked what it was called. When I saw it on menus from that point on I always ordered it. The potatoes may have been steamed before being cut up in the salad, not boiled, as they were nice and chewy, not mushy. And yes, the binding agent was olive oil.

I wish I could rememver the names of the places I had this at but several of them didn't even have signs as far as I knew.

[Bux]

The texture and quality of a cooked potato may depend more on the quality of the raw product than on the cooking. I find the potatoes in Spain to be much better than the ones in the states, especially when one wants that waxy boiling potato rather than the starchy potatoes best for baking.

A Google search for Ensalada Malguena gave up only two results both in English, but a second search on Ensalada Malgueña brought many links in Spanish as well as other languages. including a desroption of a cold nueva cocina soup--una crema fría de patatas, sorbete de naranja, cebolleta, palomitas de bacalao y aceite

[vserna]

Indeed it seems that the Málaga version of remojón includes hard-boiled eggs and, as lambretta76 signaled, some of the places do offer it with potatoes. I've never seen it myself but intellectually I find it a somewhat odd combination of textures and tastes - potatoes and oranges.

[lambretta76]

Yes - it is indeed spelled ensalada Malagueña.

I found a recipe for it, but alas - no potatoes. I am 100% positive that they had potatoes in them when I had them, though...

Ensalada malagueña (Málaga Salad): 100g of salted dried cod; 1 cooked egg; 1 bitter orange; and for the dressing: garlic, olive oil, vinegar and paprika. Put the cod in water to soak overnight (7 or 8 hours); peal the orange, slice it and place in a serving dish; then add the cod pieces and a finely chopped hard-boiled egg. The garlic for this dressing needs to be very well crushed, you then add a pinch of paprika, olive oil and vinegar to taste.

[Eric_Malson]

I love the Portuguese salada de feijão frade--a simple salad of black-eyed peas. Curious, since I'm not especially a fan of black-eyed peas when they're hot. But somehow cold, with some oil, vinegar, onion, hard-boiled egg, and a pinch of clove, they become ambrosial.

Of course, a good Cantabrian centollo (spider crab), served cold with a bottle or two of sidra or albariño, is pretty heavenly, too, as I was reminded last week....

[JesusBarquin]

Actually, the real recipe of remojón (that's the actual name) comes from Granada, not Málaga, and includes desalted codfish, orange quarters, spring onions and olives, dressed with olive oil. I've heard of many versions, but until today none with potatoes.

Well, I live in Granada and -under the usual name of "Remojón granaíno"- in restaurants here you can find different versions of the basic recipe described by Víctor. To my mind, not a dream of a dish...

My preferences go for any kind of fresh salad and some of the above mentioned dishes: gazpacho (which we made without bread neither onion), pickled stuff, papas aliñás, but let me say a word about salmorejo (known at home as ardorias -Osuna influence here-, also called porra in the area of Antequera) and about pipirrana, the delicious tomato salad from Jaén.

Pipirrana: peeled ripe tomatoes, 1 green pepper, half a cucumber, a clove of garlic, extra virgin olive oil (in fact, not any other kind of olive deserves that name), salt, one boiled egg. Just cut into irregular slices the tomatoes after having peeled them, as well as half the pepper and the cucumber (with or without peel, as you like it and depending on its freshness) in a more regular way. Crush in a mortero the other half of the pepper with the salt and the garlic and, in case that the tomatoes have not given out enough water, add some cold, almost frozen, water to the majao (crushed stuff). Mix everything and cover with slices of boiled egg. Very refreshing and -if you are careful with the olive oil- even a diet meal. The problem is that there is a strong temptation to eat it with lots of bread... I love pipirrana paired with a flamenquín.

Ardorias: Peeled or unpeeled (as you like it) ripe tomates, half a green pepper, one clove of garlic, a slice of thick, dense bread soaked in water, extra virgin olive oil, salt. (Important: no water added, no onion, no cucumber: that's the way my andalusian grandmother and my mother -and me- prepare it). At home we make it in a Turmix-mixer: first, put everything except the tomatoes. When the other ingredients are absolutely well mixed, add the tomatoes and mix everything thoroughly. It can be eaten -using a fork- with a boiled egg that has been crushed with the same fork (the traditional way at home and the one I prefer), but it is a good base to add cured ham, fried fish, uncooked codfish, etc... I know people from Estepa (where it is called salmorejo) who eat it with fried potatoes, tuna fish and a chorreón of olive oil.

Vinegar can be added (as the last step in ardorias, just before the egg in pipirrana), but it depends on the kind and quality of tomatoes used. This week, we made both of them at home with 1 1/2 kilos of raff tomatoes, which were very sweet and not acid enough, so that we decided to add some drops of sherry vinegar to the ardorias and to the pipirranas. But we wouldn't add it with many other kinds of tomatoes.

Sorry for mistreating english and regards.

[Katherine]

Asparagus with mayonnaise. I could eat that for lunch with hard boiled eggs every day.

[Bux]

Jesus, what can you tell us about the Raff tomatoes? When I see them in the market, they are usually at least partly green and rather misshapen or at least not at all the perfect little red globe of a fruit that is grown in hot houses in Holland. Most noticeable of all is that they usually cost at least twice as much as the perfect red balls. I suspect they are a type of tomato bred for their flavor and not eye appeal. I think of them much as I do of the heirloom tomatoes that farmers here in the northeast of the US have started to cultivate in great quantity and which are so highly prized by the best restaurants, but I don't have experience with the Raffs in Spain.

[JesusBarquin]

Well, I am not an expert on tomatoes and guess we have the problem that probably the raff tomatoes (and the other types of tomatoes) you can find in your markets, but I'll try to say something:

1. They are first completely and then partly green, as every tomato, but at the end are absolutely red. I suppose that those hollander red tomatoes cannot be eaten before they are completely red and that they get the color before the whole ripeness, so it's useless to sell them green. But the raff tomatoes, as many other varieties that can be bought in Spain (not as many nowadays, that's sadly true), can be eaten in salads and other dishes when they are partly green.

2. Raff tomatoes are widely produced in Almeria (Andalusia, Spain), where the salinity of water is supposed to be very suitable for them, and they are between the most expensive ones that are sold in this country: even at 6 €/kg, depending on the season. Normally they double or multiply even by 4 the price of other tomatoes (regular price of most tomatoes at the market: less than 1 €/kg in summer, between 1 and 3 €/kg in other seasons).

3. They have little water and seeds, lots of "meat" and are quite sweet and not too acid. My thinking about them is that it is a pity that one has to look for and pay an extra for the same kind of stuff I ate when I was a child as the most popular and cheap tomatoes: those wonderful ones from Chipiona (Cádiz)!

4. Regarding the different classes (I don't know the name of a lot of them) of tomatoes available at home, my favourite is one that people call "diente de león": big, meaty, flavourful, balanced tomatoes which are very suitable for every purpose. But the other day the greengrocer offered me those raff tomatoes at a very good price because they were starting to get too ripe and I thought it was a good chance to taste a gazpacho, salmorejo or pipirrana made with raff tomatoes.

5. Try them and tell us,

Cheers. Jesús

[pedro]

From what I know, raf tomatoes have a short season and their exterior appearance never achieves a total red colour. Simply cut on thick slices with some coarse salt (use Maldon for textures purposes if you wish) and extra virgin olive oil are worth trying.

Weather calls for simple pleasures.

[JesusBarquin]

their exterior appearance never achieves a total red colour.

Pedro, they do get completely red if you let them ripe enough.

Simply cut on thick slices with some coarse salt (use Maldon for textures purposes if you wish) and extra virgin olive oil are worth trying. Weather calls for simple pleasures.

I agree with the recipe, but think that it's life itself that calls for simple pleasures,

[pedro]

While having dinner at Arce, I thought about this thread. Many of the greatest cold dishes we've written about, pivot around products that are in season. Shouldn't we open the scope of the thread and talk about summer dishes, whether they're cold or not?

Marmitako, the albacore stew from the Basque country is the dish that came to my mind as an example. I'm not totally sure that it can be considered as a summer dish, but the albacore season fits quite nicely with the warmest months of the year. Sardinas and many other blue fish species are excellent these days. Víctor described baby lamb cutlets done on an outdoor fire of grapevine cuttings, which brings me memories of barbacoas feasts done in Burgos (plenty of morcillas).

So, let's give a try to not cold summer dishes. Who's next?