Hungry Travelers

Those of us who aren’t Basque have a hard time imagining just how well they eat. Good food and a love of cooking seem to be central to the culture. When we sat down with Elena and Juan Marí Arzak for the Robb Report story about the seasonal special dish of angulas (see the Dec. 21, 2011 post), they emphasized that love of good food was a Basque birthright that extends to every meal–not just special occasions.

That certainly seems to be true. When we later met professional guide Ana Intxausti Gardeki, she took us to the San Sebastian market and told us all about the various kinds of fish available. (She had worked for a seafood broker before changing careers.) She even gave us a recipe for calamari that she makes at home. It’s a Basque home cooking standard that even superchef Martín Berasategui serves in his restaurants. Ana calls it “Chipirones encebollados,” or “calamari with onions.”

CHIPIRONES ENCEBOLLADOS

Serves 4

Ingredients
4 tablespoons of olive oil, divided
8 spring onions, sliced (shallots will also do)
1 cayenne pepper, crumbled
2 cloves of garlic, minced
32 whole squid, cleaned and cut into tentacles and rings (about 2 lb.)
brandy or Armagnac
1/2 cup of dry white wine
salt to taste

Directions

1. In a sauce pan, mix 2 tablespoons olive oil, onion, cayenne, garlic, and a pinch of salt. Set heat on lowest setting and cover pan. Cook very slowly until the onion becomes golden brown, about 90 minutes.

2. Set a large sauté pan over strong flame and add remaining olive oil. When is it hot, add squid and sauté quickly, about 2 minutes. Add a splash of brandy and set it afire, turning pan to deglaze. Do not crowd the pan. Cook squid in 3 or 4 bunches if necessary. Pour the calamari and any remaining liquid into the onion.

3. Add white wine to the pan of squid and onions. Simmer for 30 minutes. Season with salt before serving.

Chef Alceo Rapa is not just a great cook — he’s a terrific showman. When David had Rapa’s seafood risotto with Gruppo Ristoratori Italiani at Ristorante da Alceo in Pesaro (Le Marche) last spring, Rapa set off a bottle of spumante as if it were a fountain. The risotto used delectable shrimp from the cold waters seven miles out in the Adriatic along with Grand Marnier, parsley, fish stock, and blood orange juice. At the finish, Rapa added a teaspoon of sugar to the just-opened bottle of sparkling wine, and voila! Happy New Year!

Ristorante da Alceo, Strada Panoramica Ardizio, 119/121 – 61122 Pesaro, Italia. Tel: +39 0721-51360, www.ristorantealceo.it.

Nothing says Christmas in Basque country like a nice plate of angulas, i.e., baby eels, also known as elvers, glass eels, or ”spaghetti with eyes.” Threatened by overfishing and by Asian buyers who purchase the live elvers to raise on fish farms, angulas nonetheless remain a touchstone of Basque traditional cuisine. They are, however, expensive. We have a piece in the December 2011 Robb Report about fishing for and preparing angulas. We should note that we had a lot of help to research this story, especially from chef Fernando Canales of Etxanobe in Bilbao, eel fisherman and all-around outdoorsman and gourmand Txetxu Oliver, and chefs Juan Marí and Elena Arzak, who were good enough to sit down and talk with us at Restaurante Arzak about angulas in Basque tradition. You can find the whole piece on our Sample Articles page. Watch for coming posts that share some recipes from Basque home cooking.

We refer you to the Robb Report article for the details on angulas, but wanted to give readers a peek at some of the photos that didn’t run with the magazine story. First up is a shot of Fernando with his angulas salad in the kitchen at Etxanobe.

And then there’s the stunning version of angulas served at Restaurante Arzak in San Sebastian. The Arzaks plate the eels on a buckwheat toast and add a seaweed salad. The whole thing is served on a plate of wet black slate.

And, finally, here is Juan Marí Arzak himself cooking the angulas over a wood fire in a perforated frying pan as fellow chef (and daughter) Elena Arzak looks on.

Of all the guidebook series we work on, the research for the Food Lovers’ series may be the most fun. Our most recent published volume was on Montreal, but we didn’t spend all our time eating foie gras or dining at innovative contemporary restaurants.

We’re always on the lookout for good values, and we found 10 great lunches for about $10 where we could tap into various strains of Montreal culture. We recently published that roundup in the Boston Globe. You’ll find the results as a pair of PDFs on our Sample Articles page.

We are just about finished writing our next volume, Food Lovers’ Guide to Vermont & New Hampshire, and have a refrigerator full of artisanal cheese, cured pork products, and storage vegetables that we brought back to Cambridge from our research forays. Inspired by the great grilled cheese sandwich we had at Maison Cheddar in Montreal’s Outremont neighborhood (it’s in the Boston Globe article), we took some of that provender to improvise a New England locavore grilled cheese lunch.

The sharp cheddar cheese came from Vermont, a fig-walnut jam spread came from Stonewall Kitchen in Maine, and a few slices of Fox Smoke House bacon hailed from the woods of New Hampshire. We put those ingredients between a couple of slices of Nashoba Brook Bakery’s ”Harvest” bread, a sourdough studded with nuts, fruits, and candied ginger. (Nashoba Brook is in West Concord, Massachusetts.) As a counterpoint, we grated some Vermont carrots, added some golden raisins, and tossed them with a little cider vinegar, salt, a pinch of sugar, and a few drops of milk to make a Montreal-style carrot salad. Not bad. It succeeded in bring a taste of travel back home.

Superchef Gordon Ramsay has 19 restaurants in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Qatar, and the U.S., but only one in Ireland. It’s at the plush Ritz-Carlton Powerscourt outside Dublin, where I visited in the spring when Ramsay was on hand to mark the restaurant’s re-launch.

I have to admit I didn’t know what to expect from the flamboyant TV personality. But Ramsay was on his best behavior and only let an occasional profanity slip, and always with a wink. Perhaps the gracious setting had a mellowing effect, or perhaps the broadcast persona is just that. At any rate, the Powerscourt Estate is truly magical. It was established in 1169 as one of the grand medieval properties forming a defensive ring around Dublin. (See ”The Eyes Have It” in this fall’s Fashion Forum.) The woodlands seem positively Druidic. The 200-room resort, which opened in 2007, was the most expensive hotel project in the history of Ireland, and it reflects the Georgian architecture of the estate’s manor house. Current general manager Massimiliano Zanardi lives for good food and wine and the chance to share both. It is no coincidence that not long after Max arrived, the Gordon Ramsay restaurant changed its focus from formal dining on classical cuisine to relaxed dining on farm-to-fork dishes. Hence the re-launch in May.

Like many of the Gordon Ramsay Holdings operations, the menu is developed by Ramsay and implemented by a chef de cuisine–in this case a super-talented Peter Byrne, whose previous gig lasted more than seven years at Chapter One, the Michelin-starred restaurant at the Dublin Writers Museum. Byrne knows the farmers and the shepherds and the foragers of the County Wicklow countryside. Thus the restaurant serves lamb raised less than 20 minutes from the hotel, the vegetables come from an organic farm a 10-minute walk away, and some herbs and mushrooms are foraged on the Powerscourt estate itself.

”I’m from Dublin,” Byrne told me, ”born and raised on the flavors of the Republic. My main goal is to keep the food fairly simple and focus on the natural flavors.” It’s a radical idea in a country that has always had wonderful bounty and seemed intent on spoiling it by overcooking or over-fancying the dishes.

Veteran showman that he is, Ramsay couldn’t resist giving some cooking lessons for the attendees at the re-launch dinner. He certainly made it all seem a lot easier than on an episode of Hell’s Kitchen. I was particularly taken with the ease–and great taste–of his simple dish of scallops with spring vegetables. The West Cork sea scallops were so big and meaty that he cut them in half so they would cook in the 3 1/2 to 4 minutes required for a normal sea scallop.

Here’s my adaptation of that recipe:

SCALLOPS À LA GORDON RAMSAY

Serves 2 as an appetizer or lunch

This is adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe for West Cork scallops that he prepared for the re-launch of Gordon Ramsay at Powerscourt earlier this year. He used fresh spring peas and mushrooms, but with a few substitutions, I found that I can make the dish all year. I use frozen baby peas, for example, and dried morel mushrooms rehydrated in vegetable stock. Ramsay serves the dish with broad beans, but baby limas are a good North American substitute. Pea tendrils, fortunately, are available year-round, though watercress makes a fine substitute.

Pea purée
1 tsp butter
2 scallions, sliced thin
1 cup tender young peas
vegetable stock

To make the pea purée, sweat scallions in butter until soft, add peas, a little vegetable stock and simmer until the vegetables are tender (3-4 minutes). Purée in a blender until smooth, then set aside and keep warm.

Vegetables
1 cup baby lima beans
vegetable stock
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup morel mushrooms
1 teaspoon butter
1 cup pea tendrils

Steam baby limas in vegetable stock until tender (5-7 minutes). Set aside and keep warm.

Heat oil in small sauté pan. Add morels and sauté a few minutes. Add butter and a little vegetable stock to keep moist. Set aside and keep warm.

Scallops
10 scallops (for two plates)
salt and white pepper
vegetable oil
butter

Season the scallops on both sides with salt and white pepper. Place a non-stick pan on medium high heat. Once hot, add 1 teaspoon of oil and the scallops. Let the scallops caramelize for a couple of minutes on the first side. Turn them over, add a knob of butter to the pan and finish cooking the scallops in the butter foam for 1-2 minutes.

To assemble the dish, place a spoon of pea purée in the middle of the plate, place the scallops, lima beans, and morels around and garnish with the pea shoots.

When we started this blog about two years ago, we never dreamed that we would be singing the praises of airport food. But that was before Pappasito’s Cantina became the only bright spot in a very trying day at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport.

We were en route from Boston to Albuquerque when our early morning connecting flight in Dallas was canceled without explanation. The next flight wasn’t until late in the day and we were resigned to a long, boring wait and generic fast food. We were debating the merits of pre-made sandwiches, bagels, yogurt smoothies, and McBurger when we stumbled on Pappasito’s in Terminal A. The long bar looked so inviting that we grabbed a couple of stools, perused the Tex-Mex menu and settled on tamales filled with chicken breast meat and topped with green chile. Bulging out of their corn husk wrappers, they were the real deal. The tamal was redolent of corn and lime, the chicken was intense, and the green chile was just the right balance of hot and sweet.

Even though we had ordered one of the more modest options on the menu, the servers kept the tortilla chips and spicy red salsa coming, along with refills on ice tea. (No free refills on the Dos Equis drafts, alas.) But a good meal in convivial surroundings certainly lifted our spirits.

It turns out that Pappasito’s is a popular local chain, first started in 1983, so we’d had a taste of border town cooking after all. And it made us think that there may be local foods with character lurking in other airports as well. We resolve to keep an eye out–and we will let you know when we find them.

The Boston Globe recently published our abbreviated tale of taking a cooking class with the wonderful Dutch and Moroccan folks of Souk Cuisine in Marrakech. You can find the piece on our Sample Articles page. It was some of the best cooking instruction we have experienced because it enabled us to get intimately involved in the life and rhythm of the city and its inhabitants.

Even if your goal is to bargain your way through the souks (Pat was told she bargained like a Berber), it is hard not to work up an appetite when you keep encountering vendors like the back-street fruit man (above) or the citrus juice truck that stands on the main square, Jemaa El Fna. Everywhere you look, there is food. And if you don’t see it, then you are bound to smell it. Even before the charcoal braziers come out in the evening, the sweet scent of freshly bruised mint tempers the acrid dust of city. Marakshi drink an enormous amount of mint tea, which could explain why fresh mint is sold not by the bag, but by the armload.

Whenever we go someplace for a week or more, we often try to rent an apartment with cooking facilities, but the riad system in Marrakech was too enticing to pass up. Fortunately, Souk Cuisine filled the gap for us. As we describe in the Globe article, we made our reservation, met our guide in Jemaa El Fna, and set off through the markets with a grocery list, shopping bags, and a modest number of dirhams. With the aid of our guide, we selected ingredients and shopped for a meal. Not only did we dicker with the herb vendors, like this gentleman with fresh coriander, we also visited one of the city’s better spice shops for all the essential seasonings.

The hands-on instruction was first-rate, with a Souk Cuisine guide explaining in English (they also teach in French, Arabic, and Dutch) while Moroccan women demonstrated and literally held our hands to make sure we understood the techniques. We were taking the class, as it turned out, with a young Dutch couple and a Dutch family of mother, father, and three grown children. Everyone pitched in. Here you can see Anne-Mieki Móll mixing up the Moroccan tomato salad (see recipe below).

Sitting down to eat the fruits of our labors after an hour of shopping and a couple of hours of cooking might have been the greatest satisfaction of all. In a nod to western (i.e., non-Islamic) taste, Souk Cuisine even pops a few bottles of cold Moroccan rosé from the Atlas Mountains. As good as the meal was, we could not resist the lure of the open-air restaurants that set up every evening on Jemaa El Fna (below).

Souk Cuisine, Zniquat Rahba, Derb Tahtah 5, Medina, Marrakech, Morocco; 011-212-673-804-955; www.soukcuisine.com. Classes held daily, reservation required, 45 euros (about $62US) per person.

MOROCCAN SALADS

As we described in the Globe article, we were in charge of making couscous for the group. But Moroccan cuisine includes a number of salads that use the wonderful fresh local vegetables and herbs. They are less exercises in cooking than in cutting, which made them perfect for the cardiovascular surgeon in our group. Here are Souk Cuisine’s recipes for three of our favorites that we make at home. Note that most measurements are by weight rather than volume.

Moroccan tomato salad

Ingredients
2 pounds tomatoes
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh coriander, chopped
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions
Peel the tomatoes, cut in half and remove the seeds. Cut the tomatoes into fine dice. Mix all ingredients and then add the vinegar and olive oil.

—

Zucchini salad
Ingredients
1 pound small zucchini
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1/2 tablespoon fresh coriander (cilantro), finely chopped
1/2 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions
Remove the ends of the zucchini. Cut in half lengthways. Place zucchini and unpeeled garlic cloves in pot and cover with salted water. Bring to a boil and simmer until tender. Drain the zucchini. Peel boiled garlic and mix with spices, herbs, olive oil and vinegar. Pour marinade over cooled zucchini and arrange on platter.

—

Carrot salad with almonds and raisins
Ingredients
2 pounds carrots
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
4 ounces raisins
4 ounces almonds, unpeeled
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cinnamon stick
6 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon orange flower water
2 tablespoons argan oil (walnut oil makes an acceptable substitute)

Directions
Peel the carrots and slice lengthways. Remove the inner core of the carrots and cut the remaining lengths in cubes. Boil carrots in salted water. Drain after 15 minutes and leave a small quantity of water in the pan. Place again on the stove over low heat. Add the remaining ingredients to carrots in pan. Simmer until carrots are well cooked. Serve the salad lukewarm or cold.

Every cook has a different way to cope with the end of tomato season. In June, Brian Aspell was lured away from the Equinox in Vermont to bring his brand of culinary passion to the Mountain View Grand in Whitefield, N.H. He was still getting his feet under him when we visited in August, but on very short notice he managed to whip together a chef’s tasting menu that swept us away. It was a harbinger of great things to come at this grande dame of the White Mountains. (The fall menus will be pure Aspell.) The opening salvo of the dinner was an amuse-bouche of a New England gazpacho. Aspell served our portions in tall shot glasses, but on a warm day we could eat a whole bowl for lunch. He was kind enough to give us the recipe, and while we haven’t had a chance yet to make it with our Costoluto Genovese tomatoes, we thought we should pass along the recipe for all those gardeners with a great harvest.

CHILLED BRANDYWINE HEIRLOOM TOMATO AND CILANTRO COOLER

Ingredients

4 cups, seeded, diced, overripe Brandywine tomatoes
2 cups, seeded, peeled, diced cucumber
6 large shallots, minced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 serrano peppers, seeded and minced
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup minced scallions
3 cups V-8 juice
1/8 cup aged sherry wine vinegar (if necessary to adjust seasoning)
10 drops of Tabasco sauce
Juice of 2 limes
2 teaspoons finely chopped cilantro
1 1/2 cups uniformly diced yellow bell peppers
kosher salt and white pepper to taste

Directions

In a blender combine the tomato, cucumber, shallots, garlic, serrano peppers, olive oil, scallions, V-8 juice, sherry vinegar, Tabasco, and lime juice. Puree for 30 seconds or long enough to achieve a slightly thickened juice.

Fold in the cilantro, bell peppers and season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate overnight and serve.

From Brian Aspell, executive chef of the Mountain View Grand in Whitefield, N.H.

When we were working earlier this summer on a New England burger roundup for the Boston Globe (see Sample articles), we had no idea that we would discover a partial solution to the late-August glut of tomatoes. When we dug into the basic hamburger served at Christie’s in Newport–the casual restaurant of the luxurious Hotel and Marina Forty 1º North–we just knew that chef Kim Lambrechts’ tomato jam was the perfect complement to the rich beef burger. With a little cajoling, we found out how it’s made.

TOMATO JAM

Chef Kim Lambrechts is the director of all food and beverage operations at Hotel and Marina Forty 1º North in Newport–including the casual restaurant, Christie’s. He serves this brilliant ketchup substitute on beef burgers. We find it captures summer in a jar. We pressure-can ours, but the jam is acidic enough to be preserved with the boiling-water method.

Makes 1 1/2 cups

Ingredients

5 large red vine-ripened tomatoes (about 2 1/2 lb.)
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
1 tablespoon chopped shallot
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
1 sprig of fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Place the tomatoes in boiling water for 15 seconds; remove them quickly and place in bath of ice water. Once they have cooled, remove the core and skins and chop flesh roughly.

2. Heat sauté pan over medium flame. Add olive oil, shallot & ginger, and sauté for a few minutes until shallots are soft.

3. Add remainder of ingredients. Bring to a simmer and cook until liquid is largely evaporated, yielding a consistency like kechup. Let cool and reserve for use.

When we first tasted this at Cayman Cookout on Grand Cayman Island in the middle of January, it was hard to think about watermelon. But José Andrés was thinking nothing but—demonstrating eight recipes for watermelon in an hour-long session. Andrés is perhaps the best ambassador of Spanish cooking to America. His Washington, D.C., restaurants include Jaleo, Zaytinya, Oyamel, Café Atlantico, and minibar by José Andrés. His grand Bazaar at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills has taken Los Angeles by storm.

We always think of watermelon as the most juvenile of summer fruits, but José showed just how sophisticated it can be. The preparation that stuck with us was his version of bistec de sandia, or watermelon steak. As every calorie-counter knows, watermelon is actually light and insubstantial (and low in calories), but grilled melon seems hearty enough to proudly wear the Spanish title bistec. The recipe depends on having wonderfully ripe watermelon and equally ripe heirloom tomatoes.

We’ve made a few departures from José’s original recipe. On Grand Cayman, he dressed the plate with microgreens. In the height of watermelon and tomato season here in New England, it’s too hot for tender greens to survive in our garden. So we use a chiffonade of Batavia lettuce, one of the few varieties that holds in the heat. José also cut his watermelon slices into palm-sized tournedos–almost like a filet mignon. Since there are just two of us and the best local watermelons are small, round ”icebox” varieties bred for New England gardens, we like to take two cross-section slices out of the middle of the melon. That way each ”steak” tends to fill a 10-inch luncheon plate.

GRILLED WATERMELON STEAK WITH TOMATO SALSA

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 ripe heirloom tomatoes
pinch sea salt
2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
2 teaspoons Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
2 cross-section slices of watermelon, 2 inches thick
Spanish olive oil to coat pan
3 leaves Batavia or Romaine lettuce, cut in fine chiffonade
1/4 cup chopped pistachios
2 pinches of Maldon or other finishing salt

Directions

1. Dip tomatoes in boiling water for 10 seconds. Remove, peel, and core. Cut tomatoes into 1/2-inch dice and toss with sea salt, sherry vinegar, and 2 teaspoons olive oil. Reserve.

2. Trim green skin from watermelon slices but leave about half the white rind intact. (It helps to keep the grilled steaks from falling apart.)

3. Grease grill or large skillet with olive oil and heat until it barely begins to smoke. Add one slice of watermelon and grill until lightly caramelized, about two minutes. Turn over and grill other side. Repeat for second slice.

4. Put slice of grilled melon on plate and spoon on tomato mixture. Place lettuce chiffonade on side. Sprinkle melon with chopped pistachios and a little finishing salt.