Tapas

M has said in the past that he strongly prefers the standard American "format" for a meal: a meat and two sides, with some kind of carb/starch, all served simultaneously of course. I could eat snacks for dinner all the time, I don't care. But I thought maybe he would go for something like a little tapas spread, where there is at least some meat involved and a variety of small things, still resulting in a balanced meal. Tonight I tried that out with success.

 The nasty burnt-looking stuff on the bread is pesto. I'm realizing the consequences of too little lighting when you're taking pictures of food. The fritters look burnt too but they weren't. You better believe I yanked them out of the scary pot of 375 degree oil as soon as possible...

The Spanish tortilla we had tried before a couple of times, and I felt like it needed something more than Frank's (our favorite sauce for all things egg and/or cheese based). Little wonder, because it's made of four things: potato, egg, onion, and olive oil---all good flavors, but none of them has anything really interesting going on, not to mention the rather monochromatic color scheme. In the CI Best International cookbook, they suggest serving the tortilla with Romesco sauce, a strange (to me) assortment of ingredients including roasted red peppers, bread, almonds, and sherry vinegar. I mixed that up in the blender today, trusting the collective genius of CI, and it was just what we needed. I think I could eat this sauce on just about anything.

The salt cod fritters, also a CI recipe from the Spain/Portugal section of Best International Recipe, were the first thing I've ever deep-fried. I was so scared of starting a fire. I probably should have watched a how-to video first or something, just to get used to the violent reaction that occurs after something is lowered, however gently, into 3" of hot oil. At the risk of sounding indelicate, I truly almost wet my pants when I started putting the fritters in---I thought all the bubbling and foaming was going to rise right over the top of the pot and create all manner of calamity, like a fire. It didn't; the turmoil subsided after the first couple of minutes, when I got up the courage to stir as the recipe instructed (I thought surely any disturbance of the oil would start a fire---noticing a pattern?). Yet I survived six minutes of deep-frying, and it was 110% (just to be cliché) worth it. Light and crispy, and the salt cod tasted neither overtly salty nor like cod. Just like clean, fresh fish enveloped in glorious fried-ness. Thankfully since I am cheap and I needed 1 1/2 jugs of vegetable oil for this (normally you can strain and reuse frying oil, but not when it's been used for fish), we won't be indulging in these on a regular basis. Not to mention the whole pyrophobia thing.

In case anyone has trouble sourcing salt cod as I did, I hear the Dekalb Farmers Market has it, but I had to get mine at Whole Foods, kept (oddly) in the freezer section in a little wood box at $10/lb. For Whole Foods I reckon that's not bad. I still have another half pound for use next week, probably with a Daisy Martinez recipe, because I read through her cookbook and approximately 50% of the recipes call for salt cod (about 75% call for $$$ serrano ham). Slight exaggeration, but come on, Daisy, we're not all TV stars and doctor's wives. I think I should have gotten her previous cookbook if I wanted more homely Puerto Rican food. 

Pre-dinner we had a nice simple drink of 3 parts ginger ale to 1 part dry vermouth, with a little lemon peel at the bottom of the glass. Dessert was the lemon ice cream I made earlier this week from Lebovitz's book, with Delicje cookies (the Polish version of Jaffa "biscuits:" spongey fruit-filled cookies dipped in chocolate). And we are now out of ice cream, which is a sad place to be facing yet another day in the upper 70s...come back, February!