NY Girl Eats World

Insatiable

An apology to my future husband: I’m going to make one irritating pregnant lady.

Relax. I’m not getting married yet. And I’m certainly not pregnant. But I’ve already experienced how powerful and strange exotic my cravings can be.

There’s been one particular craving smoldering in the back of my belly for longer than I’d like to admit. It’s almost embarrassing. Borderline obsessive, too. There’s actually a food that I’ve quietly longed for since the day I packed my bags and left Madrid – six years ago.

No, it’s not Iberico ham. I’ve kept that one at bay by chomping on imported cousins – non-Iberico serrano, Italian prosciutto, and the like. It’s not tortilla española, either. Although I haven’t mastered the Spanish egg-and-potato omelet-cake, I can make a pretty good frittata. See, for all my favorite dishes, I’ve been able to find at least a semi-adequate substitute. Though admittedly inferior to the originals, they’ve at least been able to douse the flame of longing. But there’s one food that has no substitute or second cousin.

OK, have I tortured you enough? Well, good! Now you know 1/100th of what I’ve been feeling.

So here it is: See those innocent green peppers in the pictures? That's it. Nothing more. They're called pimientos de Padrón -- or, peppers from Padrón, a damp, chilly town in northwestern Spain.

This may be a let-down for people familiar with these thumb-sized  vegetables. Because, well, that’s just what they are – rabbit food. Funny thing is that I don’t even like green peppers. The only way I’ll eat green bell peppers is if they’re sautéed (never raw! ew!) with onions or mixed with the sweeter red or orange kinds.

But Padrón peppers are different. They’re actually sweet. And when they’re properly cooked in olive oil then sprinkled with really fine sea salt, they’re smoky and irresistible. Occasionally – maybe one in every 10 – you'll find a hot one that can sear the surface of your tongue and light up the soft insides of your cheeks. But that’s the sport of eating these “innocent” peppers.

In Spain, pimientos de Padrón are commonplace bar food. My taste-memory brings me back to a dim, narrow tapas joint – maybe six tables and a beat-up bar – just off a grooved cobblestone street in Madrid. One hand cradling a water glass of inky-red vino, I use the other to pluck Padrón from a tiny ceramic dish in the center of the table. The peppers recline in a pool of honey-colored oil, their skins charred, wrinkled and blistered. I hold the stem on the other side of my clenched teeth and pull. A pile of frayed stems builds on my bread dish. Few of my friends are actually eating the Padrón with equal fervor. They’re going for the cheese and the olives, the shrimp in garlic-oil and the croquettes, instead.

Only a few farms in the U.S. actually grow Padrón. Naturally none of them are close to me. But I’d known for a while that I could get them through La Tienda, an online shop specializing in Spanish products. I don’t know what made me finally do it. The price had always been intimidating; at $14/pound and then added shipping costs, it wasn’t encouraging. But then something inside me snapped. As if someone had puffed up their cheeks and exhaled a mouthful of oxygen on my craving-flame; I had no choice: I HAD TO HAVE THEM.

NOW.

They arrived encased like Russian nesting dolls – first a cardboard box, then a Styrofoam cooler and finally a plastic container. I’d never watched anyone cook them in Spain so I went with my instincts. I washed the peppers – about 80 in a pound – and filled a saute pan with a generous amount of oil. In anticipation, I’d bought really good sea salt to grind over them just before serving. I put the flame on medium-high and started with a handful of peppers. I quickly learned that their skins are thin and tender. They soften quickly and char even faster. I turned down the flame and worked at a clip.

In no time I had a platter of Padrón that in Spain would’ve fed no less than ten groups of bar-hoppers. But I ate them all. No, I shared them with a friend. But together we polished off the platter in one sitting. In one 15-minute period they were gone – vaporized into another taste-memory. But what a glorious 15 minutes! A desire that had lain dormant for six years suddenly satisfied in one feverish feeding frenzy.

I turned to Phil and asked him if they were as good as I had made them out to be. He smiled, nodded enthusiastically, and assured me they were. Of course the reason I’d asked him was to check if I was crazy –  to gauge whether years of longing for Spain had reshaped the memory of Padrón into something that it really wasn’t.

As I gnashed my last pepper I began to understand what this whole craving had been about. Yes, I'd longed for the taste of Padrón, but also something deeper: a life in Spain as inaccessible to me now as those little green peppers.

Cooking Mexican with Little Miss Ecuador

Nelly rocks onto her toes when I slide the course disk of a white corn tortilla into a pan on the stovetop. "What's that?" she asks, her big brown eyes squinting quizzically.

"It's a torrrrtilla!" I say brightly, really milking the Spanish tongue roll. Nelly is Ecuadorian and I feel a ridiculous need to impress her with my accent, even though she's only 10 years old.

I press a spatula down on the oiled tortilla and it sizzles. I ask Nelly, "You don't know these?"

"Um, yeah," she says unconvincingly. "Yeah, I know them. What are you going to do with them?"

"Make them into chips that we'll eat with guacamole."

"Guacamole?" she says, wrinkling her nose the way she does when she thinks she doesn't like something.

I grab a black avocado from a bowl on the counter and put the reptile fruit into her hands so she can feel the bumpy, rubbery skin. "It's made of mashed avocado and chopped tomato," I explain.

"Oh, I know these!" she says enthusiastically. "We eat these with salt."

Nelly often uses the royal we, as though she's the ambassador of Ecuador.

"You eat everything with salt," I tease her.

Nelly is the only child I know who is content to eat an entire plate of cherry tomatoes coated in salt. This and dinosaur chicken nuggets with lots of ketchup were about the only meals my mother was able to get her to eat when she babysat Nelly.

I begin to make the guacamole. I slide a knife along the pit of each fruit, twist the two halves free and scoop out the flesh. Nelly tells me that's how her mother does it, only she cuts the avocado into squares. I take a serving fork to it, mashing, stabbing and twisting the buttery green flesh inside a large bowl. When I tell Nelly I may put onion in the guacamole, she says she won't eat anything with onion.

"I won't put a lot in," I assure her. "You'll be able to eat around it."

"No, I can't eat anything that even touches onion," she insists, wrinkling her nose again. "I hate it."

I leave out the onion.

   Nelly follows me to the oven. I peek in on wedges of beefsteak tomato and red onion charring beneath the broiler. I shove my hand into an oven mitt and use the other to hold my shadow back so I can slide the hot pan out safely. I leave the vegetables to cool on the counter and prepare the rest of the ingredients for a roasted tomato and chipotle salsa.

"What's that?" Nelly asks as I pop the top off a small can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.

"It's a kind of smoky hot pepper." I pull one from the can with a spoon, lay it on the cutting board and lick the spoon before tossing it in the sink. "They're spicy," I warn her.

"I don't like spicy things," Nelly tells me.

I know this and recall a time when she shocked my mother by declaring she didn't eat chili. "You don't like chili?" my mother had said in total disbelief. Boundaries within Central and South America did not exist for my mother at that time. Everyone was Mexican until she got to know Nelly.

I put the cooled tomatoes and onion into the blender and Nelly drags the footstool over so she can peer into the glass pitcher. "Ohhh," she says delightedly. "The onion looks like a flower."

I take a look and impressively she's right. It reminds me of a purple orchid.

The chipotle pepper goes in next and a bunch of cilantro. Nelly tells me she knows this stuff and slips into Spanish: "Es una hierba."

I commend her knowledge and set the blender whirling.

When we finally sit down to eat, Nelly won't even touch the soft corn tacos stuffed with chunks of tilapia, shredded bibb lettuce, diced mango, a smear of guacamole and a healthy squeeze of lime. She doesn't try the salsa either. But she nearly devours an entire soup bowl of guacamole, which she shovels with nearly mechanical continuity using the home-baked chips. It may be a Mexican dish but as far as Nelly is concerned it has two of her favorite "Ecuadorian" ingredients: tomatoes and salt.

Favarito

If there’s any way to eat your broad beans, it’s this way.

Phil, a self-professed lima bean hater, was skeptical when he came into the kitchen and peered down at the cutting board. (Yes, he “peered down” – he’s 6’1” and incidentally I’m 5’2.”) Popped from their long velvety green pods, fava beans (another name for broad bean) look a lot like lima beans.

I assured him he’d like the favas, pointing to the finely diced onion and prosciutto melting in a saute pan. Everything tastes better with prosciutto and onion. He went away satisfied.

I’d never cooked fresh fava beans before. I saw them in the grocery store and couldn’t resist the preternaturally large pods. Picking one up, it weighed heavy in my hand and seemed to be covered in short downy fur. I bought two handfuls.

I kept them in my refrigerator for a few days as I plotted their fate. I thought of making an Asturian bean stew called fabada. But I knew I hadn’t bought enough beans for that. Also, it’s a slow-cooking stew, so dried beans are probably best. Nevertheless, I consulted Teresa Barrenechea’s cookbook The Cuisines of Spain, a gorgeous collection of authentic recipes and photographs of food and life in Spain. That’s when I found her recipe for habas rondeñas – fava beans with jamon serrano and hard boiled egg – which she learned to make in Ronda, an Andalusian town perched on a rocky plateau that inspired Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke to name it “the dreamed-of city.”

The recipe calls for jamon serrano, an addictive dry-cured Spanish ham. However I had prosciutto on hand and it turned out to be a successful substitute. I also left out the hard-boiled eggs (see recipe below).

Preparing the fava beans is a two-step process: First, you shell the beans and blanch them, and then you peel the milky skins off each individual bean. It’s time-consuming. But on a lazy Sunday, with a warm breeze rustling the sheer kitchen curtains, I didn’t mind losing myself in the monotony of the process. And Phil made sure to puncture the time now and again with a slurp in my ear and a Hannibal Lecter line.

Once the beans were prepped, I finished them in the saute pan with the onion and ham. The result was something so irresistible I had to fight Phil for a few spoonfuls. Next time, I’ll definitely buy more beans.

Habas Rondeñas
Recipe from The Cuisines of Spain, by Teresa Barrenechea.

• 2 tsp salt
• 3 lbs fresh fava beans in the shell
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 (1/4-inch-thick) slice jamon serrano or other dry-cured ham, about 3 oz., finely diced
• 3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
• 1 Tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Fill a saucepan with water and bring to a boil. Add the salt and the beans and boil for 15 minutes. Drain, reserving one cup of the cooking water. Peel the fresh beans to uncover their sparkling green color.

In a saute pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and saute, stirring frequently, for about 10 minutes, or until the onion is soft and lightly caramelized. Add the jamon serrano and saute for two minutes, or until its fat turns shiny. Add the beans and the reserved cooking liquid, cover, decrease the heat to medium-low, and cook for 15 minutes, or until the beans are tender.

Cut each egg lengthwise into eight wedges, or chop the eggs coarsely. Add the eggs to the beans and mix well. Serve hot, garnished with the parsley.

One Love

If your mother ever told you that you’d meet The One as soon as you stopped looking for him, she was right. It happened to me.

I was in a small grocery store on the Amalfi Coast at the end of a hot and sticky June. I had my nose in a refrigerated case where there were hunks of cheese, containers of yogurt and bottles of milk.

“What do you need?” a man’s voice asked with a syrupy, seductive Italian accent. I’d noticed him when I walked in: thick black hair, radiant blue eyes, a muscular frame and a naughty smile.

Parmigiano, I told him, without looking away.

I heard the man leave his post from behind the cash register, then his light breathing as he peered down over my left shoulder. “Here,” he said gently, choosing a wedge of white cheese and putting it in my hand. “This will work.”

That’s how I met my One: the one and only cheese I could never part with. Grana Padano, I take you, to have and to hold, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

To understand the significance of this declaration you have to understand that I love cheese. I mean: I. Love. Cheese. Bring me to a cheese shop and put me in front of the display case, I will be happy to stand there with my nose pressed against the glass, reading the descriptions of origin and taste, imagining what a piece of each might taste like as it melted into creaminess on my tongue. With an imagination like mine, this is nearly as pleasurable as the act of eating.

Yet, if it came down to it, and I could afford to have only one cheese in my refrigerator, I would give up my triple cream, my goat cheese and, sigh, my artisan reserve manchego for the humble Grana Padano.

It’s true; Grana may not know how to tango or how to play a Chopin concerto. But it’s satisfying, dependable and comforting. It will never let you down. After all, let's be real: Even though we all fantasize about being with a mysterious, spontaneous romantic One, the One we end up with for life is usually a sturdy Grana Padano.

Grana has the dry, hard flaky texture of really good Parmigiano-Reggiano but with a lower tone of sweetness. Grana’s taste is a little earthier, a little nuttier. With each bite you are reminded that this food is made from the milk of grass-grazing cows. It yields to the teeth with several crystalline pops and then dissolves into a creamy, slightly tangy, coating on the tongue.

Grana Padano is a staple in many Italian homes. It was created by 12th-century monks living on the Paduan Plain, a wild stretch of the Po Valley in Lower Lombardy that they tilled and tamed. Today its production is controlled and protected. So when you go to purchase the cheese look for stickers that say “Denominazione di Origine Protetta” (Protected Des- ignation of Origin, D.O.P.) or “Indicazione Geografica Protetta” (Protected Geo- graphical Indication, I.G.P), which authenticate its production.

Grana Padano is a good substitute – often, I think, a better substitute – for Parmigiano. It can be grated over pasta and into soups and sauces. But my favorite way to eat it is as a simple snack with sweet slices of juicy pear. I also use the combination in my go-to appetizer for every occasion: slices of Grana melted over a thin crostini and topped with roasted pears and a heavy sprinkling of freshly ground pepper. It’s sophisticated simplicity.

My source for Grana Padano Stravecchio (meaning Grana that has aged 15-20 months) is Tutto Italiano, a Citarella outpost in East Hampton. The first time I visited the shop I found myself once again with my nose in a refrigerator case. This time Pasquale, a native Neapolitan, came to assist me. I showed him a wedge of Grana and told him I had found what I was looking for. His eyes lit up and he pulled me over to the fresh fruit aisle.

“I have all these people who come in and ask me what they can do with this,” he said, holding my wedge of cheese. “I tell them all you need is a few pears and a bottle of wine.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell Pasquale that I’d already discovered this perfect pairing. His passion for Grana Padano was a mirror to my own, and I let him gush until his heart was content.

Crostini with Grana Padano and Roasted Pears

Makes approx. 24 appetizers.

• 1 loaf of French bread or the equivalent
• 2 large Anjou pears, skins peeled
• 1 wedge of Grana Padano
• freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Slice each pear vertically against the core into four large pieces. Slice each piece vertically again, this time into quarter-inch slices. Place the slices in a single layer on a greased baking sheet and roast until soft and the bottoms are caramelized, about 15 minutes. Do not move them while they roast to ensure that they caramelize properly.

Meanwhile, cut the bread into 24 quarter-inch slices and lay them on another baking sheet. Then cut enough thin slices of Grana Padano to cover the surface of each crostini.

When the pears are done, cool them enough to handle. Assemble the crostini by topping each slice of bread first with cheese and then two pears in an X pattern. Broil the crostini on low until the cheese is melted and bubbling. Serve them immediately with a generous grinding of fresh pepper.