Olive Me

Although “cookies” have recently appeared in a few modern-chic pastry shops in Barcelona and Madrid, there is not really any equivalent of the American Christmas cookie tradition in Spain. For one thing, let’s face it: cookies are lumpy, loving-hands-from-home things and Spaniards are uptight about that kind of homeliness. They prefer to entrust their sweet endings to fancy pastry shops where they can count on perfect discs of mousse-filled genoises with glossy-gold caramelized sugar glazes.

Besides, except in the cooler, cow-studded, mountainous north, people just don’t have a lot of butter lying around the house here. What they do have is manteca. Lard. Yes, from pigs.

My ex was Andalusian, so even though we lived in Barcelona, his mother always laid in a supply of mantecados – a crumbly shortbread made with lard and ground almonds — for Christmas. Polvorones too:  they’re a more nutty, less floury formulation of the mantecado. They came from Estepa, delivered by visiting Sevillano friends. The story goes that mantecados were perfected some 150 years ago by a famously large woman known as “La Colchona” (translation: “The Mattress”) who baked them for her husband to sell along his pony express-style transport route from Estepa to Córdoba. Nuns in Southern Spain still crank out tons of these sandy sweets for the holidays (keeping cloistered, perhaps, for fear of nicknames).

Mantecados come individually wrapped in crinkly thin paper and dusted with powdered sugar. When you unwrap them you get only the faintest whiff of almond or cinnamon or lemon or anise seed — the classic sweet-enhancing flavors of Spain. You have to nibble carefully or the whole cookie just dissolves into a pile of crumbs in your hand. Joaquín always advocated squeezing the whole thing into a ball before unwrapping it, and felt it was crucial to pop it into his mouth all at once.

If you’re in Barcelona and missing Southern Spain’s mantecados, head for Caelum, a shop full of sweets supplied by convents and monasteries (C/ Palla 8 at the corner of Carrer del Pi, Tel:  93-302-69-93).

If you’re in the U.S., I know you’re tempted to slip on your wimple and start baking, but you’re probably afraid to go for the lard. So here’s my butter-based interpretation. This is an easy cookie of few ingredients, humble, crumbly-dry, not too sweet, meant to keep company with a good café solo or licor.

Cinnamon Almond Mantecados

Makes 30 cookies

3 oz. whole raw almonds (about 1/2 C)

5 Tbsp. confectioners’ sugar (plus 1/2 C for rolling the finished cookies)

1 tsp. cinnamon (or a Tbsp. or so anise liqueur, or a few drops lemon essence)

a fat pinch of salt

1/4 lb. (one stick) butter

Preheat oven to 350F. Put almonds on a baking sheet and toast them lightly, about 5 minutes, until they’re aromatic. Let them cool completely. I don’t bother to skin them; the ground skin makes the cookie more rustic.

Whirl almonds, the 5 Tbsp. confectioners’ sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a food processor. Process until almonds are finely ground. Add the butter and pulse the processor until the dough holds together.

(At this point I like to take the blade out of the processor, clean it, and get it put away somewhere safe. That way you can work right out of the processor bowl without losing any fingers.)

Gently roll dough in your hand to make small balls about 1-inch in diameter (or 1/2 oz each). Place on cookie sheet — they can all go on one sheet, they do not spread much. Using the bottom of a glass dipped in confectioners’ sugar to prevent the dough from sticking, squash each ball slightly, leaving the rounds quite thick.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes. They should be firming up a bit but not browning at all. Cool a few minutes on the cookie sheet, then remove and cool a bit more on a rack. Roll in the remaining 1/2 C confectioners’ sugar while they’re still a little warm and continue to cool before eating. Or storing. If you’re feeling saintly wrap them in little waxed paper squares.

Forget about butter and jam on your morning toast (and maybe all that pre-dinner double-dipping of bread in olive oil, too). The Catalans have a better idea: pa amb tomàquet, bread with tomato.  Add a smidge of garlic, olive oil, and salt, plus a slice of protein — sheep’s milk cheese or dry cured ham — and you’ve got a complete breakfast.

Pa amb tomàquet is like biscuits and gravy:  a perfect pairing that got its start down on the farm, but has since made its way to big city tables.  Here in the New World it is found on “tapas” menus and recipe pages described as a Catalan specialty but given a new name based on a translation, inexplicably, not into English but into Spanish:  “Pan con Tomate.”  Whatever you call it, it is just about the most scrumptious thing you can do with a late summer tomato.  And there’s nothing to it.  Just don’t go about it the way Melissa Clark did in the New York Times a couple of years ago:  Rubbing the toast with tomato after drizzling on the olive oil will not do — you need the crusty toasty surface to act as a sort of grater for grabbing the garlic and the tomato and you want the olive oil to dress the top juicily.  Here’s the proper order of business:

Oh, wait.  Did I say there’s nothing to it?  There is one challenge to getting this “recipe” right.  It’s the ingredients.  With something this simple, the flavor of each element matters exquisitely.  The bread should be real bread, a rustic round or a ciabatta, substantial, crusty, hole-y.  The salt should be sea salt or kosher salt with a nice crunchy texture, but not that great big coarse stuff.  And the tomatoes should be the small, juicy, thin-skinned kind — this year, after a summer without tomatoes, the fall ones here seem just perfect.  In Catalunya when the last late fall tomatoes ripen, people pull the whole plant out of the ground and hang it upside down in a cool, dark pantry or attic.  And here’s my kind of transubstantiation:  The tomatoes last deep into winter this way, their flavors concentrating to perfection.

Once you’ve gathered these few good ingredients, here’s what you do:

Pa amb Tomàquet

Serves 4

For four people, toast four big slabs of bread or eight smaller pieces.  If you happen to be grilling, toast your bread on the grill, but the oven or broiler or ordinary toaster will do.  Do both sides, why not?  Meanwhile, cut a couple of garlic cloves in half crosswise, and do the same to four ripe little tomatoes.  Have your pitcher of olive oil and bowl of salt at the ready.  Let people gather around and do up their own:  first rub the hot toasts lightly with the flat side of the garlic — don’t be compelled to use the whole piece, a little goes a long way; next rub the tomato halves onto the toast, gently squeezing so the pulp mashes onto the toast  — do be compelled to use lots in this case; then drizzle with olive oil; sprinkle with salt.

Pa amb Tomàquet

A fancier version

Here’s a tidy make-ahead version that works well for a big party or one that doesn’t invite the do-it-yourself scene described above.  To prep the tomatoes ahead of time, I use a great Catalan cooking trick:  halve them and grate the pulp — yes, just press the halves, pulp side down, along the big holes of a plain old grater, catching the juice and pulp in a bowl.  Just before serving, cut a ciabatta in half crosswise, expose its hole-y bellies to the grill or toaster, and when it’s toasty, scrape on the garlic, lightly.  Now you can spoon on the tomato neatly and quickly, drizzle the whole show with oil, sprinkle with salt, whack into pieces like a pizza, and bring the whole thing to the table on a platter.

It’s August and I keep thinking about cold gazpacho.  I picture myself gulping it under the shade of a fig tree.  But I’m stuck in New York City right now, and, at least down here below penthouse level, we don’t have many fig trees.  And what’s worse this year:  we don’t have tomatoes; there’s a tomato blight on.  For once, rather than whining about what they’ve got that we ain’t got, I’m endeavoring to change my inner tune.  Today, borscht is my song.  This one goes out to my Spanish friends who do love beets, thank you very much, in their potato salad, and who have, after all, become suckers for foods with other-worldly looks, con un abrazo, desde Nueva York — toma ya, Ferrán: (more…)

“Oh, no, not me.  I don’t drink cocktails,” I said, as Xesca mixed up a pitcher of rebujito, her favorite summer potion.  “And especially not cocktails made of wine,” I added snootily to myself.  I mean, there’s a reason spritzers are so 1970s, and that reason is wine.  Yet here she was, a friend I truly admire, blithely swizzling up a bubbly drink with, of all things, a delicate Manzanilla. (more…)

As I pulled these creamy blocks out of my suitcase after my last trip to Spain, Ed was standing by as usual, salivating, and asking about how I had eluded the food-haters at U.S. Customs this time.  Then I broke it to him:  “It’s not cheese, it’s soap.”  (more…)

I’m working on creating a walking and eating route across northern Spain — the drizzly part of the country travel marketers call Green Spain.  I realize the pairing of drizzle and green may not sound all that exciting, but we’re going in September, close to grape harvest time, so we can take advantage of the fact that entire villages will be praying for good weather. (more…)

Those Michelin star folks are troublemakers, if you ask me. A couple of years ago, their meddling came between me and my favorite Barcelona lunch date:  Restaurant Saüc. It’s not that Saüc’s star wasn’t well-deserved, it’s just that it brought lots of new suitors to the table. Prices went up and our lunchtime thing had to end.

We have “La Crisis” to thank for a recent e-mail from the restaurant, wooing with a 27 Euro prix fixe lunch special. The note also mentions a pumpkin salad, beef cheeks with wild mushrooms, almond and pear tart with sheeps’ milk ice cream.  You better believe I’ll go running back for more. (more…)

Everybody knows about the Napolitanos’ pizzas and the Provençals’ pissaladières.  The Catalans, however, seem to prefer to keep their cocas on the DL.  (Below, a pastry shop owner puts his sweet coca under wraps.)

Coca is a flatbread made in sweet and savory versions depending on the occasion and strewn with different toppings depending on the season or on where you are in Catalonia.  I love a savory coca de recapte, a Tarragona-leaning combination of roasted and peeled eggplant, red peppers, and onions found in bakeries all over Catalonia. “Recapte” means provisions, and in that spirit, a savory coca can be topped with whatever is on hand, but it is never slathered with tomato sauce nor draped with cheese.

It’s hard to find a bakery coca that’s as good as a homemade one.  Fortunately, they’re a cinch to throw together.  (more…)

Walking down Carrer Parlament in Barcelona’s Raval one day in June, I came across a place that brought back sweet memories of summers in that city. The neighborhood has become trendy, but Horchatería Sirvent is still there, righteously unhip. (more…)

Step away from the red gazpacho. Red means canned tomatoes or tomato juice have gone into the hopper. Both lend a distinctly cooked flavor to a soup that is supposed to be all about fresh summer produce. Here’s the thing: Gazpacho’s true colors range from pink to orange to white, never red.

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If you thought the pimientos you ordered in New York or Madrid this winter were good, belly up for another round pronto. What you get, especially if you happen to be in Galicia, in the northwest corner of Spain, will put those wimpy winter peppers to shame. Midsummer is the season for the intensely flavorful, rarely spicy Pimiento de Padrón. (more…)

I have craved this salad off and on since my friend Juani’s mother from Granada made it for a winter picnic ten years ago. We set ourselves up in a clearing just above the town of Rupit (in the province of Barcelona, all cobblestones and 16th century stone houses built into steep rocky hills — worth a visit). It was Christmas day, so the air was cool but the sun was bright and somehow that combination of warmth and refreshment seemed perfectly expressed in what we were eating: juicy oranges, salty cod, tart green olives, a little heat from a red onion, a touch of richness from a hard boiled egg. (more…)

They say it’s spring but it’s cold out and my head is stuffed up and I’m convinced the only cure is the rosemary soup Inés Puigdevall makes at her beautiful casa rural, Mas Garganta, near Olot. I guarantee this soup will lift you out of almost any kind of slump. (more…)

Yesterday’s “One Pot” column in the New York Times featured cocido, Madrid’s classic stew of garbanzos simmered in a rich, hammy broth. The recipe is from Tía Pol, the Spanish restaurant in Chelsea which will reportedly have cocido on the menu through March. (more…)

Canalons are one of those rich comfort foods people tend get competitive about. Barcelonins spend a good part of the day after Christmas (when canalons are a tradition) discussing just what exactly makes their mothers’ nutmeg-scented ground pork and veal stuffed into pasta and browned under a layer of bechamel so “light.” I know this sounds Italian, but the cooks of Barcelona swear it is theirs. (more…)