Wrinkled potatoes with mojo verde

When we ate at The Bazaar by Jose Andres, I did have one rule. I didn’t want to order anything on the menu that was also featured in his cookbooks. I decided I would rather make those dishes at home. The night we were there, one of the more popular menu items was wrinkled potatoes with green mojo, which also happens to be in his Made in Spain cookbook.

This is actually a very simple recipe – potatoes are cooked in highly salted water until tender. After they’re cooked through, the water is poured off and a thin layer of salt crystallizes on the outside of the potatoes. They’re called wrinkled potatoes because the skins of the potatoes get wrinkled during the cooking process. The potatoes are served with a brightly flavored sauce of cilantro, garlic and olive oil.

The recipe in the book says that you can use any small potatoes. At the restaurant, it looked like they were using small fingerling potatoes, so I went with some great fingerlings that I picked up at the farmer’s market.

The measurements in this recipe are a little shocking. Almost a cup of salt for one pound of potatoes? I’m pretty daring, but even I was a bit nervous about dumping that much salt into the pot. I decided to throw caution to the wind, and it worked out just fine. The potatoes came out with a very thin layer of salt on them, which was the perfect amount. The cooking process makes the potatoes very creamy, and the green mojo made for a great dipping sauce.

Wrinkled potatoes with mojo verde

Serves 3-4

Adapted from Made in Spain

For the potatoes:

1 lb fingerling or other small potatoes

3/4 cup kosher salt

For the mojo verde:

1 small clove of garlic, crushed

1 cup packed cilantro leaves

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp sherry vinegar

salt to taste

Put the potatoes in a pot, cover with water and add the salt. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook the potatoes for about 25 minutes, or until tender.

Pour out most of the water, leaving just a thin layer in the bottom of the pot. Return the pot to the stovetop. Shake the pot over low heat until the salt covering the potatoes starts to crystallize, about 3-5 minutes. Take the pot off the heat and cover the pot with a paper towel until the potato skins have wrinkled, about 10 minutes.

Put all of the ingredients for the mojo verde into a food processor. Pulse until a paste forms. Serve the potatoes with the mojo for dipping.

Peas and pea shoots with sausage

I have to admit, I got excited when I saw pea shoots at the farmer’s market. In my area, pea shoots are one of the first spring vegetables to show up, and I try to take advantage of their short season. The bunch I picked up this weekend was covered in purple flowers.

I’ve had my eye on this recipe from Jose Andres' Tapas cookbook for quite a while. Peas and pea shoots are cooked with leek, onion and a little bit of sausage and bacon to make a light and delicious dish. I served this as a main course, but you could also serve it as a side. The original recipe calls for butifarra, which is a type of Spanish pork sausage. I didn’t have time to seek out butifarra, so I went with a link of italian turkey sausage which worked well.

I made quite a few changes to the original recipe, but one change was unintentional. You see, the version in the book called for fresh mint. I went out to my garden, and painstakingly picked some tiny mint leaves to sprinkle over the top. I came back inside, set them on the kitchen counter and then promptly forgot about them. So, no mint in my version, but feel free to add it.

This was a really delicious meal – a wide variety of tastes and textures, and relatively healthy too. What more can you ask for?

Peas and pea shoots with sausage
Serves 2 as a main course
Adapted from Tapas

1/2 c white onion, finely chopped
1 leek, light green and white part only, finely chopped
2 slices of bacon, coarsely chopped
1 mild pork or turkey sausage, casing removed
1/4 c chicken stock
1 1/2 c fresh or frozen peas
1 1/2 c pea shoots
salt to taste

Heat a large saucepan over high heat. Add the bacon, reduce the heat to medium, and cook until browned and crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan, drain on paper towels. Reserve about 2 teaspoons of bacon fat in the pan, pour off the rest. Add the leek and onion to the pan, saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the sausage, break up into small pieces, and cook until the sausage is done. Pour the chicken broth into the pan and add the peas and pea shoots. Cook until the peas are done and the pea shoots have just wilted, about 3-5 minutes. Season to taste with salt.

Chocolate and olive oil pancakes

Now that I've eaten at The Bazaar, I'm even more motivated to cook from my Jose Andres cookbooks. I turned to my Made in Spain book for these chocolate and olive oil pancakes. Chocolate and olive oil may seem like an odd flavor combination, but it's actually pretty common in the Catalonia region of Spain. It's also common to see a third ingredient thrown into the mix: sea salt.

I've had olive oil gelato on a couple of occasions; it tastes much better than it sounds. In fact, a few years ago I had a dessert at Manresa that combined olive oil ice cream, chocolate mousse and flaky sea salt, so I knew what to expect with these pancakes.

This recipe is pretty simple. It's the same ingredients you'd find in any other buttermilk pancake recipe, with the addition of dark chocolate pieces and the substitution of olive oil for butter. I used half white and half whole wheat flour with great results.

The pancakes are cooked in a little olive oil and drizzled with honey instead of syrup. The recipe doesn't call for any sea salt, but I decided to sprinkle a little bit on some of the pancakes. I preferred the pancakes with the sea salt on top to those without the salt.

These are great pancakes - the chocolate adds richness, and the olive oil flavor is quite subtle.

Chocolate and olive oil pancakes
Adapted from Made in Spain
Serves 4

1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour (I think King Arthur's white whole wheat flour produces the best results. Alternatively, you could just use 1 3/4 cups of all purpose flour)
2 T granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 egg
1 and 1/2 cups buttermilk
4 T extra virgin olive oil, divided
1/3 cup chopped dark chocolate
Coarse sea salt such as Maldon for serving (optional)
Honey for serving

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Whisk in the egg, buttermilk and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, mix until the batter is mostly smooth (a few lumps are ok). Stir in the chocolate.

Heat the remaining olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Pour 1/4 cup of batter into the pan and cook until golden. Flip the pancake and cook until golden on the other side. Transfer the pancake to a serving plate. Repeat with the rest of the batter.

Serve the pancakes topped with honey and a light sprinkling of sea salt.

A weekend in LA - part 1

Only one more day for the BonBonBar giveaway! Be sure to enter if you haven't already.

Most of my extended family lives in Los Angeles , so we usually end up going there a few times a year. Each time we go, we try some new restaurants. I was really happy to hear that Jose Andres was opening an LA outpost, because I love his cookbooks and tv show. On Friday night we had dinner at The Bazaar by Jose Andres. The restaurant format is tapas, and the menu is split into two sections. The Rojo section of the menu focuses on tradition tapas fare. The Blanca section of the menu is modern tapas with a molecular gastronomy slant. We spotted Marcel from Top Chef hard at work in the kitchen.

I did all the ordering for the table, and tended to veer more heavily towards the Blanca section of the menu. Simply put, the meal was amazing, definitely one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten (French Laundry still holds the #1 spot). Since there were quite a few courses, I’ll keep the descriptions relatively brief, but please feel free to ask questions in the comments section and I can provide more details.
Philly cheesesteak - This was a hollow bread filled with a cheese sauce and topped with thinly sliced Kobe beef. Tortilla de patatas 'new way' - A quail egg cooked slowly at 63 degrees C topped with a warm potato foam and crispy potato bits. A modern take on the classic spanish tortilla.
Modern and traditional olives - The modern ones are Ferran Adria liquid 'olives', which I believe are spherifications of an olive flavored liquid. The traditional olives are stuffed with anchovy and piquillo pepper and topped with orange zest. The modern olives come to the table in a jar of olive oil and are fished out of the jar and placed onto the spoon by the waitstaff.
Jamon iberico de bellota - Acorn fed, free range iberico ham served with tomato bread. This was definitely a splurge, but worth every penny. They had a separate meat slicing area with a big bowl of perfect looking tomatoes for the toast. I'm not sure where they got such nice tomatoes in January, but I'm not complaining!
Crab buns - Crab and cucumber with a creamy sauce (alioli maybe?), served on steamed buns. The buns were the perfect texture.
Foie gras cotton candy, salmon caviar cone - A piece of corn nut crusted foie gras torchon wrapped in warm cotton candy. It may sound strange, but trust me when I say it was delicious. I didn't try the caviar cone, it was for the person in our party who doesn't eat foie gras.

Ottoman carrot fritters - Bits of carrot and white bean loosely bound and fried. Served on a bed of creamy pistachio sauce.

Butifarra - Pork sausage with white beans and mushrooms. The sausage was perfectly cooked.

Tempura avocado with airy mayonnaise - Chunks of avocado lightly battered and fried, served with foam for dipping. I detected a nice hit of sherry vinegar in the foam.

Mozzarella-tomato pipettes with micro basil - To eat, you pop the tomato into your mouth and squirt in the liquid mozzarella and olive oil from the pipette.

Bunuelos - Traditional salt cod fritters with honey alioli. I just realized that I have the recipe for these in one of his cookbooks, so you can bet I'll attempt to recreate them at home.

Tea service

Traditional spanish flan with vanilla and orange - We decided to end with a traditional and a modern dessert. The flan was the best we've ever had.

Coconut nitro floating island with banana and passionfruit - Frozen on the outside, soft on the inside coconut island on banana slices with a passionfruit sauce and passionfruit seeds. I thought the passionfruit seeds were a nice touch.

There's only one dish that's not pictured here, and that is the fideos with shrimp and alioli. I didn't bother with a picture because it wasn't particularly attractive, and it turns out it was also our least favorite dish. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't as good as everything else. We will definitely be back, hopefully sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I have his cookbooks to work my way through!

Catalan style spinach

I love to try new recipes. In fact, I average about 10 new recipes a week. The vast majority of the time, we like the new recipes I've made. I'm sure that's partially due to the fact that I only pick recipes I think we'll like and I alter them to fit our tastes. Every so often, a recipe will stick out from the pack. Sometimes it's a lengthy complicated recipe that's just so incredibly delicious, it's worth the time and effort. Other times, it's a simple, easily executable concept that also happens to be notable. This type of recipe makes it into our regular rotation, and usually after the first or second time through I don't even need to refer to the recipe anymore.

This Catalan style spinach from Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America is going into my regular rotation. With only five ingredients, I can make it without any fuss on a busy weeknight. A peeled, chopped apple is sauteed in a little olive oil until golden brown. A handful of pine nuts is added to the pan and cooked until golden. Next comes 10 ounches of spinach, a handful of raisins and salt to taste. The spinach releases liquid as it cooks, which in turn plumps up the raisins. That's all there is to it. Like I said, simple concept, great results.