By Derk Richardson  July 28th, 2010 7:43 am  |  Comments (2)

Photo by Francisco Guerrero

A pot of long-cooked meats, including slices of pancetta or bacon, hearty vegetables and legumes, and a savory broth that becomes a vehicle for fideos (thin Spanish noodles)—how can you go wrong? In the September/October issue of Afar, Leah Messinger dives into the cultural history of cocido Madrileño, the filling stew long popular in Madrid, Spain.

According to food historian David Gitlitz, one-pot meals incorporating chickpeas and/or lentils have been ubiquitous around the Mediterranean since Roman times, mentioned in the writings of Pliny and Apicius. A dish called olla podrida (rotten pot) turns up in Don Quixote from the early 1600s.

So you can try it at home, Messinger provides a slightly more contemporary recipe—from Madrid’s Taberna la Bola, where cocido has been on the menu for a mere century or so.

By Nicole Solis  May 19th, 2010 2:48 pm  |  Comments (4)

Calabaza en Tacha

We had hoped to run this recipe for one of the delicious traditional Mexican dishes in our May/June 2010 issue, along with the cover story, “Mexico’s Soul Food.” We had so many wonderful photos that we ran out of space in the magazine, so we decided to publish the recipe online.

Calabaza en Tacha
(Winter squash cooked in syrup)

Serves 16

This sweet, syrupy squash is often served with warmed milk for breakfast or dinner (comida, the midday meal, is the biggest meal of the day). In Michoacán, the dish is often made with locally grown calabazas de castilla. Cristina Potters, who supplied this recipe and writes about Mexican food at Mexico Cooks!, says that to break through the extremely hard shell, cooks often resort to using a machete or throwing the squash against a concrete floor.

The ingredients: squash, piloncillos, white sugar, cinnamon, and spices.

INGREDIENTS

6 cups water
14 2-oz. cones of dark piloncillo (coarse brown sugar) or a mixture of 3 ½ cups dark brown sugar and 3 tbsp molasses
2 cups granulated sugar
4 sticks Mexican cinnamon, each about 2.5″ long
1 tbsp anise seed
1 tsp whole cloves
1 medium-size calabaza de castilla or other winter squash (about 3 lbs.), cut into wedges and seeded
Whole milk, for serving (optional)

MAKE IT
1. In a large pot, combine the water, piloncillo (or brown sugar and molasses), granulated sugar, and cinnamon sticks. Place the anise seed and cloves on a cheesecloth square and tie closed. Add the spice bundle to the pot. Bring the mixture to a boil, then simmer until the liquid is thick and syrupy, approximately three hours.

2. Add the squash pieces to the syrup and simmer until the squash is soft and turns a deep brown color.

3. Remove the pot from the heat and let cool for 15 minutes. Place one or two pieces of squash in each bowl. Ladle syrup into the bowl, and pour hot milk, if desired, on top.

Cook’s notes: I made this in the spring, with an heirloom squash from Farmer John’s Pumpkin Patch, in Half Moon Bay, California. Sadly, I forget which variety it was, but happily, a 10-inch chef’s knife did a fine job of cutting it into slices. No machete required.

I found piloncillos at a local Mexican grocery store, in the bulk section. The store had two sizes of piloncillos, but I used the smaller, roughly 2-oz. cones and weighed them until I had 28 oz.

Though Calabaza en Tachs takes a fair amount of time on the stove, it releases one of the most amazing scents I have ever smelled in my life: spicy, sweet, and perfect for warming up the house on a chilly day.

The dish itself is delicious, but exceedingly sweet, as least to my taste buds. As a breakfast, it would be excellent as an alternative to French toast (especially for someone who is gluten intolerant). As a dessert, it’s rather filling. You may consider cutting the wedges in half for more manageable portions. Be prepared to either halve the recipe or feed a large crowd.

By April Kilcrease  October 8th, 2009 5:09 pm  |  Comments (2)

Soft, creamy, sweet, there’s something so comforting about rice pudding. According to Afar writer Jeff Koehler, the milky dessert “is one of the few universal rice dishes around the entire Mediterranean.” In his latest cookbook, Rice Pasta Couscous, Koehler offers three regional variations on the delicious dish.

The oven-baked rice pudding with mastic (sakızlı fırın sütlaç) is inspired by his first trip to Istanbul in 1994. “The weather was cold and wet,” he writes. “Much of my time was spent in cafes and muhallebici, ‘dairy bars’ specializing in milky puddings. Creamy, baked rice pudding was a discovery for me, especially when flavored with mastic. Crushed tears of mastic give a piney flavor to the pudding and a chewier consistency.”

His creamy vanilla-scented rice pudding (rizogalo) is adapted from a Greek family recipe that has been “passed from mother to daughter for generations.”

He also includes a spiced rice-flour pudding (moghli) from Lebanon, where “families prepare this caraway-and-anise-laden rice-flour pudding for guests after the birth of a baby.”

Rice pudding (arroz con leche) is a favorite in Koehler’s Barcelona home. As he shares in his article “Absorbing Rice,” “when the weather cools, my girls start asking for…arroz con leche. These are the days when…the flat fills with the aroma of rice simmering in milk with sugar, cinnamon, and citrus peels. To me that smell announces autumn.” To make the traditional treat, follow the arroz con leche recipe at the bottom of his story.

What foods say autumn to you?