Variantes!

Variantes!

More of a technique of preparation than a recipe, variantes are a pretty typical way to elevate a great regional (or, in most of our cases, imported) product with the personal taste and style of the server. And the better the original product, the better the result. But even mediocre olives can get a kick in the flavor department or even become something much much greater than you could have imagined.

Variantes :

1) Get some olives, by any means necessary. They should be great olives, because things like olives should always be the best. But if they aren't, this approach will not only work but improve them.

2) Lightly rinse off the marinade or brine (if any) that the olives were previously in. In the case of oil-packed olives (such as the Morrocan black olives I'm so fond of) that were packed seperately, you should omit this step.

3) Toss the olives in olive oil to coat.

4) Lightly and separately boil raw vegetables such as carrots, spring onions, garlic cloves, celery slices, fresh beans, asparagus, quartered artichoke bottoms, etc. Drain, cool, and add to the olives. Add more olive oil if necessary. (If you're like me, you'll have added too much other stuff

5) Add spices, herbs and other seasonings to taste. (The most typical include thyme, mint, paprika sweet or hot, chile flakes or powder, garlic, black pepper, etc.)

6) Allow to sit for a few hours or a half a day. Serve at room temperature, garnished with fresh chopped parsley, citrus zest, tiny minced bits of garlic or red pepper, or whatever your fancy.

7) These keep well, but perhaps not so well as you might think. Before serving, always remove from the fridge and let sit for at least an hour or so. Stir them up good again after they've sat and redistribute the oil. I recommend adding any raw garnish suggested in (6) to each batch of the olives once you've sat them and stirred them.

Tapas/Bar Food Barcelona-Style, 9.3.11

Just a lovely end-of-summer day by the pool. And in the pool! Thanks to everyone involved for a great day, especially my able assistant Robin, without whom etc. etc…

Our Menu :

Variantes (marinated olives)
Serrano y Manchego (serrano ham & raw milk manchego cheese)
Pa Amb Tamaquet (catalan tomato bread)
Trempó (majorcan summer salad)
Pincho Moruno (moorish pork kebab)
Gambas A La Planxa (garlic shrimp)


Variantes! (separate entry here)


Jamon Y Manchego : Easy enough, just buy quality from a trusted vendor and slice quite thin.


Pa Amb Tamaquet : Catalunya's beloved tomato bread is as simple as it is pleasing. Grill slices of country bread or baguette. Rub with a cut garlic clove and a cut tomato half while still hot. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper while still hot. Serve, while still hot.


Trempó : Trempó is equally simple, and equally delicious at this time of year. Coming from the Catalan-dominated Balearic island of Majorca, it is nothing more than a combination of equal parts thin sliced onion, bell pepper and apple or pear to two parts tomato. Add a little olive oil and salt and let marry for an hour or two. We veered a bit from the authentic here and went for fully-ripe tomatoes. In the original, taken from Colman Andrews' classic Catalan Cuisine, semi-ripe tomatoes are used, as they are used in many Mediterranean composed salads. And while I heartily endorse this style in general, we're in the middle of Jersey tomato season, so ripe it is gonna haveta be.


Pincho Moruno : Adapted from a recipe in Penelope Casas' The Foods & Wines of Spain, this captures a street kebab I ate while near-penniless in Barcelona. (I know, poor me.) It's best with pork loin cut off the bone into inch pieces, marinated overnight in about 4-6 tbsp olive oil per pound of pork. The spice mix, also per pound, is 1/2 tsp of paprika, 1/2 tsp of thyme, 3/4 tsp of cumin, 1 tsp red pepper flakes, a handful of chopped parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. She has you add a bay leaf, crumbled, which I omitted as I was out of them. (And still am, bulk spices are not easy to come by in Western NJ.)


Perhaps the mother of all tapas (barring maybe the olive) : Gambas Al Ajillo, the griddled garlic shrimp of the Spanish coastal regions. It pops up even inland, and has a million names, but in its simplest form it is pure class. Grill oil-drizzled, salt & peppered raw shrimp on a hot metal plate, over a coal fire. Turn once. When very nearly done, add chopped garlic and parsley. Turn again, then turn onto a plate. Eat.

Accompanied with grilled eggplant, spring onions & zucchini and a Romesco sauce.




Drunk with Estrella Damm beer & this excellent and readily available Mionetto Prosecco:


& somehow followed by dueling desserts! (The fruit tart was my favorite, and no, I can't believe I tried both either.)


Also, we promise no endangered yellow dinosaur was served at this meal. No, no, we're quite sure of it, really.

Calliope's Po-Boy, 2130 Jefferson St., Houston, TX

Right down the street from our beloved Huynh is another one of our Houston favorites, Calliope's Po-Boy.

OK, so I've been to New Orleans, didn't exactly have the best time there, but I chalk that up to circumstances beyond anyone's control, including being forced to make the obligatory pilgrimage to that giant unsavory frat party known as Bourbon St. The food I ate and the local folks I met, though, were all pretty spot-on. Still, I don't believe I had a po-boy as good as the many I've devoured right here.

Look, any fool can fry seafood, and most fools will figure out after the first few times to err on the side of under, rather than over-cooked. (Granted there are many fools, especially in this country, who still continue to be given a fry basket after many failed opportunities to learn the latter.) But, truthfully, the secret to a drop-dead po-boy is the bread. It has to possess that consummate combination of crusty (but not too crusty) exterior and chewy (but not too chewy) interior that balances so well with well-sauced, nicely textured meats and crispy, spicy aquatica.


The people at Calliope's, let me confide in you, are no fools. They know how to turn achingly-fresh seafood into masterpieces of the deep-fryer. They know that different spice and batter mixes for different fish and seafood are both needful and enjoyable. They know how to make smackingly-good gravy. But most of all, they know how to make the quintessential po-boy loaf and then elevate it with whatever gets stuffed in the middle.

Our favorite is almost definitely crawfish. When in season, crawfish is as delicious as any seafood out there. Also recommended if you're going gastro-splurge is the "Surf N' Turf," combining crispy shrimp with roast beef and smothered in gravy. Just eat it quick! And share! And don't forget to bring a towel! Oyster, catfish, soft-shells, shrimp are all excellent to outstanding, each given a subtly different spice and batter mix to play off different natural flavors.


OK, see, now I'm looking back and thinking I somehow underrated what Calliope's does with a deep fryer, and that ain't so. The mixed fry platter (known here as "Fisherman's Paradise," sample victim photoed above) is a great way to enjoy lots of catfish (perfectly done with a light batter and buttery soft inside) and oysters (crumby, spicy but spicy-savory not spicy-hot) and shrimp (slightly more spicy, perfectly cooked) and (my favorite) soft-shell crab, like crunch aquatic butter.

And the fries! Did we neglect to mention those? You've heard of twice-frying, sure, it's all the rage but I am pretty convinced this guy is figuring out some way to fry these damn things three times. They have a batter coating that turns them into some mad elongated tater tot that's been somehow fried inside and out simultaneously. Or something. Anyway, they're damn good and especially decadent, when smothered in cheese and gravy! Hey, if you're going to do it (and you should, just not very often!), at least do it right.

What'd we miss? Gumbo is excellent, with a deep, smoky roux but a little light on the shrimp, oysters & sausage when we got it. Onion rings and jalapeno hush puppies both kick ass, even regular old hush puppies are well-done and don't feel just like stomach filler. Presumably, things like ham and chicken po-boys are good as well, but why bother, nothing here is break-the-bank expensive, apart from things it would probably take a soccer team to eat. As for me, I'm desperately craving that crawfish… that bread… might actually be worth driving 30 hours or whatever to eat it…

It's almost frustrating, you know. The place gives you so many encouraging options to eliminate bread, thus making room for more things that have been deep-fried. But you just keep thinking… that bread… that bread…


…those po-boys…those po-boys…

The Garden, August 2011, Second Half

The second half of August in the garden was not so happy a time as the first–pests and diseases began to take their toll, and a promising tomato harvest was interrupted by the ultimately fairly minor impact (garden-wise of Hurricane Irene.


But there are more tomatoes to come… until mid-October, if climate maps can be believed.


"Mister Stripey" is an inquisitive sort. Here two different plants start creeping onto the cage of a Roma one row away. Speaking of Romas…


…this one was in the shadiest, weediest corner of the garden and shot off the heaviest fruit-producing branches the quickest, and staved off the stem rot the longest. What do you make of that?




One thing that can be counted on, though, is those sturdy peppers, just starting to enter their second wave. Here come the Hungarians, Pasillas and Hot Cherries.


Sage!


Tiny mites love eggplant!


These dicks (cross-striped cabbageworms) are all kinds of up on my Brussels sprouts and broccoli…


…diiiickkks…


…but they didn't reckon with Serpentor! (Sadly, Serpentor, after nearly two decades of loyal service, perished shortly after this photo was taken.)


All the sadness in the garden isn't necessarily due to invasive insects, though. Some losses are just seasonal. The final bush of basil to be sacrificed before the nights get too cool…


…and damn near the end of the squashes & cukes.



Several of these have popped up through the fencing and around the perimeter of the garden. I'm still not sure what they are. Butterflies seem to like them, however.


Overview from shortly before nightfall, late August…



…and just before Irene came to town, necessitating the measures of…


…an herbchest…


…and a forced harvest of precious tomatoes…


…not to mention a #$@^#$ post-storm harvest of loose or fallen fruits. The hammer? Don't ask.


Here's hoping our fall plantings will fare better!