Spain On the Road Again: Beet Puree and Shrimp Pancakes

Anyone seen an episode of Spain On the Road Again? Probably not. In spite of having Mark Bittman, Gweneth Paltrow, and Mario Batali in Spain, it's a snooze fest. Four people eating and talking with very little editing. There may be four people who are witty and intelligent enough to make that work, but those guys should know their limitations.

Still, Mario's a great cook and Bittman a terrific recipe writer, so there's good stuff on the website. So far we've tried two recipes, one for a beetroot and walnut puree and another for chickpea pancakes. Here's our thoughts.

Beet Puree

The recipe is here, and it's good as is. The idea is to take some beets and walnuts and mix 'em with tahini and oil. Our tweaks include the following:

1. Roast the walnuts first and place them in the processor warm.
2. Add more tahini and less oil.
3. Withhold some of the salt and add some parmesan cheese (sounds weird, but it's good).
4. Add or garnish with fresh dill.


Shrimp Pancakes

This recipe is also great. You can find it and a useful video here.

We're old hands at making pancakes with besan, or chickpea flour, which you can find at any Indian grocery. (You can also find it at a Spanish grocery or gourmet store, but you will pay an absurd price for it.) We normally mix it with a lot of water, add cumin seeds, coriander, peppers, onions, or whatever we have lying around. And if you're fat conscious, you can cook them in a dry nonstick pan, believe it or not. They will separate from the pan.

The Spanish version involves cut up shrimp, herbs and lots of pepper. That said, we like ours a little crisper, so we use twice as much besan as white flour (something Bittman mentions). If you want it really crispy, eliminate the white flour and baking powder altogether.

Leftover Grits with Red Beans

Red beans are almost a staple food at our house. They're ridiculously cheap, really easy to prepare and have a huge variety of applications. We typically make them by the bucketful, and either freeze them or can them. Then, if we want breakfast, we heat some up with rice and then fry or scramble an egg (gallo pinto, a traditional breakfast in Costa Rica). For a snack, we combine them with hot sauce, sour cream, and cheese to make a dip. For dinner, we serve them with rice and lots of Tapatio.

But this was probably the best application yet. Using the leftover grits from our Shrimp and Grits, we piled on some red beans.

Red Beans

1 pound red beans, washed and soaked overnight
2 smoked ham hocks
1 large onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp canola oil
Pepper
Salt
Water

1. Add the oil to a heated pot.
2. Add onion, pepper, and celery and cook, stirring for 5-7 minutes until onions are just beginning to brown.
3. Add spices and allow to bloom.
4. Add all the beans and ham hocks.
5. Cover with water and add some salt.
6. Simmer for several hours adding water as necessary until beans become fully cooked and silky.
7. Remove ham hocks. Mash some beans against the side of the pot, stir, and season to taste.
8. Serve with polenta and Tabasco sauce.

Shrimp and Welsh Grits

We had never heard of shrimp and grits until recently, but there's nothing wrong with spicy sea creatures over cheesy cornmeal. Especially since shrimp's one of our favorite things to have in the freezer. You can get it reasonably cheap in flash frozen bags. Any time you want to make something, just shake a few out of the bag and they're ready to go.

Of course our "grits" aren't really grits. We'd get shot in Georgia for these grits. Real grits should have a grainy texture. Instead, we used cornmeal, which makes them smooth and silky. Cornmeal also has the signal advantage of existing in our kitchen.

Shrimp and Welsh Grits

Grits

1 cup cornmeal
4 cups water
½ pound cheddar cheese
1 tbsp Worchestershire Sauce
2 tsp dried mustard
Milk or cream
2 tbsp butter
Salt

1. Boil the water.
2. Add cornmeal in a small stream while whisking vigorously.
3. Turn heat very low, and allow to bubble slowly, for about 2 ½ hours, stirring every fifteen minutes or so. Add water as necessary.
4. When cornmeal begins to turn white, add salt, mustard, cheese, butter, and Worchesterschire sauce. Stir and add milk until the texture is how you like it.

Spicy Shrimp and Sauce

12 shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 tbsp paprika
½ tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp flour
1 tbsp butter
Water or stock
½ tsp salt
Pepper
Canola oil

1. Add spices to a bowl and stir to combine.
2. Toss shrimp in spices. Allow to sit a few minutes.
3. Add 2 tbsp oil to hot frying pan.
4. Add shrimp, toss for about two minutes or cooked through.
5. Remove shrimp.
6. Add butter and flour and combine to make a roux.
7. Add ½ cup water or stock, bring to a boil, and stir. Ad more as needed.
8. Place shrimp over polenta. Pour sauce on top and garnish with parsley.

Quick Char Sui Pork Stir Fry

We felt bad bringing our Char Sui Pork to Romania, so we took the leftovers and turned them into a much more traditional stir fry. This kind of quick lunch is really common at Leftover Grub Towers. Often on a Monday, we cook about 3 cups of rice, and stick it in a bag in the fridge. When we need a bite during the week, we pull out some of it; and then pile whatever leftovers and unused veg we've got into the stir fry. Here we used the leftover Char Sui pork and some of the unused asparagus.

Fair warning: This stir fry is riddled with shortcuts. It makes a tasty lunch, but you won't want to serve it to your foodie friends just back from Beijing.

Quick Pork Stir Fry

Slurry
1 tbsp soy sauce
½ cup chicken stock (or water)
1 tbsp Chinese marinade (or Char sui)
½ tsp rice wine vinegar

Combine the ingredients, then taste and adjust to get the flavor you want. Don't get too crazy mixing ingredients. A few will do and water is your friend.

Stir fry
The slurry
½ cup leftover char sui pork
4 asparagus cut in bite sized pieces
2 clove garlic sliced
½ tsp chopped ginger
1 large onion sliced
1 tbsp corn starch mixed with equal amount of water.

1. In a hot frying pan stir fry the onions and asparagus for about 2-4 minutes, until asparagus is getting cooked.
2. Add ginger and garlic, stir for 30 seconds
3. Add meat, toss
4. Add slurry, wait until it comes to a boil
5. Taste, if it's too strong, add water or stock. If it's too weak, reduce slightly.
6. Turn heat down, add the cornstarch mixture a spoonful at a time. As it reaches boiling temp, it will thicken. Add enough to get the desired texture.
7. Remove from heat.

This recipe involves leftovers from Char Sui Pork Polenta.

Pasta with Red Clam Sauce

The in laws have recently converted to the glycemic index and have banished sugar and refined white flour from their diets (except where pizza is concerned). They even declared war on pasta, which—so the theory goes--turns humans into hippopotami in no time flat. At first, we thought we'd point out that dried pasta is actually made from high-protein durum wheat, but we had two good reasons not to. 1) They wouldn't listen anyway. 2) It allowed us to expropriate their locker of unused pasta. That included many good specimens, including a half kilo of bucatini.

That returned us to more canned clams and one of our favorite dishes. We've been kicking this recipe around for years, making it a bunch of different ways. It wasn't originally ours, but by now, we'll claim it.

Pasta and Red Clam Sauce

1 pound pasta, cooked al dente
2 cans chopped clams
2 anchovy fillets
3/4 head garlic chopped (yeah, that much, it cooks down)
1 tsp cracked red pepper
I small can whole peeled tomatoes. (Italian ones are obviously better here. If you can't get 'em or are too cheap to pony up the funds, add a small amount of sugar).
3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tbsp lemon juice (optional)
Lots of grated parmigiana
Olive oil

1. Place oil in medium hot frying pan, and add anchovies.
2. Mash anchovies with wooden spoon until the disintegrate into the oil.
3. Add garlic and pepper and sautee for 30 seconds
4. Open the can of clams—actually, have the can of clams already opened before you start any of this. Press the lid down on the clams and drain all of the clam juice into the sauce.
5. Stir and bring to temperature. Then place tomatoes in a bowl—actually, do this before you start cooking as well. Mash them really good with your hands.
6. Pour the tomatoes into the sauce. Don't add too many, you don't want to have more tomatoes than clam juice.
7. Simmer for fifteen minutes.
8. When everything tastes great, add the clams, most of the parsley, and the lemon juice.
9. Bring back to temperature and remove from heat. Do not cook the clams very much.
10. Toss with pasta.
11. Serve garnished with parsley and lots of parmigiana cheese.