The Canary Islands' Almogrote cheese cream

The almogrote is a delicious cheese cream typical of the Canary Islands, and overall of the island of La Gomera. We'll see later on this post the recipe in detail, what we can anticipate you now is that the main ingredients for this canarian delice are mainly olive oil, garlic, mature cheese and pimentón, a spanish spice similar to paprika, all beaten in a mortar with a pestle.
This unbelievably tasty cheese cream (try it and you believe it!) has a very long history, that begun in the rich gastronomy of the spanish Jews, called the Sephardim (from the identification of Spain with the Biblical western country of Sepharad).

The Spanish Separdi Jews modified an ancient roman sauce called moretum (probably the granpa of the pesto sauce). The moretum (from the greek verb "moreon", to stir) was made mixing olive oil, cheese, garlic, vinegar, wine and aromatic herbs. Here comes the Sephardi touch: they reduced the quantity and the proportion of the ingredients, in order to obtain a delicious cream instead of a a liquid sauce. In the late stage of the Roman empire, the names were frequently modified and corrupted, and this happened to the moretum too, that, misspelled, became "modretum".

The Sephardi cream cheese continued being popular also during the Islamic domination of Spain. During this stage, the name of the dish was modified from modretum to al-modrote.

The Al Modrote was a popular Sephardi recipe until the XVII century: by that time, all jews of Spain were all converted to catholicism or expelled and their goods confiscate.

But, even if the decision of the Catholic Monarchs of getting rid of the jews in Spain was highly unethical, the Sephardi gastronomical tradition continued elsewhere, in the remote lands and islands of the Spanish Empire and also in other countries.

For example, one of Europe's most influential rationalist-pantheist philosopher, the Netherland-born Baruch Spinoza, was a Sephardi jew whose parents were expelled from Portugal.

But let's get back to the cuisine! We said that a large amount of Sephardim found their new house in the remote lands of the Spanish empire, and many of them choosed the flourishing harbours of the Canary Islands, on the Atlantic route to Americas. There they regained the fortunes the loosed in the mainland investing in the Atlantic commerce. During the Sixteenth Century, the Spanish Siglo de Oro, many Sephardim had their own Siglo de Oro in Canary Islands, after hard times in continental Spain. In the Atlantic archipelago, it's very likely that many of the Spanish Jews continued their gastronomical tradition. Here, the almodrote was matched with two gastronomical gems of the Canary Islands: the Queso de la Gomera, one of the very best Spanish cheeses still nowadays, and the incredible taste of the pepper of La Palma. 

In the island of La Gomera, the almodrote became the best version of itself, and its name was changed to almogrote, the ultimate cheesy cream. The almogrote, despite the fact of being less known than it would deserve to be, is still growing in popularity and gastronomical appreciation througout the World. We love this gourmet cream made of the best cheeses, we love the almogrote!
Here goes the recipe!


Recipe:

Ingredients: The quantities of the ingredients are orientatives, since it depends mainly on the kind of cheese you're using and the texture of the cheese cream you're looking for. Try and develop your own golden ratios! ;)

- 320 g. of hard mature cheese
- 200 ml. of olive oil
- 2 sweet peppers from La Palma (you can use also ñora or choricero peppers, or mexican Anchos red peppers)
- 2 garlic cloves
- Salt and pepper to taste (it depends also on the kind of cheese you're using, for many kinds of cheese are already savoury enough)
- Optional: hot pepper (like the mexican jalapeño, use it just if you like it veerrrrry spicy!). 

Pimienta Palmera

Preparación: 

1- Even if traditionally the almogrote was prepared in a mortar, nowadays you can do it in a mixer. First, grate the cheese, possibly a very mature and hard one (and if it's from La Gomera island is even better!).

2- Boil the peppers, so to hydrate them and then extract all the pepper pulp and put it into the stand mixer. Add to the mixer the rest of the ingredients, that are the garlic cloves and the grated cheese. Little by little, while beating, keep adding the olive oil, just as you would do to make a mayonnaise, until you reach the texture you prefer.

3- Very important! This is crucial K? Take a slice of a crunchy fresh bread and spread the almogrote above it and...nom nom! Keep the almogrote in a jar and pop it into the fridge, and if it dries up then add some olive oil to conserve it longer (even if -trust me- it won't last long he he he!)

I personally prefer a creamy texture, but still I want to notice little, irregular bites of hard cheese under my teeth, but that's of course a personal taste!

A fast version of the almogrote can be easily obtained with very good results, without grating the cheese. Put all the ingredients together in the mixer with the half of the olive oil, mix it all and at the end correct the texture by adding little by little more olive oil, the exact amount it depends on the kind of hard cheese we're using.

There are many versions of the recipe, someone uses mature tomatoes too, but to be honest this is not the most typical choice, Someone uses a spoonful of sweet (or spicy) pimentón to enforce the flavour. The pimentón is a good alternative though if you can't find peppers anyway.

It's soo easy and tasty you won't believe it!

Try it and you'll repeat it!

Potas en salsa Canary Islands recipe

The potas in salsa are a traditional Canary Island dish, coming from fishermen's traditions. As usual for this kind of dishes, every house or every neighborhood cook it differently, and I'm no exception, and I'm gonna tell you my family's recipe. 

The pota is a kind of mollusk (or a cephalopod, since it has no shell) very similar to squids, but it's cheaper and not so well known, but it's just perfect for many delighful dishes. The quality of the flesh may be somehow inferior in quality, when compared with the squids, but when it's well cooked, the result will be super tasty!

In Canary Islands potas are a very common dish, especially when cooked in sauce. I remember that even not so many years ago (and still today, once in a while) fishermen used to came in my neighborhood to sell potas, yelling "potasss! fresh potasss! very tasty potasss!", and everyone come off to buy the potas they'd fished the night before. That's one of its characteristics: it's fished by night and in high sea.

The potas can be cooked in the same ways as squids or calamari, which makes them great for the children (and not only!) since they've no bones. Nutritionally talking the pota it's very interesting too, since it has a lot of proteins and the fats it has are very healthy, and even if it has 190 mg. of cholesterol for every 100 grams of flesh, its flesh does not makes that the cholesterol in our blood grows as other meals, and it even helps lowering the levels of cholesterol because of the kind of fats it has. Potas are very rich in vitamines and minerals like phosphorus, potassium and magnesium. So, let's eat potas! You can eat all you want as long as you eat the right quantity!

This kind of recipe is very versatile, we can prepare more than we need and what we don't eat we can use in many others preparations! Take advantage of it, you'll save time and money. And beside that, it's a dish with easy and cheap ingredients. Less is more!

Ingredients:

• 1 y 1/2 kg aprox. of Potas.
• 1 red pepper
• 1 big onion
• 3 garlic finger
• 3 or 4 sauce tomato
• 1 spoonful of sweet pimenton (spanish paprika)
• 2 leaves of laurel
• 2 glasses of white wine ( aproximately)
• 5 or 6 spoonful of olive oil
• Salt (to taste)

Preparation:

1- Clean the potas and cut it as you prefer. I do not take off the skin when I cook it, because it adds a flavour to the sauce, but that's a matter of tastes.

2- Put a pot heating, add olive oil, minced onion, just like to make a soffritto. When it starts becoming somehow fried, we add the minced garlic, the minced pepper and we continue frying it. When it's halfway through the frying process, we add at last tomatoes cut into pieces and previously peeled.

3- When we're done with our fry, we add the potas, we stir them a little bit, we add the spanish paprika, known as pimenton, the laurel and the white wine. What I told you is an approximate quantity, and you maybe should add some more wine during the cooking.

   
Let cook our potas with the pot covered for about 50 minutes (we can check it out when the potas are ready seeing if the tentacles are soft, since they're the hardest part of the pota, if they're soft, then the pota is cooked). If we see that the flesh still isn't enough cooked but the sauce has dried a lot or it's sticking too much, we shall add some more wine, but never water! In this way, it will result a lot tastier. At this phase, we'll try the salt, and that because this kind of mollusks tend to be somehow salty, and in this way we avoid the risk of having a dish that's too much salted. If we thikn it needs it, then we'll add some sea salt, we'll stir it and we'll keep cooking it...chup chup chup!

4- When we think that our potas are ready, we'll let them cooking some minute more, so to let the sauce "stick" to the bottom of the pot, which will add a toasted touch that's very tasty, but be careful in this phase or you'll burn it!

The classical dish would be potas en salsa to be eaten with some delicious papas arrugadas, or boiled, or even mashed potatoes.

It's a delicious dish, and it's very versatile too, since we can use it to make rice with potas, and the rice with the tasty sauce it's just wow! We can also use it to fill empanadas and so on. Of course, we can freeze it and conserve it for any occasion.

I suggest you, for example, to eat the potas you've left with rice, the following day. Sometimes I just cook potas in salsa to eat it directly with the rice, nom nom!).

To do so, you just need to add to the same pot you've used to cook the potas left some rice and water (we'll add two times more water than rice, but that's depends on how dry your sauce is. If it's too liquid, we can low the quantity of water). We can add a little bit of curcuma too, to give it the typical yellow colour without using colorants, and ejoying the many benefit that curcuma gives us! We add salt to taste, we cook it and when the rice is ready...there you have it! Here you are a delicious and super tasty rice dish!

Of course we can add olives, peas or whatever we want to our rice, but the great thing here is to make something easy, with just some ingredients and obtain a delicious dish!

Enjoy your meal!

Angie

Puchero Canario Recipe

Feliz Día de Canarias! Happy Canary Islands' Day!

Today we bring you a typical recipe from Canary Islands, the puchero.

We can say that the Canary islands' puchero is the local version of the Spanish cocido. It is a very complete and heavy, that you can eat in a cold winter day (of course, even if there is no a freezing winter in Canary Islands, there are areas that are colder that the rest, that is, every corner has its own climate, we call it "microclima"). It is ideal when shared with the family, and it's just great with a good old mojo and a escaldon de gofio (we'll talk about it in another occasion) to have a super typical dish.

It's a recipe where we'll see lots of different kinds of meats tossed together (pork, ribs, veal or chicken), and different kinds of veggies (zucchini, chayotas, pumpkin, , cabbage, beans, etc.), chickpeas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize heaps and so on. In some hamlet, they add a pear to this cooking mix. Of course, you can decide whether an ingredient will go or not in the pot, according to your taste or the availability of it. I remember that when I was a child I didn't like it at all, y'know, the little ones and the veggies, but what I did expect most when was time for a puchero in our family was the soup! It was, and still is, delighful! Made with all those ingredients altogether...yum!


As for the quantities of the ingredients for a good puchero, much of it depends on how many and how hungry your guests are. We use to weigh a little bit of every ingredient, veggies, meat, everything, for every guest, more or less. In this case, we made a puchero for 3 or 4 people.


Ingredients:

• 1/2 kg. of veal meat
• 1/2 kg. of chicken meat
• 200 g. of pork ribs
• 1/2 morcilla
• 1/2 chorizo
• 150 g.of chickpeas
• 2 or 3 carrots
• 1 middle size onion
• 1/4 red pepper
• 300 g. aprox. of beans
• half cabbage (cut into four pieces)
• 300 g. of pumpkin
• 8 potatoes (some 2 potatoes per guest)
• 2 corncobs
• 2 or 3 garlic fingers
• saffron
• parsley
• comino 
• sweet pepper
• Salt
• 2 spoonful of olive oil

Preparation: 

1- In a pot, put the water on heat until it starts boiling, then we toss the meat inside. Put it on middle heat.

2- After some 20 minutes, toss in the pot the chickpeas and the carrots.

3- After some others 15 minutes put inside the pot the harder veggies, like for example the beans (that traditionally were tight together with a cooking string, a "package" for each guest), the cabbage, etc. and little by little we'll add the rest of the veggies.

4- In our house, we fry with oil the minced onion and the pepper, along with smashed garlic, comino, salt and saffron all mixed together, adding the pimenton in order not to let it burn and ruin its taste. That will add to our puchero a lot of flavour! If you prefer, you can jump to the next step and add it all without cooking it.

5- When the veggies are half baked, we'll add the potatoes and the sweet potato (batata), because we don't want them to break. In this phase, we'll add the morcilla and the chorizo too.

6- When all is well cooked, turn off the heat and get ready to eat!

7- If you prefer it, you can use the stock where our puchero was cooked and prepare with it a great soup with all the taste of the veggies we've used. To do so, we pass the stock to another pot, we'll toss the small pasta and there you have it! With that stock you can preare an "escaldon de gofio" too, that is an all time favourite in Canary Islands! (We'll talk about the Gofio in another occasion, a really healthy and nutritive food).

8- To serve the puchero, put in the dish a piece of everything you've cooked, of course according each one's taste, and at the end dress it with olive oil and vinegar. That's all! Si down and eat it with a traditional red wine del pais.

Enjoy it, or Que aprovechen!

A puchero dish with Escaldon de Gofio and red mojo

With the leftover puchero, we can prepare some delicious croquetas. Furthermore, this dish is perfect for every kinds of diets, choosing only the veggies and not the meat for the vegetarians or the vegans, and perfect for the coeliacs.

Greetings!

AnGie

Canary Island's Vilana Cake

In the month of May we celebrate the day of Canary Islands, and therefore we want to share with you regional recipes from the rich gastronomy of these islands.

Today we start with a traditional sweet dish from the Gomera Island, the Vilana Cake!
It is called vilana because it is named after the rectangular tinpot called vilana or milana. This sweet dish looks like a traditional cake, but its peculiarity is that its dough has potatoes as the main ingredient, and in addition almonds and currants. Canary islands have a huge variety of potatoes, as we previously mentioned in other posts, and the almonds and dried fruits are very presents in the islands, and therefore those products are often used in the gastronomy of Canary islands.

Blossoming almond flowers. Tenerife Island.

The vilana cake is a traditional cake with a very smooth taste and texture that we can find in every typical Canary feast, like feasts of artisans, school's feasts, family celebrations, romerias...this delicious dish is also so easy to do! Today I bring to you the vilana recipe of my mother.

ingredients

Ingredients:

• 250 g.of flour
• 200 g. of sugar (or according to your taste) 
• 500 g. of potatoes
• 30 g.  of royal yeast
• 6 eggs
• 150 g. of butter
• 200 g. of almonds
• 200 g. of currants
• 1 spoonful of cinnamon
• 1 lemon zest

Preparation:

1º- We peel the potatoes and we put them to cook. Once they're ready, we mash them with a fork.

2º- In a bowl, we put the mashed potatoes with sugar, the butter, the eggs, the cinnamon and we mix it all well.

3º. Add the sifted flour, the yeast, the almonds (that we previously peeled and minced in not so small pieces), the currant and the lemon zest. Mix it all well.

4º-  Put some butter on the interiors of a rectangular baking pan in order to not let stick our cake to the pan and we put our dough inside of it, and decorate the surface with almonds (no need to peel or mince them here).

5º- Bake it in a preheated oven at 150° Celsius for about an hour. We will keep an eye to the oven every time, because as we all know every oven it's a world of its own. If we see that it's getting too much golden brown on the surface, we can cover it with an alluminium foil or a baking sheet, and we'll just keep baking. To be sure that our cake is ready, we'll put a kitchen needle of a knife inside of the cake, and if it get out of it clean, then the cake's ready!

6º- Let it cool until it's warm, then put it out of the baking pan, and let it cool completely on a rack, and if you can, try to resist the urge to eat it until it's cool!

Enjoy it!

AnGie

Canary Islands Stuffed potatoes

Today we'll bring you a family recipe, a recipe from Canary Islands. This one is very versatile and can be adopted to a lot of versions, according everyone's taste, but these ones I'm gonna show you aren't the usual stuffed potatoes you can find anywhere. I have never find this kind of stuffed potatoes outside of the Canary Islands. In the many, many versions of stuffed potatoes you may find that potatoes are bread-crumbed , fried or gratinated, but this one's special. Other kinds of this recipe are from countries like Perù, Colombia or Cuba, between the others, and we'll talk about them in others occasions. Canary Islands have a really great culinary tradition with potatoes, or "papas", as they call them. We have seen for exemple the recipe about "papas arrugadas".

As for the quantity I'm gonna tell you, they are for three to four people (and their appetite!). Just vary the quantity according your guests.

Ingredients:

- Middle sized potatoes (dependig to how many guests, in my case 1,300 kg)

Pimentón y curcuma

- little zucchini (a Canary Island variety called "bubango")
- 200 g. of tomatoes
- 150 g. of red pepper
- Onions ( aprox. 200-250 g)
- 1/4 kg. of minced veal meat
- 1/2 cup of white wine
- 2 teeth of garlic
- olive oil
- 1 spoonful of pimenton (or sweet paprika)
- 1 pinch of curcuma (natural dye)
- 2 leaves of laurel
- thyme ( optional)
- Salt
- 1/2 liter of water
- 2 spoonful of flour (optional)

Preparation:

1º- Start with prepping the filling of our potatoes. In a pan, we put two spoonful of olive oil, we put it on heat and we add the half of the minced onion, some 100-150 grams and a garlic. Add fine salt to fasten the cooking, and when the onion start frying add the minced red pepper. Fry a little bit and add the minced tomatoes (some 100 grams). Add the meat to our pan and a little bit of salt too. When the meat is ready, take it out of the heat and put it aside.

 2º- Start preparing the potatoes, in my case I also used bubangoes, that are a Canary Island variety of the classical zucchini. You can in the same way have even stuffed peppers. Peel and wash the potatoes, then punch a hole inside the potatoes with a spoon or a parisien spoon scoop. In this step be careful not to break the potato, you don't want the hole to be big. Do not throw to the garbage the parts of the potatoes you've removed! You can do a spanish tortilla, fry or cook them, and you can put the parts of the zucchini you've removed inside your filling to add a lot of flavour...you can use it all!

3º- With the help of a coffee spoon, fill the potatoes or the veggies you've chosen. To close the hole to be sure our filling won't get out during the cooking time, you have many options. I usually put in a bowl 2 spoonful of flour and I keep adding some water and stirring, until I obtained a sort of thick cream. Then I put some of this thick cream above the hole, and then in a very hot pan I put the potato with the hole on the botto, so that it cook perfectly closing the hole. Another option is to use the removed parts of the potatoes to use them as a sort of cap, but with this option you shall be careful, because not many stuffed potatoes can cook at once, otherwise they would open and the filling will go out.

4º- In another pan we do another sautée, this time with onion, pepper, and the remaining tomato. Add the wine, the aromatich herbs, (laurel and thyme in my case), and put the potatoes with the hole side up. Add water, but not that much water to cover the potatoes. Add the quantity of salt you desire, cover the pan, put it on medium heat and let it cook...blub blub blub!
This step will last half an hour, but it  depends on the variety of potatoes you used, so give them an eye while cooking, and try once in a while if they are ready with a fork: if the fork enter the potato, the potatoes are ready. If potatoes are still not cooked, add water so that the sauce will not dry. Try the salt, you can adjust it while cooking.

resultado final de la cocción

5º- And now your stuffed potatoes are ready to eat! I prefer to eat it as a single course, given that here we have the veggies, the proteines and the hydrates. Eat it with a good wine and enjoy it! Sometimes I use veggies or champignon mushroom filling only, sautéed tuna, chicken or turkey or even with corned beef...you choose! I hope you'll like this dish that's thought for all the family and all year round!

Enjoy it!

saludos

Angie

The Papas Arrugadas

The wrinkled Papas negras yema de huevo and the mojo de cilantro

Today we'll bring you a typical Canary Island recipe, where you can find a whole lot of variety of potatoes, or, as we call it in Canary Islands, "papas". Expecially in the island of Tenerife (where one of us two, Angie, was born) potatoes are being cultivated since the XIV century. Some of the variety of potatoes cultivated in the Canary Island are simply unique in the World.

Potatoes were brought here from America, specifically from Perù, where they are cultivated since more than 7000 years. Spanish "conquistadores" thought to bring this peculiar product back to Europe ad a sort of botanical curiosity, rather than a culinary delight. Canary Island, infact, as Admiral Nelson well knew, were a sort of strategical link between the Old and the New World. It is said that potatoes arrived well before in Canary islands than in Europe, and, thanks to the warm climate, the cultivation of this new product spread around the islands and created many unique varieties. Some kind of potatoes, infact, just exists in the Peruan Andes and in Tenerife. One of them, perhaps the most famous of all, is known as the Papa Negra, the Black Potato. Today we'll talk about it!

Papas negras de yema de huevo

Within the papa negra's world exists just so many sub-varieties, and the most peculiar is the papa negra yema de huevo, that is "black potato egg yolk". This kind of papa negra it's well known for being very small, despite existing many exceptions, and because of the colour of its interior, very yellow, just like egg yolks.

In today's cuisine, with the fashion of modern and innovative dishes, this papa is being somehow rediscovered by famous chefs worldwide. This gourmet potato is known also as the "black truffle of Canary Islands". But this exquisite product is far from being a luxury delicatessen in Canary Island cuisine: it has been used infact in the Island's traditional cuisine for centuries, for example in our recipe of the Canary Islands Stuffed Potatoes. Many different kind of dishes can be prepared with this gorgeous kind of potato, but its own quality allows the papa negra to being the auhentical solo queen of the table. Often the papas negras are served together with the Mojos Canarios sauces (we'll talk about them in another post) but there are an infinite list of dishes that really screams for having beside the papas negras! There are modern dishes where you can find the black potatoes, but the most traditional one, the most fascinating and the most historical too is without a doubt the recipe known as the Papas Arrugadas (or in english, "wrinkled potatoes")

An old potato farmer in Canary Island

Logically, you can use whatever kind of potatoes in order to obtain papas arrugadas, Today's recipe is just an attempt to get you inside the faboulous world of Canary Island potatoes. The only things you'll really need to obtain papas arrugadas is to look in your local shop for the smallest round shaped and high quality potatoes you can find, since the papas arrugadas are to be eaten without taking of their skin.

Ingredients:

• Potatoes
• Sea Salt
• Water

The ingredients

You'll never hear someone from Canary islands telling you exact quantities of ingredients, since this recipe is somehow "instinctive", since no one never measure the quantity of salt that the water needs and the quantity of potatoes used depends on how many people we'll have eating with us, but we'll give you some rough measure in order to obtain good papas arrugadas. For each kilogram of potatoes, we'll add 250 grams of salt. Don't be afraid of tossing too much salt to the water, since the papas negras will absorb just the exact quantity of salt they'll need, and the rest will remain in the skin or in the pot. It may be interesting to notice that in some places near the shore it was used directly the salted water of the sea, and today this practice is still in use in some case. In the past people used also to conserve the salted water used to cook the potatoes, so that the water was ready for the next use even without adding more salt, but this practice has almost disappeared.

Procedure:

We'll toss the potatoes well washed without peeling their skins in a pot, and we remember that we'll eat the papas arrugadas with their skins, so wash them very well. We add water without covering the potatoes completely and we add salt.

the potatoes semi-covered with water

the potatoes and the salt

Put te pot over high heat until you'll see the water boiling, and then pinch a potato with a fork until you see it's cooked. Please be careful of not pinching too much the potatoes in this step, otherwise too much salted water would enter your papas negras and they would be too salted. You could choose a potato that we think is ready and pinch it in order to see if it's soft enough, or simply pinch a potato in the upper part of our pot.
The exact timing of this phase it depends on the kind of potato you're using. With the papas negras yema de huevo, since they're extremely small, they will be ready in a matter of minutes, between five and ten minutes after the water starts boiling to be more precise. If the potatoes are bigger, you'll need more time, and you'll see lowering the level of the water. This is normal and helps the process.

When you'll have your potatoes are soft enough, we pour the water off the pot without taking off the papas negras. This is the crucial part, since you'll then put the potatoes again on the heat without the water. In this way you'll see the papas dry and wrinkled. Move the pot in order not to burn the potatoes, and you'll see them getting whiter and whiter: this is the salt of the water. After few minutes, we'll be ready to eat them! s Papas arrugadas are always to be eaten hot, that's how they taste best. Try them with sauces, mojos canarios, with fish dishes or meat dishes, they're simply unique...enjoy them!

ready to eat them!

Saludos!

Angie