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!

the Spanish Croquetas recipe

The Croquetas are a symbol of Spanish gastronomy and represents a dish prepared with a speciality of iberian cuisine, like Jamon Serrano. Wa cannot think of going in a Spanish bar without the omnipresent croquetas. Potatoes are really widespread in spanish gastronomy, and in many versions potatoes are included in the mixture, even if the vast majority is made with a bechamel sauce together with a large variety of possible ingredients, everything's fine within a croqueta.

But even if the croquettes, or croquetas, are now a typical spanish dish, historical documents seems to show that the origins of this dish are not in Spain, but in France. The oldest document is from year 1691, where we can find the recipe of a croquette from the Royal chef of Louis XIV. We do not know if the cook draw inspiration from a previous traditional or oral recipe from Spain, but we can see that nowadays the croquetas from Spain are really popular and so they somehow gained success crossing the borders. We can see nowadays different versions in many Countries.

The first historical documents about spanish croquetas is to be found in a year 1867 book titled "El cocinero español y la perfecta cocinera" ( the spanish cook and the perfect lady in the kitchen), published in Malaga. We find this book to be a little bit too late to be realistically the first mention of spanish croquetas, and we are pretty sure that generation after generation, mother to daughter, the authentic & traditional spanish croquetas recipe have been invented many century earlier its formal publication.

If the origin of the recipe may be somehow controversial, the origin of the name is easy to relate to the french word "croquir", that is being crispy. In Italy, the croquetas, or croquettes, arrives through the Bourbon dinasty to Southern Italy, to the Regno delle Due Sicilie, where the croquettes were stolen from the hands of the Monzù (the french chefs of the Bourbon royal court) and transformed the tasty "crocchè", based on a potatoes and egg mixture. Later, in Sicily from the Crocchè were created the famous "arancini". A pretty glorious history isn't it?

Today we will bring you the recipe for a croquetas made up with Jamon Iberico, a dish invented by the spanish chef Alberto Chicote, who personally published his own recipe through Twitter some months ago. We changed a little bit here & there, overall for what concerns the quantities, but at the end the result is almost the same, creamy & super tasty. This is actually the first time I use heavy cream for croquetas, we'll give you many other croquetas recipe in the future.
Let's go with the recipe!

Ingredients:

• 670 ml if milk
• 330 ml approx. of heavy cream
• 95 g.of flour (I used half whole-wheat, half normal flour)
• 75 ml of olive oil aprox. (the original recipe uses butter, but I don't)
• 1 big onion
• 100 g. of Jamon Iberico
• Jamon bone (optional, but it will add much more taste to it!)
• Salt (the quantity you want)
• black pepper (to taste)
• A little bit of nutmeg
• For the battering: 2 eggs, flour & breadcrumbs

Preparation:

1º-  In a pot, we put the milk and the heavy cream together to warm a little bit. If we have the Jamon bone, put it in the pot now, it will add a lot of flavour. When the liquid starts to boil, we low the heat and keep on cooking it a little bit more.

2º- in an anti-adherent pan we pour a drizzle of oil and we put the heat on medium-low. We cut the onion à là Brunoise, or in thin slices, and we put it to fry a little bit. At this point we will add the salt to speed up the frying. When the onion starts to become transparent, we add the Jamon Serrano we previously cut in small pieces and we stir it all together for a while.

3º- We add the flour and we stir for about 10 minutes, on low heat to cook the flour, and after that we pour into the pan the mixture of the milk and the heavy cream (do not pour you jamon bone, be careful!) and keep stirring in order to avoid the creation of bulks. A little bit of salt & pepper to taste and also a little bit of zested nutmeg too! We will stir for other 10 minutes or so, or until we see the dough well mixed, not sticky and we see all ingredients well incorporated.

4º- Once we concluded the previous step, we put the dough in a platter so to let it cool, and we cover it with plastic wrap. We want the plastic wrap to touch the dough, so to avoid the forming of a crust when cooling. We pop it into the fridge for about two hours or we can let it there overnight.

5º- We prepare three dishes, and we put flour in the first, beated eggs in the second and breadcrumbs in the last one. We create little balls with the dough of the size we prefer, and we dip the balls first in the flour, then in the beated eggs and then again in the breacrumbs, all in sequence. Fry it in very hot oil.

We can freeze the croquetas we don't eat them right away. To do so, a trick is to put them in a tray each one separated from the others and we put them in the freezer for about an hour, or until they are completely freezed. Then, once freezed, we remove them from the tray and we put them into freeze bags or Tupperwares. In this way they won't stick to each other when they will freeze, and will be easy to get them ready to eat!

Saludos!

AnGie

The Gachas Cordobesas

Today we bring you a recipe that I've known since I was a little kid. My Grandma (mother side) and all her family are from Cordoba, a city of Andalucia, and this dish comes from that part of Spain. The recipe has been passed from generation to generation, and my mother taught it to me. I want to share it with you all this recipe that is really famous in Cordoba, even if in Canary Island not so much.

About the origins of the cordobese Gachas little is known, but what is sure is that this recipe has lots of centuries on its back. This recipe was popular in the Middle Ages and in the Al-Andalus era too (the moresque era). It is known also that in the roman era somethig very similar was prepared, since there are documents found in the work of the latin writer Marcus Gavius Apicius.

The gachas are to be prepared with very simple ingredients, and even if the tradition wants them to be prepared for all the Saints (1st of November), you can't help but eating them all-year-round.

Ingredients:

• 200 g. of flour ( some 8 spoonful)
• 20 g. aprox. of granulated anise (matalahuva)
• 1/2 lemon zest
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 100 g. of sugar (yu choose)
• Bread
• oil to fry the bread ( 150 g. aprox.)
• 1 pinch of salt
• milk ( aproximately I used 1 and half liter).
• cinnamon powder to decorate

The fried bread

Preparation:

1º- Cut the bread in pieces and fry it in the oil, y lo doramos o freímos en aceite, but we won't let it burn. Put the bread aside.

2º- Put a pot on heat and pour two spoonful of oil. When it starts being really hot, we will add the anise grains and we will remove it from heat so to not let it burn, otherwise our dish will be too bitter.

3º- Put again the pot on heat and we will add some milk. The milk it can be both warm or cold. I usually prefer it to be cold at the beginning and then warm to avoid bulks, you choose.

Milk, lemon, cinnamon, oil and anise seeds.

4º- At low heat, we put the flour, the lemon, the cinnamon and the salt in the pot. We energically stir to mix well the flour with the milk. We will add slowly the milk, letting it dense a little bit, just like we would do with the bechamel sauce. Stir it countinously, to avoid the creation of bulks. The process will last some 20 minutes in order to obtain a well cooked sauce with a good taste.

5º- When the sauce starts to dense and we have finished pouring all the milk, we add the sugar and we stir. When the sugar have completely melted we move to our next step (try if the sauce is sweet enough, and in the case, just add some more sugar and stir again).

6º- We add the fried bread, we stir and we turn off the heat. Now you can try them, and you'll see that they will not taste as flour at all, and they'll have a very smooth consistence in the mouth.

7º- Serve it in a central dish, or in different, individual portions. Decorate them with cinnamon powder and let it cool a little bit before serving. I love them warm anyway.

The gachas are realized also with water instead of milk, but in my family we always used this version. In other parts of Spain, the word "gacha" is used to describe other salted dishes.

In many versions the lemon skin is added at the beginning, along with the oil, and then remove it when it is a little bit fried. I tend to prefer to add it to the milk and cook it, so that the aroma of the lemon slowly gets integrated in the milk. I love to put some not fried bread in the gacha, but I know many others prefers to add it above the gacha, to decorate it. That's a matter of taste, as everything is in this life!

I hope you'll try them!

Greetings,

AnGie