Huevos Estrellados

Some days, you can just have so many things go slightly wrong that they pile up on you and the only option is to sit on the couch, have a beer, and let the day wash away, hoping that the tide will bring an easier, if not brighter tomorrow.  Those days which flicker with mild to moderate misfortune, like an aging florescent bulb.  This is a meal for one of those days.

 

 

Spanish Food Parties

 

Volver = To return as well as a rather good movie.

Well, the academic year has kicked off, which means I’m back in Spain.  This year may be a little on the light side, blogwise, as I’m going to be doing a Master’s program as well as my teaching assistant job.  So to make up for it, I’m going to kick out a huge mega entry while I’m still on ‘vacation’ – I had to come back early in order to fix up my immigration status.  I do want to learn several things yet, like migas, lentils, and chocos, so I’ll do my best to carve out some time to cook and share.

Spanish food is trendy in magazines and in foodie circles but most people in the US have never had Spanish food or have a mental image limited to tortilla española and paella.  If they had indeed tasted some of the things Spain has to offer, then it was most assuredly not home cooked.  I decided to throw a Spanish food party as my own goodbye to everyone, that promptly grew into two separate food parties.  As you may have seen more than once before here on the blog, these may very well be the only types of parties I know how to put together.  I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not.

Some of these recipes I’ve got here are dredged from the internet, but all of them have been altered or influenced by me and my friends here in Spain.  The rest have been jotted down in Spanglish (1 kilo tomato, 1 diente de ajo, trocito de bell pepper) directly from real live Spanish people.  So if it isn’t authentic enough for you…move to a tiny pueblo?

Fácil es mejor

Last summer, the food trend seemed to Spain – Spanish food hit Gourmet magazine (RIP), the Food Network, food blogs the internet over, you name it.  Now I wonder if it really was in, or I was searching desperately for traces of Spain’s food heritage here in the US.  I had just gotten back from a study abroad in Seville and I was in the throes of cultural readjustment – throwing my own Spanish food party helped, but I was still on the lookout for reasons to brag about Spain that didn’t make me look like a tool caught up in my own personal experiences (which I was), but instead a finger-on-the-pulse, hip foodie.

I’ve gotten over that particular obsession, though every time I see a hint of Spanish food culture, I still get the warm fuzzies, though

Illegally delicious.

I’ve done better at keeping them on the downlow.  Some examples: finding membrillo at Whole Foods, finding real, hard cured Spanish chorizo at DeLaurenti’s Deli at Pike Place Market, drinking cheap bottles of Rioja instead of studying for finals… These are manageable ways to work Spain into my diet without smuggling

cured ham in my suitcase or begging friends abroad to bring me Lemon Fanta.  Well, I’ve done those things, too.

But anyways.  When I was in Spain, I managed to pick up a few recipes.  Tortilla española, garbanzos, and huevo al plato.

Cazuelas

Huevo al plato is literally an egg on a plate.  My host father would make it for me for lunch in the wintertime, cooked in a cazuela, or indestructible glazed terra cotta bowl/plate.  These things happily troop from on top of the stove burner, into the oven, then into the dish washer afterwards.  No problem.  Lucky me got two of them as a birthday gift a few days before I left Seville.

I used to think that a huevo al plato was this specific dish that Jairo would plunk down on the table in front of me with fresh bread, as I toasted my feet on the space heater and wished for the rain to stop so I could get to class dry.  But Doña Margarita of my Spanish cookbook has informed me that in fact huevo al plato refers to the way it’s served – an individual egg in a cazuela.  This now seems very, very obvious to me.  But I share my shortcomings with you so that you don’t feel alone when those kitchen duh moments trickle in shamefully.  If you poke around on the internet, cookbooks, or Spain, you’ll find lots of variations on this theme, especially in tapas restaurants.

You won’t find a huevo al plato in Gourmet magazine (if it were still running) or as the main dish of a ritzy chef, but I love it because it’s easy.  Ridiculously so.  You don’t need a cazuela to make it – just use a small frying pan and slide the mess onto a normal plate and dig on in.

Jairo’s Easy  Peasy Huevo al Plato

Ay, ¡qué buena pinta!

In return for the fabulous Sri Lankan Feast, Gabrielle and I invited Michelle and her sister Andrea over for dinner, as well as our friend Brianna (I say our friend, but really these are Gabrielle’s friends who I have slowly usurped).  I knew it would be difficult to compete, but I was also excited because Michelle and Andrea are meat eaters (Gabrielle and Brianna not so much), so I decided to make up what I’ve been wanting to eat myself: garbanzos.

Tasty face!