Spanish Roast Chicken with Romesco and Grilled Onions

I'm not sure how or why I ended up deciding that roast chicken or roast duck would be the perfect meal for New Years Eve, but I got it in my head that I wanted to roast a whole bird of some sort and I went to Fairway to buy both.  And then I looked at the recipes I wanted to make and decided that we would make the chicken for New Years Eve and make the duck on January 1.  We had to re-evaluate the duck and push it back until the weekend because the bourbon-pickled jalapenos need to pickle for 3 days so I'll report back sometime this weekend on how the duck worked out.  I'm pretty excited.  

Anyway, it has been a long time since we last roasted a whole chicken.  For the most part we roast bone-in chicken breasts because it is far less time and labor-intensive than roasting a whole chicken.  It also seems a little wasteful to roast a whole chicken when I'm really only interested in the breasts.  But every once in awhile we give it a shot.  And this recipe has me totally inspired to go out and roast more whole chickens.  It was delicious - the smoked paprika rub gave the chicken a really wonderful smoky, earthy flavor.  We were both a little worried when we pulled the chicken from the oven that it would be totally overdone (just look at how brown the skin is) but it wasn't at all.  The chicken was moist and juicy.  And when you ate it with the romesco (which was wonderfully smoky, bright and acidic and ever so slightly spicy) it was delicious.  I also loved the grilled scallions on the side.  We had some king oyster mushrooms in the fridge that I wanted to use so we threw them on the grill too while we were grilling up the scallions.  They kind of look like sunchokes in the picture, but they were mushrooms.  I can't wait to bust this recipe out at some future date.  There is more than enough romesco for 2 whole chickens.  I think if I were to have 4-6 people over I would cook two chickens, double the number of scallions, grill up some more mushrooms and serve it all with a salad and some nice bread.  Done.  Maybe I would start off the meal with some cheese and some Marcona almonds, but it would be a totally wonderful and relatively simple meal.  Now that I am back into the whole roast chicken game, there is an Ina Garten roast chicken recipe that I have been meaning to try for awhile that might just be my next attempt...

Recipe after the jump!

Gazpacho Cordobes

Alex and I are trying to get into the habit of doing Meatless Mondays in our apartment.  I'm not going to avoid meat if we go out to dinner, but to the extent possible we try to cook and eat vegetarian on Monday nights.  This Monday we wanted to use a bunch of produce from the fridge and the farmers' market so we whipped up a batch of gazpacho (which we started on Sunday so it could sit in the fridge overnight and then all we had to do was blend and serve on Monday) and Corn on the Cob with Lime Salt.  The thing that most distinguished this gazpacho from others we have made in the past to me was the smooth and almost creamy texture.  Roasting the tomatoes and bell peppers intensified their flavors, but mellowed the flavor of the garlic.  The acidity of the tomatoes and the vinegar (as well as the fact that the soup is served chilled) makes the soup very light and refreshing.  I didn't really taste the tarragon, but I thought the soup was pretty tasty so I would make it as written again.  The only thing I might try is to crisp up some serrano ham and serve the soup with crumbled crispy serrano.  Yum.  But not on Meatless Monday of course.

Recipe after the jump!

Spanish Tortilla with Broccoli, Chorizo and Onion

You might not know this, but eggs are kind of my thing.  If you have read this blog at all in the past (or gone to brunch with me) then it should be fairly obvious.  Then again, Alex does try to curb my egg obsession so there aren't as many egg recipes on this blog as there might otherwise be...  So maybe it's not as obvious as I think it is.  Actually, I tried to add eggs to our dinner last night and Alex shot me down.  Anyway, I decided that I wanted to make this recipe to use the broccoli I picked up from Fairway last week along with the eggs from the farmers' market.  And for those of you not familiar with Spanish tortillas - they are essentially heavier frittatas with thinly sliced potatoes inside. used As we started to make the dish Alex told me that I had selected two of the things that we are worst at in life - flipping eggs and homemade mayonnaise (or aioli in this case).  We have tried to make mayonnaise three times in the past - once with the food processor, once with our immersion blender and once with the blender.  All three times we failed.  Epically.  We ended up with thin, runny, greasy messes each time.  And it happened again.  Apparently we really suck at making mayonnaise.  But this time we Googled how to rescue a broken aioli and found out that we are not the only people who have this problem.  There were several articles and blog posts citing Julia Child's method for saving a broken aioli or mayonnaise.  We used her method and it totally worked!  Hurray!  But our tortilla didn't flip too well...  It broke into a million pieces and chunks got stuck to the pan.  So we failed there too.  And there was really no rescuing it because it's not like you can put a frittata/omelet/Spanish tortilla back together.  But in the end it's the flavor that matters and the flavor was good.  It didn't really occur to me until we put the ingredients in the pan, but I think you should either add more eggs or cut down on the amount of broccoli and chorizo in the future.  The ratio of filling to eggs is a little off and the broccoli is heavy, which makes it hard to flip the tortilla successfully.  It was still pretty heavy (partially due to the ratio of eggs to filling and partially because of the combination of ingredients and flavors), but I knew that was likely to happen going in because Spanish tortillas always strike me as heavy.  I thought that the absence of potato would make more of a difference and make it taste a little lighter, but not so much.  Either way, it was a tasty dish and we finally made a (semi-)successful aioli!  Yay!

Recipes after the jump!

Sopa de Ajo (Garlic Soup)

Sopa de ajo (aka garlic soup) sounds a little weird right?  I thought so.  I know it's a totally traditional Spanish dish, but I have never been inspired to try it or make it at home.  But we had some stale bread in the apartment and Alex wanted to use it, so I found this Mario Batali recipe online at Serious Eats for sopa de ajo with poached eggs.  I have to admit, the poached eggs were what really sold me on this recipe.  Well, that and the fact that we had everything we needed in the apartment (which is a huge plus on a rainy weeknight).  This soup is simple and very satisfying, with a pleasing richness from the poached egg.  It's the perfect type of soup to eat when you are feeling a little under the weather or when the weather outside just isn't so great.  One note - depending on the type of bread you use you might have to play with the ratio of broth to bread a little - ours got really thick, almost oatmeal-like, because we used a fairly hearty bread (and probably because Alex used more than 1/4 pound on accident).  As far as meals go, it was comforting and tasty.  We served it with a nice salad, and it was a perfect meal for a rainy Tuesday night.

Recipe after the jump!

Gambas a la Plancha

So I know I promised to say more about those crazy Mayan Shrimp that I picked up at The Lobster Place.  We picked them up on Saturday, and made them for a late lunch on Sunday, but I never got around to posting the recipe that night (or Monday night for that matter).  But here I am finally; better late than never.  As for the shrimp themselves, they were by far the largest shrimp or prawns that I have ever purchased (or seen for that matter).  The name shrimp is totally deceptive because it conjures up much smaller mental images.  These shrimp are colossal.  Dave Pasternak at Esca described them as "Chernobyl shrimp."  I think we bought just over a pound - maybe 1.15 lbs, and we only bought 8 of those bad boys.  I knew that my Mario Batali cookbooks had some recipes for giant prawns/shrimp, so they were the first place I looked when I wanted to figure out what to do with my shrimp.  This recipe won out because it was the simplest, and as such, seemed like it would be the best way to really showcase the shrimp themselves.  If you are going to go to the expense and trouble of buying these crazy shrimp (which I think cost roughly $20 a pound), you should make sure that you don't mask the sweetness of the shrimp by using an overly complicated recipe and overly powerful ingredients or seasonings.

And with this recipe all you tasted was shrimp.  It really was sweet and meaty, with a far more intense flavor than your average shrimp.  The shrimp were also really juicy.  Alex's complaint about the shrimp was that they were a bit of a pain in the butt to eat.  Apparently when you don't have any fingernails it can be quite difficult to peel a Mayan shrimp.  I didn't have any trouble, but Alex certainly did.  I countered by saying that they are no more a pain in the butt than crabs and crawfish.  Alex's response to that was that we're from Maryland - blue crabs, beer and football are what we do.  I guess I can't argue with that.  But even if the dish was a bit messy and labor-intensive, I thought it was quite tasty and fun to make.

Recipe after the jump!