All-day Pea Soup

Smoked ham hocks, sauteed onions, celery and carrots. Thyme, Margaram, Bay Leaves (4 - cooks have to count), garlic, salt and pepper.

Ham hocks, covered in water, went on to simmer at 07:00. I use the
spaghetti pot and strainer. Easy to lift all of the hocks out of the
broth, strains any of the smaller bones at the same time.

For some soups, such as this, (and sofrito, sofregit, soffritto, or
refogado, ) I prefer vegetables that are small diced. I seldom
concern myself with peeling carrots as they will all but disappear
through the day. I do avoid celery leaves...personal taste.

Using a large (BIG) cast iron pot saute the veggies until the onions
are glassy. Add in herbs and spices. Bloom everything. At the same
time sort and wash 2 pounds of dried peas. When the onions are ready
deglaze the pan with some of the ham hock broth. Add the peas. Cover
with additional ham hock broth. Stir to prevent the peas from
clumping. <= technical term, sorry.

preheat oven: 200F. Ideally we want just long soaking heat, cooking
from 12:Noon to roughly 17:00, plus or minus the time it takes to bake
crescent rolls.

The ham hocks, in the strainer, are then turned out onto a sheet pan
to cool. Go play a game of Spite & Malice. Regardless of who wins,
the hocks are now cool enough to handle, though I have become a big
fan of gloves for the 'messy' work of picking the meat from the hocks.

Time to combine. Add the meat to the newly acquainted pea soup. Add
'some' more of the broth. Lid the pot and bring to a full rolling
boil. Steam will be pushing out from under the cast iron lid when that
is achieved. Reduce heat, stir completey, and evaluate for adding
more broth.

Place lidded pot of Pea Soup on the center rack of the oven and ignore
for 45 minutes. Pull it out. You should notice the peas are really
beginning to break down. This is another reason for all day cooking,
cooks everything thoroughly but leaves some body, some texture. Add
more broth as necessary, but it shouldn't need much.

Back in the oven while I complete writing this...

When I am done with this I will pull the soup, give it a good stir (to
avoid the dreaded clumping). Evaluate for seasoning. Always, always,
always use less salt than you think. Adjust to taste. Then every
hours of so I will pull it and stir... and maybe taste, again and
again.

Service can be as involved or as simple as you like. I'll pull the
soup, it will stay hot in the lidded cast iron. I'll crank the oven
to 350F, spread out some tube Crescent Rolls and in 12 to 14 minutes
we will just ladle right out of the cast iron.

Now I have to go pull, stir, taste and adjust. Darn my luck.

This is an extremely simple and absolutely comfy pasta dish. There are two key elements to making a perfect carbonara: using the correct ingredients (guanciale, pecorino, egg) and not overcooking the egg.

There are actually only 4 steps (cook pasta, cook guanciale, mix egg with cheese, create carbonara), but I will be thorough because there are many places where this recipe can be wrong and you will end up with a bland sauce, gummy noodles, or worse, scrambled eggs with pasta.

I used too much egg/cheese in my pic (or too little pasta), but getting the right proportions when cooking for one is hard. It was great, anyway.

1. Cook the guanciale

Cut the guanciale in 2mm-wide strips. Guanciale is pork cheeks, and it has a stronger taste than bacon or pancetta, which is the pork belly. You can replace guanciale with bacon, but you and your descendants will be cursed by the whole population of Italy. I'm not italian, so I will allow it. However, if you can't find guanciale, at least aim for pancetta. It will be blander, lacking the stingy taste of the guanciale. Make sure to try guanciale at least once and you'll never go back to bacon carbonaras.

Stir-fry the guanciale in a bit of olive oil or pork lard. This is a fatty cut, and will release fat when cooking, so it doesn't need a whole lot of oil, just a bit to kickstart the cooking. Stop the heat when the guanciale is transparent and a bit crispy, but not too burnt. Leave it in the pan, make sure it doesn't get too cold.

2. Cook the pasta

The original recipe uses spaghetti, but I had thin tagliatelle at home. Cook the tagliatelle in salty water. Add a tablespoon of salt for every liter of water. Unlike rice, the pasta does not absorb a lot of the saltiness, so it won't be too salty unless you go totally overboard. I go with 100g of pasta if the dish is a full meal, and 70g if the meal has an entree

The cooking time is usually written in the packet, but in any case, taste it. You should stop the heat when the pasta is al dente, that is, a little undercooked.

3. Beat an egg with pecorino

While the pasta cooks, beat an egg with shredded pecorino cheese. The original recipe calls for 1 egg plus an egg yolk per 2 people, but when I'm cooking for myself I just use a single egg with no extras. A good amount of cheese is between 30g and 40g per person. Don't use too much. Don't substitute with parmesan, it's too flavorful and will overpower the guanciale. If you don't have pecorino, look for a mid-curated cheese.

4. Mix the carbonara

Once the pasta is done, transfer it to the pan with the guanciale. Transfer around 150ml (per person) of the pasta water to the pan, too. Stir so the pasta and guanciale are well mixed and there is a layer of water-oil over all the tagliatelle. Do this step BEFORE adding in the egg.

Now for the critical part: controlling the heat of the pan before adding the egg. There should be a good amount of residual heat. If the pan is too cold, turn the heat on for a few seconds, but turn it off later! There should be enough heat so it's hot to the touch, but the oil should not be sizzling.

Add the egg-cheese mixture to the pan and STIR STIR STIR. Mix heavily so the egg covers the pasta, and the hot pasta-water-guanciale mix transfers its heat to the egg. The egg should coagulate, but not fully cook. Keep stirring to avoid curdling the egg. The ideal degree of cooking means that the egg is not runny, but it doesn't taste like an omelet.

After about 20-30 seconds, the egg should be cooked. If in doubt, undercook, because the hot meal will continue cooking the egg while in your plate. If it tastes like scrambled eggs, sorry, you failed. Enjoy your non-carbonara but tasty pasta, and adjust your process next time. I failed twice until I learned the trick. Now my carbonara is perfect. Don't despair and keep trying.

Serve. Grind a bit of black pepper on top of the plate for decoration. If you're a fan of parmesan, you can shred a bit too. Just for decoration! You want to taste the egg.

Enjoy!

The paella is a staple of Spanish cuisine, more specifically, the Mediterranean coast. It's become wildly popular, so multiple versions have been created to accommodate to all tastes, especially tourists: paella with chorizo, with too much seafood, and other disasters. To each their own, it's positive that people love the dish so much that they venture into those extreme modifications, but they are missing on the great dish with subtle tastes that is a traditional paella.

Therefore, if you want to prepare a basic "core" paella, this is a pretty decent version with stuff you can have in your fridge. I'll mention the modifications I made from the traditional recipe, and how you can substitute ingredients for other food you can find in your local market.

The dish is quite easy (fry meat, fry vegetables, add rice and cover with stock), but getting the perfect cook point takes experience.

Use one pan and one fat source for everything - hence the name "paella" ("pan"), as ingredients go in and out, but the pan stays.

Fry the meat

• Stir fry the meat in a very generous amount of fat. The pan should be fully covered in 5-10 mm of fat. The recommended fat source is olive oil. Alternatively, sunflower oil, canola oil, or lard. Never use butter. Salt and pepper to taste, but don't add too much, we'll rectify it at the end.
• About the meat type. The traditional paella uses rabbit and chicken, I used rabbit and pork sausage as pork provides a heartier taste. Do not abuse pork (no chorizo, no bacon, no 100% pork) unless that is specifically your goal. Classic paellas use white meat / poultry exclusively. In cultures that do not eat rabbit, use chicken. Ensure 100-150g of lean meat per serving, therefore include the raw weight of meat to account for bones.
• You can make a vegetarian paella by removing meat and adding more vegetables (for ideas, see below)
• The meat should be around 80%-90% cooked as it will finish cooking later. If in doubt, cook it fully, you don't want raw rabbit. Once it's done, reserve it.

Fry vegetables

• Using the same oil, stir fry onion, green or red Italian pepper (alternatively, bell pepper), and tomato. Roughly, 1 onion, 1/2 pepper and 2 tomatoes per person. Optionally, one or two garlic cloves. This is the vegetable base. The original version uses an extremely specific type of pepper called nyora. Don't sweat it. Italian or bell.
• For added texture and body, the traditional recipe also includes lima beans and green beans, the flat type, cut in half or thirds. I included wild mushrooms (no button) and artichokes which blend in pretty well with the canonical paella.
• Make sure the onion, pepper and tomato are thoroughly cooked, as you don't want to find hard bits in the final dish. If you use green beans, however, they should add texture, so don't let it get too soft. Salt and pepper to taste, but don't add too much, we'll rectify it at the end.

Add the rice and cook it

• Add in the meat and the rice to the pan with the vegetables, and cook the rice 1-2 minutes until it starts to become transparent. Aim for 80g-100g of rice per serving. Don't be afraid of making too much, paella becomes an excellent leftover. Just reheat it in a pan with a bit more oil.
• Use round rice, like the one used for risotto. It needs to have some starch. Never, never use basmati or long rice for a paella, it will be too dry.
• Add in the stock. I used chicken and vegetable stock. You can also use pure vegetable stock. As a last resort, use water. In that case, increase the amount of the vegetable base by 50% to compensate for the lack of flavor of water.
• The proportion of rice to stock should be around 1:2 by weight. This varies a lot depending on the type of the rice, the evaporation rate, and even weather conditions. My advice is to start with 1:1.75 and add the stock whenever needed.
• The traditional paella includes saffron, I didn't have any.

How to tell when it's done

• When the rice is done it will stop absorbing liquid. This usually takes 15-20 minutes. This is why it's better to add liquid when necessary rather than dumping it all at the beginning.
• In some places there seems to be a misconception about the socarrat (sticky bits of rice). In the traditional recipe this is a by-product of cooking the rice on a wide and thin pan over a fire. It tastes nice, but it shouldn't be the focus of the paella. Furthermore, it is very difficult to control when cooking at home at a regular kitchen with a regular pan. Just avoid it until you are an expert, otherwise instead of socarrat you will get disgusting burnt rice.
• Therefore, stir the rice very gently every 2-3 minutes to avoid it getting stuck to the bottom of the pan and undercooked.
• Taste, taste, taste. Rectify salt and pepper. If the paella lacks flavor, add in a bit of acid like the juice of 1/4 of a lemon or a bit of white wine. This is 100% non-traditional, but I think it is a reasonable modification.
• Taste the texture of the rice every 2 minutes after the 15th. When it is al dente, meaning that you could eat it but it's still a bit hard, and a thin layer of liquid still remains (see picture) turn the heat off and let it rest for 3-5 minutes. You can cover it with a cotton cloth, but do not fully cover the pan with a lid because the rice will get soft and overcooked. It needs to breathe.

Enjoy!

That's it! You can now enjoy the paella as spaniards eat it at home, using ingredients that are available worldwide.

Here's the finished dish:

Asmarris is a fish stew originated in a very small region in the Mediterranenan coast of Tarragona (Spain).

This hearthy and delicious dish was invented by fishermen to make best use of small fish, preferably blue fish such as sardines, and as few ingredients as possible, stuff you would find on a fishing boat. Besides the fish, it only requires tomato, stale bread, potatoes and olive oil. Garlic and red wine are optional.

• Lightly fry the sardines in olive oil. Do not cook them all the way. Count 5-6 sardines per person.
• In the same oil, lightly fry stale bread, tomatoes and garlic. Grind in a food processor, or if you're in a fishing boat, crush it with a mortar. You can leave it a bit grainy or let it grind until it's smooth.
• Put the paste back on the oil and keep frying it. When it begins to stick to itself, add 150ml of red wine and let simmer for a couple of minutes
• Add diced potatoes and cover with water. Stew them until the potatoes are almost done. If in doubt, cook them all the way, as it is preferable to overcook them than to overcook the fish. I used one medium-sized potato per person.
• Put the fried sardines back and finish cooking along with the potatoes for a maximum of 5 minutes. Be careful not to let them break apart.
• When it's done, let rest for 3-4 minutes. Serve hot and enjoy.