The Maltese Bacon

1001 socialist pick up lines or anything involving fish stew

Horaci made some Catalan monkfish stew on Sunday and it was delicious. Culled from a recipe from his grandmother, it contains few ingredients, but was incredibly rich and flavorful. I didn’t realize making fish stew could be such an easy affair. Joanna who is averse to fish, pregnant and all, even mopped it up. We had a “sobre mesa” like they do in Barcelona, which means we had a long, lazy post meal chat at the table, with bread crumbs and dishes still hanging around. (Congealing food is what makes it a true sobre mesa). Brian came by, about 3 hours into digestion, when we had long ago moved onto the couch and into coffee and scotch.

 

Catalan Monkfish Stew
1 pound monkfish
2 tablespoons parsley
1 small can of tomato paste
2 1/2 cups of fish stock (Horaci used a fish stock bouillon cube in water)
2 healthy sized Yukon gold potatoes
1/2 cup wine if you have some on hand
1 can of peas
1/2 cup of almonds
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 cloves chopped garlic and 1 clove whole
Red chili flakes to taste (my addition)
Salt/pepper

Quarter potatoes, then cover by 1 inch with salted cold water  in a pan and simmer, covered, until just tender, 7 to 10 minutes. Drain in a colander, then cool. In a food processor, put almonds, pine nuts, one clove garlic and tomato paste and blend. Rinse the fish and pat dry with a paper towel. Salt and pepper the pieces of fish. In a large pan, heat some olive oil and sauté the fish for two minutes on each side. Set aside. In the same pan, throw 2 cloves of garlic in and sauté . Put in the tomato mixture, red chili flakes, wine, potatoes, fish stock and peas and let simmer for 5 minutes. Add the fish and let simmer for 5 minutes. Add parsley. Serve with bread.

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

Sunday nights can go two ways. They can hang rather dull, tinged with the anticipation of another work week. On the other hand, they can be perfectly cozy like putzing around in your striped socks with a cuppa tea when it's cold outside. Yesterday fell into the second variety - a nice and easy cooking party/potluck dinner at Joanna and Horaci’s sweet new place. They had just moved to Park Slope to get ready for the arrival of a baby girl.

The potluck was a free for all but not as crazily incoherent as one might expect from a group that represented a cracked U.N. cafeteria of America, Australia, Spain, India, China and Vietnam.

On the menu:
Cold Vichysoisse (Joanna)
Cod Brandade (Horaci)
Cilantro chicken (Pooja and Harshad)
Plantain cakes (me)
Fried eggplant (Yogeeta and Hrishi)
Tofu & avocado salad and ganache icing cupcakes (John)

I’ve never had a vichysoisse cold. Very refreshing. Horaci made a yummy cod brandade to eat with bread. He usually makes it with salt cod, like a good Catalan would do, but he couldn’t find salt cod being a newbie in the neighborhood, so he used fresh fish. He was telling me about a more traditional Catalan version that uses mashed potatoes instead of béchamel which sounds intriguing.

Here is his recipe for last night’s dish in his words:

Brandada de bacallà
With the fresh cod (1 pound yesterday), you just have to boil it. Put it in cold water, and when the water starts rippling, remove and let cool. Then mush it with the blender.
On the side, make a béchamel with olive oil instead of butter. Yesterday’s had half a wine glass of olive oil and a full water glass of milk, plus 4 soup spoons of flour (sorry for the weird Spanish units of measure.)
While the cod and the béchamel are warm, mix them well and add the cream (to your taste, I forgot how many soup spoons it was, but I ignored it anyway).
Add parsley and serve on thin slices of fried bread.

Casa Mono: Vegetariano Paradiso?

Mario Batali may worship at the altar of offal and the flappy bits of the rooster, but his tapas-style restaurant on Irving Place has some really lovely vegetable dishes, especially now that spring is here. This realization would not have been made if I had not been dining with my friends Pooja (a vegetarian) and Harshad. I am learning that you can learn a thing or two from a vegetarian sometimes. Although, I still don't think they should be given suffrage. I'm kidding! Actually, it was the perfect late, breezy weekday night to get some veggies in. (Please ignore the fact that my friend is in a scarf. It was a WONDERFULLY BALMY SPRING EVENING. The smell of clover hung in the air. She donned a shawl to cast a spell against winter's insufferable clutch....) 

 "Tripe Schmipe"

We ordered the ramps and they were blo-ddy good - the ramps incredibly sweet and a romesco sauce smothering the whole lot in the ripest tomatoes and garlic. I was excited to have the season's first soft shell crab there, but you know what? I was more into the sprite lettuce and fiddlehead fern salad that came with it. The lamb chops were alright (a bit dry) but it was the pea puree with mint, a kind of gastropub spin on English mushy peas, that I really loved. With all this vegetable mongering, it's starting to sound like I have scurvy but I don't.

The patatas bravas were in a chef-ed out barbecue sauce, of whose origins I guess were smoked paprika. And the beet salad - with the crunchiest, freshest beet tops and a formidable tower of red and yellow beets and blue cheese - were great. We also had the pumpkin and goat cheese croquettes, which I don't really feel the need to comment on.

These are not tapas-styled portions. The plates can be pretty hefty and with all the olive oil that covers them, you better watch how much you order because you will fill up.

Casa Mono
52 Irving Place
212-253-2773