Gunternation

On our first trip to Spain we visited Barcelona. We came home raving about grilled squid.  Next we went to Grenada and Malaga and were introduced to Tinto de Verano. Last year we visited Galicia and experienced Padrón peppers. Common to all our trips was an increasing appreciation for bacalao, an immediate addiction to jamon iberico, and the lovely refrain of “Dos más caña, por favor.”

We were in Madrid for a week at the beginning of the month, and again Spain rocked our culinary world. This time it was the morcilla. Spain’s black pudding.

A morcilla bocadillo

We’ve been on a slow journey toward black pudding. Americans are squeamish about it. I think somewhere in our cultural heritage black pudding was used to separate us from our British overlords forebears. Young children were rocked to sleep at night to their mothers cooing, Aren’t you glad you’re independent of the British Empire, with all that cricket, and royalty, and heavens, they even eat pudding made of blood! As a kid my images of blood pudding were disturbing indeed; knowing only American pudding, I would imagine bowls of cold, congealed, bloody goo.

Those thoughts hadn’t fully left me when we arrived in Ireland, but of course I wanted to engage in the Full Irish Breakfast experience, so I tried the round of black pudding on my plate. It was okay. More like a breakfast sausage patty than a hematoma. Not disgusting, a little bitter. Nothing special. So I ignored black pudding for a while and Bill would buy only white pudding for our (only occasional) fry ups.

Sometimes Bill ordered dishes with black pudding in restaurants–chicken stuffed with French Black pudding at Restaurant 1014; a chorizo, potato, and black pudding starter at The Winding Stair. Those were both tasty dishes, so I decided that black pudding was nice as an ingredient. It was fine in a group of friends, but you wouldn’t really want to hang out.

Then it seems that everyone on twitter started talking about black pudding and I heard tale of creations such as black pudding with chocolate and pistachios. Fellow expats who had once spit out a black pudding canape happily attended a dinner hosted by Clontakilty, a name synonymous with pudding. A black pudding renaissance was underway.

At the O’Brien Chop House in Lismore last Spring, I ordered a black pudding dish, the classic combination of scallops with black pudding. An absolutely perfect pair–the earthiness of the pudding meeting the sweet sea of the scallop. The next thing I knew I was at Sheridans Irish Food festival watching the three big names in Irish black pudding–Jack McCarthy, Ed Hick and Tom Doherty–make black pudding from scratch. I even tasted the black pudding before it was cooked. When it was still red. I had crossed over.

I ate that!

We brought home some Tom Doherty’s terrific pudding, we really like his spicing, which Bill prepared using a Nigel Slater recipe for Black pudding with mustard cream sauce. Since then we’ve tried every variety of black pudding we’ve come across, including a lovely, mild loaf of black pudding from Inch House.

Black pudding with mustard cream sauce

And so we found ourselves on a warm evening in Madrid, on our second bottle of cider at the Asturian Sidrería down the street from the apartment (the cider ritual was another new experience), having already consumed a plate of charcuterie with the most ruby red jamon and a pile of  Padrón peppers, when we were enticed by a plate passing by to the next table. “Huevos,” I said dreamily. “With Morcilla, I think,” Bill said, “black pudding.” Moments later we had our own plate, and we found yet another Spanish food to love. We think it’s the cumin that makes this black pudding delectable. It’s crumbly, and made with rice. Served with fried eggs and fried potatoes, this dish is killer. We ate morcilla at every opportunity, in bocacillos, in pinxtos, and even returned to the Sidrería to eat their huevos rotos con morcilla one more time.

The eggs may appear to be the star, but the morcilla is what blew us away.

The pintxo version

“How can we have been to Spain three times and never had morcilla?” I asked, amazed and a little indignant. But then I understood what Spain had known all along: We hadn’t been ready.

On a recent Sunday, Bill and I drove to South County Wicklow to visit our veg guy. That’s right, we don’t have a local–that pub where everybody knows your name–but we do have a veg guy.

His name is Duncan Healy, and he’s at the Red Stables Market in St. Anne’s park every Saturday. I’ve mentioned before that the market is part of our favorite Saturday routine, and after a bunch of Saturdays of chatting over chard or tomatoes, Bill and I started referring to Duncan by name and saying things like, oh, if Duncan has some nice kale today I’ll make a kale and white bean stew. Well, Bill would say those things.

And then one day there were tomatillos.

The way I remember it, I was at work on a Saturday, and I received a single-word text from Bill: Tomatillos! I let out a yelp and raised my phone over my head like large-haired Joan Cusack at the end of Working Girl.

While my recollection may be altered by the mists of time,  we did indeed find tomatillos in Ireland and we were stoked! If you’re unfamiliar with the tomatillo, it is like a cross between a tomato and a pepper and is in the gooseberry family. Tomatillos are common in Mexican cuisine, frequently used in salsas and sauces.

My favorite use for tomatillos is to toss a few  into a blender along with a clove of garlic, a serrano chile (or jalapeno or bird chile), and an avocado. Blend. Then enjoy a bright, perfect marriage of creamy and tangy. It’s great as a dip, or served with Rick Bayless’ potato and pork tacos. (See right.)

Bill likes to roast tomatillos. For a fresh salsa, throw a few tomatillos, a clove of garlic, and chiles into a roasting pan and roast about ten minutes until blackened. Blend these ingredients to a puree, and then add some diced onions and cilantro. The roasting mellows the flavor of the tomatillo and adds tasty charred bits. You can also freeze the puree of roasted tomatillos, garlic and chiles. This base can be added to browned onions to make a salsa verde, which is excellent with pork (see below) or add onions and cilantro for salsa as above.

We were delighted to be invited to visit the Healy farm. Duncan grew up on the farm, and returned a few years ago to work with his father, Denis. The farm operates as Organic Delights, providing produce to restaurants and through stands at many markets including Temple Bar and Dun Laoghaire. We’re really happy that our local market sells so many veggies grown right down the road in Wicklow. What they can’t grow in Ireland, they will import, so the Organic Delights stall is always bursting with selection.

After feeding us homemade pizza, salad and blueberry crumble, Duncan led us and a contingent of kids and other family members around the farm to visit the pigs and see all the baby veggies growing big and strong. We snacked on plums, apples and raspberries as we explored the greenhouses with onions drying, tomatoes blushing to red, and pea tendrils climbing their trellises.  We collected a few veggies to bring home, including two round, green squash that when cut open looked like a cross between the seedy pulp of a crookneck squash and the stringy spaghetti squash, and tasted better than that description indicates. In fact, they were lovely stuffed with quinoa, beef mince, onion, tomato, and a couple tomatillos, and topped with cheese.

Thanks to Duncan and Cindy and family for a great day on the farm.

Petting a pig

A pocket full of watercress

Raspberries (still not used to berries being an Autumn fruit)

Tomatillos!

From the market this morning. Oh what goodness lies in store!