Razor clams rice and fried sole

It's very difficult to translate the names of fish. There are a few types of fish that go under the name "sole", but the prices and gastronomic characteristics vary quite a lot. I am referring to this variety, but unfortunately the fish has already been cleaned, which makes it difficult to completely identify it:



This is a very delicate fish, both in texture and in flavor, so it may seem a bit senseless to fry it. It works, though. Sprinkle it with kosher salt an hour in advance, dust with flour making sure to remove the excess, and carefully fry it in shallow oil. The key is in not overcooking, keeping the fish moist and succulent.

The razor clams, still bursting with life:





The rice: clean the razor clams thoroughly under running water. We used 1/2 kg for a cup of medium grain rice, which serves about 3 people. Have a pot with boiling salted water under medium heat, add the razor clams and cover with a lid. Use as little water possible, just enough to cover the clams. As soon as the clams open up, remove them from the pot. Reserve the cooking liquid, which you should pass through a fine-mesh sieve to remove any sand. Separate the flesh of the clams from the shell, reserving the flesh.

Finely dice a small onion and two garlic cloves. Slowly sweat these with slug or two of olive oil and a bay leaf. To this, you add the flesh of two ripe tomatoes. Let it slowly stew for five minutes or so. Then, add the hot cooking liquid to which boiling water has been added to obtain two and a half times the volume of rice. Bring it to a boil, season with salt, and in goes the rice. Let it cook under medium heat. When the rice is almost cooked, add the razor clams. There should be a bit of broth left when the rice is fully cooked. Add some chopped parsley and serve at once.

Salada montanheira is the perfect accompaniment to this dish, but this salad deserves its own post.

Here are the fish and clams, side by side:

Whole fish in the oven

Continuing with the fish theme, take a look at this gorgeous white sea bream:



It was a little over 1 kg before it was cleaned, and it's difficult to buy fish much fresher than this: it smelt like the ocean itself!

The question is: how do you cook it? Most people would consider grilling it on charcoal, but I think that by roasting it in the oven and keeping it very simple we are able to enjoy much more of its flavor and juiciness.

Here's how we do it: sprinkle the whole fish with kosher salt one hour in advance. Keep it in the fridge but remove it 15 minutes before you're ready to put it in the oven.

Eat the oven to 200 C.

Peel and thinly slice potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava and onions. Distribute evenly them on a oven tray, season with kosher salt, pepper and a generous amount of olive oil. Add a few peeled garlic cloves which you have smashed with the back of a knife. Cover the tray with aluminum foil and put it in the over. Lower the temperature to 180 C.

Peel two tomatoes and dice them.

After 20 minutes, take the tray out of the oven, remove the aluminum foil, sprinkle the tomatoes over the potatoes and arrange the fish on the tray. Add a few spoons on olive oil over the fish. Maybe put a few sprigs of parsley over the fish also.

Return the tray to the oven. Roast for 15 minutes. Open the oven and pour a glass of dry white wine on the tray. Back into the oven. Another 15 minutes should be enough for the fish to cook. The idea is that as soon as it is cooked we should remove the tray from the oven. Overcooking will render the fish dry. It may have a nice caramelized taste, but the flavor of the fish itself is gone. Below you can see the same white sea bream after it was cooked this way (sorry, I had already started serving it when I remembered to take the picture, that why the fish is not intact.)

Garlicky ray

For me, going to the seaside is more about buying, cooking and eating fresh fish and seafood than it is about enjoying the beach itself.

The highlight of this week of holidays was ray cooked in a way that is very traditional here. It is a simple dish but it turned out surprisingly delicious. Besides the ray, say about 1 kg, you only need new potatoes, garlic and olive oil. Here's a picture of the ray, and notice how fresh it was:



Sprinkle the ray with kosher salt one or two hours in advance. Poach it water seasoned with salt; be careful not to overcook it. Reserve the cooking liquid. Once the fish is cold enough to handle, carefully remove the skin and separate the flesh from the bones. Break the flesh into large chunks and reserve.

Meanwhile, boil the potatoes without peeling them. Smallish white potatoes that are appropriate for boiling and that are really tasty is very important to the success of this simple dish. Once they are cold enough to handle, peel the potatoes, break them into large chunks by hand and distribute them on a serving tray. Distribute the fish also on this platter.

Make the sauce: smash three of four garlic cloves, skin-on, with the back of a knife. Put them in a bowl and add olive oil (say a 1/4 cup), salt, vinegar (two tablespoons), pepper, and a couple of tablespoons of the warm cooking liquid of the fish. Mix well. Let it stand 10 minutes or so for the garlic taste to infuse the oil.

Spoon the sauce over the fish and potatoes mix. Let it stand for 10 minutes. This is wonderful at room temperature but also coldish. If all the ingredients are good quality and cooked to perfection, this is absolutely delicious. (No picture of the final product, sorry.)

Paella

I finally came around to using the paella pan I bought some four years ago, and to put to use the paella recipe that was written down for me by one of the world experts on the subject. Here it is the front page of the manuscript:



Let me translate the basics of the recipe here for future reference! This is the simplest version possible, without garrafon or snails.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium chicken, cut in small pieces (1.5 kg more or less)
• 1/2 kg of rice (DO Valencia, la Fallera is a good brand)
• olive oil, salt, special food colorant for paella, sweet paprika
  
• 3 ripe medium tomatoes, only the pulp obtained by grating them
• water or chicken stock, see below (2 and a half times the volume of the rice)
  
• fresh green beans (flat ones) cut into 5cm bits (200g)

The broth: Instead of using water, it's much better to use a nice chicken stock. One way of doing that is by using parts of the chicken that are mostly bone or that will not be used in the paella, like the wings. Put those chicken parts in a pan with olive oil and quickly brown them. Add an onion cut in quarters and a carrot peeled and cut in smallish bits. Sautee everything to get some color going. Add water and let it boil on high heat for 5 minutes. Skim the surface. Lower the heat, put on a lid, and let it simmer away. You can add some salt as well. When the time for adding water to the paella comes, just strain this broth and add enough hot water to make up for the volume you need.

Start the paella: In medium heat, add olive oil to the paella pan and fry the small chicken bits in batches, which you season with salt and pepper as you go along. The goal is to start cooking the chicken, but also to obtain a nicely browned meat: color and flavor. Reserve the cooked meat as it gets ready.

In the same oil, sautee the green beans. Reserve as well.

Now fry the tomato, seasoned with salt and a pinch of sweet paprika. The tomato should be well-fried, but not burned.

Next, add the broth, making sure it's pretty hot. With a wooden spoon, release all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the reserved chicken. Cover the paella pan and make sure that the broth boils for at least 5 minutes. Alternatively, you could boil the chicken with the broth in a separate pot and then add everything to the paella pan. If too much broth evaporates, we may need to add a bit of broth when the rice comes in. So, have some extra broth ready just in case it's needed, and make sure it's boiling hot when you add it to the pan.

Add the green beans to the paella pan. Put a couple of tablespoons of broth in a cup, mix in 1/2 teaspoon of colorant and mix well. Return this broth to the pan, making sure it's well incorporated. Taste for salt - it should be sightly on the salty side.

On high heat, and only if the broth is on a rolling boil, distribute the rice uniformly around the pan. Record the time. Make sure the pan is on a rolling boil for the first 5 minutes. Between minute 5 and minute 15, we regulate the fire to ensure that by minute 15-17 there is no broth remaining. If there is too much broth, up the heat; if there is too little broth, lower the heat and perhaps cover the pan.

After 15-17 minutes have elapsed, turn off the fire and let the rice rest for no more that 5 minutes before serving. Ideally, the rice in direct contact with the pan should be slightly burnt - this is what's called rosejat and is highly prized. It can be achieved by upping the heat at the end of the cooking time by a short amount of time.

The final result:



NB: In desperate cases, if there there isn't any liquid left by minute 8-10 one can add a glass of boiling water which has been seasoned with salt and a bit of colorant.