Passport & Plate: Wined, Dined, and Culture Defined

Passport & Plate - Wined, Dined, and Culture Defined

Spain | Friday, March 14, 2014 | flickr photos

Ingredients
For the base of the tapa:
French Baguette
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, as needed to coat bread

For the spread on the tapa:
Jamón Serrano
Goat Cheese
Agave Nectar

For the wine-poached fruit topping:
1 bottle red Spanish wine (Rioja)
2-3 pears
5-10 candied figs
2-4 tbs sugar, to taste
2 cinnamon sticks

For the garnish:
10-30 crushed walnuts

 

How to prepare this recipe
This entire recipe is made up of a bread base, a cheese spread, a poached fruit topping, and a nutty garnish.

1. The base: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees fahrenheit. While it is warming up, cut the baguette into slices no more than an inch thick. Place them on a baking sheet, and brush a few droplets of olive oil onto each slice, fully covering the side facing up. Once your oven is fired up and ready to go, pop the baking sheet in for about ten minutes, or until the slices are lightly browned. You want them to be crisp enough, but still fluffy on the inside.

2. The spread: Gather your goat cheese, agave nectar, and serrano ham. Squeeze as much agave into the cheese as you'd like for preferred sweetness and mix together until well-blended. With a knife or clean hands, cut or rip the ham slices into small shreds. Add to the cheese and stir until evenly distributed.

3. The topping: To create the poached fruit glaze, put a large pot on medium-high heat on the stove. Add 1/4-inch layer of water to the pot, and immediately add wine, about half the bottle. Before the wine starts to bubble, chop up the pears into small cubes and add them to the pot. Change the heat to low-medium after about five minutes to allow for slow absorption of the wine. Add in cinnamon sticks. Once the pears have a tinted hue, chop up the figs, and add them to the pot. When almost all of the wine has been absorbed or evaporated, which could take up to an hour on a low heat setting, add sugar and stir well.

4. The garnish: Once the compote is ready and your bread is fresh out of the oven, it's time to combine the elements. Slather the spread onto the base, glaze it with the poached fruit, and add a sprinkle of crushed walnuts to each piece.

Once your dish is ready to be served, use the leftover wine to pour a round of drinks that complement the sweetly piquant tapa.

Buon appetito!

 

The story behind this recipe
Spain is a state of many flavors—and not just regarding food. With 17 autonomous regions and a handful of co-official languages, it's a mesh of cultures both within and outside its borders. Within, Basque gastronomic societies, hearty Galician portions, Catalan customs, and Andalusian tapas traditions surround the quintessential food mecca in Madrid. Outside, its French neighbor across the Pyrenees, its Italian neighbor overseas, and it Arabic neighbor below the Iberian Peninsula lend Mediterranean tastes, ingredient influences, and culinary styles to its already vivid food scene.

Whether ordered from a "Una cerveza por favor" request at a bar or in the kitchen of renowned chef Ferran Adria, the most well-known eating tradition in Spain is tapas. Although not always consumed in the same way, each diverse region of the country has a similar approach to the small dish.

This particular recipe is an original creation influenced by a Basque-style dessert tapa (similar to pintxos in Euskara) I tried at a restaurant called Sagardi in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. It was a toasted baguette slice, layered with mató y miel, raspberry jam, and walnut crumbs. Because Catalonia is adjacent to mountains and has cattle graze its lush land, mató y miel (ricotta-like cheese and honey) is a popular snack.

Jamón serrano is the country's staple food. The cured meat, similar to Italian prosciutto, reigns king in Spain. I decided to incorporate those thin-sliced pieces of heaven into the dish to reflect the importance of flavor balance in Spanish cuisine, such as with mar y montaña (like surf 'n' turf). To balance out the sweetness of the cheese and wine-drenched fruit, the savory comfort of the ham pleases the palate.

My study abroad program, IES Abroad, held a tapas contest in Spring 2013. With the help of my host mother, who introduced me to these defining flavors, this adaptation of Sagardi's delectable bite won by students' choice. I still serve this dish today to friends.