Faking it

I love what the Spanish call “cocina de cuchara” — stews, potages, and anything else that you need to eat with a spoon.

The problem with spoon food is that it takes a long time to make. And most recipes produce quantities that mean a single person is going to be eating them for days on end. Of course, canned versions are available, but rarely as good as the real thing.

For the last few days, I’ve been jonesing for white beans with chorizo, a classic that takes quite a while made the old-fashioned way. In a bit of culinary creative thinking, I have come up with a recipe that is as close to what abuela made as is possible in less than 20 minutes.

 

For two servings, you need:

• 1 can or jar cooked white beans, drained and well-rinsed
• 150 g. chorizo*, diced
• 50 ml. water
• 50 ml. tomato sauce
• pinch oregano
• pinch smoked paprika (Pimentón de la Vera**)
• spoonful olive oil

Heat the oil in a pot and drop in the diced chorizo. Let cook 1-2 minutes, stir in the paprika, and add the other ingredients. Stir well, cover, and cook over medium heat approximately 10 minutes. Get out your spoon, slice a hunk of crusty bread, and enjoy.

The real thing. From www.cocinandoconlaabuela.com

*You really do want Spanish cooking chorizo for this. If you don’t have a market near you that sells it, go online. Latienda.com ships to the U.S. and Canada and to Europe.

**Also worth getting the real thing from Latienda.com. Many supermarkets carry smoked paprika, but there’s no substitute for Pimentón de la Vera.

Unpuzzling

Figuring things out makes me happy. Spacial reasoning is fun for me. I can read — and even modify and write — knitting patterns. I’m good at putting IKEA furniture together. And I’m better at IT than your average Rubiatonta.

Today, I couldn’t get my fancy new wireless printer to work, even though it had been working just fine since it arrived and I’d set it up. After thinking through a number of possible fixes, it dawned on me that the problem was with the USB modem I was using, and its requirement that I enter a PIN.

So how to eliminate the need for a PIN? In digging around on some user boards, I found this suggestion: put it into a cellphone and change the setting.

Readers, it worked. I just finished printing out a bunch of pages to edit. And I’m kvelling at my ability to do complicated and annoying things by all by myself.

Of course, this American, pioneer, go-it-alone attitude isn’t always the best fit with the problems we might be facing. One of my dearest friends here read me the riot act when she found out I’d been sick in bed for a week over Christmas and hadn’t called her to ask for help. My reasoning — that it was the holidays, she has family, she was enjoying a well-earned vacation, that  I didn’t want to intrude — didn’t wash. As she pointed out, “You don’t know if I can help you unless you ask me and let me make the decision. You have to let me be your friend all the time, you know, not just when you think it’s going to be convenient for me.”

This is not the first time I’ve been reminded that we all like to be asked to help, and that I’m not quick to make those requests. Years ago, another friend said, “If you don’t let us help you, it’s like you won’t let us love you.”

‘Nuff said. After I finish my happy dance, I’m going to write myself a reminder and stick it on the mirror. “Ask. For everything.”

Light posting this week

As I mentioned, I’ll be helping look after a friend this week as well at trying to keep my work projects more or less on schedule, so I won’t be posting every day. (Though I have a couple of bits and bobs percolating already…)

Calling all cooks!

Dear ones, I need your input, please.

Next week, I’m going to be cooking for a friend who’s recovering from surgery. I need to make things that I can do in advance so that someone in the family can reheat them with no fuss, and minimal clean up. And I’ve been requested to make comfort food that’s outside the standard Spanish repertoire.

When I cook for myself these days, I usually do something quick in a skillet, so I’m feeling a bit stuck! The one idea I’ve had is to do a beef stew, or perhaps ropa vieja. And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten…

I know a lot of you out there are gourmets, so please do send along any ideas you might have!

Gracias y gracias.

Justicia

Spare a thought today for Baltasar Garzón, one of Spain’s most honest and fearless judges.

Over the course of his career, Garzón has — at considerable risk to his own safety — pursued drug dealers, terrorists, rogue police operations, and those responsible for past dictatorships in Chile and Argentina. He has investigated crimes committed during Franco’s dictatorship, daring to look directly at a wound that has been left unhealed for decades. And he has worked to end corruption at high levels of provincial government in Valencia, which is home to some of the dirtiest politicians in Spain.

As it happens, those dirty politicians are members of the party now in power. That party also has historical ties to the Franco regime (its founder, Manuel Fraga, passed away just this week). There’s no great love for the jurist in the Partido Popular.

Garzón now finds himself on trial before the Spanish supreme court for abuse of power. (He also faces prosecution in two other cases.) The charges against him are related to wiretaps he approved in the course of the corruption investigation. This is a “private” trial — that is, government prosecutors have refused to support the charges against him. Among his many supporters — who include a large number of jurists at all levels — there is a feeling that the verdict has already been determined. Garzón himself has said that he thinks the supreme court judges want to get rid of him.

This is what passes for justice in Spain, after more than 35 years of democracy.

Tour de Flat, day 1

In real life, showing you around my little apartment would take a grand total of three minutes. (Not even worth the nickel admission.) But since I’ve made you all wait so long, I decided to make it last!

Here’s the kitchen, with its Doritos bag color scheme. Note my new electric kettle, bought with GrammyRubi’s Xmas gift. How do I love thee, electric kettle? Let me count the ways…

I've always wanted a galley of my very own! And I'm my very own galley slave, too.

Hurrah! It’s raining!

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Rubi, weren’t you complaining about the rain in Spain not so long ago?” You’re right. I was.

The thing is, it’s barely rained at all for over a month. The reservoirs are at perilously low levels. And in a city like Madrid, which is prone to a phenomenon called “thermal inversion,” the dust and pollution can reach toxic levels very quickly. We need regular rain to wash the air clean.

So hurrah for the rain! Hurrah for a return to invisible air! Hurrah for not smelling like a tail-pipe when you get home from a walk!

Just don’t stick around for ever, rain.

Rubi Recommends: A little gem…

This past weekend, I went to the movies — and ended up totally delighted by a film that I hadn’t even heard about before the movie-going plan was made.

It’s called Le Havre, and it’s by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. You can find a synopsis here, but I don’t think any synopsis could really do it justice. It’s a film that’s unclassifiable. I loved the story, the characters, and especially the visuals  — many of the interior shots have the feel of Edward Hopper paintings. While the setting is on the down-and-out side of the title city, the film is suffused with love and humanity, both within the story and from the director to his characters.

I don’t want to break the spell it still has on me by over-analyzing here, but take my word for it — find it and see it. You’ll be enchanted.

Culebrones

A recent nod to soap operas over at Privilege set me to reminiscing about my own relationship with the genre — which dates back to the year I was 14. I spent many an afternoon babysitting after school, and got hooked on “The Doctors.” Alas, the series didn’t last long, and I shifted my loyalty to “The Young and the Restless.” (Apparently, I like soaps with definite articles in the title.)

I still like Y&R, though I’m not a faithful viewer any more. But I am a devoted fan of “Amar en Tiempos Revueltos,” which is a soap set in post-Civil War Spain — we’re in 1956 right now. It’s a huge hit, despite the often silly or frustrating story lines (Why did they kill off Chelito? WHY?), and I’m betting that it’s in part because of the great wardrobe/hair/sets, and in part because it’s reasonably accurate from a historical perspective. Watching ATR is a regular part of my “sobremesa” after lunch, and if I miss it during the day, I often go online to watch it in the evening. It even helped me pass the DELE exam last spring; the characters use a lot of useful colloquialisms.

Soaps — in both the after-lunch and evening versions — are very popular in Spain. In addition the nationally-produced options (the late, lamented “La Señora”; “Gran Reserva” — essentially Falconcrest set in La Rioja; and “Gran Hotel,” which takes place in a — can you guess? — Grand Hotel), we’re in the middle of Downton Abbey fever. I don’t watch it, though, because I can’t stand that Dame Maggie Smith (and all the other actors, poor lambs) are dubbed into Spanish. I’ll be getting mine off iTunes instead.

Today’s vocabulary word is culebrón — a soap-opera; a pot-boiler. It comes from culebra, meaning “snake.” Great visual, huh?

Halucinante

Today the long stretch of holidays is officially over, and it’s back to work and school. That means that some of the university students who live in my neighborhood saw this weekend as their last chance to whoop it up for a while.

Saturday night, there was quite a ruckus upstairs, with furniture being dragged around to the accompaniment of shouting and laughter. It seemed that our loud, young, and inconsiderate neighbors were having a party. I finally took a sleeping pill at 1:00 AM and that was the last I heard until yesterday morning, when the ruckus had moved down to the lobby.

This time, it seemed that all of the older residents of the building had gathered and were having a lively (LOUD) discussion. It went on, and on, and on. I was trying to write, and it was making me nuts, but I kept at it until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Finally, I got dressed and headed out to buy bread. The group in the lobby was still there, still talking. My across-the-hall neighbor (Sra. Shouty) was on the landing, telling another neighbor, “They were making a lot of noise upstairs, and at 3:30 a group of kids rang my doorbell by mistake. And then, at about 4:00 I heard a loud bang, but I wasn’t sure what it was.”

“What happened?” I asked here.

“That,” she said, pointing down.

Those are our nearly-new mailboxes on the floor. The brick area behind is where they used to live.

Even when I lived here in my 20s and was doing a fair bit of partying myself, I was astonished at the Spanish capacity for drunken mayhem. It seemed that each Monday morning there was a story in the news about some gruesome fatal traffic accident over the weekend. Nearly every time, a young person was involved, driving drunk.

The Spanish police have cracked down hard on drunken driving, and most Spanish drivers take the law very seriously. But there’s been less success in stopping “street” drinking, especially the odious custom of the “botellón,” where huge groups of kids get together in public squares, on beaches, or even in industrial parks, to drink. There are rapes, and fights, and fires.

The party upstairs this weekend probably wouldn’t qualify as a “botellón,” but the destruction in our lobby is as much an offshoot of this youth drinking culture as anything that happens outdoors. And it’s just as impossible to understand.