Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Christmas Eve in a Spanish Home

This past holiday season, I spent Christmas and Christmas Eve with my immediate family in Staten Island.  It was very low key and relaxing and I got to spend some time with my mother bonding over food and cooking together.  My mother happens to be a cooking dynamo and all around Renaissance woman wrapped up in 5’1 package! The woman is seriously inspiring. I remember being a child and often coming home to a house with reupholstered furniture, new curtains and new hand embroidered table clothes & a smell emanating from the kitchen that was usually a combination of sofrito or marinara sauce & garlic! They truly don’t make women like her anymore and as an adult my appreciation & respect for her grows everyday.

So, with lots of preplanning and chatting prior, my mom and I decided we were going to make a traditional Spanish Catalan dish, Zarzuela de Mariscos for Christmas Eve. Zarzuela de Mariscos is a fish stew which as the name suggests, incorporates lots of fish, namely- clams, mussels, lobster, shrimp, scallops. (We left out squid, which is sometimes also included, but we were making Calamares Rellenos en su tinta for Christmas- TOO MUCH squid!)  We cooked ours in a traditional paella casserole dish, but any similar pot will work!

Ingredients
Serves 6

1 ½ pounds of live lobster
12 large shrimp
¼ cup olive oil
1 cup of finely chopped onions
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
2 small red or green peppers, seeds removed and finely chopped
2 tablespoons of finely chopped Serrano or prosciutto ham
6 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
½ cup blanched almonds, pulverized (you can use a food processor or old school mortar & pestle)
1 large bay leaf, crumbled
1/8 teaspoon ground saffron or ground some saffron strands
1 teaspoon of salt
Pepper to taste
2 cups of water
½ cup of white wine
1 tablespoon lemon juice
12 mussels, washed & scrubbed
12 clams, washed & scrubbed
½ pound scallops, cut in half


Cleaning the lobster
This is probably the most labor intensive portion of this dish, if you are squeamish about using live lobsters, you can opt to purchase only the tails from your fish guy.



With a cleaver or large knife, chop of the tail section of the lobster at the point where it joins the body. Twist off the claws.  Cut the main body section of the lobster lengthwise in half. Here you need to remove some of the icky parts that you don’t want to cook with- remove the stomach, this should look like a gelatinous sack in the head and the long white intestinal vein that is attached to it. LEAVE the roe and you can leave the liver which is a greenish brown color.

Shell the shrimp, but leave the tail attached. It’s helpful if you buy already deveined clean shrimp. If your shrimp have the vein, it’s pretty easy to remove, with a paring knife make a shallow incision down the back along the vein- just lift the vein out, should come out easy. Do this under cold water so you can rinse the shrimp as you devein. Set the lobster and shrimp aside.

In a heave 6-8 quart casserole dish heat the olive oil under moderate heat until a light haze forms above it.  Add the onions, garlic and red or green peppers and stirring frequently, cook for 5 minutes or until all are soft but NOT brown.

Stir in the ham and cook for a minute or two.  Add the tomatoes, pulverized almonds (this is a thickening method Spaniards like to use), bay leaf, saffron, salt and some pepper to taste. Raise the heat to a boil.  Cook for about 5 minutes until the liquid cooks down and thickens. 



Add the water, wine and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Stir thoroughly and add the lobster, mussels and clams. Cover the casserole, reduce the heat and continue to cook for ten minutes. Add the shrimp, scallops and continue cooking for another 5-8 minutes. Make sure to throw out any clams or mussels that have not opened!

Taste the zarzuela for seasoning and serve straight out of the casserole dish. You can also sprinkle it with a bit of chopped parsley.





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