Happy Holidays2

Happy Holidays

Spaghetti alle vongole

(Italian for spaghetti with clams) Very popular throughout Italy, especially its central regions, including Rome and further south in Campagna (where it is part of traditional Neapolitan cuisine).

Italians prepare this dish two ways: in bianco, i.e., with oil, garlic, parsley, and sometimes a splash of white wine; and in rosso, like the former but with tomatoes and fresh basil, the addition of tomatoes being more frequent in the south.

Traditionally, the bivalves are cooked quickly in hot olive oil to which plenty of garlic has been added. The live clams open during cooking, releasing a liquid that serves as the primary flavoring agent. The clams are then added to the firm pasta (spaghetti, linguine, or vermicelli), along with salt, black pepper (or red pepper), and a handful of finely chopped Italian parsley.

Italian-American recipes sometimes use cream in this dish, but, although cream has the virtue of amalgamating butter and cheese in some over-the-top sauces for fettucine, it is quite alien to the spirit of Italian cooking.

Cheese is never added to this dish, which forefronts the simple flavors of the clams and of good quality olive oil.

MECHADO IN MUSHROOM SAUCE

Mechado is a beef dish from the Philippines. The addition of soy sauce and calamansi juice to the marinating liquid gives this recipe its distinct Filipino character.

The traditional dish uses a Spanish culinary practice of threading strips of pork back-fat through thick pieces of cheaper lean beef to render them more tender and less dry (called larding). Hence the name mechado from the Spanish mecha meaning wick. The larded pieces of beef are then marinated in traditional vinegar, soy sauce, calamansi juice, crushed garlic, black pepper and bay leaf Then browned quickly on all sides in hot oil or lard, and then slowly braised in its marinade with the addition of soup stock, onion slices, and tomato sauce until tender and the liquid is reduced to a thick flavorful gravy.

My preference when preparing this dish is braising the meat in stock in the oven and then add wine and mushroom sauce. My mother however cooks the dish in the traditional way with the addition of tomato paste and mushroom sauce.

ARROZ A LA CUBANA

Growing up in a Spanish family, we delighted in the fiesta-like dishes prepared by my grandmother. Some of the dishes she prepared and cooked were Paella, Morcon, Kaldereta, Ensaymada to name a few. But one dish stood out for me as a comfort food - Arroz a la Cubana!
Arroz a la cubana (Cuban-style rice) or arroz cubano is a dish eaten in many Spanish-speaking countries. Its defining ingredients are rice and a fried egg. A plantain or banana, and tomato sauce, are so frequently used as often to be considered defining ingredients.[1][2] Various informal sources state without references that it originated in Peru.[3] Some authors consider that it may have originated from rice dishes with fried eggs from Cuba when it was a Spanish colony.[5]

In Spain, a typical dish of arroz a la cubana consists of a serving of white rice with tomato sauce and a fried egg. Sometimes a plantain[6] or banana[7] is fried with the other ingredients.[2]

Arroz a la cubana has been eaten in the Philippines since Spanish colonial times[8] A modern version[2] typically consists of ground beef sauteed with onions, garlic, tomato sauce, diced potatoes, raisins, and diced carrots, plus white rice, a fried egg and a ripe native plantain, sliced length-wise and fried.

In Peru, it is common for the dish to consist of white rice, fried plantain, a fried hot-dog wiener, and a fried egg over the white rice.[6]

1. Ismael Sarmiento Ramírez, (2003), Alimentación y relaciones sociales en la Cuba colonial, Anales del Museo de América, ISSN 1133-8741, Nº. 11, pp 197-226 (Spanish)
2. Arroz a la Cubana (Cuban Rice), The Philippine Way. This variant uses banana.
3. "Arroz a la cubana - a Peruvian dish" (Spanish)
4. Arroz a la Cubana
5. Cándido Hurones, (2009), Cómo freír un huevo. La innovación didáctica al servicio de la docencia universitaria, Entelequia: revista interdisciplinar, ISSN-e 1885-6985, No. 10, pp. 239-252 (Spanish)
6. Recipe from Perú, using plantain
7. In most Spanish-speaking countries, "plátano" means both "plantain" and "banana". For example, a recipe given in both English and Spanish by a cookery school in Spain gives "plátano" in the Spanish version of a recipe [1], and "banana" in the English translation [2]. In other Spanish-speaking countries the word "banana" as in English is used.
8. Antonio Quilis,Celia Casado Fresnillo, (2008), La lengua española en Filipinas: Historia. Situación actual, CSIC, Madrid. (Spanish)