Odd Ingredient du Jour: Naranja Agria

With lunch ("multigrain pilaf" from Trader Joe's), I had some of this, mixed with sugar and soda water to make a tasty beverage. It's an unusual ingredient, but one I find pretty useful, so I thought I'd discuss it here.

It's mock bitter orange juice, bitter orange being an integral ingredient in many Latin American recipes. I first heard of it trying to make Rick Bayless' jicama salad in "Authentic Mexican", but it's also common in meat marinades. Real bitter orange juice comes from Seville oranges, which produce extremely sour citrus flavor (apparently it's reminiscent of grapefruit) and are generally unavailable in the U.S. Bayless suggests using a mixture of lime and grapefruit juice, in addition to orange zest, as a substitute rather than bottled mix. I did that the first time I made the jicama salad, but it was expensive and a huge hassle. Next time, I bought this huge bottle of mock bitter orange instead. It contains orange juice, Seville orange oil, grapefruit juice, and a variety of preservatives. And it's huge. I don't make nearly enough Mexican food to use up this bottle in a timely manner, so I started experimenting with it. It works well in homemade vinaigrettes, but my favorite use is cocktails and mocktails. It's extremely bitter, but flavorful and a little floral. I haven't tried making tinto de veranos* with it yet, but I bet with enough added sugar it could function as a stand-in for the orange Fanta.

(*Tinto de veranos are the best drink ever. But the Wikipedia page is kind of wrong. I lived in Spain for a summer, traveling and drinking widely, and always saw them made with orange Fanta, never with lemon soda. And definitely never with Sprite)

Tapas in St. Louis

For dinner, I had some homemade tapas, with a tinto de verano.

The idea came from today's trip to Whole Foods- my first here in St. Louis. I was hoping for a wider variety of produce than Trader Joe's, and was somewhat disappointed. In any case, they were having a sale on vinegar-cured anchovies (aka boquerones) that I couldn't pass up, so I decided to go for tapas.

First, I need to pontificate about tinto de verano, aka "tinto verano". It's crappy Spanish red wine mixed with European Fanta, or whatever facsimile one can find in the U.S. The idea is to find something with at least 8% real orange juice (EuroFanta does, American Fanta does not), and mix it in 1:3 or 1:2 proportions with red wine. It's supposed to be cold and refreshing, and not terribly sweet. It's brilliant, and I love it, but no one in the U.S. seems to know what it is. Outside of the 9th Door in Denver, I've never been to an American tapas place that has even heard of it. Waiters and bartenders look at me like I'm crazy. Granted, it took more than a month living in Spain before I heard of it, and most American tapas places are in it for marketing rather than a passion for Spanish food, but still. It's too simple and yet delicious to remain unknown.

In any case, I made my tinto with Condesa de Sarabella 2007, a grenache I found at Trader Joe's for $6. It was good enough to drink alone, but I made my tinto anyway, mixing it with some "Club Orange" soda from Ireland I found at the Global Market a few days ago.

In addition to the boquerones, I roasted some red peppers and topped them with goat cheese, and marinated some mushrooms in a garlic and wine broth. It made for an interesting and relatively easy dinner.

Tapas in Houston

For dinner, I had a variety of tapas from Mi Luna in Rice Village, with a glass of merlot.

Are there any truly good tapas restaurants in this country? Not that I frequent tapas places (pricey!), or that this one was bad. But none of them are ever quite right.

The atmosphere was good- a very long bar, huge windows, nice patio, and good "rustic" color palette- lots of rusty reds, yellows, and browns. The waiters all spoke Spanish, and had an authentic Spanish feel- little mustaches, white aprons, slicked back hair.

I'm incredibly picky about tapas- everyone makes them a little bit differently (which is kind of the point), but I have very definitive ideas about what they should taste like. For me to enjoy them, they have to either taste exactly like my Platonic ideal of that dish, or be mind-blowingly delicious in their own right. I've never been to a tapas place in the US that did the classics well- it's always the more unusual traditional ones, or avant-garde fusion weirdness tapas that are good. Like the last decent tapas place I've been, The 9th Door in Denver- their gambas al ajillo are an affront to everything holy about garlic and shrimp, but they make an amazing serrano ham/manchego cheese/quince paste chip thingy.

So, Mi Luna. We ordered patatas bravas, boquerones al vinagre, jamon serrano, gambas al ajillo, B'stilla, Lombarda al chorizo, and Queso de Cabra Montanes. My two favorite tapas are the boquerones and the gambas. I also judge a tapas place by their patatas bravas, but it's usually not my favorite dish. I love jamon, but it's cheaper at the grocery store. The rest of our choices were more or less random.

Boquerones= anchovies. The tapa consists of fresh, raw anchovies cured in a vinegary brine that you eat with bread, or, in the case of one place I went in Madrid, potato chips. It sounds disgusting, and I was skeptical, but it's actually very yummy- think salt and vinegar potato chips. Also note that these cured anchovies taste nothing like canned anchovies that you'd use on pizza or in Caesar salad- they're just briny, vinegary protein. Mi Luna's boquerones were actually smelt rather than anchovy, so they were a little thicker than normal. Not bad, but not amazing.

The patatas bravas were a little strange. I judge restaurants more and more on their patatas because it's a hard balance to execute between smoky and spicy and tomato. The idea is to have small chunks of potato that are very soft and creamy on the inside and slightly crispy on the outside, that stay crispy even after they're lightly coated in a spicy, tomato-based aioli. The potato worked, but the sauce was a little off flavor-wise, as though they'd added cream rather than mayonnaise and Latin American peppers rather than Spanish ones. They were decent bordering on tasty anyway.

Likewise, the gambas were decent but not amazing. And if there's one thing that can be transcendentally delicious if executed properly, it's shrimp bathed in scalding olive oil and a ton of garlic. There is a tapas place in the Netherlands (of all places) that makes the best I've ever had, accompanied by delicious homemade bread to soak up all the garlicky olive oil. Mi Luna's fell short because the shrimp were a little overcooked, and the whole plate was covered with quite a bit of ground pepper.

So what was yummy? All the strange tapas. In particular, the B'Stilla and Lombarda al chorizo. B'Stilla is a North African dish I'd had once before (at a Moroccan restaurant, not as a tapa). It sounds gross, but is incredibly good- shredded or ground meat, cinnamon, roasted nuts, and honey, baked inside layers of phyllo dough.
The Lombarda consisted of smoky Spanish chorizo and soft caramelized onions on top of more patatas bravas. The flavors went together really well, but I was almost too full at this point to enjoy it.

Finally, the wine. Unfortunately, they didn't have tinto verano, which is literally red wine mixed with orange Fanta half and half, and the BEST summery drink ever. Instead, I had a glass of their de facto house red, a merlot from Chile's Santa Rita. I usually drink their cabernet, which is decent, and only ordered the merlot by mistake. It was not as good, and tasted like it had been open a while.