The choricero pepper is the essential ingredient of Basque (Spanish) chorizo, and of the red mother sauce of Basque cooking, salsa viscaina. The sauce can be made from fresh peppers, or dried peppers rehydrated in hot water.
Use it as a sauce for grilled fish, or baked potatoes.
Ingredients
2 onions (preferably red) thinly sliced
6 choricero peppers, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, smashed and diced
3 tbsp olive oil
1 slice of dry bread
2 cups of stock (vegetable, chicken, or fish stock)
1 tsp salt
Procedure
Saute onions and garlic in olive oil until translucent.
Add sliced peppers and continue to saute (about 5 minutes)
Add stock and salt, simmer 30 minutes
Add bread slice and pcuree with immersion blender, blender, or food processor.
We spent late June in Spain. We visited Bilbao, Salamanca, and Madrid. In each city we ate Salmorejo. Each recipe was subtly different, but all were amazing. Comparisons to gazpacho are unavoidable, but Salmorejo is, hands down, the best cold soup on earth. It is simplicity itself as the only ingredients are tomatoes, bread, olive oil, and a touch of vinegar, along with toppings, which may vary. The key to success is that the ingredients, especially the tomatoes and olive oil, must be of superb quality. The hard boiled egg topping in this recipe is not entirely typical, but some version of the Serrano ham is entirely typical. I have tried replacing the Serrano ham with crisply fried smoked bacon. That works fabulously well.
Ingredients
8 medium tomatoes
1 medium baguette
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 Clove of Garlic
Splash of sherry or red wine vinegar
Pinch of salt
2 hard boiled eggs
Sliced Serrano ham or crisp bacon
Instructions
Scald the tomatoes: Drop tomatoes into boiling water. After 30 seconds transfer into cold water bath then peel off skin.
Remove the cores of the tomatoes and add all the rest to a blender. Blend at high-speed for about 30 seconds.
Cut the crust off a baguette and add 2 cups of bread chunks to the blended tomatoes. Let the bread soak in the tomato juice for about 5 minutes.
Add the splash of vinegar, salt, and garlic and blend until the soup is an even texture.
With blender running, slowly add the olive oil as you are blending at a moderate speed.
Add 1 hardboiled egg and blend until incorporated. Taste and adjust levels of salt and vinegar.
Serve topped with diced hardboiled egg and sliced ham or fried bacon. Serve cold!
Basil in the garden is coming on beautifully. I pinched off some tips that were threatening to form flower buds and the leaves from these, pictured here, made beautiful pesto.
Our custom for summer weekends is to finish the day sipping a cocktail on the bank of our pond. Yesterday we enjoyed a version of the classic Jockey Club Cocktail, which replaced the usual Amaretto with a homemade version, created by steeping vodka with cherry pits for two weeks. I recall this fondly as I sit, bleary-eyed over coffee, on a Monday morning, before departing for work.
Here is the recipe for the down on the farm version of the Jockey Club Cocktail.
Jockey Club Cocktail a la High & Dry Farm
Two parts gin
2/3 parts lemon juice
2/3 parts cherry pit infusion
1/3 part triple sec
dash angostura bitters
Shake with crushed ice, garnish with a twist of orange peel and a tart cherry, serve with ice.
This year we had a bumper crop of pie cherries. I saved the pits and covered them with vodka. Two weeks later, the vodka infusion was decanted and filtered. The result is amazing. The liquor has a strong Amaretto-like almond flavor with a touch of tartness and complex underlying cherry notes.
Our custom for summer weekends is to finish the day sipping a cocktail on the bank of our pond. Yesterday we enjoyed a version of the classic Jockey Club Cocktail, which replaced the usual Amaretto with a homemade version, created by steeping vodka with cherry pits for two weeks. I recall this fondly as I sit, bleary-eyed over coffee, on a Monday morning, before departing for work.
Here is the recipe for the down on the farm version of the Jockey Club Cocktail.
Jockey Club Cocktail a la High & Dry Farm
Print
Two parts gin
2/3 parts lemon juice
2/3 parts cherry pit infusion
1/3 part triple sec
dash angostura bitters
Shake with crushed ice, garnish with a twist of orange peel and a tart cherry, serve with ice.
The harvest of the first new potatoes of the season has inspired me to make potato salad. I chose a flavor profile dominated by homemade paprika, which I made last year by pulverizing dried home-grown Basque Piquillo Lodosa peppers. My pepper seeds came from the famous town of Guernica.
