BREAD

The week before Easter spectacular processions fill the streets of Madrid, with insanely heavy statues being carried around, people in traditional costumes (the famous pointy hoods that the Ku-Klux-Klan copied) and bands playing sad tunes for the death of Jesus Christ. Too bad it rained this year, so some events were canceled; but there were still a lot of impressive sights.

The city is now back to normal, after the Sunday of the Resurrection. In Italy instead the religious calendar is a bit different and today was still a holiday: the Angel Monday, called in a more informal way Pasquetta (Little Easter). It’s the day that somewhat marks the start of the spring, and it is generally devoted to picnics - or more often to traffic jams, since most Italians take the car to reach their picnic destinations.

In my hometown tradition dictates that during Pasquetta you eat simple food, such as boiled eggs, salame and bread. I had eggs and salame in my fridge, so it seemed appropriate to try and make bread.

No-knead bread

Now, if you ever tried to make bread you know that the whole thing can be rather unpredictable: the kind of yeast, the kind of flour, the temperature of the room can affect in one way or the other how your bread will rise; and even the oven and the way you bake the dough can make a lot of difference. Plus there are zillions of different processes out there: you can use pre-fermented masses like poolish and biga, you can knead the dough various times with long pauses for rising in between, et cetera.

But then, around 5 years ago a professional baker called Jim Lahey showed a New York Times interviewer something he called “no-knead bread”, basically a super-easy way of making good quality bread at home. The recipe became very popular, was discussed and quoted by countless food blogs – so maybe you know about it already. Me, I missed it at the time (to be honest I wasn’t particularly into cooking, back then), and I wish I hadn’t, as my bread baking experiments would have benefited immensely from it.

The way I usually make bread nowadays is based on that recipe, with some adjustments mainly due to local products availability. Note that the rising will take a minimum of 14 hours, so you will obviously have to start the whole thing one day in advance. Also, you will need an ovenproof pot with a lid – a cast iron one, for example.

Ingredients

400g strong wheat flour, or harina de fuerza. Can be found at Carrefour and other big supermarkets

1 full teaspoon of salt

10g fresh yeast, again can be found at Carrefour

Some olive oil

270ml of lukewarm water – which in terms of volume is about half of the flour

How to

Crumble the yeast into the water, then mix with a spoon until the yeast is completely dissolved.

Put the flour in a big bowl (as the dough will greatly increase in size with the rising); throw in the salt, throw in the water with the yeast and start mixing with your hands until you have a dough with a uniform texture. It shouldn’t take long, maybe a few minutes.

Cover the bowl with a wet towel and let it rest for 12 hours, at warm room temperature. The dough should become double the size, with bubbles on the surface.

Grab a clean cotton towel, put it on a work surface then coat it with flour - you can use regular one, semolina or whole wheat, they all give nice results.

Put some olive oil on your hands, so the dough won’t stick; grab the dough then fold it on itself a few times. Transfer it on the towel covered with flour, leaving the seam side down (i.e. the “lines” made by the folding should be touching the surface, while the smooth side of the dough should be up). Coat the dough with the same flour you used for the towel, then cover it with another towel. Let it rise for at least another 2 hours, better 3 or 4.

Some 45 minutes before starting with the baking put your empty pot (with the lid) in the oven, then set the heat to maximum. The pot, by the time you are ready to start, should be blazing hot.

After 45 minutes, make sure to protect your hands adequately, then open the oven and remove the lid from the pan. Remove the towel covering the dough; put your hand under the other towel, pick up the dough and throw it in the pot seam side up (careful not to throw in the towel…). Put back the lid and close the oven. Leave to bake for half an hour, then open the oven, remove the lid again and bake uncovered for another 15 minutes or until the crust of the bread has a nice brown color.

Take the bread out and let it cool for an hour or so before cutting it.

The pot does the trick

The guy that came up with this system was stressing a lot the fact that this way of making bread is especially easy, as it requires almost no kneading. To me, the real stroke of genius was actually the use of the pot: it keeps the steam inside and makes sure the loaf gets soft inside/crunchy outside. Without it, bread cooked in a conventional oven would tend to become dry and parched.

PULPO CON PATATAS

I remember this old D&G TV ad, supposedly set in Sicily: the usual Big-Jim-look-alike kind of guy that you see in all D&G ads captures an octopus while swimming, then comes back to the beach and kills the animal smashing it on a rock. Then he checks out a nearby Monica Bellucci who at that precise moment is putting on a swimsuit, with two old Sicilian women helping to hide her naked body; Monica and Big Jim exchange a glance, then she jumps into the water and he starts eating the octopus raw, right there.

Now, I am not sure if this scene really succeeds in appearing sort of sexy, I suspect that for example an English viewer (who most likely wouldn't even think of cephalopodes as edible things) will just find it weird. However, it's true and historically accurate that octopus is a traditional delicacy not only in Sicily but in pretty much the whole of Italy. And as a matter of fact, this is another food that the Italian and Iberian peninsulas have in common, as in Spain and Portugal octopus is very popular too. 

The most common version around here is definitely pulpo a la Gallega (roughly "octopus in the Galician way"), which means that the octopus is boiled and accompanied by thinly sliced potatoes, pimentón dulce (paprika), good olive oil, coarse salt. Simple but effective, as all ingredients come together nicely. The recipe originated in Galicia, like the name suggests, but it is now spread pretty much everywhere in the country, and it is very easy to find in Madrid venues.

Personally I love octopus, especially with potatoes, but when I am home I tend to prepare it differently from the orthodox a la Gallega version, just to have a bit of variety. My usual recipe is actually more similar to a Portuguese dish called polvo à Lagareiro, where the octopus is first boiled and then grilled.

A word on octopus

You could easily find pre-cooked octopus at markets/supermarkets, but then you would lose all the fun of cooking it, and you wouldn't have control over the degree of chewieness that you want for the final product, and it would be way more expensive...  Buy raw instead, it will cost you usually less than 10 euros per kilo and the dirty job of cleaning will be already taken care of by the fishmonger. The only small steps left for you to do are fairly easy: remove the eyes, the beak and the ink sac with the help of a sharp knife or scissors. That's it.

But, before starting with the actual cooking, you should know about the classic problem with octopus, the fact that it tends to become rather chewie after it's been boiled. There are a few tricks you can use in order to improve its tenderness:

*You can buy the octopus a few days in advance, then simply freeze it. The water inside it will turn into ice and expand, supposedly breaking the tissues and making the defrosted pulpo more tender.

*You can "scare" the octopus. This is a traditional solution, and you can actually see it done live in traditional ferias Gallegas (Galician fairs), where cooks seem to be constantly throwing octopi around, in and out of boiling water. Basically, you don't just throw the mollusk in boiling water then forget about it; rather, you grab it by the head then put it in boiling water for a few seconds, then pull it out; then put it in again, then pull it out; then put it in for the final time, and leave it there to cook. It should have something to do with the octopus flesh (is it called "flesh", I wonder? "meat" sounds wrong...) gradually getting used to the high temperature, and staying tender because of this. Similarly, some Italian recipes suggest to put the octopus in cold water and then slowly heat the whole thing together (and this is more or less what I do).

*You can also beat the octopus repeatedly with a meat mallet. If you do this, remember to cover it with some film or you'll be splashing water all over the place.

Last thing before starting: don't add any salt to the boiling water, at least not from the start. The octopus is already soaked in salty water, that will be released during the cooking, giving flavor to the broth.

Ingredients for 4:

1 octopus of 1,5 or 2 kgs

1 kg of potatoes

extra-virgin olive oil (you'll need quite a lot of it, some 10 tablespoons)

half a glass of white wine for cooking

1 clove of garlic

1 laurel leaf

some parsley

some rosemary

some thyme

coarse salt

Remove eyes/beak/ink sac from the octopus. Now it's the moment: if you feel brave, take a good bite and then let me know if it tastes good.

If you don't feel brave, put 4 tablespoons of oil, the laurel, chopped garlic and chopped parsley in a big pan - or, if you have it, in a pressure cooker. Fry on low heat for a couple of minutes, then add the octopus. Shake the pan a bit, pour in the white wine, let it evaporate a bit, then add cold water until you cover the octopus almost completely. Cover the pan with a lid and let it cook on low heat for something like 40 minutes from the moment it boils. In the meantime, peel the potatoes and cut them in rather big chunks.

Note that the cooking time might actually vary depend on the size of the octopus, and on how tender you want it to be: many prefer a final product that is a bit chewie, rather than something cooked for so long that it almost falls apart. In any case you can always stick a fork into it to check on its tenderness. Also, if you are using a pressure cooker you can reduce the cooking time by half.

When you are satisfied with the tenderness of the octopus, take it out of the pan and leave it alone for 15 minutes, so the skin doesn't fall off. In the meantime, taste the broth left in the pan - it should be very flavorful, as the octopus during cooking has released juices and salty water; add salt only if needed, then throw in the potatoes. Boil them for 10 minutes or so.

Switch on the oven, set it to grill-200º. Prepare a large oven dish, sprinkle some oil on it, some thyme and some rosemary. After the 10 mins have passed, remove the potatoes from the broth and transfer them to the oven dish. Cut the octopus into pieces, then add it to the oven dish. Sprinkle with oil, add some coarse salt and put the dish in the oven for 10 or 15 mins, close to the grill. Once potatoes and octopus have a color that you like, take them out, add some more olive oil if you like it, and serve.

By the way, after all this you will still have the excellent broth that you used to cook the pulpo and the potatoes: save it for some nice soup or fishy preparations. You can also freeze it.