A while ago I was asked to come up with a dish that truly represented the bold simplicity that I know Spain to be.
Clearing my head of the vacant Instagrammable fluff that fills the cool urban neighbourhoods of Barcelona, I set about creating a plate of real food, real flavour. Moorish almonds, some beast from the sea, a bright green vegetables, smokey honey saffron, juicy pomegranate, and of course, thick golden olive oil.
On the menu the dish would read…Catalan spinach with saffron-grilled sea bass, romesco, toasted Marcona almonds and saffron salt.
This is a plate that demands full sensory immersion. You need to visualise, listen to, feel, breathe in and taste every component of the dish at every step in the process. Then get to work cutting, slicing, dicing, peeling, grating, grinding, mixing, whisking, blending, folding, crushing, cracking, and creating your way to a dish worthy of representing an entire country.
Every chef measures success by how clean his plates are as they leave the kitchen and how empty they are on return. So when I prepared this very dish for over 200 hungry diners in Tel Aviv at SOFO International Chef Battle and the same 200 plates came back with just a bright orange hue of Romesco and golden yellow specks of saffron salt and I was fairly certain Papa Serra would be proud enough to offer a “Molt bé” of my efforts.
Ingredients: Hazelnuts, red peppers, tomates, garlic,pimentón, sherry vinegar, oil, sal, pepper, fresh rosemary, day old bread, red wine, brown onions, bay leaves, spinach, raisins, pine nuts, sea bass fillets, saffron threads, toasted almonds, pomegranate and fresh mint.
Step I: Prepare the romesco by blending toasted hazelnuts with blackened red peppers, roasted tomatoes and garlic, sherry vinegar, fresh rosemary, pimentón, crusty bread, red wine, olive oil and salt.
Step II: Caramelize diced onions with oil, salt and bay leaves then add raisins and leave to sauté. Add washed spinach and then once cooked add the toasted pine nuts.
Step III: Dry the fish with paper towels and set aside. Toast saffron threads then pound together with salt until broken down into yellow powder then rub oil over fillets and top with saffron salt. Place fillets under a hot grill and leave until salt forms a crust and fillets become juicy and translucent.
Final step: Spread plate with some of the romesco then top with the fish. Serve the spinach next to the fish and dress with olive oil, toasted almonds, pomegranate, saffron salt and fresh mint.
This and more recipes combining authentic Spanish flavours with fresh and creative preparations are available in my debut cookbook Papalosophy: A Spanish Cookbook. Purchase limited edition copies online now at Papalosophy.com
This recipe was originally produced for Paseo de Gracia with illustrations by Anna Solsona.