Mar i Muntanya

From Ad Hoc at Home

I had received Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home a few months ago, a present from my best girlfriend in Chicago. But I hadn’t really attempted to cook anything from it until I was reminded by Sarah Gin’s post over on the Tastespotting blog that I owned it and tasty things could be made from it.

Mar i Mutanya is essentially a deconstructed paella, where all the components are cooked separately and brought together at the last minute. Unlike a traditional paella where the ingredients might be pre-sauteed and eventually put into the pan to cook with the rice, here, the chicken, seafood, vegetables and rice all have separate preparation and cooking procedures, and are eventually joined together as a finished dish at the end.

Land and Sea

I had skimmed through the cookbook in the beginning, and quickly realized that many of the recipes were Pretty. Darn. Involved. As in, it’s not enough to cook chicken, but one must know how to cut up a whole chicken properly into 8-10 pieces and then one usually must brine that chicken ahead of time, but no longer than 12 hours total. One must make the saffron rice separately, and have it ready in time to nestle the crisped chicken into it. One needs to blanch the haricot verts (in water as salty as the sea), slit the shells down the backs of the shrimp, make homemade chicken broth.

Ingredients

One of the few shortcuts Keller advocates (throughout the cookbook he calls some of these “lightbulb moments”) is using jarred, whole roasted Piquillo Peppers. These are small, flavourful red peppers with a similar texture and consistency with red bells, but are somewhat more refined and definitely more expensive. A small 8 oz. jar from Spain costs $11.99 at my local gourmet grocery.

I made mistakes, accidentally over-brining the chicken — don’t think you’re going to remember to take chicken out of brine after coming home from The Rise of the Planet of the Apes at midnight — which thankfully did not come out too salty. Perhaps it was because I might have diluted the brine sufficiently when trying to cool it rapidly the day before. I also cooked the chicken over heat that was too high, giving the outer skin an ugly dark char instead of a nice even golden tan. I took shortcuts – I didn’t cut up a whole chicken, nor did I make the chicken broth myself.

Nonetheless, the end result tasted pretty good, despite my little screw-ups. The chicken was well-flavoured and juicy, the shrimp crisp and sweet. The rice also came out great, and perhaps would have tasted even better had I made my own broth. Thus the genius of cooking components separately – each item retains its integrity and flavour and does not get overcooked.

I won’t be posting the recipe here as it’s written in the book, but will basically give a rough outline of the steps and timing and a list of ingredients. After making this dish, I highly recommend purchasing the book yourself.

Mar i Muntanya

Ingredients

  • 8-10 pieces of chicken (either a whole chicken, cut-up; I used just thighs and drumsticks – about 4 lbs total)
  • 12-15 pieces jumbo shrimp
  • 18 PEI mussels
  • 1 batch cooked Saffron Rice – recipe also in Ad Hoc at Home
  • 1 chorizo, sliced
  • 1 cup haricot verts, blanched
  • 3 Piquillo peppers, sliced in strips (from a jar is fine; they should be roasted and peeled)
  • Piment d’Espelette
  • Chicken broth/ stock – around 1/2 cup
  • Dry white wine – about 1/4 cup
  • parsley leaves, fleur de sel, canola oil, salt and pepper

Procedure

  1. The day before you plan on serving the dish, brine your chicken, using the recipe in the book. (Chef Keller’s brine consists of kosher salt, honey, lemons, bay leaves, parsley, whole peppercorns, garlic cloves and springs of thyme. The mixture is heated and we thought it smelled a bit odd – DD remarked that it smelled mediciney – like a poultice mixture you’d smear on a bandage. Don’t worry – your chicken will taste fantastic.)
  2. To save time you could even make the saffron rice the day before – just make sure to warm it up when you’re ready to use it the following day.
  3. The recipe instructs that the chicken should not remain in the brine for more than 12 hours; my chicken pieces remained in the brine for around 16 hours! But perhaps because I had dumped a whole bunch of ice in the brine in an effort to rapidly cool it down the day before, I might have saved the chicken that way.
  4. When you remove the chicken from the brine, rinse and pat dry with paper towels. If you have time, let the pieces air-dry in the refrigerator.
  5. Shrimp shells should be left on; cut a slit cut down the back through the shell to remove the dark vein (Keller recommends using small nail scissors; I just used a small knife.). Brine the shrimp for 10 minutes in a solution of only salt and water.
  6. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
  7. Sprinkle the chicken with salt, pepper and piment d’Espelette. Heat some canola oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Put the chicken into the pan skin-side down, and then eventually lower the heat to medium-low. Make sure you give the chicken pieces time to caramelise before flipping onto the other side. Keller recommends about 8 minutes for the first side; and 6 minutes for the other. Your mileage may vary.
  8. Spread the warm saffron rice in a large casserole dish. Top with 1/2 the Piquillo pepper strips and 1/2 blanched haricot verts. Nestle chicken pieces in the rice and pour chicken broth over the ingredients. Put dish in oven.
  9. Heat some oil in a pan large enough to hold mussels in one layer. Sautee the chorizo until crispy and remove from pan. If there’s too much oil left over, tip some out. In the residual oil, cook the shrimp, about 1.5-2 minutes per side. Remove. Add the mussels and the wine to the pan – cover and cook until the mussels open.
  10. Remove the casserole from the oven and arrange the chorizo, shrimp and mussels with the chicken and vegetables. Heat the remaining piquillo peppers and haricot verts if needed and add these to the dish.
  11. Garnish with parsley and sprinkle with fleur de sel. I also ended up spooning the remaining wine and juices from the mussels, chorizo and shrimp onto the dish.

From the side

Note: For September – November 2011: It seems like Sur La Table is offering a series of cooking classes developed in conjunction with Chef Keller that will include Mar y Muntanya (Favorites of Spain series) in Palo Alto, Los Gatos and Santa Rosa. Click on the “Menu” tab to view the various class options for cooking from Ad Hoc at Home. Note that Chef Keller won’t be there, it costs $225 for a 3-class series, but you do get an autographed copy of the cookbook.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Share