Cocido – Andalusian Stew
This recipe is by Clifford Wright, the author of “Real Stew Cookbook for Clay Cooking”.
Spiced sausage, cumin, saffron, black pepper, and garlic flavor this stew that some call the national dish of Spain. These spices had their culinary roots in Islamic Spain, but the trade in spices itself was coming through Lisbon to the great spice markets of Seville and Barcelona.
Spain offers hundreds of versions of this chickpea stew, also known by the name olla podrida, which Cervantes made famous in Don Quixote.
Cooks prepare all versions using chickpeas as the base and flavor them with a ham bone plus regional ingredients such as morcilla (blood sausage), oreja (pig’s ear), rostral (spinal cord), lard, beef knuckle, gourd (now pumpkin), and cabbage.
During Cervantes’ time (1547-1616), people considered olla poor people’s food. When Don Quixote’s sidekick Sancho says “serve me with what they call ollas podridas and the rottener they are the better they smell,” he meant it. The wealthy believed their delicate food would upset the stomachs of the poor, who could only afford a miserly olla.
Traditionally, cocido is served as two, and even three, courses as the important midday meal, not as the evening repast. The poor typically would not have found meat in their cocida excepting perhaps a ham bone for flavor, nor would they have eaten in two courses. Bourgeois households, on the other hand, would strain the broth and eat the first course with rice or fideos, a typically Spanish pasta form of vermicelli broken into one-inch lengths.
The second course features the meat and vegetables, or cooks save the vegetables for a third course and serve them with whatever sausages cook in the olla (pot). Wealthy families use beef shoulder while poorer people choose goat or lamb. As for the pig, cooks use every part in making sausages, salt it, or add it to a cocido. Spanish cooks make chorizo sausage with pork, garlic, and pimiento. The vegetables used depend on the local seasonal produce.
Spanish culinary authority Luis A. de Vega explains that in the late fifteenth century, Marranos—Jews who converted to Christianity—wanted to prove their sincerity to Christian neighbors. They began to substitute pork for cooked eggs in adafina, a traditional Jewish dish in Spain, creating what we know as cocido..
The adafina/cocido preparation was typical for the night before the Jewish Sabbath, as the pot could remain over a low flame without an attendant, thus avoiding the violation of Jewish religious law.
The Jews could still have their adafina, but the pork would show that they were good converts.
Nevertheless, Christian authorities constantly distrusted the motives of Jewish converts. They insisted on seeing pork in the stew and watched for smoke rising from the fire on Saturdays. For them, both signs proved that the household was not following Jewish religious law..
The traditional cocido pot is an earthenware vessel, glazed on the inside and with a tight fitting lid. In Andalusia today, the pressure cooker is often used in place of the traditional method, in which case you would cook the cocido for 45 minutes instead of 4 hours. I am not a fan of the pressure cooker, though. Today cocido is something of a preparation for special occasions, a sign of modern times, as traditionally is was nothing more than daily nourishment.
This recipe from Andalusia is typical of the cocido found around Granada.
Yield: Makes 10 servings
Preparation Time: 5:30 hours
Ingredients:
3 cups dried chickpeas (about 1 ½ pounds), picked over, soaked in cold water overnight, and drained
1 ½ pounds oxtails
1 ½ pounds oxtails½ pound jamón serrano, inexpensive domestic prosciutto, or slab Canadian or Irish bacon, cubed
1 ham bone or one ¾-pound beef shank bone
5 cups water
1 garlic clove, peeled
4 black peppercorns
Pinch of saffron threads, crumbled
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
2 ripe plum tomatoes, peeled and seeded, 1 whole and 1 finely chopped
½ pound green beans, ends trimmed and chopped
4 chicken legs (about 1 pound)
1 pound Spanish-style chorizo sausage, sliced
1 boiling potato (about ½ pound), such as Yukon gold, red or white, peeled and diced
Salt to taste
1. Put the chickpeas, oxtail, jamón serrano (or bacon or prosciutto), and ham bone or beef shank in a large stew pot with 4 cups of the cold water. Bring to a simmer slowly, about 30 minutes, then cook for 1 hour, skimming the foam off the surface occasionally.
2. Meanwhile, in a mortar pound the garlic, peppercorns, saffron, and cumin together until mushy. Add the whole tomato and continue pounding until the mixture is homogenous. This step can also be done in a blender or food processor.
3. Add the green beans, chicken legs, chorizo, potato, and the chopped tomato to the stew pot along with the remaining cup cold water. Carefully stir the stew and salt lightly. Add the spice mixture to the pot and stir carefully to blend well.
4. Cook over very low heat for 2 to 4 hours, checking doneness occasionally after 2 hours. The cocido is done when the meat is falling off the chicken legs and the potato has lost its crunch, but before it begins to fall apart. Taste and correct the seasoning.
