We are thrilled to bring to you one of our favorite dishes from our friend, Dale Gray, the beloved cook behind the Instagram account @thedaleyplated and her amazing blog, and her beautiful new cookbook South of Somewhere. This dish is inspired by classic Spanish cuisine which first sears the chicken in olive oil and then, when the chicken is removed to rest, the hot oils are joined by the garlic, onion and chorizo, and simmered until aromatic and turning a rustic red from the paprika in the chorizo.
Spanish Chorizo
Braised Chicken Thighs with Chorizo and Sherry Gravy
This beautiful and savory dish is served in most local restaurants in Spain, it is a national treasure of their cuisine. This intensely flavored dish is made with one single large cast iron or enamel pan, what could be more simple.
Paella
Paella is the signature meal of Spain, a national pride, and yet almost no one fully agrees on how exactly it should be made. It is a controversial meal for many reasons… starting with the simple fact that it is a huge shallow pan loaded down with complex and expensive ingredients which completely vary from home to home, town to town, restaurant to restaurant, and from region to region in Spain. Paella in Madrid is very different from that in Seville. But at the same time, like Bouillabaisse from France, Paella is a classic meal so identified with the soul of the country that it naturally comes laden with emotion, memory, tradition, pride, and a sensory longing for the authenticity of the time and place of one’s upbringing.
Roasted Chicken Thighs with Orange Slices
This is a dish we love to make for its gorgeous look and amazing flavors. We use olive oil, Porcini mushrooms or cremini mushrooms, Giant Beans from Greece for their incredibly dense creamy flavors, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, Cara Cara oranges for their unique flavor, Spanish chorizo with its smoky paprika flavor, and we sometimes use Cajun Andouille sausage for it’s immense smokiness and depth of Cajun flavors.
Homemade Pizza!
Every once in a while we like to look back at some of our favorite savory homemade pizzas and share them. We love homemade pizza, it brings the family together like no other meal!
Stuffed Peppers with Shakshuka Sauce, Sausages and Feta
Shakshuka isn’t just for breakfast anymore! This fabulous Middle Eastern feast is also a wonderful stuffing for grape leaves. Give it a whirl, these are the best stuffed peppers we ever had!
Chicken Roulade (Roll) in Mushroom & Thyme Cream Sauce with Dijon Mustard
This is the Chicken Roulade of our dreams, the one we first experienced in Florence and the hill towns of Tuscany… the extravagant chicken roll that incorporates every savory ingredient we ever wanted to include.
Basque Braised Chicken Thighs with Peppers and Chorizo
We have always been fascinated by the Basque people, not just for their unique soulful cuisine, but also for the fact that no one really knows for sure where they come from or even where their language originates. Whenever folks go looking for the Basque origins, it turns out they were right there in their Basque Country homeland in the Pyrenees mountains all along, bordering both Spain and France, long before the French or the Spanish even existed.
Seafood in Saffron Broth with Coconut Cream, Sausage and Vermicelli
For a long time, we have been passionate lovers of the fusion cuisine that spreads out from the South of India, across the Malaysian Islands, and is greatly influenced by nearby Thailand and Vietnam. Combining the coconut cream, saffron and warm aromatic spices of Southern India, the lemongrass, Kaffir lime leaves, tomatoes and vermicelli of Malaysia and Thailand, to the pork sausage and umami fish sauce of Vietnam, this amazing feast is one to cherish for your own wild savory kitchen.
Paella
Paella is the signature meal of Spain, a national pride, and yet almost no one fully agrees on what it is or how is should be made. It is a controversial meal for many reasons… starting with the simple fact that it is a huge shallow pan loaded down with complex and expensive ingredients which completely vary from home to home, town to town, restaurant to restaurant, and from region to region in Spain. Paella in Madrid is very different from that in Seville. But at the same time, like Bouillabaisse from France, Paella is a classic meal so identified with the soul of the country that it naturally comes laden with emotion, memory, tradition, pride, and a sensory longing for the authenticity of the time and place of one’s upbringing.
Steamed Mussels with Spanish Chorizo
Along the coasts of Spain and Morocco, when home cooks put a big bowl of seafood on the table for a family feast, this is one of their classics. This sauce is based on our own preserved Meyer lemons along with the natural juices of the seafood, the smoky chorizo, virgin olive oil, garlic, fresh herbs like Italian parsley and cilantro, garden fresh tomatoes and the magic of saffron. Serve with crusty bread to soak up all this umami goodness and with harissa on the side. Sometimes we steam the mussels we gather on the coastal tidal pools north of Santa Cruz in two copper Cataplana pots, which are made in Portugal. They are wonderful devices… hand hammered copper pots by Portuguese artisans. They have a tin lining inside and are held together like a clam shell with metal hinges, and they sit directly on the flame. The history of the Cataplana is obscure, which is excellent news for me because, as a dramatist, I can tell a good story about the legendary Cataplana that feels true to the time and place it was first recorded… which is the Algarve region of Portugal… and best of all, no one knows if I made it all up or not.
Clams and Monkfish with Spanish Chorizo and Saffron Fennel Broth
I grew up in a time and a place where the possibility of experiencing exotic or umami infused cuisine was just about zero. The little town in Illinois I come from had 500 residents, a couple of coffee shops, one family restaurant specializing in deep fried food, and was more than an hour from the closest big city. But when I still a little kid, I began to realize with a kind of bewilderment, that other people didn’t seem to be amazed by food quite the way that I was.