Cooking for One in Spain: Fall Vegetables and Spanish Pork Products
About two months ago, I left New York for Madrid. I moved into a packed apartment in the center of the city, leaving my comfortable Brooklyn kitchen for the great unknowns of someone else’s dishware, metric measurements, and gas stoves. In the past few weeks, I have finally felt settled into my place enough to light up a match and start cooking.
In Madrid, eating-out options, whether or not they are fast food, trend heavily toward the meat and bread category. People grab bocadillos when they are on the run, normally of the meat-and-cheese-on-baguette variety. A popular lunch option is the menu del día, an incredible bargain where three courses plus bread and beverage (even wine!) can be had for about 10 euros. I’ve only once seen a truly veggie option on one of those menus. All of which is to say that when I was thinking about things I wanted to cook for myself I got no further than fresh vegetables. This being Spain, land of acorn-fed pigs whose cured legs go for about 90 euros a kilo (look at all those continental measurement units!), I decided to add some cured pork to whatever I came up with.
I came across this adorable story-and-recipe combo on Smitten Kitchen, in which Deb from SK relates to tale of Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern wooing his now-wife with scrumptious cauliflower dishes. That dish called for cauliflower and lots of little things mixed together to impart some flavor to our faint friend – capers, almonds, raisins. I decided to put my own spin on this, even though I am not wooing anyone!, and make my own cauliflower mix for one of my first serious cooking forays in Spain.
Cauliflower, garlic, and lomo sauté 
Ingredients:
- one head of cauliflower
- quarter pound of lomo embuchado, julienned. Lomo is thinly sliced pork cured with garlic and red pepper. It imparted extra savory flavor to the cauliflower since it released both pork grease and seasonings into the mix. Any cured pork will do, depending on what is available where you are.
- Two cloves garlic, chopped
- Splash olive oil
- One pat of butter.
Slice the cauliflower as uniformly as possible into thin pieces. Feel free to remove large pieces of the stalk, as they do not cook at the same rate. Sauté in a large pan (I used a wok) three to five minutes on medium heat in olive oil, until the florets begin to brown and soften up. Turn heat to medium-low. Add the garlic and the butter. Stir continuously for three minutes. Add the lomo. Stir for three more minutes or until lomo becomes slightly crispy, remove from heat. Add black pepper and serve.
Cauliflower is one of those vegetables I wrote off as a kid and have never revisited except drenched in cheese. I never really thought of it as a base that can soak up flavors. So it’s like the tofu of vegetables?