The Mediterranean Slow Cooker Cookbook (2 page)

Slow cooking has been around for thousands of years. One of the earliest slow cookers was a cauldronlike pot used by Cro-Magnon men and women in southwestern France. In modern times, enameled cast-iron Dutch ovens have been used for braising, hammered-steel and copper stockpots for making soups, and conical tagines for making stews. Today’s modern and sleek new electric slow cookers are great for making all sorts of dishes, and they do their job off the stove top. A slow-cooked meal has been a comfort food for the ages, satisfying and soothing the soul.

The Portuguese, with their love of the sea and its bounty, prepare seafood in myriad ways; for example, they slow-cook whole fish or fillets on the stove top with potatoes and saffron, and they make enormous pots of seafood stew. Spaniards are famous for their paella, flavored with saffron, pork products, and salt cod. Moving along the northern Mediterranean coastline, we reach France, with its slow-cooked beef stews in red wine, and its famous seafood stew, bouillabaisse. Italian slow-cooked foods range from minestrone, a thick vegetable soup, to porchetta, a stuffed rolled pork shoulder cooked for hours until it falls apart in juicy, tender, rosemary-scented chunks. Greece and Turkey present a variety of slow-cooked foods, from lamb flavored with lemon and rosemary to eggplant dishes. Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and the entire North African Mediterranean coast boast aromatic and flavorful cuisines, often with ancient roots. A palate of herbs and spices defines their culinary cultures. The slow-cooked dishes of the Mediterranean, served from home and restaurant kitchens, are truly as varied as the region’s terrain.

An electric slow cooker in your kitchen can bring the Mediterranean into your home. When you want to make something different and special to serve to family and friends, this book will be your go-to source for great
recipes. They reflect a more sophisticated approach to the slow cooker, requiring a few more ingredients, and maybe a few new flavor combinations for you to enjoy, instead of the meat and potatoes you might dump in your machine before running off to work.

Why use the slow cooker? I’m asked this question time and again, and the answer is quite simple. I don’t have to baby it along on the stove top or in the oven. I can literally set it and forget it until it is done. With a programmable slow cooker, the food is automatically switched to the warm setting after cooking for the allotted amount of time. I can leave the house, go about my business, and return to a perfectly cooked dinner—no worries about overcooked or burned dishes. Another great benefit of using the slow cooker is that unlike the heat on a stove top or in an oven, the heat in a slow cooker is constant, so all the ingredients cook at the same temperature. Slow cookers are energy efficient, too, using only as much electricity as a 75-watt lightbulb.

Included here are tagines; tender lamb cooked in a variety of ways; classics like
Veal Osso Buco
, an
Old-Fashioned French Beef Stew
, and Paella Valenciana; seafood with many different herb and spice combinations;
Greek Pastitsio
; layered eggplant dishes; and game hens stuffed with savory and aromatic rice in the style of the
Egyptian kings
. There are also accompaniments such as rich legume and rice side dishes,
Couscous
,
Simple Pita Bread
, and sauces to complement the main dishes.

When you use a slow cooker as your low and slow oven, an elegant dinner for friends can be a reality any night of the week. Or you can cook up a delicious Sunday supper for your family using any of these mouthwatering recipes. You’ll learn streamlined techniques for getting these scrumptious dishes to the table, full of fresh flavors. And as we travel around the Mediterranean, sampling its varied and bountiful foods, I’ll also include a bit of history.

Where Are We?

Each country possesses a rich bounty of delicious ingredients for the Mediterranean table: aromatic spices and glistening fresh seafood in the markets of Marrakech, pungent sheep’s and goat’s milk cheeses on rural Greek farms, truffles in the Dordogne region of France, spring lambs on the salt marshes of France, wild boar in Tuscany, fields of wild oregano in Sicily, and vineyards heavy with grapes throughout the region. Lying roughly between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels of latitude, the Mediterranean enjoys a climate that is generally mild, giving crops in most of the region a long growing season.

History gives us clues about the development of the cuisines of the Mediterranean. European explorers would bring back spices and foods from their travels to Asia in the East and the New World in the West, introducing them into their native countries. Conquering armies from Rome, France, Spain, and Britain brought their own foods and cooking techniques with them, leaving permanent marks on the cuisines of their Mediterranean neighbors. Today, although you will find McDonald’s in Marrakech and KFC in Jerusalem, the traditional flavors of the cities’ native cuisines are still apparent as you walk through the markets, inhaling the aromas of local spices, produce, meats, cheeses, and seafood. In many places small refrigerators, or none at all, make it necessary for people to shop daily for ingredients. For others, shopping frequently at local markets for the freshest ingredients is a way of life.

Many authors have written exhaustively about the Mediterranean diet, which is now recognized as an “intangible cultural heritage” in Italy by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It is a way of life and a way of eating, which the Italians call la cucina genuina or la cucina povera (“genuine cuisine” or “cuisine of the poor”). This is the diet of those who work the land, and feed themselves using seasonal ingredients grown in their small plots outside the kitchen. This is the original back-to-basics cuisine! So come discover some of the most diverse and delicious foods you will ever serve out of your slow cooker; be transported to the Mediterranean, experiencing the tastes of this dynamic part of the world.

Mediterranean Flavors

There are many cookbooks that explore Mediterranean cooking in all its complexity, but I like to keep it simple for the home cook. Although each country that borders the Mediterranean takes pride in its own dishes, they share many ingredients. The following is a simple list of flavors that are the essence of Mediterranean cooking. We could debate this subject forever, but for this book, and these recipes, these items will be essential for a Mediterranean pantry, and you should be able to purchase them without a problem at any full-service grocery store.

A good balance of flavors is the key to making delicious slow-cooked Mediterranean dishes. Since the flavors in these dishes have a long, slow simmer together, it is important that they complement one another, rather than fight for supremacy. Knowing how to combine flavors will help you to prepare balanced dishes in your slow cooker.

When adding salt to a dish, balance it with sweet or aromatics, such as sweet butternut squash with salty prosciutto. Smoke is balanced with aromatics or sweet flavors, and heat is balanced with aromatics. Aromatics and pungent flavors can be balanced with any of the other flavors, while sweet should be balanced with salt, acid, smoke, or aromatics. Acidic ingredients are always balanced by the addition of salt.

The French word terroir, meaning “soil,” was originally used to describe the way the soil and climate of a particular place affect the taste and aroma of its wines. For example, wines from one region may have a mineral smell and a crisp finish owing to the soil that the grapes are grown in. But today terroir means more than that in the Mediterranean. The earth and its components of soil, minerals, water, as well as the climate affect all the foods in the marketplace, and on the table. For example, olive oil in one region may be buttery, while another olive oil leaves a strong peppery aftertaste in the back of your throat. The contrast between the two is a result of different soil, climate, and methods of harvesting in each region. Cheese is flavored by the diet of the cows, sheep, or goats whose milk produces the cheese. And the grasses they eat vary from one region to the next as a result of the differing content of the soil. Terroir influences every aspect of Mediterranean cuisine.

Regional preferences have a great influence on Mediterranean cooking, too. In Greece, yogurt and strong sheep’s milk cheeses are found in kitchens. Northern Italians like to cook with butter, cow’s milk cheeses, and cream, while southern Italians use olive oil rather than butter, and they flavor their food with sharp sheep’s milk cheeses. Many regions pride themselves on their smoked and cured meats; Serrano ham in Spain, prosciutto in Italy, and luxurious French hams all contribute smoke or salt to various dishes. Lamb and goat are particular favorites in the southern Mediterranean and along the North African coast, and so are small game hens, guinea fowl, and chicken. Since many Mediterranean countries are poor, with populations that cannot afford meat in their daily diet, beans and legumes provide the protein in many dishes. Lentil and rice dishes abound, too; I could write a whole chapter on those alone. Meats and poultry, when used, generally stay in the background, and in some cases religious dietary laws govern which meats are common to the cuisine.

Using Your Slow Cooker

Using an electric slow cooker to make traditional foods from the Mediterranean is what I call a no-brainer; the ingredients are sautéed and then added to the cooker for a long and slow simmer. This isn’t rocket science, or even culinary science. It is simple food cooked in a way that is ages old, using electricity instead of a fire.

All the recipes in this book were tested in 5-, 6-, and 7-qt/4.5-, 5.5-, and 6.5-L slow cookers. If you have one of these sizes, or even a 4-qt/3.5-L, you can make any dish. Some cooking times are loose; something may cook for 4 to 5 hours until tender, not precisely 4½ hours. For maximum success, below are a few more tips to keep in mind.

TIPS FOR SLOW COOKING

Never add water to slow cooker dishes; instead add broth, stock, soup bases, fruit juices, or wine. Water will not add flavor, whereas a broth or stock or other flavorful liquid will season the finished sauce. If you already have a slow cooker you know it creates a steam bath once it gets up to temperature. Steam is created and held in the pot, and the ingredients actually sweat as they cook, adding more liquid. Some cuts of meat, like pork shoulder and chuck roast, will give you up to 4 cups/960 ml of extra liquid as they cook. By adding a small amount of liquid (and sometimes none at all), you will end up with a more concentrated, flavorful sauce to serve with your dish. To that end, in some recipes I recommend that you use a soup base like Superior Touch Better Than Bouillon or a demi-glace concentrate like Provimi or More Than Gourmet, which are readily available in supermarkets or gourmet stores. If you don’t want to use a soup base, boiling the sauce on the stove top to reduce the liquid that has collected in your slow cooker (after cooking) will help to evaporate some of the water, leaving the essence of the dish in the finished sauce.

Remember the 30-minute rule: If your dish will simmer more than 30 minutes, use a dried herb or spice; fresh herbs will lose their flavor in 30 minutes. At the end of the cooking time, add fresh herbs to refresh the flavor of the dish. The exceptions to this rule are fresh rosemary and fresh thyme sprigs, which are woody and can stand up to a long simmer.