Fried Artichoke with Pio Negro Jowl, Fresh Mushrooms, Crayfish and Toasted Almonds
Túbal
Chef: Nicolás Ramírez
Country: Spain
City: 31300 Tafalla (Navarra)
Address: Plaza de Navarra, 4.
(+34)948700852.tubal@restaurantetubal.com
This restaurant represents the evolution of popular cuisine in Navarra. A statement that is at its height regarding the elements the local population is the proudest of: vegetables. The menu offers infinite recipes with diversified treatments of every main ingredient. Raw artichoke and red thistle salad, green beans or mange-tout, chicory, watercress, red chard and arugula,… as well as oysters, al dente, stewed with other winter vegetables like white thistle, borage, green beans or mange-tout, together with ham and vegetal velouté sauce. After being cooked at low temperature (vacuum-cooked for 20 minutes with oil and salt at 90º C), the whole is grilled with young garlic and Iberian pork, and then fried. A version that is infinitely more succulent, ostentatious and glamorous due to the magnitude of all the ingredients that accompany the artichoke. A great dish made of crayfish, pork jowl, (meadow) mushrooms and almonds in which the artichoke really does justice to the part it plays in the title.
The Recipe
INGREDIENTS (4 SERVINGS):
• 8 artichokes
• 300 g fresh mushrooms
• Black pork jowl (Pío negro)
• 4 big crayfish
• Slices almonds
• Minced parsley
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Crayfish oil
FRIED ARTICHOKES:
Peel the artichokes removing the external hard leaves and the tip, leaving just the heart and the tender leaves. Cut them 1 cm thick, approximately. Slightly coat in flour and fry in extra virgin olive oil at 170º C until the heart is tender and the tips are slightly browned.
PÍO NEGRO PORK JOWL
• 1 jowl
• 500 g coarse salt
• 150 g sweet paprika
• 10 cl chicken and veal broth
Remove the skin of the jowl. Mix the salt with the paprika and cover with the jowl for 3 hours.
After that time, remove the salt and the paprika.
Dehydrate the jowl and put it into a vacuum bag together with the broth. Steam-cook at 75º C for 17 hours.
Once cooked, cool down into water and ice, cut into pieces and slightly brown on the grill.
SAUTÉED MUSHROOMS
Clean the mushrooms and sauté at a high heat with extra virgin olive oil, salt and parsley.
SAUTÉED CRAYFISH:
Peel the crayfish and sauté in a Teflon pan with olive oil so that the external part gets slightly browned. Set aside and add a bit of artichoke broth into the pan to use the juices from the first step.
ARTICHOKE JUICE
Make a crayfish oil with the heads of the animals and vegetables (onion, garlic, carrot and leek). You can crystallize at very low heat to extract all the flavour from the heads or cook into a vacuum bag at 75º C.
Make a roux with this oil and add some artichoke broth as well as the broth obtained to brown the crayfish. Strain in a conical strainer.
TOASTED ALMONDS:
Brown the sliced almonds in a pan with a drop of olive oil or on their own in the oven.
ASSEMBLY:
Place the slice of pork jowl in the centre of a plate and cover with the sautéed mushrooms. Add the fried artichokes and the crayfish. Pour the sauce and spread the toasted almonds.
NOTE: In spring, we use meadow mushrooms instead of fresh wild mushrooms.
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