- Spanish food is really hot these days, you know, perhaps it's because we love all those ingredients.

I mean, ham, chorizo, saffron, paprika, rice, shellfish, wow.

But the really good news is you can find all of those ingredients at your local supermarket.

So, now you can make terrific Spanish food at home.

You'll see what I mean when you taste my pork and Spanish olives, two great Spanish ingredients in a speedy weeknight meal.

We're also going to a chorizo factory and then Despana a fantastic family owned store in New York City that's a motherload of Spanish ingredients.

Then I'm going to make a dish called fideo which is a twist on paella, only I use pasta instead of rice.

So come to my kitchen today and take a trip to Spain on Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(upbeat music) Funding provided by.

- [Voiceover] Family owned and Indiana grown, Maple Leaf Farms is a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Providing a variety of duck products for home kitchens, Maple Leaf Farms duck helps inspire culinary adventures everywhere.

Maple Leaf Farms.

- [Voiceover] Subaru builds vehicles like the versatile Subaru Forester.

With symmetrical all-wheel drive and plenty of cargo room.

A recipe made for whatever the day brings.

Subaru, a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Sara] And thanks to the generous support of.

(spanish music) Hi, I'm Sara Moulton.

Welcome to Sara's Weeknight Meals.

I am going to take you on a trip to Spain today.

I've been there many times and I love it.

I mean, the food, those beautiful tiles, the tapas, the wine.

It's such a great place.

However, if the only way you're going to visit Spain is from the comfort of your own home, these recipes that I'm going to make today are going to take you out of the recipe doldrums.

I'm going to start right now with pork cutlets with my Spanish olive sauce.

And we're going to start, of course, with the pork.

Now what I have here are some pork cutlets and I'm going to pound them and we're making them into very thin cutlets so that there's lots of sauce with every bite.

I'm a sauce person.

I love sauce.

So, let me show you how I like to do this and this is about a pound of pork, boneless pork cutlets.

And their very affordable so this is a great choice for a weeknight meal.

I start with some plastic wrap and I put some water down first.

If you've every pounded meat before, you're like, "What's the water for?"

Well, the point of the water is, when you go to pound meat, if you've ever done this, especially with chicken, you notice by the time you're done with it, that it looks like a piece of lace.

It's got holes in it because it stuck to the plastic when you were pounding it.

But if you add water, it slides across the plastic and doesn't shred.

So, here we go.

And these are fairly tender, pork loin is.

Now I'm using a, this is an official meat pounder.

I'm using the flat side of it.

If you don't have one of these, a rolling pin is fine, and if you're really desperate, but don't be too enthusiastic, but you can use a wine bottle.

So, there is one.

I'm going to go ahead and do the other three.

You want about a pound of meat.

(spanish music) Now this is actually a really fun activity after a bad day at the office or if the kids have been misbehaving or the husband for that matter.

I highly recommend it.

Okay, so, I'm going to go hose down because I've got raw meat on my hands and get rid of my cutting board.

I try to keep separate cutting boards for meat or at least just wash them really well but it's important when you're working with raw meat to wash your hands very, very well because we don't want any cross contamination.

And now I'm going to get my burner going and I'm going to season the meat before I flour it.

It's just salt and pepper, very simple.

You're going to see how quick this is.

I'm making the whole thing from start to finish on a weeknight.

So, a little bit of kosher salt.

We want to do this on both sides but let me get the pepper on there too and some black pepper (scraping noise).

You can season the flour too but I find that if you season the meat as opposed to the flour, it gets more deeply seasoned and salt is very important, as is pepper.

All right.

Now, we're going to use flour that my remind you of your grandmother.

Certainly it reminds me of my grandmother.

It's called Instantized flour.

It's flour that my granny used to use and it's formulated actually to not lump up gravy.

So, if you use this particular flour for your gravies, you won't have any problem.

However, it has a second really good thing that it does which is gives a crisp coating when you're sauteing meat, fish, or any kind of protein.

Let me get some oil in here.

You can use olive oil or vegetable oil.

Coat the bottom of the pan.

Okay and now, I like to flour the meat this way because you can lift up the sides of the parchment paper to get it really coated.

Let me see how we're doing.

(pan sizzling) Yeah, okay.

I'm going to get the first one in (upbeat music) and the rest are coming.

(upbeat music) You can start with a little less flour than I do so you don't waste any.

We'll just turn that down.

You want to here that sound when you put the meat in there because it means that the pan was hot enough.

If you put your meat in a pan and you don't here that (sharp noise), get it out, get the meat out, heat the pan further and then put the meat in.

So let's take a little peek here and see what we've got.

We don't need a lot of color.

You could get, you know, slightly more than this, but this is just fine.

After I turn these, I'm going to quickly wash my tongs too and bring over the rest of the ingredients because we don't want cross contamination.

All right, now the olives, and these are Spanish olives.

They are pimiento stuffed olives and I actually saw these being stuffed when I was in the region where this recipe is sort of based on and it was really fun watching them get stuffed.

There was ladies who were putting the pimento, which is the red part of a Spanish stuffed olive into the jars.

It was pretty incredible.

And let me just pull this off for half a second because I don't want these to overcook.

We're going to deglaze in just a minute with some sherry, another very important ingredient that uniquely from Spain.

I need to grab that.

Here are the olives.

I need about a third a cup of chopped olives.

(spanish music) Let me get my sherry in there.

It's about a quarter cup of sherry.

Anytime you add alcohol to the hot pan, pull the pan off the fire, (pan sizzling) so that it doesn't catch.

Woo, did I get a hit of sherry there.

That was my little cocktail.

I'm going to let this reduce until it's almost done and then we're going to add our olives and our chicken broth.

Now, it's very interesting in Spain.

Traditionally the big meal in Spain was had in the middle of the day and it would go on for a couple of hours with many courses.

I think often times people, here we go, you can see how dry that is.

In go the olives and about one cup of chicken broth.

The actual supper which is the lighter meal of the day, doesn't happen until 10 or 11 at night.

So what do they do to bridge the gap?

Of course, these the kind of things that I'm always concerning myself with is where is my next meal and when am I going to be hungry again?

They go out to bars and have tapas, those little tastes, little hors d'oeuvres, and tapas were originally designed to be put on top of a glass of wine or sherry to keep the bugs out.

That's supposed to tide you over to dinner.

I never made it really to dinner because that's 10 or 11 o'clock.

I'm in bed.

All right, so now, I'm going to add the meat back to the sauce and the flour that's on the meat is going to thicken the sauce.

So we're just going to very gently re-heat them.

Today I am using store bought chicken broth, which is probably what you would be using too.

Store bought chicken broth does not have any collagen, gelatin thickener, natural stuff from bones in it.

If you continue reducing it, it goes poof and goes bye, bye.

If we were using your own homemade chicken broth, I'm going to get these guys back out, as you reduce the stock down, it would get thicker because there is gelatin in there.

So we have to make up the difference here with the flour and then I'm just going to add a little bit of butter.

Okay, let's get a little bit of butter.

This is a French thing.

The French call this (foreign language).

So you just swirl it around and try not to make a lot of noise.

You could two tablespoons of butter in there, that would be even better.

I'm going to put the meat back in.

I'm going to just coat it a little bit.

Now I cooked one pound of cutlets for four people and it's plenty of meat, particularly when you pound it like this, it's the psychology of serving.

These seem like big pieces.

Okay, so let me put one piece on.

Delicious.

And some chopped fresh herbs always are a nice way to end, particularly when you have something brown, it's nice to add something green just to brighten it up.

And we've got some baby roasted potato here and this would be great for a weeknight.

You saw I made the whole thing while you watched me make it and there you go.

(spanish music) Almost everywhere Spanish is spoken, chorizo is an important ingredient.

So we're going to go visit a factory in Queens, New York, to find out how this spicy sausage is made.

(spanish music) - We sell Spanish foods.

There is a difference.

There is a complexity that you can appreciate.

Ham, (foreign language) and pork is a big part of our culture and so, chorizo is something that's a staple in Spanish food that has always been present.

My name is Angelica Intriago.

I am Vice President of Despana.

I own it with my husband, Marcos Intriago, and this is our storefront, the original store, and the chorizo factory.

- [Sara] Despana has been making chorizo, the spicy Spanish sausage, since 1971, in this tiny storefront in Queens, New York.

Like so many delicacies the world over, chorizo was born from a need for preservation.

- [Angelica] It was a way of really storing all of this pork meat that was done in November typically, the (foreign language), which is the season where the hogs are sacrificed and they are used in order to keep food for the family.

My mother in law would keep it in these big tubs full of lard and it would last the whole year.

- [Sara] In Queens, this tiny factory pumps out 1,800 pounds of meat a week.

It starts with Pennsylvania pork, fatty jowls and blade meat from the shoulder.

- [Angelica] Our percentage is about 80 percent blade meat, so it's a leaner pork meat and then the skinless jowls add that fat content which give that juiciness to the chorizo.

(spanish music) - [Sara] The secret is not so much the grind as the spices.

There is sea salt, ground oregano and bay laurel.

And for ultimate smokiness, the classic Spanish ingredient.

- Pimenton de la Vera and that's a naturally smoked paprika that is made in Extremadura, Spain.

- [Sara] The spices in ground meat are mixed with white Spanish wine and then fed into natural casings.

It is linked by hand, hung on enormous trucks and wheeled into the ancient smokehouse oven 600 pounds at a time to cook for nearly three hours.

- You want to try some chorizo?

- [Sara] Chorizo is the core of Despana's business but Spain is what they are selling at a new cafe in Lower Manhattan and to nostalgic customers in Queens, longing for a taste of the old country.

- You always remember your grandmother's recipes (laughs) To enjoy this, that's the closest things to that.

- [Angelica] So for us, it is a continuation through generations of our heritage.

It's the meaning, Despana represents just this culture, which is Spain.

- (foreign language) - (foreign language) (spanish music) - This dish I'm about to make is for Sunday because it's a little more complicated.

There's many different parts.

It's called fideos.

It's named after the noodles that are the star of the show.

It's like a paella but made in one pan with pasta.

So let me start by getting the shrimp.

There's many different elements.

It's a one dish meal, maybe crusty bread or a salad on the side.

But I want to flavor my shrimp which are going to go in later.

It's got shrimp and chorizo and tomatoes and garlic and onions and peas.

You see what I mean, it's got everything in it.

There is my shrimp and I'm going to chop up some garlic.

We need about four teaspoons and generally one garlic clove equals one teaspoon.

So I'm going to do four garlic cloves and if I happen to add a little more than I need, that's fine.

If you can't find these thin noodles, you can certainly use fegatini thin spaghetti.

I'm going to add about a teaspoon, here's my shrimp, put some salt and pepper.

And these are large shrimp.

The reason I like the large shrimp is because I don't want them to cook too much.

They go in at the very end and the larger the better because smaller ones would cook too fast.

We're seasoning them so that it has time to pick up the flavor of the salt and the garlic and the pepper.

We're just going to set it aside and move on to the noodles.

This is eight ounces of noodles and I'm going to break them into two or three inch lengths.

You just actually have fun and break them up.

We're starting in a cold pan.

So now I'm going to add two teaspoons of olive oil.

So what I'm going to do now, is cook this on medium.

I just turned on the flame and I'm going to keep an eyeball on it while I prepare the rest of the ingredients.

It's going to get very toasty and very brown and it can go quite fast, so keep an eye on it.

All right, here we have chorizo.

I've already peeled two.

This is Spanish chorizo.

And I just get this loose.

There's two main kinds of chorizo, well, styles of chorizo, the Spanish and the Mexican, and the Spanish is smoked and cured and the Mexican is fresh.

So the Spanish, you can eat straight up and in Spain it's flavored with garlic and paprika.

It could be smoked, hot or sweet.

Sometimes there's a little bit of wine in there and what makes it red of course is the paprika.

You can eat it straight up.

You can slice it.

You can saute it.

You can use it as a flavoring as well and then the Mexican, is again, usually pork, ground pork, fresh ground pork though, which is why it needs to be cooked and it's flavored with dried chilies in place of the paprika.

Now, I never met a chorizo I didn't like.

But for the purposes of this recipe, I want to go with the Spanish.

There's many wonderful brands out there.

(spanish music) Boy, I'm smelling that, smelling toasty, spaghetti, there we go.

You can see it on the bottom.

This is not something you walk away, don't answer the phone.

If you can see, some parts are getting a little dark.

Just get them out.

Oh, I wish you could smell this.

Who knew that toasted dried pasta would smell so good?

It does.

It smells like toasted bread.

Just about there.

I've got a little bit of oil left but we're going to add a little more.

Fat is a conductor of flavor.

Don't leave it out of the recipe.

Two tablespoons.

That's exactly two tablespoons.

So I'm going to put the chorizo in but I only want to cook it for about two or three minutes.

Oh, wow, I'm smelling the paprika.

Fantastic.

And an onion gets finely chopped and we're going to brown it.

When you brown an onion slowly, it also adds depth of flavor.

One onion.

We want about a cup.

One medium onion equals about one cup chopped.

Alright, these are looking good, you don't want too much color on there.

We're going to add this to our fideos and then our onions are going in.

Oh, this smells so good.

I wish you could smell it.

Notice it's not smoking since I made sure that the temperature was right.

In go the onions.

These will take about eight to ten minutes to get nice and golden and then we're going to add the rest of our garlic.

This is on like a medium heat.

I'm just going to check on them every so often but meanwhile, I'm just going to tidy up a bit.

(country music) (pot sizzling) Those are lovely and brown.

So now I'm going to add my garlic.

This is three teaspoons, the remaining three teaspoons, and this only takes about a minute.

We don't want to get the garlic brown.

If it gets brown, it gets bitter.

I've got some marinara sauce here and if you want to make your own, I have a wonderful recipe that we're going to put on the website.

Only takes 20 minutes.

Or you can just buy your favorite.

In goes our marinara and this is going to simmer for about four minutes.

This is pretty thick this marinara, so we may not need that long.

Okay, so let's start with our paprika.

I'm going to add a teaspoon of the smoked and a teaspoon of the sweet.

We want to bring it alive by getting it in there with a little liquid.

This is all about building layers of flavor.

And now, in goes everything else.

I think I'm going to add the fideos first and then we'll get all the liquid in.

Half a cup of white wine, that adds a nice acidity and our chicken broth.

Now, a little miracle happens in here because you are like, wait a second, aren't we cooking the fideos, the pasta, and a whole lot of boiling water, which is what we've been taught to do when you are making Italian pasta.

Trust me, it's going to be just beautiful.

It cooks in here.

Everything comes together.

So we're going to bring it up to a boil, turn it down to a simmer and stir it every so often.

Okay, let's come up to a boil.

I'm going to turn that down to simmer for about 10 minutes and go out and get some flowers.

(soft guitar music) Okay, I'm setting that to broil, which is how we finish the dish and, oh, that looks perfect.

You see it's reduced.

I've given it a stir every so often and you can see how tender the noodles are.

So, in goes some peas, about two cups, and these were frozen, defrosted peas.

Essentially, frozen peas are really blanched and cooked.

They are good to go.

You could eat them raw even.

Let me just stir those down and then the shrimp gets tucked in on the top and how it gets cooked is just by the heat of the broiler.

It's so pretty when you take it out.

(light guitar music) While it's broiling, which takes only about four minutes, I'm going to make the garlic mayonnaise, which is the last touch.

It's very simple.

It's not rocket science, unless you make your own mayonnaise, in which case, good for you.

That is fantastic.

We need about three quarters of a cup of mayonnaise.

I'm just going to eyeball it.

This is just regular store bought, you know, we all have out favorite brands.

Then we're going to put some garlic finely minced, about a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half.

I like garlic, so I'm going to put a lot in.

And then some lemon and that is my very complicated garlic mayonnaise.

Here we go.

I'm going to put this in a little bowl and this is going to be on the table out there and we're going to dollop it on top of our fideos.

I have a buddy coming.

Her name is Margaret and she just got back from Spain.

How perfect.

So she's going to show me her photos and I'm going to feed her Spanish food.

Now for my fideos.

Oh, that looks perfect.

Oh, yeah.

All that crispy stuff on the top.

You want that to happen.

Oh, I can't wait to try this.

(spanish music) I wonder if you had anything like this when you were in Spain.

- We had paella along the coast.

- [Sara] This is very similar, it's just we're using, it's got pasta in it instead of rice and this you have to have a little bit of this.

This is garlic mayo that you put on, which is very key to the whole recipe.

There you go.

- [Margaret] Oh, it looks delicious.

- [Sara] Yeah.

And we've got some Spanish wine with it.

Now I love, this is Tempranillo.

I love Spanish wine.

Are you a fan of Spanish wine?

- Particularly, I especially do love a sangria in the summer, though, I have to say.

- Yeah, well this is true, it's so refreshing.

- [Margaret] Absolutely.

- [Sara] But I love Spanish wine because it's so food friendly.

Let's dig in.

- Okay.

- I want to thank you all for joining me today.

I hope you make some of these Spanish inspired meals at home.

Go ahead, eat up.

- Oh, thank you, it looks delicious, thank you.

- Because your family will just be so happy.

The flavors are so wonderful.

The ingredients are so great.

I'm Sara Moulton here with Margaret and I'll see you next time for more of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

So tell me, what was your favorite thing you ate in Barcelona?

- Paella, at this, I don't remember what they call the places, but they are along the coast.

- It's context too, because you're sitting in this beautiful place.

- Beautiful place and the siesta, the best part, so you can siesta and then eat again.

- Go back out for tapas.

They know how to live.

Sara's Weeknight Meals continues online.

For recipes, helpful tips, messages and lots more, visit up on the web at saramoulton.com/weeknightMeals.

And go to our YouTube channel, Sara's Weeknight Meals TV.

Funding provided by.

- [Voiceover] Family owned and Indiana grown, Maple Leaf Farms is a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Providing a variety of duck products for home kitchens, Maple Leaf Farms duck helps inspire culinary adventures everywhere.

Maple Leaf Farms.

- [Voiceover] Subaru builds vehicles like the versatile Subaru Forester.

With symmetrical all-wheel drive and plenty of cargo room.

A recipe made for whatever the day brings.

Subaru, a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Sara] And thanks to the generous support of.

(light music) (presenting music) (electronic music)