Olla Podrida
"This word-Olla-means at once a species of prepared food, and the earthenware utensil in which it is dressed The olla is only well made in Andalucia, and there alone in careful, well appointed houses: it is called a puchero in the rest of Spain, where it is but a poor affair .
It "The veritable olla is difficult to be made a tolerable one is never to be eaten out of Spain, since it requires many Spanish things to concoct it, and much care. may be made in one pot, but two are better. They must be of earthenware, like the French pot au feu. Put them on their separate stoves, with water. Place into No. 1 garbanzos which have been placed to soak over night. Add a good piece of beef, a chicken, a large piece of bacon; let it boil once and quickly ; then let it simmer : it requires four or five hours to be well done. Meanwhile place into No. 2, with water, whatever vegetables are to be had-lettuces, cabbage, a slice of gourd, carrots, beans, celery, endive, onions and garlic, with beef and long peppers. These must be previously well washed and cut, as if they were destined to make a salad; then add red sausages or chorizos, half a pig's face salted, which should have been soaked over night. When all is sufficiently boiled, strain off the water. Remember constantly to skim the scum off both saucepans. When all is ready, take a large dish, lay in the bottom the vegetables, the Omelet beef in the centre, flanked by the bacon, chicken, and pig's face. The sausages should be arranged around en couronne. Pour over some of the soup of No. 1, and serve hot." (Abridged from Ford's Handbook of Spain.) In spite of Ford's protest, there is nothing in this receipt which cannot be procured in London. The garbanzos are chick peas, which are to be procured at Francisco Figul's, 10, Woburn Buildings, Tavistock Square. But surely it is not to be said that the Spanish Olla depends on the garbanzos, and that no other peas will do. The Chorizos are also to be obtained at the same Spanish shop, which was of old recommended by Ford. In the absence of Chorizos use Frankfort sausages. As for the necessity of an earthen pot-that is a delusion, if the true use of earthenware is understood. See article Soup.
A two-pot cocido: meats and chickpeas in one, vegetables and cured pork in the other, assembled on a platter with the broth poured over. The method is sound, but the quantities are left entirely to the cook.
- The hingeKeep the two pots genuinely separate until plating. Pot 1 stays clear and is the broth you serve; pot 2 carries the cabbage, garlic and salted pork, whose water is thrown away. Cooking everything together gives you a muddy, cabbage-dominated soup instead of the clean chickpea-and-beef broth the dish is built on.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For six people work to about 1 lb dried chickpeas, 2 lb beef shin or brisket, a 3-4 lb chicken, a 1 lb piece of streaky bacon or salt pork, and roughly 3 lb of mixed vegetables.
- GarbanzosChickpeas, as the note says. Soak overnight with a pinch of baking soda if your water is hard, and add them to cold water with the meat — they will need the full four to five hours. Tinned chickpeas will not survive that and should go in only for the last twenty minutes.
- Timing the chickenFour or five hours suits the beef and the chickpeas but destroys a chicken. Add the bird for the last hour to ninety minutes, or poach it separately and carve it onto the platter.
- Pig's faceHalf a salted pig's cheek. Order cured or fresh pork cheek from a butcher, or substitute a smoked ham hock. Soaking overnight and discarding pot 2's water is what keeps the whole dish from being too salty — do not skip either.
- Long peppersProbably dried mild Spanish peppers here rather than piper longum, though the text does not say. A couple of dried ñoras or a mild ancho give the right flavour; a hot chilli does not.
- ChorizosUse Spanish cooking chorizo, not the dry cured slicing kind, and add it to pot 2 for the last thirty to forty minutes so the fat and paprika do not entirely leach out. The suggested Frankfurt sausages are a weak stand-in and need only ten minutes.
- Slice of gourdWinter squash or pumpkin, a standard element of Spanish cocido. Add it late; it collapses in under half an hour.
- SkimmingThe instruction to skim both pots constantly matters more than it sounds. The broth is served undisguised, so scum left in pot 1 shows up as grey flecks and a greasy mouthful.
- ServingTraditionally eaten in courses: the broth first, sometimes with fine noodles or rice, then the vegetables, then the meats. Serving it all at once on one platter, as here, is the simpler presentation.
The olla podrida — literally "rotten pot", the name being much argued over — is the ancestor of the modern Spanish cocido and puchero; it appears in Don Quixote and gave English the word "olio" for any medley. The olla names both the boiled dinner and the earthenware pot it was cooked in, which is why the recipe insists on earthenware and why Kettner's editor, characteristically brisk, dismisses that insistence as a delusion. The text is lifted from Richard Ford's Handbook for Travellers in Spain (first published 1845), a book so widely read that its author's opinions on Spanish food circulated for decades; the passage here is answered point by point by a London editor determined to prove that any foreign dish could be assembled from a shop in Bloomsbury. That shop address, printed as a practical convenience, is the most period-specific thing on the page: chickpeas and chorizo were then specialist imports requiring a named supplier.