STUFFED VERDURAS
Altamiras hollowed his verduras for stuffing with a dried cane cut from river reeds. Presented on the same serving plate they give one of his most beautiful dishes. Slow cooking them, quite literally, is the key to success: the vegetables are poached in barely simmering stock to leave them intact while the vegetable broth reduces to a glossy sauce you can flavour with a saffron infusion, sweet white wine, or olive oil and garlic.
Altamiras wrote up the recipes in a playful spirit, using flavour-switches to the stuffing for each vegetable – for example, he suggested chopped cured ham, sausagemeat and chicken for cucumbers – and he closed the first recipe, for lettuce, with one of his most endearing lines. “You may play with these like balls, but do not throw them around if you hope to win the day.” The lettuces are visually fun to make: when you steam or blanche them, they open like a flower in the water, and then, when well drained, you stick bands of stuffing at different heights, working from the heart towards the larger leaves, wrapping them round to make sure the lettuce keeps its shape. Providing you fasten the whole thing well with string, it’s one of those great alternative feast dishes, as good on the eye as on the taste-buds.
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❖ Stuffed Verduras
Slow-braised lamb-stuffed pumpkins, onions and courgettes give a sweet broth, flavoured by Altamiras with saffron, wine, olive oil and garlic then reduced to a glossy sauce.”