SERVES 4
Monkfish are wedge-shaped, thick, and have a wide, toothy mouth in a massive head that comprises over half of its total weight. The head makes some of the richest stock, while the meat on the fleshy tail has a texture often likened to very tender lobster.
I first encountered this delicious, straightforward recipe in the deep south, an area steeped in Moorish influences. This recipe showcases one of their most important introductions to the Spanish countryside—saffron. Use whole saffron threads, preferably those from La Mancha, where the severe climate gives Spain’s most distinguished spice its potent aromas and bold, brilliant color. See page 168 for more on La Mancha’s oro rojo (red gold).
1. Generously season the fish with salt and pepper. In a large cazuela, heavy casserole, skillet, or sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. When the oil begins to shimmer, dredge the fish piece by piece in flour and then cook in batches as needed, turning only once, until golden on the outsides and just opaque throughout, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer to a platter.
2. Add the onions to the cazuela, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook until soft and translucent, 8 to 10 minutes. Add all of the saffron, stir, and immediately cover with ½> cup/120 ml water. Bring the liquid to a boil and then reduce the heat to low. Return the monkfish and any drippings to the pan and cook, shaking the pan from time to time, until the liquid has reduced down almost completely and the onions are still very moist, about 5 minutes.
3. Divide the fish among plates and cover with the onion sauce. Serve immediately.
As I entered a converted garage in the Castilla–La Mancha town of Madridejos on a cold winter afternoon, the smell was overpoweringly tropical in its heady floral aromas. Mounds of purplish saffron flowers picked that morning covered a long table topped with a bright yellow tablecloth. Sitting around it was Gregoria Carrasco Sánchez, her three daughters, and her husband, working quickly but patiently, extracting the three scarlet-red stigmas from each flower. They placed the 1- to 1½>-inch-/2.5-to 4-cm-long threads in a small dish and dropped the rest of the flower to the floor, where they piled around their feet.
Arab traders introduced saffron into Spain sometime around 900 CE. The Spanish word azafrán comes from the Arabic za’faran. The center of the industry is in Castilla–La Mancha, where the brutally hot summers and bitter cold winters give the saffron its vivid color and intense aromas. The saffron bulbs are planted between June and September, and the short-lived but beautiful flowers are picked from mid-October to mid-November. During the harvest, entire families help out in la monda, as the process to remove the stigmas is known. As a girl, my mother-in-law sat with her aunts to separate threads from the flowers, and still remembers a few weeks every autumn, plucking out the fine filaments and listening to the stories and songs of these women.
Saffron is famously the world’s most expensive spice. Gregoria told me that it takes the stigmas of 260,000 to 265,000 flowers to make a single kilogram of the spice—about 132,500 for one pound.
That family I visited in Madridejos is typical in that they grow a small plot of their own saffron, remove the threads, and toast them over a small heater (where they lose 80 percent of their weight), and then sell them to a wholesaler. “It’s the only industry left in Spain that pays its workers in the product by weight,” Gregoria told me. They receive one third of the threads that they separate as payment.
But saffron isn’t just a commodity. It plays an important role in the Spanish kitchen, too. If it’s good saffron, just a pinch of threads is enough. (Too many and the flavors can be almost medicinal.) That pinch gives many Spanish dishes their defining color or aroma—chicken in pepitoria sauce (see page 212), monkfish with saffron (see page 166), and, most famous of them all, paella (see page 136).
