RICE WITH COD AND MAJORCAN SAUSAGE

This weekend I decided to make rice with cod and sobrasada (Majorcan sausage). This is a Manuel Vazquez Montalban’s dish and I found it in his book The Carvalho recipes. It is one of these traditional poor people dishes in which they used to throw everything they had on hand into the rice, with the final result of amazing combinations. As it was far more complicated than the other pasta dishes I made before I invited three friends to share the rice in good company. Someone could ask me: What Vázquez Montalbán has to do with photography? Because I said that all the recipes would be related to the photographic world. The reason could be that I photographed the writer on numerous occasions. It's a good excuse, isn’t it?

Here is the recipe for 4 people:

½ kilo of rice, 1 large sobrasada (Majorca sausage) slice, 4 garlic, tomato sauce, 1 green pepper, artichokes or 2 ½ k of cooked green beans, 200 g of salt cod, 1 large potato or baked beans (250 g already cooked). Roast the cod and crumble it. Fry lightly the minced onion and the green pepper and add the tomato sauce. At the same time fry the potatoes sliced thin and turn away. Then in the sauce melt the slice of sobrasada (Majorcan sausage), add the shredded cod, the rice and then the artichokes (already fried and cut into pieces) or the baked beans. Pour the vegetable broth, twice the amount of rice, cook vigorously for the first fifteen minutes, and then reduce the intensity. Add the layers of potatoes, or cooked white beans, and stew with a sprinkle of minced garlic. Five minutes later retire away from heat and let stand for another five minutes.

MANUEL VÁZQUEZ MONTALBÁN

Some years ago I photographed Vazquez Montalban for the last time. It was on the occasion of 25th anniversary of the publication of his first book of the detective Pepe Calvalho: Tatuaje. "You won’t imagine the success that I have cooking your recipe of rice with cod and sobrasada" I told him. "You know that you can put artichokes instead of green beans?”- he said. So I did, and the layers of potatoes instead of white beans. To your health Manolo!