Iberia · Volume 07, The Roast, the Pot and the Acorn Line
Migas Extremeñas
Extremadura
Illustration
- Time
- Hands on 30 minutes · Waiting 8 hours
Extremadura, the shepherd's stale-bread dish, hydration the whole technical question.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 . 20 to 30 minutes frying, plus an overnight soak for the bread
Ingredients
- 500g stale bread, ideally two to three days old, cubed
- 250ml warm salted water, for hydrating the bread
- 125ml olive oil
- ½ head garlic
- 1 green pepper
- 20g pimentón de la Vera
- 150g each, or 300g total chorizo and/or panceta
- A handful fresh grapes, to serve
Method
- Cube the stale bread and hydrate overnight in warm salted water, then rest.
- Fry in olive oil with garlic, green pepper and pimentón de la Vera, adding chorizo and/or panceta.
- Stir the bread constantly over the heat until it takes up the rendered fat evenly and turns golden and separate-grained rather than gluey.
- Serve with fresh grapes scattered over the top.
What a modern chef changes
Dehydrator-standardised bread and a confit chorizo fat
Rung 5
Method
- Standardise the bread's moisture with a controlled overnight dehydrator setting per rung five, rather than judging staleness by eye, for consistent results batch to batch.
- Confit the chorizo and panceta separately at a low, controlled temperature before crisping them, rendering their fat more completely and evenly than a hot pan alone achieves.
- Fry the bread in that clarified confit fat, not raw olive oil.
- Finish with grapes very briefly seared on one side in a dry hot pan, concentrating their sugar against the migas' savoury crunch, a small addition rather than a departure from the traditional pairing.