Miriam García, from El Invitado de Invierno", invites us to prepare a juicy presa on the griddle with vegetables, made with a Le Creuset cast iron grill. A dish as simple as it is appealing, healthy and tasty!
At this point it hardly needs saying that one of this country's great culinary treasures is the Iberian pig. This animal has exquisite meat, streaked with delicious fat... you can tell I like it, right?
Presa is a cut of meat that corresponds more or less to the pig’s shoulder, very juicy and full of flavor. Because it’s not an excessively thick or large piece, it can be cooked perfectly on the griddle without butterflying it, just as it comes. The meat should be browned on the outside and pink in the center. If done right, on a proper griddle, the result is impressive. A true pleasure.
In this season when, let’s admit it, we don’t feel like spending much time in the kitchen, meat on the griddle with some veggies is a great idea, a complete dish and, if the ingredients are quality like a good piece of Ibérico pork, we’ll treat ourselves with very little effort. Here we go.
Ingredients
(for 2 people)
- 1 piece of Iberian presa
- 1 small zucchini
- 2 pear tomatoes
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Salt to taste
Preparation
- Slice the zucchini into thin rounds, no more than 3-4 mm, and halve the tomatoes. Heat a good griddle or a heavy-bottomed pan over high heat. When it’s very hot, brush with olive oil and add the vegetables. Brush the zucchini slices with a little oil on top as well.
- We toast the vegetables on both sides until they are soft, then remove them to a covered dish so they stay warm while we cook the meat.
- Place the meat on the griddle or pan and cook it for at least 10 minutes per side over high heat. There’s no need to add more oil in this case, because the meat already contains enough of its own fat and won’t stick.
- After that time we serve the meat immediately, accompanied by the vegetables while still warm. We will carve the presa into slices about half a finger thick, which we can salt individually. I prefer to salt each Iberian presa slice separately when serving, because since the presa is somewhat thick and the cooking not very long, if we salt the whole piece we might not notice enough seasoning inside. For this type of meat I find flaky salt to be a fantastic complement.
In this recipe I used zucchini and tomato as a side, but we can add other vegetables too, such as sliced eggplant, wild asparagus, etc. To each their own; the variety of recipes for griddled Ibérico presa is as extensive as your culinary taste and ingenuity when it comes to innovating.
