That Perfect Gift: Spanish Cookbooks

If you, your friend, or your family don't already have a good Spanish cuisine cookbook, then why not add that to the Christmas shopping list this year? My wife and I like to cook, and when we were in the States we found a few cookbooks that met her high standards for "authentic," but also addressed the fact that you can't always find the exact same ingredients in the U.S. that authentic recipes call for in Spain.

In my opinion _the_ best Spanish cookbook in English is Penelope Casas's The Food and Wines of Spain (1982). Casas, married to a madrileño and a regular visitor to Spain, has been writing cookbooks for more than three decades. The Foods and Wines of Spain continues to be my favorite book by her, though she has other good ones. Great insights and cultural commentary accompany her recipes, which are pretty close to authentic if not spot on, but which also make good suggestions on sometimes necessary substitutions.

All the books in the Culinaria series will
make for nice additions to your kitchen

Another great cookbook to own is Culinaria Spain, by Marion Trutter. This is simply a beautiful book to own. It is great not just for the recipes and tips on cooking, but you will also want to put it on display and eat up the large colorful photos with your eyes. (This book actually makes a nice accompaniment to Penelope Casas's, which has no photos at all.) Culinaria is organized by region and has really nice spreads on the typical foods, ingredients, and dishes one can find in each region of Spain.

I also recommend you consider the various books by my fellow expat blogger Janet Mendel. On her blog she gives a nice overview of local ingredients and the kinds of cooking techniques and styles that people here use to prepare them. Given that she has been living in Spain for decades, the depth of her knowledge and appreciation for Spanish cuisine give her books an edge over the dozens of hack Tapas and Mediterranean cookbooks that are now flooding U.S. bookshelves. Perusing the online descriptions and profiles for each of her books, I would say that Cooking in Spain (1987, 2006) is your best bet for a standard recipe book. Cooking from the Heart of Spain (2006) and Traditional Spanish Cooking (2006) are better for those foodies who like to journey through the cultures and histories of their dishes and recipes. And Tapas—A Bite of Spain (2008), her latest book, caters to those of you wishing to tap into the recent culinary craze of tapas in the UK and U.S.

Check out Mendel's own description of her books at her blog here.

In general Mendel's recipes sound delicious, but be warned, they are often slightly different than traditional or conventional recipes. My litmus test for Americans who cook Spanish food is their paella recipe. (I can't help it, what with living in Valencia, the paella heartland.) Mendel's approach to this dish on her blog is actually quite ingenious. Recognizing the difficulty of reproducing authentic paella, she offers her readers "Paella a la Americana," a twist on the recipe chock-full of seafood goodies that Americans will enjoy and which simulates the idea of Spanish paella. I commend her efforts at exporting the paella principle abroad, though with my wife's proviso: this is not Spanish, and certainly not Valencian paella. (Penelope Casas, for example, is correct to observe that it is a common misconception in the US "that paella is loaded with ingredients." It is actually usually served in Valencia with fixed ensembles or combinations of a few select ingredients.) Since Mendel makes no pretense of her recipes being "traditional," I'm inclined to forgive these divergences from the "real thing." The most important thing is that the dishes taste good, right?

One feature that I like about Mendel's blog is that, since she is blogging her recipes throughout the year, she more or less follows the seasonal eating that Spaniards follow. In other words, she uses the ingredients as they become available and are in season. So the blog indirectly gives you some sense of when to look for figs or "higos" (answer: late summer) or cook traditional dishes with pomegranate, a.k.a. "granadas" (when they appear in Spanish markets in the fall).

For more cookbook or Spanish cuisine ideas, you can also check out these links:

http://spanish.about.com/cs/spanishcookbooks/

http://www.foodsfromspain.com/

Cocido: A foundation of Spanish cuisine

Typical plate of cocido meat and vegetables.

If you're new to Spain and regularly do grocery shopping at a supermarket, you might have wondered about those packaged trays ("bandejas") of assorted vegetables or the "pelota [para] caldo" ("meatball [for] stock") in the meat section. Well, mystery solved! They are ingredients for cooking "cocido," which is a foundation of Spanish cuisine. Cocido is a stew of meats and vegetables in a large boiling pot, which is then broken down into a variety of traditional dishes.

Bandejas of vegetables and meat specially prepared for cocido,
purchased at the local Mercadona supermarket.

And fall has arrived so it's cocido season! Cocido is a seasonal dish in the sense that people only really make it in the fall and winter, in part because it's used to generate hot soups and stews or heavy meats, and in part because you have to boil it for 1-3 hours which nobody here would want to do on a hot summer day. When fall started on September 23rd this year, cocido was one of the things people listed among the things that they were looking forward to on the national news report about the changing of the season. (In our house, we were also eagerly looking forward to it!)

Sopa de fideos, a nice warm soup to cure you of the cold.

Probably the most famous cocido, the one you're most likely to encounter in restaurants, is the "cocido madrileño," which is served in stages: a "sopa de fideos" (a soup from stock with a small thin pasta added), the boiled vegetables, and finally the boiled meats. But cocido has many names in different places. In my hometown, Valencia, it is known as "puchero." In Catalunya there is "l'escudella," in Burgos the "olla podrida," in Cadiz and Jeréz, "la berza gitana," and in Galicia a local cocido, "pote gallego, is a variation on the (in)famous "caldo gallego" (complete with pig's ear). For that matter, you can probably find similar dishes all throughout Europe, since the basic principal of cocido—boil together all the food you have available to make stews, soups, porridges, etc.—is quite economical and tasty. The Romanian dish, rasol, is pretty similar to the Spanish cocido, and one should not forget the French pot-au-feu, which French chefs acclaim as the "quintessence of French family cuisine."

Before one starts slipping into classic foodie wars about who invented what, it should be noted that cocido is traced to a well documented earlier dish, "olla podrida" (namesake for the Burgos dish), made famous by Cervantes in one of the short stories from Don Quijote (circa 1610s). In the scene the faithful sidekick Sancho Panza, mistaken for a nobleman, is frustrated by a doctor who is declaring all the delicious plates before him at a banquet to be unhealthy for his noble blood. Sancho, upon seeing the olla podrida declares:

"Aquel platonazo que está más adelante vahando me parece que es olla podrida, que, por la diversidad de cosas que en las tales ollas podridas hay, no podré dejar de topar con alguna que me sea de gusto y de provecho." [Translation: "That giant plate passing by me appears to be olla podrida, which, by the diversity of ingredients to be found in this dish, surely I will manage to find some that I that would be to my taste and to my benefit."]

Sancho Panza prevented from eating by a meddling
doctor, painting by Charles Robert Leslie.

Unfortunately for him, the doctor disagreed, declaring olla podrida to be the worst possible thing for a nobleman (more suitable to priests, school masters, and peasant weddings). 

The earlier roots of this dish, however, are disputed. But several food historians claim that it originated from a traditional Jewish dish, what is today called "adafina," which was made by placing ingredients in a pot and setting it to a low-flame bowl, providing them food "without the aid of human hand" during the Sabbath. Legend has it that Spanish Jews forced to convert during the Inquisition (after they were officially purged in 1492), were encouraged to add pork to this dish so as to prove their entrance into Christendom. Again, I'm inclined to put all these different precedents and culinary cousins together under the broader category, to use Penelope Casas's words, of "meals-in-a-pot" for which there must have been numerous independent and overlapping origins all throughout Europe.

Here is a recipe which my wife uses to make puchero (serves 4 people):

• 1-2 pelotas of ground meat
• a cut of chorizo (I prefer the "picante" or spicy ones)
• [Optional: You can really add most other kinds of stewing meats, such as stewing cuts of beef, or chicken, or morcilla, but we tend to make it lighter on the meats for our personal taste.]
• 2 bandejas of vegetables for cocido. Each package contains approx.:
    – 4-6 "zanahorias" (carrots),
    – 2 "nabos" (turnips),
    – 2 "chirivías" (parsnips),
    – 1 "napicol" (a local Valencian tubor, possibly a Kohlrabi or German turnip),
    – 1 "puerro" (leek),
    – 1 stock of "apio" (celery)
• 1 (big) potato
• [Optional: 1-2 handfulls ("puñados") of "bachoquetas" or in Spanish "judías verdes [planas]" (a thick flat green bean local to Valencia)]
• [Optional: a handfull of dry garbanzos (a.k.a. chickpeas)]

Typical cocido vegetables found in a store-bought bandeja (left to right):
napicol, zanahorias, chirivías, puerro, apio, and nabos.

Fill a large boiling pot about halfway with water, and turn on the stove to high heat. Put the meat (except the morcilla) in the water while it's still cold. (Remember to remove the skin from the chorizo.) Clean the vegetables (wash and remove skin) and place in the water as it starts to heat up, going in order of hardest (roots) to softest (celery and leeks) vegetable. At the end you can add the potato, the chickpeas (preferably placed in a porous sachet, so that you don't have to scoop them out individually afterwards), and a spoonful of salt.

Let everything boil for half an hour at medium to full heat uncovered. Then skim off the foam that has formed on the top of the pot, and lower to low heat. Let it boil, this time with the pot covered, for another hour at low heat.

Out of this you get 2 batches of stock ("caldo") for use in making sopa de fideos or arroz al horno, and a bunch of boiled vegetables, beans, and meats, which you can either eat as such for a main course, or blend into a tasty "crema" (cream soup) to use as a starter in a meal, or put to use in a variety of other ways. (For a number of recipes on dishes you can make out of these products of puchero, check out this Spanish culinary blog.)

Setting aside the caldo or broth for a future soup or rice dish.

Again, this is an incredibly economical meal. One cocido, which may only cost you around a total of five euros in ingredients, can provide you the foundation for 2-3 meals for two people. Maybe this is why for many in Spain cocido is synonymous with "la comida casera" (a homecooked meal).

Rice Culture in Valencia. It's More Than Just Paella

So apparently the only famous thing Hemingway ever did in Valencia was eat paella in La Pepica, a restaurant at the city beach. I know this because every guide on the planet (at least written in English) seems to direct tourists there for it. I'm going to resist the urge to rant, and just say that, while the paella at La Pepica is good, it is probably overpriced, flooded with tourists, and hardly the only place to eat this famous Valencian dish.

Hemingway forever consecrating La Pepica in his book, The Dangerous Summer,
as a "must visit" spot for American tourists in Valencia.

What's more, since I live here in Valencia, home to the famous rice dish, I feel obliged to explain that rice culture in this region runs deep, and is not just about paella. Valencians are really big rice eaters in general. Among the dishes you can sample, there are, broadly speaking, at least five different categories of classic rice plates: "paella," "arroz meloso" and "caldoso," "arroz al horno," and "pimientos rellenos" (or stuffed peppers).

Within the "paella" dish spectrum, the most famous variations are:

• "de pollo y conejo" (chicken and rabbit) also called "la paella valenciana" (it sometimes also has "caracoles," or snails)… this is the traditional meat paella [For instructions on how to make it, check out this series of blog entries.]
• "de marisco" (seafood)
• "de verduras" (vegetable paella, which can change with the season, so that in winter, for example, it is nice because it has artichokes hearts).
• "arròs negre" (a rich flavored black paella made with squid ink)
• "a banda" (plain rice cooked in a broth)
• "l'arròs del senyoret" (this is the marisco paella, but with all the shells pealed and removed… thus the name: "rice [prepared] for a lord")

La paella valenciana, as prepared and displayed by my mother-in-law.

But there are many, many more kinds, including some regional twists from towns throughout the Valencian Community. Traditionally, paella is cooked in the "paella" frying pan over an open wood fire ("leña"), though many people cook it at home over a stove flame. There is also a saying that the water in Valencia isn't good for anything except making paella. Indeed, Penelope Casas correctly recounts what most Valencians will tell you, when she writes:

"the local water—dreadful for drinking—seems to have a unique chemical composition that is perfect for rice cookery." — in The Foods and Wines of Spain, p. 174.

Ajoaceite, or "All i oli" in Catalán.

This is why locals say that paella can never taste the same, or as good, as it does in Valencia. (It is very important that you pronounce the double "ll" in paella as a "y" and not an "l" sound... as in "pae-yah.") Be sure to order "ajoaceite," Spain's traditional accompaniment to paella and version of aioli, the typical Mediterranean garlic mayonnaise sauce.

And though they look a lot like paella, the "arroz meloso" and "arroz caldoso" are technically not. These soupier rice dishes are cooked in a slightly deeper pan, the meloso version leaving the rice just slightly moist with caldo (broth), whereas the caldoso is pretty much a rice soup. One truly delicious variation is "arroz meloso con bogavante," which is a soupy rice cooked with a regional lobster.

The classic arroz al horno

Then there is "arroz al horno," also considered an entirely different dish, which is rice cooked in a clay pot (cazuela) in an oven. The most common one has tomato, potato, morcilla (a Spanish blood sausage), garlic, chickpeas, and pork ribs. There are hundreds of variations on this dish, but that is the one you will typically find in restaurants, and I highly recommend it.

Pimiento rellenos, a homemade Valencian staple

And finally there is "pimiento relleno," which is a thick juicy local red pepper stuffed and baked with Valencian rice. This dish is tricky to find in restaurants, but is really delicious, so keep an eye out for it.  The two typical ones are: "de bacalao" (cod), and "de carne" (with ground pork).

The best place to eat paella is naturally at your mom or mother-in-law's house. But if you can't get invited to a local's home, there are other remedies. One is to attend one of the many paella street festivals in the region throughout the year. But in terms of restaurants, for die-hard, true lovers of paella, _the_ place to eat it is El Palmar, a pueblo south of the city and right next to the Albufera lake where the special "arroz de Valencia" rice is grown. Most if not all the "arrocerías" (rice restaurants) there will serve excellent paella, though one that is particularly nice is called Nou Racó (previously El Racó del L'Olla), which has a strong international reputation and is located right on the lake.

A nighttime view of Nou Racó taken from the Albufera lake

The Albufera Park is itself worth a visit (and perhaps a future blog entry). You can reserve a complete visit to the Nou Racó restaurant where you take a ride on one of the shallow (gondola-like) boats over the lake, visit the museum which talks about the park (the largest bird migration spot in southern Europe), and most importantly, have lunch at the restaurant Nou Racó. However, this paella mecca requires either taking a bus or taxi, or having a car.

Arroz caldoso de bogavante

An alternative, also quite nice if you can't get out of the city, would be to go to La Riuà located in the city center (C/ del Mar, 27, 46003 Valencia), which is highly rated by locals. For exquisite arroz meloso, my favorite arrocería is L'Altell (Calle Vinaroz, Avenida Primado Reig, 46020 Valencia). And if it is just more convenient, there is always Hemingway's La Pepica, or La Marcelina another arrocería right next to it. Both have the advantage of being right at the beach, ready to serve lunches on those days you want to tour around the recently renovated port area or lay out on the "Las Arenas" (the sands) city beach. Though I've been told by locals that L'Estimat, another arrocería right there on the beach, makes a better quality paella than the other two heavily-frequented-by-tourists spots.

Oh, and one final piece of advice. People here _always_ have these rice dishes for lunch, _never_ for dinner. It actually struck my wife as odd when one of our visitors once asked if we could do a paella for dinner. Just something to keep in mind.