A glut of good books on Spanish cuisines shows that British cooks are gaining a deeper understanding of the country's ingredients and techniques
Recipes from Rick Stein's Spain:
? Fresh broad beans with black sausage and garlic shoots
? Crab tarts with garlic, tomato and tarragon
? Clams with a garlic and nut picada
For too long the food of Spain has been dismissed by most of its neighbours. The Italians are particularly sniffy, considering Spain a poor relation in all matters culinary, and it's taken us Brits a while to look beyond typical package holiday fare. However, slowly but surely, Spanish food has been making inroads in our national consciousness, to the extent that certain products, initially sold by trailblazers Brindisa are now outselling their Italian equivalents in supermarkets and there's been a sudden explosion of cookery books ? a good thing if we are to branch out from indiscriminate use of the ubiquitous chorizo.
I started collecting books a few years ago after my interest was piqued by an off-the-beaten-track holiday in Gran Canaria (possibly my first joyous experience of Jam�n Ib�rico), but was frustrated by the lack of variety. There are hundreds of books on Italian food, but so few on Spanish that they still don't even merit their own section on Amazon. Until Sam and Sam Clark wrote their Moorish influenced books (reissued in a slightly cheaper format this August) and Phaidon brought out the very useful 1080 Recipes, I was limited to a couple of admittedly excellent books by Elisabeth Luard (whose 1989 book on Tapas is soon to be reissued by Grub Street) a 1950s curiosity by Elizabeth Cass, and of course Colman Andrews who has moved from tracing the origins of Spanish food in his highly regarded Catalan Cuisine to chronicling an aspect of its current state with his biography of Ferran Adri�.
Rachel McCormack who runs classes and events around Catalan cooking also recommended to me Janet Mendel, who like Elisabeth Luard immersed herself in culinary Spain, and Maria Jose Sevilla who is an authority on all aspects of Spanish food and has been very involved in Rick Stein's Spain, the most mainstream of the new releases (you'll find 3 recipes from the book extracted here).
I should say right off that I'm a huge Rick Stein fan. I've cooked from all of his books and never yet had a failure. I find his enthusiasm and his reflections on food endearing and infectious and I love the fact that he is never patronising, unlike some other BBC presenters (such as bovine Kate Humble who ruined an otherwise interesting series on Spice with her fawning condescension). As usual, it is meticulously researched, rich in relevant anecdote and captures the spirit of the food without relying on hard-to-find ingredients or being too precious about authenticity (impossible anyway, and something he says the Spanish are quite relaxed about, unlike the Italians who he finds irritating in this regard). Unusually for me, my favourite recipe is a dessert ? fennel seed fritters with hot chocolate.
Just published is the Barrafina book, which is everything a restaurant cookbook should be, beautifully presented food sits next to confidence inspiring, well written recipes. The balance is perfect. Deep fried food (croquettas, frittas, chiperones) and seafood are enlivened by beautifully fresh salads and vegetables. Aspirational dishes (suckling pig, an ethereal scallop carpaccio) are supplemented by a host of more affordable ones (unctuous pig cheeks, garlic and lemon chicken wings, cuttlefish with runner beans and chickpeas). Little known ingredients (mojama, calcots, juanolas) are used sparingly enough not to frustrate, and there are short but useful guides to sherries and types of ham ? the only omission is cheese, which is mystifyingly absent.
Two bravely specific books on Spanish food are Paella, Phaidon's follow up to Tapas and Liliane Otal's Plancha. I am not convinced I need a cookery book on either, but both have their merits. I enjoyed Alberto Herraiz' Paella more for the building blocks (the stocks and fumets, the flavoured oils, the sofrito) and his long introduction about the history and culture surrounding paella, than for the paella recipes themselves. Plancha describes a method of cooking on simple metal plates over gas. This type of food couldn't be faster or simpler ? the opposite, in fact of paella, do the Spanish snack on one whilst waiting for the other? Again, I was interested by the cultural stuff and liked some of the recipes, but was ultimately a bit frustrated by the generic, pan-European nature of most of it, especially the marinades and sauces.
Generally, the future appears bright for Spanish cookery books. I am already eagerly anticipating a couple ? Jos� Pizarro (ex-Brindisa and chef patron of much lauded tapas bar, Jos�) is following up his Seasonal Spanish Food (worth getting for his descriptions of La Matanza alone) with a regional cookery book next spring. Finally, Claudia Roden has produced a 624 page work on Spain (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Spain-Claudia-Roden/dp/0061969621/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309851891&sr=1-1), which looks like her most definitive book since Jewish Cookery. So far, there is only an American edition, but hopefully it won't be too long before it's released here.
Eva Cavalli Wooden chairs Designer gallery Backyard designing Trend ideas
No comments:
Post a Comment