Teresa Barrenechea and Jose Andrés
Teresa Barrenechea is the author of The Cuisines of Spain: Exploring Regional Home Cooking (Ten Speed Press). José Andrés is the chef-owner of seven restaurants in the Washington, D.C., area and the author of Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America (Clarkson Potter). Click here to meet Barrenechea and Andrés, then we'll talk with them about their favorite places in Spain and trends in Spanish cooking.
Would you each nominate an underappreciated culinary region of Spain—some place where you would recommend that American chefs go for inspiration? And what dishes should they try when they get there?
JA: Madrid, Barcelona, the Basque region— those are obvious. But I would recommend not following the guides or the magazines and taking the opposite road, and I would go to the very northern part, to Asturias. Tourism is not big there; there's not a lot of sun. It's rainy and green and the sea is right there. There are mountains, cows, sheep and amazing cheeses made in the traditional way, where a person makes four to five wheels a week from milk that he has captured himself in a little pail. The local people are happy to see people from away. Asturias captures the spirit of the deep Spain.
I would mention one Asturian product: Cabrales cheese. It's the king of blue cheeses, very strong but unique in spirit, matured in caves.
The grandfather of French cassoulet is fabada asturiana. Asturian fava beans grow on the slopes of the mountains—big, buttery beans that cook for hours and never break apart. You almost don't notice the skin and it disappears like butter in the mouth. A few years ago, it was impossible to find them in the U.S. Now you can find them on the Internet at a very high price because they are very rare.
The beans are cooked with parts of the pig—blood sausage, good chorizo, a small piece of bacon, the ear. It's simplicity at its best.
Then there's faves con almejas (beans with clams), surf and turf, the countryside looking to the sea, the best of both worlds. Those are two dishes that define Asturias.
TB: The Balearic Islands (Majorca, Minorca and others) (MAP)have an incredible cuisine that is not known even in Spain—maybe because they attract so many tourists that people don't even realize there's an autochthonous cuisine. At so many of the bars and hotels all you get is international cooking, but when you get to the houses of the people, I was really impressed. It's one of the few areas of Spain that cooks turkey other than at Christmas. They chop it in small pieces and do a slow-cooked stew. They have empanadas that are super interesting; sometimes they use orange juice in the dough. You see the influence of Moorish cooking very strongly in the Balearics.
José, I was surprised that there were no salt cod recipes in your book.
Salt cod is very important, especially in Catalan and Basque cooking. And that's the only way that people in the heart of Spain, hours from the sea, could enjoy fish. So why not include it when it's so important? There is no top-quality salt cod in America. But I'm working on it. A chef has to be an entrepreneur, convincing someone that there's a need. We are very close to bringing salt cod from Spain into the States, but I didn't include bacalao because the quality I've been able to get is not up to my minimum standards.
Is home cooking changing in Spain? Or are home kitchens untouched by the modern cooking going on in the restaurants?
JA: Home cooking in Spain is changing as it's changing almost everywhere in the civilized world. Economic and social structures are changing dramatically. The woman traditionally was the one who cooked at home. Today, women go to university even more than men, so who's cooking? But with cooking shows and magazines, home cooks are achieving a higher degree of technical skill. It's like a tennis game between home cooks and restaurant professionals, with information going both ways. Spain is at a moment of truth, with home cooking, modern creative cooking and traditional cooking. It's important to remember that the traditional cooking of today was the modern cooking of yesterday, and the modern cooking of today will be the traditional cooking of tomorrow
Some say that Spanish cooking is almost schizophrenic today, with some chefs resolutely traditional and others wildly creative. So what's the real Spanish cooking? Can these two visions coexist?
TB: They both have their place. It's wonderful to be able to enjoy those dishes that have a soul, that you remember the taste and smell of, and you can go back to the restaurant where you had it 20 years ago and have it again, and at the same time to have other options for food that's innovative, that awakens you in a different way.
JA: Traditional cooking and modern cooking are very far away but at the same time so close. Today we have people like Adria and Arzak doing modern creative cooking, but at the same time they're igniting a revolution at other levels. Today you find championships for tortilla española. That's home cooking at its best, and it wouldn't have happened 20 years ago. There's one guy close to Bilbao, in a restaurant called Etxevarri, who is redefining grilling. Every morning he puts logs of olive, orange and oak and makes his own charcoal and has new techniques to grill fish, meat, baby eels, with new utensils. In the end, it's not "traditional: good; modern: bad." There's only good cooking.
TB: Etxevarri is wonderful. The chef set himself the goal of being one of the greats in Spain, not because he was doing futuristic things but because he would be the one with the best raw materials. He'll go to the last corner of Spain to find the best shrimp or the best beef, and he'll pay three times as much if necessary.
Pimentón de la Vera and romesco sauce sure hit it big in America. So what's next? What Spanish ingredients or dishes are poised to take off?
TB: Maybe bacalao if José can persuade some of the exporters to send a good quality here, because bacalao is so closely knit with our eating habit.
JA: Jamón iberico is going to be big in the States. First we'll see the embotidos, the dry cured sausages. Then we'll see the front legs, and after one or two years, we'll see finally the pata de jamón iberico (the cured ham) and it's going to be very expensive, over $100 a pound, but this is the best of Spain. Another product, as soon we open up the pork market, is sobresada from Majorca, which is almost like butter but with the flavors of pimentón and smoke. It's very buttery sausage that you put on bread. Products from pork will be the future superstars of Spanish cooking in America.
Sherry vinegar could be also, and other vinegars from Spain: Tempranillo vinegar, cider vinegar from Asturias. It's important in our cooking, our cold soups, but I would say sherry vinegar is nicely established already.
When American chefs attempt Spanish cooking, what gets "lost in translation?"
TB: Some get it right, some less right. Often people travel to Spain and spend three to four days here and there and think they are experts in the matter.
JA: You need to be delicate in the way you use anything. Tradition is there to be protected, but also to push it forward. Fusion happens over centuries, given enough time for every new layer to consolidate. Today, we're in a world of speed, and that's when you need to be more delicate and precise to make sure that fusion does not become confusion. Use common sense, your tongue and your brain to make it work.