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Posts from the ‘Spain’ Category

A Rosey Future

When my cousin Marta, who lives in Spain, asked if I’d tried the Thermomix, a “kitchen robot” she’d received as a gift that did “almost everything”, I thought she was referring to a souped up crock pot I might look at the next time I was in a Williams-Sonoma or wishlisting on Amazon.  My curiosity was piqued when I came across this article in the Wall Street Journal, “Snaring the Elusive Thermomix” by Raymond Sokolov.  Learning that it was in fact a robot that did do almost everything and simultaneously too, I was disappointed to read that it wasn’t available in the U.S.  By the time I found Spanish food blogs that listed both regular and Thermomix recipes on their sites, I was feeling a little deprived.  Not of a machine I might not need after all, but of the Jetsons future I thought we’d all have by now.  I’ve asked Marta to let me know what it’s like to cook with a Thermomix and how she uses  it.  In the meantime, I’ve posted a clip of how I imagine it works until I know differently.

The Sandwich Armada

I discovered Despana by accident, looking for something else, in the disorienting cross streets where Little Italy becomes Soho.  A small gourmet shop and wholesaler specializing in Spanish imports, it’s lined on one side with olive oils, jars of preserves, canned delicacies and Valor hot chocolate and cases of cheese and cured meats on the other. There’s also a small lunch counter offering pintxos, tortillas, bocadillos, salads and desserts.  Basically, everything you worried you’d never find when your year abroad ended.  Now that I have found it, I plan to seek it with purpose, again and again and again.

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His Mother’s Son

The first time I read about Spanish avant-garde chef Francis Paniego I fell in love, with his mother.  An award winning chef in her own right, Marisa Sánchez is responsible for Echaurren, a restaurant serving traditional Riojan food connected by a small inn to El Portal, the cutting edge restaurant run by her son.

Now that I am looking more thoughtfully at traditional cooking, I see the push and pull between old and new everywhere. I like of the thought of these two restaurants sharing a kitchen, side by side like a whim of Gaudí.  I decided to try to make Marisa’s Chicken and Serrano Ham Croquetas, served at both restaurants.  I included a picture above of the uncooked breaded croquetas because they were much prettier before I inflicted my skittish frying on them, as seen below. Read more

Make It Hot, But Not Yet

I hate being cold, but I love getting warm.  As soon as I found this recipe for “Age of Discovery” Vanilla-Scented Hot Chocolate from Maricel E. Presilla’s The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural & Natural History of Cacao with Recipes, I had to try it.  Based on a seventeenth-century treatise by Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, the drink discovered in Mexico and brought to Spain was touted as a cure-all.  I had set off to make this a couple of months ago but had gotten sidetracked.  After the sudden onset of summer heat last week, I thought this would be my last hot chocolate for awhile. Read more

The Spanish Goose Whisperer

I’d heard Dan Barber mention an ethical foie gras producer he’d discovered during a panel discussion for the Brooklyn Book Festival in 2007 so I was excited to come across a talk he gave this winter where he elaborated on his encounter with Eduardo Sousa, the owner of the Pateria de Sousa.  I always associate Extramadura with drought and a barren landscape so I fell in love with the paradisiacal description of the farm.  But then I’m not a goose.