There are only three cuisines in the world: Chinese, Persian, and a far third, Spanish. The rest is just propaganda and superficial playing around with basics, without any complex traditions and tastes. If you are shocked by this comment, you have been brainwashed by constant media bombardment of nonsense. Travel more. ;)
Great article. Too bad the links are so frustrating. They seem to promise at least the minimum of a "recipe" and then deliver other content that is interesting ....but?? The link for vanilla poundcake is all about ice cream.
Can we get at least a couple actual recipes??
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Mr Minder's reporting is a treasure. The NYT must keep him in Madrid!
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I would love to see an exhibition that dealt with precisely that social history. Two stereotypically Spanish foods...gazpacho and tortilla de patata...are not injeremtly Spanish but (as the article mentions with the tomatos introduction and excitement at court) are appropriations based on conquest. What is it to have a cemented identity that is, more deeply, a borrowing or taking from an Other. Food could explore that story really well in the case of Spain.
I'd love to hear more about the origins of tortilla and gazpacho. I've read that gazpacho was brought to Spain through Roman conquest. And of course it didn't include tomatoes, and key ingredients were olive oil, bread, and garlic. I've heard some apocryphal stories about tortilla as well.
It is a great initiative. Spain enjoys an old and rich culinary tradition.
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@ Teresa Garcia Justo Madrid
I always thought that jamón ibérico was the most famous food of the Spanish cuisine. Wild boar ham might have been a staple of days old, but I could find no reliable purveyor of such in Internet.
I love learning about food history and seeing what was eaten. Would love to see a show where they produced recipes from the near and distant past. Was a show called the “Super sizers” that focused on food from different historical eras. While it focused more on the richest or weirdest dishes, was very entertaining.
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[[“I really feel that our Western food culture has become obsessed with always finding the latest innovation, instead of really valuing the wealth of our past,” Mr. Morales said. ]]
Meh.
I was in the market the other day and the clerk looked at my groceries and asked "What's for dinner?"
I told him what I'd planned (a very simple shrimp dish) and he (and the woman behind me in line) were very impressed.
I think the great majority of people have lost connection to the most basic cooking skills (hence the rise of prepared frozen meals). To most people, a simple salad with home made dressing is an "innovation."
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That is a huge generalization. Maybe young, single people living in cities don't cook, but that's because they are working crazy hours and socializing during their free time.
As people get older and have more time and larger kitchens, especially if one starts a family, there is much more home cooking, including salad dressing.
Maybe the people at the supermarket were simply complimenting you on your planned preparation, rather than being impressed. Lots of people share recipe ideas when waiting in line at store or at farmers markets. It's fun.
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I lived in Spain for nearly 25 years, and when I first went there, in 1970, there was a "casquería", a butcher's shop selling only offal, very near our apartment in a working class district of Madrid. I went in there only occasionally, mostly to buy liver, but they also sold kidneys, tongue, tripe, lungs, sweetbreads, hearts, and many, many other parts of the animal that I was never able to identify. It was off-putting yet fascinating to look at, and now I wish I had learned how to cook some of these. Tongue and heart in particular are just muscles, like a steak is, very nutritious and much less expensive than steak, and sadly not available here in TN where I live.
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@ Juliet Memphis, TN
You made a wonderful list of the most unappetizing parts of animals that some humans like to consume. There are similar uses of such organs in the Alsatian, Chinese, and probably many other cuisines.
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Sad to read you can't get tongue in Memphis. I live outside of Nashville and it, along with some other organ parts are readily available. The influx of Hispanic and Asian folks has been a big plus.
Keep asking around. I'm sure there is somewhere you can find organ meats in the Memphis area.
Thank you for this article, and good for the National Library of Spain.
It is rather amazing to discover how much cooking terminology and techniques have changed, even within the last century. I have enjoyed browsing through the recipes of cookbooks published in 1900 or so. However, I often find the recipes hard to reproduce in my kitchen. The recipes seem confusingly rudimentary or vague in comparison to modern recipes, leaving uncertainty for the reader about exactly what ingredients are called for, and exactly what methods for cooking are to be used. Sometimes I hardly know what they're talking about. Fascinating, nonetheless.
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