A bit late this week on my posting, due to the death of my electronic recorder, on which this week's posting had been recorded, I decided to post a recently hashed together introduction to my in progress cookbook:
My Spanish Inspiration
The RENFE train bolted us northward for 11 hours from windy shores of Tarifa at 270 big ones an hour. Freed from the shackles of Andalusian Tapas, we parachuted into San Sebastián and bust out into Basque country, leaving the Madrid myths of Ferran Adria-trained chefs behind us.
Within our first hour there, like a mad bull, I had already lowered my head and charged the pension owner of Bellas Artas and got jammed to the shoulders as I strained to get through the narrow doorway to her office and see Puyol’s game-winning header in the Spanish World Cup Semi-Final. As cries of joy burst out from every room in the pension and hugs and kisses flew around the world, my wife and Leire were in tears, laughing at me, still struggling in the doorway, craning my neck to look at the small black and white television under the counter in her office.
The fire and excitement of that hour set the tone for our first night’s trip to Fuego Negro, San Sebastián’s pinnacle of Pintxos. Pintxos: the Basque answer to the Spanish Tapas. We watched the sun set over the Atlantic to the verdict: Basque 1 Spain 0.
The Winner
I gorged myself every evening on guindillas fritas that are only in season for 3 weeks, txangurro (crab) crackers, Kobe beef sliders, the carrillera de ternera (braised veal cheek) and foie gras at San Telmo, and all the Rioja wine that we could find. And a special shoutout to the cafe with the excellent grilled brioche a la marmelada, you really made my morning.
The Loser
Madrid: The stodgy old French cuisine of an Adria disciple was drenched in overbearing, if well-executed, sauces that wouldn’t make the news. Mind, they did adorn the plates with beautiful presentations, even if they oft ruined them with the sauces splashed all over everything by the server at service. Still, I thank you for the complex and playful desserts like “bubblegum,” they were unexpected and appreciated. Madrid, he was outdone by a clam dish in the Mercado San Miguel, but he was the only one who brought you close. I have 5 lbs of a most delicious prosciutto and home, but I had so much ham and cheese with you that I still can’t bring myself to crack it.
This was my Spanish inspiration: gaining 7.5 pounds a week, packed on in 10 inch high sandwiches of fried bread, beef tenderloin (lomo) and cheese; affectionately called “zapatilla” or “slippers.” Heaps upon piles of variously cured pigs; rice thickened stews; potato stuffed omelets that were practically deep-fried in olive oil; a boondoggle of badass sandwiches; pyramids of wine bottles left in my wake, all delicious, none memorable. Everything was eminently local and fresh; all local except for all that bacalau (cod) that they obviously poached off the coasts of Newfoundland, right?
Squished Zapatilla Decimated by my Millstones
Eddie F. Setser and Troy Harold Seals, they knew
There were seven Spanish trawlers,
They were fishing in the sun;
The Spanish they caught all the fish,The Newfies they got none.
Then the clouds appeared, and the fog rolled in,
The sun no longer shone;
And seven Spanish trawlers took all the codfish home.
And this summarizes the dilemma I faced when I set out to write a cookbook. I grew up in a climax of Gaspesian culture, at a turning point between two times. My parent’s generation saw the advent of electrical refrigeration on the coast, computers, and we had the unique excitement of exploding an egg in one of the first microwaves on the coast. With the increase in the availability of goods from away, we saw our local resources wane – the closing of the mine in Murdochville, the crushing collapse of the fisheries, the end of the forestries industry.
I grew up in a world where I ate lobster every week in the early summer, fried cod tongues in Gaspe butter, cod head stew, cod livers, salt cod, herring, mackerel, all of the Chacuteries de la Mer: lobster butters, taramosalatas, smoked fishes. And I left that world, on a tear, running from all the mac’n’cheeses a-mash with wieners, cream of corn and ketchup, ramen noodle packs that were eaten raw and whose wrappings lay a-littering college dorm room floors, fried chicken, ”Lebanese sandwiches” that were really pepperoni submarines wrapped in pita bread, as McDo and Timmy Ho muscled their way into the local food scene. As I sprinted towards the exit, our local cookbooks were sporting 2 dozen recipes for meat loaf with soup mixes and a what-to-do with a variety of canned goods and not a one for fish.
I tripped my way into Montreal, fell on my face as they rolled me out the college doors, and tumbled through a series of adventures. I was voracious. I burnt the candle at both ends, consuming every cultural experience or cuisine that I could find. I left the white bread at the door and learned to cook Ethiopian from a girlfriend’s family friends, I shacked up with chef roommates, hung around in Indian markets, asking unsuspecting Tamils for tips, plied Korean depanneur owners with beer and lobster for their Kim Chi craft, traded canned roast peppers for green chili chutneys from South America and the Mexican chocolate dropped off at my door, straight from the uncle’s shop, was bartered for curried lamb chops and biryani. I spent 6 years as a vegetarian, with frightening pantries full of fermenting grains and produce that terrified my roommates. I sought out and trained in every cooking style I could find. I never wanted to eat canned green beans with garlic powder ever again.
I wanted to eat local, cooked foreign. I burned to get back to that critical point of foreign invasion. Spain inspired me. Spain, with all their stolen cod.
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