Janet Mendel
Spanish food is, sadly, often overlooked by cooks who find themselves more immediately drawn to Italian and French cuisine. With any luck, Janet Mendel's
My Kitchen in Spain will reverse the trend. A collection of 225 authentic regional Spanish recipes, the book offers a wide range of classic dishes with origins ranging from seaside villages to metropolitan tapas bars. Andalusia-based Mendel bills herself a "food foreign correspondent" and does in fact bring a keen reportorial eye, as well as a cook's discrimination, to the task of translating Spanish food for her readers. Savory recipes for the likes of Chicken in Almond Sauce, Moorish Lamb Stew with Prunes, and Orange-Glazed Pork Tenderloins reveal her ability to provide authoritative yet approachable versions of delicious regional fare.
Following a scene-setting discussion of life in her "home" village, Mendel proceeds to tapas, including wine-bar staples like Fried Stuffed Mussels, Sizzling Shrimp with Garlic, and Crispy Potatoes with Hot Sauce. A standout chapter on gazpacho and other soups introduces White Gazpacho with Grapes and a hot winter gazpacho flavored with bitter orange--dishes that reveal the flexible character of this largely unexplored dish. Paella, a much bastardized dish, receives its due with authentic versions, including one made with pasta in place of the usual rice; and seafood, including Spain's much-beloved salt cod, is treated enticingly in dishes like Mackerel in Oregano Marinade and Sea Bass with Saffron Sauce. Country breads and sweets, including convent specialties like the meringues called Nun's Sighs, are also present. With informative sidebars, cooking tips, and evocative notes, My Kitchen in Spain is the place to begin a true Spanish culinary conquest. --Arthur Boehm
1 Excellent Recipes of Personal Experience of Spanish Food
`My Kitchen in Spain' by Janet Mendel, one of the two major English language writers on the food of Spain, is not your definitive review of a food's culinary culture like Penelope Casas' `The Food and Wine of Spain' or Diane Kochilas `The Glorious Foods of Greece' or even Jean Anderson's smaller book on `The Food of Portugal'. While it is a bit less than these works, it is a bit more than Patricia Wells' two books on cooking in Provence, which are very personal recipe collections from a single region of France. It is most similar to `Rome at Home' by Suzanne Dunaway' or even to Mario Batali's `Cooking from My Two Villages'. That is, it is a personal view of a region's cooking with a fair coverage of at least all the major topics of that region's cooking, if not being a comprehensive survey.
Ms. Mendel gets on my good side immediately upon my opening the cover, where there is a very nice map of the provinces and major cities of Spain. The book's subtitle is `225 Authentic Regional Recipes' and while the geography of Spain may be more familiar to most Americans than, say, the geography of Thailand, it is still a very important matter to have a map of your region with all the place names you mention on that map. Ms. Mendel's editors slip just a bit by mentioning places in Spain which are not noted on the map, but I will forgive them, as they are small villages and the location by direction and relation to the coast are clearly described.
While I am sure that the recipes are authentic and I am sure that Ms. Mendel presents recipes from outside her immediate region, the presentation is not systematic by region. Rather, it is done by type of dish, leading off with the recently very popular Tapas. This chapter of 28 recipes begins with the big three classics, spiced fried almonds, olives, and the inimitable Spanish potato omelet (Tortilla Espanola). I was tickled when I discovered this dish and the related fact that the badly misnamed `Spanish omelet' of diners across the country has virtually nothing to do with Spain. I immediately tried Ms. Mendel's recipe as this is a favorite dish of mine, and I found it to be at least as good as all the other recipes I have tried. My personal observation is that I may rather finish it like a frittata by sliding it under a broiler rather than flipping it. Even with a modestly weighted Calphalon aluminum pan, this was pretty messy business. I followed the author's recipe by slicing the potatoes on a cheap mandoline, but she says her son claims that chopped potatoes give a better result than slicing. I am almost inclined to believe that the best procedure is to grate the spuds, as the object seems to get a pretty tightly intertwined mix of egg and potato.
The book has several sidebars on major Spanish culinary products, especially ham, sherry, and olive oil. She claims Spain produces the most and the best olive oil. There is no question that Spain produces the most. Many experts believe the best comes from Tuscany or Provence, depending on your tastes.
The author takes a very odd approach to making substitutions for Serrano ham, if you can't find the real thing. She suggests either bacon or unsmoked pancetta. Two things are odd about this. One is that pancetta is, by definition, unsmoked and the other is that I think Italian or French cured hams would be much closer to Serrano than cured pork belly. This ties in with my sense that Ms. Mendel is not the very sharpest wordsmith. This has no influence on the quality of her recipes, only in the quality of our experience in reading her books.
The next chapter is a rather smallish selection of five recipes for bread and bread byproducts (crumbs). While bread appears to be almost as important in Spanish dishes as in Italian, it is probably that Ms. Mendel is not herself a big bread baker.
The soup chapter is probably worth the cost of the book, as it gives a very nice collection of seven (7) gazpacho recipes plus a little essay on the origins of gazpacho and how the author came to learn how to make this hallmark Spanish dish. After the gazpachos, there are ten recipes for other soups and thirteen recipes for one-pot meals from soups and stews.
The egg and cheese chapter makes total sense with eight (8) egg recipes and three (3) custard and cheese recipes, since it is simply unlikely that the eggy `Tortilla Espanola' would exist without a lot of similar dishes using eggs.
The vegetable chapter reinforces the similarities between the Spanish, French, and Italian cuisines with 28 recipes for hot and cold dishes featuring artichokes, beans, onions, eggplant, asparagus, and potatoes, potatoes, potatoes.
The rice chapter features paella, but makes it clear that there are Spanish rice dishes that are not paellas. The seafood chapter has the largest number of recipes and pages, including recipes for shellfish; finfish; stews and casseroles; and salt cod. The poultry chapter is much smaller with nine (9) chicken recipes and three others, including a recipe for a Christmas turkey. The meat chapter is larger (19 recipes, 11 with pork), but not even half as large as the fish offerings. The game chapter brings the count of land based protein almost even with the briny fare with eight (8) recipes for birds and hares.
The centerpiece of Spanish sweets is, of course, the custard based flan. Otherwise, the Spanish seem to be light on sweets like their fellow Mediterranean Latin's, the Italians.
This is a very nice book for cozying up to Spanish cuisine without getting too scholarly. It is a lot different from New World Hispanic cuisine (Add olive oil and subtract chilis, mostly) and therefore worth getting to know better.
2 Para Chuparse Los Dedos!
A truly sensational cookbook that stimulates all of your gustatory senses.
The best way to experience Spanish food is to go to Spain. One of our favorite unknown restaurant/bar is the ChezEvaristo in Pamplona, Navarra, Spain. Their finger foods "tapas" are mouthwatering, especially the seafood. The decor is beautifully quaint. It is located in Pamplona's downtown on the world renowned street where the bulls run loose to kick off Spain's annual bull fighting season. You can enjoy your Sangria and tapas in the comfort of this quaint and comfortable restaurant if you opt out of trying to outrun the bulls. The restaurant has a webpage for more info www.chezevaristo.com
Si no le gusta cocinar, pero quiere comer las deliciosas tapas espa–olas, vaya al Chezevaristo en Pamplona, Espa–a. Se encuentra en el centro de Pamplona a 1 min de la Plaza del Castillo y a 3 de la Plaza del Ayuntamiento. En plena calle Estafeta, famosa por se la calle por la que discurre el famoso Encierro. Ver su pagina web www.chezevaristo.com
3 Excellent and Easy-to-Follow Recipes
This book provides excellent, easy to follow recipes for a variety of course from Tapas to Holiday Fare, and it's all excellent.
The book, generally, calls for simple ingredients which makes for delightfully rustic meals. The recipes are clear and suitable for even a novice cook. The several Paella recipes are excellent and the Flan is to-die-for. (This is the first time I've made Flan that has ever turned out perfectly.)
Granted, there are no pictures, so this cookbook is more suitable as a COOKBOOK rather than a coffeetable book. The pictures are not necessary, as even a beginner could make the recipes beautifully, and a little creativity will help you to plate them well.
4 Lack of photos destroys the whole book
As you might have guessed from my title, there is something that really puts me off in this book. Even though the recipies are good and the information the author provides about her life in Spain are interesting and provide a good read, this doesn't cease to be a cooking book and as such it lacks the visual aid to the reader. That said, it would have been nice to have some photographs of the country itself, as Spain is a beautiful country.How do you know that your dish came out allright?How will a dish seduce you to try the recipe if its photo is not there?I think it is ridiculus to price a book with not a single photo that high.I got fooled by the price and bought it thinking it would be filled with mouthwatering photos and recipies.You'd do better to buy "Savoring Spain and Portugal","The taste of Spain" by Camilla Jessel or"Spain a cookbook" by Nestor and Tin Lujan or even better "CULINARIA SPAIN" by Konemann instead of this overpriced book.
5 A wonderful read to teach or entertain
Janet Mendel has written a marvelous book for anyone interested in Spanish cooking, or who plans to travel to Spain. Filled with anecdotes from her 30 years of living in Spain, the book is a well-written and fascinating compendium of recipes from all over the country. It serves up descriptions and explanations of the various ingredients found in Spanish cooking, as well as substitutions available on this side of the Atlantic, where necessary. I highly recommend this book to food lovers of all levels of cooking experience.
