Spain

EL BULLI – Cooking in Progress

October 14, 2012
El Bulli: Cooking in Progress

The process of cooking fascinates me, the way in which things change and transform under the eye and hand of a cook, how they become something more than they started out as. I realise the gulf in technique and understanding between an enthusiastic amateur and the professionals … I cook a lot, but I merely [...]

Read the full article →

Pollo a la montanesa, or Santander mountain chicken

September 9, 2012
Pollo a la montanesa, or Santander mountain chicken from Nicholas Butcher's Recipes From the Spanish Kitchen

This might sound stupid – and that’s mainly because it is – but the reason I tried this recipe is simply so that I could chop up a whole chicken with a massive cleaver. I’ve spent years in fear of dinging the edge of my ridiculously expensive German knives doing something as mundane as jointing [...]

Read the full article →

Recipes from the Spanish Kitchen, Nicholas Butcher

May 2, 2012
Recipes from a Spanish Kitchen by Nicholas Butcher - a reprint of the 1990 classic cookbook, detailing the food of Spain.

This book feels like a rediscovered treasure found once again at the back of a dark attic, loved but forgotten.  Dusted down and spruced up, it suddenly fits again, makes sense again.  You wonder why it was cast aside in the first place, wonder why people stopped loving it. Recipes From the Spanish Kitchen was [...]

Read the full article →

Churros, or Spanish doughnuts

August 20, 2010
Thumbnail image for Churros, or Spanish doughnuts

We spent a week in Barcelona recently, and walking around the city, you notice little bars and cafes everywhere selling hot chocolate with long, piped doughnuts, ribbons of fried batter coated in sugar and sold in cones or paper bags. Ethan latched onto the idea, as kids do, that he wanted to try churros, but [...]

Read the full article →

Salt cod brandade

August 11, 2010
Thumbnail image for Salt cod brandade

Remember that salt cod I made the other week? Here’s what became of it. Brandade de morue or brandade de bacaloa, depending on if you’re French or Spanish is a simple emulsion of salt cod and olive oil, most often eaten with bread.  It’s common across France and Spain, and versions of it exist in [...]

Read the full article →

Ametilles Garapinyades, or sugared almonds

July 24, 2010
Frank Camorra's sugared almonds

The list of ingredients here is impressively short, but the technique is fiendishly difficult and needs a lot of concentration, good timing and, inevitably, a few botched attempts before you get it right. It’s worth persevering, though. Almonds coated in a crust of crystallised sugar? What could be better than that? Put 155g of almonds [...]

Read the full article →

Alfajores, Spanish spiced fruit and nut biscuits

July 21, 2010
Thumbnail image for Alfajores, Spanish spiced fruit and nut biscuits

The coincidence of a week in Barcelona and a publisher sending me a copy of Frank Camorra’s staggering Movida Rustica cookbook has left me cooking a lot of Spanish food. I make no apologies for this, but warn that it may continue for a while yet. Movida Rustica is three hundred and sixty-eight pages long.  [...]

Read the full article →

Bar Celta, Barcelona

June 30, 2010
Thumbnail image for Bar Celta, Barcelona

Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter is a rabbit warren of narrow streets and alleys, lined with small shops and houses, washing strung over balconies to dry in the Mediterranean sun.  Every so often, the claustrophobic streets open up into large, open squares, with tables, chairs and a generally continental buzz. Back in the alleys, there are some [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries