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Andalucían Allusions: the Cuisine of Southern SpainNov 20 '02 (Updated Jun 26 '08) Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Tapas, baby, tapas.....And excellent red wine! My husband and I recently spent ten days in the region of Andalucía in southern Spain. Andalucía includes an enormous Mediterranean coastline as well as several mountain ranges. Such geography gives rise to diverse climates and thus, diverse culinary traditions. Near the coast you will of course enjoy all manner of fresh fish; and salted cod - called bacalao in Spanish - is available nearly everywhere in Andalucía . Sevilla province in central Andalucía is mostly alluvial land suitable for wheat, olive and citrus cultivation. To the west, the province of Huelva nestles up to Portugal in the Sierra Aracena mountain range. This province is famed for its pork products, but also provides cork from its surprisingly green cork and oak forests. In general, the southern Spanish menu tends heavily towards meat, cheese and eggs. The vegetable components of most meals, at least as we experienced them in November, were limited to potatoes, onions, peppers, tomatoes, some eggplant, lettuce, mushrooms and squash and occasionally, spinach. In this review I'll try to summarize my experiences, observations, recommendations and favorites of Spanish food. Spanish meals and meal times Spanish breakfasts are typically quite light, usually limited to just a bit of bread with butter or olive oil and strong coffee. However, Andalucía evolved its own regional breakfast dish which highlights the best local products. I don't know the name of the dish, but it consists of a slice of toasted bread, gently rubbed with a clove of garlic, spread lightly with a very thin, uncooked tomato puree which is then covered with slices of cured ham and drizzled with olive oil. If you're very fortunate, you may run into an establishment which allows you to sample this dish for breakfast. It's very tasty and vegetarians will find it delicious even without the ham. If you do not encounter this dish in the morning hours, you may be lucky enough to find it on a tapas menu for lunchtime or evening consumption. Lunch is eaten rather later in the day than most of the English-speaking world is accustomed to. Lunch begins no earlier than 2pm in Andalucía , and usually consumes a leisurely two hours. As the main meal of the day, lunch deserves special attention. Visitors will likely encounter little difference between the dishes restaurants offer for lunch and those offered for dinner. Unlike other countries, dinner in Spain is often quite light. Another difference is that dinner is eaten rather late; usually beginning no earlier than 9pm. This can be a bit of an adjustment for foreign visitors accustomed to light lunches and substantial dinners around 6 or 7pm. Fortunately, many Spaniards practice the habit of having a small snack around 7pm. If you're desperately hungry at this time, don't fret. Have a small bite to eat at one of the many..... Tapas Bars Tapas are surely one of Spain's signal contributions to global culinary diversity. "Tapa" literally means "lid" in Spanish. This refers to the tiny plates that these small portions of food are served on. Tapas may be hot or cold, may consist of meat, fish, cheese, egg, or vegetables, and most importantly have prices that allow a diner to sample an enormous range of dishes in a single meal. Some restaurants have a special "carta" listing their tapas, in others the server will simply rattle off what is available. Some eateries serve tapas all day long, others only at certain times. Some have huge selections of tapas, others only a few choices centered on olives, cold cuts and cheese. Tapas suit the way I like to eat very well. Especially when I am in place new to me, I love to explore the cuisine by sampling as many things as possible. With lots of little portions and someone to share the food with, I can satisfy my curiosity and my belly with ease. The more people at the table, the more tapas one can order. My husband and I always shared everything we ordered between us, as is our custom. This seemed to be normal protocol in Spain as well. If you count your calories, be warned: many (if not most) of the hot tapas dishes come out of a deep fryer. For those of you who eat with abandon, this is wonderful because it makes everything taste great. You may want to start with a simple or mixed salad so you can fill up with lower calorie foods before you start with the truly yummy stuff. Another variation on the tapa to keep in mind when dining in Spain is the practice of the "media ración," or "half ration." This means that it is possible to ask for a half order of an item listed on the menu. Some menus show prices for both full and half rations, while in other places the possibility exists but is not obvious from the menu. It can never hurt to ask if you feel like having a smaller portion of something. In general, a tapa portion is equivalent to a quarter or a third of a normal portion, and a media really seems to be a half. After a few meals in ordinary restaurants menu offerings, especially tapas menus, can begin to seem much of a muchness. To avoid boredom, at least in the larger cities, I recommend looking for restaurants recommended by the Michelin guide or other dining guides. Meals in these better restaurants need not be significantly more expensive than in a run of the mill restaurant if you stick to the tapas. They do tend to have a wider selection and sometimes offer house specialties that you will find nowhere else. Regional Specialties Serrano Ham - The mountainous province of Huelva in western Andalucía is famous for producing cured hams from pigs fed partially or entirely on a diet of acorns. You will no doubt notice these hams, slowly curing in cigarette smoke, hanging near the bar of just about any restaurant or tapas bar in the region. The ham is cured and dried to a much greater extent than Italian cured hams. The meat also has a darker color than Italian prosciutto, likely due to the longer drying times, or the acorn diet or possibly both. Connoisseurs of Spanish hams judge those fed exclusively on acorns to be the best, and these varieties receive the highest grading. The grades come in the form of J's, the number of J's indicating the quality. A particular ham may be graded from one to five J's, and there is a good chain restaurant in Spain that has adopted the highest grade as their name: Cinco Jotas. To be absolutely honest, I came with an open mind about Serrano hams, sampled many varieties and tried to enjoy them. But in my considered opinion they are inferior to Italian dried hams, especially the incomparable Prosciutto di Parma. I found the taste strong without the tanginess that I enjoy so much in game meats. I noticed that portions of Serrano hams were always cut by hand, which meant that our servings were thicker than is typical when hams are cut with electric slicers. Further, the ham is always cut with the grain of the meat, making the consistency somewhat tougher and more fibrous than it would otherwise be. Perhaps Serrano ham is an acquired taste that I lacked sufficient time to acquire, or perhaps I'm merely jaded. You may enjoy them far more than I did. The town most famous for these hams and other pork products is Jabugo. Unfortunately, Jabugo has little to offer the visitor other than easily reproducible opportunities to buy these products. Don't bother visiting Jabugo unless you are truly a hardcore porcophile and plan on taking home lots of Spanish jamón (provided of course, that it's legal to do so). Bacalao - As mentioned above, bacalao is salted cod. This dried and preserved fish can be easily transported and stored for months without the need for refrigeration. It must be soaked for many hours before preparation to remove the salt and rehydrate the flesh. I had bacalao many times as a tapa during my trip and it ranged from the sublime to the unappetizing. Whether this variation reflects differences in the chefs' skills or the quality of the fish itself I don't know. I do know that having had delicious bacalao once, I'm more than willing to try it again. If, by chance, your first encounter with this fish is less than inspiring, it may be worth your while to give it another chance. Solomillo - Technically, solomillo can be a filet of either beef or pork, but in all the dining we did in Andalucía, it referred exclusively to thin cuts of grilled pork. A frequent staple of the tapas menu, solomillo is served with any number of sauces, topping and accompaniments. We tried it with a mild blue cheese sauce, topped with sautéed mushrooms, or caramelized onions, and raisins stewed in a whiskey sauce. It was always excellent and it proved a reliable dish to accompany much of the "blind" ordering we did when we had no idea what the dishes on the menu were. Andalucían gazpacho differed greatly from the chunky cold soup that I used to think of as gazpacho. This soup was served cold, and it did contain cucumber and tomato, but it was completely pureed and seemed to have a starchy extra ingredient that I suspect was stale white bread. They also serve gazpacho with a little plate of chopped garnishes that include onions, cucumber, Serrano ham, green pepper, hard-boiled egg and fried bread cubes. We found this dish reliably tasty and very refreshing on hot days. Another soup that we encountered in the mountainous province of Huelva in western Andalucía was "sopa de ajo," or garlic soup. The recipes for this dish varied considerably from kitchen to kitchen, but the universal ingredients included a clear garlicky broth seasoned with paprika, one or more pieces of fried bread, a fried egg, and slices of sautéed garlic. We tried some sopa de ajo that was subtly spiced, aromatic and delicious as well as other servings that were leaden with bread slices, flavorless and swimming in grease. It's a bit of a crapshoot, but if you luck out and find a truly great bowl of this stuff, you'll be glad you risked it. Game is also popular in Andalucía. Game seems to be something people either love or hate. I'm one who loves the added complexity of game meats and I delighted in tapas portions of venao (venison) and jabalí (boar), as well as special rice dishes with rabbit and pheasant. I found the venison and the rabbit to be especially good in this region. If you enjoy eating game and come across one of these dishes while visiting this region, be sure to try some. For those Americans who think they know what a tortilla is (I was one of them!), a Spanish tapas menu can be a lesson in revision. A tortilla in Andalucía is not a flat round of bread made from flour or corn. It's a dense round of scrambled eggs usually made with ham, cheese or fried potatoes. These are served for lunch or dinner and are quite hearty. Certainly one of the most famous Spanish dishes, paella seemed limited to the coastal region of Andalucía. We spent very little time on the coast and did not see it on menus once we moved inland. Paella is a mixed dish of rice, seafood (usually shellfish), small bits of other meat and small pieces of vegetables all seasoned and colored with saffron. At its best this dish is unforgettably sumptuous. But at its worst the rice is soggy, overcooked or dried out and the other ingredients bland and disappointing. We did find a rice dish called arroz infanta that resembled paella in its signature saffron coloring and the inclusion of bits of carrots, onion and red pepper. This made a lovely accompaniment to our other tapas dishes. Do look for paella while near the coast; but I would avoid it in other areas. Perhaps my favorite vegetarian tapa was a regional specialty simply called "espinacas con garbanzos," or "spinach with chickpeas." Spinach stewed for too long is usually revolting. But although this dish included spinach cooked to the point of utter limpness, I found it delicious. The perfectly tender chickpeas that were mixed in with the whole spinach leaves, and the slices of hard-boiled egg that garnished the dish reminded me of nothing so much as a mild Indian stew. In fact, the espinacas was quite reminiscent of saag paneer (without the paneer, of course), if you're familiar with that dish. Once I'd sampled this tasty specialty, I ordered it every chance I got. Because of the oil that was added to the vegetables it wasn't low-cal, but it was a nice alternative to the boring, often overdressed salads that were all too frequently the only other vegetarian item on the menu. Wine - Southern Spain is known particularly for its rich and hearty Rioja red wines. Often served slightly chilled, some of the Riojas verge on the sweetness and depth of a good port. The four classifications for Rioja wine correspond to the amount of barrel aging a particular wine goes through. In increasing length of aging, these classifications are: joven, crianza, reserva and gran reserva. We found these wines to be dependably very good to excellent and they could be had by the glass in the average restaurant for under $2 per glass. I highly recommend that you sample the Riojas at every opportunity! If a particular bottle catches your fancy, make a note of the vintner and the year and have a look for it in a liquor store. Face-saving note: for those of you with limited Spanish skills, red wine is called "vino tinto" in Spain rather than the literal translation, "vino rojo." Beer - Spain isn't famed for its beers, and heaven knows I'm no beer connoisseur. Luckily, my better half is a beer connoisseur. This information brought to you courtesy of my husband. Of the two local beers that he sampled, Cruz Campo and Estrella Damm, neither especially stood out as great beers. However, Cruz Campo, the most widely distributed of these beers, grew on him a bit during our trip. Cruz Campo is a highly hopped pilsner with a very light body. Mildly bitter, it is at least somewhat distinctive and will please "hop heads." Estrella Damm is another light bodied pilsner. Straight ahead with no funny stuff, the beer is malty and average overall. His final analysis was that it's better to stick with the wine if your constitution can tolerate it for both lunch and dinner. Other dining issues Reservations are generally not necessary in Spain's casual society. Of course if you want to eat dinner on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday at fancy restaurant in a major city, it makes sense to make a reservation just in case. Sevilla was the only major city we dined in and we never needed a reservation. Smoking seems to be practically a requirement of all adults in Spain. Of all the meals I ate in Spain I witnessed only a single instance of a table with all non-smoking patrons. Forget about asking for a non-smoking table. Non-smoking sections by and large, don't exist, and even if they did, it wouldn't do you much good. The best strategies are to sit outdoors, far from other patrons, or simply show up for lunch at 1:15 and dinner at 8:15. Arriving this early will be a little odd, but it will give you enough time to finish your meal before the hordes of smokers show up. Vegetarians will have an extremely difficult time in Spain, especially outside of the major cities. And vegans ought to simply stay home, where they can control their own diets, unless they're willing to subsist on bread, olives and pale, bland salads. Spain truly has not moved to accommodate diets not based on animal products, and I cannot recommend it to those who are not prepared to be flexible with their diet or go undernourished. Tipping is not required in Spain, as a service fee is always included in the price of the meal. However, it is a reasonably common practice to leave a very small tip for the waitstaff if the service is good. The tips we left ranged from one or three euros, when we left anything at all. Since waitstaff are not working directly for tips, American diners especially will notice quite a different standard in service. The check will not be brought to your table until you request it. This is the standard everywhere in Europe so far as I know. Americans should take this into consideration, especially if on a tight schedule. The phrase "la cuenta, por favor" will produce the check. Having your payment processed is another matter. When a restaurant is busy, it may take another half hour before your card or cash is taken. It is not considered acceptable in Spain to simply leave enough cash to cover the bill and stroll out. This will make your waiter nervous. If remotely possible, wait for your change before walking out. Well, there you have my notes on food and dining in Andalucía. Looking for more information on the Sevilla area? You can read about the wonderful town of Carmona we visited in this region. Or about El Triguero, the lovely (and very cheap!) traditional hacienda we enjoyed staying at in Carmona. Or perhaps you'd be more interested in the Parador de Carmona a more upscale hotel where we also stayed? Did you enjoy my commentary on Andalucian cuisine? If so, you might want to read what I have to say about Bavarian cuisine, the cuisine of Veneto or Umbrian cuisine too. Also, I can highly recommend the cookbook Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America as a guide to preparing some accessible and delicious recipes for either nibbles or a hearty meal at home. If you happen to be in Austin, Texas you could enjoy a meal of Spanish tapas at the restaurant Málaga.  |
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