Spanish Books - Page 5

La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain

Penelope Casas

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Penelope Casas, the foremost American authority on Spanish food and the author of the bestselling Tapas, presents more than 175 robustly flavored yet amazingly simple recipes representing the best of Spanish home cooking—the cooking handed down through generations of Spanish “mamás.”

Long overshadowed by France and Italy, Spain has finally taken its rightful place as one of Europe’s great culinary meccas. Consider the reborn cities of Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao; the new respect afforded Spanish wines; the popularity of tapas bars in the U.S.; and Spain’s widely influential Michelin three-star chefs, Ferran Adrià and Juan Mari Arzak. Despite the world-wide acclaim for these chefs, arguably the greatest Spanish food is found not in the nation’s restaurants, but in private homes off-limits to tourists, where women still cook the recipes their mothers and grandmothers cooked before them. Now, Penelope Casas takes us into those homes to uncover the secrets of this simple, easily reproduced, and altogether marvelous cuisine.

For La Cocina de Mamá, Penelope Casas has collected recipes from great chefs and traditional home cooks in every region of Spain, all of whom have shared with her the dishes they grew up loving and still cook for themselves today. There are recipes for tapas, like Clams in Garlic Sauce; elegant soups and hearty one-pot meals like Stewed Potatoes with Pork Ribs; many wonderful seafood dishes like Fish Steaks with Peas in Saffron Sauce; meat and poultry dishes, such as Pork Tenderloin in Orange Sauce, Rack of Lamb Stuffed with Mushrooms and Scallions, and Lemon Chicken with Ginger and Pine Nuts; paella and other rice dishes—and even a few pasta dishes; unusual vegetable preparations, including Sautéed Spinach with Quince and Toasted Sesame Seeds; and desserts like Basque Apple Custard Tart. Whether of Roman, Moorish, or peasant origin, all of the dishes appeal to today’s tastes and exemplify the virtues of the Mediterranean diet—lots of olive oil, lean meats and fish, and vegetables. Sidebars throughout discuss ingredients, areas of Spain unfamiliar to most Americans, travel vignettes, and more. At last, Americans can discover the unique and irresistible flavors of authentic Spanish home cooking in La Cocina de Mamá.

Cooking from the Heart of Spain: Food of La Mancha

Janet Mendel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For forty years, American-born freelance journalist and award-winning cookbook author Janet Mendel has made her home in Spain. Becoming a "local" has provided Mendel with the unique opportunity to explore the authentic foods of her adopted country, and to bring the best recipes to American kitchens. Now, in Cooking from the Heart of Spain, she turns her attention to the region of La Mancha.

Mendel has taken part in the harvesting of saffron, wine grapes, and garlic. She has made marzipan in Toledo, joined in a partridge shoot, and prepared trout caught fresh from the streams in Cuenca. She tells stories of artisanal cheesemakers and wine producers. Her own home in an olive grove gives her special insight into world-class Spanish olive oil.

Cooking from the Heart of Spain features traditional foods from the country's heartland, a region of vineyards, olive groves, and wheat fields. From here come Spain's most famous products -- Manchego cheese, saffron, serrano ham, and olive oil. These ingredients, along with its rich and diverse Moorish and Sephardic heritages, give Manchegan cooking an air of refinement and delicate complexity beyond its sturdy simplicity.

The recipes in Cooking from the Heart of Spain include simple pisto, a medley of summer vegetables sautéed in olive oil; lamb stuffed with spinach and pine nuts; a robust peasant garlic soup; and a delightfully subtle saffron ice cream. Mendel also includes sophisticated dishes such as cheese and ham flan and partridge braised in wine sauce, as well as fun food, such as "fried milk," a sweet custard with a crisp-fried exterior. Oh, yes -- and Madrid tapas too.

Laced with quotes from Cervantes' Don Quixote -- which had lots to say about the food of La Mancha -- Janet Mendel´s cookbook provides recipes for delicious dishes, both traditional and modern.

The Basque Table: Passionate Home Cooking from One of Europe's Great Regional Cuisines

Teresa Barrenechea

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Few people have stayed in one place as long as the Basque people have stayed in Basque Country, which spreads from northern Spain across the Pyrenees into France and stretches out to the sea. Basque Country has remained intact from the time of cave paintings to today. The Basque language is a language unlike any other; even Basque DNA is different from any other European DNA. So it should come as no surprise that the food of Basque Country, while similar to what is found in other parts of Spain and France, is distinct as to its place and people of origin. Restaurant owner and chef Teresa Barrenechea invites one and all to come sit at the Basque table and learn while enjoying.

Though nueva cocina has invaded Basque cooking, Barrenechea has intentionally left it aside for another book. She cleaves to tradition in The Basque Table, to the pinchos (like tapas), first courses, and main courses that make up the traditional meal served in Basque homes. It is a deceptively simple cuisine, something of a tightrope act, that demands of any cook the ability to select the best possible ingredients. When, in a dish like Chuletitas de Cordero (grilled lamb chops), you are only working with the chops, olive oil, garlic, flat-leaf parsley, and salt, there's no place to hide. And yet, when everything is exemplary and the chops come off the grill at the perfect moment, the effect in the mouth and in the heart and soul of any diner will defy description. A tough kind of simple, in other words.

A fierce pride shows in Barrenechea's recipe descriptions and food notes. She holds herself to the highest cultural standard. What she aims for and achieves is a replication in print, with an American kitchen in mind, of exactly how a certain dish should taste to the Basque palate.

So take heart in dishes like sweetbreads with garlic and parsley, crayfish in hot sauce, mushrooms with scrambled eggs, white bean stew, roasted fresh ham, chicken Basque style, fresh cod with red and black sauces, grilled prawns, and trout Navarra-style. You may be cooking at home, but you'll be sitting and eating at a Basque table. And there's no other table quite like it. --Schuyler Ingle

Nuevo Latino: Recipes That Celebrate the New Latin American Cuisine

Douglas Rodriguez, John Harrison

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Checked it out of the library, now I'm buying it! 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 19 people found this review helpful.

We've just returned from a Caribbean cruise with its final destination in Costa Rica. We were inspired by the diversity of the flavors and food presentation everywhere we visited...so inspired we decided to come home and have a New Year's Latino brunch for friends and neighbors. So, our local library had Nuevo Latino on the shelf and we were on! Douglas Rodriguez' book is well written so that it tells an interesting story of his career journey, and it presents recipes, definitions of ingredients, and presentation ideas in a practical and easy-to-replicate way. Now, even the trips to the grocery store with all these new "foreign" foods in the produce section conjure up memories/ideas from the recipes he's presented. Can't wait to go to New York to experience Patria, but also know that what we made from his book was excellent. Our friends thought we were great cooks! And that's the point of cookbooks, isn't it! Thanks to Nuevo Latino.

Editorial Review:

The now-classic recipes in NUEVO LATINO celebrate and reinterpret a broad range of old-style dishes from Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, and throughout Latin America. Such utterly unique creations as Grilled Flank Steak over Mushroom Ceviche; Sugarcane Tuna with Malanga Pure and Dried Shrimp Salsa; and Chocolate Tres Leches are a feast for the palate as well as the eye. This is the ultimate presentation of revolutionary cooking inspired by the sensational flavours of the Americas.

Sabroso: The Spanish-American Family Cookbook (New American Family Cookbooks)

Noemi C. Taylor

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Food and Friendship 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Thumbing through the book you can practically smell the food cooking and you can absolutely feel the friendship these four women have forged over the years. That a daughter collected their creativity for all to share is a dash of spice. I and a friend prepared the first dish I tried for a dinner party with several friends. I'll be dipping into this book many times!

Editorial Review:

¡Sabroso! is a compilation of more than 200 recipes, menus, and the stories of four lively, Spanish-speaking women who formed new homes and a close friendship far from their native homes of Spain, Peru, Argentina, and Colombia. Food has always been central to the friendship between the four women. From the first get-together, to every picnic, barbecue, birthday, party, holiday, and milestone shared through the years every woman brought a special dish made from a recipe from her native country adjusted with American ingredients. When they first moved to America they each realized how different the food was from their home counties. So they soon began to adjust, swap, debate and refine their recipes. This book is a collection of these recipes and the stories of their friendship and traditions lovingly compiled by the daughter of one of the women.

Los fogones de José Andrés: Las recetas del chef que triunfa en España y Estados Unidos

José Andrés

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Cocina 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I watch José Andrés on TV, on TVE, the TV from Spain that we get here on cable. Each time I wish I was one of his friends invited to eat. The book is like the TV show: "fantastic·

Editorial Review:

Las tapas, base fundamental de la cocina de José Andrés, son una de las principales aportaciones españolas a los tesoros culinarios del mundo: platos de ingredientes mediterráneos sencillos, como su preparación, hábilmente combinados para proporcionar estallidos de sabor puros y limpios. Esta obra, organizada por alimentos como base de cada una los capítulos (tomates, patatas, setas, legumbres, pimientos, verduras, arroz, huevos, pescado, mariscos, pollo, cerdo y otras carnes) es el primer gran libro que celebra una cocina de renombre mundial, creada por el nuevo cocinero de Televisión Española, discípulo aventajado de Ferran Adrià, galardonado con varios premios, propietario de seis restaurantes en Washington y portavoz oficioso de la cocina española en Estados Unidos.

The Basque Kitchen: Tempting Food from the Pyrenees

Gerald Hirigoyen, Cameron Hirigoyen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sometimes, when you are Basque, you speak English with a French accent. Sometimes, that accent will sound a little more Spanish than not, and yet you are still Basque. Such are the complications of one of the more peculiar pockets of humanity to be found. For the country occupied by the Basque people is in both France and Spain while remaining unique unto itself. The Basque language is like no other, and no one knows where it comes from. Even Basque DNA is different than the DNA of other Europeans. Food--the taking of meals--is central to the culture. In some places it's a little more French than Spanish; in other places in Basque country, just the opposite is likely to be true.

Chef and restaurant owner Gerald Hirigoyen invites the reader into The Basque Kitchen. In page after delicious-looking page, Hirigoyen presents what he most loves about the cuisine. And rather than suggest that what he so loves remain frozen in a museum of cuisine, he embraces the foods and cooking techniques he has encountered in Paris and California. His Seared Ahi Tuna Steaks with Onion Marmalade honors his uncle's tuna and onion casserole. But instead of covering a tuna steak with onions and olive oil in a casserole and cooking a long time, Hirigoyen prepares an onion marmalade, then pan sears thick ahi steaks until they are hot and rare, and serves it all on a bed of lentils. He's saying that you have to be Basque to get there, but now that we have all arrived, we're somewhere else, yet connected.

And what a marvelous connection. The vast majority of the foods to be encountered between the covers of The Basque Kitchen are simple in nature, yet complex in the flavors they deliver. Potato and chorizo tortilla, an omelet of onion, potato, chorizo, salt, pepper, and parsley, gains added radiance with a little piment d'Espelette, powdered small, dried red peppers with a distinct flavor. Steamed mussels are prepared with tomatoes, crusty bread cubes, white wine, parsley, and chives. It's a dish from St.-Jean-de-Luz, over which the author proposed to his wife.

Gerald Hirigoyen brings to life the foods of his youth and family, as well as foods he has created from experience and whimsy. Refusing to be confined by tradition, Hirigoyen takes inspiration from Basque tradition and demonstrates the timelessness of the Basque kitchen. The benefits for one and all are right there, page after page after page. --Schuyler Ingle

Barcelona Served: Contemporary Catalan Cuisines

Montse Palacin

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Editorial Review:

Barcelona Served is an illustrated guide to contemporary Catalan cuisine, including its major figures and restaurants from Barcelona and throughout Catalonia. This beautifully illustrated book presents 14 of its major figures (Ferran Adrà, Sergi Arola, Carme Ruscaddella...) and 98 of its restaurants. The book features established and up-and-coming creative chefs, and a series of recipes that bear witness to their talent and reputation. In addition there is a selection of specialty shops, markets and fairs where local produce can be purchased, as well as cooking schools where professional methods are taught. This publication also includes a guide to restaurants serving both fresh, seasonal and Mediterranean cuisine.

Casa Moro

Samantha Clark

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Casa Moro - Sam and Sam Clarke 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 23 people found this review helpful.

A must have book for anyone with an understanding of good ingredients. The recipes are fantastic! Love it!!

casa moro: beyond claudia roden 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

For those who are familiar with the books of claudia roden and penelope casas on middle eastern food and spanish food, this book has definitely a few new things to offer. The recipees are basic, with few ingredients, emphasis on good taste and relatively simple to prepare. Do not expect elaborate "Michelin restaurant" style type dishes. The authors like spiced (not hot)food, so if you like that too, then stock up on your cumin, coriander and paprika, and start pickling your own lemons.
The book starts with a curious chapter on dishes prepared with wild ingredients (herbs) from the area in spain where the authors live (Andalucia). The four seasons are each presented with 2-3 dishes. While it is apparently meant to set the scene, I found this chapter a bit out of place and too much "Jamie Oliver" with pictures of happy family and tales of friendly neighbours; the dishes are sometimes less easy to prepare with the ingredients listed. What follows is a short chapter on bread which i did not find particularly intersting. Despite the encouriging remarks of the authors, (it only takes 10 minutes!) making bread by hand the classic way takes time, is messy, and the results is always a bit disappointing.
The next chapters on soups and on mezze and starters however is very good with many good recipees. Other chapters are on slads, fish, meat and vegetables (!). The meat chapter has 6 nice lamb, 2 pork, 2 beef and 4 chicken recipees. They are rather classic (roast lamb, sirloin steak) but again of good taste. However, you will find a much wider selection in both Roden or Casas. The authors admit that they only recently started to get interested in desserts, and the book therefore is relatively short on this item, with a few good cakes, ice and fruit desserts. In conclusion: its not a real restaurant book with complete menu suggestions, and it has frequent accounts of personal life and travels (it is a bit romantic, organic and jamie oliver style), but the few recipies i have tried so far where easy to prepare and tasted very much oke: 4 stars..
One last remark to the publisher: the list of suppliers and reference to particular brands of flower is usefull for UK readers but of no use to readers outside the UK. Would it be a better idea to include websites of suppliers in europe and USA where foodstuff can be ordered?

The Food of Northern Spain: Recipes from the Gastronomic Heartland of Spain

Jenny Chandler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Mouthwateringly entertaining 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Jenny Chandler's style is truly unique. She combines the most enticing dishes and mouthwatering photography with a fabulously dry wit. Indulge your senses!

Major Addition to Spanish Culinary Writing. Buy It. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

`The Food of Northern Spain' by culinary writer, Jenny Chandler contributes much to achieving parity between writings on regional cuisines in Spain and Italy. This is such a popular genre nowadays, there have been a few less than luminary titles recently, but this one is a real winner.

It will take a close look at the map of Spain to understand the region of which Senorita Chandler is writing. It is easy to think of it as only the northern Atlantic coast of Spain, west of the Pyrenees, but she is really taking the entire line, virtually all along the same meridian of latitude, from northwestern, Celtic Galacia to the very urban and modern Catalonia on the Mediterranean coast, including the landlocked Navarre and parts of Aragon.

The appropriateness of this choice is clear once one has read important recent books on both the Basque and Catalan cuisines, both of which tout their subject as Spain's culinary center. Senorita Chandler makes the excellent case that this entire region, distinguished primarily by deep valleys in mountainous terrain and rough seacoasts, taken together, is the culinary heart of Spain.

While this does not appear on the surface to be a very scholarly study, a la Coleman Andrews or Paula Wolfert, of this cuisine it is really much more studied and revealing of the soul of its subject than other recent oversized travelogues of Spanish cuisine.

The author begins with a chapter of Background on each of the regions comprising her chosen territory. While giving us not much more than two pages per province, she manages to evoke the spirit and resources of the region as brightly and as passionately as a much longer discourse.

Next, is an excellent chapter on the Storecupboard and Cellar on the principle ingredients of the regions. I am taken by the fact that she begins not with olives and olive oil, but with peppers. It is crystal clear from every book I've read on Spanish cuisine that the great variety of peppers arriving from the New World are as much an influence on the food of northern Spain as the tomato is for the cuisine of southern Italy. A bit of reflection tells me that peppers as a class are a far richer addition than tomatoes, as the range of colors, sizes, and flavors of peppers is far greater than the similar range for tomatoes. There is just so much variety you can squeeze out of a plum tomato, even if it was grown in the shadow of Vesuvius. This little essay on peppers also reveals something about Spain that I have known for years about far-flung former Spanish colonies such as the Philippines, but which never came to the fore in other books. This is the fact that to Spaniards, canned produce is just as good as fresh, it's just different, not inferior. This will become obvious to you the next time you pass the 30-foot long Goya section of your supermarket. The Goya brand is Spanish, not Mexican, as I was want to jump to before actually looking at a can of Goya beans and a bottle of highly regarded Goya olive oil.

Next in importance, especially for the northern marches, is cheese. I was delighted to discover here that the famous Spanish Cabrales cheese is actually a mix of milk from cows, sheep, AND goats. The catalogue of cheeses is not as large or renowned as the great Italian or French cheese kingdoms, but it is pretty important and sizable. This section is rounded out with essays on Olives and olive oil, Pork, Pulses (legumes, beans), salt cod, Crustaceans, Mollusks, Cephalopods and Wild Mushrooms.

In the land of tapas and pinchos (very characteristic of the north), you would expect the next section on matching Spanish food and wine. This is not as exhaustive as Penelope Casas' coverage in `The Food and Wine of Spain', but it is illuminating and very easy to read.

The recipes are organized as one would a traditional cookbook, by type of dish or course. These are:

Light Bites and Tapas, featuring pinchos of olives, anchovies, foie gras, chorizo, and croquettes. The obvious centerpiece is the recipe for tortilla espanola. The description is lovingly given, but may be just a bit less detailed than Senora Casas' recipe in her book `Tapas'. Senorita Chandler also doesn't give us the scoop on how it is served (usually in wedges in the South and cut into cubes and stuck on skewers in the North). I am especially happy to see her recipes for empanadas, with both tuna and pork fillings.

Soups and Starters, featuring a gazpacho with asparagus and a gazpacho with beetroot, a blended mushroom soup, a squid soup, tuna tartar, grilled scallops, and Escabeche.

Salads and Vegetable Dishes, featuring a tuna mixed salad, a spinach and ham salad, and vegetable stews reminiscent of Ratatouille.

Rice and Pulses, featuring two of the most famous Spanish dishes, Cocido and Paella. Interestingly, Ms. Chandler agrees with most others that it is Cocido and not Paella that is the apple of most Spaniard's culinary soul.

Fish and Shellfish, with lots of salmon and salt cod dishes. Hake is very popular here, and Sea Bass is as common here as on the Chilean coast.

Poultry, Meat, and Game, featuring some really surprising combinations such as chicken and prawns and partridge with chocolate. And, some of the steak recipes are gorgeous.

Sauces and Seasonings, with Allioli (with no egg!) et al.

Desserts, with fritters, flans, and coulis.

This book succeeds in its task of really making you interested in the cuisine of the author's chosen regions. While the author doesn't push scholarship, there is both learning and passion aplenty here, all appropriate to its subject.

An excellent foodie read AND cookbook.

Editorial Review:

This sumptuous cookbook amply demonstrates why Spanish food is the new inspiration of the culinary world.