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Cooked clams open themselves during the cooking process. In fact, you should leave aside and not try to open the ones that remain closed, since that's a hint that something is wrong with them (only the closed ones, you can safely eat the rest). So, if they were clams and they were cooked, they should have been opened. Where in Spain did he had this dish? The smallest clam I know of that could be served in Spain is coquina, which is larger than what you describe. Perhaps other fellows around know of other type of clams that fit in with your description.

Are you still trying to complete the Tomato Rougaille? Move on, man! We're waiting.

Summer's here and the time is right for eating in the streets. It looks like summer finallly arrived to our peninsula, after some timid tries. So now we're going to see the temperature high in the thirties (ºC) - nineties (F) for some months, which cold dish do you enjoy the most? Since I've created the thread, I'll choose the cliché: gazpacho, in almost any of its endless variations. But there's much more outside gazpacho. I'm curious what our triumphant friends to the other side of the border have these days, since I'm not familiar with any cold dish from Portugal.

Fat Guy, when are you planning to tackle another recipe/subrecipe of this book?

I don't think we have. I assume your sentence should be read as "a last course before dessert or in lieu of dessert", I would say that's the case. In fact, it's still common in many restaurants to see cheese as starters.

AFAIK, there are three Grandes Livres, the one you've got and two more: Le Grand Livre de cuisine d'Alain Ducasse : Desserts et Pâtisserie Le Grand Livre de cuisine d'Alain Ducasse : Bistrots, brasseries et restaurants de tradition

I've to admit that the one Grand Livre that attracts me the most it the one on "bistrots, brasseries et restaurants de tradition". Boris, do you think the statement I quoted is also applicable to this book? how is it organized? I would expect a collection of recipes of this kind of restaurants, capturing a fair amount of traditional cooking, rather than Ducasse's. As always, any info will be appreciated.

Going tonight at 10pm. Will report asap. Silly We're all curious about it. Looking forward to your report.

Has anyone eaten there in the autumn/winter months? I have the impression those would be the seasons where Can Fabes's cooking will be at its best. Mushrooms, truffle, game...

Thanks for your post, pranian. I'm curious about what you had at La Xicra. Regarding your question, most likely you were just supposed to try the different types of oil, adding some salt if you felt like to. However, some cheeses in Spain are preserved and cured in oil. It's not totally uncommon to add some oil to manchego cheese. Just a little.

After all the processing described by MobyP, let me suggest you a couple of options: a) Simply fried them (in olive oil, please), serve them with poached onions, some salt and red peppers (ideally piquillo). b) I had them last week at Arce (Madrid) in a light mustard sauce. Excellent results. I asked for a second helping.

Great. I look forward to your post. Is this your first visit to Can Fabes?

Aberrations which human beings are capable of are infinite by nature. Coming back to the nativeness of rice dishes, I'd say that there are rice based dishes in almost every region of the country. Nevertheless, paella is a specific dish with more or less well defined regional borders in terms of origin.

I would say it's true, Bux. Basque chefs are well reputed all over the country, not only in Madrid. There are great basque restaurants in many cities, and basque chefs behind the kitchens of many restaurants, basque inspired or not.

Miguel, it would be great if you could tell us some more about these seven regional culinary traditions.

I've just unwrapped the carefully packaged book sent to me by De Re Coquinaria. Copy 3159 of 5000, which according to the criteria used in the first page, put me miles ahead of the closest competitor . The first thing I immediately missed is a CD. For this kind of reference works, using that kind of media with the right content in terms of indexes, hyperlinks and such should be a must these days. I presume that comparison with El Bulli, The Books are unavoidable. More to follow as I advance, but it looks that just browsing I found a recipe without dependences: red and green tomato essence (p. 32). A condiment, of course.

Miguel, I believe you're right about the number of portuguese restaurants in Spain. Certainly, the restaurants mentioned by Víctor which I have visited, Tras-os-Montes and Don Sol, are very good (they have the same owners, José Alves and his wife María Graça). They offer a huge variety of codfish preparations, yet just a sample of what you could get in Portugal. But you can't compare three restaurants with the plethora of asian restaurants established in Madrid, for instance. I guess that the reduced number of Portugueses living here has something to do with this, as probably will have in the other side of the border. I agree with Víctor regarding the negative clichés and negative preconceived ideas. I don't think that's the case, and Portuguese cooking is well received in Spain. Keep in mind that most of the people in Spain prefer traditional dishes rather than the sophisticated proposals coming from our innovative chefs. There's a public for the latter, larger in number here than in Portugal, but our asadores and marisquerías are crowded. PS: Keep dreaming about beating Spain on Sunday. I hope I don't have to edit this post and remove this part of it.

Sumac, thanks very much for sharing this with us. I haven't been to Can Fabes for more than a year, though I maybe visiting it next month. Good, solid but not mind blowing are terms that I've heard more than once applied to Santamaría's cooking. It's difficult to use them myself to qualify Santamaría, since some of the best dishes I've ever had were cooked in his kitchen. So I'd like to believe that what you experienced last time was a transitory uninspired moment. Again, judging the inventive Santamaría puts into his cooking from the dishes' descriptions is extremely difficult, at least to me. AFAIK, Santi has always preferred minimal descriptions. In consequence, when I can't appreciate more inventive in the 2003 Hake in romescu sauce than in the 2004 Sea bass, scallops and peas in light broth. One thing that I noticed some months ago, and has been mentioned here before by others, is that he introduced premium dishes in the tasting menu that in order to have them, you'd have to pay a plus. I don't understand why he's done that, but if that has caused to remove some of his signature dishes (potatoes purée, carn salada and caviar, amazing results from this a priori odd combination), it could lead to feel the experience you describe. I don't like that approach to tasting menus. How did you find the service, sumac? I hope they haven't changed the standards there, I consider it one of the best in the country.

I see your point. Do you know if Ducasse has a formal R&D setting as such? I'm thinking of an equivalent to El Bulli's Taller. In Spain, just El Bulli and Arzak (in a scaled down scheme) have that. In fact, I saw an interview in the Spanish Food channel with Adrià where he said that when thinking about creating El Taller, he asked to colleagues around the world and nobody had separated R&D from the production stages.

Perhaps I'm not totally getting your point, Fat Guy. But to me, that would be a secondary reason for increasing my appreciation of Ducasse's cooking. I mean, just putting person hours into something is not a passport to success. Of course, professional teams can achieve tasks orders of magnitude above what an individual could complete, no matter how talented the latter is. That shouldn't be a surprise since we're surrounded by examples of this in almost every discipline, from software programming to architecture. But when we admire a building, the effort in terms of labour is not one of the criteria we commonly use. From that point of view, a top level restaurant is an interesting machine to study, since they have to balance the price of the dishes with the effort put into them (assuming that increasing the effort, i.e., constructing and using more of the "building blocks", would accordingly increase the quality of the dishes).

My copy should be arriving tomorrow, 150€ shipping included from De Re Coquinaria. I couldn't resist the temptation.

Bux, I agree with you. But my point is that we'd feel in a mood to go to El Bulli's heir not that often and not that many people. Of course, this is highly speculative, but there're plenty of examples of this kind of pattern in almost any field, ranging from science to arts, where once a given level of complexity has been reached, the number of disciples who are willing and able to access/experience the subject is sharply reduced. I would agree, though, that top level restaurants have a force that probably in the end would lead them to balance: economic success.

That well could be the case. There's a risk that at some point in time the current trends lead to a major disconnection between patrons and cooks. The cooking becoming so complex that only cooks could appreciate it. There are examples of similar patterns in other fields. Free jazz immediately comes to my mind: music for musicians (basically). Technique has to obey a superior goal. Taste. Naturally, IMHO.

My curiosity for these books increased as of reading Spoon Cook Book in depth, eGullet's new feature. I know the Grandes Livres have been around for some time now, and I wondered if anyone has read them and what's your opinion about them. I'm specially interested on the book covering bistrots.

Did you buy anything? How was it?