mielimato

My experience does not come from 27 years of food writing and dining in Spain but from eating, cooking and living in Spain for the past 10 years. And from this perspective, I have often found the markets and home-cooking to be much more limited, although I can’t say the same thing for meat and seafood dishes. Many of the vegetables you talk about are actually difficult to find in the local markets in Barcelona and in the Maresme (which are my two points of references), mainly because they are still new to the population and not widely consumed. It is not easy to those white monster-sized asparagus in the markets that is not already preserved in a can or a jar. Outside of broad beans, snow peas, sugar peas, pea shoots and pea tendrils are still considered exotic items and difficult to find. Collard greens and kale, which are common in Galicia, are again difficult to find in regions outside of Galicia. This is surprising when you consider that even the smallest markets outside of Galicia are always well stocked with fresh seafood from the North. I certainly agree that there are many great places in Spain that prepare vegetables well and that Spanish treatment of vegetables, both with respect to how it’s prepared “traditionally” and with respect to its many modern reincarnations, has improved over the years. Spain has some of the best of the best restaurants that are fully capable of producing creative and tasty ways of preparing vegetables that preserve the integrity of the produce. But I am not sure that examining how top, cutting edge restaurants prepare vegetables is the best way to measure a nation’s penchant towards preparing vegetables badly. p.s. I fail to see why my nationality should matter but since you found it necessary to raise the point, my point of reference is not limited to the Americas, as you seem to imply, but originates from East Asia (that’s 5,000 years of culinary history to you Europeans).

I am going up North this August so I will try to check out those places. Looking forward to it! Thank you!

Making such a general statement always gets you into problems...I don't want to say that well-cooked vegetables do not exist. I love escalivada, pimentos de padron and samfina. And the occasional boiled plate of vegetables can make a nice foil to a plate of fried salty fish. I once had a delicious peas and black butifarra dish at Hispania where the peas were were still small and young (not too old and chalky). They were perfectly cooked so that they exploded in your mouth with all their sugary sweetness. That was a good day! I am interested, however, in vegetable dishes from the North. I imagine that they must eat more greens in Galicia, Austurias and Cantabria. Are there any special dishes or vegetables that I should know about? I am going to Galicia for a week in August. We will have our own kitchen and hope to make a few trips to the market. Any advice would be appreciated! Thank you!

Currently, Spain has arguably the best seafood and pork products in the Western world. Yet when it comes to how vegetables are treated, it is a sad state of affairs. What breaks my heart is that walking through the markets in Spain one is confronted by some of the best produce in the world. But what gives you wonder at the market bears little resemblance to what is served at the table—bland, textureless vegetables that have been so overcooked that might as well have come from the freezer. Salads are lackluster—some lettuce, tomatoes, a few olives and onions. No interesting lettuce variety or inventive dressing. Peas and favas are almost always stewed with sausages to the point where the vegetable retains none of it delicate flavor. The most common way of cooking spinach, swiss chard, broad beans or cabbage is to boil for 20 plus minutes until it is mushy an textureless. Then it is often sautéed in pork fat as if the goal is to extract out the flavor of the vegetable so that you can cover it up with the taste of meat. I can understand how vegetables like eggplant, peppers and artichokes may benefit from being cooked in this slow-simmered approach but why would you do this to green vegetables? Am I missing something? My experience is mainly with Cataluña and Andalusia. Maybe vegetables are treated differently in the north. Are things different in the Basque country, Galicia, Asturias, or Cantabria? How can a cuisine reach such amazing heights in terms of its treatment of seafood and meat and simultaneously be so behind the times in its treatment of vegetables?

My favorite place is also Gelateria Caffeteria Italiana! Their fruit flavored ice-creams are especially good: melon, peach, figs, strawberry, etc. Their dark chocolate ice-cream is also declicious. Nothing is too sweet. And everything tastes good and natural. The one sad thing about this place is that the older Italian ladies are no longer there. I have not seen them for months. Now it is just two hot mamacita serving ice-cream. I hope the Italian ladies come back soon.