vserna

Tras-os-Montes even has some peculiar Spanish wines, pedro...

If you think we're picky with codfish in Spain, Bux... we're just beginners next to Portugal! It's a national religion there. Hundreds of recipes. Not getting into dried codfish when visiting Portugal is exactly like not getting into pasta when visiting Italy, avoiding cheese in France, boycotting paella in Valencia or forgoing chiles in Mexico - how can one emit an informed opinion about the local cuisine by shying away from its main staple? It's beyond my comprehension. Bacalhau à Gómes de Sá, bacalhau a brás, bacalhau dourado, bacalhau a lagareiro... Mmmmm... It's the soul of Portugal.

Hey, when I was a kid in 1968 and made my first serious foodie trip to France with my father, we stayed first in Biarritz after eating at the (then) great Café de Paris, from where we hat do drive across the country (no motorways at all back then!) to Roanne for the Troisgros and then to Lyon for Bocuse. After a memorable dinner at the Café, Pierre Laporte gave us two magnums of Brane-Cantenac for us to take to the Troisgros brothers (both Jean and Pierre, back then) and to Paul, and he said: "Tell them that this is for them to taste some real wine, and not that Rhône and Burgundy plonk they insist on drinking!" Every culinary region of France was very insular then, and to some extent they remain insular today. Try to get a decent bottle of Burgundy in a Bordeaux restaurant! (Pierre Laporte, southwestern French bigot that he was, would heartily approve, I'm sure.) That said, I've often explained here, and I recently mentioned Ferran Adrià's words to Michel Guérard in the same context, that we'd be nowhere without what we took and learned from the French. But then no one else in the world of modern cuisine would be anywhere if it hadn't been for France!

Lots of pork and no codfish? A peculiar selection...

Goodness, I missed the Sep. 22 flurry here! Sorry about that - I was harvesting grapes at the time, which is something that happens to me once a year about this time of the year . But let me say that I'm very glad that Bux's experience as told in another thread has restablished some balance in opinions about Martin Berasategui, which were getting a bit out of hand. Yes, I defend him. Outstanding cuisine, even with its links to France that are a bit more apparent than in other Spanish three-star places. What's wrong with that, anyhow?

Bux, the Spanish Academy of Gastronomy, which does the ratings for the Campsa travel guide (Spain's largest selling one), has just elevated (for the 2004 edition) Manolo de la Osa's Las Rejas to its top category of three 'suns', where he joins the likes of Arzak or El Bulli. Michelin, on its part, keeps him with just one star.

That's what we usually consider a "par-for-the-course American attitude" to food here in Europe. Of course, this does not apply to the many enlightened American diners, like eGulleters, who make the trip to eat seriously. But most non-foodies, as experience tells us, will only touch chicken, filet of sole and maybe steak if they're really old-fashioned. I had to smile at another recent thread on eGullet where someone was marveling at the rumor that pigeons are actually eaten in Morocco. Heck, and in Spain, in Italy, or in France! (I won't go into the, to some, cruel details on why Spain is the only country in Europe where roast 'rare' pigeon, i.e. with the blood still in it, is available. With the current American fuss about cruelty to force-fed ducks to fatten their livers, this Spanish pigeon story could be scandalous. In the mean time, Bux, if you see 'pichón de Navaz' (Navaz being a village in Navarre where the farm is) or 'pichón de sangre', go for it. Amazing treat.)

From The Guardian in London, in today's edition: Cuisine goes back to college Jon Henley in Paris Wednesday October 15, 2003 The Guardian Alarmed by a waning of France's global prestige in all things culinary, the government is to establish a university of gastronomy. "Haute cuisine these days is international: you can find great chefs and wine experts everywhere," Renaud Dutreuil, minister for consumer affairs and traditional businesses, told Le Parisien yesterday - acknowledging that, as gourmet tastes become ever more adventurous, many critics now say classic French cooking is crushed by tradition, and that better food can be eaten in Brussels, New York or even London. "France has to impose itself more visibly as the country of reference for taste," the minister said. "This university, the first of its kind in the world, will aim to do precisely that. It will become a sort of Harvard of taste." It opens next September at Reims in the Champagne country, and will accept 100 students - "French restaurateurs who hope to improve themselves, Americans in the food-processing business, great chefs from, say, Denmark or Japan" - for training in "arts of the table and French culinary history". Tutors would be historians, sociologists, chefs, biologists, and "great professionals in the trades of taste," the minister said. There would be offshoots for regional gastronomy and viticulture. "France is renowned for its cuisine, but it lacks a training tool to spread this knowledge across the world," Mr Dutreuil told the paper. "We need ambassadors who will represent our culinary heritage."

Ah ah ah. The words 'as ever' couldn't apply to a report that hasn't been written yet, could they? Or is it perhaps my command of a foreign language (which is what English is to me) that's faltering? If so, my excuses. We poor foreigners can't compete in the field of sheer wit, not to mention that of grammatical precision...

Four days in Bordeaux? What for? BTW, as soon as I have a minute I'll post a report on my trip last week to Bordeaux in the France board. As boring as ever.

I was referring to Basque restaurants, not homes, of course. With the sad decline of the French Basque scene (the greatest French Basque cook, Pierre Laporte, is now dead; Christian Parra of L'Auberge de la Galupe has sold his place and is semi-retired; Firmin Arrambide's Les Pyrénées has been unable to hang on to its second Michelin star...), it's not fanciful to say that everything of import in Euskal Herria now (and for a number of years already) comes from south of the muga (border) between France and Spain. Andoni Luis Aduriz, Elena Arzak, Isaac Salaberria or even Victor Arguinzoniz (the first high-tech, high-innovation master of that old Basque standby, the wood-fired grill) are much more important today, as culinary creators and trend-setters, than anyone working in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. And that's a verifiable fact. I don't see what an adjective or even "a few thousand years' history" (???) would change in that fact.

AmyH: The problem is the language. Teresa Barrenechea's book is no doubt better than Hirigoyen's. I don't know if any other, non-US based Basque chef's book has been translated into English.

No one thinks so in the Basque Country. There's hardly anything Basque in it, save for a little piment d'Espelette. It's a thinly disguised version of classic French cuisine. I think that, a) Hirigoyen left France for the US many years ago and is not very familiar with what's happened (culinarily speaking) in the Basque Country, on either side of the border, in recent years; b) he never was very familiar, to begin with, with Spanish Basque cooking, which is distinctly different and forms the basis for 95% of what's going on in Basque kitchens today.

A decently authentic bit of information is to be found here: http://www.arrakis.es/~jols/tapas/indexin.html

No, Randall. Price supports for wine are banned in the European Union. What there is is EU subsidies for capital investment in vineyard modernization and winery equipment, which ain't hay. There are lots of good cheap wines in places like Australia and Chile, which have legal, fiscal and political systems that are entirely different from Europe's...

Actually, Bux, I understand they will sometimes add a second choice, but they always announce it at the table and not on the blackboard menu; I didn't mention it, but the other night one could choose roast duck instead of the veal shank. It's not a vulgar place, culinarily. I am an inveterate investigator of Paris bistrots, and this one is really up there with the good ones. Of course, it's not Allard circa 1965-1970. Then again, nothing is Allard circa 1965-1970 anymore...

I often have to make harrowing, 18-hour trips to Paris: one long afternoon meeting, one night, one 8 AM flight out of town... The antithesis of a 'gastronomic pace'... Last week it was raining hard and I was staying in the fully unfashionable 11th 'arrondissement' (well, just 50 yards away from the very fashionable Marais, but even crossing the Boulevard Beaumarchais seemed like a harrowing task...) Fortunately I'd read in some French magazine about the newer Paris bistrots, and there was one that seemed interesting on the very Rue Amelot where my hotel was. So off it was to Au C'Amelot for an early dinner. Well, it was surprisingly good. And cheap. There's some criticism of it in France because there's a single prix fixe menu, with dessert (three are offered, plus one cheese plate) the only possible choice: take it or leave. "That's not what a bistrot stands for!" local oldtimers say. Well, 20 years ago Sally Clarke introduced this system in her Kensington restaurant after learning the trade at Chez Panisse, and we all loved it. Then again there's the price: in a very expensive city like Paris, 32 euros for a four-course meal, and a well-cooked one, is a steal! The menu, of course, changes every day. The other night, at my little table in the narrow dining room, I had the following dishes, expertly cooked by chef/owner Didier Varnier: a hearty 'potage parmentier' (good stock, mashed potatoes, a bit of 'crème fraîche', crunchy 'croûtons, lots of freshly chopped chives on top); then a good chunk of barbue (Scophthalmus rhombus; in British English, brill; for Americans, a smaller cousin of turbot; for us in Spain, rémol), which had been oven-roasted whole, with a meat 'jus', arugula (make it rocket in British English) and a bed of roast eggplant (aubergines); then a caramelized veal shank with a bit of vinaigrette-flavored couscous. Finally, I chose a truly exquisite dessert of fig compote with an ice cream made with a fennel 'confit' (i.e., sugared fennel), plus a sweet red wine sauce (I guess made with a Banyuls or a Maury). The soup (they leave the tureen on your table) was very hearty for a rainy night, the brill perfectly cooked, i.e. juicy and tender (infrequent in France, where they love to overcook fish) although the chef had used the pepper mill with somewhat excessive gusto, and the veal shank had been very slowly cooked so that it flew off the bone and melted in the mouth. The eggplant and the couscous worked very well with, respectively, the fish and the meat course. These kinds of prices make a slightly expensive wine more attractive, so for 38 euros I chose a bottle of an unpretentious but beautifully gluggable red Burgundy from the outstanding 1999 vintage, Domaine Fougeray de Beauclair's Fixin Clos Marion. Oh! The semi-dry, cool Pays d'Auge cider sold by the glass is a perfect apéritif. Nice place. I'll come back, even if it doesn't rain. The location: 50, rue Amelot, 75011 Paris, phone 01.43.55.54.04

As the abundant spam we're all receiving these days (on a different type of cylinder) emphatically states, size matters! Now imagine those asparagus, three times as thick.......

Inferior to what? "Bordeaux reds" is a rather meaningless expression, don't you think? What are you referring to? Château Haut-Brion or Bordeaux Supérieur? Because, let's face it, most Bordeaux reds these days are inferior to many red wines from all over the world. And that includes even a large number of reds from poor backward Spain.

I'm talking about identifying myself, OK? I had never done it. Now you have it all in full living color, open to scorn or commiseration. My character? Detracting from it? I couldn't care less. I'm totally immune to such considerations. I'm interested in making points and trying to back them up with data and reasoning. If it's grating to you, so be it. I believe I'm civil enough, and I believe in debating only those subjects that I know sufficiently well. The rest, I abstain from them. And I'm not here to pat backs or win popularity contests. That would be boring and besides the point.

This is the first time ever I've identified myself on eGullet, if I remember properly. 36 times, huh?

You have no idea at all of what my "relationship" with MB is or isn't, thus you are prejudging: that's prejudice. The innuendo, obviously, is that my view is twisted, or unfair, due to that "relationship". What makes ginger chef's views more reliable? Couldn't they be tainted by his (evident) "relationship" with MB? I have a first-hand source about what goes on in MB's kitchen, and it's certainly not MB himself, whom I've met on a few occasions professionally, as any other reporter would, but with whom I have not even spoken for a long time. I know my source by name, surname, cooking capacity and personal circumstances; I do not know anything about ginger chef - his identity, his culinary level, the circumstances of his stay at MB's. As even you might admit, there is little reason for me to trust gc's views more than my own source's. Oh! Just to identify myself (I wouldn't want to be accused of posing as someone else or hiding behind an alias), my name is Victor de la Serna, I am deputy editor of a national daily newspaper in Madrid, El Mundo, the editor of the wine information web site, www.elmundovino.com, and a frequent writer (for many years) on food and wine for a bunch of publications in the world, most of them fairly reputable, including Decanter magazine in the UK. I'm also a vinegrower and wine producer, but I guess this is of little import as far as this thread is concerned. What I'm not is a hearsay-monger, and I don't see where you're coming from to hurl that at me, frankly.

A pretty obvious example: "So you can provide us with some secondhand information coloured by whatever your relationship with MB is..." If that ain't prejudice tainted with a dollop of innuendo, you tell me what this is....

I wasn't exactly born yesterday, as is now copiously apparent, Jon. When the 'git' word is accepted by gc and interpreted in a highly dismissive manner by several participants, and gc doesn't come back (until much later) to correct all those interpretations, it may honestly be interpreted that he's acquiescing. I was not responding to gc alone, anyhow, but to the general direction this thread had taken.

I've been a professional journalist for 35 years. I don't go by hearsay, but by reliable sources - by reporting, in a word. Your innuendo and your prejudice are pretty amazing to me, Andy. Whoever gave you the divine right to dismiss what someone else, whom you've never met, writes about a subject that (of your own confession) is totally extraneous to you?