Robust classic recipes

[grahamtigg]

You cover a broad range of areas and terroirs - there must be scores and scores of regional dishes. Can you recommend some regional dishes with recipes that are particularly robust against being replicated in homes of the north, the UK for example?

By robust I mean that authentic ingredients and specialised cooking techniques aren't essential, and that they still taste good away from their natural habitat.

[Marina Chang]

One of my objectives during the course of writing Tastes of the Pyrenees was to select a modest number of recipes that are representative of the various cooking styles of the area. Another consideration was that a recipe could be easily duplicated using ingredients found in the U.S. and U.K. Hopefully, you will find that most, but not all, of the recipes I included in the book are relatively easy to prepare. For a few recipes whose preparations are fairly simple or straightforward,* and result in a very flavorful and robust dish, you might try the: Tomatoes Roasted with Garlic and Herbs, Garlic Squid or Shrimp, Escalivada, Roasted Rabbit (stuffed or unstuffed) with Allioli, Basque Chicken, Duck Magret with Walnut Garlic Sauce, Monkfish with Golden Garlic, Marinated Trout with Mint and Ham, and the Fruit in Red Wine dessert.

If you can locate some of the more specialty items, such as bacalao or salt cod, anchovies, fresh rabbit, pine nuts, and chorizo in the U.K. you should be able to make all the recipes in my book, as well as other regional dishes.

* By the term straightforward, I mean that a dish is simple to prepare, but the steps may be somewhat time consuming as one must chop, peel, marinate, or otherwise ready various ingredients before the final assembly.

- Marina