Spain's cooking.

[pedro]

That Spain has a tremendous variety of regional cookings is undeniable: from Andalusia to Galizia, we find different traditional cuisines all over the country. In fact, sometimes I find them so different that makes me wonder (and this is a debate that is not new in Spain) if we can talk about a Spanish cuisine as a whole.

Do you think that there's a Spanish cooking? If you do, which are the elements that characterize it?

I can think of several products (i.e. pork, olive oil to name two of them) that are used in each and every region, but I guess something more than that is needed to define a cuisine.

Ideas, please?

[vserna]

No, there isn't a "Spanish cuisine", Pedro. Not even olive oil is a generalized binding ingredient - take the Atlantic/Cantabric arc: only in Cantabria is there an historic presence of olive oil. Two centuries ago it was not used at all in Galicia, Asturias or the Basque Country, which were salt pork or butter regions. And pork is not enough of a common denominator: heck, pork is big in every Christian-oriented culture of the western world, and that's not enough to make Westfalia and Aragón two close cousins!

There was a consensus 40 or 50 years ago that restaurants offering cocina española basically offered a panoply of classic, traditional recipes from various regions: you had gazpacho and a few dishes made with various pulses (cocido, kidney bean soup, fabada, pote gallego, olla podrida...), tortilla de patatas, callos a la madrileña, bacalao a la vizcaína, besugo a la espalda, roast lamb, croquetas, albóndiga meat balls, flan... A varied palette for a varied palate, but that didn't amount to a common corpus. Thank goodness! A big country with a single national cuisine would be very boring.

Indeed the only larger European country that has a true national cuisine is France, and that's only because they have a fancy haute cuisine that was systematized by a number of great Parisian chefs since 1800, and which transcends regional cuisines.

Edited September 25, 2004 by vserna (log)

[Bux]

First, I think we can talk about it whether it exists or not. I think the discussion of whether it exists can be taken further than Victor takes it. I think the term is relative. Does France really have a national character? Victor says it has a true national cuisine that's the haute cuisine character. I'd disagree in that haute cuisine may influence all restaurants, but still be one facet of the cuisine. There is a cuisine of the Ile de France that's often taken as the national cuisine and it's been absorbing dishes from all over France, but still one eats differently in Provence than one does in Alsace or Brittany. It's just that France is homogenizing at faster rate than Spain for a longer time. In due time Spain is likely to follow suit as is a large part of Europe. Mozzarella, tomatoes and basil is now a typical bistro dish in France.

There are two aspects that come to mind as to whether a nation has a national cuisine. Is there food that is the same, or varies only slighty from region to region and whose appearance tends to stop abrupty at the borders? I'll submit the tortilla as an example for Spain. Can I also ask if there they foods that appear across the border that have not made inroads within the country? I think that question can no longer be asked in the 21st century without qualification. Balsamic vinegar, soy sauce and lemon grass seem to be ubiquitous and sushi, pizza and hamburgers are pretty well distributed. They may obliterate the regional cuisine as well as the national one. Perhaps one qualification of Pedro's question is to dismiss the international aspect and stick to the regional vs. national character of Spanish cooking.

I say the one doesn't preclude the other. If 90% of what's on a menu or eaten in a home in any area is regional food, I'm willing to suggest the other 10% may be national food and enough to say there's a Spanish cuisine, but that it's weak in comparison to the regional cuisine. Weak perhaps, but still worth identifying. Pork is ubiquitous, but it's different in China than it is when it's jamon. Can we find a Spanish common denominator in jamon and embutidos that is different than the Italian equivalent? I think so.

[vserna]

Victor says it has a true national cuisine that's the haute cuisine character. I'd disagree in that haute cuisine may influence all restaurants, but still be one facet of the cuisine. There is a cuisine of the Ile de France that's often taken as the national cuisine and it's been absorbing dishes from all over France, but still one eats differently in Provence than one does in Alsace or Brittany.

Can we find a Spanish common denominator in jamon and embutidos that is different than the Italian equivalent? I think so.

←

I disagree on both counts, Bux.

France has many regional cuisines, of course. Great regional cuisines, in most cases. But it also has that unique distinction - one unified, strictly codified national cuisine that from its start transcended regional traditions and was created by great chefs who wanted pomp, circumstance and luxury for the aristocracy and later the rich bourgeoisie they were serving: these great cooks, from Carême to Escoffier (or perhaps we should go back to Taillevent?), created an extravagant cuisine that had very little, if anything, in common with tripoux, aligot or andouillettes. And certainly nothing in common with Ile-de-France cookery. Sole Dugléré, lièvre à la royale and tournedos Rossini were identical when served in Paris, in Biarritz or in Monte-Carlo. Indeed, there was no need to be physically in France to be part of the creative process of that great cuisine – Escoffier did much of his pioneering work while living in London.

Perhaps Italy was on its way to something similar when the court of the Medici in Florence was the hotbed of modern cuisine in the Renaissance, exporting much of that knowledge and those techniques to – France, of course! But Italy was several centuries away from political unification, and the Medici experience never translated lastingly into a pan-Italian cuisine.

There is no clear-cut common denominator among Spanish schools of meat curing and sausage making. The Andalusian, Castilian, Asturian, Catalan, Basque, Extremaduran and Valencian traditions are extremely dissimilar, from the very nature of the meats used (Ibérico or white pork, venison, beef...) to the cooking, drying, spicing and casing techniques. So if there is not a common thread even within Spain, finding a decisive difference with a theoretical 'Italian school' of sausages becomes an impossible task.

We might argue, for argument's sake, that whereas Spain lacks a national cuisine it may be a decisive, driving force in the creation of an international modern school that would run through people like Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal and Charlie Trotter. But I'd say it's too early to tell if it's going to gel and last...

[dfunghi]

Just like to add a little here to the topic.

Perhaps what Spain has is a national "Eating" style. No where else do you find Tapas / Pinxtos and these you find in every corner of Spain. However varied the dishes may be they are all consumed the same way. Also perhaps the vast regionality of the food is its national identity. No place I have been ( Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, UK, USA, Mexico) have I ever seen such abrupt and definitive changes in landscape, food, dialect as I have in Spain. To us this was a unique charecteristic of Spain. A quite enjoyable one at that. There is a Spanish sensability to enjoying food that seems nationwide.

In addition let me add to the second part of the topic. Forget France, Greece has the most single identifiable and nationwide cuisine I have seen. From the Cyclades to Macedonia it is all very similar with almost no regionality. A village salad is the same all the country over as are Dolmades or Pastitsio to name a few. Just my 2 cents.

David

[Fat Guy]

Haute cuisine is not the only example of French national cuisine. There is also a relatively standardized set of dishes served in casual resaurants all over France as well as in restaurants outside of France that summarize French cuisine: onion soup, steak tartare, etc. To that extent, it can be said of most any country with many regional cuisines that there is a national "greatest hits" cuisine that draws from all over and embeds itself in the international culinary consciousness as a summary. For Spain that national cuisine would be paella valenciana, the tortilla, various tapas (especially chorizo), gazpacho, flan, sangria, and the like. It may be a dumbed down, inaccurate, poorly rendered take on Spanish cuisine, but you can find it in Spanish restaurants everywhere from Newark to Tokyo to Salamanca. Ask most anybody in the world who dines out casually and thinks about food somewhat but not a lot "What is Spanish cuisine?" and I assure you they'll name those dishes.

[vserna]

Steve:

Agreed that these things (onion soup and pâté de campagne for France; spaghetti bolognese and saltimbocca romana for Italy; paella and fabada asturiana for Spain) are served by 'French', 'Italian' and 'Spanish' restaurants all over the world as a summary of what these countries have to offer culinarily. But that's just a restaurant shortcut, a commercial choice, not a reflection of a real, single national culinary identity.

Just look at the mushrooming pan-Asian places throughout the world, which simultaneously offer Japanese sushi, Indonesian satay, Chinese dim sum, Thai red curry and Vietnamese nems. Should we conclude that, just because there are such restaurants, there is really a single unified Asian, or East Asian, cuisine? Of course not.

Well, New York Spanish restaurants (or, indeed, certain traditional Spanish restaurants in Madrid!) are just like those pan-Asian places. They offer a panoply, a summary, a hodgepodge - however you may want to qualify it, it's still a restaurant menu, a choice of dishes, not a real display of a national cuisine, coming from the same cultural and sociological background, from the same region, with a specific set of available ingredients and culinary habits.

Real international awareness of a country's culinary diversity only begins when the restaurant customers in any given city are finally given a chance to move from saltimbocca, pâté de campagne or paella (fake paella, usually) to regionally inspired restaurants.

This was very important in the case of Italian food, which really took off internationally when regional restaurants outside Italy began showing the different culinary traditions of Sicily, the Veneto or the Abruzzi. Not quite so important for France because in that case the unified, haughty/haute cuisine was the common thread of Le Pavillon, La Caravelle, Lutèce in New York, or Le Gavroche and the other Roux brothers restaurants in the UK; yet Breton, Alsatian, Lyonnais or Provençal restaurants also showed another decisive side of France's great gastronomic wealth. And, of course, this regional diversification was decisive in the spread of fine Chinese cuisine in the world. (I can still feel on my tongue the searing heat of Hunan dishes 30 years after I first tasted them at Hunam, the first NYC restaurant specializing in that then-unknown cuisine... )

So, should we conclude that just because tortilla de patatas is enjoyed all over Spain, there is a national cuisine consisting of only one simple eggs-and-potato dish? That would really minimize Spanish cuisine to caricature levels!

The point about a common Spanish attitude to food, with the spread of tapas, is more relevant here. But it should also be qualified. First, there is little in common, culinarily, between a modern, sophisticated San Sebastián pintxo and a dozen olives in a Huelva bar - other than the healthy habit of not serving drinks on their own, but always accompanying them with a little solid food. Second, tapas originated in Seville and moved rather early to Madrid, but their nationwide popularity is not much more than 30 years old, and they remain marginal in a number of areas. It takes more than 30 years, in the European timeframe, for a tradition to be considered as such. Third, and foremost, a national attitude to food is one thing, a national cuisine is quite another! This thread, I believe, responds to a specific question by Pedro: "Do you think that there's a Spanish cooking?"

No, I insist, there isn't yet. Yes, the Spanish, or Catalan-Basque if you will, approach to modern cuisine that's been inspired by Juan Mari Arzak and Ferran Adrià and now followed by youngsters like Andoni Luis Aduriz and Mario Sandoval, an approach that is radically technical and intensely centered on textures and temperatures, could become a unifying culinary force of greater magnitude than anything else ever experienced by Spain. But then it's no longer just a Spanish movement but a worldwide movement. Unless we want to count Blumenthal, Trotter, Samuelsson or Robuchon as "Spanish chefs", which would be somewhat exaggerated...

David:

Yes, Greek cuisine is rather unified; among other things, it's largely Turkish, as it reflects many centuries of Ottoman domination and has countless points in common with other former outposts of that empire - Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Armenia... (Yes, it's politically incorrect to call Turkish coffee by its name in Greece, where it's "Greek coffee", or in Armenia, where it's "Armenian coffee"... but it's still Turkish coffee!)

That said, let me go back to what I wrote in my first post: "The only larger European country that has a true national cuisine is France." Greece is a small country, as are Norway, Hungary, Croatia, Ireland... It would be unrealistic to expect wide regional diversity in countries of much smaller sizes and (even more important) with widely different cultural and ethnic situations; from Hungarian homogeneity to Spanish diversity, the models for European nations vary immensely, and so do the objective opportunities for culinary diversity to prosper.

Then again, once one starts digging into a European country's culinary heritage, surprising differences in very small territories may pop up! I grew up in Switzerland, a country of seven million (well, it was only six, way back then...), half the size of South Carolina - and it has three very distinct, albeit quite modest no doubt, cuisines - Germanic, Romand (French-Swiss) and Ticinese.

Zürcher Geschnetzeltes, fondue valaisanne and torta di pane have little in common as 'Swiss' dishes. They have probably more in common, respectively, with Southern Germany, Franche-Comté and Lombardy... Again, it's the regions (sometimes supranational regions), not really the nations!

[butterfly]

Ah, we were just debating this the other night, but more from an American perspective...

I agree with Vserna. I do not think that Spain has a national cuisine. I believe strongly that cuisine is an indicator of culture. And Spain lacks a strong centralized culture.

France was once as diverse culturally as Spain. But the French government much more effectively and systematically standardized the language spoken and the regional cultural practices. This filtered down to identity and cuisine. I think the geography, educational system and wide-spread industrialization of France lent itself to this much more than in Spain.

I lived in Barcelona and can attest that I now feel strongly that I am living in a different country (in Madrid). The food and the way that people eat (and live) is entirely different. There are no two places in the US or France that are as different as these two cities. In fact many countries in Europe are more similar than these two places.

There are only a few culinary commonalities that I have found are pervasive in Spain--tortilla española, turrón at Christmastime, and some form of jamón.

[pedro]

Ah, we were just debating this the other night, but more from an American perspective...

I agree with Vserna. I do not think that Spain has a national cuisine. I believe strongly that cuisine is an indicator of culture. And Spain lacks a strong centralized culture.

France was once as diverse culturally as Spain. But the French government much more effectively and systematically standardized the language spoken and the regional cultural practices. This filtered down to identity and cuisine. I think the geography, educational system and wide-spread industrialization of France lent itself to this much more than in Spain.

I lived in Barcelona and can attest that I now feel strongly that I am living in a different country (in Madrid). The food and the way that people eat (and live) is entirely different. There are no two places in the US or France that are as different as these two cities. In fact many countries in Europe are more similar than these two places.

There are only a few culinary commonalities that I have found are pervasive in Spain--tortilla española, turrón at Christmastime, and some form of jamón.

←

Note from the host: Please let's do keep the discussion focused on cooking. I don't think butterfly's intention is to divert this to a political debate but just wanted to make very clear from the beginning what's the topic debated here.

[pedro]

I tend to agree with the position that there isn't a Spanish cuisine. However, as we could argue that some Spanish cuisine could be emerging at the very top, lead by Adrìà and his legion of followers, couldn't it be argued that such a trend exists and has existed for some time at the most basics echelons?

I'd say that the immigration flows of last century's second half have result in a widely spread repertoire which include dishes from several regions: gazpacho, yes, but also bean dishes inspired by the fabada, legumes based dishes (lentils) and some others. If such a palette crystallizes, something that I see at risk due to the changes in our habits resulting in less and less cooking at home, couldn't it be considered as a sort of Spanish cuisine, in the sense of the cooking one would likely find in a big part of Spanish homes?

On a side note: would cod perhaps be a more widespread product than olive oil? Probably due to religion reasons which made this salt preserved fish the ideal to reach areas far from the sea for its consume during Eastern, when the meat fasting was pretty much observed until 20 years ago or so.

[vserna]

Codfish is much more pervasive in Portugal than in most of Spain, Pedro. So would we annex Portugal? Not falling into politics, it's a temptation that I hope died out centuries ago!

Indeed this points to a different type of culinary identity in Europe: regions, sometimes very far apart, united by their love for a certain product or way of cooking.

Examples?

Well, salt cod!

The lands of salt cod: Northern Portugal, Basque Country, Catalonia, Provence, Kingdom of Naples. How about Brazil, Greece, Mauritius? Maybe they should be in, too!

Others?

The lands of boiled dinners: Madrid and Castile in general (cocido, puchero), Andalusia (olla gitana), Catalonia (escudella i carn d'olla), Ile de France (pot-au-feu), Vienna and its hinterland (Tafelspitz), Piemonte and Lombardia (bollito misto). Let's not forget New England boiled dinners...

And on and on...

Edited September 26, 2004 by vserna (log)

[pedro]

Codfish is much more pervasive in Portugal than in most of Spain, Pedro. So would we annex Portugal? Not falling into politics, it's a temptation that I hope died out centuries ago! 

Indeed this points to a different type of culinary identity in Europe: regions, sometimes very far apart, united by their love for a certain product or way of cooking.

Examples?

Well, salt cod!

The lands of salt cod: Northern Portugal, Basque Country, Catalonia, Provence, Kingdom of Naples. How about Brazil, Greece, Mauritius? Maybe they should be in, too!

Others?

The lands of boiled dinners: Madrid and Castile in general (cocido, puchero), Andalusia (olla gitana), Catalonia (escudella i carn d'olla), Ile de France (pot-au-feu), Vienna and its hinterland (Tafelspitz), Piemonte and Lombardia (bollito misto). Let's not forget New England boiled dinners...

And on and on...

←

Víctor, you're addressing something that I didn't suggest, or if I did, I did it by mistake. I was simply wondering whether cod would have been more present for longer time, if only in very specific dates, than olive oil. I don't consider this to be the case anymore.

Regards,

[Bux]

a national attitude to food is one thing, a national cuisine is quite another!

Perhaps that's true. I'm inclined not to make a complete separation, but for the purpose of this thread, maybe we can agree on this and leave it behind us, although I suspect that if we find similarities in the way people eat, we will find some similarities in what they eat.

Victor has focused on France as a country with a national cuisine and based that claim largely on its haute cuisine. That haute cuisine, as has been noted, is not only based on a royal cuisine, but has been codified for the 20th century by a French chef working abroad a good part of his career. I think haute cuisine for the past 100 years has been more of an international cuisine, although I suppose the weakness of my claim may be that its been exported internationally by successive generations of French chefs. The real shock to the French ego is that a resume that says born and trained in France is no longer enough to move a chef to the head of the hiring list.

Waverly Root's The Food of France is the basis for my understanding of the food of France and he did a good job of separating the regions by the fat used for cooking--butter, olive oil and goose fat primarily. I don't think a similar claim for Spain will effectively convince me Spain has less of a national cuisine that France on that basis. In fact, I'm not sure any convincing is going to be done in this thread. Food is a very subjective topic. Remove taste, and it's hardly worth eating let alone talking about.

The virtual tests I'd propose are:

If you were dropped into a restaurant and most trappings of national identity were removed (flags, menus, etc.) and a meal was served to you, would you likely know you were in Spain, France or any other country. If you were dropped at ten restaurant table of a dozen different countries would the ten Spanish ones have an identity as greater or lesser than the other dozen countries. The fallacy here might be in confusing the knowledge of the parts with the sum, but with the exception of the most modern food in France, I can frequently tell what part of France I'm in from the dishes offered. Victor is well versed in haute cuisine and French regional cooking, but I recall a food savvy American expressing surprise that she couldn't find duck on the menu in her few days in Provence. Duck? Nothing as nationally French as canard à l'orange or magret, right? Wrong.

I'm less informed about the regional food of Spain. That accounts for some of my excitement when eating in Spain, but the enjoyment seems to be increasing with acquired knowledge. Maybe my opinion on this will change as I learn more, but at the moment, I feel all too aware of the exact moment I cross over the Pyrenees. I've left a region of France and entered a region of Spain, but there's a greater difference crossing the national border than the international ones in each country. There's a great blurring of this at the Atlantic and possibly one that's growing, but that's no greater a mark against a Spanish identity than a French one. I suppose my point is that for all the arguments we make here, our subjective impressions will rule our opinion.

The one last thought I might offer is that Spain excels in two things, canning and jarring all sorts of foods--vegetables, fish, etc--and preserving meat--particularly pork but venison and other meat as well--by curing, that much of its local bounty is very easily transportable wherever there's a taste for it. Victor, Pedro and others can tell me if that taste is often national. I know that in major markets and butchers, I see a variety of sausages from many regions.

[Fat Guy]

Sometimes a cuisine is just a cuisine.

[MiguelCardoso]

Perhaps people don't appreciate just how big and multinational Spain is.

Portugal, though it's linguistically and culturally homogeneous (a very rare state of affairs in Europe), doesn't have anything resembling a national cuisine and it's much smaller and much older as an independent political state than contemporary Spain. Regional cuisines are so different from each other that you'll gravely insult a cook if you say what they offer is "typically Portuguese". There is no such thing. Of course, every region thinks it produces the best food in Portugal (and makes a point of belittling the traditions of all the other regions) and, in this sense, if a practitioner is cocky and annoying enough, she or he might boast its cooking is "the true Portuguese cuisine".

This competition is a very good thing, as it accentuates the differences and localizes culinary practices and tastes.

In Spain, to make things even more complicated, you have a multitude of creative chefs who should be considered supranational or cosmopolitan in the richest sense. They go well beyond "reinterpreting" regional cuisine or "redifining" what their mothers and grandmothers cooked. This universality is a well-established trait of Spanish artists in general, rather than of Spanish art.

Of course it's convenient to think of "Spanish Food" (or Spanish Cuisine) - but the more correct way to describe the totality in a book or article would be "Food IN Spain".

Whereas with Portugal you can speak of a general, Portuguese attitude towards food, even along a simple conservative/adventurous axis., I can't see how even this can be done with the whole of Spain. Portugal could be said to be extremely conservative - but so is an enormous wedge of Spanish regional cuisines. It's just too diverse and, in many cases, open to change.

To get an idea of Portuguese cuisine you'd have to not only list the several regional traditions but also their objections to each other. These (thankfully) are insurmountable. Simple ingredients like garlic, coriander or olive oil are subject to enormous variations. But it's not seen as a "question of taste": the way other regions use or don't use them is considered absolutely wrong and filthy.

Although I have but a scant knowledge and experience of the food in Spain, I think the fact that it makes no sense to apply a national catch-all definition to a much smaller, neighbouring country like Portugal points to the folly of doing so with Spain.

God, if it's argument you want, just take a peek into the intense polemics within the regional cuisines themselves! :)