The Cuisines of Spain: Exploring Regional Home Cooking at Chef2Chef

The Cuisines of Spain is first and foremost a book to read. The author's first two chapters describe in great detail the history and geography of Spain's regions which she groups by shared climate and natural resources. She calls this "following bean stews rather than political boundaries." Woven into this tapestry are traces of the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks, Romans, Celts, Visigoths and Vandals (who left behind livestock farming practices), Moorish and Jewish culture, and, of course, the New World impacts of foods returning with Columbus--tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peppers. She gets granular--which pigs, grown where and eating what, contribute to the great hams of Spain.

She divides the book by the flow of a meal, and makes suggestions throughout which dishes would typically go together. This is if you were to choose to cook an entire Spanish meal, from tapas to dessert. You could also strive to include a single Spanish dish in your weekly meals, learning as you go, expanding a repertoire, because this is home cooking. This is about every day, not just special occasions.

The enterprising cook will find chapters devoted to "Tapas," "Cold Soups and Salads," "Vegetable Dishes and Other First Courses," "Breads," "Pies and Pastas," "Warm Soups and Legume Stews," "Rice Dishes," "Fish and Shellfish," "Poultry, Meats, and Game," "Desserts and Other Sweets," and "Beverages." There's a chapter of basic recipes as well as a list of sources for some of the more unusual ingredients.

This is a lush, beautifully illustrated and designed cookbook, as at home on a coffee table or nightstand as in the kitchen. Take the author's advice: Follow the bean stews into a new world of Old World home cooking. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly
Few have done more to disseminate the delights of Spanish cuisine than Barrenechea. A Spanish native, former New York restaurateur and author of The Basque Table, Barrenchea mixes Spanish history with the 250 recipes in this formidable cookbook. The recipes are grouped by course, and the author suggests some main dishes can, "in small portions, be served as tapas." This should, in theory, make meal-planning fun, but the sheer volume of recipes may intimidate many: there are eight chapters of courses, not counting tapas or sauces, and although Barrenechea insists these recipes do not require "hard-to-find ingredients," Spanish staples like salt cod or blood sausage can prove difficult to locate. Similarly, the author claims "you don't need a lot of specialized equipment," right after she asserts "if you want to cook authentic Spanish dishes," you'll need earthenware casseroles in different sizes, a paella pan, a food mill and a mortar and pestle. Although the recipes are superior-clear, concise, and delicious- this cookbook seems intended more for education than entertainment. Those who are obsessed with Spanish cooking will consider it a treasure; anyone with slightly less interest may feel overwhelmed.
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Reader Reviews
`The Cuisines of Spain, Exploring Regional Home Cooking' is by Teresa Barrenechea is, unlike the other prominent writers on Spanish cuisine, Penelope Casas and Coleman Andrews, a professional chef. This means here recipes tend to be just a bit more practical and interesting to eat, especially compared to Andrews, but it does not mean she will be better at putting together a really interesting book on all the regional cuisines of Spain. Until one gets to the chapters on actual recipes, it seems as if Mme. Barrenechea has everything you need for a good survey book on a national cuisine. For starters, there is a very decent physical and political map of the Iberian Peninsula, including the Balearic Islands and an insert on the Canary Islands. She follows up on this promise by including a discussion of the culinary geography of these two important island groups in her text. Chapter I starts out seeming like it will be giving us a history of Spanish Iberia, but turns into a survey of the culinary geography and economy of each of the main regions of Spain, which she identifies as: Andalusia La Ribera del Ebro Asturias and Cantabria Balearic Islands Basque Country The Canary Islands The Castiles and Madrid Catalonia Extremadura Galacia Levante The sections here which are the most interesting are those which are not covered well by Andrews, Casas, and in Barrenechea's book on the Basque region. Unfortunately, in those regions on which I have read a fair amount, I find Barrenechea's book a bit lacking and downright inconsistent in places. In the introduction, Mme. Barrenechea states that the Catalonian sauce, alioli is made with eggs, similar to the Provencal aioli, yet in her recipe in the back of the book (and in Coleman Andrews book on Catalonia), it is clearly stated that the classic recipe does not include egg. Barrenechea's discrepancy is probably explained by the fact that Andrews explains that while the classic excludes egg, most Catalonians actually include it anyway! Chapters 2 and 3 are possibly the best in the book, as they deal directly with simple matters, the primary ingredients and the distinct kitchen tools of Spanish cooking. In this regard, they follow the excellent model set up in Nancy Harmon Jenkins' `The Essential Mediterranean'. The recipes sections are organized by type of dish, with the Castilian and English names for each dish and the region from which each dish came. I find this not quite as satisfying as the organization of dishes by region, as Ms. Casas does in `Delicioso' and as Ms. Claudia Roden does in her classic `The Food of Italy'. I also spotted some significant oversights in assigning regions. On the one hand, the author is quite accurate in describing the `tortilla espanola' as a dish done throughout Spain, but her recipe is identical to the one in her book on Basque cuisine and the photograph presents the dish in the Basque style, squared and mounted on skewers rather than the more common Andalusian method of serving in wedges. This may not have seemed peculiar except that she did not make note of the fact that the version of the dish presented was Basque. All of this, however, is probably nit-picking, and all it means is that this book is not a definitive book on Spanish cuisine. It is certainly a very good overview of the whole subject, and a very nice complement to Ms. Casas `The Food and Wines of Spain'. But, if you wish to own more than one Spanish cookbook, I recommend you start with all of Ms. Casas titles, then Coleman Andrews' book, and then Ms. Barrenechea's book on Basque cuisine.