tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40337706318198996562012-01-27T00:45:16.374+01:00SPAIN: Food, tapas, markets, tastes, recipes.JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.comBlogger1081100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-88875925217634074582012-01-18T17:51:00.000+01:002012-01-18T17:51:35.195+01:00

Moros y Cristianos--black beans and rice. Moros y Cristianos—Moors and Christians. An unlikely name for a pot of beans and rice. But these are black beans—the Moors—and white rice—the Christians. In Spain, they have a long history of dueling it out. (Clue: the Christians win.) A moro in Spanish is an Arab, a Muslim, a Berber, a dark-skinned person, an invader, a pirate (as in, hay moros en la

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Pan de higos--fig roll spiced with anise and sesame seed. How do you say “Bah, humbug!” in Spanish? By the Twelfth Day of Christmas, I’ve had enough! Too much festive season, too much eating and drinking. I’m looking forward to getting back to hum-drum routines. The final day of Christmas, Epiphany (January 6), in Spain is known as Los Reyes, Kings’ Day, when the three kings come from Belén (

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Black-eyed peas, the Spanish way. Happy New Year, everybody! ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! I missed my chance to lock in good luck for the coming year, Spanish style, by eating one grape on each bong of the midnight bells. Years ago, standing in the village plaza as the church clock chimed, I choked trying to swallow all 12 grapes on top of a quantity of cava (bubbly). Since then I avoid the grape ritual

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Serve marzipan figures after Christmas dinner. Twas the night before Christmas and all through the casa, all the creatures were stirring, even the niños. Even at midnight. Of course, the babes don’t have to tuck in early in hopes that St. Nick soon would be there. That’s because he isn’t expected tonight—his Spanish rendition is the Three Kings, who bring gifts to good girls and boys on

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Tortillitas of spinach are a Spanish take on latkes. After I light the first Hanukkah candle at sundown, I won’t be serving potato latkes. I will be frying Spanish tortillitas, vegetable fritters, a Sephardic recipe that also belongs to today’s Spanish cooking. I have long suspected that traditional Spanish cooking includes many dishes that derive from Spain’s Jewish heritage. While the Jews

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Brown rice and vegetable paella. I’ve been trying to cut down on consumption of meat and seafood (for both health and environmental reasons). But I am discovering that it is ever so hard to be vegetarian and still cook Spanish. The traditional Spanish kitchen uses meat sparingly--a quarter of a stewing hen cooked in a cocido with garbanzos and vegetables feeds a family of six. But ham bone

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Potato tortilla--a favorite in every region. Ever wondered what’s cooking in Catalonia? What’s best of Basque or cool in Castilla? I recently wrote an article for U.K.-based magazine, FINE FOODIES (check it out on-line here), with a regional round-up of everything good to eat. Here is part of that article, providing some culinary geography, a cook’s tour of Spain. Olive variations. Taste:

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Patatas fritas--olive oil fries. I’ve just come back from the mill with a 5-liter jug of fresh extra virgin olive oil, fruit of my labor—I picked 60 kilos (132 pounds) of olives. I’ve still got more to pick, so, hopefully, I’ll earn another 5 to 10 liters, enough for all my cooking for about nine months. Olive oil from the mill. I use olive oil exclusively in my kitchen—to “butter” the

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Partridge shoot in Toledo. Los Yébenes  spreads out on the flanks of a long ridge, where a pair of 16th century windmills rides the crest. The village, south of the medieval city of Toledo, about 90 kilometres from Madrid, is known as the hunting capital of the highland Montes de Toledo. Hare, rabbit, deer, and boar are abundant, but it is the native red-legged partridge that is the delight

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-5528651382699012422011-11-12T21:38:00.000+01:002011-11-12T21:38:32.739+01:00

Some of my favorite Spanish tapas. Got a question about Spanish cooking? Looking for a recipe? Need some tips on paella making? Searching for instructions to prepare bacalao? Ask me! I’m the expert on Spanish cooking. Just leave your question in the COMMENTS.  I’ll either reply in the comments or, if it’s an inspiring question, write a blog posting about it. Garlic Soup Recently a

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  Pasta with sofrito and chorizo. I still have late-crop tomatoes ripening in the garden. I’ve been blanching, skinning and bagging them for the freezer—a great asset for winter’s soups and sauces. But today I was inspired to make a batch of  sofrito, some to use immediately and some to freeze. Late-crop tomatoes from the garden. Quite a lot of mystique accompanies sofrito, considered the “

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-81258438504055047532011-10-30T20:25:00.000+01:002011-10-30T20:25:17.493+01:00

The Great Pumpkin, aka Calabaza. Before I came to live in Spain (more than 30 years ago), I had never seen pumpkins, except the snaggle-toothed jack-o-lantern sort, nor eaten them, except baked in a pie shell with lots of sugar and spice. In Spanish markets I was amazed to find giant pumpkins (calabaza), dark green and grooved on the outside, bright orange flesh on the inside. Market vendors

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Meatballs with almond-saffron sauce. I was working on an article about Spanish food for a British magazine, with recipes for some of my favorite tapas. One I chose is a tapa bar classic—meatballs in a saffron-almond sauce. The editor asked if I had any photos, and I realized that I hadn’t made meatballs in a really long time and had no photos in my files. Now I do. They were so delicious.

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Donna Gelb picking out the perfect tomatoes. As we strolled through the market, filling baskets with fresh produce—gorgeous heirloom tomatoes, striped eggplant, fat zucchinis, glowing red peppers—I started planning my dinner menu. We were shopping at a weekly outdoor organic farmers’ market, held in four different inland villages on consecutive weekends, this week in Cártama Estación (

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Roman ruins of Baelo Claudia. While my friend Donna from New York was visiting last week, we made an excursion to see the Roman ruins of Baelo Claudia. Situated right on the wind-swept beach of Bolonia, near Tarifa in the Straits of Gibraltar—the southernmost tip of Europe—the ruins are of a fairly substantial town that thrived from the 2nd century BC until 2nd century AD. Vats where garum

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Bell peppers for stuffing. Peppers are coming fast and furious. Last week I was frying the thin green ones (read about frying peppers here). This week I’m stuffing big fat red bell peppers that are rampant in the garden. Bell peppers ripen in the garden. I used to love my Missouri grandmother’s stuffed peppers. She used ground beef and rice and braised the peppers very slowly in the oven.

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How to eat a fried pepper. Hold it by the stem and dangle the fried pepper over your mouth. Eat it whole, throw away the stem. Have another. Fried green peppers are a late-summer treat all over Spain. They are served as tapas—so good with a cold caña, draft beer—or as a side dish with steak, chops or fried eggs. Long and kinky or short and stubby—two sorts of peppers are used for frying.

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A village feria is a party on a grand scale, usually accompanied by fun-fair rides, sports competitions, cultural exhibitions, feasting. And round-the-clock partying.     In my village, the feria happens early in September, in honor of the Virgen de la Peña, the Virgin of the Rock, so-called because the image was discovered in a stone grotto on the edge of town. Baby girls are named in honor of

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Potato salad with lemony dressing. Invited to a friend’s barbecue supper, I offered to bring a side dish.  How about potato salad? I make a Spanish-style potato salad, ensaladilla de patatas, also known as  papas aliñadas. Unlike most American-style potato salads, it has no mayonnaise, but a lemony olive oil dressing. But, how was I to know that José also was bringing potato salad? His was

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Sangría by the pool. What do you drink lolling around the pool on a hot August afternoon? How about sangría, chilled red wine punch with fruit? Light and refreshing, sangría also goes well with party foods—ham and melon on picks, spicy meatballs, grilled mini-kebabs, fried chicken wings. There are variations on the sangría theme. Add different fruits, make it more or less sweet, fortify

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Wild fennel. When I saw a ChefShop newsletter touting wild fennel pollen, 17 grams for $19.89, as a “well-kept seasoning secret” with “incredible flavor that stands on its own.” I said, “I gotta try some of that”. So I went to the edge of the garden, where the weeds range tall, and picked a bunch of flowering bracts of wild fennel. I pan-fried pork chops with slivers of garlic, put them on

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GAZPACHO! (Photo by J.D. Dallet) Ripe tomatoes in the garden and hot August days—definitely time for gazpacho. At my house, gazpacho is true to its roots—tomatoes, garlic, onion, green peppers and cucumbers from the garden, a chunk of stale bread, my own extra virgin olive oil. I whirl the ingredients in a blender, sieve out the bits of skin and tomato seeds, thin the gazpacho slightly

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Pine nuts at the source. I was having a quiet breakfast on the terrace, eating fresh-picked strawberries with yogurt and savoring a cup of tea, when CRASH, a missile hit the deck right beside me, sending shrapnel in all directions. I looked skyward, into the tops of a towering pine tree on the other side of the patio wall, and, there they were, potential missiles just waiting for a strong wind

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Not gazpacho, but cold soup with melon.   There’s an old country joke, the sort of thing that you tell little kids, that watermelons are completely white inside until the very instant that you cut one open. As you insert the knife, the flesh turns deep red. Magic. So last week, a watermelon arrived from a friend’s garden that failed to work according to design. We sliced into it and—oh no!—

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Eggs stuffed with tuna. Invitations went out on Facebook a couple months ago for a big summertime get-together of expat families and their kids who grew up together in this Spanish village. Now, our kids have kids. Some still live in the village, but others are far-flung. The visit of one family from Chicago was the reason for the party. It was a terrific reunion of cousins, school friends,

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Onion harvest. When my kids were growing up, come dinnertime, all I had to do was heat a little olive oil in a pan and add a chopped onion, gently frying it a few minutes, and the kids would materialize from the depths of homework or TV asking, "Smells great, what's for supper?"  At which point, I could serve liver, fish brains, spinach or vetch and get away with it.  Nothing, I think,

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I’m home! After several weeks visiting friends and family in the United States, I am back in my kitchen in Spain. Picking lemons, inspecting the ripening tomatoes, gloating over the onion harvest, pouring out my own olive oil, I am glad to be here. But I am remembering some wonderful food that I ate in the US, from New York to Atlanta to New Orleans. Let me share some of the flavors of my

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-45898690258865796002011-06-20T03:09:00.001+02:002011-07-02T09:59:44.527+02:00

(Photo by Donna Gelb.) When I go traveling, I pack a kit with saffron, pimenton and Spanish rice so that I can prepare paella for my hosts where I am staying.We go out shopping for good olive oil from Spain, chicken and seafood and return to the kitchen to work together. On this trip to the US, I've made paella in New York with my friend Donna Gelb and two more with my son Daniel and his

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Look at this! You can buy my book, TAPAS--A BITE OF SPAIN -at DESPANA in New York. You also can find lots of ingredients for preparing tapas and the wines to accompany them at Despana. I visited the shop with my friend Donna Gelb, a New York-based food writer, in search of a taste of Spain in New York. Pedro slices iberico ham at Despana. We sampled some fine jamon iberico de bellota--

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Strawberries from the garden. At breakfast time, I take my basket and clamber down the embankment to the strawberry patch, picking just enough of the juicy red berries to eat right away. With a big dollop of yoghurt, the fruit is such a delight. I’ve only got about a dozen plants, so don’t get much more than one serving every other day. Next year I’m going to dig in a lot of manure and see if

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-89746497165590063432011-05-29T20:42:00.001+02:002011-05-30T00:18:23.043+02:00

Grilled duck breast with olive-Sherry sauce. My home-cured olives have lost their punch. They still taste great, but the texture has changed and they are too mushy to serve as aperitif. I picked and pitted the olives myself, then brine-cured  them with thyme, fennel and garlic. Because they have no preservatives, the olives don’t keep more than a few months. What to do with several jars of

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All about tapas, by Enrique Becerra, Sevilla. Sevilla is the tapas capital of the world. This is where the tapas custom originated. Although I live only a couple hours away from that magical city, I don’t get there very often. But I vicariously enjoy virtual tapas from Sevilla every day by following posts on Facebook from Sevilla Tapas. Shawn Hennessey, a Canadian who lives in Sevilla, posts

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I have a big bucketful of freshly-dug potatoes from my garden. The spuds,   brown-skinned and white-fleshed, come in all sizes, tiny ones, golf-ball sized ones, big lumpy fist-sized ones. Newly hatched, they still smell of the earth. Potatoes from the garden. I’ll be eating potatoes for quite a while. But, right now I need to celebrate their first appearance. I choose a simple recipe from

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Congratulations to the 2010 James Beard cookbook awards winners. (See the list here) Speaking of cookbooks, let me tell you about mine. As you can see from the lineup in the left-hand column, I have five cookbook titles currently in print. All are about the food of Spain, with recipes, anecdotes and information. Although there is some overlapping—recipes for potato tortilla appear in all five;

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Artichoke and orange salad. Artichoke season has come around again. My own artichoke plantation—six plants circling the clementine tree—looks to be thriving, but so far has not sent up any artichokes. Artichoke flowers. Artichokes are the flower buds of an edible thistle. Last year, when the ants and aphids took over the plants, I let the buds mature and open to dramatic purple thistle

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Tortillitas are pancake-like fritters of salt cod, drizzled with molasses. I hear the solemn drumming. The village streets are slicked with candle wax after processions have passed. Holy Week is here again. That means it’s time again for bacalao—dry salt cod—the meal of choice for Viernes Santo, Good Friday. Truthfully, cooking salt cod but once a year is not sufficient to really get a handle

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Torrijas are cinnamon-scented slices of fried bread. This week all the local bread and pastry shops display trays of sugared or honeyed slices of fried bread dusted with cinnamon called torrijas. Torrijas are somewhat like “French toast,” but in Spain they are served as dessert or snack, not breakfast. In Andalusia and La Mancha, torrijas are absolutely essential during Holy Week and Easter

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Revuelto is eggs scrambled with vegetables. My favorite flash-in-the-pan lunch dish is revuelto. Revuelto means  “scrambled.” But the dish is more than simple scrambled eggs. It starts with a sofrito of garlic, ham and vegetables. Then the eggs are scrambled into the sofrito. I take my basket and head for the huerta, the kitchen garden. Sometimes I pick small heads of broccoli for the

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-90427225141805951782011-04-02T22:01:00.000+02:002011-04-02T22:01:52.586+02:00

Ferran Adrià, the Picasso of modernist cuisine, plays with gelification, liquid nitrogen, foams, smokes, what he terms “techno-emotional food”. Delicious is sometimes beside the point. It’s all about thrill, excitement, creativity. And technique. Dinner as high art. I’m not a chef. I’m a home cook and I learned Spanish cooking from home cooks. I cook and write about the traditional Spanish

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Looking for the history of olive oil in Spain? Bio notes of Ferran Adrià? Where to eat tapas in New York City? Want to import foods from Spain? Discover how to make sofrito or escabeche? Looking to find ibérico ham on the hoof? You will find answers to all these inquiries and many more at this new interactive web portal, FOODS FROM SPAIN. Sponsored by ICEX, Spain’s institute for foreign trade (

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Hooray, Carnaval! Cancelled two weeks in a row because of rain, today carnaval processions hit the streets in my village with raucous banging, ringing, singing and dancing. Carnavales are the pre-Lenten bacchanalia that, by the Church calendar, should have ended a week ago. But, all that planning for costumes shouldn’t go by the wayside because of a few rainstorms! After the groups

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 Families and Food   If you live in the US and have an interest in the food of Spain, you likely have heard of La Tienda, an on-line retail store that specializes in foods imported from Spain. Not so many years ago, before pimentón, chorizo, olive oil from Spain, serrano and ibérico ham became popular in many American supermarkets, La Tienda http://www.tienda.com/  was one of a very few

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On a sunny Sunday in Málaga, neighbors gathered for a Carnaval street party featuring music and a hearty traditional stew called berza.  Forty kilos (almost 90 pounds) of chickpeas along with a similar amount of sausages and pork went into four enormous ollas, stew pots, making enough to serve 800 people.  Local politicians (municipal elections are in May) came along to stir the pots and chat

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When you pick up a package of Manchego cheese at the supermarket, do you ever stop to wonder where it comes from? Manchego means it comes from La Mancha. La Mancha, Don Quixote’s stomping ground, is an upland plateau in the very heart of Spain. It’s a land of open spaces and big skies, where shepherds move herds of sheep across stubbled fields. Windmills appear on ridge tops like a line of

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Seafood soup (sopa de pescados y mariscos).  Spain has dozens of fish soups—Catalan suquet, Andalusian sopa de rape, Galican caldeirada, Murcia’s caldero. Most of these are basic fishermen’s fare—the catch of the day cooked up in sea water with olive oil and garlic plus bread or potatoes to add substance to the broth. The Basque version of seafood soup also starts out as a simple marinero

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Eggplant Pâté  When my cholesterol level hit 300, my doctor shook his head and  handed me a prescription for a new medication. I had already been through three different statin drugs—and suffered bad side effects. After a trial year with no medication, it appeared that diet alone wasn’t going to lower those numbers. Just for the record—I use olive oil exclusively in my kitchen. I don’t eat a

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A dream come true—avocados in my garden! That’s after five years of wondering why my little avocado tree never made fruit. The tree appeared to thrive, but year after year it flowered and produced lots of avocado nubbins that all fell off. I worried that perhaps it needed a mate—cross pollination? I think it just needed more and deeper watering. As I watched my fruit mature, I was gifted with

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Caldo Gallego--Galician soup with beans and broccoli raab. In the summertime, I grow a “gazpacho garden”—tomatoes, green peppers and cucumbers to keep me supplied with the ingredients for that lovely cold dish. In the winter, it becomes a “soup garden”—leeks, chard and kale for adding to hearty vegetable soups. This year, instead of kale seeds, I received a packet of broccoli raab seeds.

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I’ve watched as tourists reach up and pick an orange or two from the trees that grow in the village plaza, peel them and pop a bite into their mouths. What an expression as they taste the sour juice! Orange trees planted in public plazas in Spain, such as the enchanting Patio de los Naranjos adjoining the cathedral in Sevilla, are the bitter orange, the same kind used for marmelade. The peel of

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  I’ve been writing about Spanish food for 40 years and counting! Food from every angle—recipes, restaurants, trends, ingredients, seasonal produce, holidays. Articles and cookbooks. The writing is easy. Recipe testing is not easy, but I’ve gotten better at it over the years. People tell me my recipes really work. But, a food blog, I’ve discovered, is much more than just writing or good recipes

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FELIZ NAVIDAD My family and I are invited to friend Charlotte's house for Christmas dinner. I'm taking good old mashed potatoes--seasoned for the occasion with bittersweet pimentón, smoked paprika.  From MY KITCHEN IN SPAIN, I send good wishes to all for a happy holiday season. 

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I once lived in an old house in the village with a big, overgrown garden behind it. Stone dry walls divided the sloping garden into terraces on which were planted many trees—an olive, a fig, orange and lemon, peach, pear and apricot. All these I could identify. Then there were some others, new and exotic to me. One of these bloomed flamboyant red flowers in the spring and then in the fall 

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Whole Hog (Ibérico, Dehesa de Extremadura) When I was reporting for an article about Spanish ibérico ham from 5J in Jabugo (read the story in the Los Angeles Times here), I was sniffing about for recipes with ham and listening for Americans’ experience with Spanish ham. I called up my main “ham man,” Miguel Ullibarri, formerly director of the Real Ibérico consortium and now with A Taste of Spain,

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Glowing red-orange orbs of fruit on a neighbor’s tree had a powerful attraction. I could see them, dangling tantalizingly, every time I went up the steps to my car. The fruit attracted small birds as well. I watched them peck holes in the bright skins, hollowing out the fruit. Time to take action. As my neighbor would be away for months, I took a step-stool and basket and managed to pick all but

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Last weekend, with glorious fall weather, my son, Ben; grandson, Leo; visiting friend, Donna, and hired man, Juan, gathered to help me pick the olive crop. Donna and I had already filled one gunny sack with pickings from several small trees, but that day we gathered the olives from a single big tree. With a tarp spread on the ground to catch fallen olives, Ben clambered up the tree to cut down

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To market, to market, to buy a fat pig. Or small goat. A grand grouper or a heap of spiny sea snails.  One sunny Saturday a friend and I hopped on a commuter train for the 50-minute ride to Málaga to visit the recently reopened Atarazanas market and have lunch at La Moraga a “gastrobar” that’s been getting a lot of attention since it opened two years ago. We entered the market through a grand

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Trick or treat is just starting to catch on in Spanish towns and lately jack-o-lanterns and witches’ on broomsticks are popular novelty items. Instead of Halloween, in Spain there are two holidays in a row—November 1 is Todos los Santos, All Saints—a real holiday when businesses and schools are closed. November 2 is Día de los Difuntos, Day of the Dead. Once village folk believed that spirits

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 Saffron Flowers Two ounces of home-grown Spanish gold—what a treasure! Nothing illicit here—I’m talking about saffron. I grew the precious spice in big flower pots from bulbs brought from La Mancha (central Spain), saffron’s home ground. The flower is a type of crocus-- crocus sativus. These crocuses appear, not in the spring, but just in time for Halloween. Saffron, the spice, consists of

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It’s been an unusually busy week for me, with two cooking demos for women’s clubs. (I wasn’t actually “cooking”, though I’ve done that before too.) The first, for the Costa Ladies Club, was a seafood how-to featuring recipes from my book, TAPAS—A BITE OF SPAIN. The second, for an international conference of the Soroptimist Club, was a demo of Andalusian gazpacho and white gazpacho, ajo blanco.

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Check out my article in the Los Angeles Times HERE about the coming of Jabugo ibérico hams to America. If the first wave of ibérico was called the “best ham in the world,” this may be even better than the best!  I’ve been to see those famous hams on the hoof, in Jabugo (Andalusia) and in Extremadura. These are free-range pigs of the ibérico breed that are fattened on acorns (bellotas) from wild

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The first time I encountered a mixed drink made with Sherry—a Sherry-tini—I  was horrified. I guess I’m a purist—I like my fino Sherry straight up and chilled, in a proper stemmed Sherry copa. Likewise, it seems a shame to mess with a mellow amontillado or palo cortado. Nevertheless, I must admit that Sherry, slightly nutty, lightly fruity, a tiny bit salty, adds complexity and depth of flavor

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ROMESCO SAUCE A simple baked potato, a heap of green beans, cooked artichoke, chicken breast or succulent grilled shrimp—a good sauce will improve any one of those easy-to-prepare foods. And, from the repertoire of Spanish sauces, there is none more hallowed than romesco, a Catalan sauce of toasted nuts, dried red peppers, garlic and olive oil. Although originally a sauce from Tarragona (

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-59268952900515140122010-09-06T23:10:00.001+02:002012-01-25T13:33:48.662+01:00

Cojonudo--"ballsy", a tapa of quail eggs and ham. What a great promotion—a tapa and glass of wine for only €1.50 (about $1.90) at any of 13 different bars and cafés around the village, all within walking distance of the main plaza.  The ruta de tapas, tapa route with special prices, took place on Tuesdays and Thursdays during summer months. For the price, you could have one drink and tapa in

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Figs, plump, luscious and sweet, are one of the pleasures of summertime. My fig trees are pretty  insignificant—one is out of reach beyond a bramble patch and the fruit of the other is consumed by field rats before it even ripens. Luckily, my friend Charlotte has a garden where figs thrive. One enormous, sprawling tree is laden with fruit. Several smaller trees bear different varieties of

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Yesterday, on the steps of the local market, a kid was selling higos chumbos,  prickly pears, the fruit of the cactus. Wearing gloves to protect his hands from the spines, he deftly sliced the ends from the egg-shaped fruits, slit open the skin and unwrapped the yellow-orange fruit. Chumbos are an emblematic fruit of high summer in southern Spain, when August heat can soar to 40ºC (104ºF). The

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Observer Food Monthly's 50 best cookbooks puts TRADITIONAL SPANISH COOKING at #25.  See the article and selections from 50 to 11 hereTo see which books made the Top Ten all-time best cookbooks, click here   First published in 1996, TRADITIONAL SPANISH COOKING won the André Simon award for cookbooks in 1997. The current edition, a soft cover, was published by Frances Lincoln (U.K.) in 2006. Here's

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I may be the only person in the world who can’t grow zucchini. The plants flourish and flower, but the baby zukes turn yellow and fall off the vine before they mature. Anybody know why? Too much water or not enough water? I harvest the tiny zucchini and enjoy them simply sauteed in olive oil. But, to prepare some of my favorite zucchini dishes, I have to head to the market or wait until

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Photo from Málaga Hoy/EFE Michelle Obama is vacationing on the Costa del Sol (southern Spain)! She and younger daughter, Sasha, and some friends are staying at a posh resort hotel in a village just a few miles up the road from where I live. Although the American press has almost nothing to say about Michelle Obama’s trip—except to wonder why she’s not with the president on his birthday—here

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What in the world is the feminine for “grill meister”? Is she “maistresse of the grill”? Grill mistress? She with the art and craft, learned from a master, is my friend Donna Gelb who visited me in Spain a few weeks ago. Donna was recipe developer for Argentine chef Francis Mallmann’s acclaimed book, SEVEN FIRES. She worked alongside the chef on location at his exquisite little hotel in Garzon,

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Clumps of flowering thyme on the sun-baked hillside near my house give off a powerful scent. They attract me and the bees. I pick handfuls of the herb to use in the kitchen, to dry for future use. I think thyme is my most favorite herb, so redolent of Mediterranean landscape. I scatter it over simple roast chicken, pork and lamb, add it to soups and stews. With thyme on my hands, I’m looking

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The first really ripe tomatoes in my garden appeared only a week ago. I sliced them, drizzled them with fine olive oil and ate them with pleasure. Now, they are coming fast and furious. Of course, I’m making gazpacho (see my favorite gazpacho recipe here). I also have a weakness for BLTs, made with toasted whole-grain bread, homemade olive oil mayonnaise, crisp bacon, lettuce, sliced sweet

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The oracle has spoken. A German octopus named Paul gained fame by predicting that Spain would win the soccer World Cup last Sunday, and, so, it has come to pass.  (Paul's picture here). VIVA ESPAÑA! In spite of the respect for a cephalopod so savant, so sporting, consumption of octopus tapas in Spain has skyrocketed in the past week or two. Especially in Galicia (northwestern Spain), where it

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One of summer's pleasures in Spain is eating fresh sardines, roasted on a fire in the salt air at the seaside.  The sardines are speared on skewers stuck into the sand in front of the flames and grilled until crackly. The aroma is irresistible, tantalizing.  You pick them up in your fingers and eat the flesh off the bones.  Accompanied by icy, cold beer and chunks of fresh bread to absorb the

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My gazpacho garden is about to bear fruit. Summer’s sun is turning the tomatoes crimson. They’ll soon be gloriously ripe and sweet. I’ve got the first crinkly, thin-skinned  green peppers and fat cucumbers as well as onions and garlic harvested earlier. A jug of my own extra virgin olive oil, a chunk of stale bread and tangy lemon juice complete the ingredient list for the season’s first

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“GranJan, you’re a good cooker,” said my six-year-old grandson Leo. Observing that the kid really liked tuna, really liked pasta, I guessed that a summer pasta salad was likely to hit the spot with him. His dad, Ben, suggested that I was “a good cook,” not a “cooker”. But, hey, I’ll take all compliments with a smile. The critics were not so easy on me a week later, when the other set of

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An especially wet winter worked wonders for my lemon tree—it’s loaded with fruit. Right now the tree bears large, overripe lemons as well as small, green ones that will mature by the end of summer, plus fragrant blossoms presaging winter’s fruit. In other words, three crops of lemons in a year. I use lemon juice and zest just about daily, because they are essential ingredients in Spanish

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“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” was Steve Winston’s last word after the E&J Gallo Winery threatened him with a law suit if he didn’t immediately stop selling the imported Gallo brand of fideo noodles. Steve and his wife, Sharon, run The Spanish Table, retail stores and web site, specializing in foods and wines from Spain. Gallo translates as “cock,” as in “rooster.” And as in “cock-and-bull story.” The

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Loquat tree. What’s that unusual fruit? Egg-shaped, the color of bright apricots, growing in clusters amongst floppy, dark-green leaves on a small tree in my neighbors’ garden. It’s a níspero, or loquat (Eriobotry japonica) (and not a medlar, as it is sometimes mistakenly called). Like apples and pears, the loquat is a member of the rose family. Loquats ripen in the spring, much earlier than

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Last week I was at the top of the fava bean season (see the previous blog posting for a couple of recipes). This week it’s peas, sweet garden peas, and a few long-awaited artichokes. Along with just-pulled spring onions and some asparagus (from the market), the ingredients add up to one of the best vegetable dishes of the seasonal Spanish kitchen. This is menestra, a mixture or melange of

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I am inundated with fava beans! I’ve just picked enough to fill a laundry basket and will spend a good hour shelling them. It’s been a bumper crop of favas this year. Weeks ago, the first tender beans were such a delight—they can be cooked pods and all. After that, it was a pleasure to pick and shell a double handful of them to add to a soup or stew or to scramble with eggs. But now, I’ve got

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Thick slabs of grilled bread, tomatoes, cloves of garlic, extra virgin olive oil, a rough wooden board—this was the starting point for almost every meal I ate in Barcelona, the makings of pa amb tomàquet, simply, bread with tomato. The bread has substance, but it’s not a dense-crumbed loaf. We cut the tomatoes in half and scrubbed them onto the bread. “Start on the crisp outside edges of the

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-59451438619862021402010-04-19T00:28:00.000+02:002010-04-19T00:28:51.354+02:00

No wonder I gained a few pounds! In the space of three days visiting Barcelona’s Alimentaria, one of the world’s biggest food trade fairs (94,500 square meters of exhibition space, with 4000 companies showing their wares, attended by about 140,500 professionals), I probably tasted 40 different cheeses (with accompanying bread); 10 different olive oils (bread for dipping); lashings of ibérico ham

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-82350961504581846252010-04-10T19:47:00.000+02:002010-04-10T19:47:45.745+02:00

Can you imagine life before potatoes? Unless your origin is, perhaps, Peruvian, there was such a time--hardly 500 years ago--when potatoes didn’t exist. No fries. No jacket potatoes. No mashed. No potatoes. Not in Ireland. Nowhere in Europe. Not in India, nor China. Not in North America. It wasn’t until some 40 years after Columbus set sail from Spain that potatoes found their way to the Old

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-11384862848810949812010-04-03T21:48:00.001+02:002010-04-03T21:51:03.681+02:00

Mountains of strawberries, heaps of artichokes, oceans of escarole, rafts of olives. Shrimp in every size and color. Lobsters waving their feelers. Snails oozing out of string bags. Glistening tuna, stacks of salt cod. Barcelona’s Boqueria market stuns the senses. As I wandered through the crowded market, which is situated just steps off La Rambla, even my olfactory senses were aroused. Near

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-36273332361189572872010-04-02T18:06:00.002+02:002010-04-02T23:58:08.313+02:00

This is Semana Santa, Holy Week, which precedes the joyous feast of Easter. In Catholic Spain, many people observe the Lenten period by abstaining from meat. In that sense, this holiday is a fast rather than a feast, but it, too, is celebrated with special foods, in particular, bacalao, salt cod. On the streets of cities and villages, Holy Week brings massive religious processions and fervent

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-38795555561429154622010-03-22T21:57:00.001+01:002010-03-23T09:17:49.030+01:00

PHOTO MONTAGE BY HARALD KUNZE. Clockwise from upper left: duck legs in Málaga wine sauce with red Torques 2002; Harald Kunze, who took these photos; old posters; raspberry sorbet with dark chocolate truffles; piquillo peppers stuffed with bonito in tomato sauce; duck leg and sauce to mop up with bread; spring flowers; Julian Sanjuan introducing the wine and me, sniffing; two of the wines sampled;

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-44020199226437570112010-03-16T16:54:00.000+01:002010-03-16T16:54:25.734+01:00

My artichoke plantation has been through several incarnations. First, I imagined the stately, perennial plants on the rough slope above my terrace. I harvested a few, but the plants did not thrive, for the soil was too poor. Next I tried two separate locations in “loamy” garden soil (loamy, in quotes, because in southern Spain,  except in river bottoms, loam does not exist). The ants devastated

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-35320594815001729782010-03-07T19:53:00.000+01:002010-03-07T19:53:44.848+01:00

I go into the village three mornings a week to work out at the local gym. I’m not becoming musclebound, by any stretch, just desperately trying to keep toned.Afterwards, I head for a café in the plaza for a café con leche, strong espresso coffee with milk. The café is sort of like my living room—I sit by the window, read the local (Málaga) newspaper and keep an eye on comings and goings. Then I

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-24032764904678595832010-03-03T00:42:00.000+01:002010-03-03T00:42:44.574+01:00

By 8 pm, early for Madrid, I was ravenous. Three of us ducked into a neighborhood bar near where I was staying with friends in the Ventas district of Madrid. Glasses of red wine were set before us and, without asking, a plate of lacón, sliced cured and cooked pork, sort of like picnic ham, drizzled  with a little olive oil and pimentón (paprika). Though I never saw the name of the bar, my guess

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-15976731086828298872010-02-23T19:34:00.000+01:002010-02-23T19:34:17.143+01:00

Menu for a Dinner Party“This is Spanish?” asked one of my dinner guests, as I served a platter of rolled and stuffed pork loin. Well, yeah—pork, figs, Sherry, that’s all pretty Spanish. “It’s a recipe from one of my cookbooks,” I said.The guest, friend and colleague, Gerry Dawes, is a journalist and specialist in the wines of Spain who lives in New York, but spends long stretches of time

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-74951537412068943232010-02-22T19:46:00.000+01:002010-02-22T19:46:18.736+01:00

My good friend, artist Charlotte Gordon (see her work here), was a recent dinner guest at my house. She loved the dessert, a Spanish take on cheesecake, and asked me for the recipe. So, here it is, for all to enjoy.                                                                                    (Photo by Gerry Dawes) Called quesada or tarta cuajada, this cheese tart comes from the northern

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-22618283218416472052010-02-18T19:10:00.000+01:002010-02-18T19:10:31.911+01:00

New Englanders may protest that their beloved chowder has “protected geographical denomination” and can’t possibly have a Mediterranean inflection. But, according to the dictionary, chowder is “a thick soup or stew, typically made of clams or fish and various vegetables”. By that definition, this Spanish fish soup certainly qualifies. Besides, its creamy, white color and the inclusion of potatoes

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-47544340713305927622010-02-16T19:18:00.001+01:002010-02-16T19:24:39.894+01:00

Déja vu. Back in 1994, when Spain was in a deep recession, I wrote an article entitled “Economy Gastronomy.” (It appeared in Lookout, an English-language magazine published in Spain, for which I wrote a monthly food column for nearly 30 years.) I offered a number of tips for eating well in recessionary times. Since the budgetary crunch has come round again, I looked back at my own advice. Here’s

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-78104948686476052212010-02-13T19:02:00.000+01:002010-02-13T19:02:58.565+01:00

The Spanish word for oil—aceite—derives from the Arabic phrase that means “juice of the olive.” (Interestingly, the Spanish word for the olive tree—olivo—comes from the Romans who preceded the Arabs in Spain.) I’ve just come home from the olive mill with a five-litre jug of olive juice—extra virgin olive oil—payment in kind for the olives I picked. It’s been an unusually rainy winter (¡gracias a

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-85897562342192269502010-02-09T15:58:00.001+01:002010-02-09T16:01:04.224+01:00

MADRID FUSIÓN:  A gastronomical summit meeting, a three-day coming together of chefs, food producers, consumers and press to show, show-off, explain, taste, promote, provoke and schmooze. It’s billed as the world’s largest food fest. This is all about alta cocina—haute cuisine in its avant-garde manifestation. It’s a get-together of celebrity chefs—mostly Spanish, but with a few from around the

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-44223422025653984472010-01-23T18:05:00.000+01:002010-01-23T18:05:43.657+01:00

I have a delightful new cookbook, MEDITERRANEAN CLAY POT COOKING, by Paula Wolfert. Paula is friend, mentor and inspiration. She and I share a love for Mediterranean flavors and I am honored that she credits me in her book with a version of the Spanish tapas dish, Sizzling Shrimp with Garlic and Hot Pepper. She writes that she first prepared the shrimp for a party back in the late 1950s,

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-25857488801299257702010-01-17T23:32:00.000+01:002010-01-17T23:32:50.867+01:00

A few miles outside the village where I live is a small shrine in the countryside dedicated to San Antón Abad, St. Anthony Abbot, the patron saint of pigs and other farm animals. January 17 is San Anton´s festival day. When the weather is fine (and often it is brilliant winter sunshine), the locals make a day’s outing to the shrine, to attend a late morning mass. In bygone times it was an

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-51618304494368370632010-01-11T20:48:00.001+01:002010-01-19T13:58:28.006+01:00

Today at the village market I found big bunches of tagarninas, the tender stems of a wild thistle that makes its appearance in frosty January. Related to the artichoke, this thistle (Scolymus hispanicus) is foraged in upland areas of Andalusia and Extremadura. I first tasted it in Extremadura, where it was cooked in a delicate vegetable flan. But, country folk who gather it usually fold the

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-73054595571368409432010-01-10T19:09:00.000+01:002010-01-10T19:09:05.032+01:00

When I got a call from a culinary friend, inviting me to a tapas lunch, I dumped what I was doing (picking olives), changed my olive-stained pants and drove down the hill to the coast town. The friend is Lars Kronmark, a chef-instructor at the Culinary Institute of America, Greystone, in St. Helena, Calif. I met him when I was a seminar presenter and workshop moderator at the CIA’s Worlds of

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4033770631819899656.post-40270606361831696052010-01-01T21:21:00.000+01:002010-01-01T21:21:59.305+01:00

Are you needing a morning-after cure? Spain—a great land for partying—takes very seriously the day-after resaca, hangover. The prescription begins with churros y chocolate, fried fritters and thick, dark hot chocolate, to finish the late-night revelry before heading home to bed.The next day, several robust soups are touted as sure-fire cures for what ails you. One is sopa de picadillo, an

JANET MENDELhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05727555362345930082noreply@blogger.com2