Spanish Cuisine: The Perfect Balance

Now that I’ve been back in the United States for well over a month, I believe it’s the perfect time to remember my country’s exquisite cuisine. It might perhaps not be the most famous and global gastronomy, but Spain is definitely a country rich in excellent products and exceptional culinary talents. Fruits, vegetables, meat, and especially fish and seafood, are all of unmatched quality back home. They’re all part of the celebration which is our gastronomy. Because this is what we do in Spain when we have something to celebrate. Eat. Not light the sky with millions of fireworks. Or through weekend-long parties. Instead, we eat until we tumble on our backs. Coinciding with my birthday on Friday, a day I usually celebrate with some of the finest Spanish gastronomical products, I’m going to dedicate this blog post to detail what makes my country’s gastronomy so special compared to others worldwide.

As many of you may know, Spain occupies the majority of the Iberian Peninsula, thereby it stretches from the Mediterranean region to the Atlantic. From the once Arab-conquered South to the mountainous North, passing through the deserted plateau on which the center of the nation elevates. In Spain, we have a little bit of everything, and that perfectly reflects in our gastronomy. The secret behind Spanish cuisine is balance. Between the different foreign influences. Between the modernity of nouvelle cuisine and the simplicity of traditional one. Being a food passionate myself, I’m letting you know in case you missed it, it’s having this wide variety of options that makes me confidently say I believe my country’s cuisine is one of, if not the best in the world. And believe me, I’m not being subjective.

Coming my family from such humble origins, with my paternal family having roots in a mining town in the heart of the Catalan Pyrenees and my maternal coming from a small rural town in the province of Leon (three hours Northwest from Madrid), traditional cuisine has always been extremely ingrained in my life. I’ve grown to value humble products. Fruits and vegetables my paternal grandparents meticulously grew in their garden. Small game meat my great grandfather brought home after hours of hunting in the early morning. Fish and the little seafood my maternal grandfather and I used to catch with nets and rods made with our own hands. Now that I’m talking about humble and traditional cuisine, I wanted to dedicate some time to introduce you to El Cocido Maragato (you’ll see an image of it below this paragraph) or Castilian Stew. This dish, typical from Madrid and Leon, where the cold winters demand the warmth and “heaviness” of a good stew or soup, is composed of three parts: First the meat, with pork as the predominant product, then chickpeas with some of the meat and always high-quality vegetables, and finally a warm meat-based soup in which the chickpeas are usually included. An absolutely marvelous culinary experience that will help you appreciate the quality of Spain’s most humble products. Nothing fancy, just pork, vegetables, chickpeas, bread… My personal favorite is offered in Casa Maruja in Castrillo de Los Polvazares, where Maruja, the owner, hosts big families on special days like October 12th in her own house and cooks the meal herself at nearly 90 years of age.

On the other side of the coin, we find the outlandish inventions of the nouvelle cuisine chefs and restaurants. Ferran Adrià, with a group of 30 other chefs, including his brother Albert Adrià, were the ones in charge of the restaurant El Bulli, lost in the Costa Brava cliffs (close from the maritime Catalan-French border) that meet the Mediterranean, that is considered to be the where modern gastronomy was born. As nouvelle cuisine has its roots in Spain, it’s no surprise it has become such a cornerstone of Spanish gastronomy in recent years. Restaurants such as El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, ranked as number one in the world for many years, epitomize this new style of cooking that capitalizes on involving all human senses during a meal. Restaurants such as El Celler de Can Roca, offer dishes such as the ones below; the one on the left being a “tomato salad” and the one on the right being a flamboyant whiskey cake. The gastronomic revolution that has transformed many kitchens into literal chemistry labs, first initiated in a remote cove in northern Cataluña by a group of “crazy” scienti… chefs.

Spanish cuisine encompasses all of these things. Humble products, extravagant inventions, extremely reputed restaurants, and traditional hole-in-the-wall places. It’s the balance of this all that makes my country’s gastronomy so special. At least in my eyes.