1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (65 page)

For all of their fragile appearance, these fish are prodigious travelers, a trait inherited from their mothers who, after being impregnated along the European coasts, swim four thousand miles to the wide Sargasso Sea in the treacherous Bermuda Triangle. Once there, the females lay their eggs and die. The newly hatched glassy offspring, each less than a half-inch long, begin to swim, float, and drift with tides that, in about three years, carry them back to their ancestral home. Nestling in the rocky waters of rivers and inlets along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, they grow to be baby eels that are good enough to eat.

First quickly blanched in either water or vinegar, the silky white eels are then given a scant minute to cook in sizzling garlic-and hot pepper–flavored olive oil. All you have to do to indulge is find a restaurant that serves them, learn to manipulate the miniature wooden fork designed to keep them from slipping off, and have some chunky bread on hand to absorb what is left of the irresistible pan juices. Although some inventive Spanish chefs get creative with
angulas
, it is doubtful that any can surpass the classic preparation.

Where:
In Madrid
, La Trainera, tel 34/91-576-0575,
latrainera.es
;
in Bilbao
, Guria, tel 34/944-415-780,
restauranteguria.com
;
in New York
, Sandro’s, tel 212-288-7374,
sandrosnyc.com
;
in San Francisco
, Piperade, tel 415-391-2555,
piperade.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Basque Kitchen
by Gerald Hirigoyen (1999);
The Foods & Wines of Spain
by Penelope Casas (1982);
Gastronomy of Spain and Portugal
by Maite Manjón (1990);
spanishfood.about.com
(search angulas bilbaina).

Caldo gallego
, Galician soup-stew, is a hearty peasant comfort food meant to ease the cold winter days of the mountains of northwestern Spain. Its traditional key ingredients are humble foods that stretch tight budgets: potatoes,
grelos
(a variety of broccoli rabe, although stateside kale, cabbage, Swiss chard, or turnip greens are often substituted), and small, chewy nuggets of salted smoked pork, plus zesty chorizo sausage, with the meat traditionally coming from pigs raised in many of the Galician villages.

Each ingredient plays a critical role. The greens lend the brew its signature satiny dark-green glow and earthy depth of flavor. The potatoes add an agreeably viscous finish, and the smoky pork and spicy sausage lend bite. Onions and white beans cushion the combination. The whole is marvelously restorative, pleasingly thick, pungent, and bracing. A meal in a pot, caldo gallego has become famous around the world for its homey charm. It has also been enthusiastically co-opted by Cuban cooks, who celebrate the dish in their home cooking as well.

Where:
In Santiago, Spain
, Restaurante Sexto II, tel 34/981-56-05-24,
restaurantesexto.com
;
in New York
, El Quijote, tel 212-929-1855,
elquijoterestaurant.com
;
in Chicago
, Café Iberco, tel 312-573-1510,
cafeiberico.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Foods & Wines of Spain
by Penelope Casas (1982);
cookstr.com
(search caldo gallego batali).

Capers grow on the ends of the plants’ thorns.

Considering their minuscule size, moist and teasingly bitter-sharp bronze capers offer outsize wallops of flavor and equally astounding amounts of botanical and cultural lore—a lot of baggage indeed for what is merely a piquant condiment. These tiny buds of the
Capparis spinosa
plant have been prized since ancient Greece and flourish in stony, dry-as-dust landscapes, most notably in southern Spain; on a small island 85 kilometers from Sicily, called Pantelleria; and on the Greek island of Cyprus. Because they thrive in such adverse conditions—they even bloom in airborne bushes in Roman ruins and the Western Wall in Jerusalem!—the frilly, mauve-white caper flowers were made the symbol of Neot Kedumim, a sprawling biblical heritage botanical park close to Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.

Capers may be hardy, but they are near hell to harvest. The bushes grow low to the ground, with long, splayed branches. On each is a
progression of the caper buds, the largest (and most prized) at the tip, and smaller ones growing nearer the center. They must be picked one by one, with ungloved hands, for if the branch is broken, or if its silver-green leaves are stripped, the plant will not produce the following year. And here is Mother Nature’s little joke: Behind each and every caper bud lurks a long, needle-sharp thorn. Even so, practiced pickers work quickly because they are paid by the kilo.

Capers, like olives, cannot be eaten in their natural, raw state. The searingly bitter fluid inside them must be leached out, either by soaking them in brine (as in Spain) or by salting them and drying them in the sun (as on Pantelleria). Also, they must be picked before their flowers bloom. If blooms appear, a stemmed, olive-shaped caper-berry develops; this is the larger, fruitier garnish used in martinis and in tapas selections.

The tiny round bud of the caper, once cured, dots salads and sauces to add a ripe and complex, metallic saltiness that some love and others hate (the latter crowd usually detesting anchovies as well). Opposing views on the use of capers also abound. In some countries, they reinforce other salty and piquant ingredients, as in tapenade (
tapeno
being the Provençal word for the bud called
capre
in French). In Italy, where they are known as
capperi
, they spike up pungent Sicilian pasta sauces and the vegetable relish caponata. But in Germany (
kapre
) and England, capers punch up otherwise bland cream sauces.

When buying capers, whether jarred in brine or sold dry, look for uniform size and a good, even green-bronze color that has not faded to yellow. Whether dry or brine-cured, all capers should be rinsed before being used; the dried variety should be soaked for about ten minutes in warm water or olive oil.

Mail order:
amazon.com (search mario camacho nonpareille capers; pantelleria capers in sea salt).
Further information and recipes:
The Foods & Wines of Spain
by Penelope Casas (1982);
nytimes.com
(search caper chase sheraton).
Special event:
Festa del Cappero (Caper Festival), Salina, Italy, June,
siciliainfesta.com
(search festa del cappero).

Cheese is sacred to Spaniards. Their shepherds have been making it for thousands of years, and for a few hundred, the rest of the populace has been nibbling away at it in great quantities while sipping aperitifs at tapas bars.

Among the wide variety of cheeses that have emerged from the country over the ages, the following four—all protected under Denominación de Origen (D.O.) legislation—are the best-known of the old guard, and were the first to become widely available outside their homeland.

Manchego
is easily Spain’s most popular cheese, and became well known for reasons
likely to do with its famous place of origin. It is made in La Mancha (Cervantes even refers to it in
Don Quixote
) in the interior of Spain, a dry highland known for its blustering winds. In winter, the region becomes so windy that the long-haired sheep are the only living creatures who don’t seem to mind. Made from the milk of these hardy animals, manchego can be served both very young (aged only two months) and very old (aged two years or more). Beloved for its mild flavor, with hints of brine and nutty accents, it’s a cheese that is easy to like and plays well with others, particularly Andalusian olives for a bar snack, or
membrillo
(quince paste) for dessert. A sturdy, salty, simple pleasure.

Cabrales
and
Picón Bejes-Tresviso
are blue cheeses made from the combined milks of cows, sheep, and goats. They are crafted in the Asturia-Cantabria region just east of Galicia, inland from the coast, where the highlands are wild and rugged and the animals graze in perfect pastures. An incredibly strong, intense affair, Cabrales is shot through with amethyst-colored veins. It bears a deep, complex flavor and a scent you can detect from miles away—not one for the faint of heart, but a reward for the stalwart. Fragile and crumbly without being sticky, it leaves an impression on the palate that makes one long for another bite. Picón Bejes-Tresviso (often referred to as picón) is buttery and slightly oily, marbled with bluish-green veins, and also quite assertive. Both cheeses are often triple-wrapped in large maple leaves, foil, and plastic before being sold. They are excellent choices for after-dinner cheeses, with sherry.

Idiazábal,
a nutty, raw sheep’s milk number that is usually smoked, is an ancient cheese from the Basque country. (It used to be stored in the chimneys of shepherds’ huts.) With a rust-brown exterior hiding a pale yellow, dense, and firm interior, it’s perfect for grating or melting over just about anything—and, with accompaniments of bread and perhaps some lusty, thinly sliced salami, durable enough to withstand a picnic.

Equally excellent are the many other Spanish cheeses that have been made for centuries: tetilla, Mahón, Izbores, and Roncal, along with Garrotxa, the goat’s milk cheese from Catalonia, and torta del Casar, the almost-liquid sheep’s milk cheese that many consider the very top of the bunch.

Retail and mail order:
In Manhattan, Queens, and Princeton, NJ
, Despaña,
despanabrandfoods.com
.
Mail order:
La Tienda, tel 800-710-4304,
tienda.com
.
Further information:
Cheese Primer
by Steven Jenkins (1996);
The Foods & Wines of Spain
by Penelope Casas (1982).

The origins of the churro are still a mystery.

The good-health police can rant and rave against the deleterious effects of fat and sugar, but the worldwide popularity of deep-fried yeast dough encrusted with sugar persists. Nowhere is this truer than in Spain and Latin American countries, where churros are the treats that satisfy that primal doughnut urge. Long, fluted, crunchy, and fragrant with cinnamon sugar, the twists are eaten hot as morning pick-me-ups and
then again as late-night soothers, either with strong coffee or (even better) with thick, rich hot chocolate.

Churros are formed by pressing yeast dough through tubes so it emerges as slim ridged ropes, which are then deep-fried in vegetable oil and showered with sugar and sometimes cinnamon while still hot. Served all over Spain, they are the particular specialty of Madrid, most famously at the funky Chocolatería San Ginés. Operating since 1894 on a quiet backstreet close to the Church of San Ginés and the Teatro Eslava, the popular post-theater destination has an old-time décor of wood paneling, weathered antique mirrors, and green velvet upholstery. There, dunking may continue into the early morning, when Ginés closes for the day.

Not to be outdone by the Spanish capital, Seville is celebrated for the lighter, more delicate churros sold by its street vendors. Churros are also on the menu at the venerable Café Tortoni in Buenos Aires, where intellectuals and tourists alike have been enjoying them since 1858.

Where:
In Madrid
, Chocolatería San Ginés, tel 34/913-656-546,
chocolateriasangines.com
;
in Buenos Aires
, Café Tortoni, tel 54/11-4342-4328,
cafe-tortoni.com.ar
.
Further information and recipes:
Cooking in Spain
by Janet Mendel Searl (1987);
saveur.com
(search churros ortega).