Spanish Dishes, 1910
Now we have followed the Spanish housewife to market and may presume that she has beaten down prices to the lowest possible figure, told her beads in the church and…
From: 1910 C.E. To: 1910 C.E.
Location: Spain
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Home Life in Spain by Samuel Levy Bensusan, 1910.
Now we have followed the Spanish housewife to market and may presume that she has beaten down prices to the lowest possible figure, told her beads in the church and gone back to her home heavily laden with good things. They are now in the kitchen, whither we will follow.
The room is very bright and clean, no less clean indeed than the scrupulously tended market-place in which the food-stuffs were bought. Brass or copper cooking utensils all in a state of high polish seem to smile from the white walls. Cooking utensils vary according to the district. In the Castiles the puchero is cooked in a vessel that takes its name from the dish which is sacred to it. The puchero is a jug or pot of blue enamel.
Earthenware cooking vessels are in use all over the Peninsula; they are porous outside and highly glazed within. They are used for boiling and stewing, while the frying-pan shouts defiance to regionalism from every corner of the country, uniting Galician, Valencian, Sevillian and Castilian in the largest measure of universal brotherhood that obtains in Spain. Among the lower orders who cannot afford to buy their oil as often as they could wish, the frying-pan is seldom or never cleaned; when not in use it is covered lightly with cloth or even paper, and the housewife guards it with jealous care.
Save in the big cities and in the cooler north, most of the butter sold in Spain is frankly rancid, the best quality being hard to obtain under any circumstances and absurdly dear—five shillings a pound being asked and paid in Madrid for the genuine article. Dripping and lard are rarely used. Olive oil, crude or refined, takes their place, save among the pastry cooks, and it may be remarked that the Spanish housewife seldom makes pastry and seldom entrusts the making to her own cook; she prefers to go direct to the pasteleria. Unrefined oil has a rather repulsive green tint, and is brought from the olive plantation in huge hog-skins.
Before it can be used the Spanish housewife "fries" it. She fills her frying-pan with as much as it can safely hold and puts a piece of bread in with it. The oil is then "fried" until the bread is burnt black when the oil is poured off into a jar and is ready for cooking. The great art of cooking in oil is to preserve the right temperature; if it is not hot enough when the food is put in, it will soak right through it; if it be too hot the food will be burnt.
A great part of the prejudice with which Spanish cooking is regarded by visitors is due to some experience of the efforts of a clumsy cook. In skilled hands a dish cooked with oil is far from unpleasant. To enjoy salads in Spain beyond the area of expensive hotels it is necessary for the traveller to carry refined oil with him, for it is notorious that the Spaniards have never learned to refine their own crude product, and in the big cities the best oil obtainable is called English oil (aceite inglesa); it has been sent abroad either to France or England to be refined. Not only are the Spaniards incapable of treating their oil properly, their wine is no better case.
Spain is a great wine-producing country in many districts, and a large part of the produce of the vineyard is sent in its crude state to France, where after due doctoring it changes its nationality and is known to the French and British public as Bordeaux or claret as the case may be. Happily there are signs that the country is wakening up to the heavy loss entailed upon it by imperfect viticulture, and in Aragon a very successful attempt is being made to deal with the rioja wines as they deserve.
Aragon is also learning to make jam and to bottle fruit, and in this fashion will doubtless do something to check the import from Great Britain which has hitherto made up in large measure for Spain's deficiencies. But as far as the oil is concerned, the properly equipped refinery has yet to be established, perhaps because the great majority of housewives are perfectly satisfied with their familiar procedure. Indeed, you may hear them declare that the clear refined oil imported from France and England is to be regarded with suspicion. "No se sabo loque contiene" (nobody knows what it contains), says the Spanish housewife, proud of the bilious green concoction out of which she must burn the more obvious abominations before it is fit to use even in a Spanish kitchen.
It may be of course that the national palate is not a delicate one; indeed but for the glorious light that shines upon the Spanish table from the pasteleria one would be inclined to favour this view, for it must be confessed that a superabundance of garlic, rancid butter, wine that takes the skin off the palate, and bread that is frequently sour are distinct blemishes from our perhaps insular standpoint.
Now it is time to sing the praises and discuss the ingredients of glories that remain to Spain even in these days when world-empire is lost. Puchero, gazpacho, pote, arroz valenciano, olla podrida, and pisto—here we have the most notable sextette in the world—fit subjects for the poet's song, the musician's ode, the painter's fancy, and the sculptor's dream, while the historian scanning the story of the world will look in vain to any country to supply him with six national dishes of anything like equal importance.
To make puchero soak garbanzos (chickpeas) in salt-water overnight. In the morning take a piece of beef, a slice of lard that may be fresh or may be a year old, a chorizo which is a sausage as full of subtle flavour as of mystery, and potatoes, new for choice. Boil very slowly for about five hours, and eat on three hundred and sixty-five days in the year if the necessary papal dispensation can be obtained. But do not seek to eat without knowledge.
Puchero must be approached with respect, for it is a many-sided delicacy. In the first place it yields soup, and this should be served with vermicelli and eaten with toasted bread and a little flavouring of garlic. A glass of sherry may be taken with propriety at a time like this. Then follow the garbanzos and potatoes and certain green vegetables that are not deemed quite worthy of intimate association with a puchero and are consequently cooked apart. Tomato sauce is associated with this course.
Then the meat follows, rich in the added flavour of the ingredients among which it passed its hours of cooking. Among the wealthy who are becoming denationalized a dish of fish may follow the puchero to which, by the way, chicken and ham may have been added, while sweets and cheese succeed as though to rob the meal of its truly Spanish qualities. But the poor and the lower middle classes are content with the real puchero and nothing else.
Let us now turn with renewed appetite to the arroz valenciano. To make this take careful heed to the following instructions. Procure a large earthenware vessel and cover the bottom to the depth of an inch with the purest oil you can buy. Add, when the oil has reached the proper temperature, a measure of the finest rice and leave it to suffer the pangs popularly reserved for sinners until it has assumed a golden tinge.
Then put in your meat, which should be veal for choice, though you may call with equal readiness upon rabbit or pig or sheep. Fill with water, sufficient to cover the top of the meat (for every cupful of rice two cupfuls of water are given by the wise and experienced); error here is fatal. Add red peppers (pimientos) and then close the pot. A short address to the patron saint may be efficacious and can at least do no harm. If all goes well within the earthen pot, there should be a result that will for at least an hour or two drive all sorrow out of life. In Valencia itself this dish is sometimes made without meat, and then it is known as arroz viudo (widowed rice).
Although this formula properly belongs to Valencia and to Valencia alone, it has been appropriated by the rest of Spain for picnic purposes; not only is it grateful and comforting to those who take part in the merienda, but the cook who can produce it under alfresco conditions in a perfect state receives the warmest congratulations of all present.
While even the Englishman may reasonably be expected to enjoy puchero and arroz valenciano, let us with all commendable honesty admit that the taste for the four national dishes that remain is nourished best and developed to the farthest extent on Spanish soil and under the Spanish sun. It is unwise even for the intelligent tourist to make too intimate an acquaintance with the others.
Pote gallego, for example, can be best appreciated by those who have ridden through Galician highlands without breaking fast from morning to evening. Then when one's destination is reached, perhaps it is some picturesque farm-house, wellnigh deserted by the younger generation that has gone to seek its luck in more prosperous lands allonde los mare (beyond the seas), leaving the father of the family to gather what profit he may from his herd of familiar, one might almost say vulgar, pigs. He will not be unwilling to welcome the stranger to share such rude accommodation as his neglected home can afford and will set before him the pote gallego. It consists of potatoes and a special cabbage grown in the district on a much higher stalk than those we see at home. It is called berza. Potato and cabbage are boiled in water with lard and eaten with bread and garlic.
Should the farmer have a little meat to spare he will add it in honour of his guest, but throughout Galicia, where the rural population is woefully poor, the gallego is generally content to allow one of his precious hams to hang over the pot and convey such flavour as it can through the medium of suggestion or magic or first intention, or any other of the hidden forces of nature. Yet let it be confessed that this national dish, even when it cannot be reinforced by meat, is very satisfying. It chases hunger away, and by so doing serves the only purpose for which food is required in the ranks of hard-working Spain. The traveller will find it difficult to persuade his host to accept anything but thanks for his entertainment, and when he rides away with the heart-felt "vaya con Dios!" in his ears, he will feel that he has left a friend behind him.
The olla podrida is a savoury mixture of meat, onions, garlic, potatoes, and oil, not unlike Irish stew, but better flavoured, and differing from arroz valenciano inasmuch as it lacks rice and substitutes potatoes.
It is the national dish of Northern Spain. If the Navarrese do not like their neighbours across the Pyrenees, their dislike is directly associated with this national dish, for they hold that the French potpourri was stolen from Navarre, while on the other hand patriotic Frenchmen have been heard to declare that their country gave the olla podrida to ungrateful Navarre in the far-off days when it belonged to France. Oddly enough, the King of Spain and the President of the
French Republic have never troubled to appoint a Commission to inquire into the merits of this vexed international question, preferring to leave it unsettled and justify the unpopularity of their respective Governments. Many a Royal Commission has wasted time and money over matters of less interest and importance.
Pisto is eaten in La Mancha, the land through which Don Quixote sought to confer honour on his Dulcinea. It is a delicious combination of eggs fried in oil with a mixture of Chile peppers and the red and green pimientos. The eggs are scrambled and sufficient water is added to give the dish a consistency of a thick soup.
Gazpacho, the last of Spain's national dishes, is favoured throughout the sunny land of the Maria Santisima where people can live very happily without patronizing the butcher more than once a week. Lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, cucumber are made into a salad with oil and vinegar in which garlic has been crushed. The bowl is then filled with water and slices of bread are allowed to float on the top.Through-out the summer the Sevillian of the lower middle class is content with a jicara of chocolate and a roll for breakfast. Shortly after midday he takes his gazpacho, and in the evening a glass of milk or of wine, with perhaps another slice of bread, satisfies his simple needs, to say nothing of the wants of his wife who may be nursing a baby and yet finds all the nourishment she requires in the three modest meals just described.
It should be remarked that the simplicity of life among the lower classes in Spain leads the household to need no further setting to the table than the large bowl in which the national dish is placed and one spoon apiece. If anything has to be cut, bread or meat, the master of the house uses the clasp knife (navaja) which he carries in his belt for all emergencies.
In spite of these lapses from the conventions that obtain among more cultivated people, meal time is a merry occasion in Spain. The hour snatched from toil seems to be sacred to the modest happiness of family life, and it may even be suggested that the average Spaniard eats his meal with greater relish because it is his national dish. The gallego would not enjoy puchero though it is a richer dish than his own; he would feel he was a traitor to his province. Nor would the Sevillian give up his thin gazpacho for the best arroz valenciano in the world. Even the upper classes whose association with their own national dishes is almost platonic, take care to eat them when they go into the country to enjoy themselves. No merienda is complete without the special dish of the province in which it is held.
Bensusa, Samuel Levy. Home Life in Spain. MacMillan, 1910.
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