"spain" news and stories

Question: What do you get when you put nine of the most famous chefs from around the world in the same kitchen? Answer: A kind of culinary United Nations -- and they're cooking up more than just food.

The Basque Culinary Center, which is based in San Sebastián, Spain, and will open to students next year, is a cooking school with a lofty goal: to better the world, one meal at a time.The council members behind the center are "much more interested in shaping chefs into socially aware activists than in honing their knife skills," the Time article says. "We're talking about the role of the chef in the future," Dan Barber, the chef at New York's Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, told Time magazine. "And in that sense, it's not the revolution inside the kitchen that matters the most."

The Center (which its director, Joxe Mari Aizega, describes as "interdisciplinary," going beyond just cooking) intends to become the "world standard for higher education in cooking," according an article from GlobalPost, and will encourage students to look at food's big picture. Every meal, after all, has a back story, and the more socially, politically, and environmentally aware one is, the more one can appreciate it -- at least, that's how the school's advisory council is looking at it. Consider, for example, where you stand on genetically modified crops, or the hiring practices of cocoa and coffee growers, or even what climate change is doing to growing seasons. As Peruvian chef and advisory council member Gastón Arcurio told Time, "When chefs recognize that we can change the world, we convert cooking into a tool for justice."

Spanish wines are hot right now--both for their awesome factor and because the ones that get imported to the U.S. tend to deliver good value, even those from the best regions like Rioja and Priorat. Rioja is the classic Spanish wine region, with reds made mostly from the powerful Tempranillo grape with a few other grapes thrown in the blend.

Rioja is classified into different levels according to how long it's aged, so if you like a wine with more oak and subtler fruit, pick one of the older (and generally more expensive) versions, and if you're in the mood for something younger and fresher, try the young Rioja.

• Rioja: aged in barrel for less than a year.
• Crianza: aged at least two years, at least one of which was in oak.
• Reserva: aged at least three years, at least one of which was in oak.
• Gran Reserva: aged at least two years in oak and three years in bottle.

More Rioja - Wine of the Week after the jump.

Unable to control his, uh...natural exuberance, celebrity chef/walking impulse control problem Mario Batali "dropped some royally naughty words" in front of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain, according to AP reports. Batali was apparently annoyed when the crowd at a $1,000-a-plate dinner at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival wouldn't quiet down. He used the f-word once while quieting them, then used it again while introducing chef Jose Andres, of Los Angeles restaurant The Bazaar. He then proceeded to grab Andres' bottom.

The queen is said to have "blanched."

While I'm the last one to think anyone should stand on ceremony for royalty (monarchies in the 21st century? C'mon now.), I still enjoy imagining the general horror rushing through the fancy-pants crowd as Batali blithely f-bombs and butt-grabs his way across the stage.

Chef Andres was apparently amused by the antics. ''This is what food and wine from Spain will do to you,'' he said.

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.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.

It's said that 2,000,000 requests a year come in for just 8000 seats at Ferran Adrià's Spanish temple of molecular gastronomy. The closest many of us will come is grazing through this brand new 528 page play-by-play, A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià. It's not so much the common parlance's "food porn" as it is a post-millennial culinary junkie's process orgy, documenting each staff motion and motivation, every microgram of alginate and liquid nitrogen, and fetishistically breaking down quantity and custom and customer/server semiotics.

The proverbial sausage has never been so obsessively, graphically made for public consumption, and rarely has it been so deliciously presented. There are pleasing pictures and recipes, to be sure (Hazelnut praline air, anyone? Perhaps some Garrapi-nitro pine nuts?), but sans easy access to an Isomalt-R-Us, it's a fever-dream cookbook. It is, however, a deeply heartening food-ifesto.

Living in Argentina during high school, I ate dulce de membrillo many times before I had a clue what the sugary, dark orange paste was. I later learned that membrillo is Spanish for 'quince,' and dulce de membrillo (literally, 'quince sweet') is simply a dense quince jelly.

The quince, which resembles an overgrown chartreuse pear, is a fruit native to Asia, now grown all over the world. Unlike pears, however, quince are not eaten raw (I've tried - they're sour and astringent and hard as rocks).

In Spain and Argentina, dulce de membrillo is sold by the slice from massive bricks and generally served with nutty, salty Manchego cheese or on buttered toast. I've also run across it in Israel, served for breakfast with thick, sour yogurt. Here in the US, you can find it at Spanish specialty stores, and some Hispanic markets and regular gourmet shops. It's got an interesting grainy texture and a somewhat floral, apple-like flavor. It's quite sweet - sweeter than most jams and jellies - which is why it's so good paired with cheese or plain yogurt. Try it with slices of Manchego on crackers, or slip some inside a wheel of brie and bake until gooey.