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For a long time Spanish cooking was regarded as “lacking
refinement” compared with French haute cuisine. Suddenly, a few
years ago, Spanish cuisine became fashionable and a few innovative
chefs shot to international fame. Currently many of them go on tour
internationally and draw huge crowds, like rock stars; and their
restaurants have become places of pilgrimage which any aspiring cook
must visit.
The new Spanish “haute cuisine” is extremely innovative and
often incorporates strange chemical processes and mixtures of flavours
which delight the taste buds of epicures.
But one shouldn’t get carried away by this new wave of
“haute cuisine”; one should remember the traditional
cooking of Spain – which one could regard as “real
food”: the sort that's eaten by ordinary folk; that is, almost
everyone. Food strongly tied to the soil which, although abundant in
vegetables and fish (the so-called “Mediterranean diet”),
is distinguished by its intense flavours and by being, in general,
heavily loaded with calories – as befits the food of a land whose
inhabitants have an especially passionate vitality.
As always happens when one talks about Spain, it’s very difficult
to generalize. What can be said is that in all parts of this country
people eat well; but having said that, each region, area, province,
“historical nation” or whatever you want to call it
–right down to the individual villages– has its own
characteristics, preferences, traditional dishes and specialities.
Lovers of good food will never get bored in Spain, and if they come to
Huelva they’ll have more than one surprise, because this
province’s proverbial unknown-ness means that, for centuries,
many exquisite delicacies have gone unnoticed while the rest of the
country’s received all the attention.
Huelvan cooking is distinguished by two special characteristics: in the
first place, as has happened in all the other Spanish regions,
it’s been strongly influenced by the large number of cultures
that have lived on this soil. In the second place, Huelva's been
positively affected by its privileged location; situated as it is in
between the sea and the mountains and with some inland regions of great
agricultural richness, its food possesses the best of each of these
three environments.
For that very reason it’s difficult to summarize briefly all the
province’s gastronomic specialities. Huelva’s known, above
all, for three products whose excellence is unquestionable: ham from
the Sierra, red berries (especially strawberries and raspberries from
Lepe and Palos) and the shellfish and fish from the coast.
Nevertheless, there exist many other products of the very highest
quality which are to be found in Huelva and which haven’t (yet)
achieved the immense fame of Jabugo Ham: some excellent white wines;
high-quality spirits; grape juice; olive oils and vinegars that are
beginning to sweep the board at all the international contests;
oranges; asparagus; and other market garden produce which is starting
to rival other areas of Spain that have a well-established tradition of
exporting...
Each area of Huelva has some specialities which, on occasions, are
blended together so that they acquire a typically Huelvan flavour that
can’t be found anywhere else. The coast is a shellfish area,
that’s for sure. The Huelva prawn is one of the most sought-after
on the Spanish shellfish scene; and the coquina clams and cuttlefish
are really something. Nor should one forget the “chocos”
(cephalopods like the squid), which have lent their name to the
inhabitants of the capital – “choqueros”; the ways of
cooking them are limited only by the cook’s imagination (we
recommend trying them in sauce, with broad beans, fried with a thin
coating of breadcrumbs and even in “fishballs”); or the
many different types of fish to be found: many of the province’s
fish markets are amongst the finest in Spain.
As we go inland we find an abundance of dishes prepared with market
garden produce (broad beans with garlic, lemon and mint; meatless
vegetable stew (this evolved out of abstinence from meat eating on
Fridays in Lent); chickpeas with spinach ...). The staple meats are
lamb and pork, but also popular are dishes with game, dishes with
mushrooms (especially brown mushrooms – a local variety called
"gurumelo") and calorie-laden but irresistible cakes and pastries.
Continuing now up into the mountains, pork seems to reign supreme,
although there’s a great variety of other meats. Now we find
ourselves in an area of meadows, holm oak woods and a ham which has
full-grown men weeping with emotion.
One mustn’t forget the other “traditional Andalucian”
dishes which are also made – and very well too – virtually
everywhere in the province. One will never be very far from a
restaurant or bar serving gazpacho (soup made from tomatoes, peppers,
cucumbers and bread, served chilled); salmorejo (a thick gazpacho with
the texture of purée); fried breadcrumbs, etc.; tapas (a series
of small dishes eaten in succession, part of the local culture); and
small sandwiches called "montaditos".
Among the hundreds of main courses and desserts typical of the province
we can find candied pork cheeks; lamb stew; gazpacho made with
coriander; plaited belly of lamb with tomato; grilled peppers and
tomatoes; crackling cakes; chestnut stew; aniseed cakes called
‘poleás’ (aniseed used to be used as a sweetener
when sugar was in short supply); cocas (Easter cakes); and a frothy
meringue called “huevos nevados” (snowy eggs)...
The golden rule is: be open to new ideas and don’t judge certain
dishes as “dodgy” because of how they look or even what
they’re called ... if you haven’t got it in you to try
whiting, scaldfish, spider crab or torpedo fish … you’re
missing a very tasty ‘little fishy’. Give yourself a chance
to have an adventure!
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