Rod Collins

An original article on Spanish Cooking written by Elizabeth David
Some dishes from North Africa arid the Basque- Country
ONE hears a good many travellers tales about the terrors of Spanish Cooking: the rancid oil, the charred garlic, the tough meat; but there are, of course, plenty of places in Spain where the food is good and interesting, and where one may eat splendid Paellas (a pilaff of rice and every kind of shellfish, with chicken thrown in), delicious ragouts of eggs, pimentos and sausages, stuffed sucking pig, a variety of country cured bacon and ham, sweetmeats of quince and almond paste, and all kinds of excellent soups, from the iced Gaspacho to, the thick and heavy Olla Podrida or Cocido, which is really a stew of meat, poultry and dried chick peas.

This food may well not be to everyone’s taste, hut for all that it has had a considerable influence on the cooking of other countries; in South America, in the Creole cooking of Louisiana, and in Morocco and Tunis it is particularly obvious.

Across the Mediterranean, along the North African coast, the. original Moorish influence on South French, Italian and Spanish cooking has. so to speak, found its way back again arid is now superimposed on thetraditional Arab food, with interesting results. In Tunis they have a sauce called ^risaa, a mixture of garlic and pimentos resembling the Spanish Sauce Rajo and the Provencal Sauce Rouille. but spiced with the coriander and cumin beloved of the Arabs. This sauce is used as a condiment in a great many Tunisian dishes, for fish and meat, and
with semolina paste, stuffed with a mixture of nuts,, mixed with eggs makes an excellent flat omelette in the Spanish manner. There is an interesting sweet made which makes delicious fritters. Here is the recipe:

BREYES BEYLICALES. Make a paste with half a pound of fine semolina, two whole eggs, a pinch of salt, and half a tumbler of water. Work this well together to make a stiff dough. Roll this out on a pastry board, until it is very thin, about a sixteenth of an inch.
Have ready prepared a mixture of an ounce each of almonds, walnuts, pistachio nuts and pine nuts (these last are not obtainable in England, and can be replaced by using two ounces, instead of one, of almonds). These are pounded to a paste with an ounce of castor sugar.

Cut the semolina paste into two-inch squares, put a teaspoonful of the nut mixture on each square, fold the paste over to form a little envelope, and fry them in very hot fat or oil. Drain them and put them into a dish in which you have prepared a little warmed honey. They are served cold.
The most interesting influence of Spanish caoking is in the cuisine of South Western France. This region is a country largely devoted to the raising of pigs and geese.

We do occasionally get pork in England which yields a good quantity of fine lard, and the season for geese will soun be here. Keep the fat. carefully strained, and on no account mixed with any other dripping, in covered bowls; when it has been used for frying, strain it carefully back into the bowl. One very soon comes to appreciate the entirely characteristic flavour of food fried or sauted in goose fat—just try slices of bread fried in goose fat for instance. Fish of course is cooked in olive oil in this region, butter is used only for pastry and cakes.

POULET AU RIZ BASQUAIS. 1 fine chicken, 1 Ib. of tomatoes, 3 or 4 red pimentos, 1 Ib. of sausage of the salami type (the Basques have their own particular sausages, called . Loukenkas, very highly spiced), ^ Ib. of rice, herbs, salt and pepper, garlic, spices, a piece of orange peel, onions, paprika.

Brown the chicken, whole, in goose or pork fat, with a sliced onion, a branch of thyme, a bayleaf, salt and pepper. When it is golden all over, pour over warm water just to cover it, add the sausage, in one piece, and the orange peel, and simmer with the cover on the pan until it is tender; this will take about, forty minutes if it is a tender roasting chicken, anything up to three hours if it is one of those purple boiling fowls, so if you arc not sure of the quality of the bird, better start it early—heating up later can hardly hurt it.
In the meantime make a ragout of the tomatoes and pimentos by sauteing the pimentos, cut in strips, in goose dripping, and when they are half cooked add the tomatoes, chopped, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and marjoram or thyme. Let them simmer until they are cooked but don’t reduce them to a pulp; stir in a table-spoon of paprika.

When the chicken is nearly ready, put the rice into a large pan of boiling salted water; cook it for twelve to fifteen minutes, until it is nearly, but not quite, done; strain it and put it in a fireproof pan in w^hich it can be served; now take the chicken and the sausage out of the liquid in which they have cooked; pour a ladle or two of the stock over the rice, and stir it over a very gentle fire; carve the chicken into suitable pieces, and when the rice has absorbed the stock and is quite tender but not mushy, put the chicken on the top, pour all round the tomato and pimento mixture and garnish it with the sausage cut into squares.
The result should be a melting dish of rice, softer than a pilaff o-c a paella, and not so compact as a risotto, more in fact resembling the classic Poulet au Riz, but with the characteristic Basque flavouring of pimento, tomato, and spiced sausage.

PIPERADE is the best known of all Basque dishes, and various recipes for it have appeared in English cookery books. Tt is a mixture of pimentos, tomatoes and onions, with eggs added at the end; the final result is a creamy scrambled-egg effect dehciously blended with the vegetables in which the pimento flavour slightly dominates. Sometimes one meets it with the puree of onions, tomatoes and pimentos, topped with fried eggs, sometimes in the form of an omelette; the scrambled egg version is the most characteristically Basque.

1 Ib. of onions, 1 Ib. of tomatoes, 3 fairly large red peppers, or about 6 of the small green ones, in season in the Basque country long before the red ones; 6 eggs. In a heavy frying or saute pan melt some pork fat (sometimes olive oil is used for this dish, but pork, or even bacon fat, suits it better). Put in the sliced onions, and let them cook slowly, turning golden but not brown; then put in the pimento, cut into strips; let this cook until it is soft, then add the chopped tomatoes, with a seasoning of salt, ground black pepper and a little marjoram. Cook with the cover on the pan.
When the whole mixture has become almost the consistency of a puree, pour in the beaten eggs and stir gently, exactly as for ordinary scrambled eggs. Take care not to let them get overcooked.

TAMBON DE BAYONNE. With the Piphadc are served slices of the famous Jambon de Bayonne, most of which is in fact made at Orthez, in the Beam. (The Beam and the Pays Basque were the provinces which made up the Kingdom of Navarre before it was joined to France under Henri IV. One hears a good deal about the bun rot Henri in these parts.)
The Jambon de BaTonne is something like the Italian Proscivitto. and imparts its particular flavour to many Basque and Bearnais garburcs and daubcs. Brochettes of calves’ liver are sometimes served with the Pipcrade.. and a very good combination it is.

SELLE D’AGNEAU BASQUAISE. A very delicious dish, rather more sophisticated than the Piperadtr, the roasted almonds are a typically Spanish addition.

Roast a saddle of lamb in the usual way, with a clove of garlic underneath it in the pan, and in the meantime brown some whole, small, raw potatoes in goose dripping; they must be cooked slowly, in a heavy pan on top of the stove, or else baked in a covered pan in the oven at the same time as. the meat; they will take about forty minutes to an hour, according to size.
While these are cooking, prepare the almonds, about two ounces, which must be skinned, and chopped, but not too finely; ten minutes before serving, add them to the potatoes and keep an eye on them to. see they don’t burn. Lastly prepare a Sauce Bearnaise to which you add finely chopped mint instead of the usual tarragon.
Serve the saddle of lamb surrounded by the potatoes and almonds, and the sauce separately.

Originally written by Elizabeth David and published in October 1950 in Contact Magazine