I’m at dinner on a boat in the heart of the Amazon, and my mouth is tingling as if the anaesthetic has just worn off after a visit to the dentist. This, I’m told, is part of the joy of eating tacacá, a tangy manioc soup made with salted shrimp and an herb called jambu whose stimulating properties and tongue-numbing effects are a touchstone of Amazonian cuisine.  

In a globalized world, encountering ingredients and flavors that surprise the palate is increasingly rare—and something of a luxury for any food lover. That was my takeaway from a five-day journey along the Tapajós river with Amazon cruise company Kaiara, the brand-new initiative from Brazilian travel expert Martin Frankenberg. 

This is not your average culinary cruise: Kaiara ventures deep into the rainforest, bringing travelers in touch with local communities and their extraordinary foodways. Frankenberg hopes this kind of engaged, low-impact tourism will encourage economic alternatives to the depredations of logging, mining, and soy farming, the main sources of income in the area.

In the riverside town of Santarém I boarded the Tupaiú, a vintage river yacht (one of three in Kaiara’s fleet) with wood-paneled cabins and open-sided dining areas fanned by the breeze. The eight-strong crew included chef Socorro da Silva and sous-chef Naiana (her daughter), whose cooking is based on Amazonian ingredients including freshwater fish like giant pirarucu (which da Silva roasts in a Brazil nut crust); endemic fruits like the tart, appley taperebá and cupuaçu, with its curious acetone-like overtones that dissipate in da Silva’s homemade sorbet.   

The Tapajós is so wide it seemed more like an inland sea. In the afternoons, as the boat chugged gently downriver, I fished for piranhas, which later became dinner. I still crave that firm, flavorful meat enhanced by a sizzle in the frying pan. At nightfall we moored beside beaches of dazzling white sands and clear blue water in time for sundowner caipirinhas, made either classic (with lime), with cupuaçu, or—for a cocktail my taste buds won’t soon forget–with that tingly jambu.  

By day, shore excursions and workshops (nothing too academic) enlightened us about ancestral forest crops like manioc and cacao—and how they can be farmed sustainably. 

Another highlight was the botanical walk with healer Raimunda de Sousa of the Atodi community. For her, and many Amazonians, the rainforest serves as a larder, spice rack, and medicine cupboard. As we strolled the forest path, de Sousa reached up to pluck a shiny black seed known as cumaru. She placed it in my hand, and I took a whiff. It smelled as voluptuous as vanilla and was much used, she said, in local preserves and desserts. Then there was a rock-hard nut called babaçu whose oil had powerful medicinal properties.

The babaçu sometimes came with a surprise inside: a small white grub. “And this,” confided de Sousa with a smile, “is a delicious thing to eat.”     

The post This New Food-Centric Cruise Goes Deep Into the Amazon appeared first on Saveur.

Until a few decades ago, Barcelona wasn’t what you’d call a first-class food town. Yes, it had great raw materials, marvelous markets, and a rib-sticking regional cuisine with medieval roots. Yet often I found, during my earliest forays into the city back in the 1980s, that restaurant-eating in the Catalan capital was uninspiring: The choices were basically calorific classics (the all-in stew escudella being omnipresent), rice dishes, or char-grilled fish.   

Then the 1992 Olympics happened, and Barcelona morphed practically overnight into a scintillating culture-hub—and the city’s food scene followed suit. All at once there was East-West fusion food and Ferran Adrià-inspired molecular gastronomy—rather too much of that, maybe—but also a brave new vision of contemporary Catalan cuisine. It was a great time to be writing about Barcelona food—and I did, in a large-format cookbook for Williams-Sonoma (Foods of the World: Barcelona), which 20 years later reads almost like a work of culinary nostalgia.   

What came next rolled in like waves on a Mediterranean beach. The 2010s brought food-trucks, supper-clubs and pop-ups; restaurants that only served dessert; Japo-Hispanic sushi joints … In recent years, Barcelona has gotten big into natural wine bars, cocktail bars to conjure with, and teeny-weeny market stalls with zippy zero-kilometer cooking. Tapas—which were never one of Barcelona’s traditional strengths—have finally triumphed, opening the kitchen door to fresh fads in snacking—none more appetizing, in my view, than a revival of the Catalan midday vermouth ritual and the salty-vinegary aperitif repertoire that goes with it.   

And now? Well, it’s as if Barcelona has Magi-mixed all these historic tendencies into a richly delicious emulsion. Places that were once super-hip have become neighborhood standbys, while been-there-forever, dyed-in-the-wool haunts have returned to the forefront of fashion. 

Today’s trends seem destined to seep more permanently into the city’s gastro DNA. Down to the bread and beer, there’s a mainstream embrace of seasonality, craft, plant-based eating, and high-quality ingredients—values that are front and center at a new crop of intimate, bistro-esque restaurants that cropped up during the pandemic. Often situated in less-touristed parts of town, helmed by a sole (often young) chef, and with a handful of tables, these cozy neighborhood joints are notable for being oriented more toward the euro than the tourist dollar. The impulse to be small-scale, hands-on, flexible, and free is surely a sign of the times. But if Barcelona has one thing clear right now, it’s the importance of Big Flavor over every other consideration. And for the food-fixated traveler, that’s a serious advantage.  

Ultramarinos Marín

Calle Balmes, 187 
+34 932 176 552

Is it a bar? Is it an asador (grill)? Behind a 1970s shopfront lies this unclassifiable eatery that’s been all the rage since it opened its doors mid-pandemic. Chefs Borja García and Adrià Cartró specialize in seasonal produce with maximum TLC, and seating arrangements follow the typical Spanish gastro-bar model: best to sit up at the bar to watch the frenzied goings-on in the tiny kitchen. Start with an appetizer of crisp pork chicharrones and home-pickled baby onions, then follow that with mackerel escabeche, char-roast vegetable escalivada, a handful of langoustines still sizzling from the teppanyaki, thinly sliced smoked beef tongue … García and Cartró have no truck with garnishing, saucing, or otherwise gussying up these good and simple things: What you see is, essentially, what you get. Either way, pretty much everything is sensational here—including the fun, boisterous vibe. 

Maleducat

Carrer Mansó, 54
+34 936 046 753

In which chef Victor Ródenas, Barcelona born and bred, draws on the fabulous produce at Mercat de Sant Antoni for a short daily menu that fizzes with imagination. Consider, for instance, a lunch of ajoblanco with tomato slush and fresh tuna, rigatoni stuffed with royale of hare, and slow-roast lamb with Idiazabal cheese and tarragon cream. Thanks to Maleducat (whose name means “Badly Raised”) and a handful of other rebellious chef-powered bistrots, the salt-of-the-earth neighborhood of Sant Antoni at the western end of the Eixample has seen its gastro credentials soar. If this casa de menjars (eating house) has a deliberately plain and workmanlike look about it, the food is anything but basic. 

Estimar

Carrer Sant Antoni dels Sombrerers, 3
+34 932 689 197

If there’s one thing Rafa Zafra understands better than most of his chef contemporaries, it’s that sourcing the very best seafood—say, anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea or big fat shrimps from Roses—is more important than fussy preparations. I like the way Zafra cooks clams, for instance, sautéing them with nothing more fancy than a splash of fino sherry. His chipirones (baby squid), another highlight, are crisp-fried in EVOO, Andalusian-style, and arrive with a side of squid-ink mayonnaise. Desserts, too, have a simple elegance: Zafra starts his flan in the steamer, then rests in a bain-marie for a sublimely silky rendition of this Spanish classic. “Estimar” is Catalan for “to love.” And I do. 

Disfrutar

Carrer Villarroel, 163
+34 933 486 896

Whatever you think of the global hit parade that last year proclaimed Disfrutar the best in Europe and second best in the whole wide world, you’re sure to be awestruck by the terrifically avant-garde $315 tasting menu. Chefs Eduard Xatruch, Oriol Castro, and Mateu Casañas were all cohorts of Ferran Adriá back in the day, and to judge by their cooking at Disfrutar (the name means “Enjoy”), the experience has stuck with them. There’s Bulli-esque wizardry in such creations as the “onion soup” reinvented as a puff of onion “bread” with Comté cheese, coconut squid “meatballs” with a soupçon of curry, and “black apple” cooked for two months at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The pair of baby cuttlefish surrounded with fresh-pea “spherifications” floats my particular boat with its loving evocation of the Catalan terroir. Unlike at Adriá’s old place, however, at Disfrutar even the pyrotechnics have a nonchalance about them, as if these new-gen chefs had outgrown the desperate need to wow the diner. On a recent visit, for instance, I was invited to reach into a box for one course, which turned out to be a large, succulent red prawn from the port of Vilanova ready to be slurped and savored. Enjoyed, indeed.

Sartoria Panatieri

Carrer de l’Encarnació, 51
+34 931 376 385

Impressively sited in a cavernous white post-industrial space, Sartoria Panatieri has quickly established itself among Barcelona’s leading pizzerie and was even voted number one in Europe in a recent “50 Best” ranking. Pizzaioli Rafa Panatieri and Jorge Sastre use organic, kilometer-zero ingredients and cure their own guanciale and salchichón from rare-breed Gascón pork. Their Roman-style crust, blasted until crisp at the edges in a woodfired oven, is textbook, while the toppings skew more new-gen Spanish: sobrassada and Mahón cheese, wild fennel and honey, and escabeche carrot with goat ricotta, to name a few.

Teresa Carles

Carrer Jovellanos, 2
+34 933 171 829

Plant-based dining still feels somewhat novel in meat-loving Spain. But in Teresa Carles, open since 1979, Barcelona has one of the country’s true pioneers of the genre. Inspired by the Catalan flavors she grew up with, Carles sources fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms from her home village of Algerri (Lleida) and combines them with plant-based “fish” and “meat” to make dishes like hearty vegan escudella and an invigoratingly spiced Malaysian vegetable curry. The stone-fronted locale (also with a takeout section) is an airy, high-ceilinged space with bare brick walls and monochrome floor tiles.  There’s nothing purse-lipped or pious about the vibe—a sign that in Barcelona, just maybe, vegetarian eating is finally coming of age.

Le Grand Café Rouge

Rambla de Prim, 6
+34 932 780 423

It’s easy to forget how close Barcelona is to France, geographically and culinarily—until you meet Romain Fornell, a Toulouse-born chef intent on spreading the gospel of la véritable cuisine française. I first sampled Fornell’s food back in the day at his posh, Ducasse-influenced hotel restaurant Diana, but the “Big Red Café” is far breezier. Sunlight off the Mediterranean floods into the high-ceilinged, white-walled interior, sited at the very end of the Avinguda Diagonal where it meets the sea at the Forum. The menu reads like a brasserie highlight reel: There’s pâté en croûte, onion soup made with Figueres onions and Comté cheese, and bouillabaisse with a puff-pastry crust.  As if wagging his finger at Barcelona’s legion of flaccid tartes Tatins, Fornell’s is impeccably caramelized and crisp. 

Bar Pinotxo 

Mercat de Sant Antoni 18–21, Carrer del Compte d’Urgell, 1
+34 933 171 731

In its first life, Pinotxo (founded 1952) was a tiny bar near the entrance of La Boqueria market where shoppers stopped for a restorative drink and a tapa before schlepping their purchases home. With genial Juanito Bayén and his signature bowtie at the helm, Pinotxo became a pilgrimage site for rustic dishes like beef and potato fricandó, chickpea stew with blood sausage botifarra, and griddled shellfish, always made with market ingredients. So when Juanito passed away last year at 88, it was unclear whether his legacy would live on—until we learned that Pinotxo was reopening in the less touristy, newly restored Mercat de Sant Antoni. Juanito’s nephew Jordi, together with his wife Maria José and son Didac, are now at the helm, and they’ve sensibly changed nothing about the cooking. Perch on a barstool, get yourself a caña (half-pint) of beer or a glass of cava, and let them tell you what’s good today.

Paradiso

Carrer Riera Palau, 4
+34 933 607 211

Barcelona’s cocktail scene has something for every kind of fancy sipper, from the hardcore old-school (Dry Bar, Boadas) to the funky and eclectic (Florería Atlántica, Two Schmucks). But when it comes to contemporary cocktailery, Paradiso, the brainchild of Italian bar supremo Giacomo Giannotti, is hot to trot. From outside, Paradiso looks like a humble sandwich bar (side note: the home-cured pastrami might be the best outside Manhattan), but on most nights, there’s a line around the block. Climb through the door of an old-fashioned fridge, and you’ll soon see why. On a cocktail menu loftily titled “The History of Humanity,” you’ll spot ingredients like rose water, olive oil, saffron, sesame, and seaweed—resulting in high-concept mixology that’s breathtaking when it works, tiresome when it (occasionally) doesn’t. Smoke, mirrors, and VR headsets are all par for the course. Me? I’d like another slurp of the Fleming 1928, a hauntingly delicious concoction of tequila, Mancino vermouth, miso, beer syrup, coconut, grapefruit, and lemongrass.      

La Mundana de Sants

Carrer Vallespir, 93
+34 934 088 023

Tucked behind Barcelona’s central rail station, La Mundana has managed to stay under the tourist radar. It’s the kind of place where neighbors pitch up on a weekend lunchtime for vermouth on the rocks, a ham croqueta or two, and a half-dozen oysters. For the rest of us, it’s a Barcelona gastro-bar, among the best of the variety, where Alain Guiard (ex Sant Pau, F12 Terrassen in Stockholm) and Marc Martín whip up original fusion dishes like pig’s-feet rice with bone marrow and a picada of tarragon and pistachios, and roast cauliflower with fried curry leaves and Café de Paris sauce. (Book well in advance.)

Can Cisa/Bar Brutal

Carrer de la Princesa, 14 and Carrer Barra de Ferro, 1
+34 933 199 881 and +34 932 954 797

Can Cisa/Bar Brutal is the restaurant-bar where Spain’s natural wine revolution began back in 2013, when two vino-obsessed twins stumbled on a dilapidated old space near the Picasso Museum with a “For Rent” sign on the door. The twins in question, Max and Stefano Colombo, from Venice, Italy, had been packing them in at their fine Barcelona restaurant Xemei for nigh-on two decades. But with a little help from their friends, the Colombos created what was then a novelty for the city, offering hundreds of organic, natural and biodynamic wines, many served by the glass (look out for Catalan grape varieties such as xarel·lo and white garnatxa) along with Italian-inflected bar bites like porchetta sandwich, ox tartare with Cipriani sauce, and burrata with trout roe. The convivial atmosphere—not to mention the raffish charm of the interior with its formica tables and antique wooden chairs—makes for a great night out. 

Trópico

Carrer Balmes, 24
+34 938 348 624

Barcelona has taken to the imported concept of brunch like a duck to water, finding it compatible with the lazing, grazing routines of the Spanish weekend. Venues in the city peddling avocado toast and eggs Benedict are two-a-penny these days, but few brunch spots go above and beyond as excitingly as Trópico. Brazilian chef Rodrigo Marco takes the globe-trotting schtick of his original Trópico in the Raval—in a nutshell, foods and drinks from between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn—and runs with it at this new place in the uptown Eixample. Playing out against the natural textures of the light-filled locale is a culinary fiesta that brims with the colors and flavors of the global South, zig-zagging from açaí and ají de gallina to Venezuelan cachapas stuffed with pabellón criollo and patacones with salsa hogao, cilantro, and costeño cheese. Marco’s coxinha, a deep-fried potato croquette stuffed with cheese and chicken, is a loving recreation of a Brazilian barroom staple (not to mention a surefire hangover remedy), while his fish moqueca, fragrant with coconut milk and dendê oil, may be the finest version of this Bahian classic anywhere in Spain. 

The post The Hottest Restaurants and Bars to Try in Barcelona Right Now appeared first on Saveur.

There’s a preconception about grandmothers that they’re mostly meek and mild, conformist and conventional. Justina Terés Sondevila, the 88-year-old Grandmas Project star, turns that notion on its head. 

Her granddaughter, film director Carmen Aubédes (26), realized at an early age that Justina (“Tina”) was “special.”    Here was a spirited woman who enjoyed the good things in life and was, in certain important ways, a person ahead of her time.    

“Modern? Yes, I suppose I was. Girls in those days weren’t as independent as they are now. But I did pretty much what I wanted at home. That was the kind of liberal education my parents gave me,” reflects Tina.

Tina was born in the town of Monzón, a 90-minute drive from the Aragonese capital Zaragoza. In 1960, she married a Catalan gentleman with whom she had four children before being widowed 30 years ago. (To her delight, her children have given her eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.) Tina ascribes her “rather strong” personality in part to her Aragonese ancestry, her compatriots having a reputation for pride and obduracy, but also for generosity and good humor.    

Characteristic of a Spanishwoman of her vintage, she is a proficient cook with a range of homestyle specialties. “I enjoyed cooking for the family. I still have piles and piles of recipes tucked away. But cooking for myself rather bores me now. I used to do a yogurt bizcocho (sponge cake) that came out very nicely. My macarrones were a favorite with the grandchildren: The sauce had a good sofrito of onion and tomato, plenty of cheese at the end, and sometimes a dash of cream. I did a good plate of lentils, too. And we had barbecues in the garden.”    

She also had a signature dish: conejo borracho (“drunken rabbit”). In Spanish cuisine, “borracho” indicates that the dish contains some kind of alcohol, often sherry or sweet wine. In this case, the rabbit pieces are cooked with a sofrito of onion, green pepper, mushrooms, and garlic, then bathed in a good glug of sherry before gently simmering until the meat is tender.   Finally the sauce is thickened with a Catalan-style picada of pounded almonds.  

“When I was little, she used to tell me the rabbit was chicken,” remembers her granddaughter Carmen. “The idea of eating such a cute animal was upsetting to me.”

Since Tina’s husband died, she has lived alone in a modern “chalet” with a large yard outside the Catalan city of Lleida. In the Grandmas Project video, she is seen striding around her garden while extolling a genre of classic movies in which an indomitable woman lives on her own in some remote location, perhaps in the Wild West or on the steppes of Central Asia. “I love those old films. The woman is usually on her own in the house, sometimes with a child…  and always armed with a rifle.   I used to imagine it might be me.”

Carmen’s film reveals Tina as a woman of character with an unsuspected string to her bow: She has a fine singing voice.    Before her marriage, she belonged to a choir in Zaragoza and traveled on various international tours, her specialty being the Aragonese folk dance called the jota. One of her star turns at family gatherings was the jota “Las Cerezas,” with its piquant lyrics comparing kisses to cherries (“When you take one, and then another, you’ll soon have the whole basket!”). In the film, she belts the “cherry song” while sitting at the kitchen table.   

Throughout her long life, Tina has been a dedicated follower of fashion. “I’ve always liked dressing up and looking nice. It was very much the thing in Zaragoza when I was young—we’d all wear the latest fashions, and plenty of makeup. In my youth, I was very fond of designer clothes, the world of fashion, and beautiful things in general. I’d like to have been a decorator, or perhaps a beautician. Even now, I try to make myself look nice, even if I’m only going out to the shops. I suppose I still have a slightly youthful look about me—but that’s just in my nature,” she says coquettishly.    

After cooking and eating her drunken rabbit, she relaxes with a tall glass of cava in her hand. “My friend Marisa, when she drinks cava, she feels sleepy. I’m the opposite. It gets me going! My husband used to cook from time to time, and some nights, he’d say, “I’m going to make torrijas [French toast].”   And we’d get out the cava. And of course then he’d want some sort of compensation. It sounds harsh to say this, but we didn’t have a great deal in common,” she confides. “Except the sex, which was one thing that did work very well.”    

Her granddaughter recalls the filming process as easy and fun.   As a child, Carmen loved to shoot little videos of family life with a compact camera, so for her grandmother, the experience was hardly a novelty. Tina “knew not to look at the camera—all I had to do was follow her around the house,” says the director. “I think she enjoyed being the object of attention. In fact, the more we filmed, the more she seemed to grow into the role.”

When Tina talks about Carmen—second child of her first-born son—a tenderness comes into her voice. “She’s a very good girl, sweet natured and very intelligent. She used to come by here a lot, and still she’s one of the grandchildren I see the most of.” Of Tina’s four children, only one lives anywhere near (in a small town in the Pyrenees). The other three are based in London, Barcelona, and “all over the world.” However, three decades of solo living, together with her naturally feisty and independent character, have inured her to loneliness.  

“Occasionally I find myself missing the family; then I have to remind myself that they’re all happy, which of course is the main thing,” she says. “I’m quite content here on my own.    This is the way I want to live. Because I’m worth it, as they say at L’Oréal.”   

So saying, she flicks back a lock of fine gray hair and lets out a peal of laughter.

Recipe

Catalan-Style Rabbit Stew with Sherry, Mushrooms, and Almonds

Get the recipe >

The post A Spanish Abuela’s Secret to Rabbit Stew—And to Life Itself appeared first on Saveur.

On a cold, blustery day, few dishes satisfy like patatas con costillas, the Spanish pork rib stew that marries pork ribs, potatoes, and smoky pimentón (Spanish paprika). Have a butcher cut the ribs for you, as attempting to do this at home—unless you’re a pro with a cleaver—could land you in the ER. If you can’t enlist a butcher, using whole ribs is fine; simply add 15 minutes or so to the cook time. 

Featured in “The Pimentón in Your Cupboard Comes From My Quiet Corner of Spain,” by Paul Richardson and “Your Ultimate Pimentón Primer,” by Benjamin Kemper.

The post Smoky Spanish Pork Rib Stew with Potatoes and Pimentón appeared first on Saveur.

You probably think saffron would be the most important spice in the Spanish kitchen—but you’d be wrong: it’s pimentón, smoked Spanish paprika.  

Pimentón is close to my heart. For 23 years, I’ve farmed my own organic homestead in the remote western region of Extremadura, a two-hour drive from La Vera, the area that produces the world’s most prized pimentón. Around here—and, indeed, across Spain—the little tins of Pimentón de La Vera come decorated with colorful traditional designs, and are as ubiquitous in local kitchens as their contents are permanently in use. 

Maybe you have some in your cupboard right now—Spain’s luxurious russet-red paprika.  Taste a little on a fingertip: there’s a warmth and resonance there, an undertow of savory-sweetness from its origin as a late-summer red pepper, plus a mysterious, haunting hint of smoke.   

Yet until a couple decades ago, few outside Spain knew what pimentón was, let alone how best to cook with it. And even now, though major brands like La Chinata and Santo Domingo are increasingly sold at supermarkets (and online at retailers like Despaña and La Tienda), I’d argue the spice remains somewhat misunderstood by non-Spanish cooks.  

That’s ironic, given that pimentón is essentially a product of the Americas. The pepper Capsicum annum was brought back from the so-called New World by the monks of the Hieronymite order and first grown in the garden at Yuste, Emperor Charles V’s monastery-retreat among the verdant hills of La Vera.    

Until then, meats had traditionally been cured with little more than salt and black pepper, but pimentón—with its unique flavor and preservative properties—opened new culinary possibilities. From La Vera the taste for this new spice billowed out across Spain, finding a foothold in such preparations as escabeche, a subtly smoky vinegar pickle for game and fish, and polbo á feira, a Galician dish of sliced boiled octopus dressed with olive oil and salt and dusted with smoked Spanish paprika. In the Balearic Islands, pimentón is front and center in sobrassada, the spreadable rust-red pork sausage that calls for two tablespoons of the spice per pound of meat.    

Though pimentón’s production methods have barely changed for 500 years, today the spice is strictly protected under Spanish law by a special Denominación de Origen (DOP).  To qualify as pimentón, the peppers must belong to any of five permitted varieties. These are dried in brick-built sheds where they are piled on racks above a smoldering fire of holm oak logs before being de-stalked and finely milled. You can see all of this on a new, government-funded pimentón trail that offers tastings as well as visits to manufacturers and restaurants.  

What complicates matters slightly is that two basic types of Spanish pimentón exist. The version made in Murcia, over on the Mediterranean coast, has a milder flavor and none of the smoky reverberance of its rival, more akin to the sweet Hungarian stuff. Both Spanish paprikas come in three gradations of spiciness: dulce (sweet), agridulce (confusingly, “bittersweet”) and picante (hot). Of these, the latter is seldom used, thanks to Spaniards’ general mistrust of spicy foods, with the honorable exception of the hot sauce for patatas bravas. 

But Pimentón de La Vera is the real McCoy. Without it, Extremadura’s honest-to-goodness cuisine would be very much the poorer. In this livestock-farming region, shepherds were known to carry smoked Spanish paprika in their knapsacks to add interest and savor to their open-air cookups when on the move with the herds. Extremadura’s signature dish, caldereta (a rich stew of lamb or kid), is unthinkable without it. Most if not all of the region’s culinary repertoire requires a touch of pimentón for added pizzazz, from migas (olive oil-fried breadcrumbs with panceta and garlic) and sopa de tomate (eaten in late summer along with grapes or chopped fresh figs) to the extraordinary mojo de naranjas, a salad of oranges, finely chopped onion, and black olives dressed with EVOO and a dusting of pimentón.    Another common use is a sprinkle over the melted surface of an oven-baked Torta del Casar, the fabulously gooey sheep’s cheese that is the region’s most charismatic queso. (I also love it on grilled halloumi and slices of cool fresh goat cheese.)   

The annual pig slaughter, or matanza, is no longer practised in most of rural Spain but is still very much a thing around these parts. Towards the end of the year, a special section in local food stores offers the items needed for the big day, among them dried sausage skins in hanks, string for tying, and pimentón de La Vera in shiny red 1kg bags. At matanza time here on my farm we do get through an awful lot of pimentón. It’s a fundamental element of the chorizo we make, but also of our patatera and calabacera (cured sausages made with potato and pumpkin, respectively), and stains our hands bright orange as we knead and turn the greasy mixture prior to stuffing. I like to rub a garlic-pimentón paste over whole pork loins and squares of panceta, to be air-dried along with the hams.

And as you might expect, I cook frequently with pimentón—in summer gazpachos, in chutneys and pickles, and even in the marinade for the cured olives plucked from my orchard come November. Decades of experimentation have taught me that rubbing a leg of lamb with pimentón, olive oil, and dried oregano before slow-braising it in the oven gives the meat an almost tandoori-like fragrance and tenderness. 

Lately, when I come in ravenous from the fields, nothing satisfies like a smoky fried egg, which gets a lift by whisking a teaspoonful into the leftover oil in the pan and pouring this “sauce” over the egg. One of my favorite summer salads starts with cooked yellow wax beans, chopped boiled egg, and yellow Ananas tomatoes; its finishing touch is an eye-popping blood-red pimentón vinaigrette. 

It was my farmer’s-wife neighbor Petra who taught me the art of the esparragado—nothing to do with asparagus but rather a mashup of cabbage and potato enlivened with a quick sofrito of minced garlic and pimentón added toward the end of cooking. Though not always used, this blooming technique kickstarts the essential oils locked inside the pepper powder.  

But for me, the blue-ribbon pimentón dish among my down-home farmhouse staples is patatas con costillas, or stewed ribs and potatoes. It’s the best example I know of pimentón’s transformative power. A generous spoonful or two tossed in with nothing more than the pork, potatoes, onion, and garlic, elevates this humble dish into something much more than the sum of its parts. 

Paul Richardson’s new book, Hidden Valley: Finding Freedom in Spain’s Deep Country, is published by Abacus (UK).

Recipe 

Smoky Spanish Pork Rib Stew with Potatoes and Pimentón

Get the recipe >

Your Ultimate Pimentón Primer

Get the link >

The post Your Pimentón Comes From My Quiet Corner of Spain appeared first on Saveur.