Cocina de Autor

cocina de autor, is the rage in SpainForget about paella, gazpacho, even tapas.  Contemporary cooking, or cocina de autor, is the rage in Spain.

By:  Colman Andrews
Los Angeles Times

Colman Andrews is the author of "Catalan Cuisine" (Collier Books) and the forthcoming "Everything on the Table," to be published in November by Bantam. He is working on a book on contemporary Spanish cooking.

  

Once we get past confusing Spanish with Mexican cuisine (they have about as much in common as French and Cajun cooking do), what most Americans know about Spanish food is usually gazpacho, paella and tapas.

But in Spain, even something like gazpacho can be deceiving. While it can be the familiar cold, tomato-heavy vegetable soup we know by that name, sometimes it's frothy and smooth and drunk from a glass instead of eaten from a bowl.  And in Malaga, gazpacho is "white," made with garlic and green grapes; in Murcia, the term is used to describe a rich fish soup to which snails are sometimes added; gazpacho manchego, from La Mancha, isn't a soup at all but rather a hearty stew of rabbit, hare, chicken and partridge.  And a Barcelona chef, Jean Luc Figueres, even uses the term to describe an unusual and appetizing cold melon soup.

The original paella valenciana, meanwhile, as you will quickly discover if you happen to order the dish in or near Valencia itself, is primarily a dish of (short-grain) rice and is flavored with bits of chicken and rabbit, several kinds of beans and sometimes snails--with no seafood at all.  And though there certainly are plenty of versions of paella that include seafood, there are also some made with vegetables only, or with assorted wild game.

As for tapas, their identity varies widely from city to city and even from tapas bar to tapas bar, but they're never the elaborate California-eclectic "little bites" (the skewered-mushroom-sausage-and-Santa-Barbara-shrimp-with-mango- jalapeno-salsa sort of thing) that masquerade as tapas in so many American restaurants.  At times, they may be as straightforward and unadorned as a saucer full of slices of great ham, cured pork loin or blood sausage, small cubes of cheese or of potato omelet (on toothpicks), rows of anchovies or herring or heaps of stewed garbanzo beans or lentils.

But wonderful though this traditional Spanish cooking may be, the real excitement in Spanish food is something entirely different.  Dubbed cocina de autor at a culinary convention in the Basque city of Vitoria last year, the new Spanish cooking, found in the best contemporary restaurants, is not at all self-conscious nueva cocina or imitation French frou-frou.  This creative contemporary cooking may be little-known outside of Spain, but it is one of the country's greatest attractions.

Until recently, Spain was largely immune to the Americanization, Japanization and overall cross-cultural mixing that has changed the rest of the continent so dramatically since World War II (in food as in other things).  Its own culinary traditions were never co-opted or obscured.  It adopted and adapted outside influences but remained remarkably Spanish in the process.

And then there are the classic recipes, the egg-and-potato tortillas, the casseroles baked in clay cazuelas, the paellas.

These recipes come from Juana Gimeno de Faraone (originally from Valencia, Spain), owner of La Espaņola Meats, where she and her staff make Spanish-style fresh and cured sausages.