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The Renaissance of Cookery: Spanish
Glancing for a moment across the Mediterranean, from Italy to Spain, we find record of but one Spanish cook-book of any note during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that of Ruberto de Nola (Toledo, 1525). While Spanish cookery is far from meriting a place among the fine arts, one must yet thank Spain for at least two things-the dulcet Spanish onion and the poignant Spanish omelette-as one should be grateful to Mexico for the tamale and to Russia for its caviare. But the Spaniard boils his partridge (perdrix à l'Espagnol), as the Hollander boils his chicken, with rice or vermicelli. The Spanish "olla podrida" the Alhambra of the national cuisine, wherein garlic, onion, and red peppers are by no means forgotten is well known to all travellers beyond the Pyrenees; but, on account of the many native ingredients it contains, it is difficult to be obtained in perfection outside its original country. Its best form is the olla en grande, which requires two pots to brew it in the rich olla that Don Quixote says is eaten only by canons and presidents of colleges. With virgin oil and a pianissimo touch, so far as the garlic is concerned, the aristocratic guisado is both an excellent and accommodating dish, inasmuch as a fowl, pheasant, rabbit, or hare may serve as its base; and for those who wish to try a dish with a Spanish name, prepared somewhat on the order of the French civet of hare, the recipe may be given: "Dress and prepare a fowl, pheasant, rabbit, or hare-whichever is most easily obtainable-taking care to preserve the liver, giblets, and blood. Cut it up in pieces and dry, without washing, on a cloth. Brown a few slices of onion in a gill of boiling fat, turn them with the pieces of meat into an earthenware pan, add a seasoning of herbs, garlic, onions, a few chillies, salt and pepper, put in also a few slices of bacon, and pour over all sufficient red wine and rich stock in equal proportions to moisten. Place the pan over the fire and bring the liquor slowly to the boiling-point, skim and stir frequently, and let it simmer until the meat is quite tender. About half an hour before serving, put in the liver, giblets, and blood. When ready, turn the whole into a hot dish and serve quickly."
The essay is opinionated Edwardian travel writing, but the guisado recipe inside it is workable — a red-wine stew of fowl or game finished with blood, close kin to the French civet. A few of its instructions need translating.
- The blood is the thickener, and it must not boilOnce the blood goes in, the pan has to sit below a simmer — around 160-170F. Boiled blood seizes into gritty brown specks and the sauce breaks instead of turning glossy. Take the pot off direct heat, stir the blood in with a ladle of the hot liquor first, then return it to the gentlest possible heat.
- Getting the blood at allModern poultry and game are not sold with their blood, and supermarket rabbit certainly is not. A halal or Asian butcher may supply pig's blood, which works; a small quantity of red wine vinegar stirred into fresh blood keeps it from clotting. Without blood the dish is still good, thickened instead by reducing the liquor.
- A gill of boiling fatA quarter of a pint: 5 fl oz imperial, roughly two-thirds of a cup (the American gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup). Either way it is a great deal for browning a few onion slices. Two to three tablespoons of good olive oil or lard does the job; the original assumes a deep earthenware pot and a generous hand.
- Earthenware panA glazed clay cazuela or any heavy casserole with a lid. The point is slow, even heat rather than the material itself, so a Dutch oven is a fair substitute.
- Half an hour for the liverThirty minutes turns liver to chalk. Add the giblets — heart and gizzard, which are tough — for the last forty minutes, and the liver only in the final five, or brown it separately and slice it over the dish.
- "Do not wash" is sound adviceDrying the pieces on a cloth without rinsing is exactly what modern practice recommends: wet meat steams rather than browns, and rinsing raw poultry spreads bacteria round the sink.
- Liquid and cooking timeEqual parts red wine and stock, enough to come most of the way up the meat rather than to drown it. A chicken needs about an hour and a quarter; rabbit an hour; an older hare or pheasant two hours or more, until the meat slips from the bone.
- Chillies and garlicThe "pianissimo touch" on garlic is the writer's own taste rather than a rule, and many cooks would use a heavier hand. Two or three dried chillies, or a teaspoon of pimenton, give the colour and warmth the passage describes without heat that swamps the wine.
- YieldA 4 lb chicken or one rabbit with this quantity of sauce serves four generously, with bread or plain rice.
The cook-book named here is real, though the name has drifted: Mestre Robert (Ruberto or Rupert de Nola), cook to the Aragonese court at Naples, whose Catalan Llibre del Coch was printed at Barcelona in 1520 and appeared in Castilian at Toledo in 1525 as the Libro de guisados — a landmark of Iberian food writing, full of dishes still recognisably Catalan. The olla podrida the author praises, literally "rotten pot" — the derivation from olla poderida, the powerful pot, is often repeated but remains a folk etymology rather than an established one — is the great boiled-meat dish that stands behind the modern cocido; and Don Quixote does indeed have the doctor pronounce olla podrida fit for canons and college rectors rather than for a governor. The guisado given here belongs to a broad European family of stews finished with the animal's own blood — the French civet, the Catalan civet de llebre, the Italian lepre in salmì — a technique that survives where whole animals are still butchered at home and vanishes wherever meat arrives in trays. The condescending verdict on Spanish cookery, incidentally, was the common English view of the period, and it has aged worse than the recipe.