The Basque Kitchen. A completely foreign idea, but it has such a rustic and romantic connotation I had to put it somewhere. Hence, this blog. That, and having lived in the Basque country for a summer, I need a way to bring some of it home. Correction: I needed a way to EAT it at home.
According to Wikipedia, the Basque are “an enigmatic people”. They’re defined by an even more mysterious and prehistoric language that makes buying apples sound like scripture. While I’m sure that’s a flattering description, in my experience I’ve found that they’re impossibly warm, forward in that their sense of personal space tends to ven-diagram your own, and eat the finest time-tested foods with a reckless abandon that you just have to, well, write home about. I feel there’s not much mystery to speak of being that once you find the region, sit down, and eat, you’ll just kind of get it. They literally serve their art, cultural and history on a platter. It’s about the food!
Twice now my partner and I have tried to bring the goodness home with us on a plane. Word to the wise: don’t. Eusko Label foie gras in Spain is Purina Chow by the time it reaches San Francisco, and I’m not even going to spend time reliving the trauma of Idiazabal we smuggled in. If I want these flavors at home in the Bay Area, I need to make them here, with the ingredients we have available to us. Luckily, I have some seriously good direction here.
This book should probably not be in my possession. However, pushy is as pushy does and today it’s 6,000 miles away from where it lived for the last 30 or so years (perhaps the only successful smuggle since my boyfriend). Most of these recipes assume that you’ve worked with these ingredients since discovering your thumbs and that you measure salt with the power of intuition, so for the sake of humor I’ll include the original recipe as a marker of what I had to start from. I actually do think it’s funny. The instructions are written with the assumption that the way things have always been done is the general rule for the way things will always be done, and so need not be explained in further detail. To that, I say, “uh—please.” I want these dishes to be as accessible and savored in my home as they would be if my kitchen were sitting on the Bay of Biscay. I think good can be accomplished by anyone mostly anywhere, as long as you like what you’re doing while you’re doing it. I think I’ve found a new personal philosophy…
As an afterthought, each of the dishes featured here will be a bit different from the original. Not just because I may have to substitute bell perppers for piquillos once in a while, but also because yo soy Celiaca. I am genetically gluten intolerant, and one of the greatest injustices to befall us yet is that so many of the foods that define Basque cuisine have actually sent me to the hospital (I’ll have to write at least one post on what a great experience I had in the Spanish ER!). I have no tolerance for wheat, therefore many of these recipes will be either wheat-free in their native state or will feature my trusty substitutes. I’ll be sure to note the swaps as inconspicuously as possible. Really, I’d bet money you wouldn’t notice. I’m choosing to mention this specifically as an afterthought because I don’t think that a life without wheat is the undertaking it once was. For me, cutting out wheat was just a natural segue to examining food as a ritual. In some roundabout way, “getting over” being wheat free has inspired me to start taking on actually challenging stuff—like Basque food! If there’s one thing I’d like to do, it’s redefine can and can’t. “I can’t eat that” or “you can only get that in ______” are statements that really have no place in my kitchen.
That said—let’s eat.
