There is a dish they make across Aragón and Navarra in the north of Spain that takes the cheapest ingredients imaginable, a chicken, some peppers, an onion, a few tomatoes, and turns them into something you would happily serve to anyone. It is called pollo al chilindrón, and the whole magic of it is in …
Living as a Filipina in Spain, I get to eat both of them, and I have come to love the quiet joke buried in my own two kitchens. On one side is the lechon of my childhood, the whole pig turning over coals at every Filipino fiesta, its skin shattering like glass. On the other …
So here is the quiet Spanish trick that fixes breakfast in one minute. You are not supposed to pamper eggs in butter until they whisper. You drop an egg into hot olive oil and let it bloom. The white frills into a lacy crown called puntilla, the yolk stays liquid, and the whole thing tastes …
The chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives is the dish most American home cooks have attempted from a Moroccan cookbook and gotten wrong. The recipe in the cookbook is usually accurate. The cook’s framework is usually wrong, and the result is a dish that has all the right ingredients in roughly the right quantities …
Ask a Mexican grandmother what to do about a cold, a fever, a flu, or just a person who looks run down and sad, and she is unlikely to point you toward the pharmacy. She will point you toward the stove, because in Mexican homes the first and often the only prescription is a bowl …
Tell an American you ate most of your meals in Japan at convenience stores and they will picture something grim: a sad gas-station hot dog rotating under a heat lamp, a bag of chips, a questionable coffee. Tell a seasoned Japan traveler the same thing and they will nod knowingly, maybe a little enviously, because …
Everyone knows red sangria, the deep ruby pitcher of wine and fruit that has become the global shorthand for a Spanish summer. Far fewer people outside Spain know its lighter, fresher, arguably more elegant cousin, sangria blanca, white sangria, made with white wine instead of red and tasting of crisp orchard and citrus fruit rather …
In a Filipino home, the first sign that someone is unwell is not a thermometer but a smell: ginger and garlic hitting hot oil, the unmistakable opening notes of arroz caldo. Before the fever is even confirmed, a mother or a lola is already at the stove, because in the Philippines this warm, savory, ginger-laced …
There is a smell that means Sunday in France, and once you have known it you never forget it. It drifts across the market square from a battered truck with a rack of golden birds turning slowly over a low flame, their fat and juices raining down onto a bed of potatoes below, and it …
There is a moment in high summer when the tomatoes are finally at their peak, heavy and fragrant and sweet, the basil is overflowing, and the last thing anyone wants is to stand over a hot stove for an hour. This is exactly the moment caprese pasta was made for, a dish that takes the …
Walk into any Spanish bar, from a tiled old taberna in Seville to a chrome-and-glass place in Madrid, and a version of the same short list is waiting behind the counter. The tapas that define Spanish bar culture are not endless or mysterious. There is a core of about nine dishes that turn up almost …
It may be the poorest soup in Spain, and it is also one of the most loved. Picture the ingredients: garlic, stale bread, paprika, olive oil, water, and an egg. That is very nearly the whole list, pennies in a bowl, and out of it comes something so warming, so savory, so deeply comforting on …