Photo by Rob Howard
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A Cook’s Tour
By Phyllis Richman, September & October 2005
My Spanish vacation turned out to be more about eating than cooking—and, frankly, that was all right with me
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There we were, eating our way through Spain's Basque country, the land
of codfish and anchovies, the hotbed of cutting-edge cooking, and what did we
become enchanted with? French toast. Or rather, the Basque version of French
toast.
In a basement cooking school in San Sebastián's cobblestoned Old
Town, it was simple and comforting: soak yesterday's bread in milk infused
with cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla, then sauté it, and serve it for
dessert. Homey slices, golden-crusted from the egg and flour, each bite
yielding a warm milky fluff of cinnamon and lemon.
As we sampled our creation, I was busy writing in my grease-stained notebook
"custardy, barely sweet...yum." Judy Kravitz, a friend from New
Jersey, was snapping photos of the final dish, known here as torrijas.
Coming as it did after the thoroughly delicious red piquillo peppers stuffed
with cod that we had just made, it was the perfect ending to an afternoon
filled with culinary excitement and invention. And it was just the
beginning.
We were eight women of middling years on a weeklong gastronomic sweep
through Spain's Basque country. As restaurant critic for The Washington
Post for 23 years, I had visited France, Italy, and the Far East. But
lately, everyone had been talking about Spain—and San Sebastián,
in particular—as the new world center of creative cooking. The last time
I was in Spain was in 2000, to spend two days at the futuristic restaurant El
Bulli—sampling savory ice creams, warm gelatins, and deconstructed soups.
Now even American chefs were talking about "molecular gastronomy," a
new approach to cooking that involves rethinking everything from temperature to
texture to taste.
The Internet is full of food-and-cooking tours of Basque country, but none
were being held on dates when I could attend. So I decided to put together my
own tour. I wanted to visit half a dozen of the region's most notable
restaurants, as well as several cooking schools. I also wanted to visit the
Guggenheim Museum, architect Frank Gehry's confection in titanium, stone,
and glass, which brings to the region hordes of tourists and money to support
these gastronomic experiments. Made for Spain, a travel agency that specializes
in customized food tours, helped with the details.
To make the trip affordable, though, I needed six or seven companions, so I
sent messages to nearly my whole e-mail address book. An initial two dozen
eager responders pared themselves down to seven women.
"I plan to walk a lot," e-mailed Denise Klein, a friend who came
along not just for the food but because we'd always wanted to take a trip
together. Linda Kamm, my old college dormmate, wrote, "I'm generally
more interested in restaurants that appeal to the general populace."
Others were eager for everything: "Don't stint on any restaurant
experiences—I'm looking forward to all of them," wrote Ginny
Sloan, a friend of Marcia Greenberger, a longtime acquaintance who also signed
on.
It was shaping up to be my kind of trip: food, food, from morning to night,
shared with a handful of close friends.
San Sebastián is a city of 185,000—twice that in the
summer—with sweeping, pristine beaches strung along its edge so that sand
and surf serve as the town walls. The city, especially in the rococo Old Town,
is packed with tapas bars, open to the street and displaying tapas, known here
as pinchos, from one end of the bar to the other. People sample as they
wander—open-face canapés of pimiento salad, mushrooms in cream,
foie gras with mango, or small squid that squirt when you bite into them. In
addition to cold tapas from those lined up on the bar, you can order hot ones
and wait for them while sipping txacoli, perhaps the world's lightest, most
refreshing white wine.
The locals eat dinner late, rarely before 10 p.m., but for Americans used to
dining earlier there's no danger of starving. Just after eight o'clock
on our first night in town, we set out with our food-loving hotel manager and
joined the rugby fans from a nearby tournament swarming the Parte
Vieja—the Old Town. The streetlights were as dim as candles, giving the
neighborhood the look of a public dinner party. One crowded bar blended in with
another as we moved from one to the next, quickly downing five kinds of anchovy
toasts—some with pepper relish, creamed crab, or sea urchin—at
Txepetxa, then a few doors away at La Cepa capturing a picnic table and
devouring trays of filmy Iberian ham and chorizo. Each dish costs a couple of
euros (about $2). "Let's just stay here and eat more of this,"
suggested Susan Hirsch, another friend of Marcia's, but Ellen Ficklen, a
friend from Washington, D.C., and I had lists of tapas bars we were eager to
try.
We did linger at La Cuchara de San Telmo, tucked into a brick alley and out
of the stream of foot traffic. Large, slatted wood tables—outdoors, with
no chairs—were surrounded by athletes swilling beer and demolishing
dozens of small platefuls of tapas. We pounced on a table and crowded it with
foie gras and roasted duck in orange sauce, risotto with Gorgonzola, and cod
tempura. The meal looked like it belonged at a fraternity party catered by a
three-star chef.
Then, as the rest of San Sebastián went on to dinner, we returned to
the Villa Soro, a 19th-century mansion where we were spending the week, and
barely found appetite for the tiny almond tart at our bedside.
"Ninety-nine percent of Basque men cook," our courtly driver, who
had introduced himself as Nasser, said as he sped along San
Sebastián's beaches past Mount Igeldo and into the mountains
surrounding the city en route to our first cooking-school lesson. Most of the
men cook at private clubs called Sociedades Gastronómicas, he told us.
The sociedad that he belongs to has 150 members who pay $300 a year to belong.
He often cooks for (and serves) 20 people at the club.
His specialty is salt cod, a traditional Basque dish. "It is very
delicious," he said as I watched his articulate hands abandon their grip
on the steering wheel. "I must soak it for three days in water or it would
be too salty, then I bake it with saffron and lemon and onion." I wanted
to tell him that I'd do the gesturing while we were careening along the
mountain highway, but he gripped the wheel just in time.
"Women are not allowed to cook or even wash dishes," Nasser added,
though they are allowed to dine at the club a couple of times a month.
That's a hole their foremothers dug for them: it is said that the
sociedades were the inspiration of 19th-century women who wanted their men to
have a place to socialize free from the temptation of other women.
Sociedad members take their food very seriously—and may be one reason
why some of the world's most innovative young male chefs hail from this
region. On a tour of San Sebastián later in the day, another guide would
treat us to a walk-through of Gaztelubide, a famous sociedad founded in 1934
when 44 members split off from an older one over the brand of cider it was
serving.
Finally, Nasser turned the van down a steep path. At its end was the
200-year-old stone villa that was our destination. Natalia
Martínez-Arroyo Muñoz, an elegant blond woman who wore a
chef's coat as if it were Dior, stood waiting to invite us into her kitchen
for a cooking class.
"Look at that sink. I've never seen one so deep," Marcia said,
running a hand along its tiles admiringly. Linda and Judy were examining the
ancient iron stove.
Natalia quickly brought us to order and handed out recipes for traditional
Basque lamb stew, a dessert of puff pastry and cream, and appetizers—our
favorite being shrimp, quail egg, and peppered vinaigrette arranged in a
porcelain spoon as a one-bite hors d'oeuvre.
The three-hour class was a lecture-demonstration rather than a hands-on
cooking class, and Natalia kept up a steady stream of comments as she prepared
the food. "Always add salt to the cooking water when the water is boiling,
not before, and immediately add the vegetables," she said. She paused only
to go into the garden for mint to flavor our orange juice, then began to
sauté the lamb. "Never add salt at the beginning when
sautéing lamb or fish—only at the end, so it doesn't draw the
water out."
Back in the van, we shared our impressions. We had learned a lot, had taken
copious notes, and were impressed with Natalia's cooking techniques,
especially her trick for covering the artichokes with a round of parchment
paper with a hole cut in the middle, to keep them submerged in water as they
boiled. But for all her talk about salting, the lamb stew tasted as if it had
none. Coming off our tapas tour and its scintillating tastes the previous
evening, the whole meal seemed surprisingly bland.
While the new Basque restaurant chefs are competing to invent the most
dazzling, startling dishes, challenging the diner's taste buds and
expectations, some of the more traditional cooking schools, perhaps in
overreaction, have gone the other way, shying away from seasonings and cautious
with adornments. We were to experience the contrast many times during the week:
tradition followed by invention.
After two days of tapas, cooking classes, and other excuses for nonstop
eating, we were ready for a cultural interlude at the Guggenheim, which I began
to think of as our between-meal palate cleanser. The museum, in nearby Bilbao,
is even more stunning than its photos depict, since the changing light on the
billowing titanium walls makes them seem nearly alive. And it looked more
immense than I'd anticipated, particularly from a balcony overlooking
Richard Serra's colossal snake sculpture.
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