Catalan Cuisine: Vivid Flavors from Spain’s Mediterranean Coast (Colman Andrews)
First published in 1988 and still in print, Colman Andrews’ homage to Catalonia remains the ur-text of northeast Spanish cuisine. Leafing through it, you quickly see why Spain has spawned so many of the world’s most inventive chefs. In addition to ironclad recipes for Catalan standards like paella and bacallà are bold departures for fried Camembert with tomato preserves, pickled chicken, olive oil soup, and a cocktail called the Alicia (essentially a Sidecar with a splash of cava). Tapas, however, are noticeably absent. As Andrews explains, they “aren’t much more than a culinary footnote in Catalonia.” A founding editor of Saveur, where he won six James Beard awards and helped launch the foodie movement as we know it today, Andrews is also a terrific, occasionally profound, writer, and you might consume this book cover-to-cover simply for the prose. [$18; amazon.com]
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