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What’s Truly Spanish
BY ETHEL S. TIMBOL
SPANISH cuisine is complicated.
In Spanish cooking, the flavors and nuances are as varied and intricate as the provinces of the Iberian Peninsula. Perhaps the only thing the dishes have in common are lots of olives and olive oil.
Few are aware that Spain produces 44 percent of the world’s olives and 40 percent of olive oil supplies worldwide.
Filipinos may consider themselves well-acquainted with Spanish food, which is so far as callos, lengua, paella, cocido, pochero, and more are concerned.
And yet, one may never know whether what one knows is truly Spanish cooking or not.
The cuisine varies according to its origins.
For instance, the Andalusians are big eaters of pescaito or fried fish. Towards the Pyrenees, one finds chilindrones (a pepper and tomato side dish), cazuelas (stews) in Catalonia, rice dishes along the East Coast, and so on.
We have sampled some of the ‘real thing’ at the Flavors of Spain, a food festival mounted each year by the Trade Commission of the Spanish Embassy and the Fuego Hotels and Properties Management Corporation.
Every year, Fuego Hotels hosts the Flavors of Spain food fest in its hotels-Taal Vista Hotel, Club Punta Fuego, Pearl Farm Beach Resort in Davao, and the newly opened Vida Hotel in Clark.
We took a culinary sojourn to Spain at the Hotel Vida where we met Chef Mikel Arriet Arruiz, executive chef of Club Punta Fuego.
As the latest property to join the Fuego Hotels, the Vida Hotel is located within the Clark Freeport Zone in Angeles, Pampanga. Its first tower consists of 125 rooms and for now, the SALT coffee shop with a trellis bar lounge. We are told that they will soon open a spa and a casino. On regular days, the SALT coffee shop serves Korean cuisine along with standard Asian and Western cuisine.
Still, we were there to get a taste of Spain as presented by this young chef from the Basque region.
Basque country is considered by many as a gourmet’s paradise. It is here that one finds bacalao served in a variety of tasty ways, among local fishes such as hake, sea bream or besugo, baby eel best served piquant with garlic and red pepper, and so on.
The Basques also have a fondness for sauces such as la salsa verde-a green sauce to go with the hake and black sauce made with squid ink. Squid in particular is abundant in the region.
Chef Mikel restructured old recipes to compose our degustacion meal which opened with a squid and hamon serrano appetizer which we relished with pa amb tomaquet (bread and tomato).
We were intrigued with the next dish-eggplant stuffed with cream cheese, a crunchy beet root crush and pistachio oil.
Perhaps typical Basque was the soup-concocted with clear squids consome, idiazabal flotins, and black crackers made with squid ink. Also typical Basque was the marmi tako, a tuna and potatoes stew.
Our main entree was duck breast (which I mistook for lamb -it was so thick and tasty) with pears laced with rosemary.
Dessert was two huge chocolate balls stuffed with chocolate mousse and the faintest hint of lemon.
We enjoyed a brief chitchat with Chef Mikel, together with artist and chef Claude Tayag, his wife Maryann, and foodie Omay Chikiamko.
Chef Mikel suggested that the Filipino favorite adobo may have been derived from the Spanish word adobar which means marinated with paprika, to prepare adobado.
Although he doesn’t like the peanut sauce of our kare-kare and takes bagoong with caution, Chef Mikel loves sinigang made with tamarind (sampaloc) and salmon belly.
He makes soup stock with the fish bones and grills the salmon belly separately after which he pours the broth over the fish. There is no equivalent in Spain of this tongue-biting sour soup, he said.
Being mostly vegetarian, Chef Mikel enjoys our pinakbet and has learned to cook with gata (coconut milk).
In Spain, escabeche is prepared with white vinegar, white wine and olive oil, a pale version of our own sweet and sour escabeche.
Philippine cuisine, in his opinion, evolved from various Asian influences mixed in with Acapulco spices such as its peppers, chilis, and garlic.
Prior to the spices imported from its colonies which were worth their weight in gold, Spanish cuisine was pretty bland like that of the rest of Europe.
So we figure, the western world was lucky the cooks of the East taught them how to spice up their tables.
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