Customer Reviews

Cooking from the Heart of Spain

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`Cooking from the Heart of Spain' by American culinary writer living in Spain, Janet Mendel, is a treatment of the cuisine of `La Mancha', or more properly, Castilla La Mancha, just south of Madrid, on the central plateau of the Iberian peninsula, with principal city of Toledo. This book closes the gap between the few books on Spanish regional cuisine and the great library on the cuisines of Italy's many culinary regions. The problem with Castilla La Mancha is that it is surrounded with many more interesting culinary regions, such as the paella capitol, Valencia, the tapas and sherry center, Andalucia, and the hotbed of pork raising, Extremadura. The author seems to solve this problem by stating that from its central location, Castilla La Mancha, her hometown, enjoys influences from all the various culinary specialities of other regions of Spain. If this were true, then why not just do a cookbook of all Spanish cuisines and be done with it.

This was my general reaction to the book as I was reading Senora Mendel's introduction. Traditionally, she plays second fiddle to the better known writer, Penelope Casas, who has done two important books on the cuisines of all of Spain, plus special books on Paella and Tapas, and a `home cooking' volume. Overall, I believe the New Yorker, Ms. Casas' books overall are a better general survey of Spanish cooking, as I find her deeper into background material than either Ms. Mendel or native Spaniard, Teresa Barrenechea, author of `The Cuisines of Spain' and `The Basque Table'. But then, I get to Ms. Mendel's recipes and I am enlightened.

Very few books on Spanish cuisine, except for Ms. Casas superlative `The Foods and Wines of Spain' cover Spanish Breads and pastries very well. Yet, Ms. Mendel does cover these areas, and she does it well. She also does an excellent job of covering one of my favorite Spanish specialities, egg dishes, featuring the famous `tortilla Espagnole', made simply of eggs, onions, potatoes, garlic, and olive oil.

The true speciality of `Castilla La Mancha' is lamb and cheese, with a fair amount of pork and beef, especially veal as well. The region also makes great use of peppers, especially sweet peppers, as in beef-stuffed bell peppers. Ms. Mendel at heart seems to be writing in the style of Julia Child, as the expert home cook. This means her recipes are a bit better than, for example, primo culinary journalist, Coleman Andrews of `Catalan Cuisine', but not really up to the standard of either Andrews in analyzing the cuisine of the region, or, is she even close to the level of the divine Ms. Julia in explaining the finer points of Spanish technique.

Overall, Ms. Mendel does as well or better for the home cook than her professional cook colleague, Barrenechea. Their recipes for `tortilla Espagnole' are virtually identical, except that Ms. Mendel's explanation seems just a bit better for the amateur; however, I prefer Barrenechea's overall result.

As a treatise on a regional cuisine, the book is no match for Andrews' treatment of Catalonia or the great books on Italian regional cooking, but it is as good as Barrenechea's `The Basque Table'.

If you are fond of Spanish cooking, I suggest you pick either Casas or Mendel and get all the books from that one author. Casas' treatment is a bit more scholarly, but Mendel may be just a bit more home kitchen friendly. Overall, I suspect the choice is a matter of taste, so pick one and eat well.

Award-winning food writer and Spanish resident Janet Mendel takes us to the land of windmills and Don Quixote, offering 200 recipes along with epic quotes and anecdotes about cheese-making, trout fishing, the saffron harvest and more.

Don't look for gazpacho and paella here. But if tapas, Garlic Soup (a purported "hangover cure"); Crispy, Cheesy Chicken Breast with Quince Sauce and Manchego Cheese Flan with Caramel Sauce call your name, this book is sure to delight.

Those of you who know me, know that my mother is from Mallorca, that she's a whopping good cook and that she's somewhat of a critique. My mother-in-law is from Mexico and she's a whopping good cook too. So having these two women over at my house at the same time, dining at my table, ingesting something I've made, can be a challenge. This book has saved me. I've had it for years and even though I know many of the recipes in it by heart, I still go back to it time and again. Yes, I play with them, adding and subtracting spices, but that's what cooks do. Good recipes are starting points and if you want to try cooking up real Spanish food, this book is a wonderful place to start.

So it's funny to be writing a review for this book because I never actually received it from the vendor. But the reason I wanted it in the first place is that we've renewed this exact book about 5 times at the library, so we know it extremely well.

The recipes in here are delicious. Amazing, gorgeous AND most of them are really pretty easy.

There are some wonderfully creative recipes in here, particularly the desserts. We keep on making the frozen fig mousse and it disappears within a day. Yum.