The New Spanish Table - Hardcover

Spain is the next France, announces The New York Times Magazine. And Wine Spectator declares: “Spain is setting the pace in Europe today when it comes to wine and food.” Food and travel editors herald Spain as the new Italy. Something incredibly fascinating is happening in the country, with its hip tapas, hot chefs like Ferran Adrià and Juan Mari Azrak (see Adrià’s Rack of Lamb with Pistachio Pesto and Scallions in the meat chapter), and mouthwatering array of premium olive oils, wines, cheeses, and other foods getting snapped up in American markets.

The New Spanish Table delivers the food of Spain in all its glory. A big, bold, 275-recipe collection, packed with gorgeously colorful photographs, it gets right to the heart of Spain today: its marriage of innovation, deep-rooted traditions, amazing ingredients, and everything one could ever want in between. Written by Anya von Bremzen, coauthor of Please to the Table (64,000 copies in print) and a food writer who’s been covering Spain for 10 years, The New Spanish Table turns risotto on its head—as in Basque Smoked Cheese Risotto with Garlic Oil. Lavishes with sexy tapas—Smoky Fried Almonds with Sea Salt, Catalan Guacamole, Blue Cheese and Date Croquettes. Heralds the gazpacho revolution—Adolfo Muñoz’s Strawberry, Tomato, and Fennel Gazpacho. Signs off with desserts that show Spanish cuisine at its creative best: Warm Chocolate Soufflé Cakes with Thyme Ice Cream, Clarisa Nun’s Banana and Hazelnut Tart. Fascinating and vibrant and impossible not to love. And all easy to prepare as well. Along the way, visits at the Spanish table with home cooks, tabernaowners, celebrity chefs, farmers, winemakers, nuns who bake like a dream. Includes appendices on Spanish wine, finding Spanish ingredients, and Anya’s recommended restaurants. ¡Estupendo!

Amazing things are happening at the new Spanish table. The sweet-hot pequillos of Navarra turn up in a classic potato tortilla (the beloved omelet found in every tapas bar). Purple-veined Cabrales butter melts across a thick grilled T-bone. Honey is drizzled over eggplant “fries.” Chocolate meets olive oil, strawberries meet fennel, vanilla meets salmon.Mysteriously delicious savory ice creams—balsamic vinegar, thyme, saffron—garnish soups and seafoods.

Casual, quietly inventive, steeped in regional traditions but unmistakably modern, Spain is the new France and Italy, an epicenter of contemporary Mediterranean cooking with a wealth of alluring flavors and preparations.

Written by Anya von Bremzen—an award-winning food writer who first fell in love with Spain in the early 1980s, introduced the Catalan genius and three-star chef Ferran Adrià; to American readers in 1997, and today spends close to half her year in the country—The New Spanish Table delivers all the pleasures of this exhilarating cuisine.

It’s a rustic table: Baked Fish with Romesco Potatoes. It’s elegant: Rack of Lamb with Pistachio Pesto. It’s exquisitely simple: Smoky Fried Almonds with sea salt, an addictive marriage of four ingredients. It’s for entertaining— dozens of tapas, paellas and cazuelas (named after the Spanish terra-cotta casseroles)—and, with its glorious comfort foods like fried eggs with crackling, crispy whites, and luscious, unusual Rice Pudding Ice Cream, perfect for cozying up, alone.

Most of all, The New Spanish Table is an irresistible, festive celebration of flavors from a culture absolutely passionate about food, wine, and the pleasures of an excellent meal.