True Spanish Cooking

Spanish cuisine, like any other has been so generalized  as well as misunderstood. There is a whole range to it beyond tapas and paella. Luckily there are chefs who are succeeding in letting foodies know the true side of Iberian cooking. It's not the food of Latin America or Mexico but true and pure Spanish food.

It was the subject of an article written by Glenn Collins in yesterday's New York Times Dining section.The famed Spanish American chef Jose Andres is offering cooking courses on it to show students real Iberian cooking. Thanks to Italian and French cuisines overpowering the American palate for decades, true Spanish food is often overlooked and under rated. That is all going to change. Chef Andres will be teaching students traditional dishes as well as acclimating them to the cuisine's ingredients. Hopefully there will some good restaurants opening in the relatively near future with the chef's influence on them/

True Spanish cooking involves a number of different ingredients and cooking techniques. Chef Andres will be showing students that old chestnut, gazpacho but he will be making it the right way. It should be a liquid salad not just a bowl of icky cold soup. He also wants them to know jamon the air cured salty ham that accompanies many dishes as well as allioli, a version of the Provencale garlic sauce aioli. He will also introduce them to mojama, tuna packed in sea salt and hung out to dry. Chef Andre includes his fried egg or eggs a al Velasquez recipe in the interview. This is just a plain egg cooked in hot olive oil and garlic bath.. It is then served with jamon , and together it makes a heavenly dish , perfect for lunch .It wa snamed after the famed Velasquez painting  fo an old woman cooking an egg.

Spanish food is not just tapas and paella. It is not from the New World. It is an Old World cuisine with varied tastes and flavors , native to the Iberian peninsula. Thanks to Chef Andres, it will be well known and as much beloved as Italian or French cooking.