A top-flight American chef once asked me, only partly in jest, if we eat any vegetables in Spain. He had been traveling here for two weeks and was overwhelmed by the vast amounts of lamb and kid, poultry, beef dishes, plates of fish and shellfish, and surely no shortage of pork and jamón. But vegetables?
The answer, of course, is a resounding yes—especially in homes. (He had been eating only in restaurants.) In southern Navarra along the Ebro River—an important center of the country’s vegetable industry—the town of Tudela takes its vegetables so seriously that it offers a weeks-long spring celebration called the Exaltación de la Verdura (Exaltation of the Vegetable). There are samples, discussions, cooking workshops, and, of course, cooking contests with vegetables.
In homes, vegetable dishes tend to be served as a first course, rather than as a guarnición (garnish) or acompañamiento (accompaniment) to a main dish. A plate of sautéed wild mushrooms (see page 100), say, or stewed Manchego-style medley of vegetables (see page 102) will usually be served on its own, just as the fish or meat dish will be for the next course. Potatoes are perhaps the biggest exception. While there are a couple of notable first dishes based on potatoes—La Rioja-style with chorizo (see page 118) comes immediately to mind—they generally come alongside main dishes.
Of the vegetable treasures brought back from the New World—kidney and green beans, peppers, tomatoes, various members of the squash family—the potato has been one of the most important to the diet. The Spanish first encountered it in 1532 in modern-day Peru, though it didn’t arrive in Spain until 1570. Cultivation began small and it was grown largely for cattle and pigs. Many considered the tuber venomous and a cause of leprosy. Not until the end of the eighteenth century was it integrated into the Spanish kitchen.
The most common Spanish potato is thin-skinned, with a waxy, pale-gold peel and white interior, akin to a Yukon gold or white round potato. Galicia has the best known potato culture (and grows the famous Kennebec variety around Ourense). Here, as elsewhere in the north of the country, they form the base for various stews, and are a key ingredient in many other dishes—including one with veal (see page 32) and another with bonito tuna (see page 31)—to give substance, thicken, and, ultimately, absorb the flavors of the pot. Boiled and sliced Galician cachelos (see page 116) make a great bed for seafood or skewers of marinated pork for the flavors to drain down into. A small book published by the Xunta de Galicia (the regional government) on its cuisine reported that potatoes are used in more than half of the dishes in Galicia. After spending much of a summer in the region, I believe it.
