What to Eat in Spain: Typical Spanish Food and Specialties | Page 3 of 4
Kalimotxo: The Basque Name for Wine and Cola
Kalimotxo is cheap red wine and cola in equal parts, with ice and a slice of lemon - back home we know the same drink as houba. People had been mixing wine and cola in Spain long before that, but the name came from a crew in Getxo who had two thousand liters of wine turn sour on them in August 1972. How kalimotxo is drunk at Basque festivals, why it has two spellings, and how it tasted in the sun outside a bar in San Sebastián.
Txakoli: The Gently Sparkling White Wine of the Basque Country
Txakoli is a light, dry, gently sparkling white wine from the Basque coast of Spain, made mostly from the Hondarrabi Zuri grape. The name supposedly comes from farmers who said they had made "just enough for the house", and in 1982 the whole Basque Country had only 21 hectares of vineyards left. Today people drink it cold and young, poured from a height so that it fizzes, most often with pintxos.
Gilda: A Basque Pintxo of Olive, Anchovy, and Pickled Pepper
Gilda is a simple Basque pintxo: a green olive, an anchovy fillet and a pickled guindilla pepper. It was born at the Casa Vallés wine bar in San Sebastián and took its name from the Rita Hayworth film, because it's green, salty and a little spicy. Today it's served in bars all over Spain; you eat it standing up, whole, with a beer or a vermouth.
Idiazabal: Smoked Sheep's Cheese from the Basque Country and Navarre
Idiazabal is a hard cheese made from the raw milk of Basque latxa sheep, aged at least two months, and the only Spanish cheese with a protected designation of origin that's allowed to be smoked. It takes its name from a village below the Aralar mountains, though it's made across the whole Basque Country and Navarre. What's true about its eight thousand years of history, why it's smoked, and how a wheel from a Spanish supermarket tasted.
Coffee in Spain: Solo, Cortado, con Leche and How to Order It
Spain has one bar for every 175 people, and at every counter coffee is ordered by how much milk it gets: café solo, cortado, con leche, manchado. This article explains what each of them means, why Spanish coffee tastes dark and faintly bitter (the 1901 patent for roasting with sugar), when during the day people drink con hielo, bombón or carajillo, and what a plain "un café" at the counter will get you.
What to Bring Back from Spain?
I never come back from Spain without a backpack full of delicacies. Cured jamón, chorizo sausage, Basque Idiazabal cheese, marinated boquerones anchovies and crumbly mantecado and polvorónes cookies. Plus cocoa that turns into the thick hot chocolate they serve with churros in Spain.
Tarta de Queso La Viña: The Burnt Cheesecake from San Sebastián
Tarta de queso from the La Viña bar in San Sebastián is a crustless cake of cream cheese, eggs, sugar and cream, baked in a fierce oven so the top blackens and the middle stays almost liquid. Santiago Rivera worked the recipe out in the late 1980s after two years of trying; from a single pintxos bar it spread to cafes all over the world as the Basque burnt cheesecake.
Menú del Día: The Spanish Set-Price Lunch
Menú del día is Spain's fixed-price lunch: a first course, a second course, dessert, bread, and a drink. A state decree introduced it in the 1960s to support tourism, but the locals made it their own and turned it into a national midday ritual. How it works, what it costs today, and how mine tasted for 15 euros in the Basque city of Bilbao.
Chorizo: The Spanish Paprika Sausage, Its Types and Shapes
Chorizo is a Spanish cured sausage made from pork, fat, salt and dried pimentón paprika, which gives it its red color and a faintly smoky taste. Until 1492 it was white - it turned red only once paprika arrived from America. It's sold fresh and cured, mild and hot, shaped like a horseshoe, a candle or a thick cular; every region of Spain has its own version, from Rioja to Gran Canaria.
Doce Uvas de la Suerte: Twelve Grapes for a Spanish New Year's Eve
Doce uvas de la suerte, the twelve grapes of luck, is a Spanish New Year's custom: with each of the twelve strokes of the midnight bell you eat one grape for one month of the coming year. Dan explains why an uva isn't a whole bunch, where the custom actually came from (and why the legend of the Alicante glut doesn't hold up), how the clock at Puerta del Sol strikes midnight, and what it was like on a roof terrace in Malaga.