Feast or Fiesta: 5 Foods from Spain On Your Kitchen Table
Jeralyn Gerba
On my first day in Barcelona, a friend and I discovered a gastronomic gold mine: a small, unassuming grocer carrying super old-school Spanish products. We immediately purchased incredibly cumbersome cans of Bonilla a la Vista potato chips, which we then had to carry around in our arms for the rest of the day. (Turns out gallon-size cans of chips are hard to fit in a purse.) To our amusement, the potato chips turned out to be our key to the city: Those hard-to-find patatas cans were a real conversation starter for old people on the street (who flagged us down), and cooks at the tapas joint (who gave us VIP treatment at the bar). I brought one of the unwieldy things to the Fathom HQ office, and we still talked about them months after the last crumbs disappeared from the bottom of the tin bucket.
And that was just the tip of the culinary souvenir iceberg. A trip to Mallorca was equally as memorable for the goodies I procured from Café Sa Plaça, a sunny bistro and shop at the Park Hyatt Mallorca. The unadulterated ingredients. The adorable packaging. Recently I thought about recreating a Spanish dinner party in my stateside kitchen. With the help of La Tienda (a fantastic resource for Spanish foods) and Amazon (Prime in a pinch), making a fiesta at home can happen in no time at all. Consider this an all-you-need shopping list.
Flor de Sal d’Es Trenc
Flaky crystals of salt are harvested from the marshes of Mallorca and infused with the likes of rose, hibiscus, and olives. Sprinkle on an arugula salad, goat cheese, or fine piece of fish. ($14.50)
Ortiz Anchovies
A beautiful, simple app for your dinner table: Pop open can, spear with tiny fork, eat with cracker and sprig of parsley. ($20)
Tetilla Cheese
A buttery, soft cow's milk cheese with a show-stopping silhouette. Shaped like a tear and sliced like a pie, it's great with a slice of apple and drizzle of honey. ($18)
Castillo De Canena Smoked Organic Olive Oil
Extra-virgin gold infused with oak-beech-birch wood and poured into a hard-to-forget baby blue bottle. The Castillo de Canena estate has been producing the award-winning stuff since 1780. Pair with crusty bread and a glass of red. ($24)
Iberico de Bellota Sliders
The famous Spanish pork has notes of acorn, grass, and herbs. It's seasoned with salt and pepper, prepped as juicy patties, and shipped frozen to your door. ($20 for six)
One Wine Glass to Rule Them All
Tumblers can serve as informal wine glasses, and are perfectly appropriate for simple bottles in easygoing establishments. You could drink from a porrón, a traditional Spanish glass pitcher that was a modern adaptation of the leather wineskin, or bota bag, once carried by Spanish shepherds. You may even drink straight from the bottle, though I recommend reserving this method for locker-room celebrations.
The Perfect Valentine's Day Gift, No Matter How Long You've Been Together
Whether your love is super fresh like J. Lo and Drake or if you’ve been together for years like Will and Jada, we’ve got a genius gift idea
LA TIENDA
Buy It! Tapas for Two, $59.95; tienda.com
3 Reasons To Stay Home For Valentine’s Day & Tapas Giveaway
Whether you have been married for decades or only a few years, you should do something special for Valentine’s Day. Even a small gesture helps commemorate the love that you share. If you’re looking for an enjoyable, simple Valentine’s Day evening, look no further than your own home.
Years ago, going out to a fancy restaurant was the most special way to spend the holiday. Now that I have children, staying in has more of an appeal to me. Even at home, our celebrations can continue. Check out three reasons why you can have an excellent evening at home.
Your evening has a more intimate setting
Skip the long lines, waiting, and crowds. Even if you get a nice reservation, restaurants will be packed for Valentine’s Day, and movie theaters will be too. With so many people going out, you will have a better chance of reconnecting by staying home.
Even though some of the most memorable evenings I’ve had out involve incredible food, I also have vivid memories of crowds. Over the years, staying home started to sound more appealing. I can relax, wear something comfy, and be myself.
Instead of stressing over making homemade food, try a Tapas for Two Gift Box of Spanish Food from La Tienda. We sampled this delicious collection of food over the weekend. Instead of everyone chowing down on pizza and then heading off to do separate activities, we enjoyed taking time to catch up as we ate. Since tapas, or small dishes, are perfect for snacking, they lead to good conversation.
Staying in and eating good food is my ideal way to spend Valentine’s Day. Whether we cook something nice or eat tapas together, keeping the evening simple will make everyone happy.
Valentine's Day Gifts for the Food Lover in Your Life
"Valentine's Day is a sham created by card companies to reinforce and exploit gender stereotypes," the great Liz Lemon once declared, right before buying cookies to celebrate the coincidentally timed February 14 birthday of famed American suffragette Anna Howard Shaw.
But no matter what you're celebrating when February 14 comes around, it doesn't hurt to celebrate with food.
If you're fortunate enough love someone more than food (okay, or equal to food), celebrate that love with what may be the only appropriate gift to show how much you care: more food.
Chocolates, candies, cheese, champagne and more are all fantastic ways to show your adoration for another person, especially if that person loves food as much as you do.
And the best part about food gifts? They're often shared ... Make February 14 a tasty date night by giving these sweet and savory treats to your sweetie this Valentine's Day (or Anna Howard Shaw Day, whatever you celebrate).
Jamón Tasting Trio
$74.95, Tienda.com
Make Valentine's Day a menage a trois, or tres, if you will, with this alluring trio of Spain's greatest hams, all to be eaten with your fingers, of course.
Hunting Gooseneck Barnacles on Vancouver Island
Sylvie Bigar
“We got percebes!” yelled the chef. I had no idea what he meant, but I nodded. I was in Spain reporting on paella and open to anything a Spanish cook would put on my plate. But when he brought a steaming bouquet of dark tubes attached to what looked like prehistoric claws, I froze.
I watched my dining companion hold one repulsive claw between two fingers, pull a foreskin off, and mouth the remaining stem.
“Hmm,” he moaned. “Ocean.”
One bite and I was hooked.
Percebes, or gooseneck barnacles, are crustaceans related to crabs and lobsters that have been prized in Spain for centuries, fetching upward of $100 per pound. In the northern region of Galicia, along the well-named Costa da Morte (Coast of Death), fishermen called percebeiros brave the pounding surf and, seeming acrobats on rocks, dance with the waves to harvest these delicacies.
Back in New York and hungry for more, I reached out to Jonathan Harris, co-owner of La Tienda, a company that specializes in sourcing gourmet Spanish food. He explained that Spain consumes most of its Galician harvest, so he sources goosenecks from Vancouver Island in British Columbia, where members of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations tribe have been harvesting them on a sprinkling of rocky outposts for generations. With the help of forager Tyler Gray from Seattle-based Mikuni Wild Harvest, which imports the live beasts into the U.S., Harris sells a Spanish delicacy made in Canada.
It was enough for me to head to Vancouver and hop on a seven-seater to Tofino on the western edge of the island. As we rocked and rolled through dark cumulonimbus clouds, I closed my eyes and mulled over my epitaph. I had just settled on “barnacles claimed her” when we plunged toward the beach and touched down a minute later.
Summer wanderers and surfers head to Tofino—on the Clayoquot Sound, a UNESCO biosphere reserve—for the miles-long beaches, swells, and temperate rain forest. But the rains that rumble through the area have spurred a storm-watcher following and transformed the small town into a year-round destination.
The plan was to head to the rocks at low tide with a member of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation, harvest goosenecks, and bring them to the kitchens of two celebrated local chefs who would turn the creatures into plats du jour.
Billy George, my spry guide, picked one of the lowest tides of the month. We were lucky. Sunny with little wind, the conditions were ideal for taking a rookie out, but I knew the truth. Men often crept along jagged bluffs, half buried by the surf, risking all for the prized sea jewels. In Spain, an average of five percebeiros die every year, and cliffs bear crosses in their honor.
“Ready, jump!” yelled George—charcoal-black mustache and angular face—as the boat bopped up and down, nearly crashing on the promontory. Suddenly he flew from boat to rock. I wavered one second too long, anxious my Wellies would betray me on the slippery rocks. I had flown cross-country, and now all I could do was watch George brave the waves, thrust his homemade pry bar under clusters of barnacles, and lift them away from the rocks to which they’d attached themselves.
He’d told me that the stronger the surf, the bigger the barnacles got because they ingest more nutrients, which explained why harvesters choose the most dangerous spots. “We lost three gooseneckers recently,” George recalled. I would learn later that his brother, a fisherman, had drowned in the same waters.
A few feet from the boat, a fin and the round back of an orca pierced the surface, circling around us slowly. I was safe, but the silence felt ominous.
For local harvesters like George, who studied culinary arts and also worked as a chef, a way of life—and livelihood—has come under threat in recent years. In the ’90s, a commercial fishery here employed more than a hundred men, who collected and shipped goosenecks to Europe. (Although Spain’s Galician goosenecks share the same genus, they are, in fact, a different species.) The Nuu-chah-nulth, who prefer to pick and share the returns communally, felt squeezed out, and the Canadian government was concerned about overfishing.
The government eventually closed the commercial operation, and in 2006, some Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations groups sued lawmakers to have their aboriginal commercial rights to all sea resources recognized. The case is still pending, but today Ocean Wise, a Vancouver Aquarium conservation program, is working to ensure the reopened gooseneck fishery, which is now owned by five First Nations tribes, remains sustainable. Goosenecks can live only in the wild and can’t be bred.
After our harvest, George and I emptied part of our treasure onto a sheet pan in the kitchen of Wolf in the Fog, a restaurant where co-owner and executive chef Nick Nutting—shaved head, hipster beard, black apron—draws on the Pacific Northwest landscape for inspiration.
This two-story chalet in the center of Tofino, with wall-mounted broken surfboards and a menacing driftwood sculpture of a wolf perched on the bar, seemed far from George’s birthplace but was only miles away. Armed with scissors, Nutting clipped the rocky parts and blanched the barnacles’ exposed insides. He peeled back the foreskin before heating up the tip of the gooseneck in tomato sauce, giving it a light Mediterranean flavor.
The next day it was pure ocean I inhaled, eating goosenecks simply poached in dashi broth by chef Lisa Ahier. The Texas native is co-owner of SoBo, another Tofino restaurant. Steamers on steroids, I thought, with a texture reminiscent of the most delicate lobster.
“They look like dinosaur’s toes,” Ahier said, laughing in black overalls and a tie-dyed shirt as she whipped up yet another version, doused with leeks, garlic, sorrels, and white wine.
Later in the week, in Vancouver, I stopped at Hawksworth Restaurant in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia for a dish of goosenecks, seared squid, artichoke, olives, lemons, and puffed grains. There, the chewy but tender texture of the barnacles added a structured layer.
Bringing the barnacles alive to my own kitchen in New York City seemed appropriate to close the loop of my marine obsession, so I ordered some through La Tienda a week later. “Yuck, what’s that?” shrieked Sophie, my 15-year-old daughter, as she peered into the fridge.
In a small casserole I simmered French butter, lemon, and pepper, then separated and clipped the barnacles as best I could before dunking them in boiling water. As soon as the water boiled again, the barnacles would be ready, George had said.
“Quick! A table!” I yelled, scooping them up into a clean bowl and pouring the sauce into another. But when I tried to slide the bulging orange tube off, it literally exploded, splattering my shirt, the table, and the wall. We burst out laughing, dipped the percebe in the sauce, and sucked the whole thing.
It was delicious. There was no orca in sight and more skyscrapers than islands, but I closed my eyes, savoring the gooseneck’s oceanic essence, and for one split second I thought I could hear the roar of the waves in the distance.
The Perfect Valentine's Day Gift, No Matter How Long You've Been Together
Whether your love is super fresh or if you’ve been together for years, we’ve got a genius gift idea! This gallery originally appeared on people.com.
It's Fresh
It's still new, but you're really into it and want to impress. From the gift of spending time together, to a personalized pick that shows you're thinking of them, try one of these can't-miss gifts.
Tapas for Two Gift Box
Available at tienda.com - $59.95
The Truth About Jamon Iberico
If you've been underwhelmed after trying Spain's much-hyped Jamon Iberico, there's a reason: you probably weren't tasting the best. Banned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture until a decade ago, the luxury, free-range Iberian ham with the rich, nutty splendor was known here only by its reputation. What wasn't clear when the import floodgates opened was that it comes in several grades. Some are merely good. The utmost—those that exhibit a rare combination of breeding, feeding and curing—are exquisite and fetch prices of $190 a pound. To get the real deal you must learn to read the label or simply buy from brands like Cinco Jotas (aka 5J) that import only the top tier.
Spain designates the best as black label. It starts with a purebred Iberian pig, called pata negra for its black hooves. Lesser grades use crossbred pigs that are more prolific and earlier to develop. Another difference is diet. Optimally, the pig feeds exclusively on fallen acorns as it roams the Andalusian oak forests during the last three months of its life. This is how it gets its oily, nutty character. Such pigs will be stamped bellota (Spanish for acorn). However, red label pigs (crossbreeds) also share that designation. Green label indicates crossbred pigs fed with a mix of acorns and grain. White label hams are crossbred and never eat a single acorn.
Since 2010, the Spanish government has gotten much stricter with the labeling requirements of its Iberico hams. Manufacturers now have to specify the details of breeding and diet. Aging is also important. Ideally, these haughty hocks should spend three years in a curing facility.
To enjoy Iberico ham you can find a restaurant that serves Cinco Jotas Iberico. More involved is buying and cutting the whole leg, but you'll also need a ham holder, the right cutlery and lessons on the proper technique. Besides, that's a lot of ham for one household. Better to find a purveyor that sells it by the slice. Cinco Jotas hams are available in precut packets from such mail-order outfits as La Tienda and Hamlovers.com, which specialize in Spanish imports.
Served at room temperature, each glistening piece should pretty much melt in your mouth. That's not an opinion, it's actually scientific fact. Acorns are high in oleic acid, giving the pig fat not only a sublime taste, but a low melting point that results in a true porcine epiphany.
20 Original Gift Ideas for Valentine's Day 2017
With Valentine’s Day less than two weeks away, most of us have not yet purchased a gift for our loved one(s).
For the sake of originality, here are 20 gift suggestions for those seeking to offer something more original than a bouquet of flowers and/or a box of chocolates:
17) Tapas For Two Gift Box by La Tienda
A picnic in not ideal this time of year in New York, but this gift box from La Tienda may have you reconsidering that. This Spanish-themed tapas box for two includes La Riojja dry-cured chorizo sausage, Peregrino anchovy stuffed olives, Torres truffled potato chips, and Marcona almonds. It is available for order via www.latienda.com.
Let's Get Cooking - Trending Tastes from Cooking Light's Editors
If the only canned fish you've tried is old-school supermarket tuna, premium seafood conservas from Spain and Portugal will blow you out of the water. You've never tasted better canned tuna or milder, meatier sardines and mackerel - all packed to the gills with omega-3s. Adventurous palates can try octopus, razor clams, or squid. Turn the page for our favorites; your pantry and next party need them.
Luxe Canned Fish: Worth the Splurge
Our faves for tapas parties or quick, delicious meals.
Conservas de Cambados Razor Clams - Firm, mild, and exceptionally sweet; a must for shellfish lovers.
Ramón Peña Octopus - Meaty chunks that make a great protein add-on for green salads.
How to Make the Most of Europe's Winter Truffle Season
Michaela Trimble
In the winter months, truffle season beckons in Europe. The mountains are cloaked in showers, soaking the grounds and nourishing grasses, trees, and truffles alike.
Jonathan Harris, truffle expert and cofounder of La Tienda, looks forward to southern Europe’s winter, when trees and truffles are well watered and healthy. During this time, the fungus is at its most fruitful, making it ripe for producing the finest quality truffles.
“Southern Europe has a very special ecology that supports intensely aromatic and flavorful truffles,” said Harris. “Winter truffles, both white and black, are unique to Europe and are the most prized in the world. There are other species of truffles in parts of North America and Asia, but none compare to the quality produced here.”
There’s a reason truffles harbor a nutty, often woody taste: “Truffles are a symbiotic fungus,” said Harris. “They depend on trees like oak and hazelnut to provide them with sugars, and, in turn, they provide essential nutrients to the trees.”
This is why truffles are the perfect complement to olive oil, cheese, and even honey. For a winter holiday, consider making the most of southern Europe’s winter truffle season with not-to-miss experiences spanning Italy, France, Switzerland, and Spain.
Northeastern Spain
Located in Teruel in the northeastern province of Aragón, Spain, La Trufa Negra is an idyllic plot of land nestled within the Sierra de Gúdar mountain range. Here, truffles prove common, and guests can explore the countryside during a visit to La Trufa Negra’s El Olmo country house, set on nearly 125 acres of oak-tree-dotted land and home to the property’s very own truffle farm. During a guided hike to source winter truffles, experts reveal the secret to the truffle trade.
Not only are the truffles in Teruel regarded as some of the best in the world, the region is also thought to produce the largest quantity of black truffles, and after dogs trained to sniff the regions black truffles source the bounty, guests return to a feast at La Trufa Negra’s Melanosporum Restaurant. Here, the chef presents dishes like raviolis stuffed with Aragón lamb and mushrooms with truffle cream and a truffle-infused hamburger with cheddar cheese and boletus sauce.
The Ultimate Gift Guide
Michalene Busico
For the gift giver, the true beauty of a gift basket may be that there is no assembly required: An enticing selection of hard-to-find delicacies or collectible wines allows you to please the connoisseur without knowing everything about the intricacies of Spanish cuisine or French patisserie yourself. To that end, we sought out gift baskets put together by experts and asked for the best they have to offer. For $250 to $20,000, here are our top five.
La Tienda Spanish Luxury Gift Box
