Introduction
My fascination with Basque food started early. My grandmother, Silvia, was a professional cook from Navarra who often prepared traditional Basque dishes while staying with us in Madrid. What I did not know at that time was how immersed I would become in all things Basque. My involvement began in the mid-1980s when I was asked to organise a lunch in London for the British press. The event was to celebrate the achievements of a revolutionary new Basque food movement known as the La Nueva Cocina Vasca (New Basque Cuisine). This movement was started by a group of young Basque chefs in the 1970s. It aimed to update La Cocina Vasca (Traditional Basque Cooking) and marked the beginning of a remarkable success, placing creative Spanish professional kitchens on the world map.
Since the nineteenth century, La Cocina Vasca has been divided into two categories: La Cocina de Siempre, Basque traditional food prepared at home and in popular restaurants, and La Alta Cocina, fine dining greatly influenced by French cooking. By the 1980s, this had already changed. Travelling up and down the country, talking to chefs and home cooks, visiting local markets and, most importantly, tasting dishes, I realised how Basque food, both traditional and reinvented, coexisted in harmony.
Having eventually found the right chef and the right menu, I discovered a history that fired my imagination, inviting me to go further. The menu written for the lunch was going to include a dessert made with apples, puff pastry and Mamia. 'Mamia?' I asked the chef. 'Mamia,' he said, 'is a sheep's milk delicacy that in some caseríos (traditional farmhouses) in northern Navarra is still prepared in the old-fashioned way, using a large traditional wooden pitcher carved out of one solid piece of wood. This utensil has always been known as a kaiku and has a long and interesting history associated with the ancient world of the Basques.' By then I was intrigued and started looking for answers. I researched and published a paper on the kaiku, then wrote my first book about the special relationship between Basques and food, which in my opinion is without comparison elsewhere in the world.
Who are the Basques? I asked myself. Where do they live? What language do they speak? Where does their intense love of food come from and, equally important, how is Basque food enjoyed and how has such a great reputation been established everywhere within the Iberian Peninsula?
While my area of research on this subject has always been based in Euskadi as Basque Spain is known - Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, Alava and parts of Navarra - the land of the Basques, Euskal Herria, actually continues much further along the coast, right through to the Pyrenees and into the French provinces of Lower Navarre, Labourd and Soule. This is the reason why I have included several French Basque recipes in this book.
All Basques speak a very ancient language called Euskera. They all share a passion for food, which brings me to my next question: where does the excellent reputation that Basque food enjoys come from? Even today, when wonderful food can be enjoyed all over Spain, ask any Spaniard where you will find the best food in the country and they will most likely say in the north, in the Basque Country. Basques are serious about their culinary traditions, which they respect and follow with passion. (I am not including the new passion for innovative food that is highly impressive but does require skill and a level of professional expertise.)
Basques believe in quality as much as quantity. They are very dedicated when preparing and tasting their delicious dishes, seeking a perfect harmony between people and food to the point where others might think it has become almost an obsession. Virtually all Basques are good cooks, or they aspire to be. I believe that they are born already inspired. They simply love their cooking, as much as to please themselves as to please others. Whether in a bar or restaurant with friends or at home with family, they love to share delicious food whenever possible. In the Basque Country, there are thousands of eating places to choose from, where the quality of the food and the wine (or cider) they love so dearly is guaranteed.
A few years ago, I wrote some words on the Basque passion for cooking and food. Even if the world has changed since then, I believe those words are still valid, I have just added a few more: 'If I close my eyes to conjure up a scene of Basque cooking, it takes the shape of an earthenware pot, cooking either on a farmhouse range, on a spectacular stove in a txokos (men's gastronomic society) or in the ultra-modern kitchen of one of the best restaurants in the world. The first is tended by a woman, the second by a man and the third by both men and women.'
Thinking about those words in preparation for this book, I travelled again to Gernika, in Vizcaya and to the locality of Astigarraga in Guipúzcoa. I stopped in Bilbao before travelling to the city of San Sebastián and then on to the town of Biarritz in the Basque part of France, before returning to London.
Not far from Gernika, I visited the caserío of my friend Luisa Aulestia. Talking to Luisa, I realised that even if life in the Basque caserío has changed dramatically since I first met her in the 1980s, she was still in charge of the house, the kitchen, the chickens, a few ducks and the two pigs while her husband still cooks in the local txokos from time to time.
In Luisa's vegetable garden, which is her pride and joy, she plants black and white beans, climbing towards the sun, supported not by bean poles but by sweetcorn/maize plants, as the Aztecs and Mayas did centuries before her. She is still growing her potatoes and amazingly large cabbages, which she calls berza. In the right season, bottling tomatoes and drying peppers and chillies/chiles has always been a priority for Luisa. She hangs red choricero and hot guindilla peppers from the windows to dry and bottles the fresh green piparras chillies, which all the family love. Come autumn/fall, from the apple orchards that surround the house, her husband and son make their own cider, which I was delighted to taste before lunch. She served alubias negras de Tolosa (black bean stew with black pudding/blood sausage and cabbage), accompanied by a small plate of piparras and, as is the custom, a glass of red wine from the Rioja Alavesa, an area of wine production inside Euskadi.
The following day, as I travelled towards the border with France, I stopped first in Astigarraga at the sidreras (cider house) of another friend, Rosario, whose recipes I love to cook. Astigarraga is a town in Guipúzcoa, well known for cider and cider houses. As I arrived, Rosario was upstairs in the main kitchen preparing one of her renowned tortillas de bacalao (omelette with salted cod) with properly desalted fish, large spring onions/scallions and green (bell) peppers, while her brother was already downstairs grilling the chuletas (T-bone steaks) in front of diners.
On the move again, I reached the ever charming San Sebastián where I found accommodation not far from the popular La Parte Vieja in the heart of the city. From eleven o'clock every day, La Parte Vieja is full of locals and tourists enjoying a pintxo, a little dish with the tastiest tomatoes or a wonderful plate of mushrooms. Mmm. My mouth is watering just remembering this scene. Walking down the streets, I could see the open front door of one of the best-known txokos in town. I could not resist stopping and sneaking into the main room, which was empty. I knew that come lunch or dinner time, a number of friends (usually all male members of the gastronomic society) would be sitting, waiting for the one member who had been cooking for hours during the morning to serve the food, possibly arroz con almejas (rice with clams) and merluza en salsa verde (hake in parsley sauce) cooked in a cazuela (earthenware pot). Not so long ago, women were not allowed to enter these societies. Now things have changed somewhat. Women are now invited on certain days to join their husbands or friends for lunch or dinner, but they are still not allowed to cook. Gastronomic societies were created as male-only clubs, considered by their members as a refuge to cook and eat for their own pleasure and for that of other members, some of whom are acclaimed chefs. It is a space chefs can disappear to from time to time, where they can experience dishes closer to home cooking that they may never confess to in public!
Whether they have a Michelin star or not, in the whole of the Basque Country, chefs are rightly considered brilliant stars themselves. Around the city of San Sebastián, there are 16 restaurants with Michelin stars: Akelarre, Arzak and Martín Berasategui have three stars each, making this a great reason to spend my very last evening there. I sampled some truly wonderful dishes (too many to remember) that have earned this city its reputation as a world-acclaimed food paradise. So here I was, heading up to the Monte Igueldo where Akelarre looks down onto one of the most beautiful bays that I have ever seen. Chef Pedro Subijana, a brilliant chef who I was privileged to accompany during his visit to London in the 1980s, was still the chef patron in San Sebastián.
The following morning in Biarritz, across the border in France, I had time to stop at an excellent...
