Category Archives: Spain

Using Cookbooks in Historical Archaeological Research: New Mexico as a Case Study

December 17, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Using cookbooks as a tool in historical archaeological research might sound a tad bit absurd, but by examining certain characteristics of these books, it becomes possible to see dirt-covered artifacts in a slightly different light. As a tribute to my childhood friend, Meli-Duran Kirkpatrick, and at the request of her husband, archaeologist Dr. David Kirkpatrick, I wrote an article DAILY LIFE THROUGH COOKING AND COOKBOOKS: A BRIEF GUIDE TO USING COOKBOOKS AS A TOOL IN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY about the feasibility […]

Categories: American Cooking, Archaeology, Cookbooks, Cooking, Food writing, Spain, Spanish Cooking • Tags: Archaeology, Cookbooks, Culinary History, New Mexico, Research methodology, Spanish Cooking

The Curse of Corn: Poverty and Politics and Pellagra

July 24, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dr. Joseph Goldberger stands watching the children eating. He’s about to prove his hunch that pellagra occurred in the face of nutritional deprivation. He devoted years to discovering what caused the curse of corn, pellagra. Although the fat cats in the South of the time, and we’re talking early 20th-century here, didn’t want to spend money on feeding programs, Goldberger managed to set up situations where he proved that insects and bacteria had nothing to do with the scourge of […]

Categories: Agriculture, Corn, Hunger, Italy, Local foods, Paintings, Southern Food, Spain • Tags: Gaspar Casal, Joseph Goldberger, Maize, Niacin, Pellagra, Southern cooking

Pilgrymes, Passing to and Fro: Chaucer Got it Right

May 16, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Springtime stirs up feelings of wanderlust in me, banishing the tiresome plague of cabin fever. I want to throw a fresh toothbrush and a fat book into my backpack and take off. I want to go on pilgrimage. To begin again: that’s the meaning of pilgrimage, which – let’s face it – is what travel is all about. Leaving behind old ways, the interminable rut, filthy habits, worn-out relationships, the stultifying everyday sameness of routine, breaking out of the box, […]

Categories: Spain • Tags: Camino de Santiago, Cantebury Tales, Dillwyn Parrish, Geoffrey Chaucer, M. F. K. Fisher, Martin Sheen, Phil Cousineau, Pilgrimages, Shirley MacLaine, Spain, The Way, Way of St. James

Dining Alone – Not the Loneliest Number that You’ll Ever Do: Just Ask Louis XIV

May 27, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

King Louis XIV did it. M. F. K. Fisher did it. The faceless man in Edward Hopper’s painting, “Nighthawks,” did it. Mr. Bean did it, too. And so did I. Daring to eat alone in public probably ranks as one of the few acts that cause normally confident people to quiver a little. It dredges up memories of being the new kid at school, faced with walking into the cafeteria and eating all by your lonesome. So public, so humiliating, […]

Categories: Chefs, Fish, Food writing, France, French Cooking, Menus, Spain, Spanish cooking, Wine • Tags: Alphabet for Gourmets, Brian Edwards, Desmond Morris, Edward Hopper, El Jaleo, Elaine Sciolino, José Andrés, Louis XIV of France, M. F. K. Fisher, Scrofula, Washington DC

Peregrinations and Pilgrimages: Legendary Scallops

September 27, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

A long time ago, I read a novel about a young woman who made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. The story captivated me, true. But more than that, the legend of the scallops stayed with me, with its magical aura of place, embodying the enduring desire of people to journey on pilgrimage, eternally seeking. The Codex Calixtinus (more HERE about this, also called Liber sancti Jacobi, Book of St. James), dating from 1160, illuminates the pilgrimage road in both […]

Categories: Shellfish, Spain • Tags: Camino de Santiago, Pilgrimage, Santiago de Compostela, Scallops, Spain, St. James

Spanish Cooks and The Essence of Their Art

June 23, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Just like in the movies, when the hero finally gets up to the ticket window and the clerk slams it shut.” That’s the thought that ballooned in my mind when I walked up to the doors of the Museo del Prado in Madrid on a Monday morning. CLOSED. No Velazquez. Of course, Monday. Here’s something mnemonic for travelers: Monday = no museums. Even though I really wanted to throw a hissy fit worthy of Scarlet O’Hara, I did what I […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Paintings, Spain, Spanish cooking • Tags: Arte de Cocina, Diego Granado Maldonado, Francisco Martínez Montiño, Libro del Art de Cozina, Spain, Spanish Cooking

Nuns’ Farts, or, How Sweet It Is

June 10, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Why would someone ever call dainty sweets “nuns’ farts?” How unappetizing and disrespectful … But call them that someone did, possibly a few disgruntled novices in a Catalan convent during the Siglo de Oro (Golden Century or Golden Age). Just imagine the young women giggling as they fried the dough, the popping sound of air escaping from the wet dough causing even more laughter. And then sudden silence when a black-habited kitchen sister frowned at the girls for breaking silence. […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Methods, Spain, Spanish cooking • Tags: Arte de Reposteria, Catalonia, Convents, Juan de la Mata, Nuns' farts, Nuns' sighs, Pets de monja, Pits de monja, Sospiros de monja, Spain, Sweets

Eating Cat Meat: A Taboo?

June 7, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One of the most memorable sayings you learn when you first study Spanish is, “Dar/vender gato por liebre,” or to “give or sell a cat instead of a rabbit,” meaning deception. Digging into the history of Spanish cookbooks, you’ll find a famous — and oft-quoted — recipe for roast cat in Ruperto de Nola’s* fifteenth-century opus: Libro de cocina compuesto por maestre Ruberto de Nola cocinero que fue del sereníssimo señor Rey don Hernando de Nápoles …,** thankfully also known […]

Categories: Africa, China, Cooking, Methods, Spain • Tags: Cats, China, E. N. Anderson, Eating Cats, El Llibre del Coch, Food Taboos, K. C. Chang, Robert de Nola, Spain, Vender Gato por Liebre

Sugar, Saffron, Spices — The Arab Influence on Spanish Cuisine, a Brief Meditation

June 2, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Spanish food enjoys some quite heady popularity right now. Trendy magazines and the international food punditry (for example, Matt Preston in Australia) say “Si” to Spanish cuisine and predict a continuing surge of enthusiasm for the food of the land of Don Quixote. Just about every grocery store, mundane as well as high-end, displays wedges of Manchego cheese placed temptingly near wrinkly chorizo sausages. And in case you can’t find it locally, an online store, La Tienda, sells everything you […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Beef, Cookbooks, Latin America, Middle Ages, Morocco, Spain, Spanish cooking • Tags: Al-Andalus, ArabCooking, Estremadura, Fudalat al-khiwan fi tayybat et-ta'am Wa-I-alwan, Laila Benkirane, Matt Preston, Mohamed Mezzine, Rachel Laudan, Spain, Spanish Cooking

Tilting at Windmills with Don Quixote, Or, A Meditation on Spanish Herbals

May 27, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I’ll confess something here: until just recently, I never read Don Quixote, except for snippets here and there. No, thanks to the preferences of my Spanish professors, instead I spent days swooning over the lyricism of poets Federico García Lorca and Pablo Neruda or stumbling through conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s account of Hernando Cortés’s conquest of Mexico. That’s really too bad, because even though Díaz recounts vivid details of the markets of the prehispanic Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán (now Mexico […]

Categories: Bibliographies, Cookbooks, Cooking, Spain, Spanish Cooking • Tags: acerca de la material medicinal, Andrés de Laguna, Arnald of Villanova, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Don Quixote, Federico García Lorca, Libro de Medicina llamado Macer, Longaniza, Luis Lobera de Ávila, Macer Floridus, Melitta Weiss Adamson, Miguel de cervantes, Nicolás de Monardes, Odo of Meung, Pablo Neruda, Pedacio Dioscorides Anarzabeo, Penelope Casas, Rafael Chabrán, Rosemary, Sancho Panza

The Herbs in Spain Grow Mainly on the Plain

May 21, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Many times when I walk through the nearby woods, I marvel at all the plants hiding under rotting logs and peeking out from the boulders. These plants, sharing the same earth and respiring the same air as we do, live and die nameless to most of us. How far away we’ve traveled from the days when we could walk out the door, into the forests and fields, and confidently pick a plant, knowing its name, its properties, and how to […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Cooking, Spain • Tags: Cookbooks, Ferenc Maté, Herbal Medicine, Herbals, Herbs, Llibre del Coch, Manual de Mugeres, Robert de Nola, Sent Sovi, The Hills of Tuscany

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme … and Lavender

May 5, 2010 by Cynthia Bertelsen

First, a pinch of etymology. The Greeks called lavender nardus after the Syrian city of Naardus, from which comes the word “spikenard.” (More on spikenard in a second.) As for our word, “lavender,” we must once again thank the Latin language for lavare, meaning, “to wash.” A member of the mint family, and cousin to rosemary, lavender can be used like rosemary in many dishes. Its blossoms form little spiked shoots sprouting flowers of many hues, not just purple. Cooking […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Cookbooks, England, Europe, Middle Ages, Middle East, Monasteries, Spain • Tags: Al-Andalus cookbook, Arab cooking, Charles Perry, Hildegard of Bingen, Lavender, Mary Magdalene, Mukhallal, Scarborough Fair, Spikenard

The Artful Pomegranate

November 5, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Guarded treasure, honeycomb partitions, Richness of flavour, Pentagonal architecture. The rind splits; seeds fall– Crimson seeds in azure bowls, Or drops of gold in dishes of enamelled bronze. –André Gide in Les Nourritures Terrestres (trans. Dorothy Bussy) Like the pomegranate itself, so ripe and bursting with seeds, the history of this berry-like fruit reveals more and more the deeper one looks into it. The myths, the legends, and the journeys of the pomegranate serve as an archetypal case of plant […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Chicken, Cooking, Poultry, Spain • Tags: Chicken, Iran, Khoresh-e Fessenjan, Pomegranates, Poultry

The Chicken or the Egg? 1. The Egg and Art*

October 12, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The egg it is where it was at for Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, who once said, rather egotistically (!), that “When I was three I wanted to be a cook. At the age of six I wanted to be Napoleon. Since then my ambition has increased all the time” The other day, thoughts of the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989) floated into my mind, slipping and sliding like one of his weary watches. Or, better yet, […]

Categories: Art, Cookbooks, Eggs, Menus, Spain • Tags: Arno Breker, Cookbooks, Food in Art, Menus, Museums, Salvador Dali, Surrealism

Honey, a Taste Sweeter Than Wine

September 28, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

THE BEE. Like trains of cars on tracks of plush I hear the level bee: A jar across the flowers goes, Their velvet masonry Withstands until the sweet assault Their chivalry consumes, While he, victorious, tilts away To vanquish other blooms. His feet are shod with gauze, His helmet is of gold; His breast, a single onyx With chrysoprase, inlaid. His labor is a chant, His idleness a tune; Oh, for a bee’s experience Of clovers and of noon! ~~ […]

Categories: Africa, Archaeology, Art, Spain • Tags: Archaeology, Bees, Bicorp, Emily Dickinson, Honey Bees, Spain, Zimbabwe

The Nose Knows

July 4, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It’s a long, old story. To be somewhat exact, 54-million years old. To make it short, the nose knows. And the nose led to the brain that could, well, create music and design spaceships to the moon and cook food à la Ferran Adrià i Acosta (molecular gastronomy):** “You can think of it as a cousin of the main line lineage that would have given rise ultimately to us.” ~~~ Jonathan I. Bloch Virtual endocast of Ignacius graybullianus (Paromomyidae, Primates) […]

Categories: Evolution, Spain • Tags: Ferran Adrià i Acosta, Ignacius graybullianus, Jamie Schler, Jonathan Bloch, Life's a Feast, Mary T. Silcox

Luis Meléndez, Mi Amor

May 16, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Oh, oh, oh, imagine my excitement when I read Super Chefs’ Juliette Rossant’s blog post on May 14, 2009: “Luis Meléndez at National Gallery of Art” I went to the source and here’s the scoop: Luis Meléndez (1715–1780) is now recognized as the premier still-life painter in 18th-century Spain, indeed one of the greatest in all of Europe, though his reputation had long been eclipsed by the achievements of his Spanish contemporary, Francisco Goya. After a precarious beginning to his […]

Categories: Art, Spain • Tags: Luis Meléndez, National Gallery of Art

The Book of Sent Sovi: Medieval Recipes from Catalonia (Textos B)

March 18, 2009 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The discovery of “new” old cookbooks always makes my brain tingle — so few people wrote down anything about the most basic of human activities — eating — that written records of any sort demand celebration and acclaim. The Book of Sent Sovi is one of those … The Book of Sent Sovi, composed around the middle of the fourteenth century [and edited by modern-day author Joan Santanach, 2008], is the oldest surviving culinary text in Catalan. It is anonymous […]

Categories: Cookbooks, Spain • Tags: Catalan Cooking, Cooking, Food, Spanish Food

Gherkins & Tomatoes

Meditations and Photographs about Food, Cooking, and Life