And that search for emulsion brings us to the undisputed king of sauce on the Iberian peninsula. Unless you hide out in your room and shun the company of humanity entirely, you are going to see mayonnaise every day that you are in Spain. Gobs of it.
You will see tapas seemingly made of it. You will see potatoes smothered in it. You will see what at first glance appear to be cakes covered in white frosting, replete with florets and garlands. Do not be fooled. It’s mayo. That ‘cake’ is layers of fish and potato, with mayo deposited thickly between the strata. Order a paella de mariscos (seafood paella) and you will get mayonnaise on the side with which to further enrich the dish. Not a little plastic packet of mayonnaise. Not a dollop or a teaspoon. You will get an ice-cream scoop of mayonnaise! If you see anything on the menu ‘con dos salsas’ it means two ice-cream scoops of mayonnaise, one of which was coloured with paprika. We can’t tell you the way to a Spaniard’s heart, but we can tell you that once you get there you’ll find a lot of mayonnaise.
The most popular herb in Spain, by far, is perejil (parsley). Spaniards love its subtle earthy taste and palate-cleansing freshness. Other herbs they use very discreetly, if they use them at all. But they use parsley with abandon. Thus, salsa verde (green sauce), made with olive oil, garlic and bunches of minced parsley
Marinades are the spiciest of Spanish sauces. They employ strong vinegar, garlic and oregano, bay leaf and sometimes chilli. Their original purpose was not so much gustatory but preservative. Marinades are still popular, especially for cooking game and heavy meats.
Almonds blanket huge swathes of Spain. Galicia is covered with chestnuts, the Basque country with walnuts, Catalunya with hazelnuts. The sauces made with these nuts have been around for centuries. The nuts arc finely ground with such things as garlic, bread, saloon, wine and, of course, olive oil.
In this category we find what many say is the queen of’ Spanish sauces, the Catalan salsa romesco (see recipe on previous page). These sauces are flavoured with, indeed are vehicles for, red capsicums. Most often this is in the form of paprika. In Spain paprika is sweet but not mild. It asserts itself upon the tongue but does not burn
This is Spanish tomato sauce, very quick and simple. Chopped tomato, onion, green capsicum, a little garlic are cooked in olive oil until the liquid is cooked away (10-15 minutes). It’s now ready to be used in cooking or stored for later.
If you pick up your average European cookery book you’ll find a whole section on sauces; sauces with grand sounding names like Grand Veneur, or Chantilly. You might even se Sauce Espagñole. So named because when tomato is added to basic brown sauce it takes on a deeper colour, giving it a swarthy hue. Hmmm. But you won’t find such a section in the Spanish cookery book for the Spanish take quite a different view of sauce and sauce-making. Let it be noted that the word for sauce is salsa, but this has nothing to do with saisa Mexicana or salsa picante.
For a people with a sweet tooth the Spanish are short on sweets. Or at least variety in sweets. You won’t find much in the way of Bavarian flights of sugary fancy, or French panache in pastry. The Italians surpass the Spanish in confectionery. Even the English are more imaginative with their traditional sweet trolley. You will see candy shops every few blocks in the major cities, and they all handle the same wares: mostly hard candies individually wrapped and stacked with bricklayer’s symmetry in display cases. They almost look like building materials. But the candies ate for kids, for the most part. And their doting parents buy then far too much. In upmarket neighbourhoods and cities closer to France and Italy you’ll find more confections, and pastry shops are increasing in number as Spain enters the European mainstream. But these are not representative of the culture as a whole, and little in part.
So alright. Now we’ll talk about paella. What exactly is it? It depends on who you ask. Put two Spanish cooks together and you’ll likely get three paellas. All will agree that a paella contains short grain rice, garlic, parsley, olive oil and saffron. The popular image of paella is a pan of saffron-coloured rice bursting with shellfish, known as paella de mariscos. Most people will agree that the original came from the field in the mid to late 19th century and was made with such things as snails, rabbit and chicken. You won’t see such paellas very often in restaurants. Rice is cheap, rabbit is cheap. They just can’t charge you very much for the dish. But throw in those red jewels called lobsters and crayfish, and they can really make you pay. And then they can save themselves a good bit of money by skipping the saffron and using yellow dye number 2. And since they are giving you a bastardised dish it’s no big deal to cook it too fast or insufficiently, giving you grains of rice that go ‘crunch’ when you bite them or that turn into a mush in your mouth.
Gazpacho is emblematic of Spanish cookery. It is a dish that says “I am Spain”. It is not simply a cool bowl of tomato juice. It isn’t always made from tomatoes. It isn’t always chilled. It isn’t always a soup; sometimes it’s a cool refreshing drink. It isn’t even always called gazpacho. In places like Córdoba it sometimes goes by the older name of salmorejo, or is said to be a descendant of salmorejo, a sauce base. It was often prepared in a vessel called a gazpachero, hence its name.