Falling in Love with Cooking in Spain

Spain is all about one-pot, simple meals and I'm here for it.

I was very fortunate growing up that my mom loved to cook. Not only does she love to cook, she is a fantastic cook. Throughout my childhood and into my college years home-cooked family dinners were a priority. She was always reading the latest Epicurious or Better Homes and Gardens articles for new recipes, adding magazine cut-outs to her ever-expanding recipe binder.

For all her attempts to get me interested in cooking, and despite thoroughly enjoying the meals laid before me, my intransigence was iron-clad. I did not want to learn. Call it “trauma” from growing up with the perennial chore of needing to wash the pots, pans, dishes, measuring cups, and utensils at the end of each meal. I have a vivid memory seared into my brain, about to do clean up after dinner. I entered the kitchen to find the sink overflowing with used kitchen tools, stacked in unique piles, as if to make an artistic statement. I thought to myself, surely there’s not an item left in these kitchen cabinets, every kitchen appliance we own has been used to make this meal!

Unfortunately, college did nothing to move the dial on my ardent disinterest in learning to cook. I opted for salads, spaghetti, homemade sandwiches, and the occasional Top Ramen thrown in for good measure. After college, I moved in with a friend and we lamented our lack of cooking skills over tantalizing takeout every night. Our would-be attempts at culinary expansion were curbed by the sweet plates of Pad Thai, deli sandwiches, and California burritos all located conveniently close to our apartment.

The universe had bigger plans for me, however. Perhaps it was my mom’s desire to manifest a chef daughter that inadvertently landed me in Spain.

I can honestly tell you that falling in love with cooking was the last thing I expected to change about myself when moving here. When I moved here for good, I was in my late 20s. I didn’t necessarily know who I was, but I knew who I wasn’t. I simply wasn’t a cook, that gene has skipped me. Perhaps a future child might inherit it.

My First Home-Cooked Spanish Meal, Puchero

One serendipitous day in Spain, I tasted my first Spanish home-cooked meal at Loli’s house. Loli lived in the kitchen. She was a chef de toda la vida, serving up delicious dishes to her family just as her mother did, and her mother’s mother before her. Home-cooked, authentic, recipes ran in her blood. No kitchen blogs here. Just being raised in an environment where cooking simply and affordably was at the crux of running a happy Spanish family.

The dish Loli had prepared that day was puchero. A salted-bone broth soup featuring a delightful mélange of meats, chickpeas, carrots, potatoes and rice. It was mind-blowingly delicious.

“Está riquisimo!” I told Loli, the enthusiasm written all over my face.

I wasn’t a chef, but I knew good food. Eating could be considered my hobby. I even worked as a tapas tour guide for a few years. There’s an ongoing debate in my friend group if a meal can change your life, and it’s clear on which side of the debate I stand. My exuberant passion for food fits in seamlessly in Spain, a place where food and social life are the pillars on which the culture so proudly stands.

Loli immediately responded to my praise with, “pero si es fácil!” (but it’s easy!) followed by a passionate speech spelling out every detail of how to cook puchero. Any compliment to a chef in Spain is likely to be responded to in a similar fashion. It’s the equivalent to asking for a recipe.

I listened intently but remember thinking to myself how in the hell am I going to remember all this. I need to write this down. As she went on, I was actually quite surprised at how easy it sounded, despite the lengthy explanation. The lengthy explanation was more due to the fact that every other sentence describing the ingredients was peppered with one of the below phrases:

• It’s easy!

• The ingredients are simple.

• It’s affordable!

• You only need one pot.

• You don’t even need a cutting board!

• Minimal effort. You basically put everything in the pot and then let it cook.

• You get so much out of one giant puchero, at least 2 meals for the whole family!

• Every Spanish person knows how to make a puchero, you must learn.

• Do you have a good knife? Every chef needs a good knife.

In the midst of Loli’s gastronomic address, as I devoured the salty Spanish concoction sitting in front of me, I experienced an unforeseen internal alchemy. As she spoke, I felt the smallest tingling of intrigue, delicately strumming some innermost part of myself. Perhaps it had been slowly forming all my life, developing dormant, waiting for this very moment. This sudden interest to learn the recipe was cemented with finality when I stole a quick glance at the kitchen sink. There was only one pot sitting in the sink, seeming to make the exact opposite artistic statement the piles of pots from my childhood had made.

Fast forward to now, years later, and I’ve added about fifteen simple Spanish recipes to my culinary repertoire. All in thanks to the lovely madres and abuelas who have been so quick to share their treasured family recipes with me.

Puchero was where I fell in love with Spanish cooking because as I cooked it for the first time, I lived what Loli so fervently shared with me. You only need one pot. It’s simple. It’s delicious.

Spanish Recipes are Not an Exact Science

The most important thing I’ve learned about Spanish cooking is that it’s not an exact science. Spanish cooking is cooking del corazón.

Any time you ask someone for their recipe, be prepared to be met with sweeping generalizations. Does the recipe have garlic? Yes, “a few cloves”. How much wine do you add? “It depends on how many people you’re cooking for!” or “It depends on the size of the glass!”

This could be a seemingly frustrating hurdle when it comes to learning recipes here. But what I love is that it converts cooking into an art. There’s no measuring cups in Spain. You don’t need them! Experiment, live a little! Try three potatoes this time and four the next, because the potatoes you got last time were from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, and this time the frutero only had smaller potatoes so you needed an extra one to compensate.

Spanish cooking captures a culinary magic that can’t be understated. Cooking doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive to be good. The key is quality ingredients, and ideally a Spanish abuela in your immediate circle.

As I’ve written before, you’re hard-pressed to find the oh so popular American food blog equivalent in Spain. Abuelas aren’t blogging. They’re too busy cooking for their family, or too busy sharing their recipes to their closest friends over a nice café con leche. As they chat, others walk by, smiling as they hear snippets of a recipe that their abuela makes as well (but their recipe is with pimientos verdes instead of pimientos rojos, claro).

The common cultural thread emerges once again, even cooking in Spain is about connecting. And perhaps that is what has touched me the most. When met with genuine curiosity, Spaniards will rope you into their world. Their inherent panache for a life well-lived percolates every activity. What one can learn from that has no bounds.

Spain was the catalyst that finally pushed open the door of my desire to learn to cook. It all started with one Spanish recipe, but as I learned more, I started to develop a real joy for cooking. It was the gateway that brought me to finally coming full circle, calling my mom and asking her for her recipes too. We connected and continue to connect as we now swap recipes over our weekly FaceTime calls.

Photo by Kevin Doran on Unsplash