With August coming to a close, I realized recently that I had yet to make a batch of sangría at all this spring or summer, which is very out of character for me and something I had to rectify immediately. Our building was having a get-together–the first that we’ve had in probably two years now–and…
Category: a txixiteo in San Sebastian
Basque-style montaditos of crème fraîche, sun-dried tomato puree, and anchovies.
Sun-dried tomatoes deserve to make a comeback: there, I said it. I know that they went from a trendy restaurant ingredient in the 80s to being completely overdone in the 90s and 00s, but it’s 2021, we’re emerging from a pandemic, and I think enough time has passed that we can give them another go….
Txangurro (deviled crab gratin), or the Basque take on Baltimore crab dip via The Basque Book.
If you’re not from the Mid-Atlantic region, then the idea of crab dip is probably one you are familiar with in a meaningful way. My mom makes it as a cold dip, mixing canned crab, diced onion, and cream cheese into a ball and then smothering it in cocktail sauce, but here in Baltimore it’s…
José Andrés’s avocado gazpacho from Vegetables Unleashed with a pickle-based pico de gallo from Grillo’s Pickles
(Note: this is not sponsored–I’m just utterly charmed by this product!) Between the end of summer and Amazon Photo sending me memories from our trips to Barcelona and San Sebastian on a regular basis last week, this is always a bit of a melancholy time of year for me. Given the last six months of…
Garganelli Aromàtiques, as interpreted from La Pasta Per Als Catalans.
A small part of my cookbook collection comprises books that I’ve gotten while traveling abroad; this started with our honeymoon in Piemonte nearly 12 years ago and has since grown to include several cookbooks on Catalan and Basque cooking. Our most recent trip in 2018 yielded my largest haul in that I got all of…
A Basque pintxo crawl at home featuring gently-caramelized piquillo peppers.
If we can’t travel right now, a small comfort is that it’s possible to travel to our favorite places, at least for a little while, through our kitchens. Our weekend in San Sebastian back in September of 2018 was a magical one, filled with so much food, discovery, and txakoli, and bringing back those memories…
Pipérade/piperrada with poached eggs and prosciutto from The Cherry Bombe Cookbook.
I was on such a Basque food tear in the months following our September trip that I basically forced myself to take a break, lest I burn out on making all of that delicious food and neglect my other favorite foods like pasta. Fast-forward to two months ago, when Michael was on a work trip…
A txiquiteo in San Sebastian: montadito of chorizo and quail egg from The Basque Book.
[Ed. – To my friends in the US, please vote today if you haven’t already.] The sheer number of Spanish and Catalan cookbooks in my collection is proof enough that one of the things I love to do most after visiting a place I love is to try to recreate as many of the dishes that…
A txiquiteo in San Sebastian: shrimp and pancetta pinxtos with modern allioli.
It should come as no surprise that I was determined to embrace Basque cooking even before we had left San Sebastian; I found one of the few open-on-Sunday bookstores and purchased myself a copy of Los Mejores Pintxos de Donostia along with another book devoted to tartines that was too visually appealing to pass up,…
The Manhattan [food] Project 