Food & Wine

Celebrate Basque Cuisine Party Menu

"…always be Basque no matter where you are." from a poem by Pello Mari Ontano "Katarro"

As a student traveler I fell in love with Spain. The romance and history, the castles and cathedrals — and the great food that I could afford — sealed my deal with this country. I suppose college kids with their brains still not completely gelled are as entitled to be almost run over by stampeding bulls early in the morning after staying up all night as well as other life threatening experiences that are considered part of the sophomoric turf. Luckily, maybe miraculously, I was not run over by the bulls or the speeding cars of those years.

My favorite part of that whole episode in Basque country was not the Pamplona expedition, although that was lively, but going on to San Sebastian and the very picturesque Ondarreta beach. With the natural boundaries of the Bay of Biscay, the Ebro River and the Pyrenees Mountains, that also act as the border with France, the region has a rich history dating to Paleolithic times. I probably did enjoy a restaurant meal in this town of serious eaters but I was so bowled over by my first grilled sardines from a sidewalk vendor, that's what I remember most: sardines in San Sebastian overlooking the bay. The vino tinto and the cava were excellent, and reasonably priced, if the quantity consumed was any indication.

Since then I have experienced the angulas (baby eels in hot oil) in a great Basque restaurant in New York City and enjoyed many other Basque delicacies at The Harvest Vine in Seattle. All of it makes me want to go back to San Sebastian and taste it again.

In honor of the Spanish Wine and Food Experience I hosted a Basque dinner and asked each guest to research the cuisine, bring a dish, a bottle of wine and a piece of trivia acquired in the research. I love knowing that before Columbus discovered America, Basque fisherman chased whales and cod in Newfoundland, adopted the Scandinavian technique for salting cod and embraced it as a national staple. When you see salt cod, it might be Basque. "Any recipe with a lot red peppers could be Basque," says another good cook.

The Basques are also famous for tenaciously holding onto an ancient language of unknown origin, euskera, and a culture that prizes "Basqueness" above other values. Read some interesting folklore.

Recipes

The recipes selected for this event by coincidence were classic choices. You can find them in the cookbooks listed below and on many Basque sites. My friend who brought the cake is part of the Basque community in Seattle and although she could not reveal her recipe for the Gateau Basque, another example of "Basqueness", she was able to share a similar recipe from a fellow country man who is the owner/chef of The Harvest Vine, a popular Basque outpost in the Madison Park neighborhood.

Recommended Basque Cookbooks

"Basque Kitchen: Tempting Food from the Pyrenees" Gerald Hirigoyen

"Traditional Basque Cooking: History and Preparation" Jose Maria Busba-Isusi
"The Basque Table: Passionate Home Cooking from One of Europe's Great Regional Cuisines" Teresa Barrenechea, With Mary Goodbody

Noteworthy Basque Trivia Brought to the Table

The poem mentioned above was a heartfelt message from father to son headed off into the unknown, and read aloud in euskera, had an emotional impact on everybody at the table. It represents an ancient and final farewell that modern people with cell phones have a hard time grasping. My other favorite was about those baby eels. This is more strange than the reproductive habits of Pacific Northwest salmon. The eggs are laid in the Saragossa Sea, in the Caribbean, and brought by the Gulf Stream into rivers off the Atlantic coasts of northern Spain and southern France. The eels hatch in these inland rivers and swim home as adults to lay eggs in the Saragossa Sea. Wow.

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