Almost seven years ago I journeyed from Santillana del Mar to Santa Maria de Lebaña via San Vicente de la Barquera. So many saints, so much devotion, that it was little surprise to learn that beyond the monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana and through the Picos de Europe lies the hallowed ground of Covadonga.

It was at the battle of Covadonga in 718 that Christian Spain under Pelayo, King of Asturias, began the reclamation of Iberia from the Muslim Moors. Nestled deep within the Asturian mountains, Covadonga is as important to the Spanish national myth as Hastings is to the British or Lexington to Americans. However, history defies such over-simplification – the linear narrative of one thing followed by another – and it is too easy to say that simply because certain events turned out the way they did there were no other possibilities. Indeed, a sentence stating that the defeat of a Moorish army by a Spanish king at Covadonga began the reconquest of Spain – which culminated in Ferdinand and Isabella vanquishing Boabdil, Emir of Granada, in 1492 – encompasses more than 700 years and glosses over seven whole centuries of war, shifting borders, switching alliances, inter-marriage, suffering and grief.

It is with this in mind that I wonder if it’s an exaggeration to suggest that had the battle at Covadonga ended differently the whole course of western history, and therefore of the world, would have been affected. Spanish historian Claudio Sanchez-Albornoz does not believe so. “Si los musulmanos no hubiesen conquistado el España en el siglo VIII, los españoles no habrian conquistado America en el XVI.”* For him it follows that what began there in the 8th Century resulted in a militarized and battle-hardened Spain conquering much of the New World.

For me, and my own personal sense of history those seven years ago, a dinner of beans, pork belly, chorizo and morcilla suggested just as plausible a theorem: that had not the Asturian armies under Pelayo feasted on fabada in preparation for the fight the next day, there may have been another outcome. And while personal experience suggests that after a hearty meal of this kind one is utterly disinclined to remaining awake, let alone to feeling lively enough to bum rush a horde of scimitar-brandishing Berbers, I still feel that this notion has validity. After all, how could one’s sense of local patriotism and desire to defend one’s homeland fail to be stirred by such a dish? That the culinary use of saffron arrived in the far north of Spain via these same Moorish invaders and the integral ingredient smoked pimentón wasn’t to be discovered for another eight centuries following the conquest of Mexico doesn’t disprove this hypothesis, rather it merely serves to highlight, once again, the non-linear path of history.

(If the Muslims had not conquered Spain in the 8th century, the Americas wouldn’t have been conquered by the Spaniards in the 16th.”)

It’s one of the ironies of being a new parent that even though we are spending more time than at any other point in our adult lives at home, we are finding it virtually impossible to do any cooking. Even when we do steal a few moments of quiet to get behind the burners, by the time the food is done, so is the nap our baby was taking. Of course, eating your dinner cold is nothing new to a food blogger – teasing the plating and getting just the right lighting usually takes a while – but at least we used to be able to eat our tepid meat and congealed sauce without the throaty vocal stylings of a five-week-old as an accompaniment.

Another delightful aspect of being a home-bound parent is that, when leaving the house involves assembling ten things, a stroller and an acquiescent child, one is motivated to make use of what is close at hand. In a moment of hunger-inspired desperation this past weekend, we took that maxim to its logical conclusion.

Literally lying beside our front door was a pair of pumpkins we had originally intended to carve for Halloween had our sculptural ambitions not been thwarted by the arrival of said infant. Still edible, they were quickly hacked, seeded and roasted in a hot oven with salt and pepper while the baby slumbered peacefully in his swing. In a “waste not, want not” moment, also into the oven went the pumpkin seeds seasoned with chipotle powder and brown sugar, emerging a scant twenty minutes later, crispy and snack-tastic. The baby, now stirring, its nostrils a-quiver.

From all of this, plus the contents of a still well-stocked spice rack and half a Mexican chorizo I rescued from a sad end in the depths of our refrigerator, came a pimentón-scented pumpkin velouté topped with sweet chipotle pepitas, crumbled chorizo and a sprinkle of black Hawaiian sea salt that I forgot we’d bought, somewhat curiously, in a supermarket in France last Christmas.

Even the abundant use of the stick blender failed to completely rouse our newborn, though, in his now-customary fashion, by the time we were seated at the table, spoons-at-the-ready, our charming little nipper was once again in full voice, sharing his anguish at his meager milk-based diet. Happily, this soup is just as good, if not better, when reheated the next day. A quality we might not have fully appreciated before now.

Towards the end of what is, in my opinion, his finest work, Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell tells of the bitter street fighting he witnessed in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War when the delicate alliance between communist, socialist, and anarchist factions of the Republican army finally collapsed. While certainly not the bloodiest scene in a war that cost around a million lives, it was one of the most significant, sounding, as it did, the death knell for the Republican cause against Franco’s Fascists. Never after this internicene strife were the respective Republican parties able to trust one another enough to wage a successful war.

Even prior to the Spanish Civil War, anarchist and regional-nationalist groups in Catalonia were making trouble for the shaky Spanish state (then under Republican rule). Indeed, it was during this period of the early 20th century that Barcelona became known as la rosa del fuego, the rose of fire. Modeling their destabilizing tactics on the exploits of Italian anarchists and revolutionaries under Giuseppe Garibaldi, the weapon of choice for Catalan anarchists came to be a round iron ball stuffed with explosives ignited with a string fuse. [Anyone who has ever seen a Tin-Tin or Felix the Cat cartoon will immediately recognize what I'm describing.] In Barcelona, anarchist activity centered around the-then hard-scrabble, now beautifully redeveloped waterfront, neighborhood of Barceloneta, where the mazy streets and crumbling slums provided ample cover for clandestine activity and proximity to the port offered easy access to contraband goods and shady characters.

It was during these unsettled years of the 1920s and ’30s that a Barceloneta bar owner by the name of Maria Pla, during a moment of whimsy with mashed potatoes to hand, created what is now the signature tapas dish of Barcelona, la bomba, the bomb. Potato croquettes with aiolli or a spicy dipping sauce is about as common a tapa as you can name, but Pla’s genius was to shape the croquette and plate it with these two sauces in a way that resembled the anarchists’ favorite weapon.

Today, la bomba can be found in tapas bars and tascas throughout Barcelona and beyond, and its origins in that murky political underworld are mostly forgotten. In fact, we ate it first at Tapa, Tapa a rather touristy tapas bar on the Paseig de Gracia in Barcelona knowing nothing of its fascinating history.

More than its political significance, la bomba is remarkable both as a relic of a turbulent time in the city’s history, and as a statement of the enduring gastronomic playfulness of Catalan chefs. Where today their creations run to rather more extravagant creations — like Ferran Adria’s trick olives (in which olive oil is sealed inside green agar-agar shells, set using a chemical reagent, and served in a ramekin looking for all the world like a simple tapa of olives) — Pla’s invention was just as, if not more so, adventurous, because it was poking fun at the potentially hazardous world of political terrorism.

Perhaps this quality of not taking life too seriously and finding time to play with ones food even in periods when one might be blown-up at any minute speaks to the broader philosophy in the Iberian peoples that George Orwell found both frustrating and alluring in equal measure — and this is not to reduce Spaniards of any stripe to the caricature of gluttonous Sancho Panzas, but rather to celebrate that such is possible even under the greatest duress — that, though they may cling tenaciously to opposing political viewpoints, which in that era, they fought tooth and nail for, nothing is taken quite so seriously as eating and drinking.

I remember the night in Madrid Jonny and I thought it would be a good idea to do a tapas crawl after having many, many drinks. We weren’t yet at that “I’m so drunk I must shovel food in my mouth now” place, but were maybe a few bottles of Mahou away. It was a great idea at first, but as the drinks piled on, the tapas were looking smaller and smaller and smaller to me. This girl was getting hungry!  But we had to soldier through. We had to follow the pact we had made after that bottle of rioja that we would have a drink and a tapa, then move to the next bar and have another drink then a tapa.  We would never surrender to buying dinner that night.  Tapas and drinks. Tapas and drinks only.

After the fourth “drink and tapa” run I began to have that feeling in my stomach. You know how it goes. The feeling that if a whole pizza was put in front of you you’d eat it all in one sitting. Or that you could die for some double crispy fries with a vat of blue cheese dressing (as a dipping sauce, of course… come on, it’s good!). Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to that next tapas joint only to find that the raciones are four times as large as they usually are?

Well, we stumbled upon the next bar and my prayers were answered. There on the tapas menu was everything I was searching for – a bit greasy, a bit spicy and a bit crunchy with a bit of starch and plenty of protein. Soon a rather large cazuela was placed in front of my salivating mouth containing Picadillo de Carne con Huevos y Patatas. Happy happy joy joy, happy joy joy.

Like two rabid dogs attacking a carcass, we dug in. It was amazing. A flavor sensation. But as quickly as it was put on the table it was just as quickly  lapped up and in our bellies. I still remember that day well and we love to make our own version of that tapa at home. Of course, we eat it as a Saturday brunch dish instead of a drunken bar snack. We substitute the beef picadillo for minced chorizo and use the rendered fat to cook the potatoes in. Yes, not the lightest meal to start a Saturday, but you’ll definitely smile while you’re eating it (and then crawl back into bed to sleep it off).

And it was because of this humbling reminder of mortality that we were unable to visit a very tempting restaurant that lay just across Calle de Campomanes from our hotel (the curiously-titled Roommate Mario) in the Opera district of the city. Every day for a week, we walked (or, as our stay progressed, waddled) past this restaurant (it didn’t appear to have a name), re-reading and salivating at the names of dishes advertised on the sunshades overhanging the windows: paella marinera, paella bogavante, arroz al horno, paella valenciana, arroz atianda, and arroz negro.

At the time, we convinced ourselves that this was no big deal since we were in Madrid to eat Madrileño food, not rice dishes from the Levante (eastern Spain, around Valencia/Murcia, so-called because that’s where the sun rises), and certainly not in the chilly depths of winter when rib-sticking dishes like cocido madrileño and callos a la madrileño were the order of the day. Of course, we flagrantly disobeyed this rule on a couple of occasions (see our previous posts on Canarian papas arrugadas and Galician arroz marinero), and during our current lengthy bout of winter-induced, home-bound funk, we found ourselves, in our related regret-filled nostalgia, wishing that we’d made one more exception.

So, to appease these feelings, what we were unable or unwilling to eat in Madrid, we decided to make ourselves right here in Brooklyn. A couple of sachets of cuttlefish ink, some D.O. Calasparra rice, and a little help from Penelope Casas’ The Foods and Wines of Spain resulted in a quite magnificent traditional Murcian arroz negro.

Do not be confused about it, the rice is, and should always be, the star of the dish. Do not be tempted to listen to the voices in your head telling you to add more seafood: this is not a black paella (though traditional Valencian paellas contain no seafood). Rice, in this case, is not just a starchy canvas on which the more tasty and colorful protein displays itself, as it is commonly thought of in the American and British mind. Use only the amount specified below, otherwise you risk distracting your tastebuds from the point that is the extraordinary manner in which the squid (or cuttlefish) ink, together with pimenton, saffron and a hint of garlic, delicately perfumes the rice. A crisp white wine (as called for in the recipe) or a dry rose would make a perfect match.

Our good friend Nuría of Spanish Recipes Pic by Pic made what is, by any measure, a superior arroz negro on her third attempt. Having been unable (at least for now) to find squid or cuttlefish complete with their ink sacs, we’re not optimistic that we’ll be able to mimic the wonderful inky blackness of Nuría’s dish, but next time we try, I think we’ll add an extra packet of dry ink to see if we can get closer to that beautiful color.
Arroz Negro Murciano (Murcian-style Black Rice) with Garlic Sauce
(adapted from Penelope Casas’ The Foods & Wines of Spain)

Ingredients

• 500 grams Calasparra, Valenciana, or Bomba rice (only use Italian arborio or carnaroli, if you are absolutely desperate)
• 2 pounds octopus (with tentacles)(ab0ut 8 squid), sliced (if you find them with their ink sacs you’re very lucky, and use these in place of packets listed below)
• 1/2 pound small shrimp/prawns, shelled and chopped into pieces
• 1 large onion, chopped roughly
• 1 medium tomato, roughly chopped
• 1/2 medium green pepper (capsicum), chopped
• 1/2 jar piquillo peppers, julienned
• 8 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 small, dry chorizos, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 2 packets squid or cuttlefish ink (nero di calamari/seppia)
• 1 pinch saffron threads
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 3 tsp pimentón dulce (sweet paprika)
• 4tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 3 3/4 cups (1.5ish liters) fish broth or clam juice (make 4 cups in case you need a little extra)
• 3 tbsp olive oil

For garlic sauce:

• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to 325F (160Cish)
2. Clean the squid, cutting bodies into rings and chopping up tentacles.
3. In a wide 2-3inch deep casserole dish (preferably earthenware), or paella (pan), heat oil and saute onion and green pepper until both are wilted.
4. Add squid rings and tentacles and saute for around five minutes before adding chorizo, garlic, tomato, parsley, salt, pepper, saffron, and pimentón. Cover and simmer gently for around 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, follow directions on packets for reconstituting the squid/cuttlefish ink, and pass black liquid through a sieve to remove impurities. Mix ink with wine.
6. After 30 minutes, stir in rice and when well combined, add broth (boiling hot) and stir in ink/wine and toss in shrimp.
7. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally until rice is no longer soupy, about 10 minutes. Decorate with pimento strips and put dish in oven and bake uncovered for around 15 minutes until all remaining liquid is absorbed.
8. Remove from oven and cover tightly and allow to sit for 10 minutes.
9. While rice is resting, add garlic in a food processor or blender, and with motor running gradually pour in olive oil until well combined and golden.
10. Place dish in the middle of the table and encourage diners to stake their claim. Serve garlic sauce on the side.

The first time I ate pulpo a la gallega was at a very disreputable-looking food stand not far from the Estadio Balaídos in Vigo, Spain, before watching a soccer match between Celta de Vigo and Racing Santander (it finished 2-2). It was served on a slightly wilted plastic plate with a toothpick that looked suspiciously blunt at one end, as if it had already been used. I was absolutely sure I was going to have raging diarrhea because of this lack of hygiene, but ate the whole plate anyway. Sure enough, two hours after the end of the match, I rushed back to the hotel holding on to my bowels for dear life.

The second time, things improved considerably, reclining, as we were, in some old oak chairs in a tapas bar in Madrid earlier this year after a morning in El Museo del Prado. The only unpleasant feeling came from our sadness when the generous racione was finished. While pondering these feelings, Amy and I came to the conclusion that it’s one of the world’s greatest snack foods. Chewy, salty, sweet and filling, healthy and satisfying, pulpo a la gallega is simply chopped boiled octopus in the Galician style – dressed with sea salt, olive oil and sweet pimenton – and in Galician pulperias is commonly served on a wooden board with toothpicks. Like so many tapas, and Spanish dishes generally, it is achingly simple, and yet unbelievably good. Add anything to it and it becomes something else, take something away and it’s missing a key element.

That said, this, the signature dish of the region, is sometimes made with potatoes and when it is, is normally cooked on a hot plate and referred to as pulpo a la plancha. Another variation, pulpo a la feria, or pulpo a la feira in Gallego (the local dialect that sits somewhere between Spanish and Portuguese) is traditionally cooked in a copper kettle which gives the purple (when cooked) octopus a more orangey color and interesting minerally-taste. When such traditional vessels are unavailable (like virtually everywhere), a copper coin is often tossed in to the boiling water.

In an effort to do it all in one dish, as we only had one octopus – we boiled the ‘pus with a copper coin and boiled some potatoes separately, then combined them on the plate with the salt, pimenton and olive oil. It was delicious. The texture of octopus might be off-putting for some, as it’s kind of chewy on the outside and “crunchy” on the inside, but I love it, and when cut into inch-long chunks it makes a fantastic finger-food, if your guests are adventurous enough to try it. Not only that, but it’s easy to prepare and octopus is pretty reasonably priced.

Pulpo a la Gallega

Ingredients

1 pre-frozen medium octopus – around 1lb, pre-cooked (if not pre-frozen, freeze it for 24 hours)

2 quarts/ (roughly) 2 liters water, boiling

1 bay leaf, 1/2 onion, 1/4 cup vinegar (optional)

2 medium waxy potatoes, peeled and balled (using a melon-baller)

2-3oz extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp pimenton dulce/sweet paprika

1/2 tsp coarse sea salt

Recipe

Gently boil octopus in 2 quarts/2 liters salted water, remembering to add a copper penny, for 1 hr. (Some recipes call for bay leaf, onion, and vinegar, some not, in the water. Our experience tells us adding a 1/4 cup of white vinegar helps to tenderize the ‘pus a little)

Allow to cool before slicing into 1inch/2cm chunks.

Dress with olive oil, and sprinkle generously with pimenton and salt.

Serve with lots of crusty bread and a bottle of something cool and white, perhaps a Galician Albarino, Ribeiro, or a Portugese vinho verde.

Note: our friend CanaryGirl has also made Pulpo a la Gallega and her technique for boiling the octopus is rather different from ours. Check her out and feel free to tell us which you think worked best.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• Truffled Butter: A Prince Among Ideas
• Pernil (Roasted Pork Shoulder): Low and Slow
• Grilled Rainbow Trout with a Romesco-esque Sauce
• Jamaican Jerk Chicken

It’s widely known that humble ingredients prepared with simple techniques often produce the best dishes, and it’s becoming more widely known that this philosophy lies at the very heart of Spanish cooking – a cuisine that has, in the last five or so years, become one of the most celebrated “new finds” of foodies everywhere. As a result of this, there has been a great deal of interest in tapas and the cuisine and culture surrounding these small plates/finger foods. All of which, in my view, can only be a good thing, even if many of these new “tapas restaurants” (itself, again in my view, an oxymoron) serve few, if any, authentic Spanish dishes.

Indeed, and here lies the rub, in their rush to capitalize on the latest food trend, it seems everyone is trying to outdo everyone else on the cleverness factor. Expanding their menus to include all sorts of dishes resembling “tapas” only in the fact that they are served in small quantities. It’s almost as if the tasting menus of high-falutin’ restaurants have become conflated with “tapas” so that you get tiny dishes and are charged through the nose for them.

Now, we here at WeAreNeverFull.com, perhaps contrary to popular opinion, are not against experimentation or new dishes in the slightest. Quite the contrary, in fact, we are always ready to try new things. However, and again, this may just be our view, so feel free to comment disagreeing, we feel that developing all these new and complicated dishes and calling them tapas is fundamentally against the spirit of tapas as a style of eating, outlined above.

The term tapas, as I’m sure many of you know, is derived from the Spanish word tapa, meaning a lid, and originally connoted a slice of bread or cheese that certain tavern owners used to serve across the top of the drinking vessel, perhaps as a way of keeping out unwanted bugs. Over the centuries this has developed into a wondrous variety of small dishes, now commonly on plates and cocktail sticks, as well as on rounds of bread, that are served to accompany su caña – whatever you are drinking at the bar. Indeed, it has become so refined a practice that many bars, while they might serve a lot of different tapas, are famous for one in particular, a signature tapa, that those in the know only eat at that one bar. So, as you can see, tapas has come a long way from its beginnings as a humble drink lid. That said, the original ethos of simple but tasty accompaniments remains.

We’ve traveled extensively in Spain and eaten, it must be said, an obscene amount of tapas over the past several years, and the consistent theme has been that the ingredients and the simple, time-honored preparations and take center stage, not the ego of the preparer. And this has never been more true than in the case of patatas a la Riojana. So, so simple, unbelieveably good. Really. Potatoes, chorizo, onions, garlic, sweet paprika and water, combine to create a dish that is without a doubt my favorite tapa. And, if I may name-drop shamelessly, I am not in bad company when I say that. Legendary chef and father of nouvelle cuisine Paul Bocuse, no less, while at a culinary convention in Spain in the late 1970s, described patatas a la Riojana as among the “greatest dishes created by man.”

And here is the interesting thing. If Bocuse, a man whose entire reputation was built on small, artfully-plated dishes, found this humble and rustic dish such a revelation, why is it that so many lesser chefs of today are trying so hard, and in many cases failing, to improve upon these time-honored preparations?

Nearly everyone knows that La Rioja is Spain’s most famous wine appellation, but it is also known, mostly inside Spain, as being the origin of many good things to eat. Piquillo peppers are the regions’ second best known export, and together with wild mushrooms, chorizo, river crabs, bream and trout they combine to make many dishes synonymous in the Spanish stomach with La Rioja. In fact, it is the inclusion of a typical Riojan dry chorizo that makes this preparation “a la Riojana” or Rioja-style.

Personally, I would eat this dish three times a week, but if my recommendation that you try making it isn’t good enough for you, then I’m sure you’ll pay attention to the wise words of Monsieur Bocuse.

Ingredients: (serves 4)

• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
• 1 small onion (or half a large one) finely sliced
• 7 ounces (or 2-3 links) chorizo, sliced into rounds
• 1/2 pound floury potatoes (idaho or similar), peeled and cubed
• 1 tsp pimenton dulce (sweet paprika)
• 1 tsp kosher salt, or more, to taste
• 1/2 – 1pint (1/2 liter) cold tap water

Recipe: (adapted slightly from Jose Andres’ Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America

• Warm olive oil over medium heat and add garlic.
• Cook for about a minute until golden before adding onions, and sauteing them gently for 20 minutes or so, until light brown.
• Add chorizo and cook until this also is browned, about 2 minutes.
• Place the potatoes in the pan and stir to coat with oil. Cook for 10 minutes.
• Now sprinkle over the pimenton and pour in enough water to almost cover potatoes and chorizo. Put lid on pan and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for about 20 minutes or until liquid is reduced by half.
• Serve immediately with lots of crusty bread and a hearty red Rioja. Unbelieveably delicious. Trust me.
• Unsurprisingly, this is quite a filling dish, but fear not, as left-overs, eaten either cold or reheated the next day are even better as the flavors continue to meld together.