Mario Batali’s new show, “Spain…on the road again”, aired Sunday night on PBS. Here Batali is basically touring around Spain with Gweneth Paltrow, Mark Bittman, and Spanish actor, Claudia Bessols. Oh the life, tripping around Spain in a convertible Benz, with your buddy and two beautiful, accomplished women, eating your face off at every turn, with all the cred to slide you into the exclusive or the obscure or past any other limiting factor imaginable, holding all the knowledge necessary to appreciate everything to a degree far beyond the reach of the layman, and getting paid for it…like a lot. Envious? Nonesense!
One of the first Chefs to sign onto The Food Network, Batali has long been my favorite of the “celebrity” Chefs. Back in ‘95 I was cooking at a restaurant two small West Village blocks from Po, the cozy Italian where Batali began to make his mark dancing on the forefront of America’s rediscovery of that wonderful cuisine. In those days Food Network was still in it’s infancy, and Batali could be seen more regularly at the Union Square greenmarket than on TV. In the years to come I was wooed by his gastronomic espousals of Spanish cuisine. Some previous experience in the country combined with Batali’s subliminal predictions that Spanish would be the next hot food trend, inspired me to a full on culinary tour of Spain in the Fall of ‘98.
It was on this trip that I discovered pintxos and txacoli, sampled every attainable form of Jamon Iberico de Bellota, and threw off my American aversion to canned seafood (canned seafood in Spain is a craft. The canning process is more to foster “aging” then for convenience or shelve-ability. The quality of ingredients, from tuna, to clams, mussels, squid, octopus, the packing sauces, olive oil, what have you, is impeccable. In other words, this ain’t no Bumble Bee Tuna.) This was a palatal education to say the least. I spent a full month crossing northern Spain from San Sebastian in the Pais Vasco to La Coruna and Santiago de Campostela in the rugged state of Galicia. I spent another full month making my way south to Sevilla by way of Salamanca and Cordoba.
To my delight, Batali’s show looks to be covering much of the same ground. I urge you to check it out, as I, like Batali, am a long time believer in this under appreciated and under represented cuisine.
2 Comments
September 23, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Vicarious living of this nature is so good!
October 20, 2008 at 7:50 pm
[...] Batali, Spain, and me Jump to Comments So, I’ve been watching “Spain…On the Road Again” now through the fourth episode. Overall, it’s been entertaining, not without challenge. I [...]