Wonderful Basque cuisine can supposedly be found in Bakersfield, CA, and I've made a note to stop there next time en route to the Bay Area. Stuck in traffic, which is the norm in Los Angeles, I tuned in to The Splendid Table with Lynne Rossetto Kaspar, and lo and behold, it was Alexandra Raij on the air discussing her latest book. Listening to her love for Basque cuisine whetted my appetite for the book.
Raij quickly dispels the notion that Basque cuisine is too difficult. She explains that Basque cooking is a cuisine of subtraction, fancy embellishments are stripped away to focus on the essential ingredients. She claims if you have a bottle of olive oil, a head of garlic and a can of tuna, you can make Basque food.
With encouragement like that, she invites you in. Some of her recipes sound vaguely familiar. You've probably eaten a lot of pintxos, the Basque equivalent of Spanish tapas. Her recipe for pimientos de Gernika is essentially blistered shishito peppers -- a staple in Japanese restaurants as well as fine restaurants these days. The charred eggplant is paired with bonita tuna sounds delicious and simple enough to start you off on your love affair with Basque cuisine. One of my favorite chapters is Huerta, The Basque Kitchen Garden, since I am an avid gardener, always looking for simple, creative ways to savor the bounty.
Simple doesn't always mean easy, which Raij points out early on in the book, but hopefully you won't mind. You won't mind because you've started to fall for Basque food, the same way Alexandra and Eder fell for each other, and the same way diners fell in love with Txikito, the only authentic Basque restaurant in New York City.
I received this book from "Blogging for Books" in exchange for my honest review.
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