My first step in diving into a new cuisine is to track down a couple of well-reviewed cookbooks and read them cover-to-cover, making two lists: specific recipes I want to try and ingredients that I want to have on hand, either because they’re pervasive across the cuisine or because they’re specialized, iconic, and not really substitutable. The Denver Metro area has a pretty good ethnic food scene and most things I find I can source or substitute fairly easily, but there’s always one thing. For Basque cuisine, it’s becoming clear to me that that thing is going to be cheese.
There just aren’t that many Basque cookbooks out there, and even fewer that go beyond the narrow and specific category of pinxtos/tapas. I got the two shown above from the library and bought José Pizarro’s new release (still on its way). I got so much out of Pizarro’s Seasonal Spanish Food when I was working my way through Asturia and Galicia last winter, and I’m thrilled that he has a new book out just in time to be relevant to what I’m doing here. I got through these the other night and I’ve started sourcing what I’ve put on my list.
Alexandra Raij takes no shortcuts and pulls no punches. Basque cooking, she reiterates, is all about the ingredients, and there are some things that just can’t be substituted. Jamón and bacalao. Those little pippara peppers, and choriceros. Idiazabal and Roncal and Ossau-Iraty cheese and bleus – Bleu des Basques and Cabrales – and about a million little hyperlocal varieties that are all just called ardi gasna (sheep’s-milk cheese). Seafood, and lots of it, fresh and quality, in great variety.
Marti Buckley’s Basque Country is just as much all about the balance of seasonal fresh foods and iconic preserved foods, but it’s a little more accessible. I can get all the seafood I need at the Korean supermart in Aurora; we’re coming into the right season for most the fresh veg I’ll need on a regular basis (which is why I chose spring/summer for this project in the first place) and I found a reliable, if slightly spendy, source for frozen artichokes.
When I started on the north coast tour last winter, my big investment was making twenty pounds of air-cured chorizo; but I hesitated at the price of real Spanish jamón, muddling through with a mixture of American ham, prosciutto and salted pork belly (many of the recipes called for jamón or pork belly). But with Basque recipes it’s just unavoidable. So I’ve got a half-pound kit of sliced Fermin serrano on the way. The remaining ingredient that’s really giving me fits is Idiazabal. It’s easy to find but runs $40+ per pound online, so I’m just going to have to make the rounds of the specialty stores in town. Dangerous… what else will I not be able to resist coming home with?
