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La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain | 
 enlarge | Author: Penelope Casas
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy Used: $12.93
You Save: $17.02 (57%)
New (22) Used (12) from $12.93
Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 318137
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 8.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0767912225
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5946
EAN: 9780767912228
ASIN: 0767912225
Publication Date: March 22, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Penelope Casas, the foremost American authority on Spanish food and the author of the bestselling Tapas, presents more than 175 robustly flavored yet amazingly simple recipes representing the best of Spanish home cooking—the cooking handed down through generations of Spanish “mamas.”
Long overshadowed by France and Italy, Spain has finally taken its rightful place as one of Europe’s great culinary meccas. Consider the reborn cities of Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao; the new respect afforded Spanish wines; the popularity of tapas bars in the U.S.; and Spain’s widely influential Michelin three-star chefs, Ferran Adria and Juan Mari Arzak. Despite the world-wide acclaim for these chefs, arguably the greatest Spanish food is found not in the nation’s restaurants, but in private homes off-limits to tourists, where women still cook the recipes their mothers and grandmothers cooked before them. Now, Penelope Casas takes us into those homes to uncover the secrets of this simple, easily reproduced, and altogether marvelous cuisine.
For La Cocina de Mama, Penelope Casas has collected recipes from great chefs and traditional home cooks in every region of Spain, all of whom have shared with her the dishes they grew up loving and still cook for themselves today. There are recipes for tapas, like Clams in Garlic Sauce; elegant soups and hearty one-pot meals like Stewed Potatoes with Pork Ribs; many wonderful seafood dishes like Fish Steaks with Peas in Saffron Sauce; meat and poultry dishes, such as Pork Tenderloin in Orange Sauce, Rack of Lamb Stuffed with Mushrooms and Scallions, and Lemon Chicken with Ginger and Pine Nuts; paella and other rice dishes—and even a few pasta dishes; unusual vegetable preparations, including Sauteed Spinach with Quince and Toasted Sesame Seeds; and desserts like Basque Apple Custard Tart. Whether of Roman, Moorish, or peasant origin, all of the dishes appeal to today’s tastes and exemplify the virtues of the Mediterranean diet—lots of olive oil, lean meats and fish, and vegetables. Sidebars throughout discuss ingredients, areas of Spain unfamiliar to most Americans, travel vignettes, and more. At last, Americans can discover the unique and irresistible flavors of authentic Spanish home cooking in La Cocina de Mama.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Excellent, Inexpensive Intro to Spanish Cooking. May 10, 2005
B. Marold (Bethlehem, PA United States)
62 out of 71 found this review helpful
`La Cocina de Mama' is Penelope Casas' fifth book on Spanish cuisine, becoming very much to Spain what Marcella Hazan and Lydia Bastianich are to Italy, in their presentations of their respective national cuisines to American readers and eaters. We do not get the high theory of Spanish cuisine as we do from Hazan with her very Italian techniques that border in sophistication on great French culinary thinking.
Unlike Hazan and Bastianich, Casas is not a native of her subject country and she does not live there full time, so we get no books about the cooking of `My Spain', as we do from Bastianich' first book on the cuisine of Istria and northern Italy. However, this book, unlike all her previous volumes, comes close to being a presentation of Spanish `home cooking'.
Her four previous books can be easily divided into two pair. The first pair is the smaller volumes on the two great Spanish contributions to world cuisine, `Tapas' and `Paella'. The second pair cover the entire range of Spanish cooking, with the first, `The Food and Wine of Spain' being a very systematic, classic approach. The second, `Delicioso', is less formal, but does follow a very useful structure based on the culinary regions of Spain, to which Casas gives some very inventive and illuminating names such as `The Region of Sauces' for Galicia and `The Region of the Casseroles' for Catalunya and the Baleares Islands.
`La Cocina de Mama' is more anecdotal than the previous four books, picking up lots of recipes from home and restaurant cooks which have great interest in themselves, but which may not have been as representative of typical cooking in Spain.
I was especially pleased to see a Foreword from the very important Spanish chef, Ferran Adria as it would have been especially curious to see a book on Spanish restaurant cooking without a not to Adria, who has been touted from here to Timbuktu as the world's greatest working chef. And yet, there are no Adria recipes in this book. One has to believe that some time soon we should see a book in English on Adria's cuisine, but we get no hints of his famous foams on these pages. Instead, true to the nature of this book, we get a recipe for a Paella done by Adria's mother. Like bouillabaisse and so many other classic dishes, I always give a little wince when I hear paella described as a `simple, peasant' dish. I confess that relatively speaking, Ferran Adria's mother's dish of rabbit, green beans, tomato, and rice is pretty easy, but it is definitely more complicated than your typical 30-minute meal. Even so, Casas takes a little liberty with the procedure for the benefit of inexperienced American cooks and finishes off the dish in an oven rather than doing everything on the burner. Casas does repeat her caution from `Paella' to bake about 10 minutes longer in an electric oven than in a gas oven.
It seems to be the season for recanting old beliefs, so just as Mario Batali recently confessed that Italians do indeed eat their fair share of pastry, Casas has discovered that pasta is a more important ingredient in Spanish cooking than a simple noodle in Catalunya (northeastern Spain, with ties to old Spanish possessions around Naples) soups. The newly discovered flagbearer of pasta in Spain is a thick soup / thin stew from the grandmother of Andalusian chef Bartolome Rodrigo Lucena. Even more unusual than the pasta dish itself is the fact that the recipe gives a recipe for fresh pasta to be used instead of the dried pasta of southern Italy. The bland fresh pasta almost plays the same role as central European dumplings by offering a bland contrast to the strongly tasting salt cod, artichoke hearts, two types of paprika tomatoes, and green peppers.
With each of Casas' books, I am again and again amazed at the predominant role of sweet red peppers in the cuisine of Spain. They seem to be in practically every dish in every region. In spite of this overwhelming presence, Casas has yet to explain the seeming connection between the paprika's of Spain and the paprika's of Hungary, halfway across Europe. The Moorish connection doesn't work because sweet peppers came from the New World a few years after the Moors were expelled from Spain. The only other connection may be the royal house of Hapsburgs that ruled both Spain and Austria-Hungary.
The book has the obligatory map of Spain (if you don't realize how important this is, try reading a book on regional dishes without a map) in the front and a very simple organization of chapters on Tapas, Salads, Vegetables, Soups, Rice and Pasta, Fish and Shellfish, Poultry and Game, Meats, and Desserts.
One new `vector' I discovered in Spanish cooking is the important role of canned tuna in the salads. While France has its classic salad Nicoise, Spain gives us three major salad recipes with canned tuna. Aside from the omnipresent paprika or fresh red peppers, there is a lot of hard-boiled egg, cooked beans, and canned white asparagus.
The desserts have their fair share of chocolate, especially hot chocolate, the favorite form of the Aztecs from whom the Spanish acquired the brown gold. There are also spicy doughnuts that are made in almost exactly the same way as you would find in New Orleans or in Amish Pennsylvania. As you may expect, custards are also a big thing, plus lots and lots of almond, meringue, and lemon. One thing I miss in all of Casas books is bread. If Ms. Casas is listening, I should mention that in none of her books is there any mention of the special tool used to flip tortilla Espanola, of which I read in Ruth Reichl's new memoir, `Garlic and Sapphires'.
Excellent, low priced introduction to great Spanish cooking and stories about Spanish food.
I love this book!! July 28, 2005
Rachel M. Rice
11 out of 23 found this review helpful
Truely inspiring. I have given away 2 copies to dear friends. Fun and beautiful.
A sound investment even if you have a Spanish mother September 29, 2006
Michael T.
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This attractive book contains a tempting collection of recipes for robustly flavored, down-to-earth family dishes that are generally simple to prepare. The author's discussions of Spanish cooking methods, ingredients, and wines are very helpful and informative. I have only one caveat: the text is printed on different colors of paper and may be a little difficult for some people to read; however, the recipes themselves should appeal to those who appreciate homey, heartwarming fare.
Another book that offers great Mediterranean home cooking is "Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen," by Sonia Uvezian, which features a wealth of uncomplicated recipes that highlight healthful ingredients and vibrant flavors.
La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain August 3, 2006
William J. Moore (Williamsburg, VA, USA)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Mouthwatering and delicious----I haven't found a bad recipe yet and they are all well described and explained. The book is well worth the money and the food prepared from the recipes is extremely and well explained.
 Totally unexciting. March 23, 2008
M. J. Smith (Auckland, New Zealand)
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
Having been to Spain and enjoyed Spanish cooking, I was very disappointed with this book. The presentation was frankly boring and the recipes generally uninspiring. The narrative giving the background to the recipes was the most interesting part of the book, but was not the reason for buying it.
I am always sceptical of recipes that rely on a single common ingredient for their uniqueness. In this case Penelope Casas appears to want us to believe that using Kosher salt will make a difference and make pretty ordinary recipes somehow Spanish. I cannot believe that many if any of the characters in the book kept Kosher salt (whatever that is) in their kitchens or that Penelope Casas or anyone else would be able to tell the difference between the dishes in the book cooked with Kosher, sea or ordinary table salt.
There must be better Spanish cookery books about!
Mike Smith
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