The fruitful present of the Spanish gastronomy It would not be understood without a past carved with the hands of the old generations. And, although we now delight in the contemporary and innovative, it was in home kitchens where the magic began.
As a tribute to those historical recipes, Google Arts & Culture presents the virtual exhibition Spanish gastronomy: culinary memory , a new chapter of the Spain project: open kitchen. The initiative dissects all the layers of a very rich gastronomy in a figurative sense, and, of course, also literally.
Previously, in other episodes, they have opened the doors to wine, created a culinary map or entered the world of Ferran Adrià and elBulli. Now, it is the turn of the roots , of what was cooked (pun intended) on a day-to-day basis, in the daily life of those chefs who were always self-taught.
Do you know the ingredients of marmitako?
GOURMET MASTERS
With this chapter, created in collaboration with Maria Llamas , director of the cooking school and kitchenware shop Alambique, and the Royal Academy of Gastronomy , we also realize one of the strong points of Spanish gastronomy: the options are as varied as endless if we intend to travel the country from north to south and from east to west.
When we leave this virtual exhibition, we will have the necessary notions to throw ourselves into the kitchen to experiment with stoves; but everything is said: also to point out the odd one in culinary conversations.
From Google Arts & Culture they start with a “What would you eat at this celebration?” . As an intensive course, in this section they prepare us to know what to eat at all times. This will be the first contact with the usual recipes: Gazpacho, Cooked, spicy potatoes, Paella…
Preparation of chicken in pepitoria.
Continuing with that movement of the mouse that we already have so integrated, we arrive at the section that will light the fire in our kitchens. Here we can consult all the necessary ingredients of some traditional dishes such as chicken in pepitoria, Fabes with Clams or marmitako.
LOVE LETTER
If in the first part they are in charge of turning us into first class home chefs, the second is an ode to the protagonists of this story. Here we will find a tribute to cookbooks , those little books that travel from generation to generation, authentic handwritten relics that are, literally, love letters to the kitchen.
It was in 2019 when four gastronomists created the project of The Recipe Books . Ana Vega, Carmen Alcaraz del Blanco, Helena Vaello and Gabriella Lendo toured the landscapes of Spain to digitize family recipe books that, today, are a treasure.
Recipe books are relics that survive the passing of the years.
Featuring impeccable calligraphy, magazine clippings, and even illustrations , the recipe books of María Josefa Hernández, Guadalupe Rozas, Guillerma Vicuña, Dolores Martín de Rolo and Mari Carmen Villar Díaz, are not simple notebooks with listed ingredients, but authentic works of art.
From the past, we now travel alongside the women who keep the tradition alive in the present as well. Here we will discover the club of the peas , a women's collective created in 1997 that keeps the culinary memory of Asturias intact, either La Cuina a Sils , another group born in the early 90s in the Girona town of Sils.
But it will be the next section that definitely removes our hearts, a face-to-face conversation with the queens of the kitchen: the grandmothers . We all revere the cuisine of our grandmothers and dream of being able to repeat it one day. We don't know if it's love, experience or the perfect combination of both, but their dishes are unique and inimitable.
We have a lot to learn from the women of La Cuina a Sils.
we will learn to do a roscón de Reyes with Clara María, some fish meatballs with Anita or ajoblanco with Mercedes , three women who appear on behalf of all those grandmothers who have declared themselves the true masters of the kitchen and conquerors of palates par excellence.
And so, throughout the entire project, Google Arts & Culture teaches us how to order fish when shopping, seafood recipes, initiatives that promote agriculture, how shepherds cooked and even the ins and outs of the monastic kitchen , discoveries that introduce us in depth to the recipes of our country.
Spanish gastronomy: culinary memory, more than an exhibition, it is a trip through all those corners of Spain that they feed us every day, but it is also a declaration of love to those people who have achieved make the typical dishes something transcendental . Take a seat at the table, dinner is served.
Long live Spanish gastronomy!