If you’ve read the Fish Face review of Rick’s Stein’s Secret France then you’ll know I’m a big fan of a Rick cookbook. Rick Stein’s Spain is no different. Leaving the recipes to one side for the moment, the book is beautifully presented. In fact, it is one of the most beautifully presented cookbooks that I’ve come across.
A feast for the eyes
Now, there is a point to all this, one which makes the book hugely valuable to home kitchen cooks like you and I. Food is an immensely visual thing. We know by looking at a punnet of strawberries, for example, and evaluating their shade of red which ones will be the sweetest. We also know that if all the strawberries are the perfect shade of red, they’ll be none left within a couple of minutes or so.
Rick Stein’s Spain is presented in such a lovely way that it has the same effect. Flicking through the pages and catching glimpses of photographs of tomatoes hanging at a market or a close up shot of some blushing garlic bulbs will make you want to cook, and of course, eat.
Rick Stein’s Spain – seafood recipes
As luck would have it, as well as wonderful photography there are also plenty of fantastic seafood dishes. Some are magnificent in their simplicity, such as sizzling garlic Prawns with garlic, chilli and olive oil while others like rice with Monkfish, saffron and red peppers are worth that little extra effort.
We do of course also have a paella recipe. Although it must be said, I make the best paella this side of Valencia (recipe coming soon!).
The thing I admire about Rick is that he’s not afraid to include less-fashionable or often overlooked recipes. In Spain we have four recipes for Octopus and three for Cuttlefish. And all of them are very, very good.
We also have seafood recipes for Clams, Hake, Salt Cod, Lobster, Trout, Crab, Mussels….
Simple Spain
Spain is a nostalgic journey for Rick. In his enjoyable introduction he tells us he first visited in 1955. ‘I remember the poverty,’ he writes. ‘The shock of seeing that the fisherman had no toilets’
It’s this sense of simplicity, stemming from poverty, that helped Rick form a ‘slightly grim but romantic view of Spain that I can’t shake off’. In the introduction he goes as far to say that Spain is a memory of simple but completely satisfying flavours. Now to me, the same could be said for seafood cookery.
Book your flights!
Rick Stein’s Spain aids us in our pursuit of satisfying simplicity. The country’s incredibly diverse regions are divided up into ten chapters. A structure Secret France could have benefited from.
From Galicia in the north-west and such dishes as Hake on a braise of potatoes, garlic, tomato & onion and seafood empanada, to Catalonia in the east with its Cuttlefish with meatballs and peas, Rick Stein’s Spain is a book that will have you searching for cheap flights to Spain in no time at all.
Rick Stein’s Spain
Has our review of Rick Stein’s Spain invoked dreams of charming tapas bars and long, lazy afternoons of seafood dishes and little glasses of chilled wine? Buy the book TODAY on Amazon!