The Michelin-starred chef shares Spanish recipes and stories about the history and culture of Spanish cuisine in his new book, "Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard."
Chef Jose Andres new book, “ Spain My Way : Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard,” combines Spanish recipes with stories about the history and culture of Spanish cuisine.
new book on Spanish cuisine, he writes of food as “the unwritten history of our ancestors, told through the pots and pans, the knives and spoons of all the cooks who kept us alive – most of them mothers and grandmothers. ”“Yeah, obviously some of them,” the Michelin-starred chef says on a recent call from his Maryland home.
“Like croquetas I keep repeating. Maybe some of the recipes are improved recipes of the past. ”
Paella Valencia as seen in Chef Jose Andres’ new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard.
hef Jose Andres new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard,” combines Spanish recipes with stories about the history and culture of Spanish cuisine. Escalavida — Catalan roast vegetables — as seen in Chef Jose Andres new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard.
” Croquetas de pollo as seen in Chef Jose Andres new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard. Tomatoes prepared for salsa de tomate in Chef Jose Andres new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard.
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Spanish chef Sacha Hormaechea prepares Tortilla Vaga a la Sacha — Lazy tortilla Sacha-style — as seen in Chef Jose Andres new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard. ” Mollete de pringa — a Spanish meat sandwich and bun — as seen in Chef Jose Andres new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard.
” A pitcher of sangria as seen in Chef Jose Andres new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard.
” Espinacas — Jaleo’s Catalan-style spinach — as seen in Chef Jose Andres new book, “Spain My Way: Eat, Drink, and Cook Like a Spaniard.
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Or take, for example, the cachopo, a stuffed, breaded and fried cutlet of veal or pork found in restaurants across Asturias, the the northwestern region of Spain where“There’s some people arguing that this is not really Asturias cooking,” Andrés says.
“It’s kind of funny that this has become a controversy in Spain, right? Like a dish can be so controversial. But everybody seems to love it. ” Andrés remembers eating it as a boy at the kitchen table at home, though it had a different name then.
“My mom used to call it libritos – little books – because they will open their pork loin like a book and then put the hame and the cheese in the middle,” he says. “The libritos were smaller. Just right for putting inside the sandwich.
“Even there, the recipe we gave with the veal, or beef, this is something very, very home-cooked,” Andrés of the version he included in “Spain My Way. ” “Something that people will eat at home and mothers will know how to make that at home. ” He pauses a moment and then offers another example of a recipe from his boyhood table many years ago.
“We did that recipe with ‘coliflor con bechamel’ – cauliflower with bechamel,” Andrés says of another dish found in the new book. “This is very home-cooking. And you could argue, is that really Spanish? Sure it is.
Every single mother makes it. I’m sure it is. ” Out now, “Spain My Way” is filled with stories from Andrés’ life as a diner and a chef. Its pages are filled with gorgeous photos of food, but also the community of food through which Andrés, his family, friends and fellow chefs move when they get together in Asturias or Catalonia, where he spent his adolescence, or Andalucia, from which his wife and her ancestors come.
“This book is not just a recipe book,” Patricia Andrés says when she pops into the conversation at one point. “It’s the places he usually visits, the food that we normally eat, that we try in the different places that we eat. Many people know Andrés for his global humanitarian aid organization, World Central Kitchen, but he also has three restaurants in the Los Angeles area – San Laurel, Butterfly, and Zaytinya.
He comes to In an interview edited for length and clarity, Andrés talked about the stories and recipes he shares in the book, the ways in which Spanish food influenced food around the world and vice versa, and how World Central Kitchen jumped into action when the Palisades and Eaton fires roared through Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January 2025. Q: How is this book different than your other Spanish cuisine books, “Made In Spain” or “The Tapas Book”?
Well, that’s a very good question. I’m talking to you from my library, and I have books right back, to my God, 1500, 1600. And you wonder: Another book? One more book?
Aren’t there other books written about every single issue and things on Planet Earth by now?
“I’ve done two previous Spanish cookbooks, and I’ve done other types of books. But more than any book, this one I really traveled through Spain to do the book and you can see it in there. Many photos in different parts I am in Spain with friends, with family, in markets. And obviously, you can feel it.
This one, I took the time to travel with friends, with chefs, my close family. Q: I love all the stories about the history of food in Spain. How did you decide to expand it beyond the recipes into history, culture, immigration and other areas?
The cookbook’s progression went from, like I have here, the Irma Rombauer book, the original “Joy of Cooking,” that used to be recipe after recipe after recipe with very little opportunity to add something, to books that have evolved with not just the recipes but the personal stories of the writer. And that serves a purpose because you’re giving context of the foods people love.
It’s a way to find out why gazpacho is gazpacho or why tomato bread is tomato bread. It can be stories about these tortilla de patatas . Or it can be the story of the chef who one day began making one open-faced kind of omelette that he called the lazy tortilla of Sacha, because he was so tired he didn’t even have time to flip the omelette.
And then I did my own version with caviar, and then you say, “Oh, great. ” You can argue, “Is this Spain? ” It’s not Spain. It’s a chef coming up with something nice and delicious.
Well, at the end of the day, every traditional cooking began that way. Every traditional cooking began by somebody putting something in the pot of any ingredient of region they live in. You ask me about the recipe, like arroz a la cubano . My daughter ate this yesterday at home.
And this is a dish you never find in restaurants. You only find in the house of people. It has nothing to do with Cuba, but we call it a la cubana in Spain. That’s been a staple for Spanish cooking forever.
Q: Reading the book, I get the sense that in Spain people take more time to enjoy their meals than we do in the United States. I always say it’s not a right or wrong way. It’s the way it is in the places it is.
Here, people rush more at lunch, but also people seem to be free at 5 p.m. In Spain, we take longer lunch because it’s a longer break, but also we work until later at night. I remember a lot of people going back home for lunch in the town where I lived. But also people lived close to where they worked and so it was great to go home and eat something and even take a little nap.
Obviously, Spain is very social, and it’s very social even in the day-to-day. There is where you see the full enjoyment of Spanish life. People like to be in the streets, people like to go out, people like to go to bars and hangout with friends and I have a beer and I have a tape. I think the Spanish life is very spontaneous.
If you’re in a city, it’s a bar somewhere. If you are in the countryside in Andalusia, it’s a venta somewhere. People will drive up to an hour to go because it’s worth the drive to go. Q: San Laurel is your Spanish food restaurant here, Butterfly is Mexican and Zaytinya is Mediterranean.
How has Spanish cooking influenced or been influenced by other cuisines? Obviously, Spain has influenced Mexico and many countries around the Mediterranean and Latin America in the same way Latin America has influenced Spain. Spain through the centuries has had huge influences from the people that invaded Spain and the places that Spain invaded.
Even before 1492 , Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain by the Christian kings, and unfortunately that happened, but in the process Spanish cooking went across the diaspora, across all the Mediterranean. After 1492 and in the early years beyond, chocolate and tomatoes and green peppers began coming to Spain and then changing forever what European cooking would be. In the same way, churros, all the olive oil-fried desserts, that’s Spanish-Arab and that was exported to countries like Mexico.
So yeah, churros, you could argue, are Mexican now, but I could argue that they really are Spanish. That they came from the influence of having so many olive trees, the influence of the Arabs in the south, the climate that allowed the olives to thrive. You could argue what the moles would be without the almonds that came from Europe and other ingredients. And what Spanish cooking will be without tomatoes and green peppers?
I can’t see it. Or I can see it, but it will be a much less richer cuisine that it is. So I think all the cooking of the world has benefits from these historical exchanges of techniques and ingredients. And the melting pot, not only of America, but the melting pot of the world, is real.
The melting pot has made a better place for eating. You could argue that the lines of what’s Spanish and what’s American and what’s Mexican. And only to be aware. To be aware means that you understand that traditionally you don’t put Tabasco in a gazpacho, but still you have the freedom to do it.
In the last 10, 20, 30 years, Europe has had this kind of re-immigration of different people around the world. And the traditional staples, like cocidos, the big pot stews of Spanish cooking, every region seems to have a few of their own, but one of them, cocido madrileño, one of the main staples are potatoes.
Now, with this new wave in the last 30, 40 years of immigrants from different South American counties, some of the markets are serving that population. So you have malanga and yucca and taro root and other staples that for some reason they never made it big in Spain like potatoes.
I guarantee you this is happening: That new immigrants that love the cuisine of their adopted country, one day instead of putting a potato in we’re going to put yucca. And you are like, OK, it’s not traditional but I guess that will become a new tradition in 100 years from now. Q: I want to ask you about World Central Kitchen, and how it came to operate here during the Palisades and Eaton fires last year.
Well, I mean, unfortunately, we’d already done a lot of operations around L.A. and other parts. The Ventura fire, the Thomas fire. We’ve been there already many times over. You could argue that such a dense population with so many restaurants, why was it determined to be activated?
You realize that like in anything, even if you are organizing your wedding, if everybody’s in charge, nobody’s in charge. That means who is going to be bringing hot coffee or hot soup to people that have been evacuated in the middle of the night and probably left home without money or anything, and they’ve been sent to a convention center that was not ready for them.
The firefighters have a system to try to provide them food, but then nothing is easy. You can hire the catering company, but if they don’t have experience on a fire they’re going to be stopped on the blocked roads. And they’re not pushy enough. Even if they say, “But we’re bringing food to firefighters,” you have police that have orders that nobody’s going through.
So World Central Kitchen has experience, and we know how to navigate those situations. That’s when we come on board. That’s why I was in Palisades on Fire Station 69. Because those firefighters, they need not just food, but they needed kind of some love and support because they were devastated, because they felt like they were not able to stop the fire.
Being there and putting a food truck there was a way to tell them thank you for who you are and thank you for what you do. For what you try to do. For the lives you saved in the process of evacuating people quickly. It’s a way to say, “We see you and you are here.
”We had a team and were very under control. But I was glad I was able to be there within hours. I was on my way to a plane to Europe, and when I saw what was going I spoke to two, three friends, including my CEO. I was like, ‘What, you don’t want to talk to me anymore?
I’ve been calling you. ” And the first thing he tells me, “Yeah, sorry, José. I know I was supposed to call you, but my house burned down. ” And when you saw that, and were like, “What the ?
” I knew that World Central Kitchen was there, but I felt my body, not my soul but my body, had to be there. So I changed my plane, and I went there directly and got in a car and I went to deliver meals. Oh yeah, Jennifer was so good during the fire. She was my driver.
She contacted me, and then we spent time together. I was like, “OK, who are you? Oh ! I know who this woman is!
” People loved to see her and she used to live in Palisades. She had a lot of friends there. She even lost friends there. She’s famous, but like other people, they put everything aside and they want to do whatever they could to give a glimpse of hope to people in those moments.
One of the things people don’t realize about World Central Kitchen is that at the end, it’s so important to be next to people. Even if you’re only doing food and water, that, for people, is almost to say, OK, somebody’s looking after my community. This doesn’t solve all the issues they have. But this gives them some comfort to know that somebody’s looking after them and their community.
Chef Jose Andres Spain My Way Spanish Cuisine Spanish Recipes History And Culture Food As History Mothers And Grandmothers Cacho Cachopo Asturias Cooking
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