Product Description

For forty years, American-born freelance journalist and award-winning cookbook author Janet Mendel has made her home in Spain. Becoming a "local" has provided Mendel with the unique opportunity to explore the authentic foods of her adopted country, and to bring the best recipes to American kitchens. Now, in Cooking from the Heart of Spain, she turns her attention to the region of La Mancha.

Mendel has taken part in the harvesting of saffron, wine grapes, and garlic. She has made marzipan in Toledo, joined in a partridge shoot, and prepared trout caught fresh from the streams in Cuenca. She tells stories of artisanal cheesemakers and wine producers. Her own home in an olive grove gives her special insight into world-class Spanish olive oil.

Cooking from the Heart of Spain features traditional foods from the country's heartland, a region of vineyards, olive groves, and wheat fields. From here come Spain's most famous products -- Manchego cheese, saffron, serrano ham, and olive oil. These ingredients, along with its rich and diverse Moorish and Sephardic heritages, give Manchegan cooking an air of refinement and delicate complexity beyond its sturdy simplicity.

The recipes in Cooking from the Heart of Spain include simple pisto, a medley of summer vegetables sautéed in olive oil; lamb stuffed with spinach and pine nuts; a robust peasant garlic soup; and a delightfully subtle saffron ice cream. Mendel also includes sophisticated dishes such as cheese and ham flan and partridge braised in wine sauce, as well as fun food, such as "fried milk," a sweet custard with a crisp-fried exterior. Oh, yes -- and Madrid tapas too.

Laced with quotes from Cervantes' Don Quixote -- which had lots to say about the food of La Mancha -- Janet Mendel´s cookbook provides recipes for delicious dishes, both traditional and modern.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #636390 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-01
• Released on: 2006-05-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

About the Author

Janet Mendel is an American-born freelance journalist who has lived in southern Spain for forty years. She writes about food, travel, and personalities for newspapers and magazines worldwide. She is the author of My Kitchen in Spain and other books about Spanish cuisine.

Customer Reviews

Very Good Home Cooking from Central Spain.
`Cooking from the Heart of Spain' by American culinary writer living in Spain, Janet Mendel, is a treatment of the cuisine of `La Mancha', or more properly, Castilla La Mancha, just south of Madrid, on the central plateau of the Iberian peninsula, with principal city of Toledo. This book closes the gap between the few books on Spanish regional cuisine and the great library on the cuisines of Italy's many culinary regions. The problem with Castilla La Mancha is that it is surrounded with many more interesting culinary regions, such as the paella capitol, Valencia, the tapas and sherry center, Andalucia, and the hotbed of pork raising, Extremadura. The author seems to solve this problem by stating that from its central location, Castilla La Mancha, her hometown, enjoys influences from all the various culinary specialities of other regions of Spain. If this were true, then why not just do a cookbook of all Spanish cuisines and be done with it.

This was my general reaction to the book as I was reading Senora Mendel's introduction. Traditionally, she plays second fiddle to the better known writer, Penelope Casas, who has done two important books on the cuisines of all of Spain, plus special books on Paella and Tapas, and a `home cooking' volume. Overall, I believe the New Yorker, Ms. Casas' books overall are a better general survey of Spanish cooking, as I find her deeper into background material than either Ms. Mendel or native Spaniard, Teresa Barrenechea, author of `The Cuisines of Spain' and `The Basque Table'. But then, I get to Ms. Mendel's recipes and I am enlightened.

Very few books on Spanish cuisine, except for Ms. Casas superlative `The Foods and Wines of Spain' cover Spanish Breads and pastries very well. Yet, Ms. Mendel does cover these areas, and she does it well. She also does an excellent job of covering one of my favorite Spanish specialities, egg dishes, featuring the famous `tortilla Espagnole', made simply of eggs, onions, potatoes, garlic, and olive oil.

The true speciality of `Castilla La Mancha' is lamb and cheese, with a fair amount of pork and beef, especially veal as well. The region also makes great use of peppers, especially sweet peppers, as in beef-stuffed bell peppers. Ms. Mendel at heart seems to be writing in the style of Julia Child, as the expert home cook. This means her recipes are a bit better than, for example, primo culinary journalist, Coleman Andrews of `Catalan Cuisine', but not really up to the standard of either Andrews in analyzing the cuisine of the region, or, is she even close to the level of the divine Ms. Julia in explaining the finer points of Spanish technique.

Overall, Ms. Mendel does as well or better for the home cook than her professional cook colleague, Barrenechea. Their recipes for `tortilla Espagnole' are virtually identical, except that Ms. Mendel's explanation seems just a bit better for the amateur; however, I prefer Barrenechea's overall result.

As a treatise on a regional cuisine, the book is no match for Andrews' treatment of Catalonia or the great books on Italian regional cooking, but it is as good as Barrenechea's `The Basque Table'.

If you are fond of Spanish cooking, I suggest you pick either Casas or Mendel and get all the books from that one author. Casas' treatment is a bit more scholarly, but Mendel may be just a bit more home kitchen friendly. Overall, I suspect the choice is a matter of taste, so pick one and eat well.

Delightful and Informative
Award-winning food writer and Spanish resident Janet Mendel takes us to the land of windmills and Don Quixote, offering 200 recipes along with epic quotes and anecdotes about cheese-making, trout fishing, the saffron harvest and more.

Don't look for gazpacho and paella here. But if tapas, Garlic Soup (a purported "hangover cure"); Crispy, Cheesy Chicken Breast with Quince Sauce and Manchego Cheese Flan with Caramel Sauce call your name, this book is sure to delight.