When a famous chef or a great Anglo-Saxon media publishes his recipe for a traditional Spanish dish on social networks, make some popcorn, sit in front of the computer and get ready to enjoy the show. The festival of gastrofends It won’t take long for it to start in the comments, where all kinds of objections to the ingredients, quantities or techniques used will be raised. One of the last chickens we lived with “best gazpacho” from The New York Times on Instagram: there were followers who reproached the author for the use of onion, the lack of bread or the lack of tomato, and the more technical ones sulked about straining the soup. Although my favorite comment was that of the follower who, without fear of being wrong, proclaimed that “the best gazpacho It’s of The French Laundry, in California”. To which another follower replied: “Or maybe the one from Spain, where he is originally from?”
Compared to the violations of international culinary law by chefs like Gordon Ramsay (spanish paella with chorizo, sherry and chilies) or David Chang (fideuá with noodles instant noodles, mussels and, again, kilos of chorizo), Julia Moskin’s recipe quite respected the canon of what we know around here as gazpacho. The proportions could be debatable, but beyond those insignificant details, the angry response of her opponents raised interesting questions: When is a recipe authentic? What are the limits to modify it? Why do we get so upset when someone cooks a traditional dish in a way that we consider incorrect?
Those of us who publish recipes on the internet know that these debates are not limited to the foreign press. Go ahead and propose to the world your formula for any regional dish and in a minute someone will ask you to account because it is not identical to their grandmother’s or does not coincide with that of their town. The discussion is also on the street: a reader told me the other day how the appearance of an alternative gazpacho at a dinner, with piquillo peppers and celery, ignited the spirits of the attendees. Some denied that this soup deserved such a name; Others cried out against gazpacho with watermelon, and a woman from Murcia defended that she uses carrots because her mother “always did it that way.”
The matter awakens mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, does it make sense to be purist with a preparation like gazpacho, which, if we stick to its hot and cold variants throughout Spain, we can barely define as a “dish with bread”? Sticking to the so-called “Andalusian gazpacho”, the use of the now essential tomato did not begin to become popular until the 19th century. Were there then Orthodox who cried out against such infamy, saying “if you put that red, it’s not gazpacho”? Ancient dishes have experienced multiple mutations or mixtures, and those of humble origin were made with what was at hand, so it does not seem reasonable to try to impose a list of immutable ingredients or a procedure on them.
These reflections support the thesis that everyone can call whatever comes out of the cucumber gazpacho. However, I am the first who has felt chills when seeing red drinks made with chicken broth or bottled tomato juice on the Internet, coming, of course, from the United States. I understand the rejection that recipes can cause. sui generis of foods with which you have an emotional relationship because they have always been part of your life. Maybe a pea hummus doesn’t shock me, but I would turn my nose up at a porrusalda with shrimp or a marmitako with bacon.
The border between the noble defense of tradition and reactionary intransigence is blurred, but the dilemma may be resolved by abandoning strict rules and thinking more about defending the most essential characteristics of the dish: in the case of gazpacho without surnames, the grinding of fresh juicy vegetables, dressing with olive oil, vinegar and salt, and cold service. Because the correct recipe for this soup (or paella, fabada, cocido or any of our venerable classics) does not exist, but its spirit does, and that is what should not be distorted.
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