Spanish ham

After years in the shadows of the cuisines of France and Italy, Spanish foods are demanding and deserving main- course treatment.

“Our gastronomy has never been as popular as it is now,” Ferran Adria, the famed avant-garde chef of el Bulli restaurant in Roses, Spain, said in an e-mail interview translated from Spanish.

In cookbooks and on television, Spain’s cuisine has become a must-have. Traditional ingredients once limited to specialty shops — manchego cheese, Iberian and serrano hams, chorizo, sardines and anchovies — are now commonplace.

Spanish ham

Today, Spanish cooking is known for an unusual blend of ultra-avant-garde creations — so-called molecular gastronomy, in which liquid nitrogen has become a standard cooking tool — and more rustic fare, such as fabada, a pork and bean stew.

Because S panish cuisine and the chefs who produce it are hot at the moment , it is the perfect excuse for a minor makeover of the classic Spanish stew called fabada.

Traditional versions include six or more pork products, including bacon, serrano ham, blood sausage and, of course, a pig’s tail or foot. It usually also is made from dry white beans soaked for at least several hours or overnight.

Most of that won’t fly in the typical American kitchen. I started by ditching the dry beans for canned. The quality and price are good, and the convenience shaves hours off the recipe.

For the pork products, I kept as many traditional ingredients as practical — bacon, chorizo, serrano ham. But that meant the tail, feet and blood sausage had to go. To compensate for lost flavor and volume, I went with smoked bacon and smoked ham.

The resulting soup is deliciously rich. You’ll want some fresh bread for sopping up the liquid.

Filed under: jamon iberico