CONDUCTAS DE EXPLOTACIÓN Y CONDUCTAS DE EXCLUSIÓN

Aluminum is used for all sorts of pots, casseroles, and particularly frying pans. Copper is the best heat-conducting metal and it is ideal for cooking jams, sugar syrups, or even chocolate, such as in the ancient chocolateras.

Currently, copper is not used very much, particularly because it is expen-sive and difficult to clean. Cast iron is still very popular. It is heavy, durable, and an excellent conductor of heat. Although enameled iron, aluminum, or other materials are actually better than cast iron, many housewives prefer the old-fashioned sartenes (frying pans) made of this metal. Stainless steel is now the most popular material for stewing, boil-ing, and so forth. It is “modern,” clean, and durable.

Casserole dishes come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They have lids and are useful for slow and prolonged stewing or baking in the oven.

Frying pans are usually made of aluminum with a nonstick coating.

There is also the traditional cast iron pan. The cast iron frying pans are ideal for egg omelettes (tortillas), and particularly for Spanish omelettes.

After using them, they must not be washed, but rather cleaned with a paper tissue.

Tortilla de Patatas(Potato Omelette or Spanish Omelette) Ingredients

• 1 cup olive oil

• 4 large potatoes (peeled and cut into small cubes)

• 1 large onion, thinly sliced (optional but typical)

• 4 eggs

• salt to taste Preparation

Heat the oil in a frying pan and add potato cubes. After a few seconds, add the slices of onion, cooking slowly on medium heat. Turn occasionally until potatoes are tender, but not brown. Simultaneously, beat eggs in a large bowl with a fork, and add salt to taste.

Drain the potatoes, and add potatoes to beaten eggs (in the bowl), pressing them so that eggs cover them completely. Pour the potato-egg mixture into the frying pan, spreading quickly. Increase the heat to medium-high. Shake pan to prevent sticking. When potatoes start to brown, put a plate (or a tortilla flipper)

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on top of the frying pan and flip to cook other side. Brown on the other side and flip up to two more times, and the “tortilla” is ready.

Ollas (pots), which have higher sides than casseroles, have traditionally been used to cook vegetables, pasta, stews and so forth.

The paella pan is a round, metal pan with two lateral, symmetrical han-dles traditional and essential in homes and restaurants alike for cooking the popular rice dish bearing the same name, as well as other derived dishes, such as fideuà (a noodle-based dish). They come in different sizes, normally: 10, 13, 15, 18, or 22 inches (for 2, 4, 6, 8, or 12 people, respec-tively). The traditional paella pan is made of cast aluminum that weds the virtue of the traditional paella pan with modern nonstick technology. The coating prohibits the crispy crusting on the bottom of the pan, which some people savor. The normal steel paella pan will change color and ab-sorb flavor as it is used. There is also a stainless steel paella pan. For cook-ing at home, if the paella pan is bigger than the heat source (18 or 22 inches, for example) it is also necessary to have a special burner that cooks rice (or noodles, in the case of cooking fideuà) uniformly.

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Pan for cooking paella.

Utensils

In Spanish kitchens, many different types of spoons are used. Wooden spoons are adequate for cooking different stews, pulses, or vegetable potajes, and so forth (metal utensils are not recommended in those cases because their metallic flavor can be transferred to the stew). Metal, round spoons (stainless steel is very common) are normally used for scooping and stirring (useful in many dishes, such as popular paella or migas), serving spoons are for serving dry dishes, and ladles (cucharones) are used for serving soups or stews.

Wooden forks are very useful also in stews, thick soups, rice, pasta, and other kinds of similar preparations. Metal forks and skewers are used par-ticularly for meat.

Glass

From the Middle Ages on, glass work became more widespread, too, and luxury items made of glass and gold reached a high level of sophisti-cation. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, it became fashionable to cut glassware out of colored glass. However, connoisseurs would progressively replace these colored glasses with colorless ones, which allowed one to appreciate the quality of the liquids they contained, especially wine. Thus, special glasses were created for each kind of wine: white, red, cava (or champagne), dessert wine, brandy, fine wines, such as fino, manzanilla or sherry, and other liquors.

Other Interesting Drinking Vessels

Porrón

In many homes, but also in popular restaurants and bars in Spain one will find the drinking vessel known as porrón, a glass wine container with a narrow, pointed spout that shoots a stream of wine directly into a drinker’s mouth. The porrón is probably of Catalonian origin. It is passed around the table. Normally, it is filled with table wine or sweet wine (the smallest models). Drinking from it takes skill and good guzzling ability to keep up with the steady stream of wine. It is never brought to the mouth, but lifted and aimed toward it. For the adept drinkers, the arm should eventually be straightened.

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Bota (Bota Bag)

The bota is a typical goatskin bag that holds about a liter of wine. The interior is coated with pitch in the traditional way. The bota is also made for sharing the wine and has a nozzle on one end; when the bag is squeezed, the wine is forced out and into one’s mouth. Drinking from this also takes skill and good guzzling ability to keep up with the wine directly shot into the mouth. It is used in the countryside, but also in many urban homes and popular restaurants (particularly in the countryside).

NOTES

1. Specific areas like Catalonia or the Basque Country, though, had already undergone a process of industrialization in the nineteenth century, at the begin-ning of the industrial revolution.

2. Among the numerous publications are the cookbooks by Doctor Trebussem (La mesa moderna), José Altamiras (Novísimo arte de cocina), Ángel Muro (Dic-cionario general de cocina and El Practicón), Pere Alcántara (La cuyna mallorquina), and the anonymous La cuynera catalana. This cuisine would be revalued through-out the twentieth century, with remarkable works like La cocina española antigua, written by Countess Pardo Bazán (1914).

3. The case of the sisters Úrsula, Sira, and Vicenta de Azcaray, owners of a fa-mous restaurant of Bilbao was different: they spent their whole lives in the restau-rant kitchen but their books and recipe manuscripts became known thanks to their posthumous publication.

4. Such was the case of maize, for example; this plant was very successful in France and northern Italy but has never had a major role in Spanish cuisines.

5. Andrés Bernáldez, Memorias del Reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. Manuel Gómez and Juan de Mata (Madrid: Carríazo, 1962).

6. F. Xavier Medina, La Cocina en España: Anotaciones (Barcelona: unpub-lished report, 1999).

7. Redaction, “La Mitad de los Hogares de las Ciudades Españolas Tienen un Ordenador,” Master-Net, http://www.masterdisseny.com/master-net/atrasadas/

155.php3.

8. Popularly, a very expanded theory in Spain says that mayonnaise (mayonesa or mahonesa in Spanish) was invented in Mahón, the city capital of Menorca, in the Balearic Islands, under the French domination (eighteenth century) and this is the origin of the name mahonesa (sauce from Mahón).

9. Redaction, “Uso de Electrodomésticos en los Hogares Españoles,” Electro-Imagen, http://www.electro-imagen.com/es/noticia/15.

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