Talk:Spanish cuisine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Spain Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Spain, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Spain on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.
Food Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as top-importance on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] Tapas

I'm sorry to say that Tapas cannot be considered traditional in Barcelona. They are traditional food from Southern Spain. I'm glad Barcelona has fantastic tapas restaurants but, again, they are not 'traditional' there. They will certainly become traditional in about a couple of centuries as what will be the future Catalan cuisine, but at the present time the article's statement is utterly inexact. Didac (d1d1_didi@hotmail.com)

[edit] Page Blanked

The page was blanked and when I tried to restore last version it lost the formatting, sorry, so if anyone has a version that can be restored with formatting and images? User:Justinmcl Justinmcl 21:58, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

This article actually contains two articles that shoud be merged. First there is the original english article, followed by the much longer translated-from-spanish article. Most of the contents of the first article is in the second one, but some things are not.

  • This is obvious, but the first task is to complete the translation of the content that came from the Spanish Wikipedia. It doesn't make sense to restructure the article while there are still a few bits left to be translated (mostly redlinks at this point). | Klaw ¡digame! 19:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Translation finished?

I don't see anything else here that needs to be translated; we've even done most of the dishes.
I also have a suggestion for changing the article - the bullet points with major dishes by region could be farmed out to daughter articles (Cuisine of Galicia, Cuisine of the Balearics, etc.), which would probably be more consistent with WP:MOS and would reduce redlinkage. It also gives us a better shot to turn this into a Featured Article. | Klaw ¡digame! 00:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bring back regional cuisines

Please bring back the information on regional cuisines. While it is great to have individual articles on them allowing for much more detail, it is still important to include summary information of each of the regional cuisines in this, the main article. That's pretty standard practice for how we deal with topics. See Wikipedia:Summary style. - Taxman Talk 15:37, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I waited two days to see if anyone else would comment. I disagree with Taxman's suggestion, because the regional cuisine content in this article comprises lists of dishes, not summaries. If someone with more knowlege of the cuisines could write two-sentence summaries on each, those would fit well in this article. But raw lists of large numbers of dishes are tougher to read and don't really meet the guidelines in Summary style: Ideally many of those sections will eventually summarize entire separate articles on the sub-topic covered in that section. | Klaw ¡digame! 15:29, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Well of course ideally it needs to be a good summary and not just a list of dishes, but unless someone can write a good summary of each it's better to have something on each region's cuisine than nothing. Regional variety is of course and important component of the cuisine. I just think until proper summaries are written removing what is there is a step backwards not forward. It's removing information. There is of course plenty more that needs to be worked on in the article to merge the translated material with what was already here. - Taxman Talk 21:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Taxman on this: prose would be better than lists of dishes, but lists of dishes are better than nothing. - Jmabel | Talk 22:10, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
It's removing information. No information was removed. It was simply relocated, and it's easy to find through the links at the bottom. I'm not going to delete it if you want to put it back; I just think it's redundant and clumsy. | Klaw ¡digame! 01:04, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Seafood

It would be interesting to get some statistics about where seafood consumed in Spain comes from; I'd guess the Spanish are only one step short of the Japanese in pulling in seafood from around the world. A lot of the waters near Spain, especially on the Mediterranean side, are rather fished out, and seafood is quite popular even in inland areas like Madrid. - Jmabel | Talk 04:38, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I live in Madrid, Spain. According to the FAO, this is the ranking of seafood consumption per capita per year.

   * Maldivas: 140 kg/person/year
   * Iceland: 91 kg/person/year
   * Japan: 70 kg/person/year
   * Portugal: 59 kg/person/year
   * China: 57 Kg kg/person/year
   * Malasia: 56 kg/person/year
   * Norway: 47 kg/person/year
   * Spain: 37 kg/person/year
   * Chile: 28 kg/person/year

As you see, Spain is behind other countries, but also has more population that Iceland or Portugal, which causes that the gross consuption of Spain is probably the third of the world. Also, it's true that the spanish waters aren't enough for our fishers and the government makes deals with other countries (mostly Morocco and Norway) to let us fish in theirs. And, yes, it's true that there is an excellent fish supply in Madrid. You can eat here the best fish of the country, delivered daily from our coasts. --Wafry 22:40, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moorish and Jewish influence? what about pork?

I realize these two groups must have had some influence but considering pork is the preferred meat of spaniards, isn't it hard to say they had a "significant" impact?(also it is implied their contribution to spanish cuisine is more significant than any other influence because they are the first mentioned in the paragraph). Also the article says many muslims dishes are still eaten but gives no examples. What about jewish examples to back up this claim? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.77.60.38 (talk • contribs) 5 March 2006.


As far as I know Muslim cuisine (North African to be more precise) is quite spicy , cous-cous is a good example whilethe Spanish cuisine isn't. Maybe the musim influence consists on new ingredients and raw products like saffron, lemons, etc... but they are used differently in each cuisine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.152.245.240 (talk) 22:19, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gourmets

The following was cut without comment; I don't have strong feelings either way, but I'm mentioning it on the talk page in case someone does:

Spanish Gourmets
  • Manuel Vázquez Montalbán: Writer of several books on cuisine, like Contra los gourmets (Against Gourmets).
  • Álvaro Cunqueiro: journalist, contributor to Faro de Vigo, and author of the introduction to the book Cocina Gallega (Galician Kitchen).
  • Nestor Luján: journalist and Catalan gourmand. Wrote El libro de la cocina Española (Book of Spanish Cooking), with Juan Perucho.

- Jmabel | Talk 18:29, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guajada

HI, this article has been a 1-line stub since creation. The Notability notice is bigger than the article PLUS the stub template. Should it be transwikid to Wiktionary? Or improved or redirected?Garrie 23:35, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Or maybe it could be merged with Cuajada, which also could need some improving.--Wafry 06:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


A typical food of the Extremaduran cuisine is Migas. This should be added. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.152.128.29 (talk) 01:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] We should make a coherent and comprehensive historical/influences section

I am saying this because it seems realy odd having the first paragraph of the article dedicated to the moors and the jews. This should be removed to the history section where the subject can be more elaborated.

That aside I also find a bit incoherent stating that their influence (keeping aside american foods) differentiates spanish cuisine from other mediterranean ones. If everything that would reinforce similarities.

[edit] Gastronomía manchega

I don't read Spanish language, so anyone knows what Gastronomía manchega is, please fill in the information. Does it refer to "restaurant in La mancha" or La mancha cheese? Thanks in advance.--Appletrees (talk) 17:54, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

It means Manchego cuisine, that is, from La Mancha. Apparently the picture was taken in Pedro Muñoz, a Manchego village. The picture is good, but I dont think it belongs to the heading. Can you find a better place for it?--Wafry (talk) 23:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for the reply. I think the picture is very picturesque and I couldn't find something representative at commons. If you feel to change it, please do. I just wanted to fill the heading. --Appletrees (talk) 22:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Mediterranean" Spain and nation-wide food

The article talks about Spain's deep Mediterranean roots while the truth is that Spain is both a Mediterranean and Atlantic country. Mediterranean cuisine is typical of the Eastern shore (Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia and the Balearic Islands), but how deeply Mediterranean are the Atlantic cuisine of 'Green Spain' in the NW (Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country), the savoury cuisine of the Central Plateau, or the solid dishes from the Pyrenean area? As for the nation-wide food, things like potato omelette, cured ham, migas and stews are quite correct, but gazpacho and paella are associated to the South and the East, respectively. The fact they can be found all over the country nowadays because foreigners think they're 'typically Spanish' doesn't automatically make them typical of all Spanish cuisines. --Purplefire (talk) 01:56, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bias and assimilationism

Where to begin. this article, translated from the Spanish, is full of drum-beating about Spanish cuisine - all these references to fashionability, "excellence" and "deliciousness" are quite unnecessary, and POV. Secondly, the whole article is full of incorrections (as mentioned above by a few, ie. tapas in barcelona, "mediterranean" Spain) which stem from the article using only one POV and means many statements are simply untrue (hopefully, through ignorance more than malice).

Another thing is the quite audatious Spanish nationalism. One thing is to say that Spanish cooking includes catalan and basque cuisine, and another is to ignore these cuisines and try and break this commonality down into anodyne political units (frankly, the regions section is poor, and really requires a simple description of major dishes - Paella, patxaran, tapas, migas, etc - and their origins. There is simply no reason to abitrarily pick a dish common to many regions as typical of just one (and vice versa). It's ridiculous, mixing politics and culture.)

All this continues throughout the subsequent and silly pages on cuisine from each region, ignoring the fact these regions are not cultural but political, and failing to make adequate reference to those dishes shared amongst many regions, as if this was to admit something compromising (and here we note the writers' cultural negationism, in that an article on culinary culture makes no reference to the other cultures in Spain apart from the castillian one, going so far as to translate those cultures' dishes into Spanish and impose local, castillian or andalusian dishes upon the whole country.)

I would quite happily write a few lines on Catalan cuisine, but I don't, unlike the authors of this political tract, want to skew the article overly from its title, and I also admit that I don't know enough about basque, castillian and galician cuisines and wouldn't dream of saying what is and isn't. Since the article on catalan cuisine (that is, cuisine of Catalonia, a misnomer in my opinion) exists, I hope that we can use it as a space to provide the much-needed information about catalan cuisine which is flattly ignored, translated and assimilated here. I have simply written a small bit clarifying that some people feel catalan cuisine is different from Spanish cuisine.--Espencat (talk) 23:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you think that it'd be helpful to list the cuisine and description with the typical regions in parentheses rather than split it out by region? For example: Food X (Catalonia, Valancia, Murcia) rice dish.... Any specific proposed changes would be welcome. Kman543210 (talk) 22:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Absolutely. for example, in the article on Basque cuisine, the same food is present in the three political areas which make up the basque culture (Navarre, French basque Country, Basque Country proper). Nonetheless, it would require someone with a good knowledge of all foods in Spain because quite often one can find foods in other regions due to immigration or cultural osmosis. For example, Rioja wine is made, of course, in the La Rioja region, but also in the south of the Basque Country (the two divide the geographical region of La Rioja/Errioxa. Ensaimades are from mallorca but in general terms are commercially available throughout Spain. I think it could be quite difficult to definitively decide which food is "typical". I suppose we will have to accept some margin for error. Either that, or we simply make a small list of the 10 or 15 main dishes acording to their popularity or importance. A further idea, what if we talk about the Spanish med, the Meseta, and the Atlantic? it's a little inaccurate but i'm sure these areas are less arbitrary than political regions.--Espencat (talk) 09:57, 10 June 2008 (UTC)