Flavors of Spain

Flavors of Spain > A Culinary Journey through Catalonia

Catalan cuisine can boast of a history stretching back more than 1,000 years. The Empordà (sea) and the Cerdanya (mountain) today still provide products that were brought or described by the Greeks and Romans. Then came the Arabs in the early Middle Ages bringing other ingredients (such as sugar, rice and artichokes) unknown in the rest of Europe at that time. In the late Middle Ages, the national cuisine saw such growth (including dishes and sauces that have survived almost miraculously to the present day) that the sophisticated Italians of the Renaissance claimed that Catalan cooks (including Robert de Nola) were the best in Europe. Chef-writers (Sent Sovi, Robert de Nola), dietician-distillers (Arnau de Vilanova) and theoretical gastronomes (Francesc Eiximenis) endowed Catalan cuisine, whether popular, aristocratic, rustic, bourgeois or monastic, with its patent of nobility.