Food & Wine Festival 2010 Cuisine, Part 22: Spain

Welcome to Part 22 in a series examining each of the national cuisines on display at the 2010 Epcot Food & Wine Festival. Today's port of culinary call: Spain.

Spain made its debut at the Food & Wine Festival in 1997, the year after the Festival itself began. This year, you'll find the Spanish booth outside the France Pavilion next to the Belgian booth.

Let's look at our menu:

Taste of Spain

The Taste of Spain, unlike the geographically limited 'Flavor of Africa' at the South African booth, does succeed in presenting a representative variety of Spanish flavors in the form of appetizers: meat, cheese, olives, and bread.

The two meats are serrano ham and chorizo. Serrano ham is dry-cured, then sliced thin and served cold. Serrano means 'mountain' and describes where the drying sheds for the ham are typically built. It can take up to two years to fully cure and dry serrano ham. Chorizo, the other meat, is traditionally a cured, smoked pork sausage, seasoned with paprika, garlic, and other spices which are adjusted as necessary to make the chorizo sweeter or spicier. In this country, you mostly find Mexican chorizo sold fresh, not smoked, and fattier than its superior Spanish counterpart.

For cheese, the Taste of Spain is manchego, prepared from sheep's milk and aged for up to two years until the texture becomes firm, the taste buttery, and the color an immaculate ivory. The taste of manchego changes with age: fresh, it's mild, then over the course of months becomes sweet and nutty, and finally matures into firm sharpness. Expect the firm, sharp kind at the Festival.

Finally, around the edges, olives (presumably Spanish of which the most common type is the greenish purple manzanilla) and the ingenious inclusion of tomatoes not on their own but in tomato bread. My strategy is to take a bite of bread with each of the other four items on the plate, or perhaps even assemble those items on the bread, then eat them together.

Seared Albacore Tuna with Romesco Sauce

I like the progression of the Spanish menu from simple appetizers to the primary protein of Seared Albacore Tuna. Tuna cooked like a steak is nothing like tuna forked from a can. The sear on the tuna should be noticeable, a passionate kiss from the grill, deep but not prolonged, merely the warm-up for the tuna's coupling with its true love, Romesco, a Spanish sauce made with almonds, roasted garlic and tomatoes, olive oil, and other ingredients, such as fennel, that enhance the flavor of the seafood with which it's usually served.

Spanish Almond Cake

For dessert, Almond Cake, more Middle Eastern than Spanish, but an inspired complement to the almond in the Romesco sauce. A Spanish almond cake traditionally has no flour, lots of eggs, and lots of almonds. The origin of this cake probably trudged into Spain with the Moors and stayed behind when they trudged back out.

Beverages

Let's get this out of the way first: where's the sangria? There isn't any. (If you want sangria, go to the Moroccan booth.) Instead, there's a red wine and a white wine, both from Marques de Caceres, a 'young' winery with a decent though not spectacular product. The Crianza Red is ruby-colored with a bouquet of black cherries and blackberries; the White is harder to pin down because the winery produces several varieties and it's not clear just yet which variety will be poured at the Festival.

The third wine, a sparkling white called Lady of Spain Blanc de Blancs Cava, has a crisp taste of grape juice and tart apple, ideal for cutting through any residue left behind by the almond cake.

Taste It or Waste It

I'm excited by the Spanish menu. It moves logically and alluringly from appetizer to main course to dessert, and the selections are both simple and authentic. If I were forced to skip one item, I'd pass up the almond cake; if I were forced to skip two items, I'd resist.

The tough choice is what to drink: red or white? Although the red has the robustness to match the serrano ham and chorizo, you'll get better mileage from the white. It's the clear pick for the tuna and it won't disappoint greatly with the appetizers. Of course, if you're just here for the almond cake, you want the sparkling white. But don't just come for the almond cake!