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Ranked #7. Gerry Dawes's Spain: An Insider's Guide to Spanish Food, Wine, Culture and Travel gerrydawesspain.com

"My good friend Gerry Dawes, the unbridled Spanish food and wine enthusiast cum expert whose writing, photography, and countless crisscrossings of the peninsula have done the most to introduce Americans—and especially American food professionals—to my country's culinary life. . .” - - Chef-restaurateur-humanitarian José Andrés, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and Oscar Presenter 2019; Chef-partner of Mercado Little Spain at Hudson Yards, New York 2019

Showing posts with label Salvador Dalì. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Salvador Dalì. Show all posts

7/12/2014

Kukuxumusu's Mikel Urmeneta at Instituto Cervantes New York


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Kukuxumusu logo. Kukuxumusu means "kiss of the flea" (flea bite) in Basque. Oct. 28, 2011. 
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.


Pamplona native Mikel Urmeneta, Kukuxumusu, at Instituto Cervantes in New York City, where he gave a presentation of his famous designs for Kukuxumsu, which means "kiss of the flea" (flea bite) in Basque.  
Oct. 28, 2011.  Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.


Halloween costumes for bulls.  Kukuxumusu drawing shown during 
Kukuxumusu Partner-Designer Mikel Urmeneta's presentation at Insituto Cervantes.
Oct. 28, 2011.  Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.


Javier Rioyo, then Director of the Instituto Cervantes, introduced Mikel Urmeneta of Kukuxumusu. 
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.


Slide show of Mikel Urmeneta's presentation at Instituto Cervantes.
All Kukuxumusu images ©2011.
Photos by Gerry Dawes©2011 / gerrydawes@aol.com.

3/20/2014

Charcutería: The Soul of Spain by Jeffrey Weiss. Foreword by José Andrés. Highly Recommended. Five Dalí Persistence of Memory Melting Watch Awards


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I have just started Charcutería: The Soul of Spain by Jeffrey Weiss, but I can already tell that it is going to be the best thing I have ever read in English on the subject of Spanish charcutería, the craft of making great jamones and embutidos, the magnificent hams and charcuterie of Spain.

 
Charcutería: The Soul of Spain by Jeffrey Weiss. 
Foreword by José Andrés. Photographs by Nathan Rawlinson.

Jeffrey Weiss is a professional chef with more than 15 years of experience, having cooked with James Beard Award-winning chef José Andrés and Spanish-based chefs Daní Garcia and Adolfo Muñoz, and in America, with April Bloomfield. He is one of a select few Americans to earn the prestigious ICEX culinary scholarship that allowed him to live in Spain, learn its regional cuisines, and cook in the kitchens of top Spanish chefs. He recently opened the Monterey, CA restaurant jeninni Kitchen + Wine Bar.


This book gets my highest rating, five Dalí watches:

Geraldo-Dalí Persistence of Memory Melting Watch Awards

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 About Gerry Dawes

Writing, Photography, & Specialized Tours of Spain & Tour Advice

For custom-designed tours of Spain, organized and lead by Gerry Dawes, and custom-planned Spanish wine, food, cultural and photographic itineraries, send inquiries to gerrydawes@aol.com.  

I have planned and led tours for such culinary stars as Chefs Thomas Keller, Mark Miller, Mark Kiffin, Michael Lomonaco and Michael Chiarello and such personalities as baseball great Keith Hernandez and led on shorter excursions and have given detailed travel advice to many other well-known chefs and personalities such as Drew Nieporent, Norman Van Aken, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenberg, Christopher Gross, Rick Moonen, James Campbell Caruso and many others.
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“The American writer and town crier for all good Spanish things Gerry Dawes . . . the American connoisseur of all things Spanish . . .” Michael Paterniti, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge and The World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese

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"Gerry Dawes, I can't thank you enough for opening up Spain to me." -- Michael Chiarello on Twitter. 

"Chiarello embarked on a crash course by traveling to Spain for 10 days in 2011 with Food Arts
contributing authority Gerry Dawes, a noted expert on Spanish food and wine.  Coqueta's (Chiarello's new restaurant at Pier Five, San Francisco) chef de cuisine, Ryan McIlwraith, later joined Dawes for his own two week excursion, as well. Sampling both old and new, they visited wineries and marketplaces, as well as some of Spain's most revered dining establishments, including the Michelin three-star Arzak, Etxebarri, the temple to live fire-grilling; Tickets, the playful Barcelona tapas bar run by Ferran Adrià and his brother, Albert; and ABaC, where Catalan cooking goes avant-garde." - - Carolyn Jung, Food Arts, May 2013.


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"In his nearly thirty years of wandering the back roads of Spain," Gerry Dawes has built up a much stronger bank of experiences than I had to rely on when I started writing Iberia...His adventures far exceeded mine in both width and depth..." -- James A. Michener, author of Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections

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Gerry Dawes was awarded Spain's prestigious Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (National Gastronomy Award) in 2003. He writes and speaks frequently on Spanish wine and gastronomy and leads gastronomy, wine and cultural tours to Spain. He was a finalist for the 2001 James Beard Foundation's Journalism Award for Best Magazine Writing on Wine, won The Cava Institute's First Prize for Journalism for his article on cava in 2004, was awarded the CineGourLand “Cinéfilos y Gourmets” (Cinephiles & Gourmets) prize in 2009 in Getxo (Vizcaya) and received the 2009 Association of Food Journalists Second Prize for Best Food Feature in a Magazine for his Food Arts article, a retrospective piece about Catalan star chef, Ferran Adrià. 

In December, 2009, Dawes was awarded the Food Arts Silver Spoon Award in a profile written by José Andrés. ". . .That we were the first to introduce American readers to Ferran Adrià in 1997 and have ever since continued to bring you a blow-by-blow narrative of Spain's riveting ferment is chiefly due to our Spanish correspondent, Gerry "Mr. Spain" Dawes, the messianic wine and food journalist raised in Southern Illinois and possessor of a self-accumulated doctorate in the Spanish table. Gerry once again brings us up to the very minute. . ." - - Michael & Ariane Batterberry, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher and Founding Editor/Publisher, Food Arts, October 2009. 
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Trailer-pilot for a reality television series 
on wine, gastronomy, culture and travel in Spain.

Experience Spain With Gerry Dawes: Customized Culinary, Wine & Cultural Trips to Spain & Travel Consulting on Spain  

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com

1/09/2012

Ferran Adría, Salvador Dalí and Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate


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Ouefs Sur le Plat (Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate).

From Dalí's Ouefs Sur le Plat (Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate), we may be seeing a painting that could have inspired Catalan super-star chef, Ferran Adría, to pass over into a new dimension of food with such dishes as a mango "egg yolk" served on a Chinese spoon, ravioli de mango, melón caviar (a ringer for samon caviar, made from melón puree dropped into a calcium chloride solution), spaghetto de parmesano (two yards plus of spaghetto made from Parmesan cheese), etc., all dishes that Dalí would have understood instantly. (Also see Memories of the Superb 2005 Dalí Exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)

12/25/2011

Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukkah from Gerry Dawes & Kay Balun.



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Kay Balun and the Bear at Salvador Dalí's house, Port Lligat (Girona), Catalunya. December 2010. 
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2010 / gerrydawes@aol.com


Gerry Dawes & Kay Balun in Barcelona's famous Boquería market toasting with cava (Catalan sparkling wine) a small group that Gerry was leading around Spain. Cava gets breakfast off to a good start! 
Photo by Tyler Schwartz.


The Chestnut Seller, Burgos, Castilla y León.
Photo by Gerry Dawes©2010 / gerrydawes@aol.com

Gerry Dawes can be reached at gerrydawes@aol.com.

3/29/2011

Salvador Dalì's Pan (Bread), Pa en Catalan, Pa de Figueres (Girona)


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Salvador Dalì claimed, "Bread has been one of the oldest subjects of fetishism and obsessions in my work, the number one, the one to which I have been most faithful." 


The distinctive shape of the local pa de crostons
or triangular-shaped bread of Figueres, Salvador Dalì's hometown.


Once ubiquitous in the Empordà region of Catalunya, pa de crostons was Dalì's inspiration for the decorative biege concrete "breads" that decorate the façade of the museum the Salvador Dalì Museum in Figueres (Girona), Catalunya. 


Short Slide Show of pa de crostons and the façade of the Salvador Dalì Museum in Figueres.

The Dalí museum (his final resting place--his tomb is in the museum) is studded with hundreds of representations of the pa de crostons three-cornered breads that meant so much to Dalì in his youth.  (Is Dalì's bread the equivalent of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane's "Rosebud" ?)

Pa de crostons in a shop near the Salvador Dalì Museum in Figueres. As a child, Dalì would hollow out the bottom of one of these pas de crostons and wear it as a hat, which some have likened to a bullfighter's montera (which has only two lobe-like projections).  As an adult, Dalì sometimes appeared with a large flat, sombrero-like circular bread (not pa de croston) on his head and the pan-on-the-head theme appears in numerous Dalì paintings.


Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904-1989). The Basket of Bread, 1926. Oil on panel. 13 x 12 1/2 in. (33 x 31.8 cm).
The Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © The Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

One of his famous paintings, the Zurbaràn-like Basket of Bread, is of the rather ordinary pan (bread) of the Spain, not pa de crostons



From Gerry Dawes's Visual Encyclopedia of Spanish Gastronomy & Wine


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