Publisher's Synopsis
Through these pages, we will learn about the evolution of Spanish cuisine from Iberian acorn flour cakes to Ferrán Adrià's spherical melon caviar. We will discover that the best story about the fruitful coexistence between Christian, Jewish and Muslim cuisines is owed to the prostitute Aldonza: "La lozana andaluza"; that on Columbus's second voyage to the 'West Indies' his sailors ate three manatees, believing them to be rather ugly mermaids; that Spain is the only country that can boast of having had a gourmet dog; that the first written document on potato omelette is dated in the year of the French Revolution, or that the Francoist minister José Luis Arrese came up with the idea of feeding humble Spaniards with dolphin sandwiches. Unraveling curiosities and forgotten episodes of Spanish cuisine, we will learn that 18th century sailors invented the recipe for mazamorra, the gazpacho that came from the sea; that the famous deconstructed potato omelette is not a creation of Ferran Adrià but of his disciple Marc Singla; that Queen Maria Luisa of Parma always ate alone because she had to remove her precious porcelain false teeth, or that Elizabeth II boasted of having eaten five plates of chicken with saffron rice, something very similar to paella, in one sitting.
