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As Christmas approaches each year a shop opens on the corner of my street in Barcelona. It stays open for a month or so and sells only variations of a single item: gift baskets called cestas de Navidad. Given to employees, colleagues, or business contacts, even awarded as raffle prizes, these wicker hampers are traditionally filled with delicacies to be enjoyed during the lengthy Spanish holiday season: a whole bone-in leg of cured jamón (ham), a selection of cured sausages, different fish and shellfish preserved in tins, turrón (nougat), traditional almond cookies… plus wine and cava.
But such gift basket need not be only at Christmas time, nor so classic. With so many Spanish products being exported, they can be far more innovative and tailormade for the person receiving it. Here are five examples with some personal choices for beginning to fill them.
FOR THE SWEET TOOTH
Spanish sweets show strong Moorish influences in certain flavors and ingredients – ground almonds, honey, lemons, sesame seeds, anise, orange blossoms…. Start filling this basket with both brittle-hard and soft versions of almond-and-honey turrón. These are extremely popular around Christmas and New Year, as are a number of variations of ground almond biscuits – almendrados, mantecadas, polvorones, mazapanes, and roscos. The tradition of many of these dulces has been artfully preserved over the centuries in monasteries. In sherry and wine-growing areas, where egg whites were (are!) often used in to clarify the wine, the yolks were given to the nuns. The most emblematic product of this custom is yemas (candied egg yolks). From the Spanish colonies in the Americas came another type of beloved sweet: chocolate. Blanxart’s dark chocolate with marcona almonds has to be one of the most pleasurably combinations around. For more avant-garde chocolate creations, the (at times) surreal shapes and (always) sublime flavors of either Oriol Balaguer or Enric Rovira will make even the most jaded chocolate lover swoon.
To go with all this? A packet of Café Saula coffee. Founded in Barcelona in 1950, the company recently added a 100% cultivo ecológico (organic) grind to their offerings. A perfect finish.
FOR KIDS
One of the great childhood (and adult!) pleasures is dipping freshly fried churros into a cup of warm, runny chocolate. Replicate this at home by melting chocolate a la taza – Valor and Blanxart both make excellent versions – in milk and serving it with melindros (soft, flat biscuits) or thin slices of bizcocho (pound cake) or another plain cake. Less messy are peladillas, almonds covered in hard sugar. They come in lovely pastel colors – pink, yellow, robin-egg blue – and are customarily given out at baptisms. Another mouth-popping favorite is garrapiñadas, almonds cooked with a crunchy sugar crust and hint of lemon.
Colorful Chupa Chups, perhaps the world’s best selling lollipops, offer a wide range of flavors that will satisfy even the most original tastes. But this basket doesn’t have to include only sweets. Of the countless varieties of Spanish cured pork sausages, kids often prefer the more mild ones such as fuet or salchichon. Thinly sliced cured jamón, too, is loved. So are pale, flat Marcona almonds – the best in the world. Another favorite of my daughters is a tin of preserved berberechos (cockles). Drain the liquid, add a dash lemon and pinch of black pepper, and serve with toothpicks. My two girls impale as many of them as possible on a toothpick – but that’s really what we’d all like to do.
FOR THE BOSS (AT WORK OR HOME)
The key to this basket is quality, and the products should be, simply, the best. Start with jamón Ibérico from free-range, black-footed Iberian pigs raised on acorns. Hand-sliced, of course. To this add two other cured products from black-footed pigs: lomo embuchado (loin) and chorizo. Thin slices of these go well with flat, thin wedges of aged Manchego cheese. A thick piece of membrillo quince jelly paste – ruddy purple, slightly grainy – gives a lovely, sweet contrast in flavor. Spain produces many of the world’s finest olive oils. Among my favorites is La Amarilla de Ronda’s selection of organic extra-virgin olive oils as much for their smooth intensity as their stylish Philippe Stark-designed tin containers. Spain has a long history of conserving topgrade seafood in latas (tins) – start with the finest clams, baby squid in their own ink, navajas (razor clams), mussels, and line-caught bonito del norte handpacked in olive oil. Also found in tins are fat, juicy white asparagus from Navarra that have been grown under a mound of earth to avoid exposure to light. Look for El Navarrico’s extrathick- size with King Juan Carlos’s famous utterance upon tasting them stamped across the side: "Cojonudos." This is somewhat risqué slang for "Terrific!" Hopefully a similar sentiment will be blurted out upon receiving this basket.
FOR THE GOURMET
Olive oil – the base of the Mediterranean diet – is key to this basket. Try to get a sampling of superior oils pressed from a selection of olives. Alone or blended, the three main varieties of olives used are Picual, pea-sized Arbequina, and Hojiblanca, each with slightly tones of spice and fruit. Accompany these with a bottle of flavorful, vaguely sweet Cava vinegar and one of tart-andsnappy Sherry wine vinegar. Blend four parts vinegar to one part olive oil for a vinaigrette that will invigorate any salad. A sophisticated salad can be easily assembled with a jar of habitas (baby fava beans) conserved in olive oil and some taquitos de jamón (small cubes of cured ham) with just a bit of freshly chopped mint. For a quick, elegant tapa, no assembly required, include roasted red piquillo peppers stuffed with anything from salt cod to Cabrales cheese. Cabrales is an excellent, full-bodied blue cheese from the mountains in Asturias, and a gastronome’s favorite. Two other delicious Spanish quesos are the nutty, slightly sweet Garrotxa with its moldy gray rind and the creamier Galician Tetilla that’s shaped like a big Hershey’s Kiss.
FOR THE PAELLA CHEF
This paella basket has everything you need to prepare Spain’s greatest dish except for the fresh vegetables, stock, and the seafood or meat the recipe calls for. Paella is named for the pan in which it is made. (Use a different type of pan and it’s not, technically, a paella.) An 18- to 20-inch in diameter pan is the right size for six people. Pans come in different materials but many aficionados prefer simple carbon steel ones for the slightly sweet flavor they give off and their ability to respond immediately to changes in heat. The protagonist in every paella is rice. Fat, short-grain Bomba variety has the highest absorption capabilities – key because the grains are vehicles for the flavors of the dish. Two spices are essential in every paella: sweet pimentón (paprika) and saffron, which should be deep reddish-purple threads from La Mancha. Include some Mediterranean sea salt plus a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil.
The original Valencian paella calls for snails. Fresh ones can be hard to find so for the adventurous chef include a jar of preserved ones. And to make sure that nothing goes wrong on the big day, how could I not include a copy of my own cookbook, La Paella: Deliciously Authentic Rice Recipes from Spain’s Mediterranean Coast? I always add a single, simple caveat when giving such a basket: I want to be invited to taste the results. I’d advise you to do the same.
Jeff Koehler’s book, La Paella: Deliciously Authentic Rice Dishes from Spain’s Mediterranean Coast, was published in 2006. He lives in Barcelona.
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