A new cookbook explores how Spaniards adapted their cuisine during extreme food shortages following the Spanish Civil War, offering recipes that relied on scarce or unconventional ingredients. The book highlights the resourcefulness of wartime cooking, including creative twists on traditional dishes like the country’s beloved tortilla de patatas. Rather than focusing on elaborate meals, the collection reflects the harsh reality of survival with simple, inventive solutions. Readers curious about historical resilience through food will find a fascinating glimpse into post-war Spain’s culinary ingenuity.
Book recreates recipes from period following end of Spanish civil war when people faced food shortagesFew dishes are simpler to prepare than Spain’s signature dish of tortilla de patatas, which – aside from disputes about onions – requires nothing more than two basic ingredients and a pinch of salt. But where to begin if you have neither eggs nor potatoes?That is the question the chef and food writer Berta Álvarez Acal sets out to answer in Recetas de Guerra (Wartime Recipes), a compilation of recipes covering the years of hunger after the end of the Spanish civil war in 1939. Continue reading...
