CANR
WORK TITLE: Grape, Olive, Pig
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Vass
STATE: NC
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LAST VOLUME: CA 389
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Attended a Spanish culinary school.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and editor. Men’s Health, former editor covering food and health; Roads & Kingdoms online magazine, cofounder and editor. Previously worked on compiling the Index at Harper’s magazine, as a cook on boats, at a carwash in Barcelona, Spain; also taught MCAT courses in Bay Area in California.
AWARDS:James Beard Award.
WRITINGS
Contributor to Best Food Writing 2013, and Best Food Writing 2014, both edited by Holly Hughes, both Da Capo/Lifelong. Contributor to periodicals, including Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Food and Wine, and New York.
SIDELIGHTS
Matt Goulding is a writer and editor who primarily writes about food and travel. His first published article was a travel story based on his experiences as the sole American in a culinary school in Spain. A contributor to periodicals and a former cook on boats, Goulding is also a contributor to the “Best Food Writing” series of anthologies. Goulding gained broad recognition for his food writing as the author, with David Zinczenko, of the “Eat This, Not That!” series of books, which provide dietary guidelines primarily focusing on better health and weight loss.
Goulding became interested in food while working as a busboy in a restaurant near the high school he was attending in North Carolina. The “Eat This, Not That” series came about when Goulding received a phone call from a senior editor at the Rodale publishing group asking him if he would be interested in writing a book. Goulding was hesitant to accept the offer at first, unsure of the concept for the book proposed by the editor. Friends, however, finally convinced him not to turn down the offer. Goulding ended up writing the book with Zinczenko, who is the president and CEO of a global health and wellness media company.
The “Eat This, Not That!” series of books has become a popular series. The first book in the series, Eat This, Not That: Thousands of Simple Food Swaps That Can Save You 10, 20, 30 Pounds—or More!, had an initial press run of 20,000 books. The books quickly sold out and a second run of 500,000 books was produced by the publisher, turning the book into a New York Times best seller. Goulding and Zinczenko have continued to collaborate on books in the series, which address numerous aspects of how to choose what to eat, including what to eat in restaurants and what children should eat. A California Bookwatch contributor, in review of Grill This, Not That! Backyard Survival Guide, noted that the book offers “plenty of nutritional insights.”
In addition to his collaboration with Zinczenko, Goulding is the author of Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels through Japan’s Food Culture, edited by Nathan Thornburgh. The book is a travel guide focusing on Japan’s food culture and offering advice to readers about Japanese cuisine. Goulding recounts his travels to various Japanese cities and his experiences with the cuisine in these cities, including the sushi cuisine in Tokyo, the ramen culture of Fukuoka, and the street vendor food of Osaka. “I think that everybody who really cares about food absolutely needs to spend some amount of time there,” Goulding noted about Japan in an interview with Food Republic Web site contributor Matt Rodbard. Goulding went on to tell Rodbard: The cuisine is “so distinct and so far from what we’re used to here in the Western world.”
Goulding devotes a chapter to each of the Japanese cities and surrounding areas he visited as he chronicles his travels and highlights the food discoveries he made. The book details the cooking approaches of Japan’s shokunin, food craftsman who often focus on cooking and improving only one type of food recipe, such as buckwheat noodles and grilled beef intestines. Goulding “bring[s] readers an epicurean bonanza in addition to insights into the men and women who have devoted their lives to the perfection of certain dishes,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor.
Although Goulding does not include recipes in Rice, Noodle, Fish, he does provide information on how travelers can have a good culinary experience in Japan. Goulding suggests restaurants and also provides profiles of numerous chefs. In addition, he offers warnings on what to avoid. “A literary dim sum, this book provides nice little bites out of the author’s life,” wrote Benjamin Malczewski for Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Rice, Noodle, Fish surpasses many standard travelogues because of “Goulding’s gift for phrasing and razor- sharp prose.”
Goulding dives deeply into the cuisine of a Mediterranean country in Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels through Spain’s Food Culture. In it, he shows the ways in which the country’s foodways diverge from popular expectations. “Spanish cuisine, like all great cuisines, is highly regionalized, but the homogenizing forces of modernity in general, and tourism specifically, threaten this diversity,” Goulding explained in an interview on the website Nomadic Matt. “These days you’ll find paella and sangria and patatas bravas in every corner of the country. But that just means as a traveler you need to be aware of where you are and make your food choices accordingly…. Of course, there is a common language that unifies Spain’s cooking … but it expresses itself in very different ways.” “A set of tantalizing verbal snapshots rather than a culinary map of the region,” opined a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “the book clearly communicates the author’s affection for the food, both simple and refined, of his chosen country.” “Deeply satisfying for the armchair traveler,” stated Courtney McDonald in Library Journal, “this can’t-miss book should be required reading prior to visiting Spain.”
Yet Goulding’s book moves far beyond the mere process of preparing and eating food. “In Grape, Olive, Pig, Goulding dedicates as many pages to the processes of harvesting, catching, growing, or by other means procuring Spain’s unique culinary resources as he does to the preparation and consumption of food,” said Samantha Reid Aviña in the Los Angeles Review of Books Online. “He adeptly exposes the threads whose knots form the fabric of modern Spanish cuisine and whets the appetites for both food and travel, daring readers to explore unadvertised adventures of Spain.” “The artwork and photography are outstanding. Photos of the people of Spain are interspersed with numerous photographs of various food items shown in such a way that every page has something a bit unexpected,” enthused Jim Maraldo in the New York Journal of Books. “At the very minimum, I want to arouse in the reader an uncontrollable desire to travel to Spain. If someone reads the book and buys a plane ticket, then I am happy,” Goulding concluded in his Nomadic Matt website interview. “I’m less interested in telling you where to go and what to eat than I am in giving you the tools and the context to understand what you see once you get here and begin to make your own discoveries.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2013, Mark Knoblauch, review of Best Food Writing 2013, p. 10; November 1, 2016, Becca Smith, review of Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels through Spain’s Food Culture, p. 12.
California Bookwatch, July, 2012, review of Grill This, Not That! Backyard Survival Guide.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2014, review of Best Food Writing 2014; July 15, 2015, review of Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels through Japan’s Food Culture; September 15, 2016, review of Grape, Olive, Pig.
Library Journal, August 1, 2015, Benjamin Malczewski, “Eating Out,” includes review of Rice, Noodle, Fish, p. 114; November 1, 2016, Courtney McDonald, review of Grape, Olive, Pig, p. 94.
Publishers Weekly, July 20, 2015, review of Rice, Noodle, Fish.
ONLINE
Austin American-Statesman Online, http://www.mystatesman.com/ (February 22, 2016), Amy Scattergood, “Matt Goulding’s Rice, Noodle, Fish Takes Mouth-Watering Tour of Japan.”
CBN.com, the Christian Broadcasting Network Web site, http://www1.cbn.com/ (March 24, 2016), Mimi Elliott, “Matt Goulding: The Skinny on Eating Out.”
Food Republic, http:// www.foodrepublic.com/ (February 13, 2015), Matt Rodbard, “Fantasy Travel Week: For Food and Travel Writer Matt Goulding, It’s Not about the Michelin Guide: The Roads & Kingdoms Editor Drops Travel Knowledge,” author interview.
GetGoing NC!, http:// getgoingnc.com/ (April 19, 2010), Joe Miller, “An Unlikely Road for Eat This Not That’s Matt Goulding.”
Gram Magazine, http://grammagazine.com.au/ (February 4, 2016), review of Rice, Noodle, Fish.
InStyle Online, http://www.instyle.com/ (November 4, 2015), Sydney Mondry, “New Book Proves There’s More to Japanese Cuisine Than You Ever Knew,” review of Rice, Noodle, Fish.
Los Angeles Review of Books Online, https://lareviewofbooks.org/ (December 8, 2016), Samantha Reid Aviña, “Pig, Pig, Pig: Eating Spain with Matt Goulding.”
New York Journal of Books, http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/ (July 25, 2017), Jim Maraldo, review of Grape, Olive, Pig.
Nomadic Matt, https://www.nomadicmatt.com/ (December 1, 2016), “Grape, Olive, Pig: Inside Spain’s Food Culture with Matt Goulding.”
Roads & Kingdoms, http://roadsandkingdoms.com/ (August 16, 2017), author profile.*
GRAPE, OLIVE, PIG: INSIDE SPAIN’S FOOD CULTURE WITH MATT GOULDING
December 15, 2016 / By NomadicMatt
Many moons ago, a friend emailed me and said “Hey, my buddy is starting a website. Can you give him some advice?” I hate those emails, but as a favor to my friend, I said yes. That guy, Nathan Thornburgh, turned out to be really cool, and we became good friends. But this article isn’t about Nathan; it’s about his partner, Matt Goulding. Together they started one of my favorite travel websites, Roads and Kingdoms. It’s one of the few websites I read daily. Last year, they partnered with Anthony Bourdain (they introduced me to him at an event last year and I babbled incoherently for a bit — it was highly embarrassing), and as part of their partnership, they created a book, Rice, Noodle, Fish, about Japan. Now they have a new book called Grape, Olive, Pig about food in Spain.
In a long overdue interview, I sat down and talked to Matt about the intersection between food and travel, and where to find the best food in Spain (disclaimer: I did this for selfish reasons, as I wanted to know for an upcoming trip I’m taking!)
Nomadic Matt: How did you become a traveling food writer?
Matt G.: Wanderlust was emblazoned in my DNA from the onset. My mom was a travel agent, and my parents would take me and my three older brothers on some pretty staggering trips in our younger years: New Zealand, Fiji, Barbados, the Yucatán. Later, I thought cooking was going to be my ticket to see the world, so I studied and worked in the kitchen and wrote short stories on the side. I cooked wherever they’d have me: at an oyster house in North Carolina, fancy cafés in Los Angeles, on a fishing boat in Patagonia. But I saw pretty quickly that cooking required more patience and discipline than I had. I was writing bad fiction and cooking average food, which felt doubly frustrating. So I took off the toque and put away tortured prose and started to write about what I knew most: food and travel. It just so happens that the two go hand and hand, and that food became both the bridge and decoder ring for understanding the world at large.
I found out what a million writers before me already discovered: that writing about something I knew so intimately made a huge difference in the quality of my prose and the depth of my reporting. I started publishing longer, food-focused travel pieces in magazines and eventually landed a job as the food editor at Men’s Health.
Then something new came along when I met Nathan Thornburgh. We connected in Mexico City at a sprawling temple of smoked meat and pulque on the outskirts of the DF [Mexico City] and hatched a plan to leave behind our cushy jobs and try something new. He wanted more food and culture in his life as a writer and editor; I wanted more politics and foreign correspondence.
We toiled in relative obscurity for the first year or two, but it turned out that one of our early readers was Anthony Bourdain. I’m still not entirely sure how he found us or what he saw in R&K, but when we approached him in 2013 with the idea of a book series dedicated to the great food cultures of the world, he gave us his full support. Eventually, that support grew into a formal partnership, which, to put it lightly, changed the trajectory of Roads & Kingdoms substantially.
Your last book was about Japan. Why did you pick Spain this time?
I was passing through Barcelona six years ago, met a lovely Catalan girl in a bar, and never left. (At least, that’s the Cliff Notes version.) Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time eating my way across the country, falling deeper and deeper in love with Spain’s food culture. This book follows the same format and design as Rice, Noodle, Fish, but whereas the Japan book was about a newcomer experiencing the awesome power of Japanese food culture for the first time, Spain is more intimate, personal book, told from the perspective of someone with one foot inside and the other foot outside of the country.
What do you want people to get out of this book?
At the very minimum, I want to arouse in the reader an uncontrollable desire to travel to Spain. If someone reads the book and buys a plane ticket, then I am happy. But the easiest part of a travel writer’s job is to evoke wanderlust, just as the easiest part of a food writer’s job is to stir hunger. The more challenging part is to write a book that goes beyond food or travel — to give the reader a deeper understanding of Spain, its people, its ebbs and flows. I’m less interested in telling you where to go and what to eat than I am in giving you the tools and the context to understand what you see once you get here and begin to make your own discoveries.
That means not just telling you where to eat a good cocido, Madrid’s famous garbanzo-and-meat stew, but explaining where it comes from and what it says about Spanish history and culture. I dedicate 8,000 words in the book to three sisters who hunt gooseneck barnacles along the coast of Galicia — not because you need to stop everything you’re doing and travel to northwest Spain to eat barnacles but because theirs is a beautiful story that says a lot about Galicia and Spain in general. In the end, food is simply the lens through which I try to examine the DNA of this extraordinary country.
Matt Goulding, author of Grape, Olive, Pig
What makes Spanish cuisine so special?
Spanish cuisine has a certain split personality that I find deeply attractive: On one hand, you have modernist (what some people call “molecular” cuisine, to the annoyance of every Spanish chef I know), that highly technical, whimsical, sophisticated style of cooking popularized at El Bulli in the 1990s and 2000s and carried on to this day by many ambitious, deeply talented practitioners. It was this type of cooking that made Spain a serious food destination over the past decade. But really, it represents the tiniest fraction of Spain’s culinary greatness. At the heart of Spanish cuisine is an infallible formula: great ingredients + solid technique = good eating. The best Spanish food — a melting wedge of tortilla, a rosy slice of acorn-fed ham, a plate of sweet red shrimp bathed in garlic oil — is at its core very simple. But simple doesn’t mean easy. You have to take the time to buy the right ingredients and to treat them properly, and most Spanish cooks excel in both categories.
Is there really Spanish food, or a diverse set of food we really call Spanish food?
Spanish cuisine, like all great cuisines, is highly regionalized, but the homogenizing forces of modernity in general, and tourism specifically, threaten this diversity. These days you’ll find paella and sangria and patatas bravas in every corner of the country. But that just means as a traveler you need to be aware of where you are and make your food choices accordingly. Up in Galicia? Eat octopus and shellfish and gooseneck barnacles and wash it down with a crisp Albariño. When in Andaulsia, eat jamón and fried little fish and drink sherry. In Basque country, feast on thick-cut steaks and whole-grilled fish and a world of pintxos. The people who find Spanish food disappointing are the ones who order paella in Madrid and sangria in San Sebastián. Of course, there is a common language that unifies Spain’s cooking — high-quality olive oil, cured pork, an abiding love of seafood — but it expresses itself in very different ways as you move around the country.
I always tell people who come to Spain to first and foremost know where you are and eat and drink accordingly. Paella, for example, has a historical connection to Valencia and is at its very best in the region, but elsewhere, it’s often used to make a quick buck from tourists looking for a “typical” Spanish experience. (The worst-kept secret in Spain is that a huge percentage of paella is made industrially and sent out frozen across the country.) Instead, spend a bit of time learning about the great regional specialties of the country and seek them out aggressively. Grape, Olive, Pig tries to give the reader the type of detailed understanding of the Spanish culinary tapestry, so that he or she is equipped to eat as well as possible in every corner of the country. But even an hour or two of reading online will make your food experience exponentially better.
Why is Spain such a foodie culture? Food is life in Spain. How did that come about?
Spain thrives on the same foundational principles of all the great Mediterranean cuisines, where the forces of geography, climate, and history conspired to create not just a group of national recipes but a pervasive food culture that informs all aspects life on the Iberian Peninsula. There’s a very important word in Spanish that I use to explain to visitors the beauty of Spanish food culture: sobremesa, which literally means “on top of the table” but actually refers to the period after a meal that Spaniards use to linger at the table. Long after the last courses have been cleared, after the coffee has come and gone, Spaniards remain firmly planted at the table, talking, arguing, laughing, enjoying an extra hour or two together. No waiter is hovering with the bill; people aren’t on their phones messaging their other friends. There may be a digestivo or a round of gin and tonics, but no one is there to get drunk. They’re there to be with each other: to debate policy, air out grievances, celebrate a loved one, and to generally bask in the warm glow of each other’s company. In Spain, food is the means, not the end.
Matt Goulding, author of Grape, Olive, Pig
Do you see the Spanish food scene changing into a more “quick eats” American style or is it going to remain slow forever?
Spain is not immune to international food trends, including ones imported from the States. Burger joints have been sprouting like fungus across the country for the past five years, and there appears to be no end in sight. (Though I’m still waiting for a single great burger to break out from the sea of mediocrity.) Tacos are the new thing in the bigger cities, and there is no doubt some other amorphous food fad waiting in the wings (bao?). But Spanish food has roots deep enough to withstand the existential threats that might topple a weaker food culture. When the burger lust dies out and the taco fervor fades away, there will still be a bar down the street serving tortilla and croquetas.
If someone was heading to Spain soon, where should they go eat?
You’ll find amazing food across the country, but if eating well is your primary mission, go north. I’d rent a car and work my way across the Atlantic Coast. Start in the Basque Country, hitting up the pintxos bars in San Sebastián and Bilbao and asadores (grill restaurants) in coastal and mountain villages. Stop in Cantabria for some of the world’s finest anchovies, then push into Asturias to feast at the region’s heroic cider houses. End the adventure on the coast of Galicia, the heart of Spain’s seafood culture, where the Atlantic’s treasures require little more than salt and a splash of olive oil.
What region of Spain has the most underrated food?
Asturias isn’t a region on most people’s radars, but the food is extraordinary. You have a deep culture of mar y montaña (surf and turf), thanks to the dramatic combination of rugged coastline and soaring peaks. You can be in a cider house in a mountain town eating cave-aged cheeses and fabada (a stew of fat white beans, chorizo, and blood sausage — the king of the Asturian kitchen) for lunch and in a seafood restaurant on the coast feasting on spider crabs and sea urchin before the sun sets. To write the Asturias chapter of the book, I spent a week with the chef José Andrés, born in a coal mining town in Asturias, who went on to create one of the world’s greatest restaurant empires. José is a force of nature, and he unlocked the magic of that region in a way that keeps me coming back year after year.
OK, final questions. We’re going to do a lightning round:
#1 restaurant people need to go visit?
Extebarri in the mountains of Basque country. Bittor Arguinzoniz is a grill god, and everything that comes out of his kitchen will haunt you for years to come.
#1 thing visitors should avoid in Spain?
Eating or drinking anything on La Rambla in Barcelona.
Madrid or Barcelona?
Barcelona, but I am far from objective. If I said Madrid, a few family members might disown me.
La Tomatina: Drunk idiot fest or fun cultural experience?
A little bit of both, but with each passing year, it slouches sadly towards the former.
You can find more about Matt at his website, Roads and Kingdoms, or just get the book Grape, Olive, Pig (which was one of my favorites of 2016) and learn more about Spain!
MATT GOULDING
CO-FOUNDER / PUBLISHER
Matt Goulding is the former food editor of Men's Health and the co-author of the New York Times bestselling series Eat This, Not That. He published his first travel story about being the only American in a Spanish culinary school. In the decade since, he's cooked on boats in Patagonia, worked at a carwash in Barcelona, and taught MCAT courses in the Bay Area. Mostly, though, he has worked in the magazine business, first compiling the Index at Harper's and later covering food and travel for Men's Health. He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Food and Wine and New York. He divides his time between the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona and the open skies of rural North Carolina.
Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels through Spain's Food Culture
Becca Smith
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p12.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
* Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels through Spain's Food Culture. By Matt Goulding. Nov. 2016.368p. illus. Harper/Wave, $35 (9780062394132); e-book, $19.99 (9780062394149). 915.2.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Goulding's presentation of the myriad Spanish gastronomic delights from across the culturally diverse country is deliciously enticing and thoughtfully introspective. The extensive tapas crawls of Barcelona and Madrid, the hedonistic pleasures of traversing Asturias with Jose Andres, and insightful discussions with the fascinating chefs and winemakers of Basque country are juxtaposed with detailed descriptions of the ancient traditions of making paella in Moor-influenced Valencia, the curing of the jamon iberico of Salamanca, and the hearty salmorejo (a garlicky tomato bread soup) of Cordoba. The importance of specific local ingredients and recipes to each area's way of life are especially illuminated in chapters on the Galician men known as percebeiros bravely hunting barnacles, the competitive bluefin tuna trade of Cadiz, and the simple migas meals of the cave-dwelling villagers of Granada. Intermezzos are provided throughout the text by interesting sidebars highlighting such nuggets of information as how to eat or drink like a Spaniard, tapas taxonomy, and the various rice dishes found throughout Spain. Introductions by way of quotes and short vignettes of a diverse cross section of Spain's unique citizenry, from fishermen to nuns, chefs to sanitation workers, further balance Goulding's culinary travel guide.--Becca Smith
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Smith, Becca. "Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels through Spain's Food Culture." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 12. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142748&it=r&asid=440a4343927cecb3272d1091fe0409f6. Accessed 25 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471142748
Goulding, Matt. Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain's Food Culture
Courtney McDonald
141.18 (Nov. 1, 2016): p94.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
* Goulding, Matt. Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain's Food Culture. Harper Wave. Nov. 2016. 368p. illus. ISBN 9780062394132. $35; ebk. ISBN 9780062394149. COOKING
In Goulding's latest work, the former Men's Health food editor and coauthor of the bestselling "Eat This, Not That" series explores the food and culture of Spain. Part narrative, part how-to guide to eating in Spain (without this book you are doing it wrong), Goulding weaves stories and observations into an organic mosaic that earns its subtitle. In nine chapters, readers are taken on a tour of all of Spain's regions, gaining insight into the country's culinary traditions and practices. The pace and rhythm of the text are just right, combining handy tips with beautiful photos that results in an elusive pairing of bracing immediacy and "all the time in the world," which makes for the best memories, at home or abroad. The second book in the series, after Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture, this volume was bom out of a collaboration between acclaimed digital travel magazine Roads & Kingdoms and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain. VERDICT Deeply satisfying for the armchair traveler, this can't-miss book should be required reading prior to visiting Spain.--Courtney McDonald, Indiana Unlv. Libs., Bloomington
McDonald, Courtney
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
McDonald, Courtney. "Goulding, Matt. Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain's Food Culture." Library Journal, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 94+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467830419&it=r&asid=676f03047ef06eae0b991572f2a514bc. Accessed 25 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A467830419
Matt Goulding, Nathan Thornburgh: GRAPE, OLIVE, PIG
(Sept. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Matt Goulding, Nathan Thornburgh GRAPE, OLIVE, PIG Harper Wave/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) 35.00 11, 15 ISBN: 978-0-06-239413-2
An enthusiastic journey through some of Spain’s culinary hot spots, with emphasis on the work of professional chefs.Goulding (Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan’s Food Culture, 2015, etc.), chief editor of the travel web journal Roads & Kingdoms and co-author of the Eat This, Not That! series, has for six years kept a home base in Barcelona, where he lives with his Catalan wife. The city gets pride of place among the areas considered in-depth in this exuberant survey, but it’s clear that the author has had some good meals and even better tapas crawls elsewhere, as well. The volume reads more like a collection of disparate essays than a unified study of the regional cuisines of Spain. In the mountains above Salamanca, Goulding watches as workers slaughter the 140 pigs intended for a festival, and he rhapsodizes about the joys of acorn-fed ham. A trip to the Basque country offers an opportunity for the author to sing the praises of his old cooking-school instructor, Luis Irizar Zamora, “the master of masters” and teacher of “some of the most famous chefs in the country.” Copious illustrations of people, food, and people preparing and enjoying food enliven the book, and interludes between chapters provide instruction on how to “drink like a Spaniard” (“skip the sangria,” which is “largely a tourist trick”) or give miniportraits of some “people of Spain,” such as bodega owner Armando, who professes, “I work here 16 hours a day. I need to look for a woman. Or maybe a rich man. Anybody to give me a break.” A set of tantalizing verbal snapshots rather than a culinary map of the region, the book clearly communicates the author’s affection for the food, both simple and refined, of his chosen country and makes obvious how much difference a change of just a few dozen miles makes in what ingredients and dishes are favored and seen as representative of the culture.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Matt Goulding, Nathan Thornburgh: GRAPE, OLIVE, PIG." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463215996&it=r&asid=1d4d316eca570b04306bc66459c941ee. Accessed 25 July 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463215996
Pig, Pig, Pig: Eating Spain with Matt Goulding
By Samantha Reid Aviña
THE FOREWORD of Grape, Olive, Pig, Matt Goulding’s latest book, consists of a correspondence regarding the birth of the book between the author and Anthony Bourdain, the chef and food writer well known for his global, food-centric travels. Goulding writes, “I’ve been pocketing these stories for years, saving them in the dank bodega of my mind like a bottle of ’74 Vega Sicilia, waiting for the right moment to decant and drink. Now’s the time.” Bourdain replies, “Might I respond to your last with a resounding ‘Fuck You!’”
Bourdain knows Goudling is a long-time resident of Barcelona and, as I do, envies Goulding’s qualifications for writing Grape, Olive, Pig, “You go out to dinner at midnight, start drinking again at noon, nap around three, nibble on olives and little bites of awesomeness when you rise, and pretty much live the dream. So, yeah, fuck you, Matt.”
His first book, Rice, Noodle, Fish, Goulding called a “love letter to Japanese cuisine,” and his latest work is best described as an adoration of Spanish cuisine and the cultural traditions and histories imbued in Spanish foodways. Goulding shares how he personally fell in love with Spain, its people, and its food, spending days enjoying “the vermouth culture, an old Catalan tradition of drinking sweet vermouth and eating salty snacks before a big family lunch,” and nights in Madrid at the bar of StreetXO, a restaurant where “a roaring cast of chefs assemble the famous Korean lasagna: an Asian-inflected ragú made with forty-five-day-aged Galician ox, layered over sheets of pasta, and goosed with a cardamom-spiked bechamel, kimchi-tomato purée, and coconut powder.” This is part of a menu Goulding describes as “stoner food with a PhD.”
As this suggests, Grape, Olive, Pig employs an impressive literary toolkit in appreciating and savoring Spanish cuisine, with descriptions of meals, translations of uniquely Spanish culinary vocabulary, spirals through relevant history, depictions of current food productions, and narratives of Goulding’s food-focused travels across Spain. In dedicating each of the nine chapters to a distinct region of the country, Goulding fixes a powerful multipurpose lens on Spain’s unique culinary culture. Geographically zigzagging across the country enables Goulding to slowly initiate readers into the rich melting pot of Spanish cuisine. Beginning in Barcelona, he heads to Salamanca, Valencia, Basque Country, Cádiz, Asturias, Galicia, and Madrid before concluding in Granada. It is no coincidence the book begins in the city where Goulding met and courted his wife, nor is it accidental that Granada is home to his grandparents-in-law.
Throughout the book, Goulding labors over his words the way chefs labor over the meals described herein, ensuring each word evokes the appropriate memory of taste or sensation.
Goulding savors various types of cured Spanish pork with Santiago Martín, who still operates the butcher and cured meats producer, Embutidos Martín, opened by his father, Fermín:
I indulge my habit: not just lacy veils of jamón, but planks of pluma — taken from the neck — so soft and rippled with fat that it could double as foil and chunks of secreto, cut from the skirt of meat below the ribs, with a salty crust from the fire and a marvelous chew. I hold up a slice of lomo and let the light illuminate the rivers of fat that run through it. Lomo might not have the fame of jamón, but Fermín’s take on it is stunning, with an earthiness and perfume that recalls toasted hazelnuts and shaved truffle.
Goulding takes care to illuminate how history mingles with quotidian life in Spain. He describes a favorite, quiet plaza, Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, “an urban oasis, a place we go to hide form the chaos of the surrounding city.” Though Goulding frequently eats, drinks, or people-watches here, his is not just any plaza, but one where “the façade of the church, the same one where Gaudí was attending evening mass while building the Sagrada Familia, is still cratered from the bomb blast” rained down by Franco’s army in January 1938, murdering 42 people, “most of them children from the preschool next door.”
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I ran my own fingertips over the same pockmarked stone this past July, marveling at Spain’s propensity to literally wear its history on its sleeve and listening to the bubbly tour guide whose group my husband and I had joined for the evening. My honeymoon included a week in Spain split between Barcelona and Madrid. As a gastronome married to a chef, my most anticipated plans included tapas tours in both Barcelona and Madrid.
My Barcelona tapas tour even mirrored Goulding’s “ruta de resaca, the Saturday morning hangover crawl,” as both begin at “La Plata on Carrer de la Mercè, a southern-style Spanish bar serving just three things: fried anchovies, a tomato-and-onion salad, and grilled pork sausage, all washed down with jugs of barrel wine.” Next time, I can save the several hundred euros on the tapas tours and simply carry this book (or, due to its girth, an e-version or photos of useful pages with restaurant names and tapas tips).
In between chapters, Goulding offers resources geared toward locating traditional food vendors and restaurants that remain local treasures. The tips accompanying the chapter on Basque Country outline how to achieve “the most intense meat experience of your life.” The instructions send you to Bodega El Capricho in León, where the meal “starts with ruby veils of raw aged ox loin, then moves on to cecina (dried beef cured and aged like jamón), ox blood morcilla, and an outrageously good tartare.”
My mouth already watering as I read this, I had to reread the next few words because they refer to the aforementioned dishes as “a minor prelude to the main event,” which was “chuletón de buey, massive rib steaks, cooked over oak with nothing but coarse salt until charred on the outside and barely warm throughout. The meat packs deep concentrations of umami and mineral intensity and a rim of dense, yellow fat that tastes like brown sugar.”
In case just reading descriptions of food isn’t enough for you, the glamour photo shots of Spanish cuisine in action will whet most any appetite: pictures of a traditional Valencian paella pan brimming with rice and chicken and bubbling over a citrus-wood fire; bluefin tunas thrashing sea waters white trying to escape a net; and close-ups of dishes like the hearty, pork-infused bean stew fabada or the indulgent “cordero lechal, baby milk-fed lamb, slow roasted in a traditional wood-burning oven until the point of collapse, then hit over with a final blast of intense heat.” According to Goulding, “as the skin shatters like a fallen wine glass, and the meat bellows pulls apart in tender, juicy ropes, all you can do is laugh at the genius of the Spaniards, and at your good fortune for eating among them.”
Goulding weaves his own story of being captivated by Spain: what was supposed to be a “pit stop on [the] way to paradise” instead leads to his fulfilling many a Europhile’s dream when he becomes “officially a resident of Europe” in thanks to his “sponsor,” his wife, “a lovely Catalan-Andalusian with eyes like oceans, a heart of melted butter, and a special set of prescription lenses that magically enhance my virtues and mitigate my faults.”
It’s hard to imagine any reader not falling for this ocean-eyed, rose-colored-glass-wearing partner. Goulding’s obvious enrapturement with his wife informs his proclamations of love for her native and his adopted country. The book turns a lens on Spain not dissimilar from how lovers learn to love each other, seeing themselves through the eyes of those who love them.
Goulding’s admiration for Spain’s women permeates the book, from detailing his courtship and marriage to his wife to the story of a trio of barnacle hunting sisters (more about them later). He writes this pointed observation of Spanish demographics: “If you ever walk into a bar here and wonder where the ladies are, they are busy holding the world together.”
The first meal described in Grape, Olive, Pig is in fact the last sumptuous meal he consumed before meeting his wife — a meal so good it makes him wonder about his single state: “Did I just have the best meal of my life by myself?” Even for readers unfamiliar with his ode to Japanese cuisine, Rice, Noodle, Fish, Goulding’s infatuation with food is obvious from the start, with Goulding lovingly recalling a meal encompassing
everything I’d had been reading about […] a mixture of technical innovation, whimsy and concentrations of outrageous texture and flavor that moved me deeply over twenty-two courses and four hours. A single giant shrimp broken down into seven different aquatic expressions; an earth-shattering beef tartare covered in crunchy pommes soufflé and tiny pellets of mustard ice cream; a dessert served in a halved soccer ball presented as “un gol de Messi.”
Goulding introduces vocabulary from Spain’s diverse regions, such as the concept of comboi, the importance of communal food consumption in Valencia, and ribollita, Basque country’s war-era tradition of reusing what was previously seen as food waste as ingredients. For some food lovers, these words render into language previously nameless delicacies; when eating paella, “at the base of the pan, scattered in irregular pockets, you’ll find the socarrat, the crispy, caramelized grains that drive rice fiends wild with desire.”
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Goulding digs through the history of Spain much like an archaeologist, lovingly cataloging layers of Spanish culture as far back as the Roman origin story of Barcelona, beginning with Hercules accompanying Jason and his Argonauts to Catalunya. He introduces each region using personal experience, but then drills down into the historical roots of the social, economic, political, and cultural forces that made this particular food practice possible in this particular place.
In the chapter exploring Valencian foodways, Goulding, in less than three pages, quotes Confucius (“A kitchen without rice is like a pretty girl with one eye”), notes that the “average Spaniard consumes just under ten kilos of rice a year, slightly more than Americans but twenty times less than the Chinese,” and ultimately concludes that in Spain, “rice, when it makes it to the table, is always the star, a conductor for flavor and texture created by the inclusion of vegetables and protein and the careful manipulation of heat.” Goulding further contextualizes the history of the ingredient:
When Christian monarchs reclaimed Spain from its Arabic occupiers, rice became a symbol of a past most of the country wanted to shed. More than a symbolic concern, Spaniards blamed the grain for cases of malaria and yellow fever that decimated the Mediterranean population.
This historical exposition informs subsequent investigations of paella, culminating in a detailing of “the 55 Concurs Internacional de Paella Valenciana, the world’s oldest and largest paella competition.” And here’s where you realize (probably not for the first time) how Grape, Olive, Pig opens doors into culinary worlds locked to us mere mortals. Not all of us will be invited, as Goulding was, to Sueca, the “under-caffeinated town of twenty-eight thousand with deep paella roots” to judge paella offerings from 35 “international contestants [who] qualified for their slots earlier in the year in regional semifinals.” Merely along for the ride as an honorary judge, Goulding describes how the winning paella:
has a rugged charm, more handsome than beautiful, but with the ruddy, almost rust color characteristic of a rice cooked with a deeply flavorful sofrito. More important than the aesthetics, the flavor is deep and well balanced and the texture is exactly what it should be: a warm, subtle sheen blankets the rice while maintaining the singular integrity of each grain.
He believes paella’s cultural prominence cannot be overstated, “Paella is a way of life, a presence in every major life event in and around Valencia.”
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In Grape, Olive, Pig, Goulding dedicates as many pages to the processes of harvesting, catching, growing, or by other means procuring Spain’s unique culinary resources as he does to the preparation and consumption of food. He adeptly exposes the threads whose knots form the fabric of modern Spanish cuisine and whets the appetites for both food and travel, daring readers to explore unadvertised adventures of Spain.
Indeed, some of the most engaging passages of Grape, Olive, Pig detail those once-in-someone-else’s-but-not-your-lifetime events like being invited to the paella competition in Valencia or to go barnacle hunting with that trio of Galician sisters who, like their mother and grandmothers before them, maintain the family business by diving into rough seas and facing “frigid water temperatures, the fierce Galician weather, and the force and unpredictability of the ocean at its angriest” to harvest the crustaceans.
It wasn’t until I finished the book that I wondered why olive and grape sat alongside pig in the book’s title. Goulding admirably distills the past, present, and future of Spanish pork production and consumption. You’ll even learn about Antón, the moniker bestowed on the pig chosen annually and then fattened up and raffled off by the townspeople of La Alberca, some 50 miles from Salamanca. Antón is the heart of “a magical tradition, this of the free-roaming village-fed beast” who, in the Middle Ages, was gifted “to the poorest family in town, but these days, the village sells raffle tickets to the hundreds that stream in from around the region to drink cherry firewater and eat blood sausage and maybe, just maybe, win three hundred pounds’ worth of the world’s most prized pig.”
Given Goulding’s dedication to the pig in this tome, however, similar explorations of the contributions of the grape and the olive to Spanish cuisine might require additional volumes. In fact, he spends far more time wending his way through the history of bluefin tuna in an effort to contextualize Spain’s seafood market on a global scale than he does sharing the histories of the omnipresent olive and the noble grape.
Such false advertisement aside, this book should be savored like a good piece of jamón ibérico; no need to cram it in all at once, though there is a particular delight in devouring something so rich so quickly. Better to slowly luxuriate over the flavor, as Goulding prescribes in the chapter exploring Salamanca:
Acorn-fed ham so rich with fat that it sweats as soon as it’s exposed to air. Rub the fat on your lips like a balm, then place the slice on your tongue like a communion wafer and wait for it to convert you. First you taste the salt, then the pork, then the fermentation, and finally some deep, primal flavor will rise up and scratch at your throat and leave behind a ghost that can haunt your palate for a lifetime.
Though throat-scratching might not be everyone’s ideal, the idea of a haunting salty savoriness echoes exactly what a practiced butcher at a Barcelona Xarcuteria encouraged me to look for when tasting the best jamónes ibéricos.
While reading Grape, Olive, Pig, I repeatedly caught myself checking flights to Spain, projecting the costs of crisscrossing the Iberian peninsula while eating my own weight in Spanish ham. For those of us not BFF with Anthony Bourdain or married to a Catalana whose love came with unlimited access to the European Union, reading Grape, Olive, Pig will have to suffice.
Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain's Food Culture
Reviewed by:
Jim Maraldo
At first glance, the title of this book was somewhat off putting. That quickly changed.
Food and travel writing can be dull.
This book takes on both negatives and gives them a jolt, all to the reader’s benefit in this personal narrative of a young writer’s adaptation to life in Spain, and his falling in love with a Spanish woman and living with her and her family in Spain—all the while becoming passionately immersed in the food and people who live it.
Matt Goulding combines a lot of just good basic travel stuff along with fascinating stories of life in Spain that circulates around food but takes in more than that alone.
Goulding brings out the people and food culture of Spain in a way that few if any food or travel writers can do. Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels Through Spain’s Food Culture is a food lover’s travel guide for the jaded or the first-time traveler.
He manages to balance good basic information such as:
• Life skills: “Know before you go “
• How to eat like a Spaniard
• How to drink like a Spaniard
along with visits to offbeat locations with deep insight to food and life in Spain rarely touched upon by tourists.
A “tapas” taxonomy explains the derivation of tapas. Goulding offers a superb and well-illustrated introduction to the most popular and basic tapas of Spain, along with “rules of the crawl:” how to work your way through a number of tapas bars, stopping at each one to eat and drink.
Covered are the important elements of Spanish food culture. Among them, “conservas,” the super high quality canned foods of Spain, certainly not your American canned supermarket stuff.
Octopus, Jarmon Iberico, charcuterie, baby eels (“Anguillas Gellega”) are presented in well-written chapters. A "rice matrix” explains the Spanish obsession with paella and rice. Interspersed are fascinating stories of people who make up the food culture of Spain
Goulding tells of Bittor Arguinzoniz, in the mountain village of Axpe, whose restaurant is fueled entirely by the flames of the hearth, showing, as he says, “everything from the smoked goat butter to the just-cooked red shrimp stands as a resounding reminder that the beauty of Basque cuisine stretches well beyond pinoxtos and pyrotechnics.”
In a chapter on the Basque country, Goulding provides a superb explanation of the rise of Basque cuisine. He digs deep and really gets to the roots. Brought to light are Luiz Irizar, (school of Irizar), Karlos Arguinano, and Pedro Subijana, chefs who laid the ground for today’s Basque cooking, influencing many of today’s important Basque chefs, much as Fernand Pont did in France. “For the Basques, it’s a birthright to eat and drink as well as possible.”
“The best barnacles grow where the elements are most extreme.” In Galicia we meet Susana and Isabel Gozalez. “Percebeiras” or barnacle hunters, gatherers of the gooseneck barnacles in the Spanish Atlantic. Galicia, known for its seafood, has the “percebe,” a premium seafood that Spaniards love—and also, one of the most expensive seafood products in the world. Gathering these delicacies is hard and dangerous work, and Goulding provides an amazing story of women who do this dangerous work and have become important players in what was formerly a man’s world.
We meet a broad spectrum of people: from churros makers; to Fernando Motos Lajara, an old man who has lived most all his life in a cave in Andalusia surviving on migas “the fuel of shepards and pork;” to a remote tobacco shop run by one of the country’s top bartenders, “Kike,” who left the big city and success there to run a tobacco shop and bar in remote Villaviciosa, Asturias, where he stocks more than one hundred gins.
In Cadiz, Meson del Toro, as the author says “doesn’t serve much—sliced meat and cheese and above all, fried eggs served over fried potatoes. Not just any eggs and potatoes, though: both cooked slowly in an abundance of olive oil soft and outlandishly savory.” Not something most tourists would find on their own.
Unusual also was “Anatomy of a Dish” Gin Tonic, which has become a “uniquely Spanish culture.”
In Cadiz, the Atlantic Bluefin tuna is netted every year as the fish migrate from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean to spawn. This is a tradition that dates back to the Phoenicians. It takes two months of hard work laying nets to trap the tuna. The “Almadraba” is the culmination. Goulding devotes an entire chapter to describing the people and the way they live, and also goes deep into the entire spectrum of “Tunanomics:” the people, the business of tuna, and its effect on their life as well as the implications on the world’s economy and sustainability.
The artwork and photography are outstanding. Photos of the people of Spain are interspersed with numerous photographs of various food items shown in such a way that every page has something a bit unexpected.
Matt Goulding nails it. This is good writing. It never drags. The book is hard to put down. It is hopeful he will write more about Spain soon.
Chef Jim Maraldo is Associate Professor of Culinary Arts at the Culinary Institute of America.