The World Cup and Spanish Foodways

Sancocho soup from Spain (and very popular in the Spanish speaking Caribbean), recipes below

In honor of the World Cup final I’m doing some food history on the participants, the Netherlands which I covered yesterday, and today on Spain. Congrats Spain on your first World Cup Championship! The Moors introduced a number of spices and herbs obtained through the Arabian spice trade into Spanish cookery during their 800 year rule there after 711. Before the Spanish re-conquest of the Peninsula in 1492, the Moorish preference for cooking with liberal amounts of onions, garlic, and buttermilk dominated the Spanish Iberian world. Moorish cooks used cinnamon, cumin, turmeric, paprika, sesame seed, black pepper, cloves, and coriander seeds, among other spices. After 1492, the Spanish scramble to exploit the Americas led to introductions of additional foreign ingredients into Spanish kitchens. Recipes for Spanish sancocho soup below illustrate this point:

Traditional sancocho recipe: http://www.thegutsygourmet.net/sp-sancocho.html

Vegan sancocho recipe: http://karmafreecooking.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/veggie-sancocho/