Settling In, part 8

One morning while Ana and I were walking she invited me over for lunch. “I’ve asked some of the new Office of Defense Cooperation wives over,” she said. “I’m going to show them how to cook some of the basic Spanish dishes—tortilla española and lomo adobado.”

“I’d love to come!” I said.

The appointed hour was noon, and I walked across the street and pressed the buzzer. Ana buzzed me in her gate, and I went into the house. There I met Lea, a pretty blond Navy wife; Trish, whose husband was a Marine; and Roseanne, whose husband was in the Army. “I already started,” Ana said. “I’m making a tortilla.” She explained as she worked: “This is the ultimate poor people’s food. Four eggs, four potatoes, an onion, and you can feed four people.” She sliced the potatoes thinly and cooked them slowly in a pan with about an inch of olive oil in it. “You don’t brown the potatoes. You just cook them slowly.” She added some salt, some onion, and she occasionally turned the potatoes with a spatula.

The cooked potatoes were drained and added to the beaten eggs, and then we watched the delicate operation of frying one side of the tortilla, turning it onto a plate, and sliding it into the pan so the other side could cook. Ana did this with great skill, and we had the delicious product for an appetizer.

“Now the lomo,” she said. This was a simpler dish. She unwrapped slices of boneless pork loin from white butcher’s paper. The slices were already coated with a spice blend that made them a bright orange-red—the color of the paprika in the blend. A little olive oil in the pan, a little time on each side, and we had our main course. “Buen provecho,” Ana said—the Spanish equivalent of bon appétit.

As we ate I listened to the conversation about military life in a foreign station. I was definitely the odd duck here, a corporate wife. These were people who were in a different frame of reference. “We picked our car up at Rota,” Lea said. “It took forever to get the diplomatic plates, but finally we got it done. Then we loaded up with stuff from the PX and drove here.”

I already recognized the red cuerpo diplomático (diplomatic corps) license plates from the many American School parents who were diplomats or military folk. But what was Rota?

“Rota is the U.S. Navy base down in southern Spain,” Ana explained to me. “Military personnel can go down there for medical care or to use the military store. We can get all sorts of American foods and cigarettes at discount prices. As a matter of fact, Phil is planning to get you-all a nice frozen Butterball turkey for Thanksgiving from Rota!”

I knew I could get a small but tasty fresh turkey at Hipercor any day of the week, but I thanked her enthusiastically.

Trish was talking about her husband’s Spanish language education. “He’s got six more months of school, and then he enters ODC in March,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s awful how long they have to be in school,” said Lea. “But my husband’s Spanish is pretty good now. And I can’t speak a word! I have to wait for him to come home to do anything.”

“That’s crazy, Lea,” Ana said. “If you need to do something, just call me. I’ll help you.” But I could tell that Ana was miffed that Lea wouldn’t even try to learn some Spanish.

I had brought a cookbook with me to Ana’s. Mike and I hadn’t even remembered that we owned a Spanish cookbook, but we did. So when it was time to move to Spain we threw it in the shipment with all our favorite cookbooks.

“Can you tell if this thing is any good?” I asked Ana. “The author is an American woman married to a Spaniard. I figure it will be easy for me to use, because all the measurements are in ounces and inches instead of grams and centimeters.” The cookbook was The Foods and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas. “To search out the finest Spanish recipes,” the blurb said, “Penelope Casas traveled over 25,000 miles, crisscrossing Spain. Region by region . . . she found local cooks, some still untouched by twentieth-century ways, and discovered their secrets, often putting to paper recipes that had never before been set down.”

Ana took a few minutes to leaf through the book. “This looks really good,” she said. “I’ve always wanted an American cookbook for Spanish food when I’ve lived in the States, but I never found a decent one. I think this one is great!” She stopped at the recipe for cocido, the regional stew of Madrid made with sausage, chicken, cabbage, potatoes and chickpeas. “Oh, but this is no good,” she said. “Let me fix this for you.”

She took a pencil and started crossing out steps in the recipe. “I don’t make these meatballs at all,” she said, “and I take out the sausage after an hour. I don’t like onions—do you?—and at this point I just cook the whole thing together for four to five hours.” When she was finished I had a neatly edited, authentically Ana version of the dish.

That night I showed Mike the customized recipe for cocido, and then he spent a few minutes leafing through the cookbook. Suddenly he stopped. “Susie,” he said, “look at this.” He was looking at a note written in the front of the book, in the wretched handwriting of his brother Brian.

12/85

Mike & Susie—

Happy anniversary & many more. Here’s a country
(probably the only one) that you might not have a
cookbook from.

Enjoy!

Love,

Brian

We stared at each other, mouths open. “I can’t believe it,” Mike said. “It’s like an omen!” I responded. “I think he knew something we didn’t know,” Mike said.