Blame it on Rioja

While researching patatas a la riojana for a recent post on a wine dinner in Connecticut, I came across a series of cooking videos made in Spanish by a blogger in San Sebastián named José Mari. His blog is called Cocinar para los amigos, or ‘Cook for your friends,’ and I am having a really hard time trying NOT to watch all of them, TONIGHT.

Let’s forget that he shows you each ingredient beforehand and then methodically takes you through the stages of some 50-plus classic Spanish recipes, so thoroughly and so clearly that even a non-Spanish speaker could probably follow his recipes to the letter with only an occasional peek at Spanish/English dictionary.

Let’s set aside for a minute the fact that his entire enterprise is founded on the idea of showing your friends love through the simple and magical act of cooking.

Let’s even not consider his background musical choices–a soothing New Age-y score of jazzy guitar, non-threatening electronics, and the occasional celtic-like female vocal that makes you feel as if you’ve been taken in by a nation of elf maidens who are carrying you to a river bath in a hammock made of hyssop-scented silk…

No, it’s really about his voice, his lullaby-like cadences, the way he begins each recipe with “Hola”. Forget recipes. He should have a show teaching Americans on how to speak Spanish, or how to speak, period.

Who is this guy?

And will he send me CD recordings of all of his episodes that I can drop it in my Bose CD/radio alarm clock and be lulled into a deep sleep?

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 2:41 am and is filed under Food blogs, Gastronomy, General, Recipes, San Sebastián, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.