There is a small corner of the culinary world in which the Basques could stand to improve a little -- in particular they could stand to learn something from the Catalans. I'm talking about bocadillos. A bocadillo is the non-Portuguese Iberian* version of a hoagie. Unlike its distant North American cousin, the bocadillo does not have a ton of different ingredients, nor does it ever come with unannounced mayonnaise. A bocadillo de jamón means jamón and bread. Maybe olive oil, but nada más. Except in Catalunya, where the bread is usually pan con tomate. Cut a baguette in half, the long way, and cut a tomato in half, any way you want, and rub the cut tomato all over the cut bread. Pour some olive oil on the tomato-y bread (I would say drizzle, but that would be a euphamism for what they do with olive oil in this part of the world) and you've got pan con tomate. (A Catalan once proudly told me all about how, at a conference in Malaysia, he would sneak in his own ingredients to make pan con tomate at the conference dinners.) Use the pan con tomate to make a bocadillo de jamón, and it's basically the best thing in the world. It's a Catalan thing, though; I almost never see pan con tomate outside of Catalunya. Basques, you're missing out.
(For the record, all the italics here are starting to bug me. They feel a little pretentious. But I don't like the way the above looked without them either. Whatever.)
*Out of adoration for the Basques, I try to watch my use of the word Spain, but it gets cumbersome.
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