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The original is simply called 1080 recetas de cocina, and the book delivers exactly what the title promises: 1,080 recipes across 1,080 pages. Simone Ortega, born in Barcelona in 1919 into a family from Alsace, published it in 1972 to preserve the recipes she had inherited through her family and make them understandable to ordinary home cooks.
In Spain it has sold millions of copies and appeared in nearly fifty revised editions. It became the book that stood in Spanish kitchens and was handed down from one generation to the next, and in recent years it has found a new audience among younger home cooks.
There is everything here from tortilla and gazpacho to bacalao (salt cod), together with menu suggestions, practical advice and a glossary. Her daughter Inés Ortega, herself a chef and cookbook author, is credited as co-author.
More than 500 illustrations are by Javier Mariscal, the designer behind Cobi, the mascot of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and Ferran Adrià, the chef behind elBulli, contributes text. This is Spanish everyday cooking, written down by someone who cooked it.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 1080
Number of recipes: 1080
Co-author: Inés Ortega
Illustrations: Javier Mariscal
Publisher: Phaidon
ISBN: 9781838668150
Language: English
First published: 1972, this edition 2024
The Kitchen Lab Selection
Every country has a book that households have collectively agreed on, and in Spain this is the one. It was published in the same decade in which the new Spanish cuisine began taking shape in San Sebastián, and it shows what that cuisine had to build on: the stews, rice dishes and tortilla cooked at home, far from the restaurants.
That Ferran Adrià, the man who pushed Spanish cooking further than anyone else, contributes to a book about home cooking is no coincidence. The avant-garde grew out of these kitchens, and understanding where it came from makes it easier to see where it went.
