In the Land of Sheep and Cod
A successful vegetarian cookbook makes for a surprising sell in a region known for its cod cheeks, anchovy–foie gras pintxos, and steak-centered cider houses. In 2004, Karmen Sobejano published Cocina Vegetariana Casera (Vegetarian Home Cooking) in Spanish and Basque, and its ongoing success remains unexpected in the region renowned for its animal-centric gastronomy. Sobejano, who co-founded Donostia-San Sebastián vegetarian restaurant Garraxi with Bego Burgueño, has shown that there’s a taste for vegetarian cooking: More than twenty years and six editions later, Cocina is still featured in regional bookstores.
Divided by course, Cocina Vegetariana Casera includes global standbys like falafel and hummus, but it vegetarianizes and veganizes largely southern European dishes. Mother sauces are made with margarine and soy milk, and moussaka is beefed up with seitan. Straightforward squash and zucchini purées are favorites, as are layered potato-veg “cakes” and croquettes, the bechamel hush puppy of Franco-Iberian holiday tables. Sobejano’s recipe for seitan-filled piquillo peppers, adapted from the traditional meat version from Nafarroa (Navarra), is the most local. Carob and lactonnaise, an egg-free mayo, are here, and vegetable quiche, lentil lasagna, and pasta dishes abound—so far, so college vegetarian café—but while simple to execute and familiar in form, the recipes in Sobejano’s book are radical for giving a culinary culture with a hidebound reputation a different way to make recognizable foods.
From her home in Iruña (Pamplona), Karmen Sobejano revisited Cocina Vegetariana Casera twenty-two years after its publication. She never set out to write, no longer holds the rights, and declined an invitation to write a second one; her authorship was the result of being approached by a publisher who had eaten at Garraxi. Even so, Sobejano seems proud of it and describes it as a culmination of creative efforts driven in part by concerns about how to best feed her then-young child. Although she is not a vegetarian—“I like ham,” she said, with a recurrent, wheezing laugh—Sobejano, now 61, revisits the values that still animate her cooking.
Following the first publication of Vegetarian Home Cooking, Sobejano sat for a 2005 interview in which she was asked about her cooking philosophy and said she was committed to using seasonal, fresh, local, and organic ingredients. She wouldn’t use a microwave. I asked if her perspective has changed since then, and she said she is still committed to making slow food and believes even more strongly that the way you cook can change everything. Sobejano is still concerned about losing “grandma’s traditions,” commenting that cooking straight from the garden is the way to raise children who will get ahead.
She believes her cookbook is still popular because its ingredients are accessible. The recipes do not call for hard-to-find spices; Basque cuisine eschews seasoning and demands stand-alone freshness. The clientele of Garraxi, which she left years ago, also remains loyal to this neighborhood fixture.
Sobejano, who is largely self-taught, has alternated between cooking in nursing homes and working in her own restaurants. And while people made fun of her “lechugetariana” (lettuce-etarian) establishments, she has offered filling, economical meals to “people who do physical work,” pronouncing disdain for the 200-euro tasting menu. To fight the lettuce-only claims, “you should make tasty soups and plates full of color,” she said. In addition to cooking, Sobejano used to teach classes on making tofu and seitan, although now, she observed, people are less interested in making things from scratch. She has drawn inspiration about how to use spices and how to compose dishes for her own home cooking, her previous restaurants, and the work she now does for nursing homes from El Libro de la Cocina Natural by Jaume Rosello, El Buffet Vegetariano by Celia Brooks Brown, and Gordon Ramsay.
Both Garraxi and this cookbook helped make space for local people who want familiar flavors but who also have concerns about the health and environmental impacts of eating meat, though few are committed vegans or vegetarians. As the first explicitly veg restaurant in Donostia, Garraxi helped pave the way for a handful of others that appeal primarily to local sensibilities. Sobejano, however, has her own motivations. Having a creative desire is the only reason to work at something, she said, adding, “la ilusión,” a word somewhere between hope and dream, “is the motor of my life.”
Kate Chabarek is from upstate New York. She lives in the Basque Country with her husband, son, and their cat, Harriet.
