Introduction: On Carmen, Pork Blood, and Polla Jokes Understanding the Spanish gastronomy of today and how it continues to influence the American gastronomy of tomorrow Madrid Manolo--our faithful friend and barkeep at this dive-bar for cooks--speaks in his cigarette smoke-laden Spanish baritone and fixes me with a glare that dares me to disagree: "Nunca has probado una morcilla como esta, Americano." Sadly, I realize he''s right--which is really all he wanted to hear anyways. "You have never tasted a morcilla like this one, American." These are some fiercely partisan culinary fightin'' words--the type spoken in bars all around Madrid over cañas of beer and, in this instance, a ración of cured blood sausage from Jaén called morcilla achorizada. This morcilla, unlike other blood sausages from around the world, is a mixture of chorizo masa mixed with pig''s blood, cooked potato, rice, onions, and spices. The stuffed morcilla is then smoked and dry cured. And it is utterly delicious; sabroso in a way that makes me angry you can''t find anything like this where I live because it''s almost impossible to find this morcilla achorizada outside of Spain and definitely not in the United States. "Thanks for rubbing it in, cabrón" I manage with a sarcastic smile while stabbing the last slice with a toothpick.

The truth is that this is easily one of the best embutidos I have ever tried and it makes me consider--with the manic obsession of a heroin junkie getting helter-skelter for another hit-- how I could possibly bring some of these wrinkled, black delights back home to California without causing an international incident at the US customs checkpoint. Andalucía In Granada is a small, inconspicuous alleyway that houses one of the best flamenco clubs in Spain. You would never know it--the only advertisement is a dimly-lit, sun-washed wall with black lettering and a scraggly, hastily-painted arrow pointing you deeper into the abyss. To make matters worse, this club is only open at night--which was when I found myself late one summer evening staring into this great unknown: It says: "Eshavira Club." Standing there in the moonlight--confronted by the deafening stillness of this portal leading to God-knows-where--I realized that at times like these there are two types of people in the world: There are those who look down that alley and, acknowledging their lack of the requisite testicular fortitude, quickly sprint away with their tail between their legs; and then there those--spurned on by a chemical courage borne of the local inebriant of choice--who follow that arrow onwards to their destiny. With a few hesitant steps made easier by said inebriant, I joined the latter group. Much, much later--minutes or hours or days had passed--I emerged from that passage to a bright new day in southern Spain. I was generally unscathed as I stumbled into the light be-speckled in crooked sunglasses, but something was different about this world around me; this Andalusian culture--with its veneer of Moorish influence everywhere you look --finally made so much beautiful sense.

What did I find in the depths of that alley, you ask? I found a confluence of cultures--a place lost in time yet wholly comfortable in the present; a consortium for flamenco and the people who cling to the practice of an ever-evolving art; a place where old and older is not afraid to mingle with the new, the modern, and even the tragically hip. I found an ancient wooden door; a bouncer with a one-word name; a bar that serves beer or sangria y nada mas; and a universe centered upon a dusty, worn stage manned by men and women who stomp, clap, and sing the spirit of Gitano pain and pride. I found a small piece of the Andalusian soul. Extremadura It''s a good day to die, little piggies. Here, 45 minutes away from the nearest city, herds of Ibérico pigs roam tree-to-tree searching for acorns to eat. They do their best to avoid the butchers in blue coveralls--knives in hand-- stalking the herd to cull three members for our matanza, the wintertime ritual pig slaughter/alcohol-and-pork-fueled party with deep roots in Spanish antiquity. The Ibérico pigs are anything but pretty--they are closely related to wild boars--but they possess a unique manner in which they store large quantities of their fat intramuscularly. It is this characteristic, plus the resulting flavor of that fat from the acorns my delicious little friends gorge themselves on during the montanera--the acorn-feeding months prior to slaughter--that makes their meat so coveted and expensive.

At The Rocamador, a gorgeous converted monastery and four-star-hotel situated in the countryside of rugged Extremadura, the Tristancho family has been conducting matanzas for their guests--often comprised of chefs and the social elite of Madrid--for years. These guests are taken out to the farm, participate in a slaughtering ritual dating back to the earliest Iberian settlers, and then reap the rewards of their labor through porcine-and-alcohol-laden payment. So it is here that I found myself with the opportunity any line cook would dream of; learning about Spanish pork butchery and charcuterie in the heart of Ibérico country; and mixing a local specialty sausage with a gaggle of Extremeñan mothers and grandmothers when my education and hazing concurrently began: "Jeffrey" (pronounced "Yeh-free" here in the heart of Extremadura), "¿Como está tu chorizo?" Translated: "Jeffrey, how is your sausage?" (Chorizo was the type of sausage that I was stuffing into a casing using hand-motions you could only describe as masturbatory--so, yes, the double entendre was very much intentional) (Laughter) "Jeeeeefrey, ¿Qué chiquito es, no? Translated: "It''s a little small, right?" (More double entendre, more laughter) "Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrey, y es blando también. ¿Le quieres dar un masaje? Translated: "And it''s limp too. Do you want me to give it a massage?" (Now they are ROFL-ing.) Apparently, this too was a tradition: the gentle teasing of any extranjero in the group''s midst (the FNG or Fucking New Guy, as someone like Anthony Bourdain would have appropriately described me in that moment). All the better that I was an American cook--a gringo, a guiri, a white-boy--initiated just enough in the language of the kitchen to understand what I was being asked to do and that I was definitely the butt of an inside joke. "Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrey: Ahora tu chorizo es perfecto.

" "Es muy grande. ¿eres el orgullo de tu madre, no?" Translated: "Your chorizo is perfect; it is very big. You must be your mother''s pride, no?" A Spanish version of a "Yo Momma" joke? I laughed too--who wouldn''t? But retaliation was in order in the name of pride and my Momma: "Cuidado con este chorizo extranjero, Señora. ¿Creo que es demasiado grande para ti, no? Translated: "Be careful with this foreigner''s chorizo, ma''am. I think it''s a little big for you to handle, right?" Score one for the extranjero. So it was for weeks with mi familia Extremeña--we ate, we drank, we took the lives of Ibérico pigs in the name of deliciousness and necessity, we connected with an age-old tradition of making charcutería just like these mothers and grandmothers did with their mothers and grandmothers, and they gave their hijo extranjero--their foreign son--a load of crap and an education in comida casera for which I am eternally grateful. And all was right and delicious in the heart of Extremadura. The Spain that I know This is my Spain--a Spain of transcendent memories centered on the food and culture of a people I have come to adopt as my own.

These memories are the staccato sounds of the flamenco bailaora''s footfalls, the multi-colored sights of pintxo platters laid out on bars in San Sebastian, and the unmistakable smells of charcutería --that smoky aroma of cured pork mixed with pimentón that permeates much of Spanish cuisine, culture, history, and a national obsession and regional pride for various shapes, sizes, and flavors. But while Spain stands porky cheek-to-jowl with other great cured meat-producing nations like Italy and France, the charcuterie traditions of Spain are perhaps the least-understood of this trifecta due to an almost infinite degree of regional variances and a miniscule degree of exportation, least of all to the United States. For example, importation of Spanish charcutería into the United States is limited to the handful of producers that can pass strenuous regulations set forth by the US Department of Agriculture and--even then--only a fraction of the products available in the Spanish market actually trickle through to American shores. These restrictions--coupled with a general misunderstanding of Spanish gastronomy that lumped it under the general heading of "Hispanic cooking" in the 70s and 80s alongside the cuisines of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and much of Central and South America-- mean that a niche product such as traditional charcutería is just now coming into popularity. This also means that you likely have never tasted the sheer eye-rolling deliciousness that is morcilla achorizada, fuet, or sobrassada--a birthright for any Spaniard but something that, for extranjeros like you or me, is something we just have to place at the top of our bucket list. Fortunately for us, however, Spanish cuisine is thriving.