Basques in Boise

If you heard someone describing seared beef with piquillo peppers and shallot jam or tuna belly with lemon confit for the first time, you might think they were talking about highly sophisticated culinary dishes.

Nothing so fancy. We are talking about pintxos, (pronounced PEEN-chos), the Basque word for miniature culinary&' || 'nbsp; masterpieces, a specialty taken very seriously in the Basque Country, where eating pintxos, usually accompanied by wine, cider or beer as well as bar hopping, is a very strong tradition.

Unlike what you might have previously thought, most of them are not that complicated and can be prepared quickly and easily at home. At least, that is what Gerald Hirigoyen hopes should you dare to try out one of the small-plate dish recipes from his new book on friends and family, or even just yourself.

"I just wanted the people to get close to that and to be able when they go to their house to pick a cook book and have a pintxo party at their house," explains Gerald in an exclusive interview for eitb.com in San Francisco.

Gerald Hirigoyen, author of The Basque Kitchen and owner of a Basque restaurant and a tapas bar, has recently published Pintxos: Small Plates in the Basque Tradition in which he has adapted 75 of his authentic Basque-American tapas for the home kitchen.

The chapters in the book are organized with recipes divided primarily into categories according to technique, presentation or ingredients. Gerald begins with A la plancha, an age-old method in which meats and seafood are seared on a hot griddle. The two other technique-based chapters are Estofados, which includes stews and braises, and Fritos, or crispy fried bites.

These are followed by the ingredient-based chapters with fresh and dried shelling beans and organos, or offal. The remaining three chapters are Gerald''s favorites, Pintxos and Montaditos, or tapas on skewers and tapas on bread, and Bocadillos, or little sandwiches.

The final chapter, Pantry, is a glossary of basic ingredients you will need to prepare dishes from the book.

The book also includes recipes for some of the best-sellers at his bar ''Bocadillos'', a lively tapas and wine bar representing what he likes to call "San Sebastian meets Barcelona in San Francisco".

"We have the seared beef with piquillo peppers and shallot jam, that is a good one, also eggplant and aged goat cheese. Then, after that, we have the deviled eggs and shrimp, those are the big sellers; we have caramelized onions with Idiazabal cheese, those are the big sellers," Gerald says.

Ingredients

There''s nothing to stop you from having a try. To prepare the pintxos, there are some ingredients that come from the Basque Country but which can be easily found in any market. "Ingredients that were once difficult to obtain such as serrano ham, smoked paprika, piment d''Espelette and Basque sheep''s milk cheeses have become almost common place in better food markets and are easy to buy online," the Basque chef says on his book.

For Pintxos, Chef Hirigoyen integrates the cuisine of the Bay area and his Basque homeland into what he coins as "West Coast Basque Cuisine". "The book is about telling the people it is not the traditional Basque recipes in some ways, but it is the idea of what you do in a pintxo bar or a tapas bar in more like a California spirit also. I gave them an American twist and I also gave them my own twist as chef," Gerald says.

"It is not necessarily the American twist because maybe I would have done the same things, but I jsut put the fresh ingredients that we have here throughout the season and adapted to these eating habits that we have," he adds.