There are more than 15,000 surnames of Basque origin in America. A good clue to the cultural legacy of the families who at different times crossed the Atlantic from Euskadi and settled there, but which, it is true, always tends to be read in a single direction. For a few years now, the Sukalderria project has wanted to go a little further and proposes a round trip in a gastronomic key, looking for how some Basque recipes have evolved in different Latin American countries and bringing them back to Donosti, to the Topa Sukalderia restaurant in Andoni. Luis Aduriz, where this idea arose back in 2019.
“Marita Echave’s pork rib” is one of those recipes and was on Topa’s menu last January. “Marita Echave was one of the first people we contacted in 2019 to start Sukalderria. She had published the book Cocina vasca campesina, in which she compiled many preparations that the Basques cooked in Argentina at that time,” explain those responsible for the project.
The 2020 pandemic forced this culinary journey to stop and when they resumed it they discovered that Echave had died in 2022, so this Argentine Basque (or Argentine-Basque) recipe is also a kind of posthumous tribute. Theirs is the fifth dish of this documentary project recently resumed and focused on discovering and sharing these recipes, investigating the family history of each of them and, also, bringing them back to the Basque Country.
Talking about the eighth Basque province may set off some political sparks, taking into account that some do not go beyond the three that make up the Basque Autonomous Community. We are talking about food, so apart from the seven historic ones, we can also add, in a somewhat poetic way, the one made up of the Basques who went to America and who still maintain cultural ties with their Basque origins. It is the so-called “Basque diaspora”.
The fact is that Sukalderria – an ingenious combination of sukaldea and herria, something like “the town that cooks” – aims to investigate the “culinary heritage of the eighth Basque province.” That the idea has Topa as its epicenter is also no coincidence, because it is a restaurant that since it opened its doors in 2017 in the Gros neighborhood of Donostia has sought gastronomic ties between the Basque Country and Latin America. Topa, in fact, has a similar meaning in Basque, Spanish and Guaraní: to find.
“Do they still cook recipes from their ancestors? Have they reinterpreted those recipes with local ingredients?” are some of the questions that this research puts on the table and that recipe by recipe aims to answer.
Like Izaguirre cod. “María Ángeles and her siblings were born in Torreón, Mexico. Her grandmother, Aniceto, arrived with her brothers from Mundaka. Her mother was from Monterrey, a young lady who played the piano beautifully and when he passed by the window and heard her, Aniceto fell in love with her.
This family story leads to a dish of cod with tomato sauce to which they also added olives “to make it much tastier” and turn it into a Christmas recipe.
Based on this story and the family recipe, the Topa team creates the dish that is served in the restaurant and that, in a way, closes this return trip. A job – they tell us – in several bands in which the communication team, the kitchen team and also the La Creme agency intervene.
Search for the stories, contact the protagonists and trace their lives and surnames, create audiovisual pieces that accompany each of the dishes… “Later, from Topa’s kitchen, with that information they study how to transfer the recipe that each family explains to a dish” topatized”, that is, with the essence and touch that we always give to our recipes”, explains the restaurant team.
On the website itself, a contact form invites you to leave clues about stories that fit the search. So far, all the dishes that have been found throughout the project are part of family recipe books. Classic preparations from each house in which an ingredient or a sauce allows us to trace those transatlantic ties that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Like the Oholeguys, who arrived in Buenos Aires from Iparralde in 1895. Daniel, the grandson, still remembers today the Basque parties that his grandfather organized and where, among other dishes, blood sausage was always served and was accompanied by zurracapote, a drink with wine. and fruits that grow in various areas of the north, including the Basque Country.
Although in Argentina it is not so easy to get cod, this fish is one of those recurring links with Basque cuisine in many recipes. For example, Javi Ederra – who even studied cooking in Vitoria – has turned the potato and cod omelette that he learned from his grandmother into one of his specialties. And also in a way of transmitting the history and Basque origin of his family to his children.
A recipe that during these last weeks in Topa has become cod fritters with potatoes and gaucha sauce. Argentina and Euskadi in a bite, while in Sukalderria they continue looking for new stories and recipes.
