I'm sipping broth from a tiny shot glass-the taste is fresh-picked-from-the-garden August tomato. Tiny slivers of crisp garlic float on top, and a thin slice of chewy chorizo sausage is served on the side.

I'm sipping broth from a tiny shot glass-the taste is fresh-picked-from-the-garden August tomato. Tiny slivers of crisp garlic float on top, and a thin slice of chewy chorizo sausage is served on the side. The broth is completely clear -it looks like water -- but my mouth fills with the essence of summer tomatoes. How is this done? It occurs to me that this is exactly the type of slightly mysterious and exciting culinary sensation that has typically drawn food lovers to France. Food that wows your tastebuds and makes you marvel at just how remarkable raw ingredients can taste when they're in the hands of a truly talented chef. Has Spain, I wonder, become the new France?

This past summer I spent two weeks traveling around Spain the food was consistently delicious -- from simple cafes where we drank cortados, small glasses of espresso topped with just a touch of steamed milk, and ate lighter-than-air pastries dusted with sugar and cinnamon to tapas bars where we ate fat juicy olives, creamy croquettes, and grilled tiny anchovies and sardines to sleek, upscale dining rooms that offered some of the boldest flavors I've tasted in years.     

Spanish food is still relatively unknown in many parts of the U.S. (It's hard to get a good paella or bowl of real gazpacho outside of major cities.) It is generally light, healthy, with a heavy emphasis on olive oil, vegetables, and fish. So why have French and Italian cuisines ruled the gastronomic scene in this country for so long? Based on my recent travels, I would say that Spanish food is about to be discovered in a big way.    

The food "revolution" began in Spain in the early 1970s when a chef named Ferran Adria opened a restaurant north of Barcelona called El Bulli. Adria runs a kitchen laboratory in Barcelona where chefs work year-round creating avant garde dishes and innovative new techniques for food-the most famous being the distillation of fresh flavors into foam-like substances called espumas that fill the mouth. His protégées, who now own dozens of their own restaurants throughout Spain, have gone on to stretch the limits of Spanish cuisine - far beyond classic dishes like gazpacho and paella.     

If you're traveling to Spain, or simply dreaming about Spanish food, here are some highlights from my trip:

• Alkimia, the home of the aforementioned tomato broth, is located in a residential Barcelona neighborhood. You dine in a small, chic, very white room that serves some of the best food in the city. The chef, Jordi Vila, one of Adria's mentees, knows how to experiment without taking it too far. His skill is apparent in the anchovy mille feuille, two crisp cheesy cracker-like wafers filled with grilled fat local anchovies, raw squash blossoms, fresh chervil, and a thin layer of Spain's famed pimiento, smoked red pepper. The carrot soup, topped with a garlic-almond foam was amazing. Perfectly grilled fresh Mediterranean tuna was topped with thin shavings of black truffle, smoked eggplant, sea salt, and tiny kumquats. In all there were 12 courses in the prix fixe dinner, including dessert -- "lollipops" of frozen white chocolate encasing a lemon ice milk.

• At L'Orangerie, in La Gran Hotel de Florida, high above Barcelona in the Tibidabo hills, we sat outside on a terrace overlooking the city and the glittering Mediterranean and sipped cava, Spain lighter and lesser-known-cousin to Champagne. We devoured olive and saffron bread, a silky smooth gazpacho topped with thin pieces of grilled local swordfish, and a salad that featured arugula sorbet and poached lobster.

• In the south of Spain, in the walled Roman city of Ronda, we spent four hours at lunch one day marveling over the skills of the chef at Tragabuches. Among the highlights was something called "Chicken and the Egg" -a tiny, raw quail egg served on a crisp piece of chicken skin topped with saffron flakes and grated lemon. The "frozen tomato sandwich," an innovative twist on an ice cream sandwich, featured two handmade cheese crackers sandwiched together with a frozen tomato sorbet and drizzled with fruity olive oil!

• At Cal Pep, one of Barcelona's most popular spots, you often have to wait in a narrow line for one of the highly coveted stools at the counter. No reservations are taken (expect for large parties who sit in a more sedate room in the back of this tiny restaurant), but it's well worth the wait for lighter-than-air fried artichokes generously sprinkled with sea salt and lemon, a casserole of baby squid, fried bite-size Mediterranean fish, butifarra (Catalan pork sausage) stewed with tiny white beans, and outrageous chocolate desserts.

• At La Boqueira Market, Barcelona's gorgeous food market, you can shop for food, wine, cookbooks, and kitchen equipment. There's an impressive array of fresh fruit (figs the size of baseballs, ripe peaches, cherries, and melons dripping with juice), herbs and spices grown all over Spain, wild mushrooms, and a gorgeous display of Mediterranean fish. I brought home very reasonably priced saffron (Spain's famed spice, which is reputed to be the most expensive in the world), pimiento (dried, ground smoked paprika), Bomba rice (a short grained rice perfect for making paella), cheeses, and sausages. Jamon Iberico, the Spanish equivalent to proscuitto, is everywhere in Spain, but can't be imported to the U.S at this point (rumors are the laws are about to change). You should try it whenever you get the chance because it's silky smooth, melt-in-the-mouth texture and full pork flavor rivals Italian proscuitto.

• After several hours of food shopping, we stopped at Bar Pinotxo at the entrance of the Boqueria market. Juanito Bayen, sporting his signature bow tie and huge smile, stands guard at a counter that hold some twelve stools. It's a competitive sport finding a seat here, but this is another place that's well worth the wait. Pinotxo (Catalan for "Pinocchio") served some of the best coffee in Spain, amazing pastries and breakfast omelets. Come around noon and enjoy a glass of local red wine served with tomato and olive oil-rubbed crusty bread. There's no real menu, but the specials include chick peas and blood sausage, white beans and baby squid, or lentils with cod and scallions. Having a restaurant inside one of Europe's best food markets guarantees a level of freshness that makes anything you order at Pinotxo a winner.

Paella: The Spanish Classics

We were driving through tiny villages that dot the Costa Brava, the coastline along northeastern Spain, when we came upon a tiny fishing village. After walking through the Saturday flea market we stopped at a small restaurant for lunch. The waitress suggested the seafood paella and a gorgeous pan of saffron-scented rice arrived, dotted with Mediterranean lobster, octopus, baby squid and shrimp. The place was no big deal, but the paella was perfect.

That's the thing about paella. To Spanish cooks it's not a big deal dish. According to Penelope Casas, author of The Foods & Wines of Spain, "Paella is a word that has come worldwide to mean a Spanish rice dish with a variety of seafood and chicken. However, the word originally referred only to the pan in which the food was cooked - a paellera, from the Latin word for pan, patella." 

What exactly is "paella?" There are virtually hundreds of variations of the dish. What they all mainly have in common is short, stubby rice (though there is a version that uses macaroni-like pasta instead of rice), olive oil, saffron, garlic, and broth. The dish is always cooked in a paella pan, a large, two-handled, shallow, metal pan that can be placed directly over an open flame.  Paella can contain seafood, meat, wild game, poultry, sausage, vegetables, herbs, or literally any combination you can think of. I have even heard of a sweet chocolate and sugar-laced rendition of the dish.

RECIPES

Seafood Paella

You can vary the fish you use in this recipe as you like, adding squid or fish chunks instead of, or in addition to, the shellfish. Serve with a simple green salad, crusty bread and a good, crisp white Spanish wine.

2 pounds mussels, cleaned

3 cups homemade or store bought fish broth*

4 tablespoons good olive oil (preferably Spanish)

5 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 small green pepper, chopped

1 small red pepper, chopped

1 small ripe tomato, chopped

2 ½ cups short-grained rice (preferably Bomba rice from Spain or Arborio rice from Italy)

½ teaspoon saffron

1 pound small littleneck clams

1 pound large shrimp, cleaned or 1 2-pound lobster cut into 8 pieces

1 lemon, cut into wedges

4 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

*Ask your fishmonger if they sell fish broth or stock.

1. Place the mussels in a large pot with 2 cups water. Bring to a boil over high heat, cover and let cook until the shells are just opened, about 6 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the mussels and let cool. Separate the mussels, keeping the shell with the mussel in it and discarding the empty shells. Reserve. Add the 3 cups fish broth to the mussel broth and keep warm over a low heat.

2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

3. Heat a large paella pan (about 15 inches across the base) or a large heavy skillet over moderate heat. If your pan is really large heat it over two burners. Add the olive oil and half the garlic and cook 30 seconds. Add the peppers and tomato and cook about 5 minutes, until softened.

4. Stir in the paella rice, coating the rice with the vegetables and oil. Add 1 cup of the warm broth along with the saffron flakes. Let cook slowly without stirring, about 5 minutes. Add another 3 cups of broth.

5. Place the clams into the rice and broth, pushing down so the liquid covers the clams slightly. Add the last cup of broth and arrange the shrimp or lobster pieces around the rim, alternating the shellfish between the clams. Scatter the remaining garlic over the shellfish. Place the pan carefully on the middle shelf of the preheated oven and bake, uncovered, for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the broth is absorbed but the rice is not quite done, like an al dente pasta.

6. Remove the paella from the oven and cover with a clean tea towel or tin foil and let sit about 10 minutes. Sprinkle with the lemon wedges and parsley before serving.

Serves 6 to 8.

Chunky Gazpacho with Piquillo-Scallion Relish

This soup is a delicious reminder of summer year-round. But if you can't find good tomatoes, hold off until you can. Once you do a bit of chopping, this gazpacho takes no time to make-just mix the chopped crisp cucumbers, fresh red tomatoes, and a few bell peppers together and set the mixture aside for an hour, and the vegetable juices appear almost magically. The resulting "soup" is like a summer garden in a bowl, topped with a minty relish of smoky, sweet piquillo peppers and chopped scallions.

Look for roasted piquillo peppers packed in oil in a small jar in your grocery store, often near the pickled items or in the ethnic foods section, or specialty food stores. You can substitute roasted red peppers, finely chopped, with a pinch of smoky paprika.

This recipe comes from Stonewall Kitchen Favorites, by Jonathan King Jim Stott, and Kathy Gunst (Clarkson Potter, August 2006).

For the Gazpacho:

1 1/2 pounds ripe tomatoes, cut into ¼-inch dice

2 seedless cucumbers (skin left on), cut into ¼-inch dice

1 red bell pepper, cut into ¼-inch dice

1 yellow bell pepper, cut into ¼-inch dice

1 green bell pepper, cut into ¼-inch dice

1 medium red onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1/4 cup white wine or Champagne vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

Dash hot sauce

Salt and freshly ground pepper

For the relish:

4 ounces jar drained roasted piquillo peppers*, finely chopped (about ½ cup)

1/2 cup chopped scallions

3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons white wine or Champagne vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Gently mix all of the gazpacho ingredients in a large bowl until well combined. Puree about 3 cups of the vegetable mixture in a food processor or blender until almost liquid. Return the pureed mixture to the bowl, mix well, and season again to taste with salt and pepper, if necessary. Let the gazpacho sit at room temperature for about an hour, allowing the natural juices to accumulate at the bottom of the bowl. Cover and chill if not serving right away.

To make the relish: mix all of the ingredients in a bowl until blended. (Makes about 1 cup relish.)

Stir the gazpacho to distribute the juices, and serve it in small bowls, garnished with a spoonful of relish.

Serves 6 to 8.

Favorite Variations:

• Add 2 finely chopped jalapeno peppers.

• Add 2 cups corn kernels (fresh are best).

• Replace some or all of the red tomatoes with yellow or green tomatoes.

• Replace one of the bell peppers with orange or purple bell peppers.

• Spoon a tablespoon or so of the gazpacho onto fresh raw oysters or clams on the half-shell.

• Serve the gazpacho with cooked shrimp.

*TASTE TIP: Piquillo peppers are small tangy red peppers native to the Navarra region of northern Spain.