Penelope Casas, Spanish Cuisine Writer -- RIP

Some of Penelope Casas' books
(Image: eater.com)

When Penelope Casas was growing up in Queens, her Greek ethnicity made her an unlikely candidate to write about Spanish cuisine. However, while she was attending Vassar, then-Penelope Fexas took a semester abroad in Spain. She hit the jackpot, finding both her husband and her lifelong affection and understanding of Spanish food there.

Casas, who passed away recently at age 70, became the American writer who introduced a generation of her countrymen and women to genuine Iberian cuisine. As her obituary in The New York Times notes, Casas' books offered literate, observant insights into Spain's many gastronomic regions. They were prepared for the average person, without the self-aggrandizing puffery many of today's insufferable star chefs inflict on the public. Her uncluttered prose made her work enjoyable and informative. I read The Foods and Wines of Spain before my wife and I visited Espana, and returned grateful for having done so.

She also wrote about Spain just as Americans began to shift their travel eyes to this inexpensive, hospitable, and culturally rich Mediterranean nation. Prior to Casas' emergence (helped greatly by The New York Times), few people talked about Spanish food in any serious sort of way. (The interesting food writer Regina Schrambling makes a similar observation in her spot-on eater.com post on Casas.) At that time, French kitchens and Gallic style reigned supreme. Times change; in recent years, Spanish chefs were lionized, while la cuisine francaise tried to locate its culinary compass. Casas was an articulate witness of that evolution, although not an active agent of that change.

She will be missed.