Made in Spain

From his home region of Asturias in northern Spain, José showcases its great cheeses, making a sweet and sour salad of cheese and tomatoes with a honey and vinegar dressing. He fries some golden brown monkfish, and takes to the seas off Asturias to risk his neck while fishing for barnacles.

José explores the food of Galicia, where pilgrims have traveled for centuries. He cooks a simple tapa of green Padrón peppers stuffed with cheese, as well as the traditional pilgrim’s meal of a chicken empanada. He fishes for octopus off the region’s rocky coast, eats a traditional Galician dish of boiled octopus with Spanish paprika, and drinks a glass of the pilgrims’ flambéed punch.

José explains the Spanish sweet tooth, cooking pancakes with chocolate before showing us the wonderfully thick hot chocolate of Spain. Just outside the capital, he takes us to a strawberry farm and returns home to prepare strawberries in a wine syrup. He ends at a traditional bull fight in Madrid, finishing off the evening with a traditional stew of bull’s meat.

Sweet, hand-roasted red piquillo peppers are now sold in jars across the United States. José stuffs some piquillos with cheese, then takes us to Navarra to show how they painstakingly roast and peel the peppers. Then he prepares a cheese and white asparagus salad. He ends in Pamplona, where the young men run with the bulls -- while older men try to improve their cooking in culinary societies.

There’s tuna and there’s Spanish tuna. José prepares a classic tuna salad before joining the extraordinary tuna catch off the southern coast of Spain. He returns home to cook seared tuna with sesame seeds and sweet piquillo peppers. He explains the great sherry culture of Andalucía, and goes bar-hopping to eat the region’s great tapas food.

José turns Spain’s sparkling wine -- cava -- into a light dressing for oysters and a refreshing mimosa cocktail. He goes mushroom hunting in the Catalan mountains, before cooking a crumbled pork sausage with wild mushrooms. Back in Spain, he fishes for shrimp and eats Catalan seafood in traditional and modern ways.