Here in the US we’re inundated by an almost endless variety of potato chips. Flavored;sour cream and onion, bar-b-que, sea salt and vinegar, even loaded baked potato. Styles;deep-fried, kettle-cooked, small-batch, hand-cut, baked (blech). I think you can find almost any kind of chip your heart might pine for, if not here than from somewhere else. Fries and gravy (poutine) or ketchup from Canada, scallop or kimchi from Japan, bolognese or chicken & thyme from the Netherlands, and the list goes on. Of course there are places that don’t heap artificial flavorings on their deep-fried potatoes, which brings me to Spain, the land of everything good. Behold…….
San Nicasio Potato Chips
These are good. Really good. And simple. Deceptively simple. After all, what’s so special about potatoes, oil, and salt? I’m glad you asked. San Nicasio Potato Chips are made in Córdoba, a city in the southern Spanish province of Andalusia, where a lot of fine olives are grown. San Nicasios are slow-cooked in an olive oil blend composed of cold-pressed picuda, picual, and hojiblanca olives. The slow-cooking is vital to ensure that the flavor of the olives comes through unscathed by too high a heat, which in the case of Spanish olives is fruitier and not as bitter as the Greek varieties. Slow-cooking also allows the potatoes to better absorb some of the oil which becomes a key component of their flavor. What’s left? Salt. Not just any salt, but Himalayan pink salt, which is actually from Pakistan. The flavor is rich and minerally which goes along perfectly with the fruit notes from the oil. These chips are lightly salted by our standards, and I like this as I taste the olive oil and the potato much more than the salt. The whole bag, every chip, was cooked to a perfect golden brown, wonderfully crisp, and I had a very hard time not scarfing down the whole bag. But I refrained, and treat them as a treat, which should be what they are regardless. They are perfect. They are Spanish.
Here they are in one of my cazuelas, accompanied by some pink salt and a tin of imported Spanish extra-virgin olive oil. Bonitas patatas, si?
You can find San Nicasio Potato Chips at La Tienda, my favorite Spanish food importers.