Spain.

Olive oil is where every Spanish recipe begins, and it behaves differently here than elsewhere in Europe: it is not a finishing drizzle but the bulk medium. Potatoes for a tortilla are poached in it, garlic for gambas al ajillo infuses it, vegetables for a sofrito melt in it. That sofrito — onion, garlic and grated tomato cooked slowly in oil until sweet and jammy — is the flavor base under countless stews and rice dishes, the Spanish equivalent of a French mirepoix, but cooked further and darker.

The spice cabinet is small and precise. Pimentón, paprika made from peppers dried over oak smoke in Extremadura or sun-dried in Murcia, gives chorizo its color and stews their backbone. Saffron, cultivated in La Mancha since the Moors introduced it, perfumes the great rice dishes. Sherry vinegar sharpens gazpacho and salads. Beyond these, seasoning mostly means salt, garlic and parsley — the confidence to stop there is the Spanish signature.

Pork is the historic protein of the interior. The pig is used completely: cured into jamón serrano and the acorn-fed jamón ibérico, seasoned into chorizo and morcilla, and its fat flavoring beans and greens. The coasts answer with an obsessive seafood culture — Galicia's octopus, mussels and goose barnacles, the Basque Country's hake and salt cod, Andalusia's fried fish, and the anchovies and prawns that anchor tapas bars everywhere. Rice belongs to the east: the paddies around Valencia's Albufera lagoon, planted under Moorish irrigation a thousand years ago, made the region the home of paella and a whole family of lesser-known rice dishes cooked in wide shallow pans.

The meal structure is its own institution. Lunch, eaten around two or three, is the anchor — often three courses even on a workday — while dinner arrives after nine and is frequently replaced altogether by tapas: small plates eaten standing, ordered round by round, ideally across several bars rather than one. A tortilla wedge, a plate of sizzling garlic shrimp, bread, olives and a glass of wine or cold beer constitute a complete and honorable dinner. Sweets are modest — flan, churros with thick hot chocolate, torrijas at Easter — because fruit and the meal itself were traditionally considered dessert enough.