Barcelona Food Girl

La Barceloneta

2009-10-01T01:10:00.000-07:00

It's windy on the beach in Barceloneta these days. Surfers are replacing sunbathers. And, in anticipation of the opening of the W Hotel Barcelona (Hotel Vela) today, locals have taken to protest rafts.

Here's the article I wrote for the Globe about the recent development around La Barceloneta: On the beach in Barcelona. It's a watered down version of the original, which had some mention of local politics. As I've been told, that is travel writing. I'll try to give you a glimpse into some of the inner workings of La Barceloneta, those less suitable for the Travel section, in another post.

Goodbye, La Mercè

2009-09-27T12:55:00.001-07:00

Goodbye, Mercè. It's been swell. We laughed, we danced, we overdid it on the cava a little, but that's o.k. in the grand scheme of things. It might have been the fireworks, they tend to inspire thirst...all that throat drying smoke. We'll try to be better next year. Really. We promise with our fingers crossed.

Wine and Fireworks

2009-09-26T05:01:00.001-07:00

The Old Port at night is better than ever during La Mercè. There's a cava and wine tasting (XXIX Mostra de Vins i Caves de Catalunya), complete with generous tapas of the traditional kind. (It's no use reminding yourself that the wine is for sampling not inebriating.) You can see the Barceloneta fireworks competition from the pier. And, schools of tiny sparkling fish put on a show below your dangling feet as they try to escape their determined predators. In other words, there's a whole host of entertainments that I highly recommend.

The cava and wine tasting continues until Sunday. Plan to go early in the evening as it closes down at around 10:00pm nightly, just before things get really raucous; that means that you have to purchase the tickets that you trade in for glasses of wine and tapas before 9:45pm. Once equipped with wine and food, you can spread yourself out on the pier, with blanket or sans, and enjoy to your heart's content. You'll know it's time to go when someone pulls out the bagpipes.

La Mercè

2009-09-24T15:29:00.001-07:00

The most patronly, or perhaps matronly, of the patron saints of Barcelona is Santa Maria de la Merced (la Mercè in Catalan, Mercy in English). In medieval Barcelona, her followers dedicated themselves to purchasing the freedom of Christian slaves from the Saracens. And, while most who praise her name today no longer have such lofty goals, she's still celebrated in Barcelona with the Festes de la Mercè, the city's biggest party.

There's music, dancing and general whooping-it-up throughout town this week, but our favourite spot to date has been Ciutadella Park. Decorated with dragons and luminous eggs, it is the site of an enormous jazz stage and the Asia Festival. The combination of crowd pleasing jazz, a comfy (if slightly obstructed) view of the harbour's firework displays and some truly kick-ass samosas is delectable. Bring a blanket if you want to sit on the dewy grass and don't drop your guard; I'm sorry to say that we've seen thieves about, especially after dark.

This weekend, we also intend to drop by the Catalan Wine and Cava Expo in the Old Port (Moll de Fusta), always an excellent mix of local wines and quality tapas at bargain prices.

La Mercè will party on until Sunday. For a full listing of events see www.bcn.cat/merce. For more on the city's other fiestas, check out The Sounder: Fiesta Anyone?

Secluded Coves - El Golfet

2009-09-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

Just a few minutes outside of Calella de Palafrugell lies a snug pebble beach half canopied by pines and embraced by golden rock outcroppings, El Golfet.

The loveliest way to reach it is to park at the Hotel Sant Roc and walk the cliffside along the winding Camí de Ronda, part of an ancient series of footpaths along the coast. The paths, which once covered almost the entire length of the Costa Brava, were initially used by watchmen and shepherds and are now a boon to those looking for the most spectacular cliffside views out to sea: pines clinging precariously to rock, small islands of stone battered by foaming waves, lone sailboats coming and going, fishermen casting their lines and white villages unfolding in the distance.

The walk alone is mesmerizing. Arriving to the rugged beauty of El Golfet makes it all the more gratifying.

El Cremat

2009-09-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

I'm loath to stop talking about the sea. Salt slicked as I was for most of last week, I think maybe the sea marinated me in its briny waters a little. I walked away shot through with its peculiar taste.

It's a taste that, on the Costa Brava at least, mingles easily with that of rum, the kind that Catalan sailors would once bring back from Cuba. At night, by the sea, the sailors would sing songs about the loves they left behind in Havana and drink a flaming beverage called the Cremat. Even though the sheen has worn well off the sailors and Spain's colonial empire, the Cremat is still all good. So are the songs (Havaneres), which have become a popular part of Catalan tradition.

We tried the Cremat on the terrace of Can Gelpí with our friend Guillermo, the waves crashing around us, just as it was meant to be tasted.

At Can Gelpí, which is famed for its Cremat, no part of the experience was a disappointment. The Cremat arrived on our table in a large clay bowl engulfed in bluish flame. It was set down with a single cup of cafe solo (espresso), three espresso cups and a ladle. We were then left to our own devices. We waited and waited for the flames to abate, but they burned on. The minutes passed and the flames soared. We were aware of the alcohol, of course, and reluctant to lose all of its bite. Eventually, thinking that the spectacle had gone on for far too long, Felipe blew out the flame. I think we were just shy of the 10 minutes that the Cremat is supposed to burn. Little did we know. We shared the coffee between the three cups and ladled out the alcohol. We were completely wrong about the procedures that accompany the Cremat, needless to say, but the result was not at all unpleasant. Quite pleasant it was. Indeed, indeed.

I've since learned the ways of the Cremat and cobbled together a recipe from our boisterous night at Can Gelpí and the few internet recipes that I've seen (virtually all in Catalan). Please forgive any imperfections.

Recipe for 6 generous servings of Cremat:

1/2 a bottle (325 mls) of dark Cuban rum
1/2 a bottle (325 mls) of aguardiente de caña (replace it with an equal amount of rum in a pinch)
A cup of cognac or two (optional)
About 75-100 grams of sugar (feel free to add more or less to taste)
The peel of one or two lemons (in long, elegant strips)
One or two sticks of cinnamon (absolutely no powder)
5 or 6 coffee beans (optional)
About 1/2 cup of brewed espresso coffee

Allow night to fall. This is not a daytime drink. Then, in a heatproof earthenware bowl, mix everything but the cup of coffee and set aflame. Let it burn. And, oh, it will burn. For a very long time. You will begin to think, "Should it really be burning this long?" It should. About 10 minutes they say, until the flavours are well blended. Don't worry, let it sit burning on the table to impress your friends.

When you think it's ready, or when there is sufficient general panic that all the alcohol has been consumed by flame (as in our case), pour in the espresso and cover with a lid to extinguish (or just blow on it as Felipe did). Spoon into espresso cups with a ladle and break into song about your lost Cuban love. You might even shed a tear. Who knows. The ways of the Cremat are a little unpredictable.

The Sea, the Sea

2009-09-21T04:21:00.000-07:00

It's nearly fall...or maybe it's fall already. Time has been slipping by with alarming speed, as always in the last moments of summer. Wandering around Barceloneta and its beaches with a lump in my throat, I had been feeling the pull of the sea, the sea...the sea at summer's end.

So, Felipe and I gave in and went for a heady final romp along the coast last week, floating, swimming and somersaulting in the heaving, roiling, galloping sea of an Iris Murdoch novel. And now we're spent and content and ready for fall. Well, as ready as one can ever be.

We found the Costa Brava, where we frittered away last week, a long string of contradictions--rugged cliffs, quaint fishing villages and out of control development. To many, this part of the coast, which starts some kilometers north of Barcelona, is a stomach churning mess of package hotels and mass tourism.

This August, my poor Polish cousins, who thought they would spend their hard earned money on a week of vacation bliss in Spain, ended up in the hotel jungle in the down at the heels Malgrat de Mar, just to the South of Blanes. By the time we got to them, they were very nearly in the depths of depression.

What makes my cousins' experience all the more sad is that there are still beautiful spots along the Costa Brava. To be sure, they're best enjoyed in June and September rather than July or August. In the still warm off-season, you are very likely to find yourself all but alone in the lulling waves of the Mediterranean, particularly if you're up for a little stroll along the cliffs. I'll tell you all about the Camí de Ronda, a footpath along the coast, in another post.

On the recommendation of our friend Louise, who once frolicked on the coast in a billowy yellow skirt, we spent last week in Calella de Palafrugell on the other Costa Brava, the one right out of a Merchant and Ivory film. Calella de Palafrugell, about an hour and a half outside of Barcelona, is a pretty fishing village, which retains all the romance of the coast as it once must have been: colourful sail boats pulled up onto the shore, pristine beaches of polished pebbles, merrily painted houses and charming restaurants lining the boardwalk. It's a tourist town through and through, but one of genteel tourism, the kind that brings back all your best memories of holidays by the seaside.

We stayed at the stately Hotel Sant Roc (www.santroc.com), which overlooks the town from a privileged cliff-top location on the outskirts (its terrace is pictured above). It's currently offering a 3 nights for the price of 2 deal, which is truly fantastic given that prices are already at low season rates. As for restaurants, we opted for Can Gelpí (C/ les Voltes 11, tel. 97 261 4572) and Tragamar (Playa De Canadell, tel. 97 261 5189), both of which serve very respectable seafood accompanied by spectacular views out to sea and the music of crashing waves.

The Charming Dive

2009-09-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

Another well kept secret of Barce-loneta's narrow streets is Can Maño. When Wee and Nuria, our friends from the barrio, told us about it, they begged me not to include it in the article I was writing at the time. It's hard enough to get a table as it is, they say. Locals don't need the extra competition.

I've never been very good at keeping secrets, unfortunately, and I can't help but share Can Maño with you, at least by way of blog. My compromise is that you'll have to find it on your own.

The truth is that Can Maño isn't for everyone, and certainly not for the average tourist. It has the look of a neighbourhood dive, right down to the flourescent lights, peeling tabletops and old school proprietor who moves from table to table at his own rhythm, occasionally with a cigarette dangling from mouth or hand. All this, however, is part of its surprising charm, a charm that emanates largely from the friendly bustle of the place: wine still flows freely from traditional porros at Can Maño; musicians enter to sound a trumpet a foot from your ear; the proprietor's daughter comes out to hand a loaf of bread to the street person at the door; and locals order from memory or from the faded list of platos combinados (mixed plates) posted on the wall.

When we first tried Can Maño, the few tables of tourists present asked for a menu, which was dutifully brought out, but we were so captivated by the dishes sailing by our heads that we ordered on the basis of "we'll have what they're having". The unbelievable oven baked mackerel and tasty grilled squid didn't disappoint. Neither did the price. The sizable mains along with a large plate of french fries, dessert (not their forte), half a bottle of wine, a soda and coffee came to 22 euros. I doubt you could do as well anywhere else in Barcelona, especially for such well prepared seafood. And, it's worth noting that at Can Maño it's not unreasonable to expect to pay considerably less--the squid, at 8 euros, was among the most expensive items on the menu.

There is one enormous drawback to eating at Can Maño, however, and it is the one hinted at by Wee and Nuria when they first told us of the place. That is that the restaurant doesn't take reservations and, at peak hours, the wait (in the street outside) can be considerable. The solution is to arrive early. By 8:30pm the place is full so it's best to go just after 8pm, an ungodly hour at which to dine by Barcelona standards, but given the number of locals in the place even at that time, a reasonable trade off for one of Can Maño's in-demand tables.

Bombaaaaaa!

2009-09-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

If you're a tourist in Barcelona, you probably know La Barceloneta best for its beach. Packed, lively and somewhat gaudy, it's the beach that's closest to the Old Town and therefore the one most favoured by foreigners staying in the Gotico and Born neighbourhoods, the same foreigners that flood it in scorched pink droves in July and August.

Lately, Felipe and I have been wandering the interior of the barrio, trying to get the feel of the real neighbourhood, that is, the one that doesn't immediately border the beach. It's a special place that, despite the summer tourist invasion, still retains the feel of a close family...a place where, on hot summer nights, life long residents put folding chairs on the sidewalks immediately outside their front doors to escape their cramped apartments, gossip and take in the sea air.

I've been working on an article about La Barceloneta, which I'll post that here when it comes out, but I'm mindful that the article's brevity doesn't lend itself well to sharing all of the barrio's secrets.

Of these, there are many, but one of my absolute favourites is the bomba and the place that claims to have invented it, La Cova Fumada.

La Cova Fumada (c/ Baluard 56, tel. 93 221 4061) is a neighbourhood place de toda la vida. There's sawdust on the floor, barrels of wine on the wall, a sense of decor worthy of the one room apartment of the most hardened bachelor and an open grease spewing kitchen presided over by grandmothers in floral house dresses. That is to say, it's quite fantastic in its own way, as evidenced by the ever present line of tourists and locals at its door.

La Cova Fumada's famed bombas are a mixture of meat and mashed potato, molded into balls, fried and topped with allioli and hot sauce. Actually, La Cova Fumada offers you everything from the mild Señorita (with a dollop of allioli alone, as pictured above) to the fiery Macho (drenched in hot sauce). Felipe and I could not limit ourselves to sample just one and could have gone through a plateful each had we not just finished a filling meal of La Cova Fumada's inexpensive seafood offerings.

Besides the bombas, the restaurant serves some excellent bacalao (salt cod), respectable sardines and perfectly prepared calamares a la plancha (grilled squid). In fact, of the wide selection of dishes we sampled, only the mussels weren't up to the snuff. To order, check out the menu on the wall or ask the waitress to tell you what's up. You won't pay much for the food and you'll feel like you've lived in the barrio your entire life.

Barcelona Travel Tips - What to Know

2009-09-11T04:58:00.000-07:00

It's the fault of movies like the insipid Vicky Chirstina Barcelona, not to mention our dwindling knowledge of the world outside our own backyards, that most people have no idea that the native language of Barcelona is Catalan and not Spanish (Castilian). In fact, most expect to drink sangria, see bullfights and hear flamenco guitar when they come here--all of these, though occasionally available in Barcelona, are products of the radically different culture of the South of Spain. It's the same kind of geographical and cultural dimness (often ascribed, but by no means exclusive, to North America) that leads people to believe that we Canadians have polar bears living in our backyards and skate to school on permanently frozen rivers. We don't, but I have heard that Australians do ride kangaroos to work.

If you know only a few things before you come to Barcelona, know these. Barcelona is the capital of the region of Catalonia (Catalunya around these parts). It's a cosmopolitan city of about two million on the Mediterranean coast of Northern Spain. Before being incorporated into modern Spain, Catalonia was a separate kingdom and a proud nationalism still courses through the veins of most Catalans. While a minority are separatists, contrary to the unfortunate reality of the Basque countries to the north, there's absolutely no messing about with bombs and violence here.

The language, as I've mentioned, is Catalan, but all Barcelonians also speak Castilian Spanish (the Spanish of Latin American and the rest of Spain), often mixing Catalan and Castilian when amongst friends. Tourists can expect a reasonable level of English (and sometimes French or German) in hotels and many restaurants, but, once off the beaten track, may have trouble encountering English speakers. (The last statistics I read placed those Catalans who speak English with some degree of fluency at about 30% of the population.)

While Barcelona has gained a relatively liberal reputation, its citizens, particularly the older ones, are a fairly conservative group and are sometimes scandalized by what the tourists get up to--stumbling half naked and piss drunk through the streets as some are wont to do after their days of baking on the beach. The truth is that the attitude of the locals is still largely "live and let live", but recently, tourist excesses, which haven't let locals live very well, have many Barcelonians thoroughly fed up. I'll write more about that and how you shouldn't behave in Barcelona in another post.

For your convenience, here are a few other tidbits that might be of use:

Currency: Euro.

When to Go: The summers are hot and sticky (25-30 C) and much of the city closes down in August for holidays. The best time to come is spring (April/May) or fall (September/October) when the weather is milder (15-23 C). Winter is quiet, rainy and much cooler (5-10 C).

Getting Around: Barcelona's main tourist areas are within easy walking distance of the centre or a short metro or cab ride away. The metro system is extensive, safe and cheap (77 cents a ride if you buy the 10 trip card). It runs until midnight from Sunday to Thursday, until 2am on Fridays and all night on Saturdays. Taxis are reasonably priced as well and cabbies usually aren't inclined to rip you off. Be prepared for small supplemental charges, however, at night, on holidays and when travelling with luggage or to or from the airport or train station. Finally, the city is very bike friendly. Your hotel can help you with rentals and routes. The red and white "Bicing" bikes so prevalent in the streets are for locals who subscribe to the Bicing service. (See the links to transport sites on the left hand side of this page for more information.)

Tipping: Catalans tend to tip very little or not at all. 5% is generally considered adequate in restaurants. It's not expected that you tip in bars or cabs. If you want to tip, any loose change you might have is usually more than enough.

Be Warned: While Barcelona has relatively little violent crime, pickpockets and purse-snatchers abound, particularly in tourist areas. You don't need to outfit yourself with a money belt and personal alarm system, however; just try not to look like a mark. That means dressing for the city and not like a tourist--you wouldn't walk around your town in little more than a bikini top with a knapsack strapped to your chest, for instance. You should also use reasonable precautions like not leaving bags unattended (I always keep my purse on my lap and never hang it on the back of a chair or leave it sitting on the ground), keeping valuables and money you don't need in the hotel safe and being aware of your surroundings. As there are various scam artists about, you should never (and this should be obvious) hand over your passport to anyone on the street, even if they look like a cop. And, as the Simpsons should have taught you, there is no such thing as a wallet inspector.

On the up side, you might be heartened to know that in my more than two years here I've never been robbed (knock on wood) nor have any of my 40 or so visitors. It's just a matter of being ever so slightly on guard, just like in any city of some size.

El Velódromo Revisited

2009-09-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

You might be interested to know that Felipe and I were finally able to get a table at the Velódromo (c/ Muntaner 213, Eixample, see The Sounder: A Cafe to Love) for something more than a morning coffee. We had attempted to brave the dinner line-up on one or two evenings, but had been unable to resign ourselves to the hour-long wait. Recently, however, we happened to be hungry for lunch at the odd hour of 4:30pm on a Saturday (a fairly late lunch, even by Barcelona standards, where it's common to eat between 2 and 4 pm). The availability of a proper meal at this hour is, in fact, part of what's most convenient about the Velódromo, whose kitchen is open (atypically) from 6am to 3am and where lunch and dinner dishes are served from 1pm on.

In the late afternoon on the weekend, the cafe's pace was easy and the mood slightly hushed. While there were other diners, the place was by no means packed. It was, in fact, the perfect atmosphere in which to linger and relax in the gorgeous high ceilinged space.

When we asked for the menu, the table was prettily laid for us with a white tablecloth, virtually towel-sized napkins and pleasantly heavy silverware. The choice of dishes, while small, was interesting, ranging from stewed tripe to pig's feet (manitas de cerdo) to rabbit to Valencian paella for two. All are traditional favourites. We ordered the paella along with ham croquettes from the tapas menu to start and an exceptionally good flan to finish. The paella, which arrived in an enormous cast iron tureen, was just slightly soupy with lovely bits of rabbit, mushrooms and cuttlefish (sepia) and left us thoroughly satisfied.

I should mention that, while the prices of the competently prepared dishes were in themselves reasonable, the bill quickly added up. This was largely because the beverages are more aggressively priced than is usual and easily amounted to the better part of the cost. Our relatively light meal for two with drinks came to about 37 euros. Whether you consider that reasonable will largely depend on the value you put on the pleasure of dining in such a well turned out spot.

Of Princes and Pescados

2009-09-07T04:16:00.000-07:00

I have a friend whom I dearly love who is currently imprisoned in a tiny cell in an office tower. I imagine him staring wistfully out the window, awaiting his reverse Rapunzel--the sexy warrior princess who throws up her long flaxen hair so that he can secure it to his filing cabinet and climb down into her waiting arms before his blackberry has a chance to send out a vibrating alarm.

Only a short time ago, our imprisoned prince was in Barcelona, basking in the sun pool-side at the Hotel Omm, sampling tapas, quaffing claras (a uniquely Spanish blend of beer and lemon soda), and generally loving life. But it wasn't long before his dark overlords put a stop to all that free-wheeling fun.

Maybe it will make him feel better to recollect his favourite meal. Or maybe it'll just be pouring salt on the wounds. Either way, it was at El Passadis del Pep and spectacular.

El Passadis del Pep (Pla de Palau 2, Born, tel. 93 310 1021, www.passadis.com) is the fancier cousin of Cal Pep, about which I wrote a few months ago: Tapas Basic - Part 1. I had read about it as the location of choice for one of Bono's dinners in Barcelona, not to mention on the Curious Eater blog, which was instructive in its warnings as to what could potentially go wrong with the El Passadis del Pep dining experience.

Those warnings aside, for the moment, El Passadis is an elegant restaurant serving traditional Catalan food. It specializes in seafood in particular. More importantly, dinner at El Passadis was, by our prince's own account, one of the best of his life and was undoubtedly one of my favourite meals in Barcelona--not for inventiveness or audacity, but for the pure joy of exceptionally fresh ingredients simply yet expertly prepared.

Once we were happily ensconced in the bustling dining room, with its rough stone walls and unpretentious charm, the following appeared on our table in quick succession (and, just as quickly, disappeared): A plate of paper thin slices of jamón iberico served with pan con tomate, succulent clams in a garlic broth, sauteed wild mushrooms so good they almost eclipsed the exquisite seafood dishes, pimientos de padrón (small green peppers, some surprisingly spicy), chipirones (baby squid, fried in batter), pescaito frito (fried whitebait), perfect grilled crayfish, the juiciest prawns, a hearty tripe stew (for Felipe), arroz negro (black rice with sepia) and lubina (sea bass), which we ordered at the prince's request, albeit somewhat unnecessarily, on top of the eight substantial dishes that we had already eaten. We shared a crema catalana (Catalan creme brulee) for dessert.

The food was so good that conversation virtually ceased for the duration of the meal. It resumed in the sleepy after glow, helped along by the complimentary chupitos (shots) brought out by our waiter by way of digestif, a welcome piece of tradition that has all but died out in other Barcelona establishments.

And, while we all rolled out of El Passadis drunk, happy and at peace with the bill, I do have a few words of advice that you should heed to avoid the pitfalls of the place (see Curious Eater's summary of those). What you need to know boils down to this: The place has no sign out front so be sure you've found it on a map before venturing out. You will almost certainly need reservations. There is no menu and the waiter will proceed to open a bottle of cava (the first is complimentary) and bring you an eight course meal, all courses emerging in quick succession, before you as much as have a chance to say boo. This is not a scam (I don't think), but it does require virtually instantaneous taking control of the situation if you do not want unwelcome surprises. The waiters, who are very pleasant and speak some English (though it's undoubtedly easier to communicate in Spanish), are very amenable to telling you what's coming and to making changes to the set menu; ours went through the proposed dishes with us in detail. Felipe, who is allergic to shellfish, received divine meat and vegetable dishes to substitute those he could not eat. We were even privy to a table of Israelis ordering a highly complicated, mostly vegetarian meal--why you would do this at El Passadis, whose particular fame is in the world of seafood, is beyond me, but I was impressed that the chef came out to assist with their selections and take note of their restrictions, all this a testament to the aforementioned flexibility.

You should also know that the price is not set and depends on the dishes ultimately selected. You should expect something between 50 and 80 euros per person, depending on the choice of dishes and amount of alcohol you consume. If you need to know in advance precisely what you will be charged, this is not the place for you. If you're lucky, you'll have with you a prince of man, who, with his customary generosity, will insist on picking up the bill.

As for our prince, we wish him many happy dreams of Barcelona and hope that he will be back soon.

Secluded Coves - Cap de Creus

2009-08-28T04:30:00.000-07:00

Possibly my favourite spot in all of Spain is the Cap de Creus (about two hours north of Barcelona by car). Windswept, jagged and wild, the area has some stunning coves with idyllic pebble beaches. Here's a tiny snippet I wrote about one of those beaches, the Platja de Sant Lluís, for The Guardian's on-line Travel section: Top Ten European Beaches by Foot. It's the same spot that I mention in The Sounder: Surrealism Meets Nudism. In the photo above, you can just glimpse the beach between the trees at the bottom of the cliff.

Even in August, when small boats are anchored off-shore, the beach is peaceful and the water absolutely sublime. Off season, when the crowds and pleasure boats of July and August disappear, it's even more delicious.

If you have time to ramble, the same path that leads you to Platja de Sant Lluís continues to the very point of the Cape, branching off to two other rocky coves along the way: the Cala Guillola and the Cala Jugadora.

Inducing Cardiac Arrest

2009-08-27T08:53:00.001-07:00

Before I share this week's secrets for bringing on massive heart failure, I feel the need to disclose a conversation that I had with my parents last week (loosely translated from the original Polish):

"Does the F in your last article mean what we think it means?" (See What the F Do I Do in August?)

"I don't know. What do you think it means?"

"We think we'd better not say, but I don't know if we're going to read your blog anymore."

"Well, I can't pretend that that might not be for the best."

Huff. (I think only partially serious, but you never know.)

To be honest, given the occasional tongue-in-cheek sexual references in my posts, I had thought my parents would have raised a fuss a while ago. This is the couple for whom the "Love Boat" was so racy that my sister and I were banished to our rooms whenever it came on. Who would have figured they would draw a line in the sand over the letter F.

Mom and dad, if you're still secretly reading, you know that I kid. And I'm not just saying that to avoid another huff.

We all have our crosses to bear, I suppose. Parents and finding a place to eat in August are only a small drop in the cross bucket.

By the way, Cinc Sentits and Gaig are reopening this week after their respective August breaks, in case you need a nice place to go before the reopening of all and sundry in September. However, I don't know how easy it will be to get a table anywhere this weekend as some 25,000 cardiologists descend on the city and, despite all the hoo-ha about heart health, I've heard that they're a group that likes to eat well.

On the up side, if you were planning a cardiac arrest (infarto), this is the weekend for it. So, go ahead, load up on the McFoie burgers at Carles Abellan's Tapaç24. You might also try La Bodegueta's (Rambla de Catalunya 100) giant plate of delectably runny "smashed" eggs (their translation of huevos estrellados, not mine), served over french fried potatoes. Consider Bar Boquería if you like options when it comes to artery clogging: start with a plateful of succulent short ribs smothered in a meaty sauce; then get the exquisite albóndigas (meatballs), also nestled in their own sauce, this time tomato; follow that up with a thick butifarra sausage or a fragrant morcilla; and, for good measure, order the choricitos (small spicy sausages flavoured with paprika) in cider and tell the waiter to keep them coming. Roll out of there and up to the Festa Major de Sants where, if you're really, really lucky, you'll come across street meat of the type pictured above.

I know, I know, I haven't given the deep fried its due. Well, I reckon you could go for as many ham croquetas as you can swallow at Inopia or the patatas bravas with their twin sauces of "hot" and "mayo" at Bar Tomás (c/ Major de Sarriá 49), reputedly the best bravas in Barcelona. My sweet tooth, however, tells me that the sugar-sprinkled, straight-out-of-the-hot-oil churros at the Xurreria (c/Banys Nous 4, more or less) or the cream filled xuxos at the Forn de Sant Jaume (Rambla de Catalunya 50) are by far the most satisfying bets.

So, there you have it, a uniquely Barcelonian recipe for an infarto. Cardiologists, stand by. Let the keeling over begin!

The Sounder: Fiesta Anyone?

2009-08-20T04:47:00.001-07:00

Gràcia is alive with the sound of music, merrymaking and squeals of delight these days as the Festa Major fills its narrow streets. It's just the first of August and September's many neighbourhood parties. Read all about it in the Sounder: Fiesta Anyone?

And, while I have your attention, allow me to quell any fears that my thoughts have forever drifted from my beloved pastime of eating. In fact, I promise to return to writing about food and all its pleasures shortly. We've been sampling new restaurants aplenty with our various visitors this summer and it will be my pleasure to tell you all about them. Just not right at this moment. But soon. Very soon.

What the F Do I Do in August?

2009-08-15T03:32:00.000-07:00

You might have seen the signs: "Tancat per vacances" or "Cerrado por vac-aciones" (Closed for vacation). They're on every second store and restaurant front in Barcelona in August. The city shuts down almost entirely this month as its overworked denizens take their holidays en masse.

It might seem like a terrible time to visit the city and, in some ways, it is. Those who describe themselves as foodies, for example, will find many of their A-list restaurants closed (Gaig and Cinc Sentits until Aug. 24/25; Alkimia, Moo, Cal Pep and Quimet y Quimet until Sep.; or so I believe, please double check). In addition, a smaller selection of shops is open in city markets.

On the other hand, August is also absolutely perfect. Generally, the city is quieter, less bustling and finding a spot on a patio isn't as challenging as it is in July. While the days may be a little sweaty, the warm evenings are absolutely delicious. What's more, all the museums remain open and, between neighbourhood fiestas and free outdoor activities, there's plenty to keep one occupied.

Here's a glimpse at what's available:

Festa Major de Gracia et al. - starting today and ending next weekend, Gracia streets will be decorated with everything from plastic bottles to CDs in recreations of Wonderland, Japan and God knows what else as the neighbourhood celebrates its popular fiesta. (Last year's decorations are pictured at the top of this post.) Look for musical performances, parades and other fiesta favourites such as castellers (human castles) and gigantes (giants). For details, brush up on your Catalan and check www.festamajordegracia.cat. Note that just as the Festa Major de Gracia ends, the Festa Major de Sants begins (Aug. 22 to 29). Check the schedule here: Festa Major de Sants.

Gandules at the CCCB - As mentioned in a prior post, on Tuesdays, Wednes-days and Thursdays in August, the CCCB offers free movies; this year's theme is Playing Cinema and focuses on the connection between movies and music. Seating is limited so get there early. In fact, I would recommend that you line up before the doors open at 9pm if you are to have any hope of snagging a seat. Here's a link to the schedule: Gandules.

Movies on the beach - The Platja de Sant Sebastia offers movies every Thursday this August (a short followed by a full length feature). The shows start at 9:30pm, I believe. I say this because I wasn't able to find a link that says otherwise. You'll just have to trust me. It goes without saying that you need a blanket and a bottle of wine.

Music at the Caixa Forum - The Caixa Forum offers a free concert series at c/ Marques de Comillas 6-8 on August Wednesdays. Look for Scottish folk on the 19th and Catalan gospel-soul (yes, weird) on the 26th. There are two performances of each (8pm and 10pm). You'll find more information here: CaixaForum Summer Concerts.

Music in Ciutadella Park - While the selection is not as ample as in July, the Music in the Parks concert series continues with jazz on August Fridays at 10pm in Ciutadella Park. Bring a blanket and a picnic dinner. Here is a link to the concert schedule (see second last page; divendres=Friday): Music in the Parks.

Music at La Pedrera - Unlike the other offerings, this one carries a cost of 7 euros a ticket, but it does give you the pleasure of enjoying half an hour of classical music on any given day in August at 7pm, 8pm or 9pm at Gaudi's Pedrera. Tickets can be purchased at the Pedrera ticket office on the day of the concert or at www.telentrada.com. For more information (albeit in Catalan), click here: Mas i Mas.

Restaurants - In terms of restaurants, the Carles Abellán set remains open throughout August--that's Comerç24 (reserve early), Tapaç24 and the newly opened Velódromo. So do most of the restaurants in the Grupo de Tragaluz: Agua, Bar Lobo, and Cuines Santa Caterina have all been reviewed here. Of the tapas joints, the Bar Boquería remains humming, so does the Cerveseria Catalana, Bar Mut, De Tapa Madre and chains like Taller de Tapas and Lonja de Tapas. Also try El Salón (see address and map) for a romantic supper in the depths of the Barrio Gotico (reserve on the patio to soak in an interesting neighbourhood atmosphere that includes everything from surprisingly talented buskers to the harmlessly insane or eat in the charming dining room) and Set Portes (www.7portes.com) in the Old Port for fabulous paella. The restaurants in the Port and along the beach remain open throughout the summer; of these, I like Agua and Merendero de la Mari best.

Oh, and don't forget to picnic and gorge yourself on ice cream. There are absolutely no impediments to either of those activities in August. In fact, I would say that, just this month, they're completely calorie-free.

If you have other thoughts about what to do in the city in August, please, please, please post a comment!

(* The links provided in this article are either to prior posts on the same subject (esp. re restaurants) or to external websites providing more information on a given activity. Let yourself be surprised.)

Barcelona Travel Tips - What to See Primer

2009-08-12T04:54:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I always find it stupefying when people ask me what to see in Barcelona. Not in the "we've seen all the major tourist attractions and are now looking for something off the beaten track" sense, but in the "we've heard that there's some famous architecture around here, what and where is it?" sense.

The latter happens more often than you'd imagine. The other day, for example, an American tourist, who started chatting to us on the beach (and who'd already spent two days in Barcelona), asked me about "the Guadi": "We haven't been to the Guadi yet. Where is the Gaudi?" This was pronounced as if Gaudi were some giant monument, cruise ship or highway overpass. Despite my misanthropic inclination to point the fellow to a basic guidebook, I explained that Gaudi is not a thing, but a person (now deceased) and that his architecture is found throughout Barcelona. I then showed him how to get to the Sagrada Familia on the map.

A slightly different manifestation of the same problem is the Philadelphia mother who wrote to me lamenting her visiting 18 year old daughter's inability to purchase meat other than ham in Barcelona. If only the poor girl (undoubtedly protein deprived to the point of near collapse) could just find a can of tuna somewhere, she moaned. I pointed her to a grocery store--any grocery store. But I'm getting off track.

This entry is for my American friend and others like him who need a little primer about what to see in Barcelona. Forgive me if I hit only the highlights.

It's barely debatable that the best way to experience Barcelona is through its architecture (a.k.a. "the Gaudi"). While the city boasts everything from gothic churches to phallic glass towers, it is best known for its art nouveau aesthetic--dubbed "modernista" around these parts,--which is best exemplified by the works of Antoni Gaudi...genius, architect, eccentric.

Gaudi's fairytale buildings capture the inimitable spirit of Barcelona. Dragon scaled Casa Batlló and stone faced Casa Milá (also known as La Pedrera, pictured above at right) vie for attention on the fashionable Passeig de Gracia. The caleidoscope tiles of Parc Guell, Gaudi’s failed garden city come urban playground, beckon from further north. And, after years under renovation, one of Gaudi's first projects, the Palau Guell, is finally open to visitors again (currently, only the basement and main floor can be seen; to compensate, the visit is free).

Gaudi's masterpiece, however, is the Sagrada Familia (pictured at top). The unfinished cathedral is likely to be another century in the making as construction plods along at a snail’s pace—official projections for completion range between 20 and 50 years. Even so, walking inside the spectacular church, with its soaring columns of sunflowers and dappled pools of light, is a revelation, somewhere between entering a living forest and boarding an alien spaceship.

While Gaudi’s contemporaries may never have overtaken him in sheer brilliance of design, Barcelona is richer for their attempts to do so. Domenech i Montaner’s Hospital de Sant Pau (pictured at left), for example, whose tiled maternity and gastroenterology pavilions--topped with patron saints and flowers--continue to function, and his Palau de la Musica Catalana, a music hall lit by an inverse pyramid of multicoloured glass, are brilliant examples of other iconic efforts. The best way to see the latter is to purchase tickets for a concert; if you can't manage that, the one hour tour is worthwhile, but book ahead because popular times, especially for the English language tour, sell out quickly.

Picasso, who lived in Barcelona between 1895 and 1904--his formative years—also left his stamp on the city. A walking tour available through the Barcelona tourist office takes you on a tour of Picasso’s Barcelona, finishing at the Picasso Museum, which is built mainly around works from the artist’s early years. After visiting the museum, take yourself back in time by having lunch at Els Quatre Gats, Picasso’s favourite restaurant. Perhaps the food isn't quite what it used to be, but the lunch menu is reasonably priced and the elaborate high ceilinged interior and stained glass windows (by another of Barcelona's great architects, Puig i Caldefach) remain much as they were in Picasso's time.

If Picasso makes you crave more modern art, Joan Miró and Frederic Tàpies are two Catalan artists with entire museums devoted to them. And, if diversity is what you're seeking, the MACBA, Barcelona's modern art museum, has it in spades, along with a spectacular modern building by Richard Meier, now the city's best loved skateboarding ramp.

More into ancient times? Barcelona's cathedral, a mishmash of architectural styles, is worth a look. Its cloisters, where pretty white geese roam free, are particularly charming. If you're there on a Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon, you may see Catalans dancing the sardana; please don't join in, they take the dance very seriously and, because the steps are highly complicated, you'll only throw them off in your friendly attempts to be part of the fun. Just behind the cathedral, off the Plaça del Rei where heretics were once burned at the stake, is the History Museum; the museum's below ground display of excavated Roman ruins is awe inspiring. On the other side of Via Laietana, the more somber Santa Maria del Mar gets the most votes for best gothic church.

You shouldn't miss the markets, of course: the Boquería is a favourite with tourists and a must see for the sheer spectacle. But, if you want something more representative of what it's actually like to go shopping as a local, try the Mercat de Santa Caterina, with its distinctive multi-coloured roof and modern interior.

Break up your days by relaxing on Barcelona's man-made beaches (as an alternative to touristy Barceloneta, try Bogatell or Mar Bella, the latter if you want to go fully nude) or forget the beach and lounge in the shade of Ciutadella Park.

And, with one hand on your wallet, don't forget to walk down Las Ramblas to the Old Port where Columbus points to the New World (pictured above at right). Las Ramblas, with its human statutes and stalls selling everything from flowers to roosters, is dirty, garish and packed, but it's also emblematic of Barcelona. You shouldn't leave without seeing it at least once. Just promise me that you will never ever eat in any of its dodgy cafes.

(* Note that the links in this post will take you to the official sites of the tourist attractions mentioned. There you can find the most up to date information about hours, prices and location. Most sites allow you to change the language of the text, usually at the top right hand side of any given page.)

The Sounder: A Café to Love

2009-08-11T06:44:00.000-07:00

Early in July, Bar Velódromo (c/ Muntaner 213, Eixample)--in its essence, a café/bar--opened in Barcelona. You could tell by the sheer volume of pre-opening buzz that this was not just any café/bar. Columnists whose regular beats were politics and scandal began writing about the Velódromo, the good old days and the fun on the horizon.

In fact, the Velódromo, a venerable part of Barcelona's history, once home to artists and revolutionaries, did not as much open as re-open. After the retirement of its last owner in 2000, the Velódromo, which first came onto the Barcelona scene in 1933, closed. It was shortly purchased by the Moritz brewery, whose mark can also be seen on Albert Adria's Inopia Bar. Moritz, in collaboration with Carles Abellán, who heads up the delectable Comerç24 and Tapaç24, undertook renovations that, to the dismay of neighbourhood residents, lasted for some six years and only this year began to see their end. The result seems to have been worth it, however, as the renos have added even more luster to the legendary Barcelona establishment.

The new and improved Velódromo is indeed terrific. It is open 365 days a year. It serves up a good cup of tea, which can be tough to get in Barcelona. The eggs are available all day and at the right consistency: that is to say, somewhat runny. And, there's a great selection of Catalan comfort food, which I haven't yet tried because they don't start serving the more substantial dishes until 1pm and we haven't yet seen a dinner hour at the Velódromo where the wait wasn't an hour or more for a table. But this is a small quibble and I'm hoping that things will change when they open the upstairs dining room. [To read about lunch at the Velódromo, see El Velódromo Revisited.]

It's also worth mentioning that the Velódromo is currently virtually tourist-free (if you like that sort of thing) as it has yet to be featured in the latest guides. To read more about it in the Sounder, click here: A Café to Love.

The Sounder: Second Best

2009-08-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

I have to confess, I've been holding out on you. I ate at El Celler de Can Roca a little over a month ago and I didn't post a thing about it. Girona's Can Roca, just an hour and a half outside of Barcelona, is one of the best restaurants in Spain (it currently holds the number five spot in Restaurant Magazine's list of the world's best restaurants) and is undoubtedly in my personal top five. It deserves a detailed post and you will get one, but for now, click here to take a peek at what I wrote about it for the Sounder: Second Best.

The Sounder: Cinema Under the Stars

2009-07-30T04:18:00.000-07:00

Summer nights in Barcelona: the heat of the day is just dissipating, you can almost glimpse stars in the city sky and you'd love to kick your feet up and melt into the night. It's the perfect moment for cinema a la fresca and Barcelona has some of the best on offer. Click here to read about this summer's line up in the Sounder: Cinema Under the Stars. And, should you want to bring a picnic (especially to Sala de Montjuic, which is a picnicker's dream), here's a link to one of my prior posts for ideas: A Picnic in Heaven.

Saaaaaaaaale!

2009-07-29T04:11:00.000-07:00

There is a crazy law here in Spain that you cannot advertise a sale outside of the months of January and July. The law has been much maligned, and this year transgressed, as shop owners vie for the last of the "expendable income" customers in the face of a seemingly never ending financial crisis.

The upside of this antiquated legal regime? Anticipation. Not to mention aggressive competition in the price slashing department, which in the last couple of weeks has translated into discounts of up to 70% on some truly irresistible trifles.

Like any other moderately style conscious girl on a budget, I am a sucker for a sale. Shopping gives me a tingle that even true love can't fully replace. So much so that, when my replacement VISA arrived this year in the giddy first days of sale season, I gave it a grateful little kiss.

Needless to say, despite best efforts to stay on cordial terms with my creditors, I sometimes over do it a little. Not unlike when it comes to eating, really. I am ashamed to say that what is pictured is only a fraction of my sale pirate's booty. It was all 70% off, though, which sort of makes it the fat free ice cream of the retail world. And you can eat all you want of that, right?

In case you too find it hard to resist the siren call of "up to 70% off" in the final days of sale season and aren't sure where to find the best places to shop in Barcelona, here is my "must hit" list. Click on the name of the store for more information and locations.

Coquette - whimsical jewellery, belts and designers like Chloe See and Barbara Bui in a beautiful bonbon of a store
Hoss Intropia - creative handbags, shoes and the loveliest day and evening dresses; designed by Spaniards
Mushi Mushi - pretty tops and bottoms, sassy lingerie and fashionable bike helmets
Sita Murt - elegant day and evening wear as well as a very respectable collection of hand bags designed by the Catalan Sita Murt
Cotelac - ingeniously constructed dresses and layering pieces in reputedly the only Spanish outpost of this French chain
Comptoir des Cotonniers - casual cotton separates with a French flair
TCN - teeny bathing suits and filmy cover ups of Spanish design
Como Agua de Mayo - drool-worthy shoes and accessories as well as a selection of women's separates
Capricho de Muñeca - hand-made wallets and handbags
Jour & Nuit - funky women's clothing in fashion mega-mall, L'Illa

The Sounder: Surrealism Meets Nudism

2009-07-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

I recently started writing for the Sounder, an on-line travel magazine put out by the charming folks who run Trufflepig, travel consultants extraordinaire. Here's a link to my first post about exploring the Cape of Creus, just north of Barcelona: Surrealism Meets Nudism.

Barcelona Travel Tips - Where to Stay

2009-07-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

The two year anniversary of my time in Barcelona came and went earlier this month with little more than a wayward "hmmm, two years" flitting through my mind. And, just as I'm starting to contemplate a return to Canada, I at last feel capable of giving some reasonably reliable travel tips to the strangers and friends who email me or leave comments requesting advice that's more concrete than the usually random ramblings of my blog.

The Travel Tips series of posts is intended as a compilation of my accumulated wisdom on various Barcelona related topics. Rely on it at your own risk, of course.

Where to Stay

While I've never addressed where to stay on this blog, I have developed some thoughts on the subject. These are largely based on my experience as a resident of Barcelona and user of hotel pools at the invitation of generous friends, rather than as a hotel guest. So, please, take my recommendations with a grain of salt and share your own, if you have any.

My first and best piece of advice is that you studiously avoid Las Ramblas, and the Gotico and Raval areas in general, when arranging for accommodations. With few exceptions (like, say, the Casa Camper and Barceló Raval), the hotels in these areas are below par and have to contend with more challenges to peace and quiet than the average Barcelona residence. The Raval and the Gotico are also where you're most likely to get your pocket picked and step in vomit all in the same 24 hours. That's not to say that you shouldn't visit, just that you may not want to make them your hub.

If I were a tourist, I would stay in the Eixample. It's central, close to restaurants and shopping and riddled with Gaudi masterpieces. Barceloneta and the Ports are nice if you like to be close to the beach, but are a little disconnected from the rest of the city. The Born is a good in-between area--it's still part of the old town and relatively close to the beach, but avoids some of the worst excesses of the Gotico. Other areas (Montjuic, Diagonal Mar, Forum, Sarria) are not central and typically less convenient; lodgings in these areas are usually more appropriate for business travelers or conference and concert goers.

In terms of hotels, in the Eixample, the sleek Omm, with its flash restaurant, Moo, is very nice and its rooftop terrace has a stunning view of Gaudi's Pedrera. The opulent Casa Fuster is an art nouveau masterpiece perched at the top of Paseo de Gracia with a lounge right out of the movies--actually, right out of Woody Allen's "Vicky Christina Barcelona". The Hotel Claris is very comfortable and I've heard good things about the Prestige, the Hotel Pulitzer and the Cram, the latter only if you don't mind small rooms. All of the above are for those whose wallets are thick. On the (slightly) more affordable end of things and nestled a little further off Paseo de Gracia is the quiet Hotel 987.

If you must be on the beach, the soaring Hotel Arts is where the stars stay--U2 and Madonna most recently. It has the best hotel pool in all of central Barcelona, no contest. It is, however, painfully expensive. Rates may fall when the much anticipated W opens on the other end of the Barceloneta boardwalk in October. It is known to the locals, who have been watching construction for several years now, as the Hotel Vela, a reference to its sail-like shape. Just so that you can assure yourselves that it's true, I've included a photo of construction's progress.

A couple of more affordable offerings can be found in the Born. I often recommend Chic & Basic Born (pictured at top) and Banys Orientals, both of which are small boutique hotels that usually have rooms for under 100 euros.

For the more budget conscious traveller, I would suggest the Market Hotel, which has pretty rooms starting at 50-60 euros. It is reasonably well connected to the centre, but is not in a comely part of the city. While the area is not unsafe, it may make those unaccustomed to the seedy a little uncomfortable when walking at night.

Another option for those on a budget is to rent an apartment. Loads are on offer in Barcelona and the recession has made it a renter's market. Quality is variable, however, and you have to be careful about illegal rentals (the majority). These are usually the bane of the existence of many local residents and you may not only be in for a very unwelcoming reception, but end up being cited as part of the reason for the housing crisis that many Barcelona residents are facing. If you do want to try this route, make sure you get all the details first. You can start your search by looking at the short term rentals section of www.loquo.com, a Barcelona Craig's List.

By the way, this summer, Barcelonians have been treated to virtually daily articles about how tourism is down and rates in many of the city's hotels are plummeting; some of the most luxe lodgings have slashed up to 70% off their rack rates. It appears that last minute bookings are a particularly good way to get the best deals.

Coming up next: What to See.

I Heart Fountain Cheese

2009-07-20T03:29:00.001-07:00

I'd like to be able to say that I'm exclusively a fan of cheese in its edible form. I keep a safe distance from Las Ramblas and its gaudy human statues whenever I can. I never assent to have my caricature sketched for a price, though I will happily accept one gratis from an artistic friend. Nor do I allow others to purchase roses for me in bars; admittedly, that's largely because it's been a while since anyone has offered.

Yet, there is one piece of Barcelona cheese that I readily gobble up, rind and all. The cheese I refer to, of course, is the oozing triple cream of La Fuente Mágica (The Magic Fountain), whose effusive jets dance on summer evenings to the tune of various classical masterpieces blaring at a volume that threatens to wake the dead. As if that weren't enough, the entire spurting, swirling, misting extravaganza is illuminated with coloured lights to the delight of the tourist hordes crowding the steps up to the MNAC on the Plaça Espanya side of Montjuic mountain.

And I, long a lover of ecstatically erupting liquids on hot summer nights, cannot deny that I voyeuristically relish the spectacle.

(From May to September, there are multiple iterations of the show from Thursday to Sunday between roughly 9pm and 11pm. During the rest of the year, the shows are limited to Friday and Saturday between roughly 7pm and 9pm. There is no charge for this guilty pleasure.)

Ice Cream Days Are Back

2009-07-19T04:27:00.001-07:00

I love Sundays in Barcelona. Shops are closed. Streets are hushed. Church bells are ringing. Elderly couples are out walking hand in hand. Families are dining together at home on their terraces. It's as if the city were taking a gentle nap until Monday when it once again assumes its twin mantles of bustle and fiesta.

So, it was unexpected that this particular quiet Sunday brought a momentous revelation. We had just finished reading the paper and licking the last bits of foam off of the spoons of our cafes con leche on the shady terrace of the Bar Virreina (Plaça Virreina), when we decided to stop by one of our usual ice cream haunts, Amorino, for a modest scoop.

As of last year, Amorino was number two on our list of best ice cream shops in Barcelona. Today, however, with the first licks of the crema crocante petals and the amaretto interior of our flower shaped scoop (pictured), it became clear that Amorino had shot ahead of the competition.

I don't know if it was the delicate flavour or the impossible creaminess or the simple loveliness of the shape that convinced us, but Amorino is number one this year, no question. It is still closely followed by Cremería Toscana. And we've brought back La Campana after last summer's boycott, primarily because we've discovered another location, not far from the one on Princesa, where the staff are more amiable and where an outdoor terrace provides the ideal spot for kicking your feet up after a day of shopping in the Born.

If you're keeping track, here are this year's standings:

1. Amorino (Gran de Gracia 53, Gracia), favourite flavours: amaretto, crema crocante
2. Cremería Toscana (c/ Muntaner 161, Eixample, and Canvis Vells 2, hidden near Santa Maria del Mar, Born), favourite flavour: cinnamon
3. Gelaaati! (c/Llibreteria 7, Gotico)
4. La Campana (c/ Princesa 36 and terrace on c/ de Flassaders 15, Born), favourite flavours: cherries with dark chocolate, cookie dough
5. Gelateria Caffetteria Italiana (Plaça Revolució 2, Gracia)

Tapas - Different

2009-07-17T01:00:00.000-07:00

Difference is a matter of perception, but, in a relatively homo-genous society like Spain, it's pointed out all the time, usually not as a point of favour. Sameness is more comfortable, after all. Comfortable, if a little dull.

The tapas bars in the different category take the baby steps approach to introducing difference into the still relatively closed ranks of Spanish tapas. The plates are still small, the names play on the familiar, and even the ingredients are generally recognizable. The resulting tapas, however, are usually, and in varying degrees, different, introducing new cooking techniques, unusual combinations and a whisper of the international. Here are a handful of spots that manage to do all this more or less successfully, in no particular order:

Samsara (c/ Terol 6, Gracia, tel. 93 285 36 88, open Tuesday to Sunday) - The state of samsara in Hinduism and Buddhism is linked to the concept of reincarnation and refers to a purely corporeal existence in which one is as yet unaware of the true spiritual self and is mired in (or pleasured by, depending on your perspective) the physical world. The restaurant of Samsara, on the other hand, is a place that serves an eclectic mixture of small plates, with deep karmic bows to Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American cuisine, and tries to plug into a casual boho chic atmosphere. The former it does brilliantly with inexpensive stunners like pesto topped sweet potatoes (a variation on traditional patatas bravas) and light salads as well as more ambitious specials like tuna tartar and grilled Argentinian beef. The atmosphere, by contrast, falls a little short in terms of both appearance and comfort--I suppose as a reminder of our worldly suffering--and, whereas I don't mind the boho, the place could use a little more chic. Given it's tiny prices and generally delicious food, however, to take away points for looks is just plain mean. Our last small meal of three satisfying tapas and wine for two ran us about 20 euros. I recommend reserving a table in the evening, particularly Thursday through Saturday.

Sureny (Plaça Revolució De Setembre De 1868 17, Gracia, tel. 93 213 75 56, open Tuesday to Sunday) - Virtually around the corner from Samsara, and a good option if you are turned away from the former for lack of space, is Sureny. I've never seen Sureny full and, really, I'm not sure why that is. The tapas--a few traditional, others more exotic--are always of high quality and the prices are generally reasonable, if not outright cheap. Dinner for four with a bottle of wine, 8 or 9 tapas (including tuna sashimi marinated in soy and ginger, sesame crusted chicken satay, duck breast caneloni, and a sautee of shrimp and wild mushrooms), two desserts and coffees came to about 90 euros last time. Perhaps Sureny is not bursting at the seams with diners because there are better value spots in the immediate vicinity or perhaps because, between its bright lighting and uninspired decor, it's a little low on charm. Its terrace on the kid-friendly Plaça de la Revolución is a good option in the summer, however, and, if you go, I have no doubt you'll like the food.

Ginger (C/ Palma de Sant Just 1, Gotico, open Tuesday to Saturday) - There are good places left to eat and drink in the Gotico. They may be few and far between, but they do exist. Ginger is one of them. Primarily, Ginger, presided over by a sometimes surly Englishwoman who very well could be the eponymous Ginger (I haven't bothered to ask), is a somewhat smoky, extremely atmospheric, retro-chic, old school cocktail bar for young(ish) people. And, if you want to stop at cocktails, no one will think anything of it. However, you will have seriously missed out on Ginger's fantastic tapas. There are a few traditional favourites like pa amb tomaquet/pan con tomate (bread rubbed with tomato) and embotits/embutidos (cured meats), but the stars are the more elaborate plates, which include butifarra (sausage) flamed in orujo, seared foie gras and wild mushroom ravioli. Prices range from about 4 to 10 euros per tapa.

Santa Maria (C/ Comerç 17, Born, tel. 93 315 12 27, www.santamania.info) - I hesitate to mention Santa Maria in this post because it is the one of the few places in Barcelona in which I've spent a lot and left hungry. The atmosphere is a nice mix of fun and "dimly lit", but the tapas (with strong Asian, especially Japanese, influences), while expertly prepared and attractively plated, are tiny in size and, for that reason, priced a little too ambitiously. I must also admit that we struggled to order enough for a table of three; granted, one of the diners was not a shellfish/raw fish eater, which limited the choices, but still. I suppose the answer would have been to order multiple portions of each plate, but again, we come back to the price. It's not a bad option if you're careless with money, on a diet or stuck for a place to go; however, there are better value choices in the area.

Tour de France Now in Spain

2009-07-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Tour de France blew into Barcelona today for the first time since bringing a little life to the repressed streets of Franco's Spain in 1965. It will cycle right back out tomorrow.

So as to distract you from my lack of tapas posts, here's a shot I took of the leader, David Millar, as the tour entered Barcelona's rain soaked Passeig Sant Joan this afternoon.

To link to information about the Barcelona leg of the tour and tomorrow's schedule, click here: www.bcn.cat/tour.

Tapas Menu - Take 3 (Montaditos)

2009-07-07T00:24:00.000-07:00

I'm melting, my pretties, meeeelting! A heat wave has yet again taken hold of Barcelona and environs and I'm doing my best to remain corporeally intact while the thermometer grazes 35 degrees Celsius.

Actually, the heat broke a little today and, after a sprinkling of rain, the city once again feels a little less like the surface of the sun and a little more like a planet with an atmosphere that allows for seasons other than hell.

The kind of heat that settles on Spain in the summers calls for minimal cooking and lighter meals than usual. Even Felipe, who can usually put away three times as much as I can, feels a little wan when faced with the prospect of eating a large meal these days. So, we've resorted to montaditos on some of our evenings in.

A staple of most tapas bars, montaditos are small, open-faced sandwiches. Really, they're canapés with a better name, one that doesn't make you feel like you're dining with society matrons.

At a tapas bar, you're likely to be faced with an abundance of choice. Some sell montaditos as pinchos, small tapas skewered with toothpicks that you retain on your plate and count at the end of the night to determine the bill. Others, tired of the boors who conveniently lose toothpicks to benefit their wallets, let you point and choose, but don't leave it to you to keep count.

As delightful as montaditos are to sample in a tapas bar, nothing could be simpler than making your own at home. All you need is a loaf of bread, preferably a baguette, though a small ciabatta will also do, and a variety of toppings. I prefer the bread sliced relatively thinly (about a quarter inch thick) and lightly toasted, but there's no real need to toast if the bread is of good quality and fresh. If you do decide to toast, you can pop the bread slices under your oven's grill for 2 minutes (until slightly golden) and brush with olive oil once you've removed them.

The sky's the limit in terms of toppings. The ones shown in the photo above are a mixture of classics and "lo que hay" (what there is), i.e. what was available based on the contents of our fridge. Clockwise from left:

(1) Fresh goat cheese topped with sweet pepper chutney and walnuts - the sweet pepper chutney can be replaced with a tomato confit, port jelly or honey.

(2) Tuna with lemon, capers and mayonnaise - the tuna should be oil packed and of high quality; I added a tablespoon of mayonnaise to a small (50g) can, a teaspoon of chopped capers, and half a teaspoon of grated lemon rind as well as a teaspoon of lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste; you can also toss in a teaspoon of chopped, fresh flat leaf parsley.

(3) Pan con tomate (see The Tapas Episode) topped with sliced embutidos (charcuterie) - in this case, I used fuet (a peppery cured pork sausage), but chorizo, lomo (cured pork loin), and jamón (ibérico or serrano ham) are also popular choices.

(4) Roasted eggplant (see The Charred and the Seedless) with tahini and fresh cilantro - this eggplant was really an impromptu babaganoush; I took a small roasted eggplant, removed the skin and chopped the flesh, added about a teaspoon of lemon (to taste), one and a half tablespoons of tahini, a finely grated small clove of garlic and salt to taste; I topped the eggplant with chopped fresh cilantro.

(5) Roasted peppers (see The Charred and the Seedless) on pan con tomate (see The Tapas Episode), topped with anchovies and green olives - the higher quality the anchovies and olives the better; in particular, you want to stay away from anchovies that are overly salty.

Other ideas, some inspired by my favourite Barcelona bars, are (6) smoked salmon over cream cheese or thick yogurt topped with capers and lemon rind (inspired by Quimet i Quimet, see Tapas - Basic - Part 1); (7) paté or foie gras topped with caramelized onions (Quimet i Quimet, see Tapas - Basic - Part 1); (8) slices of tortilla (see The Tapas Episode) on pan con tomate (see The Tapas Episode) sprinkled with sea salt and finely chopped parsley; (9) sauteed mushrooms (see Tapas Menu - Take 2) with thyme topped with gruyere and broiled in the oven; (10) smoked mackrel or trout topped with a green olive tapenade and quartered cherry tomatoes; (11) white bean dip (see Dipping into White Beans) sprinkled with chopped spring onions; (12) grilled chorizo over thinly sliced green apple drizzled with maple syrup; (13) manchego cheese topped with sliced fresh figs and drizzled with honey; (14) grilled peach quarters or apricot halves wrapped in jamón serrano and drizzled with maple syrup; (15) tomato slices topped with fresh mozarella, salt, a dollop of pesto and a basil leaf; (16) skewers of 2-3 shelled fresh prawns, salted, brushed with oil and grilled (1 minute or so on each side) served over toasted bread smeared with a dollop of allioli (inspired by Cerveseria Catalana, see Tapas - Basic - Part 2).

Postponed

2009-06-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

Due to excessive enjoyment of self in northern Catalunya this week, the remainder of the Tapas Month entries will be posted in July. For the next few days, I intend to while away my days skinny-dipping in the rocky coves of the Costa Brava, climbing the Pyrenees, and skulking around cava vineyards.

San Juan

2009-06-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

It was a year and two days ago that I met Felipe at the verbena de San Juan (Sant Joan in Catalan), the all night party prior to the day of San Juan on June 24th. The verbena is a celebration of the shortest night of the year, somewhat belatedly, mind you, as the summer solstice in fact usually occurs on June 21st. In Catalunya, the night is celebrated with street bonfires (hogueras; fogueres in Catalan) and an inebriated beach party complete with DIY pyrotechnics, which every year rob the citizens of Barcelona of some three hundred eyes and fingers.

Like New Year's Eve in North America, la verbena de San Juan is the night on which the past is laid to rest, as symbolized by the burning of old possessions, and a new beginning is ushered in to the booming sound of fireworks. These, unlike in the blithely litigious and highly regulated world across the Atlantic, are randomly set off by the young and the dim witted in every imaginable corner, giving the city the sound and smoke filled look of war torn Bosnia.

It's also a night when sex is in the air and the atmosphere is rife with expectation. Everyone, from the packs of pink British boys to the bronzed American blondes to the scantily clothed Brazilians of both genders, wants some. And, on the night of San Juan, they're likely to get some, particularly if they wait long enough. By 4 or 5am, with the joints smoked and the ecstasy dissolved and the bottles dry, there's little to do in the sand other than kiss. And 6am, when the weary police enter to disperse the crowds and make room for the dutiful clean up crews, is the moment to take your San Juan sweetheart home, bobbing alongside you like the magical, if slightly deflated, balloon your parents tied to your wrist at the town fair so many years ago.

Of course, if you're anything like me, you won't let your new love upstairs after the two hour walk home from the beach, leading the excessively proud gentleman, or lady, as the case may be, to refuse your number and walk off in a huff. If that should happen to you, don't worry. Repentance for actions taken in haste is swift. In other words, you may get your fairy tale ending yet.

Tapas - Basic - Part 2

2009-06-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

If you're on your way to Barcelona, you'll be happy to know that the heat has broken and the rage-meter is again ticking along at a reasonable level, somewhere between slight misanthropy and grudging contentment. You might also benefit from the remaining recommendations in the basic tapas category.

I wouldn't necessarily think of these spots as the burnished steeds of Barcelona tapas; they're more like the work horses, really--serviceable, hard working and, generally, very busy.

Cerveseria Catalana (C/ Mallorca 236, tel. 932 160 368, Eixample)- I have to confess that--partly because of its convenient location, partly because Felipe and I are now morning regulars and it would be a shame to mess with that relationship--Cerveseria Catalana is my go-to place for inexpensive tapas of reliable quality. It's also the go-to place for half of Barcelona. In the summer, you'll find crowds spilling out onto the side walk. Because of the high turn over, there's nothing stale or sub-par here and the tapas basics, as well as the montaditos, which are put out at around 6pm and priced at a bargain 1.25 euros for the most part, are a thorough survey of the traditional favourites; seafood dishes and daily specials are usually especially tasty. Cerveseria Catalana is also handy because it opens at around 830am (9am on weekends) and stays open right through to midnight; useful if you've missed the usual lunch hour (130pm-400pm) or if you want to eat dinner earlier than the average Spaniard (i.e. before 930pm-10pm). Bar seats are hunt and swoop; for an indoor table, you have to give your name to the hostess, who will call you when your table is ready; there's a separate list for outdoor tables, maintained by one of the men in blue at the door. If you arrive after 9pm, the wait can be as long as an hour for a table, but you can always order a few drinks from the bar while you're waiting. (By the way, Ciudad Condal, a little further down Rambla Catalunya and under the same ownership, has similar tapas offerings and a terrace well suited to people watching, but for some reason, I never seem to end up there.)

Bar Mundial (Plaça de Sant Agusti Vell 1, tel. 933 199 056, Born) - When I took my sister and her boyfriend to Bar Mundial last year, the first few minutes in the low ceilinged back room of this scruffy joint provoked some purse-lipped disapproval. Things changed, however, when the steaming parillada, a mixed seafood grill, came out. The seafood is simply, but exquisitely done and is without a doubt Bar Mundial's specialty; in fact, there's little else to choose from on the menu, so don't go if you have an aversion to the beasts of the sea. Bar Mundial does take reservations and it's worth making some on the weekend as it fills up quickly. If you get claustrophobic in poorly ventilated, windowless spaces, ask to be seated in the front room rather than the dingy back.

El Xampanyet (C/ Montcada 22, tel. 933 197 003, Born) - If you've ever walked down the Born's Calle Montcada at night, you've seen the throngs of people (mostly tourists) spilling out of the tiny space that is El Xampanyet. The tapas, mostly conservas, cheeses and cured meats, are not necessarily anything to write home about, but the atmosphere is fun and the house drink, xampanyet (a poor man's cava), is a euro a glass. For that price, don't expect to sit down.

Mam i Teca (C/ de la Lluna 4, tel. 934 413 335, Raval) - Mam i Teca is a tiny hole in the wall in the Raval with a mostly local clientele, meaning that the expats of the Raval frequent it, rather than the tourists of the Barrio Gotico. In contrast to the three bars above, it's often quiet during the week and on Sunday evenings. And, while the regular menu has some very pedestrian pastas and other dull offerings, the daily specials are always worth the trek into the depths of the Raval.

La Bodegueta (Rambla de Catalunya 100, Eixample) - La Bodegueta has a dusty charm that's not typical of the usually upscale Eixample. In summer, its terrace is normally full, but there's often room in the cozy interior. In addition to serving reasonably priced plates of cured meats and cheeses, La Bodegueta does fabulous patatas bravas (cubed, french fried potatoes topped with spicy and mild sauces) and mouth watering huevos estrellados over fried potatoes ("smashed eggs", as they say).

I might also mention that Taller de Tapas (www.tallerdetapas.com) and Lonja de Tapas/Celler de Tapas (www.lonjadetapas.com), both Barcelona chains, generally offer traditional tapas of solid quality practically around the clock and have useful locations throughout the Old Town and along the Rambla Catalunya, for when your energy is flagging and you're wondering where to go in a pinch. Don't order patatas bravas at Taller de Tapas, though, the last ones I had there were absolutely terrible.

Tapas - Basic - Part 1

2009-06-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

The trendy tapas bars that I told you about last time are generally trying to recapture the glory of the past, albeit in a shiny new package. Well, the past, while slightly scruffy, is alive and well in Barcelona and probably wondering what all the fuss is about.

The bars of today's post have, for the most part, been around for years and generally lean toward straight-forward, traditional tapas. So, I've placed them in the basic category. This is not the basic of "basic hotel room", a basic that might be translated as "no frills" or "modest". Rather, it's the basic of "basic alphabet"--a basic that is elementary, the foundation, or base, of your tapas experience in Barcelona.

Bars of the Boquería - Frankly, one of the best places to discover traditional tapas is the Boquería Market, which houses a handful of bars, featuring some of the freshest tapas in Barcelona. The classic Boquería bar--and a favourite of some of Spain's famous avant garde chefs, Ferran Adria among them--is the humble Bar Pinotxo, run by Juanito (the eponymous Pinotxo), a beloved Barcelona character. There's no menu at Bar Pinotxo, nor is what's available always obvious, so you will just have to ask your server to recommend something. Dishes seem to generally run between 7 and 15 euros. Other spots, like the inexpensive Bar Boquereía at the back, showcase their selection of tapas behind glass and, if you're stuck, you can always point at what you'd like. In Bar Boquería's case, your experience will vary from excellent to so-so, depending on what you order: choricitos (small, spicy sausages, usually served in a sizzling broth), butifarra (Catalan sausage), costillas (pork ribs), and pimientos (grilled red or green peppers) are usually a good and inexpensive bet. Felipe and I have eaten plentifully (3 or 4 sizable dishes) at Bar Boquería for well under 20 euros. The best time to go, if you're looking to snag a stool anywhere in the Boquería, is slightly before noon. Any later and you'll likely do a lot of hunting and waiting; most of the bars are open from the early morning and close some time between 3 and 4pm.

Quimet y Quimet (C/ Poeta Cabanyes 25, Poble Sec) - I discovered Quimet y Quimet fairly late in my Barcelona game and, frankly, it's the kind of you place I wish I'd been going to from the beginning. It's on a dingy Poble Sec street, has a sweetly crusty barman (Quimet, fifth generation), allows for standing room only, and is possibly my favourite tapas bars in Barcelona. It's a charming spot, stacked from floor to ceiling with an impressive selection of wines, liquors and tins of all descriptions, but, more importantly, it serves spectacular, made-before-your-eyes montaditos (small, open faced sandwiches), well-sourced cheeses in enormous quantity and some excellent conservas (canned seafood and vegetables). Especially delicious are the salmon montadito with yogurt cream and truffled honey and the paté montadito with caramelized onions and balsamic. Tapas prices range from 2.50 euros per montadito to 8.90 euros for a tray of cheeses that, despite our most eager efforts, was too large for us to finish.

Cal Pep (Plaça de les Olles 8, tel. 933 107 961, Born, www.calpep.com) - Equally good and equally packed is Cal Pep, the famed Born tapas bar. The difference is that Cal Pep is now overrun with tourists, not that that's a bad thing--especially because the tourists are of the well behaved variety. It does mean, however, that you will have to wait in line. The good news is that the line moves swiftly and, contrary to the often lackadaisical Spanish way, is managed by Pep and his staff with virtually German efficiency. Your wait is also most justly rewarded with some of the best seafood dishes in Barcelona--clams stewed with ham, baby squid with garbanzos and myriad fish cooked to perfection. Again, everything is made-before-your-eyes behind the bar. The Catalans who still haven't given up on Cal Pep tend to reserve one of the tables in the back. You could also do so, but I would recommend the full bar experience, which includes standing in line for 20-30 minutes, the first time you go. Our last tapas meal for two (5 dishes) with 3 glasses of cava ran us about 70 euros, but they nearly had to airlift us out of the restaurant so I would say that we over-ordered by at least one dish.

Coming soon: Tapas - Basic - Part 2.

Tapas Menu - Take 2

2009-06-19T03:44:00.000-07:00

Remember that nice post I wrote last month about A Picnic in Heaven? The one where cumuli were bobbing on periwinkle skies and everyone was writing in to say how pretty it made them feel? Well, those days are over, punks. It's bloody hell over here in Barcelona. Bloody, smoking, firey pits of hell with an incongruous humidity level of nearly 100%, probably from the blood, sweat and tears of all the condemned souls toiling in the devil's pits of tar and brimstone.

It's the kind of sticky cesspool of sweatiness that makes you want to pull your neighbour from his nicely air conditioned home and punch him repeatedly in the stomach, just for playing that infernal rock'n'roll music, the kind that makes all the small town kids fornicate in the crumb strewn back seats of their parents' sedans. Oh, the devil's work is never done.

It's precisely why crime levels soar in the summer months. If you don't believe me, just ask the New York Times about why I'm feeling my murder-meter rise apace with the raging heat.

Fortunately for the rest of you, my law abiding Canadian roots don't allow me to give free rein to my heat-driven bloodlust other than in recipe form. So, as my lone outlet for this summer's carnage fantasy, I'm making my next tapas menu blood based.

Tapas Menu - Take 2

Morcilla
Pimientos escalivados (roast peppers)
Setas a la plancha (grilled mushrooms)
Pan con tomate (see The Tapas Episode)

My bloody meat of choice is morcilla, a.k.a. blood sausage. I first sampled it on the impromptu trip around Spain with Mike Tkaczuk, the Canadian importer of jamón ibérico, and friends. We were in central Spain at the time, where the preferred variety of morcilla is rice based. Mike was so enamoured of morcilla, which you can't currently get in, or import to, Canada, that he ordered some whenever possible. While I'm generally not a lover of blood based foods (I'm still scarred by my Polish grandmother's duck's blood soup, a delicacy once beloved by my father), the taste for morcilla has stuck with me since that trip.

The best varieties are made with iberico pig blood mixed with rendered fat. Here, in Catalunya, onion is usually added and the sausage is often referred to as butifarra negra (black butifarra); in the centre and south, it's rice that's added, which gives the sausage a sweeter, more delicate flavour, one which I far prefer. The former is available at any charcutería in Barcelona; the latter, I've usually picked up at the Boquería, where one stall identifies it as morcilla de Burgos.

Because it's a substantial sausage, morcilla is a great (and adequately bloody) anchor for a meal of tapas. In the centre of Spain, it's frequently found in tapas bars removed from its casing and mixed in with huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs), sometimes with raisins; it's difficult to imagine if you haven't had it served this way, but it's actually indescribably good. The simplest way to serve it, though, is to slice it thickly and grill it in a lightly oiled pan for 1-2 minutes on each side--you have to be careful not to overcook or let it stick, which it is wont to do.

When we order it at the tapas bar in our local market, we usually also get a side of peppers escalivada (roasted red or green peppers). These are easily prepared at home by placing halved peppers, seeds removed and skin side up, on a lightly oiled baking sheet in a 220 C oven for about 25-30 minutes, until the skin begins to brown and puff up. You can let them cool and remove the skin before slicing into strips, seasoning with a little salt and pepper and drizzling with a little bit of good quality olive oil. If you'd like to go all out and make a more elaborate escalivada, which would also fit in well with this menu, have a look at the post titled The Charred and the Seedless.

As a final touch, mushrooms are nice. The chanterelles pictured are not in season yet, but this menu is well suited to late summer and early fall when they start to flood stores. For now, you can replace them with another type of mushroom--almost whatever is available will do; shitake, for example, though not particularly big in Barcelona, would make a great substitution. To prepare, you'll need to remove loose dirt first. I use a slightly damp paper towel, trying not to wet the mushrooms too much. I then sautee them for 4-5 minutes (until soft) in a little bit of olive oil (a tablespoon or two for 300-400 grams of mushrooms; you can add more if your pan starts to dry). The trick is not to salt them until the very end so that they don't start to release water. Just before you remove them from the heat, you can add a finely chopped teaspoon of flat leaf parsley mixed with a clove of very finely chopped garlic and stir for about thirty seconds. Drizzle with a good quality olive oil to serve.

Summer Bargain Hunting

2009-06-13T02:21:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a day off from tapas to tell you about a few Barcelona bargains. Now, be warned, these are bargains in the way that a $2000 purse on sale for $1000 is a bargain. While the price may be slashed, it's still beyond the purchasing power of many and, even though it may be on your wish list, it in no way qualifies as something you genuinely need. So, if you're the kind of person who is willing to eat canned spaghetti for an entire month because you blew your entire budget on the purse, read on. Take a pass if such frippery horrifies you; likewise, if your closet is stuffed to the gills with $2000 purses and you can't imagine why anyone would wait for a sale to buy one.

What I'm talking about is the high end menu del día. Now, the menu del día is a Barcelona institution. Some time ago, it was legislated in Barcelona that restaurants had to provide reasonably priced, hearty meals to workmen at mid-day on weekdays. Many mainstream restaurants still do so and, in most spots, you can get a substantial three course meal with bread and a drink included for about 10 euros. The truly old school places will bring you an entire bottle of their house red (quality usually somewhat questionable) so that you can drink as much as you wish. I'm not sure if the legislation exists to this day, but it's as a result of this piece of state officiousness that the custom of the menu was propagated and lives on happily to this day.

In any event, I don't know if it's because of the financial crisis or declining popularity or a little bit of both, but the menu del día has recently been ushered in for weekday lunches at some of Barcelona's finest restaurants. It's an absolute boon for food lovers on a budget.

My personal favourite, and Felipe's as well, is the menu del día at Moo (pictured above, www.hotelomm.com). It's 45 euros per person, seven courses and includes everything--water, a glass of wine, bread and coffee. Felipe and I went on the sweltering roses and books day, La Diada de Sant Jordi, when Moo's black and white, minimalist interior in the lobby of the Hotel Omm seemed cool and inviting. While the restaurant was busy, it was by no means packed, so it may be possible to pop in on the spur of the moment if you haven't bothered to reserve ahead of time.

The meal began swimmingly with a complimentary glass of cava, immediately followed by a selection of amuse bouches, which included beetroot and shrimp chips, patatas bravas (the classic fried potatoes with hot sauce and mayonnaise) in a cone, and sobrasada (a type of sausage) in pastry. On the heels of these, came another set of delectable morsels: couscous with trout eggs and a divine sugar and bread crumb crusted foie gras. We were oohing and aahing over the foie gras before we'd even reached appetizer territory.

The actual appetizers kicked off with a timbal de tomate con helado de mozarella, tomato timbal with mozarella ice cream over baby greens. The mozarella ice cream was a revelation. The timbal was followed in short order by appetizers that Felipe and I had selected--his, an out of this world cream of morel soup; mine, cigalas (crayfish). The crayfish centres were served over peas and flowers in a citrus salsa; the legs were served on the side. The crayfish experience was rounded out by a fragrant bisque in a porcelain cup, to be sipped at the end. Amazing.

The mains were no less impressive. Felipe's rabo de buey (pictured above) in an elegant red wine reduction was rich and satisfying; my bacon wrapped monkfish over steamed vegetables and beetroot chips equally so.

We were both already tingling with pleasure by the time the desserts arrived, a platter of golosinas (childhood sweets), which would have tickled the fancy of any 7 year old and which left us giggling and excited. There were tiny servings of sugared raspberries and blueberries reminiscent of hard drugstore candy; amusement park ices in coca cola, coconut and strawberry; cloud like cotton candy wisps; decadent coconut marshmallows tinged with chocolate; a coy sunflower brittle; stray pieces of caramel corn; and even a wry piece of black licorice, oddly bearable in comparison with the black licorice whips I so hated as a kid.

We would have left happy after these, but there was more: a refreshing lemon and mango icecream with frozen raspberry and blueberry jelly and, finally, white and milk chocolate with coffee.

We walked out of Moo feeling like we'd eaten like kings for a relative pittance, the bill--for a feast that included the menus, two cavas, two glasses of wine and coffee--came to not a penny more than 90 euros, as promised, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't touch another piece of food for the rest of the day.

More recently, we treated ourselves to the menu at Arola (pictured, right, www.arola-arts.com), Sergi Arola's outpost at the tony Arts Hotel in the Olympic Port. (It should be noted that Arola is not on location here at all times, working mostly out of his restaurants in Madrid). At 32 euros, the menu includes four courses and bread--all beverages are extra and can rapidly add up to more than the 32 per person of the menu itself. While they claim not to take reservations for the terrace, they did set aside a shady terrace table for us. Their policy is to try to accommodate you if possible and they seem to have plenty of room to do so--I would say that you could even chance it without reservations.

We were greeted with a creamy basil spread with crisps as an aperitif, followed by a traditionally served pan con tomate--that is to say, toasted bread, olive oil, salt, whole tomatoes and whole cloves of garlic. The expectation, of course, is that you make your own (rub the bread with the garlic and tomato (both of which you must cut open), then drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt...it's a pleasantly interactive part of the meal, but one that would be helped greatly by a more suitable knife and better bread.

The appetizers, for sharing, came next: signature patatas bravas--tiny cones of potato, filled with hot sauce and topped with creamy mayonnaise (pictured at the top)--that are perfection in both flavour and texture and possibly the best version of bravas that I have tasted; and a rather simple salad of cold, steamed baby vegetables topped with iberico ham.

The star attractions were a delicate hake in light green sauce--the green, we discovered, were peas, parsley and garlic--and a black rice with sepia (pictured, left); you have your choice of one of the two and both were flawlessly executed and generous, though Felipe complained that he could have eaten more rice (the man generally eats for two or three, however, so take it with a grain of salt).

Dessert was lovely: a white chocolate cream topped with an explosive raspberry sorbet, rose jelly and lychee (pictured, left). A second dessert of petit fours (chocolate-banana flakes, coconut macaroons, lemon madeleines and marshmallows) followed with coffee.

After four glasses of wine, a bottle of fashionable water and a cortado (espresso with milk), our bill came to 115 euros. Not bad value, but Moo delivered much more for less.

By way of final notes, the service at both restaurants is generally young and a tiny bit stiff, particularly at Moo, but really that's nitpicking. Both places have a tranquil, modern vibe and the terrace at Arola, with its herb and vegetable planters and view of the tail of Frank Ghery's sparkling fish, is unbeatable. The pillowy sofas alongside the terrace are the perfect place to sip your coffee or a digestif and would be a wonderful spot to while away a breezy evening.

A footnote to this post is the Eixample's Noti (noti-universal.com), which for a long time has had a 20 euro menu del día, a three course affair that is both competent and tasty, but rather on the small side and in no way on par with the elaborate culinary hijinks at Moo and Arola.

Tapas - Trendy

2009-06-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

So, as visions of choricitos in cider and patatas bravas have been dancing in my head this month, I've also been mulling some of the best tapas bars in Barcelona. There's a wide variety, but, in my mind, virtually all fall into one of three categories: "trendy", "basic" or "different".

Let's start with trendy. These are the places that have a big name chef; a dressed up look (even when they claim to be an homage to old school, they're not long on the scruffy old school look); and, if they deliver on the food, a long lineup of tourists and locals undeterred by the usually jacked up prices.

I consider the contenders in this category to be the following:

Tapaç24 (C/ Diputacion 269, Eixample, www.comerc24.com) - This is the tapas baby of Carles Abellan of Comerç24 fame (click here for stories of my blissed out foray into Abellan's haute cuisine--also tapas style--at the mother ship). It provides traditional takes on classics like patatas bravas (potatoes with a spicy sauce), stewed tripe and pescaito frito (tiny fried fish), alongside more inventive daily specials. For dessert, don't miss the bread with chocolate--possibly my favourite way to end a meal in Barcelona.

Inopia (pictured above, C/ Tamarit 104, Eixample, www.barinopia.com) - Bustling, bright and pared down (or as pared down as you can get with a doorman running the not-so-velvet rope at the front door), this is the brain child of Albert Adria, the brother of Ferran Adria, godfather of modern haute cuisine and chef at (have you heard? it's the best restaurant in the world) El Bulli. Don't expect foams and boxes of air here, though. In classic tapas bar style, the menu focuses on olives, anchovies and other high quality tinned goods as well as house specials such as patatas bravas and ensaladilla rusa (Russian salad).

Bar Mut (C/ Pau Claris 192, Eixample, tel. 93 217 4338) - This pijo spot appeals as much for its moody, dimly lit atmosphere (not a forte at most tapas bars) and varied wine list as for its eclectic tapas specials, particularly the market fresh seafood. Even though it's not particularly Catalan, don't miss the (richer than Bill Gates) brownie for dessert. Also keep in mind that, unlike at the other spots, which have a "strictly lineup" policy, it's virtually impossible to get a table at Bar Mut without a reservation, particularly on weekends: of the two sittings, the earlier (830pm) is for tourists, the later (1015pm) for locals.

Cuines de Santa Caterina (Mercado de Santa Caterina, Avda. Francesc Cambo 16, Born, www.grupotragaluz.com/santacaterina) - I don't know why, but I don't make it down to Cuines de Santa Caterina very often. Maybe it's the cavernous space and slightly indifferent service, which makes it feel just a tiny bit soulless despite the exposed beams and indoor trees. When I do go (it's a good option when wandering about the Old Town), I always eat well; the place is located in a market (El Mercado de Santa Caterina), after all. No reservations here, but it's usually possible to get a table without a wait. The bar at the front serves more traditional tapas fare and is open all day; the back is open for lunch and dinner only and has a more varied, market based menu with some Asian and Italian touches.

Bar Lobo (C/ Pintor Fortuny 3, Raval, www.grupotragaluz.com/barlobo) - Another slick product of the Grupo de Tragaluz, also responsible for Cuines de Santa Caterina, Bar Lobo suffers from the same lack of soul as its cousin and some of the worst service in Barcelona (which is saying a lot). This probably won't matter to you when you realize that it also possesses one of the best terraces in the Raval; shaded by an awning and with a pillowy bench at the back, it is virtually irresistible. It also has the advantage of being open until 2pm, outlasting most other tapas bars by about two hours. On summer evenings, when it is overrun by pretty foreigners, Bar Lobo has a fun, almost clubby vibe. The tapas menu consists mainly of classics that are competently executed, but in no way mind blowing, particularly at the tourist adjusted prices.

Now, if you were to ask me which spot I would choose as the best tapas bar in this category, I would have a tough time picking among the first three. If pressed, I'd probably admit that Tapaç24 just edges out Inopia and Bar Mut. It has less attitude than Inopia and a more interesting selection of tapas, though the basics (patatas bravas, croquetas, ensalada rusa) are available and well done in both locations. Both Tapaç24 and Inopia are also far cheaper than Bar Mut, which is the most elaborately priced of the three. The latter is a winner on lighting and atmosphere, though, and hands down the location of choice if you want a side of romance with your tapas.

More on basic and different tapas bars coming soon.

Tapas Menu -Take 1

2009-06-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

It's a summer Saturday. Heat ripples the air, there's barely a breeze, and you're still slightly smarting from the revelry of the night before. You'd crawl into your hammock, if you had one, and spend the rest of the day sipping cool, life-giving water through a bendy straw under the shade of the lone tree in your back yard. If only you could. As it happens, you're expecting your in-laws for lunch.

This is a scenario that clearly calls for Tapas Menu Number 1:

Navajas a la plancha (grilled razor clams)
Langostinos a la plancha (grilled prawns)
Surtido de quesos y embutidos (selection of cheeses and cured meats)
Pan y aceitunas (bread and olives)

Assuming you have access to a good market, you're set. If you spend more than twenty minutes in the kitchen, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

To assemble this mini-feast, you should start by soaking the razor clams (you'll want at least 3 or 4 of these per person)...they're sandy and need to sit in warm water for about 10 minutes before you put them on the grill. You can also give the prawns (about 3/4 kilo or more, depending on how hungry you expect your in-laws to be) a rinse and shake them off in a colander.

For best results, you should get everything ready and on the table before you cook the seafood so that you can bring out the steaming platters of shrimp and clams as the crowning pièce de résistance. You should put out the olives and sliced bread along with a good extra virgin olive oil and salt. The cheese can go out sliced or whole, in the latter case with its own knife.

There's an enormous selection of Spanish cheese. One of the most popular varieties is manchego (pictured), a hard sheep's milk cheese from central Spain, which comes in fresco, semi-curado, curado y viejo varieties, a scale from youngest (softest and mildest) to oldest (hardest and sharpest). Another favourite is idiazabal, a yellow sheep's milk cheese from the Basque country. Other delicious goat, cow and sheep's milk cheeses abound in Spain and each region usually has a specialty or two. You should ask at your cheese shop about the different varieties and don't feel the need to limit yourself to just one.

The cured meats should go out sliced. Jamón iberico (pictured) or the much less expensive jamón serrano should be sliced paper thin at the shop. Embutidos (sausages) such as chorizo, fuet, longaniza or morcón (pictured) can be hand sliced at home. Chorizo and morcón (a larger, more coarsely cut version of chorizo) are flavoured with paprika and may be purchased in mild to spicy versions. They provide a nice counterpoint to the slightly sweet jamón iberico. Fuet and longaniza are also good choices--they have a subtle, slightly peppery flavour.

Now that the cured meats and cheeses have been taken care of, you can turn your mind to the seafood. Remove the clams from the warm water in which they've been soaking and give them another rinse under cold water. Set aside to wait with the shrimp.

Heat about a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a large frying pan, preferably one with a lid. Once the oil is hot, add a few slivers of garlic for flavour, stir for a moment and add the prawns. Sautee on medium high heat for a 3-4 minutes until the prawns have just turned a bright pink on all sides and not a second longer. (For more about cooking prawns, see The Tapas Episode.) Remove to a warm plate, clean out any obvious shell residue with a paper towel, add a little more oil to the pan and the razor clams. Cover with the lid. The clams only need about two to three minutes on the grill at medium-high heat, but you should turn them once (with tongs is easiest). Be careful of the sputtering oil and water combination. I might also have garnished the razor clams pictured above with a teaspoon of finely chopped thyme and about the same quantity of chopped, sauteed garlic, but this is absolutely not necessary--if you want to, though, you can throw these ingredients into the frying pan for a few seconds before you put in the razor clams. The clams should be completely open when you serve them. Feel free to serve with a little lemon on the side, but, again, absolutely not necessary when you have good, fresh seafood.

Bring the mouthwatering plates of seafood out with the appropriate pomp and ceremony and pour some cava (Catalan sparkling wine) all around. Your work is done.

June Is Tapas Month

2009-06-03T11:17:00.001-07:00

You might remember that, some time ago, I promised to return to tapas, first addressed with the help of my saucy sous-chef, Stephen, in The Tapas Episode. I think it's been more than half a year since that promisory post, but tapas have been on my mind, not to mention in my belly, since then and I've taken some important steps to bring you more about tapas--primarily these were eating steps, interspersed with relatively random cooking, researching and photographing steps. As a result of these selfless efforts, I am now ready to usher in--I believe a drum roll is in order--Tapas Month.

Oh, the succulent treats and spicy bits of information that Tapas Month will offer! Oh, the delectable photo spreads! Oh, the trusty recipes! Oh, the coveted tapas bar recommendations! Oh, if only you could trust me to deliver. Ahem.

Well, deliver I will! And, as an amuse bouche of good faith, I'm going to first serve up some juicy tapas trivia. Well, maybe not that juicy. Actually, probably just this side of dry. Still, the point is that I'm making an effort. An effort you might look upon kindly next time you're on the verge of taking me off your reading list after an embarrassingly long absence of posts.

There is a problem with tapas in Barcelona about which you may not know. Tapas, despite their near ubiquity in the city, are not really a Barcelona thing. Sort of like churros. Despite the fact that you can get them, Spaniards will tell you that they're not really as they should be.

What does it mean to be so prevalent and still not to be a "Barcelona thing"? Well, for one, the tapas tradition--that of accompanying an afternoon or evening drink with a small serving of food--really arose south of here. In parts of southern and central Spain many bars serve a free tapa or two with the purchase of a drink, such that the "tapeo", or going from bar to bar sampling tapas and drinking your face off, is sort of like a regional sport. The only bar that I know of that upholds this tradition in Barcelona--only occasionally and sometimes only if you look like something of a local, which apparently sometimes I do and sometimes I don't--is De Tapa Madre (c/Mallorca 301, www.detapamadre.com), a dependable spot in the Eixample. The rest often charge an arm and a leg for the small tidbits that some southerners consider to be their rightful due with the purchase of an alcoholic beverage. This is what Spaniards really mean when they say that tapas aren't a Barcelona thing--they're not free; they're not even cheap. (One of the exceptions to the "not cheap" rule is El Xampanyet in the Born, pictured above and to be discussed in another post.)

That said, there are many excellent tapas bars in Barcelona and, if one looks at expense issue from another perspective, Barcelona is probably one of the best spots in Spain to sample some high quality, highly inventive, highly eclectic tapas. More on that later.

For today, I will leave you with this slightly unappetizing thought: The word tapa (from the verb "tapar", literally to cover) is thought to have evolved from the centuries old practice of using a piece of bread or cured ham to cover glasses of wine in bars in order to prevent flies or dust from falling in. Happily, we currently live in more hygienic times and your ham is now (usually) served on a plate.

A Picnic in Heaven

2009-05-22T01:15:00.000-07:00

Heaven, I'm in heaven

And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak

And I seem to find the happiness I seek

...

And then, of course, there's the "cheek to cheek" business of the Irving Berlin classic, but I never get to that part when I'm singing the song in my head these days. "I'm in heaven" is on a permanent loop.

Indeed, heaven is the luscious slice of bliss that is currently Barcelona: cotton candy cumuli bobbing on periwinkle skies, whispering oak canopies shading the grand boulevards, terrace gardens erupting in flower, choirs of birds singing the city awake, a heat that hasn't lost its kindness, and a slight breeze ruffling the scarves that cling stubbornly to Barcelona necks despite forecasts of a balmy 25C. It's the kind of ephemeral perfection that leaves one wandering the city in a bemused trance hoping that the reverie never ends.

Actually, the best part is that it's only just beginning. Tourist invasion aside, spring and summer in Barcelona are an absolute wonder and, whether you're a hardened Barcelona resident or a wide eyed visitor, I recommend celebrating their glory with a picnic.

Your picnic need not be elaborate. You can make do with a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of wine or maybe even a cava if you're hoping to get lucky. Throw in a brownie or a punnet of strawberries or perhaps both and you have a veritable feast. All you need to worry about is the blanket as I'm about to take care of the rest.

In terms of ready-made picnic supplies, Barcelona abounds with bakeries and food shops to cater to your every need. In a pinch, try the sandwiches and cakes at the Eixample's Mauri Pastelería (www.pasteleriasmauri.com, tarts and croquettes of all kinds are a particular treat)) or at Garriga (c/ Consell de Cent 308, tel. 932 157 215, the plum cake (in Spanish, "ploom cake") is particularly delicious); more elaborate take away plates and generous American style desserts at Born Cooking (www.borncooking.com, excellent if you're missing carrot cake or chocolate chip cookies); a variety of ready made dishes, including traditional favourites, at Pim Pam Plats and its sister restaurant Pim Pam Burger in the Born (pimpamplats.com); delectable baked goods at the recently opened Atlanta bakery (c/Princesa, just off of Via Laietana, beware of the baffling lack of reasonable take away containers, particularly as there's nowhere to eat inside) [NOTE 17-08-2009: Atlanta closed as rapidly as it opened; in its place, and under the same name, you can now find a women's clothing store]; wine and just about any canned product at the Eixample's Colmado Quilez (Rambla Catalunya 63, tel. 932 158 78; in a nod to old timey redundancy, get the cashier to total your purchase, take the receipt to the woman at the door to pay and return with the stamped receipt to pick up your purchase from the cashier); and, if you're feeling a little more hands on and up for adventure, anything and everything at the spectacular Boquería Market (www.boqueria.info).

Ferreting out the perfect location is also a breeze these days. Some of the best picnic spots in Barcelona can be found on the steamy beaches with their buzzing boardwalks and chiringuitos (venture past Barceloneta and Puerto Olympico for fewer American teenagers); on the shady slopes of Montjuic--best experienced while watching an outdoor movie with your picnic dinner (check out www.salamontjuic.com for this summer's movie schedule, screenings start June 29 and continue to the end of July); amid Ciutadella Park's tree-lined hive of activity, whether during a concert (the Musica Classica als Parcs concert series is scheduled for Thursdays and Fridays at 10pm in Ciutadella and Turo Parks between July 2 and 24, 2009) or an impromptu juggling rehearsal; within the idyl of Gaudi's Parque Guell (brave the crowds at the entrance and on the fabulous tiled terrace and make your way to the rustic aqueducts lined with alcove benches); and, if you're in the mood for a subway ride (Mundet or Valldaura metro stops on the Green Line (L3)), lost in the childish pleasure of the the living labyrinth in the Parque del Laberinto de Horta. For more information about Barcelona parks, gardens and beaches check out the Parks and Gardens portion of the City's website at www.bcn.es/parcsijardins.

Oh, and one more thing, if you're lovers, or maybe even if you're not, take along a book of the now deceased Mario Benedetti's poems, as Felipe and I did this week, and select a few to read out loud over a glass of wine on the grass.

The Charred and the Seedless (Escalivada)

2009-05-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

By way of adding to your tapas repertoire, I'm going to tell you about escalivada. And, yes, this too is inspired by Jordi and Deirdre's calçotada, which featured deliciousness far beyond mere calçots.

The word escalivada comes from the Catalan verb escalivar, which means to roast over hot embers or, in the approximate language of today's world, char grill. A true escalivada, which has peasant and country roots, involves placing whole unwashed vegetables (generally, eggplants, peppers and tomatoes) into an open fire (or, better yet, hot ashes) to roast--as in the photo above--, then peeling and serving them with a sprinkling of oil and salt. This of course requires access to an open fire, which I will assume most of the readers of this blog don't readily have.

Fortunately, an open fire is not absolutely necessary to make a slightly less authentic version of the beloved salad, a version that is easy peasy and open to fiddling and interpretation. I, for one, often dispense with everything but the eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and salt (particularly when I'm feeling an excess of weight in the thigh region) and use quantities of vegetables that reflect what's readily available in my fridge rather than exact amounts. Please use what follows more as a spiritual guide than as biblical escalivada truth.

Ingredients

2 large or 4 small eggplants
4 red peppers
4 tomatoes
1 onion (optional)
2 cloves of garlic (optional)
1 tsp finely chopped parsley (optional)
olive oil, salt and pepper (to taste)

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Slice the eggplants in half and set aside for half an hour sprinkled with salt to remove the bitter juices. In the meantime, cut the peppers in half, remove seeds and place cut side down on a baking sheet lined with oiled aluminum foil. If you are using onion (I don't), place it--sliced in half, drizzled with olive oil and wrapped in aluminum foil--in the oven with the peppers. Roast for about 30 minutes or until the skin of the peppers has blackened and is coming away from the surface. Remove and set aside. Roast the eggplant in the same way once you have rinsed off the salt and dried each piece. Slice the tomatoes in half and roast for about 15-20 minutes--if you have room, you can slide the tomatoes in with the eggplant about 10-15 minutes into the eggplant's roasting time. Remove the skin from the roasted vegetables, slice into strips and combine in a serving bowl, being sure to include the juices. Dress with salt and pepper, the minced garlic and a little olive oil. (Leave out the garlic and oil for a lighter salad and, if so inclined, sprinkle in some finely chopped parsley.)

As for final touches, I often top escalivada with a soft Catalan goat cheese. I place the escalivada in an oven proof container, cover with large slices of goat cheese and brown under the broiler for a couple of minutes or until the cheese is golden. This version--as well as the cheeseless one--is delicious as part of a meal of tapas or alongside any meat dish.

Another common way to serve is on toasted bread topped with good quality anchovies and, if you like, olives.

Come to think of it, the always packed Cerveceria Catalana (c/ Mallorca 236 (Eixample), 93 216 0368) has terrific examples of both versions for those who'd rather forego the cooking altogether.

Salsa Romesco

2009-04-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

It's rare that I deliver on my gratuitous on-line promises, but today is an exception. I've had the recipe for an unbelievable salsa romesco on my hands for some time and it seems a profound transgression not to share it. Not only is it straight from Tarragona--cradle of the romesco sauce and charming Roman town just an hour outside of Barcelona--, it's also a tried and true family recipe, courtesy of Mrs. Fernández Roig, a.k.a. Jordi's mom, who prepared it for a crowd of hungry calçot eaters earlier this spring. See the Calçotada post for details.

You may not know a lot about salsa romesco; it doesn't have the international caché of an allioli or a bernaise, but it does have the chops and is a Catalan favourite. It's sweet, it's savoury, it's smooth, it's crunchy and, while it goes with almost anything (I was spreading it liberally on toasted bread recently), it's most commonly served with roasted vegetables, including calçots, as well as fish and seafood.

The base, in addition to ground nuts and olive oil, contains a type of pepper that is difficult to find outside of Spain. The traditional peppers used are often referred to as "romesco peppers" and can easily be found in Catalunya; they are distinct from ñora peppers which are often also used. These peppers are smaller than your average red pepper and have a richness that a regular capsicum does not. Outside of Spain, red bell peppers can be substituted, but I'm afraid the substitution, if not exactly second rate, makes the salsa more of a romesco "lite".

Now, here is the recipe, just as it was provided to me--with translation and some explanation. I must say I had to guess regarding the quantities of pimentón, olive oil, and vinegar, but that is the beauty of a family recipe.

Ingredients

125 gr toasted almonds
125 gr toasted hazelnuts
50 gr pine nuts
2 walnuts
1 onion
8 tomatoes
1/2 head garlic
5 dried "romesco" peppers
a tiny bit of raw garlic, pressed (to taste)
a tiny bit of sugar (to taste)
1 tsp spicy pimentón (or hot paprika)
about a cup of olive oil
about half a cup of red wine vinegar
salt (to taste)
cayenne pepper (to taste; optional and not part of Jordi's mom's recipe)

Preparation

Char grill the onion, tomatoes, garlic and blanch the peppers (if using fresh peppers, char grill these too). (If you are Jordi's mom, you will do the char grilling over a wood fire in the outdoor brick oven in your backyard; if you are not, you will likely have to do with your home oven at about 220 degrees C for 30 minutes or so.) Once the vegetables have cooled sufficiently, remove the skin. You will now have to use a food processor unless you have freakishly strong arms and a giant mortar and pestle. Start with the nuts; add the vegetables and seasonings next; and finish things off with the olive oil, added slowly in a thin stream to ensure the sauce holds together (some add a bit of toasted bread to the mix to help with the consistency). Process until well mixed but not completely smooth. Add vinegar and salt to taste at the very end.

By the way, to be completely authentic, you should buy your olive oil and hazelnuts in Constanti, the town where Jordi's mom was born.

This recipe will serve ten, so prepare to share.

Roses and Books (La Diada de Sant Jordi)

2009-04-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

So, Sant Jordi is a saint, the patron saint of Catalunya in fact. You may know him better as Saint George. You know, the one who slew the dragon. You must have heard about the dragon--the dragon that was menacing the village and demanding villager blood in return for not wreaking even more destruction (you know, not unlike the former Bush government). Each night, the villagers would decide by lottery who would offer him or herself to the dragon the next morning. The village's government was rather egalitarian and, one day, the lot fell on the village's princess. She went willingly to meet her fate; however, before the dragon could tear her to shreds, Saint George appeared on his firey steed and stuck a lance through the dragon's heart. Catalan legend has it that out of the dragon's blood a rose bush sprang.

Now, one might quibble about the fact that Saint George waited until the princess was in danger before he slew the dragon, letting countless hapless villagers go to their deaths, but that would simply show a flawed understanding of foreign policy--the central tenet of which appears to be don't get off your couch until there's something in it for you, whether that be simple glory or foreign oil.

Glory Saint George received. Catalans, for one, celebrate him on April 23 by giving roses and books to their beloveds. The roses, a symbol of passion, are accompanied by blades of wheat, a symbol of fertility, and the Catalan flag, a symbol of the still simmering Catalan nationalism; they are traditionally a gift for the ladies, though times are changing. The gentlemen, in turn, receive books. This appears to have more to do with the fact that April 23 is also the International Day of the Book and, coincidentally, the date on which both Shakespeare and Cervantes died. In any case, it's a charming custom.

In Barcelona, the streets are never more packed than on the Diada de Sant Jordi. Book and flower sellers are out in tents on Paseo de Gracia, Rambla Catalunya and Las Ramblas, selling wares to couples strolling by. Well, that's the public relations dream; the reality is that it's more a day of teeming throngs--lovely as the idea is, we had to narrowly escape suffocating crowds and exhausting line ups as we were strolling yesterday evening. Despite the challenges, I am today the proud owner of Exciting Barcelona: Festivals and traditions and Contemporary American Culture: An Anthropological View, not to mention a blood red rose.

To check out Barcelona hotels click here: Barcelona Hotels.

Calçotada

2009-04-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I have sunk to such depths of delinquency this time that readers have taken to emailing me to ask if they should remove my inactive blog from their reading list. Please let me take this opportunity to assure you that I have not drifted off to eternal sleep; I've just been hibernating. And, as spring is fully swinging here in Barcelona, the time is more than apt to come out of my cave, if only to blink dazedly and crawl back in for another snooze.

Since I'm out here now, let me remedy my long standing failure to post the calçotada link I promised (go ahead and click on it now): Feting the humble onion in Catalonia. The article came out in the Globe & Mail in March and I must thank my friends Jordi and Deirdre for supplying the culinary and literary fodder for the piece and the 2-3 extra pounds I put on in the single day of feasting.

I should also mention that the calçots we ate that day were accompanied by a fabulous salsa romesco prepared by Jordi's mom, a master of this sweet and spicy traditional sauce. She was kind enough to provide me with her recipe, which (at the risk of once more making promises I may not keep) I will post here shortly.

For those looking for an authentic calçotada experience near Barcelona, the article contains a couple of restaurant recommendations. However, we are at the very, very end of calçot season and you may need to wait until next year to get down with the onion in true Catalan style.

Back to Barcelona

2009-03-03T19:15:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's spring here in Barcelona. Yes, it's approx-imately 30 degrees warmer than it is in Canada (conser-vatively speaking). And, yes, since getting over the shock to my system, I'm really, really, really enjoying it.

February and March are the months of the calçotada in Catalunya. It's the time of year when Catalans celebrate the humble calçot (a type of spring onion) by eating it with gusto. Deirdre, my lovely Canadian friend, and Jordi, her lovely Catalan husband, invited us to experience the genuine article at Jordi's family home in Tarragona this year. An article is forthcoming in the Globe (hopefully) and a family recipe for romesco sauce, which accompanies calçots, will appear here shortly. Stay tuned.

Toronto

2009-02-25T20:06:00.000-08:00

Before I get back to what's going on in sunny, spring-time Barcelona, it would be remiss of me not to mention Toronto, where we stopped on our way back to Barcelona for random toboganning, extravagant dinners with friends and some very unpleasant dentist appointments. Don't worry, I still have all my own teeth.

This year, my favourite addition to the always changing Toronto scene was OddFellows (936 Queen St. W., 416-534-5244, reservations recommended for weekend evenings), for the unabashed fun of it. The brainchild of designers Kei Ng and Brian Richer, OddFellows blends eclectic, modern, campy and sometimes just plain weird design pieces with an atmosphere that's as down home as it gets: a wood burning stove, a long communal table, the clatter of dishes, the bumping of elbows and the buzz of conversation...well, it's actually more like a clamour to be heard over the throbbing music, but it's a minor niggle.

The food follows the homey elements of the space: bison meatloaf, pressure cooker lamb stew, a burger the size of a small child's head--all fantastic and all seasoned with a giant dose of family dinner hour nostalgia, right down to the creamed corn and partitioned plates.

Initially, I thought that there was a certain kind of pretension behind OddFellows' self conscious devil-may-care-ness and deliberately incongruous pairing of out-there design with the staples of home cooked comfort food. Certainly there's an eerie sense of displacement, a carefully constructed falseness of the kind you feel when you enter an artist's model of a house. Maybe it's just the reverb of putting an unfamiliar spin on the ultra familiar. Ultimately, it's just another element of the experience and the bottom line is that the experience, particularly in good company, is great. You should go.

Calgary

2009-02-16T22:20:00.000-08:00

Hi. How are you? It's been a while. What's new? How's the family? Work? The dog? Your Friday night bingo games? Yeah, it's always great to get together with the old gang even if the stamping pens are getting a little pricey.

Me? Oh, I've been fine. Took a trip to a little town they call Calgary. Saw the folks. Froze my ass off. Put on a few holiday pounds. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Yes, the weather was bad. Thirty below. Not a word of a lie. And piles of snow. Mountains, even. The fluffy kind. It was a little like the Christmas movie version of the North Pole. Except for the tree sized candy canes and talking reindeer. Not many of those.

A few good restaurants, though. Who would have thunk it? Don't get me wrong, I'm still a long way from declaring that Calgary is the next Barcelona, but frankly, it was better than I would have thought.

For one, there were tapas. Good tapas. Better tapas than I've had in Canada in a long while. At Wine Bar Kensington (Lower-1131 Kensington Road NW, (403) 457-1144). I know, they didn't waste any creativity on the name. Perhaps that's for the best. We could have ended up with Hola Cowtown or something equally Iberia meets the Wild West. (You can take a city out of the cow pasture, but you can't take the cow pasture out of the city.)

Now, to be perfectly honest, the tapas weren't authentically Spanish, but no one in North America really uses the word tapa to designate anything resembling traditional Spanish tapas anymore. The tapas were "small plates", as they say, ranging from a delicate bison carpaccio to an absolutely divine mascarpone stuffed lemon ravioli to staggeringly good Alberta beef short ribs to a died-and-went-to-heaven pork belly risotto. The wine selection was nice too and within reach. As for dessert, we were tempted by a basil cheesecake. Now, for my money, you can't really improve on the good old fashioned variety of cheesecake--i.e. the kind without the basil--and should probably not spend too much time trying. But I will say that the basil version was creamily memorable.

Other spots deserving of mention are Blink (111 8 Avenue SW, (403) 263-5330, www.blinkcalgary.com) and Mercato (2224 4 Street SW, (403) 263-5535, www.mercatogourmet.com). Thanks to my lovely sister and her very large gift certificate, we were treated to some very finely prepared dishes at the swish Blink. These, in their minimalist and somewhat trendy way, showcased the highlights of Canada's bounty: freshwater Manitoba pickerel, bison, loads of Alberta beef and other tasties, which I would probably remember but for the gallons of wine we consumed. The one minus to the evening was that the place echoed with emptiness; we were one of two tables in a restaurant that sits 60 if not more. It was a Monday night between Christmas and New Year's, though. Perhaps not the most popular dining night of the year.

In stark contrast to Blink, Mercato (no relation to the Toronto version, I'm told) is always stuffed to the gills and is the place I can now say I always go to with my dear friend Amreen, given that we've been there twice, once on each of the last two holiday treks we've separately made to see my parents, her in-laws. The lively spot has solid Italian pastas and mains, a terrific antipasto platter and a combination of clatter and movement that makes you feel perfectly comfortable bringing kids; Amreen brought her baby this time around. What I particularly love about Mercato is that Amreen and I can sit still for hours amid all the commotion, picking at hunks of parmigiano and roasted red pepper while sharing the news of the year that's just passed, the intimate and the notorious, the happy and sad kernels of it.

By the way, you can find Amreen's Urban Moms blog, The Balancing Act, by clicking here.

Saint Nicholas is Coming to Town

2008-12-10T05:14:00.000-08:00

Even though Barcelona's Christmas lights have been up since the end of November, Christmas-time in the city really begins on December 6th.

December 6th marks the rather prosaic Constitution Day in Spain, a national holiday commemorating the signing of the Spanish Constitution in 1978, three years following the end of Franco's dictatorship. Practically speaking, it's the last long weekend before Christmas. If the 6th happens to fall on a Tuesday or Thursday, todo el mundo hace el puente--that is, everyone takes a vacation day on the Monday or Friday to make it a four day weekend...five day if the holiday falls on the Wednesday. As a result, the day is sometimes referred to as El Puente de la Constitución.

Most everywhere else in Europe, December 6th is St. Nicholas' Day. St. Nicholas--patron saint of children, students, sailors, archers, merchants and pawnbrokers--is the less commercialized version of the modern day Santa Claus.

Legend has it that St. Nicholas was an infamous anonymous present giver. Preferring to eschew gift giving glory, he deposited his parcels after nightfall, long after prying little eyes were fast asleep. One story has it that he took pity on a poor farmer who wasn't able to afford dowries for his three nubile daughters. On three consecutive nights, St. Nicholas crept up to the family home and tossed gold into stockings that the sisters had hung out to dry thereby funding their dowries and saving the maids from a certain fate of prostitution--not to mention giving a whole other meaning to his signature "Ho! Ho! Ho!".

St. Nicholas is often depicted with three sacks or balls of gold in a nod to the legend. In certain countries, the balls of gold have been transformed into oranges in the popular imagination leading to the tradition of giving oranges as gifts on December 6th. Conveniently, it's when oranges happen to be in season.

While St. Nicholas' Day is not particularly celebrated in Spain, the Dutch seem to believe that Sinterklaas (the Dutch version of St. Nicholas) hails from these parts. Dutch legend has it that after Sinterklaas gives presents to all the good little children, he packs up all the bad little children in his empty sacks and takes them back to his Spanish lair. Presumably to work in his sweatshops...I mean workshops.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

The Weather Outside is Frightful

2008-12-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

It's blustery and cold here in the Ciudad de Condal. The waves breaking on Barceloneta beach are impressive, as are the few surfers brave or crazy enough to venture in with their boards. Felipe and I are content to watch them, huddled into our coats and scarves, warming our hands on hot chestnuts if we can still find them.

We've been going out for long walks as often as we can on these frigid days--a sort of boot camp for our winter holidays in Canada. The unfortunate truth--and one I haven't yet let Felipe in on--is that a blustery day in Barcelona has nothing on a Canadian winter. I'm trying to break it to him gently, shall we say.

Our night walks are now lit by Barcelona's myriad constellations of Christmas lights and, by day, we often pass through the cathedral square, where the Fira de Santa Llucia (www.firesifestes.com), with its gaudy holiday baubles and fragrant greenery, opened this weekend. Only the creche in Plaza de Sant Jaume remains a secret, though not one that's very well kept: you get a pretty good idea of the state of things by surreptitiously peeking through the green netting.

These are the last days of chestnut season--the few Castanyada shacks that haven't yet closed for business will likely do so in the next few weeks or so--and the early days of turrones and other Christmas sweets. If you're keen, you can read about the latter here: No Ordinary Nougat, Peladillas, and The Dustiest of Desserts.

All in all, a wonderful time to be in Barcelona, despite the cold.

Oh Starry Night

2008-11-26T10:42:00.001-08:00

A few months ago, my friends Allan and Trish were in town, treating Felipe and me to dips in the roof top pools of their swank hotels and multiple bottles of cava. We ate well in those weeks--tapas around town, a picnic on the beach, and paella on our terrace. But the most decadent treat (thank you Allan and Trish) was dinner at Cinc Sentits (www.cincsentits.com)--a restaurant owned by Catalan-Canadian brother and sister, Jordi and Amelia Artal (pictured).

The dinner deserves a considered post and you will get one in time. Before that, however, one piece of news: last week, Cinc Sentits was awarded its first Michelin star...an honour that locals have long thought deserved and one pounced upon by Catalan newspapers following the release of the new Michelin guide for Portugal and Spain.

The star is all the more bright because of the widely prevailing view (at least in the Spanish press) that the awards of stars were "stingy" this year--stingy in that few new stars were awarded in Spain, of course. But what would food industry accolades be without a little fodder for bellyaching, I say.

You can read my article about Cinc Sentits in the Globe & Mail until I get a chance to fill you in further. Here's the link: Catalan-Canuck chef makes Michelin magic.

Churros and Chocolate in Barcelona

2008-11-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

I rarely write about blogging per se because, let's face it, qua activity it's a little on the dull side. That is not to say that the blogging world doesn't hold a sway over me. Nor is it to say that I don't follow my blog statistics with a greedy fascination. It's simply that the mechanics of blogging are normally best left out of the blog.

Except today. Today, I'm going to tell you a little about what I learn from my stats. While the statistics don't identify visitors, they do let me know generally where visitors to the blog are from and, in some cases, what they were searching for when they came to me. You may be surprised to know that an alarming number of my blog's visitors are searching for "girls' pepes", which I suppose is a misspelled euphemism for vaginas. They are directed to the post titled Pepe's Paella. I can only assume that they are sorely disappointed. Not unlike those searching for "sexy nuns"; they end up at Nuns Cook.

More importantly, I've discovered that there are many desperate souls searching for the best churros and chocolate in Barcelona. They have to date been misdirected to this blog because of a post about churros in Seville.

Churros are deep fried pieces of dough, usually in stick form, which are typical of the south of Spain; they're not part of Catalan culinary tradition, even though there are a handful of churrerias sprinkled around Barcelona. My Seville churro post simply says that Barcelona's churros just don't reach Seville's standards and, with that, leaves those hopeful souls hanging

That ends today. For those of you who must know, there is one Barcelona spot that nearly reaches Seville standards (nearly). The pace is rather laconically dubbed Xurreria (the Catalan spelling of Churreria). You can find it a few doors down from a place called La Granja (c/ Banys Nous 4, Gotico).

La Granja (pictured above) is, well, a granja, that is to say, a milk bar--a little like a cafe, but with offerings that usually include a variety of hot chocolates and milk based beverages. For those looking for a break from bars, there's no alcohol and no smoking. Many granjas are holes in the wall; La Granja is one of the more charming and offers a variety of chocolates, milks, juices, teas and coffees as well as pastries, sandwiches and home made desserts. An excellent option for a light breakfast or a merienda (an afternoon tea, usually taken at around 5pm in Barcelona).

But back to churros. The Xurreria makes some of the lightest, freshest churros in Barcelona and La Granja--which sells a a thick melted chocolate so dark it's nearly black--lets you bring them in for dipping.

An individual portion of churros is a euro. The chocolate is 2.50. I have no doubt that your taste buds will thank you...your arteries, not so much.

Foie Gras (Rant Free)

2008-11-19T08:24:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a post about old school Catalan restaurants recently, dutifully consuming butifarra, suquet, pigs' feet and a variety of other Catalan classics without writing a word.

Luckily, the Globe has come through by publishing another article that I can share with you on-line. This one is about "ethical" foie gras. It's a costly rarity, even in Spain, but you (assuming you are European) can get it through this site, if you fancy: www.ibergour.com.

If you have a hankering to read all about it, you can find the Globe article here: Spain's no-guilt delicacy: foie gras minus the force feeding.

If you simply cannot suppress the need to rant about foie (one of the most rantable foods, to be sure), feel free to let it all out in the comment section of this post.

Pigs for Obama

2008-11-05T07:34:00.000-08:00

It's a little hard to wrap your mind around pigs on the glorious morning of the Obama victory. Believe me, I know. But, if any pig can take your mind off history-making, righteousness and the single largest ray of hope on the world political stage, it's the wooly, totally improbable Hungarian mangalica. I like to think the mangalica would have come out for Obama in droves were they human and registered voters in key swing states.

In any case, here's a link to my story about them (voting history not addressed) and the Spanish production company that helped save the breed: Mangalica: The Next Big Pig.

In case you're wondering, I do still have a piece of sausage left from the mangalica samples that Jamones Segovia sent me, the ham samples having disappeared a long time ago. The pork is delicious, even if the picture of the wooly critter on the packaging creeps me out a little every time.

La Castanyada

2008-10-31T07:55:00.000-07:00

Felipe and I went out today fully decked out in our finest wiggery to confirm reports that Spaniards are quickly catching on to Halloween. We were fiercely stared down by dour Catalans and thoroughly drenched with rain--a punishment by a dour Catalan god, no doubt.

It all makes us think that rumors of Spanish Halloween have been greatly exaggerated. Or perhaps that Catalans remain fiercely anti-Spanish, which in this case may also make them anti-Halloween. Nonetheless, we will venture out again tonight to conduct further investigation. The Gangsters of Love are playing at El Monasterio (Passeig Isabel II, Born) and you might remember their hip swinging, slow drawling, harmonica playing singer from the Got Bail post. I know, I know, I'll be accompanied. But one can always look...particularly when a harmonica's involved.

In any event, that still leaves us with La Castanyada. I really should have mentioned it when I last wrote about panellets, but for sheer laziness I left out that part of the story.

Since we're temporarily trapped at home by the pouring rain, I'll tell you now.

Loosely translated, La Castanyada means something like The Chestnut Season. Strictly speaking, it occurs on October 31 and November 1 when Catalans partake not only in panellets and moscatel wine, but also in roast chestnuts (castanyas in Catalan) and sweet potatoes (boniatos). As such, October not only sees the cookie market flooded with panellets, it also sees the installation of tiny shacks on select street corners where robust, soot covered women (and sometimes men) tend charcoal grills for roasting said chestnuts and sweet potatoes. The women store the chestnuts, once roasted, in giant drawers insulated with the rattiest blankets on God's green earth. And, by golly, they're brimstone hot and diabolically delicious. The chestnuts, not the blankets. The blankets you'll just have to overlook.

You can pick up a packet of 12 chestnuts for about 2.50 euros and a sweet potato for between 3 and 4 euros. Mauri Pastissería has its own chic stand at the corner of Provença and Rambla Catalunya and can also supply you with some tasty panellets. For a more authentic Castanyada experience, however, try a stand that's not a name brand. Central spots include the stand on the southwest corner of Plaça Catalunya and the one on Calle Bailen, a few blocks south of Travessera de Gracia.

But hurry! The shacks disappear soon!

Days of Almond and Potato

2008-10-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

Remember last year at about this time? I know, it's asking a lot. I hardly remember it myself. I have the archives for this very reason...to aid memory.

My archives tell me that at this very time last year I was writing about Cookies for Saints and Dead People, otherwise known as panellets.

As I recall, I stiffed you on the recipe. You can't blame me, this blog doesn't really pay. However, the Globe & Mail does. So, this year, I developed a recipe for them. Here is a link to the story: All Saints' Day cookies are an almond delight. You are welcome to try the recipe. The photo above is of the finished product.

By the way, my friend Trish tested the Globe recipe out of the goodness of her heart and palate. Click on the link to check out her delicious website, The Seasonal Gourmet.

Cooking for the Financial Crisis

2008-10-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago now, my sister informed me that the world was in a financial crisis. I can't blame her for assuming that I had been in a partial vegetative state since my arrival in Barcelona and therefore unable to access communication media or converse with other humans, it hasn't been a particularly productive year for me after all. However, I managed to put her mind at ease by letting her know that I was on top of the crisis thing-a-magiggy and will now go even further by offering my thoughts on crisis management...food-wise.

Luckily, this is a topic I know much about as I have been trying to keep the lid on a personal financial crisis for, well, about a year and a half now. No one's turned off my lights or, God forbid, blocked my internet access, so I do believe I boast about as much success as the US Treasury Department. Perhaps more.

My secret to creative crisis management: the chicken carcass. You'd be surprised the excellent return you can get on a mere skeleton with a few scraps of meat hanging off it. At 50 euro cents a pop, it's really all economic upside.

Actually, it's all about strategically combining the carcass and seasonal vegetables. This week: the pumpkin at 1.50 euros a kilo at the farmers' stalls outside the Boqueria market.

So, to the management. Well, basically, the carcass (two carcasses, preferably) goes into a pot with a good four litres of water and a selection of stock vegetables. (See the Chicken Soup post for additional thoughts on chicken soup--while that post deals with an already cooked carcass and this one with raw carcasses, the technique is largely similar.) This week I used 2 carrots, 1 parsnip, half a turnip, a couple of leaves of cabbage, 1 rib of celery, a leek and some parsley. The whole thing cooks and cooks until it becomes delicious chicken stock--you'll have to skim a little scum off the top when the soup first boils, but once you've reduced the heat to simmer and salted the whole thing well, there's little more to do but wait for the flavour to take. I usually pick the meat off the carcasses and throw it back in along with the carrots and parsnips (chopped up) for a home style chicken soup. I also put the soup in the fridge overnight so that I can skim off the fat the next day, but you can do as you like. If you leave things here, your investment has been approximately 2 euros ($3) and about an hour to an hour and a half of time. Your return: four very healthy and delicious meals for two.

But you can really take crisis management to the next level with the pumpkin and just one litre of the clear stock (i.e. just the liquid, none of the bits). For this, you'll need the following:

1kg pumpkin
1 litre chicken stock
2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
3 tbsp maple syrup
1 400ml can coconut milk
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
cilantro and roasted pumpkin seeds to garnish (optional but delicious)

You first cook the pumpkin, seeds and goo removed, in the microwave for 5-6 minutes to soften so that you can remove the skin more easily and chop it up. Once chopped (coarsely), you toss it into a soup pot with the stock and cook until soft enough to easily mash. You mash (or puree with a hand blender for a smoother soup), add the peanut butter (dissolved in a little of the hot liquid first so that it doesn't clump), maple syrup and coconut milk. Season with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with a little chopped cilantro and roasted pumpkin seeds.

By the way, I found great instructions for roasting pumpkin seeds and general pumpkin manipulation at this site: www.pumpkinpatchesandmore.org. I tossed my seeds with a little bit of olive oil and salt before roasting and they came out a treat.

Should you be wondering, your additional investment is 2.50 euros ($3.75) or so and you get two to three additional meals for two...well, you reduce the meals with the chicken stock by one or two, but you gain some variety and deliciousness so it's all net profit in the world of nutritional accounting (it's a little Enron-like, the nutritional accounting, you see).

Anyway, that's up to six meals for two for the price of 4.50 euros ($6.75) by my count and don't even get me started on how you can vary, stretch or even freeze the chicken stock--it's a world of infinite possibilities.

I will now sit back and wait for my Nobel Prize in Economics, thank you very much.

The Fishies

2008-10-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes what it would like to be a fishmonger. Spending your days in the pungent world of fish, crustaceans and mollusks. Gutting. Scaling. Filleting. Removing ink sacks. Slicing and dicing. And god knows what other manner of deft knife work. It's a trip to see it all live at a Barcelona market, where fish and their cousins are available at their freshest and only the unworthy open on Mondays. (Everybody knows that there's no Sunday catch to sell so whatever shows up at the market (or on most restaurant menus) on Monday is usually already past its prime.)

I use a two pronged method to choose market seafood: price and lack of overall scariness. Lobster (bogavante) and crayfish (cigalas) generally fall off the list based on the first criterion. Eels (anguilas) and their fanged friends based on the second.

Doradas (gilthead breams) have been reflecting the light off their pale silver scales with an intensity that can only be termed provocative of late. They're a firm fleshed white fish from Atlantic waters and popular choice with Catalans...and, what, they're just 9 euros a kilo (and half that price at the Boqueria market)? A veritable bargain. A healthier, better value lunch or dinner one could not find. (Should you wish further information about this or any other fish (including species vulnerability), check out www.fishbase.org.)

The other day, I asked my fishmonger to clean a couple of doradas inside and out and took the little beasts of the ocean home to stuff and roast. Felipe eats the insides of their heads--it's a little Hannibal Lector, I know, but, to amuse us both, I asked that the heads be kept intact. It's not a popular choice, I'm afraid. I personally relish the drama of the intact noggin for presentation purposes (as do most Spaniards), but I have friends who would run screaming after one look at those blank fish eyes. So, follow my example at your own risk.

I turned the oven on to about 200C and made a little stuffing. I grated a carrot and about half a medium onion. I chopped a handful of parsley and another handful of hazelnuts. I mixed it all together with the juice of half a lemon (plus a little of its rind), a tablespoon and a half of olive oil, and pepper and salt to taste. Then after greasing the doradas inside and out with oil and sprinkling them with salt, I stuffed them with my carrot mixture, hollowing them out a little more than the fishmonger had in the process. I baked them in the preheated oven on olive oil greased aluminium foil for about 20 minutes and served with mashed potatoes and tomatoes sprinkled with sugar that I had roasted along with the doradas and dressed with basil, black olives, olive oil, pepper and salt.

My little dorada friends were a smashing success. And I scored a few points when I let Felipe have my dorada's head. I must say, it was no skin off my dorada.

(For a variation on the stuffing, try a handful of chopped pineapple, a handful of chopped cilantro, a handful of chopped tomato and some chopped peanuts mixed with lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper (in the quantities suggested above).)

Losses

2008-10-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have to take a moment to mourn the passing of a couple of favourite spots that perhaps I'd neglected a little in the past few months. For this I feel guilt and remorse and even a little shame. But so it goes in the cut throat world of Barcelona restaurants. Not all survive.

First, Mosquito, of the Hold the Meat post, has given way to La Mosca (Spanish for Fly...insert your own joke). I haven't tried La Mosca, but I will admit that at least it's keeping Mosquito's spirit alive by naming itself after another insect. Unfortunately, it's one that's even less appetizing than the last. Oh well. [P.S. I'm afraid that news of Mosquito's demise has been greatly exaggerated here. It is alive and well in a new location: Jaume Giralt, 53 (Born), tel. 93 315 1744. La Mosca is a sister enterprise, serving French influenced tapas. My apologies for the confusion.] [P.P.S. Mosquito did, in fact, close on July 1, 2009. We are to watch the website, however, for news of future ventures by its owners:www.mosquitotapas.com.]

Second, L'Espigall, the little neighbourhood bar that served me many a manchego cheese sandwich and cafe con leche seems to no longer be opening its doors. If they're just on holiday, which is always possible, I beseach them to put up a sign. [P.S. I have since discovered that L'Espigall opens for the summer tourist season.]

Besides those changes in my food landscape, I was sorely disappointed with dinner at La Candela--see Terrace Days and Personal Best of Barcelona posts--last time I went. Don't get me wrong, the food hit the spot. I was craving a hamburger and, even if theirs is a little unconventional, they serve it topped with some of the most delicious carmelized onions know to man and a healthy slab of goat cheese. Fantastic. The plaza had changed, though. In our couple of hours in the square at the foot of that formerly peaceful old church, we were witness to what appeared to be several drug trades run from a nearby bench, teenage drinkers on the church steps, a couple of untidy construction zones and a steady stream of scooters and other traffic where there had been none before. Presumably, these are in part the effects of police crackdowns on dealers in the centre of town, which have resulted in more activity on the formerly quiet peripheries.

Loose Ends

2008-10-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

More than a month without a post. Shameful.

Let this be a warning to all of you singles out there. Get into a relationship and all of a sudden all of the really important things, like your obsession with food and writing about food in a vaguely sexual way, start to take a back seat. Not that I'm knocking relationships--there's a reason the food takes a back seat...well, it bides its time, anyway.

I believe I owe you a few things. Overdue things. Shamefully overdue things.

First, I need to wrap up the ice cream story. Just because I haven't been writing about it, doesn't mean that I haven't been researching it...with gusto. And these October days are just like summer lately so there's really no reason not to get out there for one last cone.

To sum up: Gelaaati! in the Gotico is a big yeees! as Marco said in his comment on the How to Lick an Ice Cream Cone post, mainly because it was the first ice cream parlour where the employees were actually happy. One of them even made a joke. Having had the laughter scooped out of us at every other Barcelona ice cream spot, we just turned away in horror, not knowing how to react to this unprecedented dairy industry faux pas.

We also swooned over Amorino at 53 Gran de Gracia--possibly the creamiest vanilla and most delicious amaretto ice cream in Barcelona.

If you forced me to rank the ones we liked most, I would say it was very close, but that this was my order of preference:

1. Cremeria Toscana (there's also a location in the Born now)
2. Amorino
3. Gelaaati!
4. Gelateria Caffetteria Italiana

Second, you should know that I could now do a full month of seafood stories. Shoals and shoals of fishes and cuttlefishes and their cousins, the crustaceans and mollusks. I have recipes. I won't tell you that they're coming because I wouldn't want to let you down when I fail to post them. Let's just say that I may surprise you with them.

Third, I think we could revisit tapas. There are a hell of a lot of tapas bars in Barcelona and I've been to more of them than I care to mention. But I will mention. That will be the whole point...to mention.

Finally, I've been to a couple of fancy shmancy places of late. Some even on my own dime--a personal failure, to be sure. I will report my travels as fully as possible. The posted pic is a hint.

I hope to be more prolific in the future. But I can't promise.

That is all.

Things I Ate in Cantabria

2008-08-20T12:03:00.001-07:00

You may not know this, but the Iberian peninsula was once hopping with Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons--Cantabria, in the northern part of Spain, in particular. They lived in caves. They hunted wooly mammoths, bison and the like. Some of them painted incredibly sophisticated pictures with metal oxides and plant extracts...of mammoth, bison and the like.

In the Cuevas del Castillo, just outside of the pretty spa town of Puente Viesgo, we saw some incredibly preserved cave art, some as old as 28,000 years. It was mind blowing, to say the least.

But, more importantly, I ate cow stomachs. Perhaps the stomachs of cousins of the two cows pictured not far from Casa Sergio (Puente Viesgo), the restaurant where said stomachs were consumed. Impossible to say.

In any event, the stomachs (innocuously monikered "callos" in Spanish) were tasty. While, as you can imagine, the beige gumminess of your typical cow stomach is not particularly pleasing to the eye, these particular stomachs came in a rich beefy stew which lent them a little cover and, one might even say, nobility. The callos themselves were less chewy than expected, with a soft, part meaty, part fatty texture and an interior resembling a fleshy shag rug, which was particularly nice.

Judging by their depictions of cow ancestors, I think the cavemen would have approved.

Whatever Became of the Palacios Chorizo Challenges?

2008-08-16T04:29:00.001-07:00

My musings on ice cream may have lead you to wonder how I'm doing with my fridge full of sausage. Believe it or not, I am almost all the way through the Palacios chorizo. However, as I recently received another shipment of samples (of Hungarian origin this time), the fridge still remains practically full of cured meat.

How did I manage to use up my remaining chorizo friends? A variety of ways. I was not above slicing the chorizo into sandwiches of fresh baguette, tomato, basil and manchego cheese. I also served much of it as part of a cured meat tapa dish (alongside good Seville olives and slabs of tortilla--see the Tapas Episode). My favourite use, however, continued to be a chorizo based paella (see First Challenge), which I returned to again and again, particularly in times of ingredient scarcity.

Another impromptu invention, albeit one requiring more ingredient planning and therefore less frequently attempted and still requiring some perfecting, was the chorizo tart (pictured). While the tart does require a few things that you may not normally keep in your fridge (e.g. puff pastry), it is in fact ridiculously easy to make. Here is as far as I got with my experiments:

Ingredients:
1 sheet of pre-prepared puff pastry
2 small chorizo sausages, quartered length wise
10 small rounds of young goat cheese (about 1 cm thick)
1 handfull of asparagus (trimmed) or 1 cup of red pepper (roasted in 200C oven for 1/2 hour), sliced
4 cups of whole milk (you can substitute 2 cups of creme fraiche for the same quantity of milk for more deliciousness)
2 large eggs
salt and pepper, to taste

Press the puff pastry into a greased 9 inch pie pan. Precook according to package directions. While the pastry is baking, beat together the eggs and milk; season with salt and pepper to taste. Once the pastry is out of the oven, place the rounds of goat cheese evenly across the bottom of the pastry. Top with milk and egg mixture. Lie the chorizo and the asparagus (or peppers) evenly across the top of the tart; they should be only partly submerged in the egg mixture. (To convert this into a vegetarian friendly delicacy, simply omit the chorizo.) Bake in a 180C oven for approximately 20-25 minutes or until the tart is set.

Accompany with a crisp white wine, perhaps an albariño.

More Musings on Ice Cream

2008-08-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

It's mid-August. There's no denying it. Though ice cream days are limited, they're not coming to an end in the immediate future--we can all take comfort.

Felipe and I are continuing our search for a favourite ice cream spot. Cremeria Toscana of How to Lick an Ice Cream Cone is in the lead without question (try a scoop of cinnamon gelato, if you go). It's closely followed by the resectable gelato and frozen yogurt of Gracia's Gelateria Caffetteria Italiana (Placa Revolució 2). Pictured above are the Gelateria's banana and blackberry flavours--the former a perfect demonstration of superior licking technique, the latter not so much.

In the old town, I feel the absence of Heladeria La Campana, black listed for reasons explained in detail two posts ago. Tomo II (c/ Argentera) is very good (the mango sorbet is all succulent mango, for instance), but its minimalist, gizmo focussed approach to ice cream doesn't appeal to me--when it comes to ice cream, I'm a traditionalist.

Wandering the Born and Gotico, we tried to get satisfaction from Gelateria Pagliotta (c/ Jaume I 15, Gotico), but the gelato didn't come up to snuff--a little watery and of middling flavour, not to mention the disappointing scoop size.

We have yet to try Gelaaati! (c/Llibreteria 7, Gotico), recommended by Marco by way of comment on the preceding post. It sounds promising. You'll be the first to hear how it stands up to the lick test.

How to Lick an Ice Cream Cone

2008-08-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

The best thing about ice cream on a hot summer day is that it doesn't let you waste a moment. If you neglect it even briefly, it's sticky sweetness doesn't delay in running down your hand, possibly to wreak havoc in the decolte of your loose summer top or mar the leg that's turning slowly from sun starved to sun kissed. No question: it must be licked.

Beware, however; licking in the heat is not a lackadaisical negotiation, it's a a battle--marshaled by the tongue. A skillful luchador will always, always start from the bottom, rounding the base to eliminate any hint of insurrectionist drips. From there, she will work her way up urgently, smoothing the surface of the ice cream into a cohesive mound, disappearing by mouthfuls any rebellious ledge or mutinous chunk until the ice cream finds itself confined to the limits of the cone, incapable of retaliation. Having contained the fractious fringes, she can rest and lick with leisure for a while, using her tongue to push what remains of the scoop down into the depths of the cone, biting down the edges as they become exposed. And if she's succeeded completely, a small core of passionate resistance will remain at the very bottom of the cone to be devoured in a single determined swoop or fed to her lover with a complicit kiss.

I might mention that I have been inspired by a new licking frontier: a little shop on the left side of the Eixample (corner of Muntaner and Córsega) called La Cremería Toscana. Mind boggling tubs full of worthy opponents.

The Best Laid Ice Cream Plans

2008-07-26T10:55:00.001-07:00

Felipe (the boy from the Pringles post) and I laid out what seemed like a perfect summer plan the other day. We decided that, over what was left of the summer, we were going to very seriously put our energies toward trying all of the ice cream flavours at La Campana (until recently my favourite ice cream spot in Barcelona). Because La Campana has at least forty ice cream flavours and because we both felt that daily visits were incompatible with swimsuit season, we laid out a considered, if slightly complex, scheme on our way to make the first purchase under the auspices of the 'plan'.

We agreed as follows: We would go to La Campana whenever we were in the Old Town. We would ask to try a sample of three flavours each time. Out of those three, we would choose a favourite on which to focus our attentions in the form of an ice cream cone. We would proceed systematically, starting from one end of the case and moving through the flavours sequentially. If we were ever confronted with a situation in which none of the three flavours tried that day appealed to us, we could purchase a cone from a previous selection that we hadn't had a chance to try. The last was a hotly negotiated point: Felipe originally thought that it would be more efficient to move on to the next three flavours at that point, while I wanted to extend the anticipation of the next experience. We hammered out the final accord hurriedly as we were nearing the shop, having decided that we'd stop in before seeing the excellent Las Meninas exhibit at the Picasso Museum (on until September).

When we arrived, we leaned in immediately to inspect the fruity case on the right, having purchased from the creamy case on the left last time we were there. With the sparkle of all the world's hope and anticipation in our eyes, we asked the laconic server for samples of the mango, cheesecase and black berry ice creams.

ONLY ONE TRY, she yelled, contorting her lips in what I can only imagine was an attempt to evoke a constipated coyote.

Oh, we can't try all of them?

ONE! (screeching baboon)

Oh, o.k., but what if we don't like the one we try?

ONE! (hyena still bloody from half eaten carrion)

One each?

ONE! (rattler...if there had been an S in "one", she would have hissed)

So much bitterness in an ice cream shop didn't bode well so, with fallen hearts, we left without a sample and without a purchase. We had been backed into an impossible corner--not because the server's position was inherently unreasonable (although it was), but because of the server's unchecked display of total contempt, which quite frankly would have robbed Homer Simpson of his appetite.

Perhaps we should have asked (quoting Lisa Simpson's conversation with the cafeteria lady) if the server remembers when she lost her love for the job. We didn't. But we did console ourselves with a delicately flavoured mango sorbet from Tomo II on c/ Argentera in the Born. Tomo II has a small selection of artisanal ices in a rotating case with minutely controlled temperature settings. It was very good, but could hardly make up for all of our melted ice cream hopes.

We are still in search of a suitable location to conduct our summer experiment.

Terrace Days

2008-07-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

Summer in Barcelona cries out for late dinners on candlelit terraces, with the murmur of city life subdued by crumbling church walls and leafy trellises. Just you and a boy you know (or maybe don't know) gazing soulfully into each other's eyes over some terribly well roasted lamb or a succulent lobster claw while a gentle breeze ruffles your hair. Maybe you're sipping a rioja or maybe a chilled verdejo because it's hot and you can't possibly imagine it getting any hotter. Maybe you order a golden crema catalana to share and feed each other as a prelude to the not-quite-direct walk home and whatever comes next.

Oh, if only it could be so. The unfortunate reality of Barcelona terrace dining is a little less romantic. Most neighbourhood restaurants do with a few tables on the nearest street corner where one battles both street noise and fumes and many of the restaurants in Barcelona's prettiest squares merit little more than a scornful saunter by or, on a truly beautiful day, an overpriced cocktail.

There are a handful of gems, however. This is my short list:

Agua (Passeig Maritim 30 (Barceloneta), 93 225 1272) - By far my favourite, Agua's beachside terrace is romanticly lit, prettily turned out, well (if not quite cheaply) priced and complemented by a very competently prepared menu with a focus on seafood, as the name suggests. I urge you to reserve ahead--at least a few days beforehand for a decent time (i.e. 10pm or later).

Merendero de la Mari (Plaza Pau Vila 1 (Old Port), 93 221 3141) - It's by far the best of the tourist filled seafood restaurants lining the Palau de Mar, I say without having tried any of the others. I base my assertion wholly on the fact that the clientele during most of the year is Catalan in high numbers, with entire families often enjoying Sunday lunch port-side. Because of the enormous size of the terrace (a corner of which is pictured above), you can usually get a spot even if you don't have a reservation, particularly if you're prepared to wait a little. Get the parillada (mixed seafood grill) and the squid ink paella to share.

La Candela (Plaza de Sant Pere (Born), 93 310 6242) - La Candela has a pretty good "market" menu that leans to the modern, but the best reason to go are the candle lit tables in Plaza de Sant Pere, overlooked by the Sant Pere Church and a series of charming Born walk ups. [P.S. See update in Losses post.]

Café de l'Academia (Plaza Sant Just (Gotico), 93 319 8253) - L'Academia is an old Barrio Gotico stalwart, serving traditional Catalan cuisine to well heeled Catalans and tourists alike. There are a few umbrella shaded tables in the atmospheric Plaza Sant Just, just outside.

La Cafeteria (Plaza Virreina 2 (Gracia), 93 416 0457) - La Cafeteria has an enviable location on the leafy Plaza Virreina--once described to me as the most adult of Gracia's plazas, presumably due to the absence of hordes of drunk revellers sitting on the ground in the middle of the square as is wont to happen in the Plaza del Sol and Plaza Rius y Taulet. La Cafeteria serves minimal food, but its sandwiches are first rate. Try the warm pork loin with goat cheese and green pepper. (The same sandwiches are served in an equally pleasant ambience and less daytime sun at Tierra on the other side of the square.)

Cafe Salambó (C/ Torrijos 51 (Gracia), 93 218 6966) - On the pedestrian Calle Torrijos, just a stone's throw away from Plaza Virreina and next door to the indie Verdi Cinema, Cafe Salambo serves good salads, a varied selection of well prepared mains and yummy desserts. While the few tables that hug its wall may not make the grandest of terraces, they are a fantastic vantage point on Gracia's parade of life.

El Jardí (C/ Hospital 56 (Raval), 93 329 1550) - In the dusty courtyard of the Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu, El Jardi is a charming escape from the bustle of the Raval. It has a small menu, but the salads are outstanding and the pastas and desserts are yum-a-licious. They also make a mean sangria. Stay away from boring basics like patatas bravas and tortilla here and you won't go wrong. (What makes me love it more is that in the fall and winter months they bring out blankets that you can snuggle into to withstand the cold. And, yes, I know that this doesn't concern you now.)

Ra (Plaza Gardunya 3 (Raval), 93 301 4163) - I have yet to try one of Ra's famous breakfasts (of the American variety, a rarity in Barcelona), but I can attest to a pretty decent and well priced (prix fixe) menu for lunch. While the rear of the Boqueria overlooking a parking location may not give Ra the most picturesque view of Barcelona, the happy decor, relaxed crowd and tasty selection of "international" food make up for it.

A few on Rambla Catalunya (Eixample) - Rambla Catalunya is a long leafy oasis of cafes of varying quality and price. My favourite time to go is at 5pm during the school year when the terraces fill with parents and grandparents, kids in tow, taking a break on the way home. I also love 6pm on weekends, when the clientele appears to be exclusively made up of well coifed Catalan ladies and gentlemen, most of them 70 and up, sipping orxata or tonic water. In terms of food, Ciudad Condal (Rambla Catalunya 18, 93 318 1997) and Taller de Tapas (Rambla Catalunya 49-51; also try the location at Plaza Sant Josep Oriol 8 (Gotico); www.tallerdetapas.com) offer the best quality; both serve tapas. Forn de Sant Jaume (Rambla Catalunya 50) has excellent Catalan pastry treats: try the cocas, buñuelos or chuchos with coffee or thick hot chocolate.

And some on Calle Enric Granados (Eixample) - The partly pedestrianized Calle Enric Granados, a few blocks over from Rambla Catalunya, also deserves honourable mention. There, Embat, Origens, Habaluc and El Trobador provide decent food on subdued, comfortable terraces. If you're early, pause in the pretty, gated university garden at the bottom of the street--be warned, though; neighbourhood cats tend to see its gravel paths more as litter boxes than walkways.

A postscript (August 26, 2008): In recent days, I've been enjoying the outdoor tables at Bar Lobo in the Plaza de los Gatos (c/ Pintor Fortuny 3, 93 481 5346) in the Raval. I don't actually think the plaza is called Plaza de los Gatos, everyone just refers to it as such because of the large cat mural on the wall of one of the buildings abutting the plaza. Bar Lobo has pretty wooden tables under a long canopy, with fresh white table cloths and pots of rosemary and thyme for adornment. For some reason, it makes me think of Provence. The food, if a bit on the pricey side for tapas, is very good.

My Obsession with Octopus Continues

2008-07-16T02:53:00.000-07:00

Despite a summer bout of procrastination that has been making my head spin, I recently managed to write about something that really matters: my love affair with the octopus, torrid and tempestuous as always and very much alive in the lazy days of summer. Here is a link to Calidoscopio (an on-line Spanish cultural review that has been kind enough to let me write in English and wise enough not to bother with a translation into Spanish): www.calidoscopio.net/2008/06Julio-Agosto/Miscelanea03.html.

Dipping into White Beans

2008-07-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

I have always loved dips: guacamole, hummus, babaganoush, tzatziki, taramasolata, raita, olive tapenade, black bean, artichoke, roasted red pepper, spinach (my mother's). A veritable pageant of freshly melding colour and flavour.

I have taken many a dip from stumbling beginnings to pinnacles of perfection...if only to later use it wantonly in antipasto platters.

The one that has always eluded me, however, is the white bean. I kept trying to coax it out of its shell for years, with little success. I persisted because I could see its potential. But, despite Herculean efforts, things always turned out deathly dull with the same ineluctable end: awkward efforts to eat through as much of the bowl as possible after everything else has disappeared and the resigned scraping of the remains into the garbage after all the guests have left.

But something happened in Barcelona. Maybe I changed. Maybe he did. Maybe both. It doesn't really matter. What's important is that we finally, finally, finally connected. The white bean has landed, it has blossomed and it is living the prime of its beany life. Both of us are smitten.

Here is what I can tell you about the how:

1 cup of canned white beans (rinsed)
1-2 tablespoons of minced fresh dill (or basil)
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon of freshly grated lemon zest
half a medium clove of garlic, finely grated or crushed
1 tablespoon of olive oil
a splash of cold water to loosen a little if necessary (no more than a tablespoon or so)
sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper to taste (I used about 1/2 a teaspoon of the former and 1/4 of the latter)

Mash everything together with a potato masher or fork. (Don't mix in a food processor as it'll ruin the texture--you want it to be mashed to the point where it holds together, but with a few pieces of bean still discernible.)

The perfect summer tickle, particularly delicious paired with crisp steamed green beans or on olive oil slathered crostini.

What to Do with a Box of Pringles in Barcelona

2008-07-06T02:43:00.001-07:00

A year ago this week, I arrived in Barcelona with a suitcase of my favourite shoes, a smattering of essential cooking utensils and an inflatable mattress. It was raining oppressively and Barcelona, at first sight, looked wilted and unkempt from the window of the cab. I undressed to my underwear in the hotel room, took a box of Pringles from the mini-bar, sat on the narrow single bed, ate the Pringles and cried.

I didn't return to Pringles until a few evenings ago. I was walking with a Colombian boy along the beach. We had a bottle of wine and a blanket, a backpack with books and sweaters. We splurged on the Pringles at the last minute. We ate some of them under the trees in Poble Nou park, while watching a kids' birthday party. Then, as the sun was setting, we took the rest to the rocks by the shore where we remained sitting into the night.

Port in Porto

2008-07-06T01:08:00.000-07:00

There are many lovely things about Portugal. The ubiquity of port wine is one and the fact that many bodegas in Porto will give you a free tasting (Croft and Noval among them) is another.

A type of port that is rarely available in Canada and that I first came to try at Noval in Porto is a white. Unlike ruby or tawny ports, which are typically served as digestifs (though tawny, technically, can be served as an aperitif as well), white port is usually served chilled as a delicious and relatively inexpensive aperitif. It varies in sweetness: a regular white is the driest, a fine white is sweet, and a lagrima is sweeter still. The LCBO in Ontario appears to stock a few brands of fine white, though I expect that you might have to hunt for them.

When we checked into the stately Pestana Palace Hotel, overlooking the Duoro River in Porto, the staff served us a fantastically refreshing mixture of white port (approx. 1 part) and tonic (approx. 2 to 3 parts)--over ice and garnished with a lemon slice. Search the LCBOs, find the white port and make this your new summer drink.

Octopus in Portugal

2008-06-23T05:50:00.000-07:00

It happened quite unex-pectedly, my last meeting with the octopus. It wasn't carefully planned and carelessly executed like the char grilled fiasco of last year. In fact, but for a gnawing hunger and a missing guidebook which might have led us to pre-tried options, we would never have settled for Cafe Paris in Sintra (Portugal). I mean, can you really expect an authentic Portuguese experience in an ostensibly overpriced restaurant named for a French city, particularly when it sits directly in front of one of the main attractions in town? Common sense dictates that you cannot. As it happens, however, common sense is a gift I lack.

Lucky for me. Cafe Paris serves a sublime grilled octopus. Certainly the best octopus I have ever had--and I am slightly obsessed with octopus so you can trust me on this. So redolent of perfection is it that it may well pave the way to heaven. Just one tentacle would certainly tempt St. Peter to open the pearly gates.

The octopus was just one of the highlights of a Portuguese trip filled with fantastic food and nightly Euro 2008 soccer. Other outstanding meals were had at the atmospheric Oliviers in Lisbon (a set menu of 9 excellent appetizers, of which the truffled tagliatelle and octopus carpaccio were the sensous stars, and a delicious but superfluous black pork main, all accompanied by an excellent bottle of Duas Quintas, a great Duoro red) and at the tiny Boquim do Mouraira in Evora (the owner of the bar, which seats no more than 10, himself whipped up a stack of tender grilled lamp chops, freshly fried potato chips and a delicious salad as he watched the Spain/Greece game and we sipped some tasty house red).

I must warn you, though, the Michelin starred Eleven in Lisbon was overpriced (expected) and unimpressive (unexpected) as well as over-salted (common in Portugal, but unacceptable at a restaurant of this level). Worse yet, the Pousada Solar da Rede in the Duoro Valley, while a stunning place to stay for the night, served some of the worst food we had on the trip (I suspect some of it pulled directly out of the freezer) and at a shameful price given the disastrous quality.

Last Meals

2008-06-03T14:13:00.001-07:00

I've been contending with lascivious Spanish aristocrats, long lost Brazilians and male bunny boilers lately. It doesn't leave a girl much time for blogging, I must say.

In the midst of this fantastic soap opera, though, I've been contemplating the imagined last meals of famous chefs. Not out of the blue, mind you. Such morbid thoughts rarely occur to me if I'm left to my own devices. In this case, I was helped along by an article in El Pais. It came out a while ago, but it's been skulking around my head refusing to leave like a good fake news article should.

Sea urchins are big for chefs, apparently. Sushi in various outlandish guises. Much complication and a few nods to the simpler things: radishes with olive oil and salt, for example. (Let me just say that you read it here first: the Return of the Radish (November 2007).) Meals at home with family and friends, more attractive if at least one of your homes is on the Amalfi Coast. Micromanagement: half wanted to cook for themselves. And most of all, gluttony: not a single chef limited himself to one dish, not even to two. Why would he and why would anyone for a last meal? I think condemned men should followed the lead here and take greater liberties in placing their orders.

As for my imagined final meal, I'd want it to be as much about memory as about food: the chicken soup my mother would cook when I was sick, the perogies my grandmother used to make, the bacon heavy scrambled eggs that are part of my dad's limited repertoire and now only make the rarest of appearances due to my mother's cholesterol related fears, my other grandmother's nalesniki for dessert. I'd wash it down with some Catalan cava (sparkling wine) in celebration of this part of my life. I would probably be very very sick at some point, but you know, with the last meal and all, that probably wouldn't be my greatest concern.

Hold the Meat

2008-05-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

I've been a little bit meat obsessed lately. You know, with the fridge full of Spanish sausage and what not.

The problem is not so much the meat, but that I have no one to share it with. Many of my Barcelona friends are committed vegetarians. By committed vegetarians I mean not even a juicy piece of bacon filling the kitchen with its sizzle would make them stray. During my brief dalliance with vegetarianism, I had a roving eye, if you know what I mean.

All in all, it's a real shame. The committed part, I mean. Barcelona is a meat eater's city at heart. All those sweaty hams hanging over bar counters, the taboo foie gras, the pretty game birds, the muscular lamb legs, not to mention the row upon row of bulging sausage casings. A crying shame.

But it hasn't been a total loss. I'm not about to start pimping meat so I've been forced to do some vegetarian research. There are some fantastic veggie spots in Barcelona. They stand up to their meat slinging cousins in quality and generally beat them by a long shot in price. All of the spots listed below are inexpensive.

My favourite, La Bascula (c/ Flassaders 30, Born, 93 319 9866), was formerly a chocolate factory. It's a lofty, rustic-chic space (pictured above) with an excellent assortment of everything from pasta to sandwiches to curries to very delectable juices, shakes and sweets.

Mosquito (c/ Carders 46, Born, 93 268 7569, www.mosquitotapas.com), which isn't strictly vegetarian, is an Asian fusion gem that offers more than enough vegetarian tapas items to make it well worth the trip. Thai coconut milk crepes, plump potato filled samosas and a vegetarian version of Singapore noodles make an excellent mini-feast. They also usually have a fantastic little glass of tiramisu for dessert. [P.S. See update in Losses post.]

Sesamo (c/ Sant Antoni Abat 52, Raval, 93 441 6411), a little further from the centre, but still very accessibly poised on the outskirts of the Raval, is another terrific spot with an excellent prix fixe lunch. Their quiches are particularly tasty, but really so is everything on the menu. Please don't go away without a slice of cake for dessert.

L'Illa de Gracia (Gracia), by contrast, makes me remember why I left the meat-free life with its bland mixtures of rices, grains and seaweed. I keep thinking I haven't given it enough of a chance, but really, it's time to let it go.

I have yet to try the Indian Govinda in the Gotico and Juicy Jones in the Raval, both of which come recommended by the committeds.

You also might as well know about www.sincarne.net, Barcelona's one stop information site for vegetarians. The site includes listings and reviews of both shops and restaurants.

Now, let me go eat some meat.

The Palacios Chorizo Challenges - First Challenge

2008-05-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

So, to the Palacios Chorizo Challenges.

You may not be as familiar with Palacios Chorizo as you are with Louis Vuitton. The simple explanation is that Palacios is a large industrial producer of various embutidos (sausages) and prepared foods. One of the largest in Spain, if not the largest. Chorizo, in turn, is a spicy Spanish sausage flavoured with paprika, from which it gets its distinctive reddish hue.

As it happens, I currently have more than one girl's fair share of Palacios chorizo sausage in my fridge. A year's supply? Maybe slightly more. Who's to say? It occupies an entire shelf and comprises well over a dozen sausage links. Whether that makes a year's supply all depends on how much you like sausage, I suppose.

In any event, there's a perfectly simple explanation. And, no, it does not involve a bottle of tequila and a 24 hour grocery store...although, in other circumstances, it might have.

About a month ago, I went on a road trip with Mike Tkachuk, the CEO of the Canadian Serrano Imports, his good natured sales manager Art and Derek Bendig, the chef de cuisine of Toronto's Pangaea restaurant. The product of this trip was the Hog Heaven article that I've reproduced under the More Ham title below. As you can imagine, we spent much time touring the farm and production facility of the family owned Embutidos Fermin, the exporter of jamon iberico to Canada. We also stopped at the much larger Palacios, the exporter of chorizo to Canada.

At the end of our Palacios tour, we were kindly offered a box of Palacios samples. Due to some language barriers and our failure to understand what the size of a box of Palacio samples might actually be, upon leaving the factory, we were presented with four enormous boxes (one for each of us), each about the size of two cases of wine, neatly stacked at the back of our van. Reluctant to offend and even more reluctant to have our diminutive hostess carry three of the giant boxes back with her, we smiled politely and thanked Palacios for the kind gift. The boxes barely fit into the back of the van.

The kicker is that all this food was of course destined for my place because all three of my companions were flying out in a day or two and there was no question of them being able to take anything back. And so I found myself with a fridge full of sausage.

The logical resolution of this state of events was to set myself a challenge: I challenged myself to eat all of that chorizo this year--if I do, I may well buy myself a Louis Vuitton bag.

Just to make things a bit more interesting for you, I'm going to create new Palacios chorizo recipes as I go. The first one is a simple but delicious paella:

1 medium tomato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
3-4 cloves of garlic, slivered
2 small Palacios chorizo sausage links, sliced (about 1 cup)
3-4 tbsp olive oil
2 cups rice
4 cups chicken stock
pinch of saffron
1 cup chickpeas
1 bunch asparagus, chopped into 1 inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste

Sautee the garlic and onion in the oil until soft. Add the chorizo and brown on all sides. Mix in the rice, coat thoroughly with the oil. Add the chicken stock all at once and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, add the saffron and distribute the rice evenly in the plan. After 10 minutes, mix in the chickpeas and adjust the seasoning. Spread the asparagus spears on top. When all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is al dente, turn off the heat and let rest for 5 minutes or so. Enjoy with a fine glass of rioja and Louis Vuitton catalogue by your side.

The Palacios Chorizo Challenges

2008-05-07T03:11:00.000-07:00

A few months ago now, a couple of friends came to visit. They stopped in Paris on the way. After a particularly inspiring trip to the Louis Vuitton store, they found a cafe for lunch and, through error or inattention, ordered an enormous plate of blue cheese, a food item they both abhor. It was then that my male friend (the challenger) challenged my female friend (the challengee). The challenger promised that if the challengee ate the entire plate of cheese, he would buy her the 800 euro Louis Vuitton bag they saw that afternoon.

The challengee didn't trust that the challenger was sincere and didn't attempt to make a dent in the cheese. Later, after repeated assurances of good faith, the challengee came to believe that she had made a horrible mistake. To revive her chances of obtaining the coveted bag, she requested that further challenges be proposed. The challenger obliged, but he was no longer in a generous mood.

The second incarnation of the Louis Vuitton challenge involved the challengee walking into the Mediterranean (off of Barcelona's city beach) fully clothed, submerging herself completely and, once back on land, making the hour long trek home on foot in her soaking clothes. The challengee tried to negotiate this one to permit the leaving behind of personal items like her watch and purse, but to no avail.

Finally, just before they left Barcelona, the challenger gave the challengee one last chance. We were picnicking in Parc Guell, a tourist filled park of a hundred hectares or so situated on the side of a fairly steep hill. After we finished lunch, just as we were on the verge of getting a little restless, the challenger made this proposition to the challengee: run around the park twice in 10 minutes or less and the bag is yours. By way of reference, it had taken us just under 10 minutes to climb up the hill to where we were sitting (approximately a quarter of the route that the challengee--in flip flops--would have to run twice). The challengee couldn't say no. She raced off before we could shout "go!". We stopped timing after 15 minutes had passed and she hadn't yet completed the first circuit. Eventually, she showed up, pink and breathless, asking how she was doing on time.

In the end, all the challengee had to show for the Louis Vuitton challenges was a fairly impressive blister on her right foot. We photographed it alongside the mosaic tiled benches of Parc Guell--the mosaics are pictured above without the blister.

The challenges came to be known as the Louis Vuitton Challenges and their high brow nature perfectly sets the stage for a new set of challenges: the Palacios Chorizo Challenges.

I will have to tell you about those tomorrow.

More Ham

2008-05-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm not going to make further jus-tifications for my delin-quency. Nor will I try to appease you by posting original material. But I do feel sufficiently guilty to at least post a version of the story I wrote for the Globe & Mail about jamon iberico. It ran with a different set of photos on April 2. (The photos I've posted here are just for you.) By the way, the ham passed Canadian inspection and arrived in stores on around April 10th.

Hog Heaven

LA ALBERCA, Spain — The village of La Alberca, in the low mountains of the Sierra de Francia in western Spain, resembles many towns in the region: Locals still smoke pipes in the main square and donkeys tread the cobblestone streets carrying farmers and their products.

But La Ablerca stands out for the stone statue of a pig in front of its church – a sign of the region's veneration of noble Iberian swine.

The area around La Alberca is one of the few in Spain where black-hoofed Iberian pigs, descendants of the wild boars that once roamed the peninsula, are raised free-range in oak forests, where they feed on acorns. The cured ham produced from these pigs ( jamon iberico) ranks with white truffles and beluga caviar as one of the food world's coveted wonders.

At an expected $300 a kilogram or more (about $1,500 a leg), the highest (bellota) grade of this ham will have a commensurately wondrous price tag when it arrives in Canadian food shops and restaurants for the first time, probably this week, following one Canadian's five-year quest to bring it here.

“This product is really special,” says Michael Tkaczuk, president and chief executive officer of Toronto's Serrano Imports, the force behind the ham's arrival in Canada.

He's not the only fan.”It's absolutely fantastic,” says chef Massimo Capra of Toronto's Mistura restaurant, which will be among the first to get the ham. “Canadians should be really excited to be getting it. Something like that is really something to rejoice about. We're not used to making this type of ham here. We're not used to getting it here.”

Chef Martin Kouprie of Toronto's Pangaea, which will be involved in the official launch of the ham on April 10, echoes the sentiment. While he says he typically prefers to work with local producers, this ham simply can't be produced locally.

Last summer, Pangaea served fresh Iberian pork it obtained as a sample at $50 a plate (single chops were served over potato rosti and organic vegetables). The dish was so popular that the restaurant ran out of the meat in two days. “People said it was better than they ever imagined and they actually saw the value in it,” Mr. Kouprie said.

When the Iberian ham is sliced, ideally by hand and paper thin, it is a deep maroon colour, shot with creamy fat. Placed in the mouth, it barely needs chewing; the smooth, nutty flavour explodes and the meat nearly melts apart.

The flavour is so exquisite that Pangaea intends to serve it unadorned, with only roasted red pepper and artichokes as accompaniment.

The story that comes with the ham gives the experience another dimension. Iberian pigs are a singular race. Their black hooves, slim legs and shiny red-black coats are often-cited distinguishing features.

But it is a genetic deformity that makes the meat so coveted: The pigs' fat penetrates muscle mass so well that the result is a thoroughly marbled, richly flavoured and tender meat. The fat is said to approximate olive oil in the high levels of oleic acids it contains, and has properties that lower bad (LDL) cholesterol and increase good (HDL) cholesterol.

To produce the highest quality Iberian ham (called jamon iberico de bellota), Iberian pigs are released in the last months of their lives into oak forests indigenous to the low mountain ranges of southern and central Spain.

Between November and late March, the pigs approximately double their weight by feeding on fresh mountain grasses and acorns that fall to the ground, which infuses the meat with its prized nutty flavour.

Traditional producers approach the slaughter of these pampered animals with great reverence, referring to it as “the sacrifice.” In a ritual that mimics an ancient religious rite, the pigs are not fed for 24 hours to remove impurities from their systems before being killed by the puncturing of the jugular vein. They are usually rendered unconscious with CO2 or stunned electrically before slaughter in order to reduce their stress and thereby preserve the quality of the meat.

In accordance with centuries-old tradition, legs of ham are cured in sea salt and dried at stringently controlled temperatures and humidity levels. The entire process can last for 24 months or more.

Even in Spain, where ham is a way of life, Iberian ham is prized.

When Mr. Tkaczuk first contemplated importing the ham to Canada in 2003, there were restrictions on the import of pork slaughtered in Spain. But by June 2005, concerns over various swine diseases in Spain were dispelled, said Elham Guirguis of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and “fresh meat and processed meat products derived from swine originating in Spain [were] eligible for import into Canada, as long as they [were] slaughtered in an approved plant.”

Once Canada opened its doors, the challenge was getting the first exporter interested and approved. Because the supply of Iberian ham is relatively inelastic, the demand in Spain and Europe is already high, and the cost of complying with North American standards is significant, this was no easy task.

Mr. Tkaczuk approached Embutidos Fermin, a small family-owned producer in La Alberca that is currently the only exporter to the United States.

“Fermin wasn't initially thinking of Canada,” said Raul Martin, who is responsible for Fermin's North American export business. “Michael approached us.”

Mr. Tkaczuk had to woo. “Fermin seemed a little nervous at first. We used the contacts we had in the Spanish government and others to help convince Fermin to work with us,” he said.

Ultimately, it worked, and Fermin applied for Canadian approval, a process that has involved the inevitable delays and expenses occasioned by two countries' bureaucracies.

The first shipment of Fermin's jamon iberico is now on the ground in Canada for CFIA inspection. It is hoped that the ham will be available for sale this week in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal.

In a rare jump on their American neighbours, Canadians will be able to purchase the highest grade of the ham (bellota, or 100-per-cent acorn fed) before the same product gets to the United States, expected in July. A lower grade arrived in the United States in December, 2007, and, at $1,000 (U.S.) a leg, the first hams sold out in the blink of an eye.

Based on buzz alone, the Canadian experience is likely to be no different.

Jamón Iberíco

2008-04-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

So this is the story. Over the past few weeks, I've been tracking and writing about this crazy ham (jamón iberíco) for a Canadian newspaper.

As my friend Dave says, jamón iberíco is the Dom Perignon of ham. It's a delicious ham, no question. Best in the world? I'd say so. It's certainly priced that way.

It arrived in the States in December and is coming to Canada for the first time this month--likely in stores this week. It will retail for about $300/kg or more for the bellota (highest grade, acorn fed ham); and about $180/kg for a lower grade of the ham (recebo, which is partially acorn and partially cereal fed). (The bellota will not reach the States until July--it can be pre-ordered on-line at www.latienda.com, a supplier of Spanish foods in America.)

In Toronto, you can buy the ham at Pusateri's, Cumbrae's or Longo's or sample it at restaurants Pangaea, Cava or Mistura. Domus in Ottawa will also have it as will a few other locations across Canada. It's well worth the price if properly stored and cut--particularly as you only need a few paper thin slices, say $10-15 worth, to get a good taste.

This is just a bit of pictorial flavour. The photo is of the ham in a drying room in the Sanchez Romero Carvajal (5J) factory in Jabugo, Spain, which I toured in February with Roger Davies of A Question of Taste (www.aqot.com), a fantastic gourmet tour company located in Seville and can arrange jamón and other food tours as well tapas tastings and Spanish cooking classes. 5J is one of the best known brands in Spain, but not the one coming to Canada...at least for now.

More on the ham, Jabugo, and the tour as well as the Spanish supplier to Canada, Embutidos Fermin, and my trip with the Canadian importer (Mike Tkaczuk of Serrano Imports) to visit Fermin's farm and factory later.

No Excuse

2008-03-28T07:16:00.000-07:00

I've been delinquent. There's no excuse. The least I could have done was send a note to let you know I was still alive.

I'm a heel and I know it. But I promise I'll make it up to you. Just not yet. Give me a week and I'll tell you all about it.

Artichokes

2008-03-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

Barcelona really feels like spring lately. Even though most of the winter here is warmer than a Canadian May, there is a marked difference between the seasons. The first signs of change are in the light and the air and the sound of the birds. And the artichokes.

Artichokes originated in the Mediterranean, of course, and were brought by Spanish settlers to America, where they've firmly taken hold. Why, even Marilyn Monroe was once crowned Artichoke Queen by Castroville, California. Perhaps not her greatest claim to fame.

For the past couple of weeks, artichokes have been available in Barcelona markets for next to nothing. Normally, I'm a little loath to take the plunge with artichokes because of all the trimming and fussing that's involved, but Yukiko set me straight. Because these artichokes are young and beautifully tender, trimming is easier and you don't need to worry about the choke (the thistly interior).

This week, on Yukiko's recommendation, I bought a few. Then I incorporated them into a Spanish-style rice. Here's more or less how to recreate it:

Ingredients

3-4 young artichokes
1/2 lemon
1/2 pound of mushrooms, quartered
1 onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, slivered
6 tbsp olive oil
2 cups Spanish short grain rice
small handful of chopped fresh thyme, parsley or oregano (optional)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp sweet paprika
4+ cups chicken or pork stock (I confess I used an oxo cube and didn't overly regret it; veggies, feel free to substitute a meatless stock)
salt and pepper to taste

Trim the base off the artichokes, remove the bottom 3-4 layers of tough leaves, and slice off the tops. Cut each artichoke into eight wedges and rub all over with the lemon to prevent browning, squeezing the juice into the artichokes as you go. (You can remove the choke by scraping it out, but I didn't bother.)

In a paella pan or large frying pan, sautee the onion and garlic in hot oil until golden (about 5 minutes). Add the artichokes and mushrooms and sautee for a further 3-5 minutes, browning the vegetables slightly. Season with salt and pepper and add the rice and herbs to the pan, combining well with the vegetables. Cover the mixture all at once with hot stock and leave to simmer, uncovered, for approximately 20 minutes until all the stock is absorbed. Taste and adjust the seasoning as you go. You may need to add more stock (feel free to use water) as the rice cooks if the stock is evaporating too quickly. Do not stir. Once all the stock is absorbed (the bottom should be lightly browned and just beginning to get crispy), turn off the heat, remove the bay leaves and let sit for a few minutes before serving.

Try it with a crisp white wine like a Spanish Rueda and a dish for discarding any tough artichoke bits that remain. I promise you'll feel the imminence of spring even though you may still be stuck in drifts of snow.

Night Classes in Geography

2008-03-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

The other night David and I wandered over to one of his many locals--another Cuban place in the back streets of Gracia (Raim, c/ de Progres).

We were already three sheets to the wind when we found ourselves at a table with two Argentinians, one of whom was wearing a fedora and claimed to be a psychiatrist. Not a bearded, pipe-smoking Sigmund Freud type but an if-they-need-a-replacement-at-Seattle-Grace-they'll-call-him type.

I believe David had asked for the stir sticks from their mojitos so that I could take them home along with the three half dead roses that David's friend, the rose seller, had left on our table. The stir sticks are a fine move, Ladies. Commit it to memory.

As it turns out, the Argentinian, despite his supposed psychiatric training or perhaps because of it, was one cocky cabrón and decided to start an argument about the continents--as in, the large land masses into which we divide the world. His opening gambit was four; mine was seven, which is what they taught me in grade school. Before we knew it, half the bar was in on the action and we had additional bets of 5, 6 and 8--though the last originated from a miscount and was not taken seriously.

Contrary to my Argentinian friend's claims, the idea of continents and their number is one of convention, not definition. If you consider the world in terms of four, you might believe in Afro-Eurasia, America, Australia and Antarctica (though these were not the ones the Argentinian himself listed). If five, then you might split Africa off from Eurasia or you might split Afro-Eurasia into three and forget about Antarctica because there's too much ice and not enough land. If six, then suddenly Europe and Asia are distinct, despite the absence of any physical separation between them. And, if seven, well, you're as nit-picky as they come and it's North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica, all separate and apart. Australia and area, by the way, are sometimes referred to as Oceania around these parts--an ill defined region which purports to encompass a variety of islands in the general area of the Pacific and which quite frankly does not fit into the unified land mass theory of a continent.

Interestingly, the Olympic rings are something of a red herring as they omit Antarctica--the penguins aren't much for sporting competitions, though they do have some excellent uniforms--and consider the Americas as a single region.

The upshot is that, by the end of the evening, the Argentinian had me so riled up that I forgot my stir sticks and my roses when I left the bar in a huff. A good lesson about keeping my priorities straight next time.

Lent Lunch

2008-03-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

So, I decided to try it out. You know, Cuaresma. Why not? I can abstain with the best of them (for short periods and when large quantities of food are available).

I bought a book: La Cocina de Cuaresma (The Cuisine of Lent), Raquel F. Moran. It's from the same series as The Cuisine of the Nuns, if you must know: a little murky on the details, but altogether a fine source of ideas.

This Friday, I invited Yukiko, an accomplished cook in her own right, to try my Lenten creations. The imagined menu was a salad of some sort to start (I had an eggplant in my fridge so it was going to feature); Arroz de Cuaresma (Lenten Rice); a seafood item; Judias Verdes con Pimientos (Green Beans with Peppers); and, for dessert, Bollos de Semana Santa (Easter Rolls), a traditional Lenten sweet containing no less than half a litre of olive oil.

Predictably, and despite my best intentions, the last two items were dropped due to time contraints. Let's face it, the beans would have been excessive. And we were really much better off going for a coffee and buñuelos at Forn de Sant Jaume (Rambla Catalunya, just south of Arago), one of my favourite places for fresh buñuelos (bunyols, in Catalan) and outdoor people watching. Buñuelos, by the way, are delicious balls of fried and sugar coated dough and are also typical of Lent.

The on-the-fly eggplant salad went a little something like this: on a bed of mizuna, a.k.a. Japanese mustard greens (could have been arugula), I arranged three slices of eggplant (brushed with olive oil and roasted the night before in a 220 C oven for half an hour, flipped once), a piece of fresh goat cheese (could have have been ricotta, queso fresco or another mild, soft cheese), and the honeyed walnuts I had purchased at the Santa Maria del Pi market a few weeks ago. I drizzled the whole thing with balsamic cream, which is easily found here, but which could substituted by a good balsamic reduction where it's not available. And presto: simple, beautiful, scrumptious.

In contrast, the arroz (think of it as a vegetarian paella) was complicated. But I decided to follow the recipe to the letter this time--more or less. Here's the tweaked version.

Ingredients:

For the stock:
1/2 kilo sardines
2 onions
2 bay leaves
6 cups of water
salt

For the rice:
1 large red pepper
1 medium onion
3 tomatoes
1 green pepper
3/4 cup fresh or frozen peas
2 cups short grain rice
6 tbsp of oil
pinch of saffron
1 finely chopped garlic clove
handful of chopped parsley
salt and pepper

First, prepare the fish stock (caldo)--The recipe doesn't give instruc- tions, but I used sardines (any cheap and flavourful fish will do--Spanish markets have inexpensive "pescado de sopa" or "pescado de roca" which will remind you a bit of the fish you used to have in your aquarium, but which are perfect for stock), quartered onions, bay leaves and salt (as above) covered with about 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil then simmer slowly for 30-40 minutes. Strain out the solids and keep warm. (Actually, I give you permission to use a pre-packaged stock--fish, chicken or vegetable--if you want to save yourself the hassle and your home the smell of boiled sardines.)

While the fish stock is simmering, roast a large, red pepper (I halved it and left it skin side up in a 220 C oven for 30 minutes). Remove from the oven, peel and slice into thin strips. (If you don't want to fuss with the roasting, just slice the red pepper and add it at the same time as the green pepper.)

Also by way of preparation, finely chop the onion; peel and chop the tomatoes (score them on top and immerse in boiling water for 30 seconds to peel); cook the peas; and slice the green pepper into strips.

Once everything is ready, heat two table spoons of oil in a large paella pan or wide bottomed, high sided frying pan. Add the onion and sautee until soft (about five minutes). Add the chopped tomatoes and cook until they start to take on a sauce like consistency. At this point, remove from the heat and, according to the recipe, puree the whole thing and set aside. (I pureed half because I have a crappy manual press and it was proving too frustrating a process. I believe the rice would be just as good if you didn't puree at all.)

Add another 3-4 tbsp. of olive oil to the pan and sautee the green pepper until soft. Add the rice and tomato puree. Shuffle the whole thing around in the pan for a bit then pat down evenly and add the stock along with a bit of salt and pinch of saffron. You'll need about twice as much stock as rice (you can play with the rice and stock quantities and add more stock through the cooking process if it's evaporating too quickly). Allow to simmer for about 20-25 minutes until the stock is fully absorbed by the rice. Do not cover. And be careful with the heat: it needs to be high enough to keep the pan simmering, but not so high that it burns the bottom of the rice (my perennial mistake).

Do not stir. This is not risotto.

About 10 minutes in, add the roasted red pepper, peas, and the parsley and garlic moistened with 2 tbsp. of warm stock. Now you can stir. When everything is incorporated, distribute the rice evenly around the pan again and pat down. If you need to add more stock, this is a good time to do so. It's also a good time to check the seasoning and add more salt if necessary.

Cook on low heat until all the stock is absorbed. When done, set aside to rest for a few minutes and take the opportunity to make the chipirones (baby squid).

I picked up the chipirones the day before at the Boqueria and cleaned them ahead of time by rinsing under cold water and pulling out the crystalline spines.

I had no particular recipe so I sauteed a finely chopped garlic clove in 2 tbsp of hot olive oil for a minute or so, tossed in the chipirones (about 1/2 to 3/4 pound) for 2-3 minutes (until just firm) and sprinkled with half a handful of fresh, chopped tarragon and some salt about a minute before I turned off the heat. The tarragon gives them a delicate sweetness and they are great alongside the rice. They're also a quick and easy tapa.

You can serve all of this with cava (Catalan sparkling wine, comparable to champagne), as I did, or maybe sauvignon blanc (I like the ones from New Zealand).

And, if you're not as much abstaining as indulging, no one will be the wiser.

La Cuaresma

2008-02-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

We're in the middle of Cuaresma, Ladies and Gentlemen. That's right, the seven weeks of Lent are upon us--well, upon the unlapsed Catholics among us anyway.

In case you're unclear, Lent is the 40 day period of abstinence and fasting between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. The modern rules of Lent require fasting on Ash Wednesday (Miercoles de Ceniza) and Good Friday (Viernes Santo) and abstinence from meat on all other Lenten Fridays--that traditionally includes eggs and milk, but not fish. Apparently, that's the reason Fillet of Fish sales spike in North America before Easter.

Why doesn't fish fall within the meat prohibition? Some say it's the shedding of animal blood during Lent that's really the issue and, in particular, the blood of warm blooded animals, which tends to arouse the passions; that's not so much of a problem with fish apparently, which are as cold blooded as they come. Others think that meat was prohibited during Lent because it was historically a sign of wealth and power and its removal from the diet was a true deprivation; again, not historically the case with fish.

Sardines, salt cod, herring and eel are typical of Cuaresma. So are stews of chickpeas and beans. The staples of fast food cuisine--bread (flour), water and oil--are also commonly used in Spanish Lenten cooking because they are viewed as "poco nutritivo" and therefore in keeping with the tradition of abstinence.

That brings us to the ushering in of Cuaresma on Ash Wednesday, which occurred in Barcelona with the Entierro de la Sardina (the Burial of the Sardine). I guess if you're going to bury something, a sardine is as good as anything else.

The burial, I must divulge, was not as much a burial as a cremation, which this year took place before a couple of hundred spectators in Parc Clot, where I dutifully took myself a few weeks ago.

As legend has it, the tradition of the burial of the sardine goes back to the 19th century when Carlos III allegedly ordered the burial of a shipload of spoiled sardines on the eve of Lent. The burial acted out today recalls this event and symbolizes the letting go of all vices in anticipation of the traditional religious period of spiritual cleansing.

In modern day Barcelona, the burial is accompanied by a parade celebrating the end of Carnaval and the beginning of Cuaresma. La Hijastra de Cuaresma (the stepdaughter of Lent, pictured above), an emaciated hag whose seven legs symbolize the seven weeks of Lent, carries with her seven sardines reminding spectators of the Lenten diet. In case that doesn't bring the message home, the seven stooges that accompany her menace innocent bystanders with raw sardines. (A related aspect of Spanish Lenten tradition, by the way, is the hanging of a cardboard Hijastra de Cuaresma in the kitchen and the cutting off of one of her seven legs on each Sunday of Lent to mark the passing of the time of deprivation.)

La Hijastra de Cuaresma and her seven companions vanquish the seven days of Carnaval and send the Carnaval king (King Carnestoltes) off to be buried along with the sardine following the reading of Carnestoltes' will by his weeping widow. This is all very dramatic and really gets the crowd going, as does the samba over to the sardine's funeral pyre.

The whole spectacle is finished off with a sardinada (a sardine grill up), for which eager Barcelonites line up for hours. This isn't as much an indicator of popularity as it is a side effect of the 2 hour tardy start of the sardine cremation; así es la vida en España, Cuaresma or no Cuaresma.

Nuns Cook

2008-02-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

Nuns cook. I mean, if you're signing on to keep yourself forever free of sin, you have to keep a little something under your habit to put a smile on your face every once in a while. So nuns cook. They cook things like Flan de Santa Teresa and Tortilla Maravilla (Marvel Omelette) and Sopa del Obispo (Bishop's Soup). They make jams and use up day old bread and they really seem to love sweets, especially the Augustines.

The Benedictines make a rice pudding that sounds pretty tasty. They heat 1 litre of whole milk in a saucepan with several pieces of lemon peel. When the milk starts to boil, they add 75 grams of rice (previously washed in cold water), lower the heat and let it cook for 1 hour, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. After about half an hour, they incorporate 125 grams of sugar into the rice. Once the full hour has elapsed, they remove the lemon peel, put the rice into a serving bowl and sprinkle with cinnamon. They let it cool and serve.

The Cistercienses make a Nuns' Soup (Sopa de las Monjas). They heat 6 tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan and brown a finely diced medium onion along with 4 finely chopped cloves of garlic. They add about a 1/2 a pound of thinly sliced day old bread (chiabatta is best) and brown it along with the onion and garlic. They place the whole mixture in a clay pot, add one peeled and ground tomato, a touch of paprika and 1 1/2 litres of water. They bring the whole thing to a boil and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes. They season to taste with salt and pepper and serve hot. (Don't be afraid to substitute a diced unpeeled tomato for the peeled ground one and to add a little tomato concentrate (3-4 tbsp.) and chicken stock in place of water (or an oxo cube) for additional flavour, even though the nuns would probably abstain. It's also just fine to make the whole thing in a high sided frying pan and forget about the clay pot altogether, charming as it is. It would, however, be a deadly sin to skimp on the olive oil or the bread so don't even think about it.)

I know these things because I bought a book. It's called La Cocina de las Monjas (Cuisine of the Nuns) by Luis San Valentin. If it came out in English, it would be called something like Divine Cuisine or Convent Kitchen Secrets or Godly Food, but in Spain, it's just Cuisine of the Nuns. The recipes are stripped down and require some divine guidance to make up for the lack of precision (e.g. cook at a sufficient heat for a sufficient time until it looks sufficiently done), but they do give one a sense that convent life isn't entirely about deprivation. Apparently, there's also a lot of eating.

What's more, I've been frequenting Caelum in the Barrio Gotico (pictured above, c/ Palla 8, near Santa Maria del Pi, 93 302 6993). Caelum is part shop, part tea room. They sell and serve items made exclusively by French and Spanish nuns: preserves, biscuits, cheeses, olive oils and honeys. (I say little prayers of thanks for their tomato confit and walnut bread with goat cheese.) They make good coffee and pretty decent tea and you can snack on delicious nun made sweets and savouries to your heart's content. It's the ideal spot for a merienda (afternoon tea). It's no convent, but it does have a peaceful, contemplative feeling about it...even if all you're contemplating is whether you can manage another macaroon.

Struggles with (Tele)communication

2008-02-12T23:00:00.000-08:00

Those of you who check in regularly may have noticed a heretofore unexplained flurry of blogging activity this month. This spate of productivity is the result of Telefonica (after weeks of struggle) finally reconnecting my internet and telephone, thereby giving me unimpeded access to the blogging world.

I'm afraid I can't blame Telefonica for disconnecting my service in the first place. There may have been a bill or two that went astray, if you know what I mean. I'm lucky they reconnected me as quickly as they did.

In any event, my dealings with Telefonica, though ultimately successful, once again reminded me that I'm no master of the language. Here's a roughly translated excerpt of part of the conversation--I'm embarrassed to say, I'm embellishing not at all:

Alright, I've requested that your line be reconnected, but you need to go to the post office right away to pay the outstanding bill.

How do I get in touch with this “post office”?

Well, you have to go to it.

This is a Telefonica department, this post office?

No, it has nothing to do with Telefonica. It’s, you know, the post office.

What do you mean “post" office?

You know, the post office, the place you go to send things by mail.

Oh. Well, where do you find this "post" office?

Well, there are many of them. You can go to any one.

I see. It’s the city’s "post" office?

Well, I suppose. You know, it’s the post, where you mail things, packages, letters, you know.

Oh, I see, the POST office. Why didn’t you just say so?

...

So, what can I tell you? Between meals and trips to the market, life's a struggle. Fortunately, it's mostly a struggle for those who have to deal with me, but a struggle nonetheless.

*Although the post office box pictured above is located in Madrid, apparently this same "post" office has also placed such boxes all over Barcelona.

Churros and Chocolate

2008-02-09T03:33:00.000-08:00

I've been wandering around the south of Spain again (more on that later). It's a good time visit: the weather is temperate, the oranges are ripe, the almond trees are in bloom and the tourists are scarce.

The one thing that I can never deny myself in the South are the churros. They're just not the same in Barcelona. [But if you must know where to get the best churros in Barcelona, click here.]

Churros are long pieces of fried dough (some wheat flour based, some potato based), best eaten with a cup of pudding-thick hot chocolate.

In Seville, there seem to be as many churrerias as there cafes and the best ones that I've encountered pull the churros out of hot oil while you wait and serve them up in parchment paper to take away or on metal trays to eat standing up at the counter. This time I bumped into La Esperanza on calle Feria, just off of Relator, which did just so. For 2 euros, I had churros and chocolate enough to satisfy a construction worker twice my size.

Afterwards, I snatched up an orange that had just fallen onto the grass from a nearby tree and degreased myself a little internally.

How can anyone not love Seville?

Birthday (4) - Dinner

2008-02-06T10:50:00.000-08:00

More birthday wishes from loved ones woke me from my nap. And, as it was still raining "a cantaros", I decided to finish On Chesil Beach instead of going out again.

There are many things that amaze me about McEwan. Two leap to mind ahead of others. The first is his ability to minutely capture the awkwardness with which we translate our desires into actions and the tragedy of that. The second is the denseness of the backdrop he draws for his stories, which at the level of plot can usually be reduced to a confrontation between two forces and the consequences that flow from it. In the case of On Chesil Beach, the story is of a young English couple in the early 1960’s on the first night of their honeymoon and what comes to divide them.

This story is in some ways a more quotidian version of McEwan’s other novels, one in which the characters’ choices lead to loss that is much more familiar than the violence that marks his earlier work, but perhaps more poignant for its familiarity. It left me disconcerted and sinking a little at the end, as some of his other novels have done, but in a deeply satisfying way, if you know what I mean. I walked around the apartment holding the book for a little while after I’d finished and then I put it away, thinking I wanted to write something about it.

Then, of course, my mind turned again to food. Since lunch had been so excessive, dinner was more of a snack, but a pretty one. All of my market bought goods came out, as did the wine. I had the cheeses with quince paste and tomato confit and the fruit, which was perfect and sweet. I didn’t have room for the cheese cake or chocolate, but, you needn’t worry, they won’t go to waste.

It was a good birthday, after all. And I’m not sorry I shaved my legs; they felt quite nice against my crisp, clean sheets.

Birthday (3) - Lunch

2008-02-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

My intention was to have a fancy lunch, birthday befitting. While my prep- arations had stopped short of reservation making, I felt confident about my ability as a single to get a spot, particularly if I went early.

I hadn’t counted on the following things: most of my imagined lunch spots (Cinc Sentits, Moo, Comerc 24) being closed for lunch on Sundays; the one open on Sunday (Can Sole) being fully (and I mean fully, no negotiations about a table) booked; and a rain storm which left me soaked and shivering in Can Sole’s entry way, wondering what I was going to do after the hostess kindly and patiently explained that there were absolutely no circumstances on earth under which she could give me a table. These minor set backs, I must confess, almost (almost) brought a self-pitying birthday tear to my eye, but I regrouped and determined not to be so easily vanquished.

I trudged forward in the pouring rain (and, please allow me to note with some indignation, it has not rained in months Barcelona!), umbrella-free, toward the Old Port. I thought I might try Merendero de la Mari (Plaza Pau Vila 1, 93 221 3141, reservations recommended), which according to me and without the burden of having tried any of the other places, is the best of the string of expensive seafood restaurants edging the Palau de Mar. I make this statement based on the always fresh and carefully prepared seafood, the relatively attentive service and the flood of posh Barcelona families that always descends on it come the weekend. Also, the terrace overlooking the Port is among the best in the city on a sunny day. Needless to say, not quite as good when it rains.

At Merendero de la Mari, a further negotiation occurred. This time I would not take no for an answer. My exchange with the Napoleon-sized maitre d' went a little something like this: Table for one please. I'm sorry, miss, we are fully booked. You have absolutely nothing. Nothing. Nothing at the bar, nothing coming up, nothing for a short time...I'd only be an hour. Well, perhaps you can have a table in 20 minutes; there's a gentleman who just received his second course, but if he orders a dessert, who knows how long he'll be. I don't mind waiting. Alright then, you can stand over there by the kitchen, maybe you'll learn something. Muy bien. (A full minute and a closer glance at the reservation list later.) I suppose I could seat you now. Perfecto. (And away I went, slightly sorry to be dragged away from the kitchen window just before the final touches were put on the excellent looking paella simmering briskly on the range.)

Now, lest you get the wrong idea, there was no malice or attitude in the initial response to my request for a table. This is just the way it sometimes goes in a land where the laws of service are still more or less developing. The full universe of possibilities doesn't emerge until you test the initial premise.

So, quickly and happily seated in the bustling dining room, I ordered myself the following: a tomato and mozarella salad with shrimp; a parillada (pictured above); and the dessert trio (small, decadent vials of dark chocolate mousse, cheese cake and guava cocktail). The waiters were supremely attentive and polite enough not to allow their amazement at the quantities of food I was consuming register perceptibly nor to judge me too harshly for pulling out my camera to photograph the food.

The parillada, which was a 35 euro proposition and could easily have been shared between two, deserves some further comment. It featured langoustines, shrimp of two varieties, mussels, squid, and two kinds of white fish (one of which I believe to have been bass and the other of which was a mystery). All were grilled to perfection, lightly seasoned, and sitting on a shallow buttery lake, ideal for dipping. The scaling of this seafood mountain was well worth it, even if I did need a little rest half way through.

Afterwards, I rolled myself home, changed out of my once again wet clothes and, since it was still raining, forgot about my plans for the Carnaval and took a little a birthday nap.

(To be continued in the next post.)

Birthday (2) - Breakfast

2008-02-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

First thing in the morning, a birthday phone call from someone close woke me. The best start.

Coming to slowly, breakfast setting waiting, I made myself French toast. I soaked dry chiabatta bread in milk, then coated it in egg and finally browned it in a little butter. I topped it with the honeyed walnuts, the Cape gooseberries (apparently also known as physalis or ground cherries) and (indispensably) maple syrup (luckily, the visiting Canadians of the past 6 months had supplied me with virtually infinite quantities). I served red currants and yogurt with strawberry sauce on the side. And I brewed Cream of Avalon tea, also from Canada, an orange, vanilla and bergamot flavoured black tea that my dear friend Shuli introduced me to a couple of years ago and which I brought back with me on my last trip.

It was a lovely and nostalgic breakfast and, once it was done, I felt no compunction about going back to bed for a couple of hours to start Ian McEwan’s last novel, On Chesil Beach. I allowed myself this in English, lifting (for the day) my six month long ban on English language reading. On Chesil Beach, conveniently, is little more than 160 pages and an easy day’s indulgence.

(To be continued in the next post.)

Birthday (1) - Preparations

2008-02-04T10:39:00.002-08:00

In life, it’s always important to have a Plan B. My father never tires of telling me this. Really, I think he’d probably be happy with a reasonable Plan A, but since he often doesn’t much like Plan A, he emphasizes Plan B.

This Sunday, Dad, I’m pleased to tell you that a Plan B (well, actually Plan C) was not only conceived, but was carried out with great success--well, quite good success, which is your best hope for Plan C.

Sunday was my birthday. My first birthday in Barcelona. A lot rides on first birthdays in a new place. In a sense, birthdays away are a measure of how well you’re adapting and it was important to me to have a good plan. As it happened, I ended up with several.

Plan A: Since in Spain it’s customary to throw your own birthday party, invite all available friends in Barcelona for grand birthday lunch at home. Impediments to Plan A: Of the handful of friends I have in Barcelona, none were planning to be around on Sunday.

Plan B: Check into expensive hotel and spend the day being pampered. Really, what I envisioned were clean sheets, a television with many channels and somebody bringing me things to eat whenever I picked up the phone. Impediments to Plan B: After making a reservation at Gran Hotel La Florida for the day, spasms of fear over impending destitution forced me to cancel the booking.

Plan C: Pamper myself with food and celebrate by participating in Carnaval festivities in Barcelona and Sitges. There were no anticipated impediments to Plan C; however, preparations were required.

Prepartions comprised, first, a thorough cleaning of my apartment on Saturday with the goal of giving myself the gift of freshly laundered sheets; a bath ready tub (I never take baths, but who knew what kind of strange impulses might overtake me on my birthday); and a sparkling, organized kitchen, in which it would be a pleasure to cook. Second, a trip to the markets: the Boqueria (Las Ramblas, Barrio Gotico), Barcelona’s most famous market, for fresh strawberries, red currants and what I refer to as goose berries, but what are really a mysterious orange fruit that no one can ever confidently name; and the artisanal food market (pictured above), which takes place every second weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) in front of Santa Maria del Pi (Barrio Gotico). At the latter, tasting all sorts of interesting and yummy things at each stall, I bought two types of goat cheese, walnuts in acacia honey, membrillo (quince) paste, tomato and vanilla confit, chestnut marmalade, a piece of traditional Catalan cheesecake and some dark chocolate. I also picked up fresh flowers and a bottle of pretty decent if slightly tart Syrah, the latter on the recommendation of a sweet shop boy.

As final preparatory acts before I went to bed on my birthday eve, I set the table for breakfast and I shaved my legs. Who knew what might come to pass.

(To be continued in the next post.)

Fat Thursday

2008-01-31T13:41:00.000-08:00

Fat Thursday (Jueves Graso) has started off Carnaval en España. In Barcelona, a traditional tasting of butifarra de huevo (along with tortilla) was held and a parade satirizing the fiasco of the construction of the highspeed train between Madrid and Barcelona wound its way to Sants station. Other than that, it's not the crazy celebration that you might imagine in the city. Sitges, down the road, is reputedly much more raucous. I'm heading there on the weekend and will send a report. I will also no doubt attend the traditional burial of the sardine on Tuesday or Wednesday. Yes, a sardine. Yes, a burial. And yes, apparently it's a big deal.

What to Eat When You Feel Like a Farmer

2008-01-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

Do you ever feel like a farmer? I know. Me too. All the time. I mean, without the hard work or the early mornings or the government subsidies. (I'm working on the latter, actually.) But exactly like a farmer no less.

Just the other day, I woke up with an overwhelming urge to eat like a farmer or a lumberjack or some other human doing hard physical labour outdoors. What would a Spanish farmer eat, I asked myself as I charged down the street to the market (sadly, not a farmers' market) for something that would satisfy my farmerly needs.

Let me tell you, when it comes to a farmerly appetite, there's a lot to choose from at a Spanish market. What caught my attention on that particular morning was butifarra. I know, it sounds vaguely obscene, doesn't it? But I assure you, it's a legitimate meat, an "embutido", or sausage, to be exact.

Butifarra comes in permutations for every possible mood, including the farmerly. Butifarra blanca, for those days when you're feeling fresh and clean and like curing all the world's ills, is made of lean minced pork. Butifarra negra, for days when you're nasty and out for revenge, is pork both lean and fat mixed with hog's blood. Butifarra de huevo, for when you feel repentant (perhaps for your more blood thirsty moments) and like you want to hang out in a chicken coop, is a mixture of egg in good portion along with other edible things and is typical of Lent and Semana Santa, which are coming right up.

On this day, I stopped at butifarra de huevo, even though more butifarra choices presented themselves. I took it home and fried it up in slices along with some onions and white beans (not an atypical Catalan accompaniment to butifarra) and served it with a farmerly bread. Then, I thought about going out to the fields for a little ploughing or sowing or some such sort of thing, but I was feeling a little sleepy from all that farmerly eating so I took a nap instead. And that put an end to all my farmerly aspirations, at least for the day.

Alex Cobb's Biscuits

2008-01-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

It is 11am on a grey Toronto Sunday morning some weeks ago and I'm invited to the Cobbs' for brunch. The entire rear end of the Cobb house is these days swathed in construction plastic and the kitchen has been relegated to the dining room in a state that can best be described as ramshackle. Alex Cobb, barely greeting me as I enter, seems impervious to all this and I believe could exist amid construction chaos in perpetuity. With the foresight of a hardened pessimist, he's timed brunch precisely to coincide with my half hour late arrival.

What I have to hand to Alex, besides the claim to a first name that is next to impossible to say without tacking on the surname Cobb, is that (and I'm sorry for being compelled to say so, Ronni*) he's a sexy cook. You know, in the way men can be. It's in his slowness about the task. I mean, he's wearing wool socks and sandals, is hunch shouldered, sleepy eyed and laconic as all hell. But somehow it works for him in the kitchen.

It doesn't hurt that the results of his efforts are pretty darn exciting. On this day, he's created a gourmet Egg McMuffin: a piping hot homemade biscuit layered with a poached egg of the perfect consistency (outside firm but tender, middle slightly oozy), cambozola (substituted by cheddar for the kids) and prosciutto. The combination is fantastic, but the indubitable star of the sandwich is the biscuit. Salty, moist, crumbly biscuit. (I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of you, biscuit. You would have been well worth displaying on the web. Well worth.) We can't resist seconds and fleetingly fantasize about thirds, but eventually content ourselves with strawberries and cream for dessert. Even the kids approve.

Pleased with himself, and rightly so, Alex Cobb provided me with this biscuit recipe should you care to replicate the McCobb (as I like to call it):

3 cups all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1-2 tsp salt
(No sugar, but if you insist on sugar, reduce the salt and add 1 tbsp.)
3/4 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 cup butter (cold)
1 1/4 cup buttermilk

Mix the dry ingredients. Grate or cut in cold butter and mix with a fork or pastry cutter until the whole resembles coarse bread crumbs. Pour buttermilk into a well in the centre of the crumbly mixture. Stir until curds form. Mash down with your fists (Alex Cobb demonstrated this with vehemence; apparently, it brought him some satisfaction). Empty out onto a wooden surface. Knead until the dough holds together but is still sticky. Don't overdo it. Roll out to 1/2 to 3/4 inches of thickness. Cut out rounds with a biscuit cutter, the top of a glass, a compass, what have you. Bake on a non-stick baking sheet for 12 minutes in a 450 F oven. After cooling just a little, set on the table in a covered bamboo steamer or some other porous and mysterious container to tantalize your guests while you take care of the rest of the fixings. Keep an eye on the guests to ensure the biscuits are not compromised.

Try to enjoy while grimacing to complete the experience and make Alex Cobb proud.

*Ronni is Alex Cobb's wife. She's sexy in and out of the kitchen.

The Mystery of the Melted Chocolate

2008-01-20T09:48:00.000-08:00

I had a post ready about Alex Cobb's biscuits before I left Toronto. The biscuits are good. So is the post. But it had to pre-empted so that I could bring you the news of my return to Barcelona. I'll write about the biscuits another day.

You will undoubtedly be disappointed to know that I spent my first two days back in Barcelona in bed. Recovering. I'm no longer used to the amount of human contact that I had in Toronto and it left me completely sapped. A little isolation was an apt remedy. So much so that by the third day I was desperately lonely and forced to leave the house in search of someone who would swap a few Spanish phrases with me.

In the end, I wended my way down to Carmelitas (c/ Doctor Dou 4), a very good coffee shop in the Raval. There, I had some bread with chocolate, olive oil and salt, as evidenced by the photo above, and two cups of cafe con leche--that is, one cup too many.

The bread with chocolate was frustrating in its simplicity. Just when I felt like I had the bread, olive oil and salt part down (toast sliced baguette well, brush with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with a few grains of coarse sea salt), I found myself confounded by the chocolate. The chocolate pieces were dark and of good quality, about an ounce each. That much was clear. When served, the squares were intact, but spreadable. How did Carmelitas soften the chocolate without it losing its shape? If they just zapped it in the microwave, how did the bread stay crunchy? And if they put it under the broiler, how did the heat not burn the top? Perhaps there was a transfer of sorts, but it did not appear so.

I'm committed to resolving the mystery by trial and error. Somehow, just asking them doesn't seem fair.

In any case, if you can figure it out, it's a simple and deeply satisfying dessert and, I imagine, not a bad breakfast, if you're into that kind of thing.

Here Piggy, Piggy, Piggy

2008-01-10T01:17:00.000-08:00

So, I'm still in Toronto. I know, I know, you were expecting me to be back in Barcelona already, rolling around in a bathtub filled with tortillas and chorizo. Or maybe that was just me.

Well, I'm not back until next week. We're all just going to have to accept that and I'm going to have to clean out the drain at my dear friends' Martha and Jeremy's--they've been kind enough to put me up for the next week.

On the up side, I have been keeping myself busy with social engagements and what not. And I'm as delighted as ever with the number of terrific restaurants in Toronto, though sad to see a couple of favourites close (Sugar, Xacutti).

Last night, a couple of generous, well heeled friends took me for dinner at Lucien (36 Wellington, where Pravda used to live). To my great excitement, Babe three ways (belly, crackling and what can only be described as juicy middle) was on the menu, served over a cassoulet. Soo-wee, he was delicious.

I had two bites of crackling left when the waiter tried to remove my plate. I smacked his hand away and said, I'm still working on the crackling. Oh, he said, fear flashing across his face. Don't stand between a girl and her crackling, said my friend Doug. Yeah, I said, making my eyes into tiny little slits. Don't. I finished the crackling and licked my lips with menace.

That pig never stood a chance.

Christmas Guilt

2007-12-21T14:31:00.001-08:00

I had good intentions, as we all do. I was going to post several times before Christmas. I had plans for a mazapan post, maybe something about almendritas, a bit about los tres reyes. All Navidad related.

But I got waylaid. I flew to Toronto. A storm hit. Thirty centimetres of snow fell in one day. I got distracted.

Now, in Calgary, I'm helping my mom prepare dishes for a traditional Polish Christmas Eve. Pierogies, cabbage rolls, borscht. I'll tell you more about that, but first I have to work myself out from under the piles of cabbage and mushrooms.

In the meantime, I'm going to post some photos of the Christmas lights in Barcelona by way of apology.

Feliz Navidad!

Christmas Scenery

2007-12-11T11:20:00.000-08:00

The weather has been beautiful in Barcelona. Upwards of 18 degrees (that's Celsius) and dazzlingly sunny. The boys are out with their hola guapa's as if it were the middle of summer. Perfect for Christmas shopping and general holiday related perambulating.

The Old Town feels particularly atmospheric of late. The Christmas lights have been up for a couple of weeks now. Every second tienda is selling Navidad sweets. The Feria de Santa Lucia gives the cathedral square a carnival like feel. And they've finally unveiled the creche in Plaça Sant Jaume.

The creche had been hidden for several weeks behind tall fencing, like the fencing around construction sites, the kind that helps build anticipation. Unveiled, it's quite lovely, even though so much religiosity doesn't always agree with me.

This year, the creche is an intimate thicket bisected by a path. In between the poplars and shrubs are carved wooden lambs, shepherds, Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. Behind them, in a nod to modernity, are chicken wire crates of varying sizes containing natural materials native to the Mediterranean coast: evergreen boughs, grasses, rocks, shells. These are not containers of left over greenery not yet disposed of by the normally efficient Barcelona clean up crews, as I originally thought. They're intentional, in fact. The display is meant to call attention to the intersection of modernity and tradition, the urban and the natural. That's what it says on the Catalan only plaque explaining the scene, in any case. Well, that and no dogs allowed.

Walking through the creche might actually have evoked a "communing with nature" effect were it not for the throngs of others also making their way through. I suppose that's the interactive "urban" portion of the display. And what's December without a little thronging? Really, it helps build up that healthy misanthropy that Christmas dinner was created to dissipate.

Peladillas

2007-12-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

You would be forgiven if you mistook peladillas for tiny Easter eggs. They have that look, particularly in their pink, white and blue incarnation. It's a little confusing to have them around at Christmas time, in my humble opinion. But a Christmas sweet they are. There's no arguing that.

Peladillas are almonds with a hard sugar coating. They're sometimes accompanied by piñones, which are pine nuts with a hard sugar coating. They're crunchy and delicious. They're manufactured by the same folks who bring you turrones (the ones pictured above are from La Campana, see No Ordinary Nougat). And they're the third part of the plate of sweets, along with turrones and polvorones, that's traditionally served during Navidad. That's really all you need to know.

Oh, and don't stick them up your nose. No good can come of that.

Will It Poo on Christmas?

2007-12-06T23:39:00.000-08:00

Warning: This post is the opposite of appetizing.

My Spanish teacher Marta, in her endearing way, has been warning us for months that the Catalans* are a scatological people. That is, they are obsessed with number two. Apparently, as far as humour goes, the brown is to a Catalan what Jerry Lewis is to a Frenchman: a laugh riot.

In Catalunya, dropping the kids off at the pool has even infiltrated holiday tradition. In the days leading up to Christmas, you can witness this for yourself at the Feria de Santa Lucia (Fira de Santa Llucia in Catalan), which takes place outside of Barcelona's cathedral.

During the Feria, endless stalls fill the cathedral square, each one selling a different type of Navidad related item: some have Christmas trees, some nativity scenes, some Christmas lights, some mistletoe, some pine cones, some holly, some religious icons. There's a lot to look at. For my money, however, the two most interesting objects are figures representing the caganer (pictured above) and the caga tió.

Linguistically, the caganer and the caga tió share the same root: cagar. Or, as we say en inglés, to poo. The caganer, in Catalan, is literally "the one who poos". His squatting figure (now sometimes in the form of a famous or infamous personage) is placed alongside Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the nativity scene. Actually, traditionally, the caganer is hidden behind a tree, as is appropriate for one doing his business in the presence of divinity. Just so no one misses the point, however, the caganer's squishy gift is fully rendered and ready for burial under a pile of leaves (the leaves are my wishful thinking and are not actually depicted).

So why represent the crassest of bodily functions on the holiest of Christian holidays, you might ask. Is it sheer irreverence and affinity for all things dookie? Probably not. As I understand it, the explanation can be found in Catalunya's agrarian roots: specifically, the caganer symbolizes the return to the earth of everything that comes from the earth; his impressive heap is a symbol of fertility. This I was told by the vendor who sold me one of the pooping figurines for my private collection.

The caga tió, on the other hand, is itself a log. A literal log that drops figurative ones in the form of Christmas presents. Specifically, the caga tió is a round piece of tree trunk with a painted face and a traditional red hat. On Christmas Eve, in lieu of leaving milk and cookies out for Santa Claus, eager Catalan children tap the caga tió with a stick and ask it to defecate gifts from under its mantle. The children sing a song that, loosely translated, goes a little something like this: Caga tió, hazelnuts and turrones, don't caca herring, which are too salty, caca turrones which are are more tasty. Thus encouraged, the caga tió lays it down Navidad style.

All in all, the whole thing gives a new dimension to the phrase crappy Christmas gifts.

I regret to tell you that I will not be in Barcelona to witness the caganer and the caga tió in action on Navidad itself. I will, however, do what I can to bring you as much Navidad related fun as I can before I head back to Canada for the holidays, whether it involves taking the Browns to the Super Bowl, eating dust based desserts or sacrificing myself at the altar of the turrones.

* I may not have mentioned this before, but Barcelona is located in the heart of Catalunya, a region in the north of Spain. The people of Catalunya (Catalans) speak their own language (Catalan) in addition to speaking Castellano (the Spanish dialect that is spoken in Spain and Latin America) and have a culture and traditions distinct from those in other regions of Spain. While many of my posts refer to customs and traditions common to Catalunya and elsewhere in Spain, those described in this post are Catalan alone.