Mi ciudad/My city

We arrived in Madrid safe and sound yesterday (I drove.) After dropping off the car, we walked around my neighborhood, my market, where I lived. My cheese man was still there, selling his many, many cheeses.

We took a nice paseo through town (40 minute walk) to the center, Sol. I was surprised how easily the streets and their names came back to me. It felt good.

Madrid is a walking town, and we’ve been doing a lot of it. Last night we went for tapas: gambas al ajillo (shrimp in olive oil and garlic), manchego cheese (hard Spanish cheese), patatas bravas (little fried potatoes with a spicy tomato sauce). Today we ate at one of my favorite restaurants: La sonabresa. The menú del día includes a bottle of wine, 2 courses and dessert.

Josh: pisto manchego (ratatouille), salmón a la planca (grilled salmon), tarta de bombón chocolate (chocolate mousse cake)
Jackie: gazpacho, mero con tomate (fried grouper with tomato sauce and french fries), milhoja (cream between puff pastry)

We had churros for breakfast and had the calamares at the grandmas’ tonight, but the grandma’s weren’t there. (Calamari was still excellent.) We’ll probably go back tomorrow, just for one last chance to see them — and another ración de calamares.

Cabeza de cordero/Sheep’s brain served in its own skull

Note the teeth.

Tonight we ate sheep’s brain served in its own skull.
The waiter told us they chop off the head, cut it in half down the nose and roast it. After we ordered, we downed most of our bottle of txakoli in preparation.

The head arrived, eyeballs and tongue intact. It didn’t taste as bad as it sounds, but it won’t become one of my fave Spanish dishes. The outside was firm and the inside significantly softer, like a piece of seared tofu. Something about the texture bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I remembered this morning: the texture reminded me of undercooked scrambled eggs that made me sick at summer camp one year.

Jackie, with squids and Txacolí

We also ordered the chipirones — squids cooked in their own ink. They smelled very pleasant and tasted like grilled calamari with a rich sauce. I gladly finished those off.

The dishes capped an adventurous day of eating. We grabbed some pinxtos (tastes) in Bilbao’s old town — gourmet bites featuring ingredients like seared foie grois and lobster atop slices of French bread. People bar hop in the evenings, eating pinxtos with friends and washing them down with small glasses of beer, wine or sidra (cider.) We had one of each during the evening.

Stop 1: sidra, pinxtos: fried calamari stuffed with lobster, salmon and salmon mousse, jamón iberico with mushroom.

Stop 2: Mahou (Bud Light), pinxtos: baccalao (salted white fish) marinated in olive oil, pulpo ala gallega (octopus with olive oil and paprika)

Stop 3: Bottle of txakoli, chimpirones en su tinta (squids cooked in their ink), cabeza de cordero (sheep’s brain)

Montañas/Mountains

Definitely got off the beaten path today.

We spent last night in San Sebastian at a guest house owned by an Argentine surfer named Ernesto. He fed us rice with chicken and gave us towels, so we loved him. Before lunch we drove up Mount Igueldo to see the view of the Bay of Biscay and San Sebastian. We reached the top with the tiny town of Igueldo (population: 756) and went down a back road about 2 feet wider than the car.

The road went all the way down the mountain. On the way, we saw farms, cows, horses and one other car. Eventually we found our way back to the city to park downtown and walk up Mount Urgull to see the old fort and giant statue of Jesus Christ that tops it. Incredibly steep, but the views were worth it.

Afterward we got pinxtos, or small servings, of several dishes at a hole-in-the-wall bar in the old town.

We ate: tortilla con espárragos (omelet with white asparagus), albondiga (meatball), patatas bravas (potatoes with spicy sauce), gamba frita (shrimp fried in funnel cake-like dough), solomo (sirloin), con pan.

After a nice paseo, we left San Sebastian (the most beautiful city in Spain, according to every Spaniard I’ve ever met) for Bilbao.

Vino y tapas/Wine and snacks

Dinner was a classier affair than originally planned, with stops at three wine bars/restaurants in Barcelona’s La Ribera neighborhood.

At stop No. 1 we had cava, which can only be called cava if it comes from Catalonia. We nibbled on tomate con berejena seca y alcachofa en aceite de oliva — a plate of sundried tomatoes, eggplant and artichokes swimming in a cup of olive oil. It was fantastic. Josh gave it a 4.5 out of 5, saying, “I would have like more.”
“It was just a tapa,” I said.
“I know that, but it was soooo good.”

Wine bar No. 2: I had a white from the Rueda region, Josh a tempranillo blend from the Rioja region. Spain marks its wine by the region in which it was produced. These labels can hurt better wineries with lower-end bodegas for neighbors. Mine was okay, tasted like a light pinot grigio. Josh’s like a decent pinot noir.

Wine bar No. 3: Josh wanted to change it up so he ordered a white from the Navarra region, very oaky, but “better than Yellowtail.” I had a copa of the txacoli, which is a white specialty of the region poured at an arm’s length from the glass. I wanted to know how to pronounce it, so I asked the waiter. (Chakoli) He joked that my pronunciation gave me away as American. I told him I liked Madrid better than Barcelona. He said he liked Mexico better than the U.S. I asked why Mexico with its swine flu. And he pointed out that the swine flu is in Spain, too.

We ate estofado de alcachofas con pulpo (a stew of mushrooms, artichokes and octopus) and tako de bacalao cremat de calcot y romesco (fried white fish with two sauces.) Excellent, nontraditional tapas.

Menú del día/Prix fixe menu/Specials 3 p.m.

Spanish restaurants, like those Italy and England, usually offer a fixed menu at a reasonable price. In Spain, the menú del día is offered at lunch time (2 to 4 p.m.) and includes an appetizer, main course, dessert, wine and bread.

We had our first menú today at Les Quinze Nits, sitting outside among the pigeons in Plaza Reial. The menu was in English and Catalán, the official Spanish dialect of this region of Spain. I ordered in half Catalán (reading the menu), half Spanish (when I couldn’t pronounce the Catalán.) Josh tried to read the Catalán, but the menus weren’t matched up so he ordered the chuletas de cerdo — pork chops with fries — instead of the turkey.

I heard him order the pork but didn’t say anything because I thought he changed his mind. The plate came and he was surprised. After the initial disappointment/frustration wore off, we dug in. (The fries beat Harpo’s only because they were fried in olive oil.) I remembered how I used to order the wrong thing all the time during my first month in Madrid. I will always remember that albondigas means meatballs.

Time to hit the beach!

We ordered different things so we could try as many as possible:
Josh:  1) tallarines con pesto (pasta with pesto)
2) chuleta de cerdo con papas fritas (pork chops with French fries)
3) torta de trufle chocolate (chocolate mousse cake)
Jackie: 1) verduras asados (roasted seasonal vegetables)
2) atún en salsa de tomate (tuna with tomato sauce)
3) yoghurt con miel (fresh yogurt with honey and walnuts)

Primer plato/First dish

Dinner = wine and tapas. We ordered the only bottle of red wine on the menu. Josh looked at the bottle that said RIOJA in large letters (and in small ones three other places on the bottle) and asked me where it came from. “I’m so tired I thought Rioja meant red.” He’s still excited for the wine, even if he doesn’t know much about it.

Pan con tomate

Being in Barcelona, we wanted to  order specialties from the Catalán region of Spain. We ended up with one: pan con tomate.
Pan con tomate — olive oil and fresh tomato spread on toasted thick bread
Boquerones — uncured white anchovies in olive oil, vinegar and garlic with olives
Piminetos del padrón — small green peppers (like jalapeños)  roasted with a little garlic

Boquerones

Josh’s favorite were the boquerones. “All people should eat this way.” It wasn’t bad — about $25 for everything, which included an entire bottle of decent wine (see next post).

I also loved the baccalao, but that’s because I love salt and it doesn’t get any better than small salted fish floating in garlicy oil.

Three things I´m excited about – Josh

Spanish wine

I love the fact that Spainards drink wine the way most Americans drink soda — which is to say all the time. I’m not familiar with any of the Spanish wines, but I know that they are all good and cost about as much as the box of Franzia in my fridge. Add to this the fact that when ordering a bottle of wine in Spain, it’s often accompanied with free cheese or jamón, and it’s easy for me to understand why so many people I know have spent so much money drinking while traveling in Spain.

Los museos
Dalí. Picasso. Goya. Gaudí. El Greco.

I read about these guys countless times during my undergraduate Spanish classes at KU, often looking at the textbook reproductions of their works again and again. Actually getting to see some of these works is something I’ve always wanted to do. As a kid, I always loved Dalí’s paintings, and seeing his most famous “La persistencia de la memoria” at the Reiña Sofía in Madrid will probably be one of my life highlights.

Los picos de Europa
It’s Spain’s first and largest national park and from the small thumbnails I’ve seen on their Web site, the landscape looks absolutely stunning. We’re stopping in a small village on the outskirts of the Picos named Potes before we drive through and around the park, and I think this stretch off the beaten path and onto some of Spain’s back roads will be rewarding.