in praise of sardines

A tale of two fish knives

I have a fetish.

Kitchen knives. It's a common affliction that infects many of us who don clogs and white coats for a living. Just as there is, I am told, the perfect purse for every outfit, we knife queens* have to have the right knife for every job.

The morning of my last day in Barcelona in July, my wife called me from New York. "Have you found the fish knives yet?"

She was referring to her fish knives, those offspring of a butter knife and a spatula that have a notch in their palettes, causing their dull-edged blades to resemble a woman's lips in a Picasso painting. During our previous trip to Spain the year before, she (and, admittedly, I) became smitten with these knives which are provided at even the humblest beachside fish shack in Spain, but are virtually extinct on the tables of America. In N's mind, procuring a set of these fish knives was one of the primary goals of my trip.

I, on the other hand, had a different kind of fish knife on my mind. Getting my hands on one of my kind of fish knife was my latest obsession and my sole objective for my last day in Spain. I had to have a fish machete.

I still don't know the proper term for the enormous knives wielded by the brassy fishmongers (all women!) of la Boqueria. These hatchets resemble Chinese cleavers, but the blade curves sharply, like the Grim Reaper's scythe turned inside out. Whenever I visited a market in Catalonia or Valencia, I invariably found myself awestruck as I watched the strong, though often petite, women deftly fillet a small sole or thinly slice through a whole merluza (hake) with a knife the size of an axe.**

I answered my wife's inquiry nervously. "No, no fish knives yet, honey."

As N knows, when I travel, I am an eater, not a shopper. By the end of a trip, my suitcases are bursting with almonds, chocolate, olive oil, wine and illicit pork products. Aside from an embarrassing number of Spanish and Catalan cookbooks, there are no non-edible items, not even a pair of Campers.

I told N of my fruitless search for fish knives (both kinds) in all the wrong places, including stores one would have thought appropriate, like housewares stores and even knife shops (cuchillerías).

She listened patiently, aware that her husband's shopping I.Q. is zero and his Spanish only marginally better. "Go to El Corte Inglés. They'll have them there."

I did as instructed and, sure enough, this Spanish equivalent to Macy's was a treasure trove full of her kind of fish knives. I snapped up a dozen, with an equal number of matching fish forks (I suppose that now makes me a flatware queen, too). The true object of my desire, my fish machete, was sadly nowhere to be found.

Dejected, I returned to my vacation rental and desperately poured through the Barcelona yellow pages one page at a time, having no idea how a Spaniard would categorize what we call "restaurant supply stores." My eyes popped wide open when, like a dumb mule, I stumbled across the category "maquinaria alimentación y hostelería."

With stores about to close, I raced to my savior, Celaya, a restaurant equipment store oddly named after a famous twentieth century poet. I happily handed over 40 Euros for my prize and paid little attention to the nervous glances cast my way as I maneuvered through crowded Barcelona streets, my shiny new fish machete clutched tightly in my hands.

*I hope I have not offended anyone with my use of the word "queen" here. I lifted it from Guy Trebay's humorous article that appeared in the New York Times a month ago, where he described "dish queens" in the food industry, a group which includes Thomas Keller. To quote from his article: "From the term 'dish queen,' nothing is meant to be inferred about a person's sexual tastes. A dish queen, broadly speaking, is a person belonging to a rarefied and sometimes loopy group for whom food is infinitely more appetizing when beautifully framed." In the same vein, the degree of my ridiculous obsession with finding the perfect knife is equal to that of the socalled dish queens.

**Keiko of Nordljus recently captured beautiful images of my favorite fishmongers at la Boqueria. Check out her photos here.

Food|and Drink|Spain|Fish|Knives

PBT#1: Masala Chai Poached Prunes

The average tourist travels to Granada for one reason, to see the famed Alhambra, the fourteenth century Moorish palace. Unfortunately for the gastro-tourist, the food in Granada is definitely not, as the British like to say, more-ish.

For that reason alone, N and I planned to make our stay in Granada in the summer of 2004 brief. Most of our dining experiences met our abysmally low expectations. Happily however, we experienced two memorable exceptions. The first was lunch at a rollicking working class tapas bar called Los Diamantes (Calle Navas, 28), where we tucked into some of the most perfectly fried baby cuttlefish, anchovies and eggplants of our trip.

The second exception was breakfast at our hotel, a fabulously romantic, exquisitely renovated fifteenth century Moorish house, by far the best hotel of our trip. N, in particular, is a breakfast lover. She had grown weary with the traditional Spanish breakfast of a croissant or a suizo (sugar topped roll) and a cup of coffee. She craved a more substantial breakfast, one that includes a bit of protein, some warm bread and perhaps a bowl of fruit.

The first morning at our hotel, we trundled down the stairwell from our room, bleary-eyed, into the cozy, barrel-vaulted former wine cellar (pictured left) where the breakfast buffet was served. We blinked several times when we saw the breakfast buffet spread out before us: jamón ibérico, manchego cheese, hard-boiled eggs, tortilla, the fixins to make our own pan con tomate (including freshly grated tomato pulp in a bowl mixed with excellent local olive oil), a do-it-yourself toaster, marmalade, fresh fruit, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and the usual rolls, suizos, and croissants. We were having such a good time, we nearly missed our scheduled entrance time to view the Alhambra!

There was one other item on the breakfast buffet: prunes. And, though it sounds ridiculous to say, they were a revelation. They were double the size of their emaciated cousins in California, although they are both the same variety as the French pruneaux d'Agen. Nearly as soft as a ripe fig, these prunes even managed to be moist and succulent, an unexpected trait for a dried fruit. My guess is that these prunes were picked when they were riper and sweeter, and then dried to a lesser degree than their Californian counterparts.

Our last stop on our gastronomic tour of Spain was Barcelona. We visited Casa Gispert, a wonderfully aromatic spice shop founded in 1851 where the owners still roast almonds and hazelnuts over a wood fire every morning. Tucked away in one of the bins, we noticed our prized plump prunes (pictured right, from the Casa Gispert website), which the shopkeeper told me were grown in northern Catalonia across the border from where the famous French prunes are grown. Although we bought several pounds of roasted Marcona almonds, we decided against buying the prunes, figuring we could find respectable ones in San Francisco.

After a year of fruitless* searching, one of the few things N requested (or more aptly, demanded) from my return visit to Barcelona this past July was, yes, a bagful of those humble, yet succulent prunes.

Since California prunes aren't as juicy as those I had in Spain or the pruneaux d'Agen, I riffed off of one of Judy Rodgers' recipes from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook to create "Masala Chai Poached Prunes" to have with our breakfast tomorrow, perhaps with a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal (pictured below).

Why tomorrow? Because pastry chef/blogger extraordinaire David Lebovitz has declared tomorrow the first (and only) Prune Blogging Thursday! (I personally think this should be a more regular occurrence myself).

If you'd like to see what other delicacies you can make with the lowly prune, David has linked to all the recipes from other prune lovers here.

* Excuse the fruitless pun. The closest resemblance to the Spanish prunes we have found are the prunes sold by Bella Viva Orchards at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco and online.

Barcelona - chocolate tour

Few people may know this, but Barcelona is a great town for chocolate lovers!  Not only is there a Chocolate Museum (Carrer Commerç 36), with all kinds of mouth-watering exhibits (unfortunately only in Catalan), but there are several world-renowned artisan chocolate makers.  I felt it was my duty to visit them all and sample as much as I could, solely of course for the benefit of you, the reader.   

I start off my chocolate tour with a visit to one of the half dozen Xocoa shops scattered throughout the city.  The chocolates here have clever packaging, including a chocolate CD and Birracao, a chocolate beer (take a look at their great website to get an inkling of what they're about).  Unfortunately, in my opinion, the quality of the product doesn't live up to the promise of its appearance.  It's just OK, which when you're talking about chocolate, doesn't mean it's bad (and it's great compared to Hershey's).

Next stop is to one of the three locations of Escribà.  I visited the flagship store (Gran Vía 546), but they also have a shop in a tiled modernista building built in 1820 (Rambla de les Flors 83, near la Boqueria market) and a beach side Xiringuito (Ronda Litoral 42) with tapas and paella in addition to their own desserts.  Everything at Escribà is as delicious as it looks, which is impressive when you see how gorgeous the chocolates are.  Besides the meltingly smooth chocolate creations and a fun collection of candy glam rings, come here for the lovely (and, again, absolutely stunning) pastries.  Christian Escribà is famous for his wedding and birthday cake creations, made to the specifications of his discerning and creative customers.

Barcelona - fun spots for lunch

Perhaps since I grew up in Southern California and have a natural Type-B personality, I find it easy to succumb to the more relaxed rhythm of life of Mediterranean Spain.  I'm a staunch supporter of siestas, 3-hour lunch breaks and dinner at 11 pm.  Frankly, I find it's a more sane and civilized way to live our only too short lives.

I'm particularly fond of the Spanish approach to lunch.  As in much of the rest of the world, the midday meal has always been the main meal of the day.  In order to preserve this tradition, the Spanish government (or some pro-labor lobby) took an enlightened approach to protect its workforce from succumbing to the corporate pressure for increased productivity which inevitably leads to a bag of greasy, chemically preserved God-only-knows-what mindlessly devoured during "working lunches" or behind cubicle walls.

Some brilliant Spanish law actually requires restaurants (not tapas bars) to provide a three-course menú del día.  What this means for the tourist is that you can join the Spaniards in tucking into a very civilized lunch consisting of an appetizer, entrée, dessert, bread and wine, often for just 7-10 Euros.  So long as you avoid the awful restaurants catering to tourists and go where the locals go, you can get a taste of something very close to Spanish home cooking.

While I was in Barcelona, I felt it was my duty to ferret out some of these great lunch spots and report back.  For my tips, I relied on recommendations by Barcelona natives and transplants who wrote into eGullet and by Colman Andrews, editor of Saveur  and author of Catalan Cuisine.  Of the places I tried, these three very different restaurants are my favorites.

Barcelona and New York - so much more to tell....

I'm physically back in San Francisco now, but my mind and my heart (and of course my stomach) are still vacationing in Barcelona.  I want to write about so much more, including fun places for lunch with the locals and a luscious chocolate tour.  And, after Barcelona, I was off to New York to reunite with my wife, who had been studying there for the summer.  One of the highlights of our few days there was a raw fish feast at Bar Masa in the newish Time Warner building.  So much to tell.

But, alas, I am off again for a few days (this time with my darling wife) to soak in the hot springs of Tassajara and to feast on their always wonderful vegetarian delicacies, including their incomparable freshly baked bread.  The beauty of Tassajara is that it's completely cut off from civilization (kerosene lanterns and candles after the sun sets), so the blog will have to take a temporary siesta.  When I return, I promise to share more tales (and photos) of Barcelona, New York and even Tassajara.  Hope you all have a yummy week.

Barcelona - La Boqueria and Pinotxo

I rented a flat in Barcelona really for one reason. I had a fantasy about shopping at the famous Mercat de la Boqueria and then using its pristine ingredients to prepare fabulous meals. As can happen when expectations are high, initially at least, events didn't quite work out as I had hoped.

My main problem was timing. I had arrived in Barcelona on a Saturday night and the markets were closed until Monday. So with high hopes (and nursing a small hangover from too much cava the night before), I headed to the market Monday morning, quite a bit later than I had planned. When I arrived at around 11, the place was overrun with camera-toting tourists. Half the stalls were closed, and there was only one fishmonger. I watched as a the few remaining sellers were bombarded by the paparazzi as if they were Becks and Posh or Madonna. It was depressing and I was devastated. Clearly all the real sellers have left and gone on vacation to avoid the tourists (I was wrong, but we'll get to that later).

So in a bit of a funk, I sidled up to the bar of Pinotxo (located to the right of the main entrance) and plunked myself down on a the same stool I sat on a year ago. A happy welcome from the ever ebullient 70-year-old Juanito Bayen began to cheer me up. He greeted me, as he does everyone, as if I had been coming there for years. Yes, of course, I would like a cava. What's Albert (Juanito's nephew) cooking today? Salt cod salad with lentils (esqueixada) sounds perfect to start. Lamb stew with mushrooms to follow--why not? By the time I had finished my cortado (espresso with a little milk) and said goodbye to the touring musicians from New York who had lunch on the neighboring stools, my spirit had lifted. Pinotxo, and particularly its owner Juanito, has that effect on people.

Barcelona - lunch on the beach

The next day, with the markets and most decent restaurants closed, I headed to the same place everyone else in Barcelona, tourist and local, seems to go on Sundays in summer, to the beachside fish and paella restaurants of Barceloneta. Last year, my wife and I went to the excellent and recommended Can Majó twice, so I decided to visit another place, Julius, but was saddened to discover it no longer existed. My other option, located next door to where Julius used to stand, turned out to be a winner.

I noticed that, as displayed in the window, the chef of El Suquet de l'Almirall (Passeig Joan de Borbó, 65, tel. 932-216233), Quim Marqués, has published a cookbook in Catalan called "La Cuina de la Barceloneta" (The Cuisine or Kitchen of Barceloneta). This was proof enough for me that he knew his way around the kitchen, so I settled into a nice table on the terrace with a view of the passing parade of beachgoers.

I started my meal with a divine bowl of steamed white cockles (berberechos al vapor in Spanish) that were tender and tasted of the sea. Unlike the clams marketed in the United States as cockles, these are true cockles, with a beautifully colored bright orange hook that protrudes from each morsel. The salty juices were so good, I soaked up every drop with some pa amb tomaquet.

Barcelona - El Xampanyet and Cal Pep

As much as I enjoyed the Basque region, I was thankful to arrive in Barcelona late Saturday night.  By nature I am a city person. I am happiest when I am surrounded by the chaos and diversity that a grand city like Barcelona

I am especially excited because I rented a small apartment here. To a cook, this of course means I have a kitchen (and I am thankful to report a nicely equiped kitchen, with a four-burner stove, an oven, plenty of pots and pans, cutlery and more staples than I ever expected, including extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar and sea salt). All for the price of a hotel room. From now on, I can't imagine travelling any other way.

The problem, however, with arriving in Barcelona on a Saturday night is all the great markets (like la Boqueria) and even the supermarkets are closed until Monday. Of course, once again, I didn't have reservations anywhere, so I set out to go to a place I knew well from my visit last year, Cal Pep (Plaça de les Olles, 8). Unfortunately, by the time I arrived at 10, the coveted counter seats were all full and the wait exceeded an hour.  "No problem. I come again more later," I told the waiter (or something along those lines.  I studied Catalan for just a couple of months, so it's undoubtedly incomprehensable (no fault of the excellent and recommended Teach Yourself Catalan book and CD).