Priorat - Part 4 (Spain is No. 1 and paella-palooza)

Today was marketing day! Few people love to visit markets more than I. When traveling, I spend more time in markets than in museums, palaces and beaches combined. My fellow culinarians and I visited a beautifullly maintained moderniste city called Reus. Reus thoroughly charmed me. The town's indoor market is spectacular (check out these roosters, for example), a smaller and less touristy version of Barcelona's famous La Boqueria.

As usual, the selection of fresh Spanish seafood (like this scorpion fish) brought on an immense case of envy, causing me to pause dreamily at real estate ads posted outside a nearby office. According to Spanish cuisine expert Penelope Casas, Spaniards eat nearly twice as much seafood per capita as any other country in Europe. Only the Japanese consume more. The freshness and variety is, in my opinion, unsurpassed anywhere, so why eat anything else? If the quality of the unique Spanish varieties of pork and lamb weren't also equally enticing, they probably wouldn't.

I will say it here for the first time, but will undoubtedly repeat it often in this blog. I believe Spain has the best seafood, pork, lamb and olive oil in Europe. Yes, better than even Italy, France and Greece. My friends and colleagues question my sudden facination with Spain. I answer: visit the markets. See, smell, touch and taste the products. It will blow your mind. Of course, this opinion is about as popular in the culinary world, which in America at least is still under the spell of decades of French and Italian cooking (and marketing) skills, as my love for all kinds of fat, but I stand by my convictions.

After a visit to an exquisitly preserved turn-of-the-last-century moderniste mansion designed by a contemporary of Antoni Gaudí, Lluís Domènech i Muntaner, we stopped in a tavern for a lunchtime repast of tapas. Like long lost friends, all my favorites made an appearance: Gallician octopus, pimientos de padron, pa amb tomaquet, jamon, fried potatoes bravas, anchovies from l'Escala. I hadn't relished these tastes in the twelve months since my last visit, so I indulged myself greedily. Before being transformed into a convivial eating place, the tavern had been an old hardware store and the owners preserved all its architectural details. Unfortunately, I failed to get the name and address, but it would be easy to find with a little digging.

Tonight Alicia trained us how to make the perfect paella. The key is Bomba rice, which is grown near Valencia, a few hours drive south of here. Traditionally, it is a dish made by men, often outside in the fields over vine cuttings. It is usually made in a special flat steel pan used only for making paella, but can be made in an earthenware cazuela. It is considered a rich dish that should only be eaten at lunch.

Before we started the paella-palooza, we slurped down some fresh navajas a la plancha (razor clams cooked in the skillet).  Then we began a rapid succession of 4 different versions of paella or paella-like rice dishes: paella mixta (chicken, pork, langostines and mussels), arros negre (black rice with cuttlefish and its ink), arros amb conill i moixerons (rice with rabbit, bacon, rosemary and wild mushrooms), and rossejat de fideus (not a rice dish at all, but small thin noodles cooked like paella and served with eggless allioli, literally garlic and olive oil). My favorite was the rabbit with rosemary. It was cooked in a cazuela, which is deeper than a paella pan, and served soupier than the other dishes.