I think I'muna retire the food blog soon. Not right away. At the end of the calendar year.
Have you ever heard that pop-management phrase, "what gets measured gets done"?
It's not that the blog *measures* food exactly, but writing about food puts a certain type of emphasis on eating in my life that basically makes me crazy. I don't want to be an obsessive researcher of food, a nutty collector of restaurant experiences...
I have heretofore not propounded my philosophy of food, but now I think it's time:
Foodie-ism is stupid. The idea of "foodies" only exists in cultures with no native appreciation of food. The way I see the world, people come in all shapes and sizes with different talents and orientations. Some people are musical. Some people are sensual. Like me. At every stage of my life, without fail, no matter what else I'm doing...I eventually find myself standing on a corner, daydreaming, with a trail of powdered sugar down the front of my shirt. This does not make me a "foodie." There are other words...like "gourmand"...but that doesn't fit either. I am not a glutton and "gourmand" to me connotes excessive consumption. "Gourmet" is certainly more dignified, but it puts too much emphasis on foie gras and lobster.
I am staunchly of the opinion that cooking is not "an art." Cooking is cooking. One of the reasons that cooking is different from the arts (visual arts or performing arts or literary arts) is that it has a specific reference point: our bodies. I never lose sight of this. Cooking of any kind, simple, sophisticated, incompetent, exquisite...all at some level functions as preparation of food to be received by bodies. It's a communication with our muscle fibers, our gut, our nasal passages... To me, art is a pleasure for our minds. Cooking is fundamentally for our bodies. People who understand that don't try to "elevate" cooking to an art. They take cooking seriously for what it is.
In my opinion, that's the way they cook in the comedor at Ganbara in Donostia-San Sebastian. Whoever's in the kitchen...I wish I could cook like them.
The first plate you see above was actually touching to me. It's fried shrimp and white asparagus with mayonnaise and a sprinkle of paprika. The color of the food -- which was not chosen for its color -- is simply lovely arranged on this pretty, old-fashioned plate. It looks lovely and it's appetizing. And delicious -- the shrimp were succulent and sweet, the asparagus was creamy. And there wasn't too much of it on the plate. Which is right...because it's fried food that we didn't order.
Then, probably the most beautiful tuna carpaccio I have ever seen. What blew me out of the water was not that it so closely resembled a plate of rose petals (again, by chance...not due to some tortured calculation)...it was the restrained hand that seasoned the plate with salt and herbs. Think how tempting it must have been to put more...but how much more pleasant it was to have less.
And then there were the mushrooms. This is the specialty of the house, and I have to say they are probably some of the best mushrooms I've eaten in my life. I think it was the ceps or porcini or boletus ("cepa" in Spanish?) mushrooms that I loved the most. They are custardy on the inside and irresistibly crusty-roasted on the outside. There is a display of raw mushrooms probably worth 500 Euro on the bar counter upstairs. Respect...the...mushroom. They're cooked that way, with respect.
The txipirones (baby squid) were also outstanding, and appetizingly plated (the cook has an elegant eye), but everything after the mushrooms was wiped from my memory by the handmade chocolate truffles that proceeded "la cuenta." You know, some people get into chocolate in that weird nerdy way, obsessing over percentages...this was not that. This was just great. Chocolatey enough to take seriously, but not so chocolatey that it was overwhelming. The texture was silky, but with just a residue of grainy sugar. The perfect amount sweet. I asked the woman who served us "do you make these here?" She looked at me cooly, "They're good, aren't they?"
The cooking at Ganbara has a little coolness, a little restraint. Gandarias is more ba-boom. I think I reverted back to my cave-woman self when they placed this massive txuleta, crusted generously with flor de sal and exuding scrumptious juices, in front of me. And in case I had any ounce of willpower left preventing me from diving head first into the plate, they added...French fries...because, what the hell? I don't know, maybe I am a gourmand. We went back to Gandarias twice for txuleta, it was so...sexy. The first time, we also crowned our gluttony with a pool of melted chocolate and then tried not to hate ourselves afterwards.
Oh God, I forgot to mention, their mushrooms (cepas?) were out-of-sight too. Again, more ba-boom than elegant, but completely voluptuous and soul-satisfying.
These meals actually marked a turning point for us. We sat down. To eat.
The first two weeks we stood up eating. Which is kind of ironic, because we frequently wanted to spend the entire next day horizontal. Such hangovers, Jeez! Every inch of my body screaming bloody murder. Was it really just the booze or was the salt somehow to blame? We both observed that they have a generous hand with salt in this town, which both of us actually like. Salt is yummy. And, of course, like a million other things here in the nation-within-a-nation that is Euskadi, there is beautiful, locally-produced salt.
But getting vertical again for a sec...do you want the whole tapas tutorial? Now that we've taken care of that...you might not know the Basque (Euskera) word pintxos also refers to yummy snacks eaten at the bar. San Sebastian's old town is hyper-dense with pintxos bars. Spiritually, it's not unlike a really fabulous Singaporean hawker center, where every vendor has a few killer dishes and you mill around tasting all the goodies. But of course, pintxos bars are way more elegant, and there is a lot of drinking to be done betwixt the eating too. Here are some of the pintxos that left an impression on me...
There was the txipirone with ink-risotto at Borda Beri. Wonderful, hard-hitting savory flavors, fantastic rice texture and delicate squid meat. Lovely, lovely.
Then there were the great, roasty guindillas -- a locally-produced pepper brought back to the old world from the Americas -- at La Cueva. You can find guindillas everywhere but we liked the ones best at La Cueva because they deep-fried them (let's be honest with ourselves) longer.
If there are any pulpo (octopus) left in the sea, it is not our fault. There is a very yummy standard in the pintxos bars here called Pulpo a la Gallega. This is a famous dish from Galicia, another autonomous community in the north of Spain. What makes it amazing is the texture of the octopus, which is first dipped in boiling water three times and then left to slow-cook in the still-hot-water off the flame for another 20 mins. The octopus then reclines on a bed of boiled potatoes and is drenched in olive oil (and butter too?) and sprinkled in paprika. A simple knock-out dish.
Again, our favorite pulpo was at La Cueva, but somehow I failed to photograph it, so this one's from Rojo y Negro, a serviceable joint with decent food that was closer to our rented flat.
Then I really liked the bric de bacalao at Bar Haziea. A delicately deep-fried packet of oniony-creamy bacalao tied like a present with a bowof green onion, and set on a zigzag of balsamic vinegar cream. Delightful mix of flavors, textures, and temperatures. Don't know if they made 'em in house or bought them, but who cares when they hit the spot?
What else, what else?
E dug the txistorra (fast-cured Basque sausage) at the restaurant called Txuleta. He liked it so much, in fact, he tried to order it somewhere else on his own and was scolded -- apparently txistorra is a wintertime specialty, to be eaten at Santo Tomas, the winter solstice celebration. Meanwhile, we were hot on the heals of San Juan, summer solstice.
I myself, preferred the fat little chorizo sandwiches at Bar Etxeberria, a little rock cavern of a place impervious to mobile phone signals. The flavor of these guys was more buttery and mellow. Yum, yum, yum.
Then we hit a wall, the bottle-of-wine-with-lunch-wall. Yeah, that's right. You get an entire bottle of wine with lunch for two people at many restaurants offering set lunch. Here we are plowing into another 2,000-calorie meal at Narru, a little hotel restaurant close to our rented flat. Even E, who lives larger than I do, couldn't handle it. For me, a bottle-of-wine-with-lunch basically shortens the day to the four hours between breakfast and a really long night.
This is not a problem for folks here. They have a different, much more ancient concept of health. Actually, I wouldn't call it "health" exactly. It's more "hardiness" or physical resilience. Because, after all, what's the point of having a strong body if you can't smoke two packs a day, eat and drink 'til dawn, swim in the ocean, and be up and attem again after a brief siesta? Seriously, that is how it is done here. Some people believe that a daily dip, year-round, is the key to surviving the good life well into old age...
I think about a dear friend in SF (hi, B!), with a very sensitive system, who once told me she was confined to bed with a "gluten hangover." I'm laughing (with you, with you), but also slightly dismayed to find that I'm a pussy too. One gets used to not hurting every day...and one kind of likes it...
And boy, if ever there were a place to have a gluten hangover, this is it. Bread is everywhere. On a good day, one goes for fresh bread twice a day, before lunch and before dinner. When E discovered that fresh, hot, crusty bread could be had first thing, he conscripted me into a morning bread-run routine so he could enjoy a breakfast of poached eggs, grilled tomatoes, and bacon on butter-grilled bread every day. After some experimentation, I settled on the soft campaignille txapa at La Tahona as the most suitable base for these delicate ingredients...
And since I was in the bakery anyway, my breakfast frequently wound up being bread too...because I couldn't resist those crusty little chocolate chip bolos.
A consequence, of course, of the many-times-a-day bread routine was...too much damn bread. Leftover bread up the wazoo. So...a festival of bread puddings. Which quickly turned a dangerous corner when we started adding chocolate to the equation... I think this banana chocolate chip bread pudding with a custardy inside and a crunchy outside was my favorite.
Haven't seen a real vegetable yet, have you? Ok, get ready, here it comes...
Dinner chez moi. Big salad, tomatoes with chives (swimming in olive oil, of course), a goat cheese-onion tart, and grilled chicken. With bread and wine, of course.
I've started to recognize the point during our travels when we go out to eat and get kind of frantic. Nothing looks good anymore, we're crabby, we walk from restaurant to restaurant, rejecting menus... This is when it's time to cook. And actually, cooking here was a pleasure.
It was a pleasure because we're cheap and we love good food. And the raw foodstuff here was excellent...and cheap. Everything grows in Spain. Beautiful oranges for heart-stoppingly good fresh squeezed OJ. Bountiful, exquisite olive oil. Crispy lettuces. Nice mushrooms. Good dairy. Good beef. Good pork. Good chicken. (The seafood, it goes without saying, is outstanding here...but I generally don't cook it at home.) Some very nice cheeses. And tomatoes.
Nice, eh? Less than two Euros for all of it! Seven lovely ripe tomatoes and big, crispy lettuce for $2.50. If the produce vendors here could see my grocery bills from the Whole Foods in Oahu, they would gasp in shock. Locally-produced lettuces there were about $4 each and this many tomatoes might have run me $8-10. So at least four times the price. Or, in this case, 1/4 the price here.
Coffee? Two Euros for a bag of decent espresso. I'm telling you... Remember Melbourne, Australia with their $4 flat whites and their $25 six-packs of beer (a six-pack of Keler 18 is about $2.50 here)? Wine is more complicated. We're right near Rioja, so drinkable wine can be had for the same price as beer, but good wines are just as expensive as they are anywhere. One of my favorite, very reasonable wines was this Bodegas Fernández de Piérola Crianza Tempranillo for 10 Euro a bottle.
I suspect that my Basque readers at this point think that we Americans are kind of pathetic. I mean, here I am extolling the virtues of La Tahona panaderia, Keler 18 beer, and Pierola wine? I guess that's kind of like getting all hot and bothered about Colombo sourdough, Budweiser, and Bogle old vine zin.
You people don't know how good you have it. Go live in Argentina for a year. You'll come back and give thanks for La Tahona and Ogi Berri every day. No joke.
But, to give proper respect where it's due... The raw foodstuff gets a whole lot better than this. N gave us a crash course in where to get the goodies when we arrived.
The best quality fish at Pescaderia Pascuala.
The best cheeses (and mushrooms!) at Aitor Lasa Gaztategia. I later came back here and asked for a great cheese to be eaten anoche. They gave me a delicious sweet and nutty cheese and didn't say anything about my wanting to eat it last night.
Chewy, crusty (rather than just crusty) breads at Galparsoro Okindegia.
The freshest produce from the vendors outside La Bretxa market (my source for one-Euro bags of tomatoes).
And then there were the traditional cakes at Pasteleria Otaegui...
Well, they don't call me BakeryDay for nothing! Just now, just two hours ago, I was contemplating this photo, and drooling on this photo. Something about the brownness of the edges of that nutty-looking cake... and I decided we had not done justice to dessert in this town. With just one day and a half remaining, I sprang into action. A wad of cash in my paw and visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, I hit the streets, tracing my steps back to all the bakeries that have caught my eye over the past few weeks.
Then, because, hey, I'm not a foody, but I am a (social) scientist (sort of), I devised a totally unscientific experiment:
I created a platter with numbered bites of seven treats from three bakeries (Otaegui, Berrenetxe, and then just a plain old Ogi Berri). Interestingly, the first two bites that caught his eye were from Ogi Berri (a pastel vasco and a madeline). The first he described as "hmm, good," and the second, "just a muffin...pedestrian." In the end, two treats came out on top:
#1 -- Panchinetta from Otaegui
#2 -- Bizcocho de Almendra from Berrenetche
A what and a what?
A panchinetta or pantxinetta is puff pastry, covered with almonds and filled with custard. Of course, that says about nothing. E's on the spot description: "almost burnt, browned taste...sesame seed, then custard, flaky inside..." I would say...one smells the browny flavor first. When you bite it, it almost tastes like buttered toast, not very sweet. Then that nice wet pastry (lard?) that has some bite and the custard which is so soothing. Great dessert!
The bizcocho doesn't look that different, does it ;-) Basically, take anything and cover it with toasted almonds and we'll love you forever. No, no... This was a different ballgame. Much more fancy, I thought. E's description: "very delicate combo of nice cake with nice crust," where the cake is orange-scented and slightly moist, and the almonds are entangled in a kind of caramel. I could put a nice scoop of vanilla gelato on this one. Mmm.
So, the bizcocho was good, but the panchinetta had more soul. More of that bipass-your-rational-brain goodness. I also really liked the pastel vasco from Otaegui but E found it too plain (he goes for more bold flavors than I do). The pastel vasco from Ogi Berri was another thing entirely, quite salty, but also yummy. Just a soft, crumbly crust with custard inside. But not in the same league. A bit cheap tasting...not that there's anything wrong with that.
Ok, let's see, we've covered...
- I'm not a foodie
- Eating sitting down
- Eating standing up
- Eating at home
- Groceries
How about...eating at other people's houses?
By the way, we're in the middle of the worst economic crisis Spain has faced in a century. Big real estate bubble, 20+ % unemployment, stuff like that. J--, my American friend of almost 20 years!, and I were discussing the prospect of a bank run before we arrived. "Don't worry," she told me, "all of our wealth is in our cupboards." Now, she is a funny lady, for sure, but she also wasn't kidding.
Check out this olive oil stockpile...
And the white asparagus, pikillos, and hongos from La Catedral de Navarra. Ooh la la...
After listening to E's latest Financial Sense interview with Eric Hunsader at Nanex, I imagine all of my worldly gains disappearing in a puff of high-frequency-traders' smoke, and think that keeping one's assets in the form of top-shelf conserves might not be such a bad idea.
The women with the golden cupboards invite us over for a lunch of love-infused, port-drenched, slow-cooked carilleras (beef cheeks) that knock our socks off.
The afternoon progresses with a lovely tempranillo reserva (that I'm sorry to say I failed to record), sorbet de limon with cava, then some 15-year Macallan...
The dog feasts on a bone.
The baby has milk, and...
P is no slouch when it comes to cooking himself, by the way. Here is the beautiful spread he treated us to when we came to his and I's house for San Juan. A blissfully meaty, olive-y shmorgasbord. In the blur of vino tinto and futbol excitement I missed photographing the second course, but there were also succulent chicken skewers and salad of green apples and arugula...
Oh hey, and we went to Arzak. Different category from home cooking, I know. The old Michelin 3-star, San Pellegrino Top 10 Best Restaurants in the World category. What follows are not my photos. I decided ahead of time to reserve my whole attention for the food.
If I could characterize the entire experience, I would say that Arzak manages to be exotic by being ancient and earthy and kind of...goaty in sensibility. Some of the lasting flavors on my palate were:
(Photo credit: gastromyblog)
Marinated anchovy with strawberries (and chives and natilla?). Somehow the acid and creaminess built a bridge between the fish and the fruit, and the two tasted like they'd been married for years.
(Photo credit: gastronomyblog)
Some kind of delicate skin wrapped around what I think was foie gras topped with carmelized onions surrounded by a dusting of green tea and coffee -- standing on end like stone monuments, or cromlechs as they're called on the menu. You grab the rocky things and have a kind of French kiss experience with the onions at the end. It's kind of indecent. That's as much as I'm gonna say here...
(Photo credit: Mika Salmi)
Have you ever taken a dog for a walk and seen them snuffle around in the leaves and grass, bewitched by all of the fascinating smells? You tug on the leash and they won't budge? That's how I felt eating this dish. It wasn't scents so much as textures than smells, but whoa...sour grass and a rich, eggy custard, perfectly cooked tender lobster atop chorizo oil (no, but it worked!), funny little closehanger cutouts made of fish, crispy crackers and then a burst of Asian flavors in a tender salad with greens and tapioca. Bizarre and tasty.
(Photo credit: foodspotting/thelma)
It wasn't this dish overall that wowed me, just those dark orange spots you see on the left-hand side. They seemed to be baked gooseberries with sage and mint. And they were like something out of a forest in a fairytale. If I ever get my hands on ripe gooseberries, I will try them myself.
So, did we do anything in San Sebastian besides eat?
I would say "sleep" except that I didn't.
This was the view from our balcony last Sunday night at 12:30am. I wept. Another 6:30am bedtime for me. If anything, this one was understandable. Spain's futbol team crushed Italy 4-0 to win the Europe 2012 championships. But what about Weds and Thurs? And Tues-Sun the week before that? I want to scream out the window, "STOP SINGING"...but then it occurs to me I would be screaming "stop singing" out the window.
Before we arrived in Spain, I wondered if E would be able to handle it, particularly given his allergy to Argentina. Actually, he has been happy as a clam. Sleeping during the day, carousing all night, scarfing down rich and tasty tidbits, checking out topless sunbathers on La Concha beach. Every few days I hear him chortle, "El Pais Vasco es para mi!"
Meanwhile, El Pais Vasco is kicking my butt. I am sleep-deprived and hungover, and now my back hurts from running so much trying to burn off all of the calories.
So I escaped for two days to Pamplona. I took refuge in the cloisters of the catedral, circumnavigated La Ciudadela, found myself a nunlike alcove of a hotel room (only 41 Euros!) and watched the sun die over the landscape that provides the backdrop for the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.
I notice, sadly, the okupi graffiti symbol spray-painted on a several hundred-year-old monastery door (thanks, Occupy Wallstreet).
Riding back on the bus (7.85 Euro, thank you), I am surprised, like last year, at how rural it is up here...
Back in San Sebastian, we all meet for lunch. It's awesome. Via Fora is a Catalan restaurant by the river, so we order rices. The seafood rice is delicious, but the seafood rice with squid ink is even better in my opinion...
J-- and I admire the long pestañas, dark chestnut locks, and plumas of the Basque folks at the table. They put up with it ;-) I narrowly escape a coffee with whisky and whipped cream. The waitress comes over at the end of the meal with a cigarette in her mouth and borrows a lighter from our table. Yeah, that's right.
I honestly don't have any judgments about this. It just floors me. Smoking in restaurants is one thing. The waitress smoking is another. The waitress borrowing a lighter from customers so she can smoke is yet another.
In some ways I feel that San Sebastian is more civilized than any place I've ever been. People do things well here (the food quality is testament to that), but they also enjoy themselves with gusto. And the attitude is really that this is everyone's right.
It was the Fourth of July yesterday. I think about how the Declaration of Independence said:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness."
In the Basque Country, I think this would have been written differently. Maybe "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Pleasure." But that's not quite it either. Maybe "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Lunch."
Hmmm.
"What happens," I ask J, "when your wife goes to New York? Does she get stressed out when she can't have lunch?"
"Oh no, we DO lunch in New York."
That's some serious s***.
I sit down in my office (a sewing table in the kitchen) to blog. Suddenly, without warning, it's as if a fist slammed through the shutters next to me. There are sudden winds here that come out of nowhere. It blows the latch off the cupboard doors. My laundry is strewn across the terrace.
I can't control it.
I can't control the wind.
I can't control lunch.
This place is more powerful than me.
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