Crisis, what crisis?

While I know that the whole world is in crisis mode, economic crisis this and economic crisis that, I have to admit that it is tough to think that we may have to brace up to hear this kind of talk for a long time to come. I am not being glib, in fact I am more or less out of work at the time, and am personally feeling some of the effects of the economic downturn either directly or indirectly. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s all I want to talk or read about. Drawing a rather obtuse connection to this statement, I might say that I was either a.disgruntledly amused b.annoyed or c.bored by Frank Bruni’s latest NYTimes article entitled: Comrades at Arms: Two Food Writers in a Kitchen Smackdown , about a challenge between two of the culinary staffers to create the best possible meal for 6 people on a 50$ budget. I guess I’m mainly just surprised that this appears to be such a challenge to these folks, and perhaps not the best example to set during these tough times. While I myself am definitely of the “spend all my (former) paycheck on delicious ingredients at the market” persuasion, 50$ is plenty of money for a delicious meal for 6, and more than what most people spend in general for a daily meal. I think that a truly fun and challenging thing would maybe have been to set the bar a bit lower, maybe 20 dollars, 10? I’m also supposing that this 50$ limit would not have included drinks for example, maybe requiring that enough wine for everyone be included in the budget could really spice things up. It is tremendously rewarding to find a delicious 2 euro bottle of young wine from Navarra or La Mancha for example – although maybe this is one of the advantages of living in Spain. In any case, I also don’t agree with the fact that “the best way to disguise a limit and leave guests feeling pampered was to present a long sequence of treats”, as stated in the article. At times there is nothing more rewarding than a delicious plato unico as they say in Spain, a hearty dish reminiscent of those many dishes that in fact originated or were staples during tough economic times: polenta, migas, paella, etc., and there’s no reason that this cannot be gourmet on a tight budget. In any case, taking a line from an aspiring small town politician, I’ll give it some thought and get back to ya.

Gimme Dimi

There is very little that I can say about this new Japanese-Korean restaurant without interspersing it with comments such as "I would go every day if I could, twice" and "I want the chefs to live with me and will sell my furniture to make space for them"!
Ah, glee. It has been so long since I have been able to recommend a restaurant 100% without a single reservation. I almost don´t want to share it with anyone.
Actually, I think I won´t. Well, ok.

Dimibang
C/Rodriguéz San Pedro, 67
915446213

Restaurant Reviewing

Let us all bow our heads and laud the coming of a society where food and drink are so highly praised, where every self-respecting newspaper and magazine has a culinary writer, and where you can’t sneeze without finding locally made grass-fed chorizo.
Welcome to Madrid, a place where you can still get absolutely stellar material prima. There are great fruits and vegetables, a fantastic variety of meats, and some of the freshest fish you can find anywhere in Spain; and the best part is that most of the products that you buy at your local market ARE, in fact, organic, although not labeled as such due to the its yet perceived unimportance. There is also new species of gourmet specialty shops opening here: chocolate, cheese, oil, etc., and of course an invasion of new restaurants, one a block, one a minute, and each more modern than the last. Let us praise the fact that in Madrid the culinary craze has hit just as hard. The only problem is that this evolution has, in many ways, made dining out in Madrid a nightmare.
The problem could perhaps be best described by the age old Mom-ism, “well if all your friends want to jump off a cliff would you want to jump of a cliff too?” In the Madrid restaurant scene the answer is a resounding just tell me when and where to jump. Now don’t misunderstand me, there are excellent restaurants in Madrid, both old and new, but the problem seems to boil down to a pervasive lack of criteria that has suddenly given the green light to either creating an incredible atmosphere of design and style and adding the food as an afterthought, or more recently, throwing a coat of paint on an old restaurant, giving it a new name or look, and charging ridiculously exorbitant prices for food that is pretty much same ole same ole. The even bigger problem as far as I can tell is that there is no one thorough and more importantly, independent restaurant review network here. The closest that I have found is the Metropoli guide published by El Mundo newspaper, which is actually a very complete guide to restaurants in Madrid. The problem is that Metropoli calls you up, tells you they’re coming by, and as far as I know and in my own experience, has their food chosen and paid for by the establishment. Therefore, I propose to create anonymous (to the restaurant) forum for restaurant reviews, not with the intention of weeding out the bad, but also with the objective of piling praise on the good. While the rating system might take a while to sort out, sometimes I think it best just to get the ball rolling.

Malaga es grande

Its hard to believe sometimes that just two and a half hours on a gently rocking train hurtling through the olive grove scattered countryside is enough to transport you to another time frame, or rather another brain frame altogether. This train, with its duckish beak and generous amount of leg room is like a portal to the tropics, a ticket to a better life consisting of sardines roasted on spits in bonfires set in hollowed out old boats and tended to by old men that in other countries might have anchors tattooed on their biceps. And so I found myself perched on a rock coming out of a jetty, nose newly freckled, surf swirling around my toes, wearing a bathing suit from the year before, and wondering why oh why it had taken me such a long time to make such a quick trip on the new high speed train to Malaga, and how being so close to Madrid, one could feel so absolutely and delightfully far far away.
The excuse was the Malaga Film Festival and an overdue visit to a friendly cousin. Once there, I was happy to see only a third of a film and a lot of the cousin. We rented bikes from a pleasant Dutchman that took us on the wide promenade along the length of the beach to the Port where the great cruise ships are docked, boarded by people who are dressed mysteriously for much colder weather, and back again to our little community (ours now for almost 48 hours) buzzing with fisherman unloading shellfish from the trunks of their cars in styrafoam boxes, beachfront restaurants, and Sunday afternoon strollers crowding the sidewalks of our lazy haven.
Apart from the smoky sardines, the restaurants in the area serve specialties that include pescado en adobo, made from deep fried spiced (sometimes) dogfish, white and hot on the inside with an almost vinegary fresh and light coating of golden batter; also battered are the thin slices of eggplant, fried and drizzled with honey; baby octopus, tiny smoked cockles, and tiny squid called chopitos. Grilled fish is fresh and smoky as well – frequently cooked whole, side by side next to the sardines over a wood fire, and tomatoes are flavourful and deeply coloured, swimming in olive oil with enough fresh smashed garlic and rock salt to make a girl blush.
In Malaga, if the food is revival then the sea is rebirth, and the return to the real world is just a bit more bearable because of it.

Thanksgiving

It was my first Thanksgiving in Spain and our rented flat didn´t have an oven so I tasked each of my roommates to go out and get a boyfriend, friend or acquaintance who had one. Luckily, my American roommate understood the importance of the mission and came back with Santiago – the owner of a large kitchen and large oven, albeit one that was located somewhat far away on the other side of town.
I´ve surely told this story at least a hundred times; how my friend Ashley and I called in sick to work and picked up the 20+ pound bird at the market in a taxi and drove it uptown in style. How we got tipsy on the cooking sherry that was meant for the stuffing, spent an entire day cooking alone in this relative stranger´s house, and eventually caused a blackout in his entire building as we sucked up all of the electricity in our 8 hour turkey, stuffing and pie baking bonanza. How the famous blackout, unfortunately, didn´t have the courtesy to wait for the turkey to finish cooking, and so more cooking sherry was consumed while we waited for the electrician to come and sort us out again. How by the time the turkey was finished it had to be transported boiling hot right out of the oven and swimming in juices in the trunk of Santiago´s car (who had come home from work that night to find virtual strangers jollied-up on cooking sherry, an electrician, and a bunch of ornery neighbors), in traffic, to a house full of 20 some guests who had been waiting hungrily at my house for about two hours for the food to arrive. And how, when we finally arrived, we realized that in our haste to tuck the turkey snugly into the car, we had left the stuffing, pies, potatoes and whatnot on the curb in front of Santiago´s house; so he had to go back, in traffic, to retrieve them.
I think that the food that Thanksgiving was delicious, even the burned slivers of bitter parsnips (I´m not naming any names) and the cold accompaniments. I know that the best part of the evening came after dinner when we passed around a bottle of Turkey, (this time the Wild kind) and everyone drank a shot and said what they were thankful for – something that would have been very TV movie were it not for the fact that we represented about 9 different countries and 5 different languages, and the person directly to the left of the speaker was forced to simultaneously translate the toast into another language, whether they spoke the original one or not.
I also know that the best part of that Thanksgiving has been by far just being able to repeat the story over and over again, as I am doing once more now. I can´t think of a better way to pay homage to my favorite holiday or to explain what it means to me.

Porto.Punto.

I´ve been away for a month exactly. A month filled with wine presentations, tasting classes, bobbing for apples (not really), working full time and achieving stiffer penalties for parole violators. And somewhere sandwiched right in the middle I managed to escape to Porto, Portugal (sigh) city, deliciously lovely city in the north of Portugal.

If I had a gun to my head forcing me to rate countries in terms of their national cuisine, Portugal would be right up near the top of my list. If I had to rate cities in terms of just sheer breathless romanticism and staggering drama, Porto would outrank most that I´ve ever visited. It is a city graced with the wide and elegant avenues typical to more northern European cities, but then interwoven with winding streets that cascade carelessly down from hilltop monuments. There are charmingly blackened and sometimes rundown buildings that seem perched almost haphazardly amongst the maze of streets and glints of brightly colored tiles in cherry and emerald tones, and intricately painted wedgewood blue designs. There are clotheslines winding like colorful flags though the building facades. There is an area near the cathedral that feels almost like a fishing village, its windy narrow streets have flowerpots, open doors shrouded in threadbare curtains, delicious aromas of food (maybe because it was lunchtime when I happened upon it), and the occasional Virgin complete with lit candles, stuck into an unassuming corner. And just when you think you are in the middle of a charmingly sleepy town, you happen upon the clean and stark lines of a modern architectural masterpiece, a photography museum, or a reformed apartment building and incredibly majestic bridges.

And then there is the Douro; glistening, wide and churning away of its own free will, independent of everything else and breathing life into the city as it rushes by as though completely unconcerned by it. Someone told me that this is what every city needs, a thing with a life completely of its own.

There are the famous Port wines, and fresh fish (typically cod); plates of deep green leafy sauteed vegetables, softly boiled potatoes, and minced golden flecks of baked garlic. Crisp, refreshing vinhos verdes - slightly sparkling - and deep fruity reds made of grapes with wonderfully difficult to pronounce names. Portuguese coffee is one of the best in the world, and cheap!

And when the sun comes out and the city is laid out before you, there is no place like it in the world.

Harvest time in ye olde Ribera del Duero

Grape harvest arrived to Ribera del Duero last week and I wore my big blue rubber boots just in case.
I had never witnessed the harvest before first hand and I have to say that the whole experience was aided by an absolutely stunning day. We drove up to the town of Aguilera, near Aranda del Duero, early last Friday morning to meet up with my friend Gema's uncle Florien, a venerated grape producer with vineyards that have been in their family for generations. It was the second day of harvest and in general the motto seems to be "we're ready when they are". I can understand it. Like any annual crop, you wait for the meat of it all year long, and like anything else, you also risk the wrath of Mother Nature and the fact that anything can happen at any time to destroy a year's work. This becomes even trickier as the fall harvest time rolls around as the temperature begins to change and there is a greater likelihood of storms or frosts that can mildew or damage the vines. This year seemed particularly tragic in Ribera del Duero, as an icy frost hit just a week before harvest and wreaked havoc on a huge percentage of vines. Driving through the countryside you could see a line across the vineyards like a treeline in the mountains. All of the lower-lying plots of vines were stained bright red, their leaves and fruit irreparably damaged by the freeze, but as the plots moved out of valleys and up hills, the vines were intact.
Florien was lucky this year. Despite the fact that his overall production was down 40% (he blames it mainly on the climate change, global warming), his vines were untouched by frost and gleaming with juicy fruit (that I just couldn't get into my mouth fast enough - hoping it would ferment in my belly, maybe?).
He and his son and daughter were leading a group of workers in the harvest. Harvesting everything by hand (for much much better quality wines), they showed us how to clip the bunches of grapes close to their "stems", to look at the grapes to make sure that they weren't damaged or diseased and to then lay them gently in the 15-20 kilo boxes. Between the four of us, Gema and Carmen took on more directional, supportive and photographic roles, while Carlos and I put our back into it. We were extremely proud of the four boxes that each of us filled (in the time that the seasoned workers had probably filled 5x that amount), and I was delighted to calculate that we had probably just picked enough grapes for approx. 120 bottles of wine. Not too shabby. But oh, my back was aching. Good thing I wore those rubber boots.

How to please your spanish In-Laws

While I do consider myself to be a cook, having had people pay to eat my food in a restaurant gives me that right, I am not a chef. I have never trained as a cook and actually my personal cooking manta is “invent, invent, invent”. I am a hack, a proud food-loving hack who can joyfully spend an entire Saturday morning at the market mulling over the fruits and vegetables, eyeing the fishmonger’s wares, and creating and discarding menu after menu as my options change and ingredients are found or forgotten. I am fortunate enough to have a willing audience at home, a pareja that has evolved into quite a foodie and a familia política that will trustingly and enthusiastically eat just about everything I put in front of them. The only problem with this is that it is sometimes hard to feel vindicated for spending an entire day making homemade raviolis, pierogis, or marinating a duck, when they would likely be just as thrilled and complimentary about a ten minute throw-together chicken pot pie. In fact, for the first meal that I prepared for my suegros (parents in-law), I was prepared to go all the way, mentally sculpting delicate rosebuds from radishes and hand-sculpting vichyssoise bowls out of entire blocks of ice. Therefore, I was taken aback when Enrique informed me that one of his father’s very favorite foods in the world was none other than, chili con carne – in all of its Tex-Mex glory. So, while this blog is purportedly dedicated to the pursuit of Spanish wines, restaurants, culture, and grub, I have decided in the spirit of intercultural communication to include (for my Spanish friends) a 20 minute recipe for fool’em chili. I should point out that, is chili better when you cook it all day, add 17 spices, hand cook the beans, use real tomato sauce, and butcher the cow yourself? Probably, except for the part about the cow. But for a delicious (cheap) and exotic meal (in Spain) with under 5 minutes prep time, who cares?

Ingredients
2 cloves garlic
1-1.5 pounds ground beef
1 jar or around 300 grams tomato sauce (I use organic, I find it tastes less industrial)
1-2 Tbs.olive oil
1 onion (I am allergic so in my house we omit them, well, I omit them)
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 jar or around 450 grams cooked kidney beans or red beans or a mixture of the two
2 tbsp. cumin more or less
Cayenne pepper (add a little bit at a time to taste, it gets spicy quickly
any other chili spices, I like Chayote
salt (I sometimes use garlic salt)
pepper
1 tsp. oregano
diced zucchini, red pepper, green pepper, celery (all are optional but I like to add a lot of veggies)
cheddar cheese
sour cream
chives (if you want to be really fancy and garnish, again, I am allergic)

Heat olive oil and add the garlic and onions. Sautee until tender and add the ground beef to brown. Season with oregano, salt and pepper. Once the beef is browned, add the diced cubes of vegetables and cook the whole mixture on high for about 5 minutes. Add the cans of diced tomatoes, the tomato sauce, and another can or a bit less of water depending on how thick you like it. Add the rest of the spices and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 10 more minutes. Rinse and drain the beans and add them at the very end. Cook just long enough to heat the beans through and throw in some more spices for good measure. Garnish with cheddar cheese and a dollop of sour cream or plain yoghurt. Was supposed to serve 8, but there were 5 of us and we all had huge second helpings and then groaned that we ate too much. I was also planning on including a photo, but we ate it all before I had a chance.

Customer Service Sadism

I wish I could say that I've stayed away from my blog for so long so that you could get a taste of what customer service is generally like in Spain: slow, tedious, and sometimes non-existent; but I can't, that would be a lie - although not the part about customer service.
Let me give you an example. The other day I went to a trendy and expensive furniture store. I wanted to exchange a chipped 4 euro coffee cup that had formed part of a 500 euro purchase (not mine). The 14 employees of the store were divided up into 4 basic groups: talking on the phone in a rude manner, smoking cigarettes outside, standing in groups bitching about their whatever, and smirking nastily from behind the cash register. As I waited in line for 20 minutes behind the other 6 customers who seemed to think that it was normal to wait while over a dozen employees roamed around without even acknowledging our presence, when it came to be my turn, I decided to boldly ask a question. "Um, hi, excuse me, for exchanges?" Someone barked at me, "You'll have to talk to Alvaro, he's the only one in a 75 kilometer radius authorized to exchange the broken cup that we knowingly sold you".
"Ok, um and who's Alvaro?". The surly employee replied, "well, he was in the smirking nastily group, but since then he's shifted to the talking on the phone in a rude manner team," gesturing to a sullen man behind her. So when he hung up the phone, "excuse me Alvaro, I'd like to exchange this coffee cup." He looked at me, "You'll have to wait your turn" and went outside for a cigarette.
Now you might say, isn't that just water under the bridge, can't anyone have a rotten day? But the reason I brought it up was because I was reminded of the whole experience by the charming waiter that served us in the Galician restaurant where we went for lunch today. After waiting patiently for 20 minutes for him to come over to our table while he buzzed busily around us, I waved him down with my most winning waiter smile. His response, "you'll have to wait." Brilliantly disrespectful (so much so that my American restaurant-owner friend fantasizes about working there), rude, downright uncivil. What gives? My Spanish brethren like to tell me that the reason that restaurant service is so bad is that the waiters are not working for tips. While I agree that it is annoying when Brian shows up at your table at _____________ American restaurant with crayons and begins to kiss your ____ the whole night, isn't there something to be said for customer service meaning just decent and friendly treatment between humanoids? Maybe they get off on it here, maybe waiters like to treat their customers badly just as much as customers don't enjoy themselves as much if they are treated with respect. Are Spaniards customer service sadists?

How to build a starter kitchen

I was interviewed a couple of months ago by someone who was doing an article about how to start a wine cellar with 200 euros. It seemed like an excellent idea to me, especially considering that everyone has to start somewhere and that a few pointers can go a long way.
I was reminded of this article again last night when a good friend asked me if I could share a few easy recipes with her, and give her a few pointers in the kitchen. She went on to say that when she goes to the market or the grocery store she unsure even of what to buy, and frequently ends up with very few things to build on, which is the way that I like to think of cooking. For me, fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, condiments, are all building blocks. Unless I have something very specific in mind when I go food shopping, whether at the supermarket or the farmer’s market, I tend to buy what “looks good”, knowing that the possibilities for mixing and matching will be endless once I get home. This is in fact what I most love about cooking; above all I am an experimenter and an inventor in the kitchen. I might use a recipe for inspiration, or for general cooking times or temperatures, but I like to take a recipe and turn it over and over in my head, creating its new identity and then throwing in a little bit of whatever else I can think of. Usually, I will do my shopping with a very definite idea in my head – chowder, chard, Poland, comfort, etc. but in general the finished product morphs a dozen times, again depending on what ultimately “looks good” while I´m in the store. I understand however, that even if you are able to chose the vegetables that are in season and the best cut of meat, you don´t necessarily know what to do with it when you get home. How do you know that what you are buying is going to “work”.
So, what are the building blocks for starter kitchen? They would obviously have to be broken down into groups of things, and this would clearly be open to debate (which I am more than welcome to) depending on the cook, the size of a kitchen, and whatever other possible factors such as food allergies (I, for example am allergic to onions, a building block for most kitchens) or refrigerator space. I should also point out that the interesting thing would be to create a starter kitchen that would contain not only basic elements that enable one to cook (i.e. Oil, salt, pepper), but also basic elements that enable one to cook WELL.
On top of these basic elements, it would then have to include the variables, those things that again, “look good” and that are in general can be used in a huge variety of dishes, and would include things such as vegetables and starches such as rice, pasta, couscous, etc., while it would also include meats, fish, poultry, etc. that can be prepared, and enjoyed at any time, without too much of a hassle. And then of course there is the price factor. Knowing how much things are going to cost you in general, and not to mention how long they are going to take to cook, is a huge help when it comes to stocking your kitchen with food. If I´m running to the grocery store with 10 euros in my wallet and want to get something good for dinner, I automatically know before I get there certain things that are out of my grasp. In fact, I brag about the fact that I can usually guesstimate how much my cart full of groceries at the supermarket is going to cost me down to the euro.
I know, isn´t that just fabulous for me, but that being said, my friend’s question still remains: what should she buy, how should she shop for it, how much will it cost and what does she do with them once she gets home?. All of these are valid questions, and ones that one by one I hope to address and answer here, hopefully with a little help.