End of the wedding season...

Last weekend we were at the last of the weddings this year down in Tortosa.. The last of five.. Joana & Paco, a cousin of E's dad... (there was 7 brothers and sisters in his granmother's family so there was a big difference between the oldest and the youngest - Joana's my age).

Regrettably, what was looking to be a fun event (was really looking forward to it - the reception was at Les Moles in Ulledecona), turned into One Wedding and a Funeral. E's granny fell into a coma on Friday night (passing away in the early hours of Sunday morning) so we were no more in the humour for going to a wedding the next day..

That being said, it was a wedding to remember - the food lived up to be everything that everyone said it would be..

Catering for large numbers tends to be a recipe for disaster - sorry folks, cooking fillet steak with foie gras for 200 people is just not possible. The steak most probably has been cooked at 9am that morning, so the probability that it will be as tough as boots is extremely high!

Joana & Paco got it 100% right - apart from the appertif hors d'oeuve, which were select and good quality, but pounced upon the moment the waiters loomed into view (it WAS 3pm, so obviously people were hungry), the rest of the meal made up for it..

Simplicity was the key, taking good ingredients and presenting them simply. It was certainly an example of a traditional Spanish wedding fair - the sign of a good wedding is the number of prawns/langoustines etc. that you get presented with! And this one, certainly turned up trumps..

Here you can see the Pumpkin soup, served separately (plated poached egg and langoustine, and then the pumpkin soup poured over the top)..

Dinner was topped off with a visit from Quico el Célio, el Mut i el Noi de Ferreries, a traditional band from the Terres de l'Ebre region, whose speciality is the traditional Jota originating from Tortosa. Joana's mother joined in to give her own ad-lib version dedicated to the couple (one of the features of the Jota is that people make up the lyrics as they go along, adapting them for the occasion).

They even played my favourite De Roquetes Vinc which has a special meaning for E's family, as it's a song that his Alzheimer-inflicted grandmother (Joana's aunt) still sings to this day on her more lucid days..

En fin.. a new beginning for some, a ending for others.. And so the circle of life goes on...

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Here's the full line up:

Aperitif

Star-anise scented crisps

Iberian ham

Marinated anchovy and herring toast

Vegetable and foie gras coca pastry

Red pepper and courgette mousse cone

Langoustine and bacon brochette

Iberian ham croquettes

Griddled prawn brochette

Dinner

Grilled langoustines

Pumpkin soup with langoustines and poached egg

Sea bass with calamar 'eel' and calamar ink 'caviar'

Blood orange and strawberry sorbet

Duck confit with muscatel and cinnamon scented apple purée

Textured rice pudding (with rice crispies!)

Wedding cake - Individual chocolate mousse cakes

Grocery shopping, the same all over the world, or is it?

Yeah, I know. A mind-disengagingly, boring task anywhere. Well for most people anyway.

E and I seem to get a kick out of it. It's a first stop-off, no matter where we go. I say that you can always tell how a country is by its supermarkets or lack-thereof.. and Spain is a food lovers paradise, so go figure that it would be instant gratification for us just doing the weekly shop.

Well, that was how it was until our busy lives caught up on us, forcing one or the other to do it alone. Not as much fun, alone.. I'm mean, somethings are meant to be done together. A long list of things comes to mind.. Yet, it ended up either being a) a strange guiri dashing through the aisles with her yellow-luminous post-its, hell bent on doing it as fast as possible (yep, my record was 34 mins for a full shop) or b) a tired-Spick whose face would light up with all the food that wasn't on the efficiently e-mailed shopping list or that already could be found in the laden shelves at home. Definitely not fun.

So where did the fun go? Most probably when the whole convenience food came..

When I arrived here, I would spend hours on end wandering around supermarkets mesmerized by the different food brands and lack thereof (I still can't stop giggling when I see Bimbo bread and reckon that Cif should still be Jif). I simply couldn't understand why their milk was on shelves and not in the fridge and why most supermarkets were rather empty of food and variety. For students in those days, it was hell. On earth.

Later, I discovered that supermarkets were not the places that the *real* people in Spain shopped. Heaven forbid if you even considered buying meat in the supermarket. For fresh stuff like that, you had to go to the market. The idea of convenience food was pizzas, chinese noodles and a millions of types of croquettes. Convenience it wasn't - rather *sin*venience - too much hassle and oil for a student.

So what happened? Globalisation, I guess. Or one rather smart market analyst who saw a gap market and a growing trend. I suppose it goes to figure, since the average working week is a minimum of 40 hours, and food customs (main meal in the middle of the day, and evening meal at 22h) meant that no one has enough time to go to the market (generally closed before 20h, unlike the supermarkets that open until 9 or 10 at night), let alone cook anymore. So it's a case of cartons of ready-made gaspazcho, cellophaned torillas, even callos a la abuela (tripe in a murky looking sauce that looks like anything but home-made by your granny - she'd turn in her grave, she would). The markets are fighting back, trying to employ celebrities to advertise the advantages of going local (better quality, fresher produce) but who can fight against price given the current aroma of the economic crisis?

It's one of the changes in Spain that I don't like at all. That's why going to Tortosa with its local market (with produce that has just hopped off the field) makes my mouth water for the fresh crunchy greens. Yet, there's other days (when I couldn't be bother to cook - yep, it happens to me too) that I'm glad I've got a tin of tuna in the house..

I guess it goes without saying that if a sign of a country is its supermarket (in my eyes), it won't be long before we all speak Spanglish.. :-/

To La Rioja or to not La Rioja, that is the question..

It's official. E and I have been married for a year now.. So to celebrate, the lovely folk at F&G where we held our wedding last year gave us a night in one of their hotels for our first anniversary.

Where to go was the question - the only solution being to Logroño, heart of the La Rioja district so as you can imagine, we forcibly went.. Imagine, a *whole* weekend tasting wine - you'd have to like it a bit for a start, and then somehow manage to find your way to a restaurant to eat something to soak up all that wine.. A difficult task was at hand..

Well, in Logroño they've got that under control, you just stagger

along. The weekend we were there it was the festival of the Laurel district meaning that everyone was out on the street eating pintxos, but unlike Bilbao the bars *ONLY* did one pintxo each.. To be honest, I'm not sure which one out of all the different ones we tried (yes another pub crawl was in order) was the best.. it's a toss up between the Triple-tiered garlic button mushrooms, where the liquidy, pungent juice sank into a day old piece of bread (Garlic mushrooms and garlic bread in one bite!) or maybe the gula or saltcod scramble roll (gulas are a delicacy of Spain - originally the young baby eels before they were nearly fished out of extinction, nowadays made from a fish paste but still in th

e form of tiny slivery, worm-like eels).. Sounds ucky but the scramble was just at that point between cooked and slightly runny that it made it a marvellous bite..

Anyway, getting back to the real motivation for the trip - the wine, and oh so much of it! Everywhere, of every type, and for every pocket (imagine €0.70 for a shot of wine!). I don't think I really *got* wine, until going to New Zealand but now, it seems that E and I are somewhat experts, well if you can compare us to the other visitors to the area who didn't have much of a clue (why go to visit Bodegas if you don't even like wine??¿¿!)

E had done some thorough research beforehand, checking out the best wineries to go, which I goes to figure since he couldn't let the Spanish side down after all that fabulous tasting in NZ.. And he didn't let the side down.

The first stop-off was in CVNE's Viña Real, half way between Logroño and Laguardia, heart of the Rioja district. What can I say, we arrived at a great time - winery to ourselves, just one group of girls with us as we toured around the facilities (state of the art and the flagship of CVNE now) and proceeded to taste the standard samples and then some.. We stumbled across the real reason why Corona beer isn't called Corona in Spain (it's Coronita) as CVNE makes an incredible sweet wine called Corona - definitely a must-try.

I could go on and on about that winery and their other one in Haro (La Rioja Alta) .. but then, the best way to know what I mean is to go there as they're so well set up that visitors can even look around during harvesting, which is totally unheard of here in Catalunya (our viniculture friend Ramon disappears off the space of the earth during September and October).

Other great finds were Bodegas Bilaínas and La Rioja Alta, each so completely different, with totally different philosophies but the same basic processes. And yes, the car did come back a few cases heavier... You can't go and not bring souvenirs for everyone! :-)

Patxi, ay va la hostia!*

Last week, E was sent to Bilbao again on business, so given I was in a quiet time workwise and E had accumulated Spanair points, I decided to join him and that way visit our friends Izaskun and Josefa in Bilbao..

What can I say other than the Basque Country deserves its name as culinary hotspot. What's more, the city is more than just the Guggenheim.. Wandering around the markets while E was working was just amazing. There were people at all the fish stalls, clamouring to get to the front and an amazing variety too. The scallops looked particularly good.

However it has to be said, that the main focus in Bilba

o (and San Sebastian, which is the next city on the "to do" list) is on their pintxos.

Pintxos are the Basque version of tapas, but generally just a mouthful, stuffed on top of a piece of bread. Essentially it arose from when wine was served in the olden days, a piece of dry bread was placed over the top of the goblet to stop any flies or other nasties from falling in. From there it has evolved into a cultural tradition, with all the bars in the Basque country filled with people at lunchtime and in the evening. There's no tables or chairs as everyone stands around, even

outside in the street with a zurito (a small shotglass of beer) or a glass of wine (more common). Depending on the area, the variety changes although most bars tend to have a speciality.. so as

you can imagine, it leads to a bar-crawl! I especially loved the ones with Txangurro (crab meat mixed with mayonnaise) and the amazing mushrooms in Cafe Bilbao in Plaza Nueva.

The weekend we were there was the patron saint of Bilbao so Saturday everyone was out on the street to celebrate. Surprisingly after the rain that we had the days before (constant Ireland-like drizzle) Saturday was a bright, warm winter day. Izaskun and Josefa decided it was about that Alain started to look like a real Basque so he was dressed for the occasion. The atmosphere was amazing, people everywhere with bottles of cider

(not like ours back home) more like wine but made with apples. Izaskun insisted that we try the local Xistorra and Talo - a pancake made from co

rnflour which was rather nice but filling!

All in all, culinary wise, it is definitely a capital city!

*Typical Spanish expression apparently characteristic of the Basques

Black pudding - a universal thing

Until meeting E, I thought the Irish were the only ones to make a real good Black Pudding (made with wheat) but that wasn't I discovered Baldanas from Tortosa...

E's hometown, Tortosa, is nestled in the river bed of the Ebro, only a few miles from the sea, near an area that they call the Delta which as you'll remember from your geography lessons is the alluvial plain of the river just before reaching the sea. What's special about this area is it's one of the main rice-growing regions in Europe. Yes! we actually have rice growing in Europe, it's not just a Chinese thing and there's a lot more varieties that just

Italian Abororio rice. Here, they grow several varieties: long rice, basmati, etc. but also a variety called Arròs bomba which is used to make the paellas in the area (I'll get back to the subject of rice in another post)..

With such abundance of rice, it's normal that they'd use it in more than just paella and rice

dishes. It's one of the main ingredients of the Baldana, among the other typical black pudding ingredients. How do they cook it you may ask? Simple, it's already boiled so it's just a matter of heating it up on the frying pan.. The typical accompanyment is Escalivada (roasted peppers, onions and aubergines soaked in oil) or even just in an Entrepà

with allioli (no, it's not just a French thing - actually more than likely was brought in by the Romans from Egypt).

La Fageda - Catalunya's best yoghurt with a heart

E has taken a liking to these yoghurts these days.. and with reason..
Only recently discovered this product, curiously through a documentary that was on TVC here in Catalonia. What makes it different to other yogurts is the work force behind it..

As the La Fageda web site says "... it's a non-profit social iniciative which aims to integrate handicapped individuals from the Garrotxa into the workforce." With a 210-strong work force, the whole production is carried out by people with Down's, autism and other mental disorders. Like a workshop scheme but the workers can actually see an end result that is actually used.. Not only that, but with tangible results, their turnover in 2006 was €7,264,000. Not bad for a small inititative! What's more, the yogurt is really good, using only natural products coming from the livestock on the farm, taking a really good base product and adding only natural flavours.. They even have a range of yogurts; skimmed, bio, yogurt drinks, custards.. Gone are the days of Superquinn chocolate yogurts, with their synthetic taste and unnatural greyish colour.. Who would of though lemon yogurts would taste soo good?

Sí España!

I guess you're wondering what an Irish girl is doing in Spain... It's reasonable enough question, one I often ask myself, only to conclude that it was my love of food that brought me back here and that keeps me here (no offence E!)..

I guess it all started when I was only 18, on my post-Leaving Cert trip to Port de la Selva with Saoirse. I don't know what it was, but somehow that seaside village got under my skin, the Mediterranean saltwater in my blood that made me destined to return..

My first of experience of food here in Spain was not what you'd imagine - for the two weeks we spent between Port de la Selva and Barcelona, we lived on Chinese instant noodles, Lay's crisps (plain salted crisps were unheard of in Tayto-loving Ireland at the time), watermelon and ice creams - not what you'd call culinary delights. But I guess there was something there that fascinated me as I walked through La Boquería just off Las Ramblas..

Everything about it enthralled me, the people, bustle of people, the colours and vast variety of fruits and vegetables that I couldn't name in English, let alone in Spanish..

Just watching the old ladies was an experience in itself- the way the lady behind the counter would examine each individual tomato, testing for ripeness while endlessly babbling on in what was a stream of incomprehensible words to me at the time. How could it take so long just to buy a few tomatoes?


It wasn't until later, returning two years later on an Erasmus year as part of my university studies, that I really started to comprehend that the Spanish don't eat for necessity, rather for the love of it. Food and shopping was not a chore to them, mindlessly wandering up and down through the aisles, randomly picking off stuff off the shelves.. rather a hunt to find 'the ripest tomatoes', 'the freshest fish', 'the most succulent steak'.. They actually think twice about what they are putting into their mouth. They're passionate about it. I just have to look at my husband E to see him get enthusiastic about the great mackerel he found, and the hours that we spend just wandering around supermarkets wherever we go...

It's not that I'm criticising my hometown; there's really great Irish food too - but I guess our (the Irish as a culture) whole attitude to food at the time (although it's not the case now) was completely different, eating out of routine rather than anything else.

My background, I guess, was a little more special - my folks being fairly adventurous food-wise. Dad is a keen fisherman which meant there was always fresh trout on the table and we wouldn't blink twice to see him gutting fish at the kitchen sink, so it's not surprising to hear that reared a child whose favourite food when she was 6 was mussels..

Not at all typical in Ireland where the most foreign fish that you'd see then was haddock or something similar.. They're still one of my favourite dishes, simply steamed with loads of garlic and fresh crusty bread to mop all the juice.. It's like having the sea there in a bowl - just wonderful.. I guess afterall it's not so surprising that I'm living here with the quantity of fresh Mediterranean seafood available, maybe it's always been there but it took going to Spain to make me realise it.. Still, I do miss those Irish mussels..

So there you go.. it started out of curiosity and ended up being love, literally.. My family never cease to be surprised about the new foods and dishes E and I find for them to try, some to their liking (Rice with duck and snails is actually quite good!) and others not (still haven't convinced them to try callos)

So why this blog? Partly boredom - should have been working a translation project but somehow stumbled across a load of great food blogs done by people that have the same passion as me (Wow, I'm not alone in the world!!) and partly curiosity to see if anyone is actually interested what I write, to share my love for food and to stop boring all my other friends with my in-depth, blow by blow account of what we ate, where we ate it and how we'd do it better.
Well there you are...