BOQUERIA MARKET: BARCELONA
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Saturdays in markets all over the world bustle with energy. At Barcelona’s famed Boqueria market on a sun drenched September morning Janet and I felt as alive and excited as we might have walking into Woodstock in 1969. Magazine pictures can only give one a sense of a place like this. It must we walked, smelled, tasted, heard, touched and finally remembered. But if you haven’t been yet let me try and recreate our time there.
It would be traditional to probably begin with “Pinotxo” the famous tapas place right near the opening of the food-dominated area of La Boqueria. The animated owner was there and easy to spot as he has been seen in countless pictures and books regarding this culinarily obsessed city.
But for me it must begin at an egg stall. Life begins with eggs and this one was a world waiting to be born! After seeing ever manner of meat and fish stalls in San Sebastian this egg sellers place of business came as a sweet surprise. Three women ruled this roost of eggs. A variety of different sized woven baskets surrounded them. There were white eggs of course. But there were eggs that were brown, speckled, and as small as a horse’s eye and as large at a softball. There were eggs that were ebony-black that were the size of acorn squash. The emu eggs were nearly threateningly large, and I could only guess at how sticky and potent the whites would be if I cracked them onto a hot griddle. Eventually I had to leave. There was so much else in this place to take in.
At “Bacallà” there is plenty of that, (bacalao; cod both fresh and salted). But there is also dried tuna, (mojama) and dried merluza of which we were offered free samples a kind of ‘Jerky of the Sea’.
A place called “Cereals” sells a variety of beans, pastas and potatoes. They are held in soft white porcelain bowls. It seems some of the customers are workers elsewhere in the market that are looking for some alternatives to the hams, sausages and seafood that rule Spain. We bought the smallest amount of some tiny beans we saw. They are known as “mongetes”, (mon-gay-tas) and they are part of the pride of Catalunya. After a few tastes we did a quick u-turn and bought a bag of the dried versions to take home and savor a taste of Barcelona at some future date.
We enjoyed an interlude lunch at a sharp little place simply called “Vins i Tape”s. (Wines and Tapas). We ordered “Surtidos de Ibericos Bellota”, (assorted cured hams and sausages) and drank a few of the local beers. We also had “Involtini de Berenjas”, (Rolled Eggplant). Our tapas waitress asked if we wanted the staple of Spain called, (variously) Pan con Tomate. I said yes in that we hadn’t had it yet. When it came it was a bit soggy, but it proved to be an even tastier platform for the meats and sheep’s milk cheese we’d ordered than the ever-proffered baguette bread with no oil.
I was interested in the sushi like cases holding the refrigerated tapas near us. It was entirely open from the back with a metal base and a toggle switch that showed it was on. There was a digital read out of the temperature. This is something we had not seen in San Sebastian last week. Maybe here in the much larger metropolis some health codes were more tightly enforced in regards to foods traditionally left on a bar at room temp.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Four years ago today we watched the world blow up on TV. Until then it was the biggest disaster of our time. Now we pass this day not able to fill our minds with quiet reflection of those lost lives and the senselessness of our government’s response. Now we are filled with the images and voices of the continuing saga in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
It seems nearly sacrilegious to be in a distant land taking a vacation. Even though we planned this time away with our friends this “time off” is experienced through a hazy reality that CNN and Internet information sites weakly prop up our understanding of the facts, the stories, and the future.
We are witnessing the largest migration of human beings in modern times. Not since the Civil War have so many people been uprooted unwillingly from their homes. We can only take some consolation that in the months to come we will do charity dinners to help in the best way we know how.
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Last night we went to one of Barcelona’s trendiest and more experimental restaurants. This is one of the things we typically avoid but the restaurant is located in the Ritz, (Hotel Arts) where we are staying. The consulting chef is a young superstar named Sergi Arola. He is the chef-owner of a restaurant in Madrid called “La Broche”. He once was the consulting chef for the branch of La Broche, which briefly flamed in Miami. Like so many creative chefs in Spain Sergi is compared to Ferran Adrià. Perhaps in his Madrid restaurant there is more of the invention that not only Ferran but many chefs in many places now favor but here the food was a rather careful and playful take on the tapas and iconic dishes of Spain.
The highlight of the meal for us was the very able and sunny sommelier whose name is “Danny”. He hopes to come to the United States and work for a great restaurant and soak up the American restaurant scene. After one night under his care, I’d be happy to help him fulfill that quest.
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Monday, September 12th
It is another sunlit morning in Barcelona. I have been plotting our day while Janet catches up on her much-needed sleep. I’m fairly itching to get back to the Boqueria Market! We estimated that we’d possibly seen but half of it on Saturday and it was closed yesterday, (being Sunday). We had lined up lunch with a 1:30 reservation at Ca L’ Isidre so we needed to get rolling. We hopped in a cab, and I asked him to take us to a tourist famous café. We enjoyed the coffee as we have almost everywhere we have had it in Spain this trip.
Now it’s 11:30 a.m. and a Devil is crawling into his costume at “Las Ramblas”. We saw him and his creepy angel sidekick in full regalia doing the street theater thing for the touristas the other day. Here he looked like an ordinary joe, putting his work-a-day duds on and getting ready to make his daily bread. We entered under the archway of the market and headed in a direction we hadn’t on Saturday. It was a jaw dropper.
It is called “Despojos Selectos” and it’s all about the “off cuts” of meats. A pretty young woman of no more than 22 attended the stall. She looked South American to me, and I asked her where she was from. “Ecuador”, she smiled. Her name was Anna. We took in the view. It was hard to grasp the totality of it at first. Each item in this seemingly mundane meat case held products you simply do not see in America. Even if we have the occasional tongue or tripe, it is in the freezer section most often anymore. Here they are raw, fresh, and a carnal as meat has ever looked. I ask Anna what the square block of muted red “butter” is knowing the answer before it exits her full lips. “Sangre…Blood”. From there my eyes scanned…EYES…still in a bony head, and huge testicles, (maybe not for a cow but by man standards, huge!), and bulbous kidneys and a whole, deep, royal, burgundy liver hanging on a sharp steel hook through a membrane. It hangs over “carne cula”. Anna smiles again and even does a half turn and point demurely to her own cula, (ass). There are intestine, cheeks, what seems to be wide arteries that are attached to a heart. I ask a woman about them, and she points to various parts of her small, old body to help me understand the areas these parts come from. It is as if a butcher took apart a whole cow, saved the familiar primal cuts we see in meat cases back home for some other purpose, and arrange them in this cold case of glass and light.
At a fruit stand a young man with several piercings and punk cut hair cheerfully talked to me of the sapote in front of him. I told him it was a small one and he looked surprised to see that I even knew what it was, but he enjoyed it. I told him we were from Miami. As it turned out he had spent a brief period of time in Orlando and Tampa and his English good. We talked about the color of the litchis being pink. Different for us. But then my eyes fell on fresh mangosteens. These are very, very rare at home and I wanted one. I asked him if I could buy just one and sample it. He said, “difficult…but I try”. He found a knife but no cutting board and began the not so easy task of cutting off the think bark that protects the delicate white fruit. I have asked people from around the world what their favorite fruit is from time to time. Many from the countries like Thailand answer with no hesitation, “Mangosteen!” He got it open, and I tipped him well. In my excitement to take another picture with one hand I accidentally dropped my nearly entire mangosteen on the asphalt floor of the market. One beautiful orb remained. I split it with Janet. I looked at the remaining wasted fruit on the ground. I had to tear myself away from scooping it up and “rubbing off the dirt”. We walked on to see what was next.
“ANTS FOR SALE!” That sign stopped us. Worms too. There it was in Spanish, “gusanos”. The same world Castro used to describe the Marielitos that escaped or were released by him to mock the U.S. Government back in 1980. “The Worms”. Here they were to be eaten.
A party of folks from Ireland was behind us, mostly women in there 30’s. In the Irish tongue I heard one say, “Insects!” “Insects in candy!”
Another, “Maggots! You can NOT eat maggots!”, her head shook violently.
No one seemed to be working this stand.
”They eat them in Asia”, one countered.
There were scorpions in vodka. “Absolutely”, I muttered. There were those worms Janet showed me now in three versions: barbequed worms, worms in cheese and worm with chilies. But no one was biting.
At a chicken shop two young girls gossip and cut up chickens. The sound of scissors clipping and the silence of knives slashing…they work. When I ask them they let me take their picture of them using a vice-like shear to cut the heads off of the birds. The thinner one closest to the device with dirty blond hair doesn’t understand my butchered Spanish and starts a pose by hold up a bird by the neck. She doesn’t smile for the camera but holds it outright with a locked elbow. I ask her to look at me and then she smiles and tilts her head. I snap a picture and then I ask her to let me take another of her doing her work with the shears. She gets it and poses with the chicken guillotine. I click, she clicks, the head drops.
“How many of these do you cut a day?” I ask. She looks at her dark-haired fellow worker and they both agree, “A lot!”
“50-80-100?” I venture. She circles her bony arm in large rolling loops, “More, more, more”.
“Who is faster at cutting?” I ask. They do not understand me again. “Quien mas rapdio?” I try. The skinny one beams and raises her arms in a “champ’s pose”. “ME!” she beams, “I am. I am”.
If great cuisine is born in the market then this is the ‘Nativity of Barcelona’.
At Kiosko Universal we see a display in the tapas case that is different than so many we have seen. Besides the nicely roasted lengths of carrot, (a vegetable I’ve not seen here-to-fore) in one of these establishments, there is a 12-foot row of raw fish. Most of it is split in half. There are cigalas, razor clams, clams the size of one’s thumbnail, thin glistening escalopes of swordfish that look perfect! Just slap them on a hot Plancha with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of salt. I know that some think lemon is a way to mask a fish, but I’m a self-confessed lover of acidity so bear with me.
Our stomachs begin to grumble, and we decide to head to “Ca L’ Isidre” a bit earlier than our 1:30 reservation theorizing that we will get out and be able to explore more in the afternoon if we do. We grab cab and leave the Boqueria…our heads filled with images.
(For Ca L’ Isidre see separate entry).